Michael Barnes is the Austin American-Statesman's social columnist. He lives in South Austin with his partner, Kip, two dogs
and two cats. More on Out & About.
Established fact: There is an audience for cabaret in Austin. At the highest level. Austin Cabaret Theatre has proven that over the course of its first nine seasons. Almost every national marquee act has graced Stuart Moulton’s stage, now urbanely situated in the Kodosky Lounge with its panoramic skyline view.
Jackson Iffinger and Riley Britton
The crowd trends older, with inevitable sprinklings of musical queens (and I embrace that term enthusiastically for myself as well). The tables at Kodosky are a bit too large by cabaret standards, complicating any movement or conversation. Yet I wouldn’t trade it for any other Austin cabaret location.
Carmen Emiliani and Norb Johnson
The duo playing two nights this week were Klea Blackhurst, best known for her Ethel Merman takes, and Billy Stritch, famous, I suppose, for dating Liza Minnelli and an artist I’ve followed since his first trios — Montgomery, Plant and Stritch and Montgomery, Mayes and Stritch — played Houston clubs and theaters in the early 1980s.
Amy Shipherd, Sam Rieger and Mary Castilla
They collaborated on the ideal Hoagy Carmichael revue. Blackhurst reveled in the revealing historical patter and the singers shared tributes to the composer’s masterpieces (“Stardust,” “The Nearness of You,” “Georgia on my Mind,” etc.) as well as his minor side excursions (a shuffle, movie and theater material). Their interpretations were inventive (every tricky in “Heart and Soul”), never disrespectful. I was especially glad there was no ungainly medley.
It’s no secret that I’m a skeptic regarding groups like Theatre Action Project, which promotes creative arts and eduction for social change. All the testimonials in the world can’t convince me that something as culturally complex as theater can significantly alter social behavior in a predictable manner. There are too many variables.
Niyanta Spelman and Arlen Johnson
That doesn’t stop me from admiring the people who attempt it. And TAP is as thorough-going as a mixed arts/social service nonprofit can be. I’ve been impressed by their seriousness — and the seriousness of the fun they generate as a byproduct.
Southern Longoria, Carla Jackson and Leonardo Zornberg
Take the fundraiser Big Kids Party, a carnival for the grown-ups who support TAP at Allan House on Thursday. The distinguished, multi-story house in the Original Austin neighborhood lent a homey feel to the games and gimmicks that guests attacked with abandon.
Yajaira and Eric McGiver
I wish TAP and its allies well. They’ve attracted top-rate talent. And they care. That still counts.
Before it closes on Sunday, I should say a few words about the touring version of “Fiddler on the Roof” starring Harvey Fierstein at Bass Concert Hall.
The question for every classic work from “Oedipus” to “Oklahoma!” is how much to alter. That effort is complicated when one interpretive/creative artist, such as director Jerome Robbins, brands all subsequent productions with his vision.
Road show director Sammy Dallas Bayes clearly respects the essentials from the 1964 Broadway production, but in hundreds of small ways, he departs from holy writ. This is healthy and refreshing.
To be clear, there’s nothing radical in his interpretation, or that of his star, whose handprints are on every scene. Audiences are always watching Tevye to see how he’ll react to each new test to his character. And Fierstein takes full possession of the role from the second he opens his lips.
The performer’s character voice takes only a few minutes of adjustment. (Side note: The sound amplification at Bass was pitch perfect on opening night for once.) Fierstein’s comic inventions remained mostly on target, especially during the long dream sequence. A little camp at times? Sure, but that’s part of the human experience as well.
His most telling additions, however, delve into more serious emotions, making connections where none existed in previous “Fiddler” productions. The way he wipes his hand after touching Fyedka in the tailor shop, or envelopes Golde’s fingers for a moment before leaving Anatevka, these introduce unforeseen facets of humanity into the role and show.
I had waited a long time to see “Fiddler” again. I cherish memories of a University of Houston production in the early 1970s that made the material so vivid (and, similar to what Fierstein recountd in his interview here, was closer to a time when anti-Jewish feelings were still pervasive). Like Fierstein, I’m not a huge fan of the movie.
Over the years, I’ve seen a wide range of performances, though. (The one I wish I’d seen was former Statesman editor Jeff Salamon’s middle school Tevye. Picture it.) This one belongs among the most memorable, precisely because of what Fierstein embellishes.
Harvey Fierstein realizes almost everyone attending “Fiddler on the Roof” this week in Austin will arrive with at least one Tevye already inside their heads.
“That’s the problem with doing a classic role,” Fierstein oozes in his pebble-grinder basso. “There are always expectations. Expectations lead to prejudice. And prejudice is the greatest enemy of art. One should come to art with an open heart and an open mind.”
Fierstein, best known for writing and starring in “Torch Song Trilogy” — also for playing Edna Turnblad in Broadway’s “Hairspray” — analyzed almost every aspect of Tevye before playing him on Broadway five years ago. That spirit of artistic inquiry has extended through the tour that stops Tuesday through March 7 at Bass Concert Hall.
The Tevyes inside his head go way back. Fierstein, 58, distinctly remembers Zero Mostel’s 1964 performances, which introduced the musical about shtetl life in Russia written by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein. The Jewish boy from Brooklyn was already theater-astute by age 12.
“My mother would buy tickets on the first row of the balcony for two or three dollars,” he recalls. “We didn’t have any money. But those are the best seats in the house. Then somebody figured that out, changed the name to the ‘mezzanine,’ and started charging as much as for the orchestra seats.”
Seeing Jewish life portrayed so openly and lovingly in the theater shocked him.
“I knew that, in show business, Jews had to change their names, get a nose job and pass for white,” he says. “And now the curtain comes up on a stage of full of Jews! They talked and prayed like Jews. They even looked like Jews with the prayer shawls hanging out.”
Zero Mostel’s inventive take on Tevye — sometimes more vaudeville than shtetl — reverberates in his memory, too.
“I can close my eyes and picture him on the cart and at Shabbat prayer,” he says, then joking: “Three-hundred-eighty years later, they asked me to do it.”
When the producers of the most recent — of many — Broadway revivals approached Fierstein to replace Alfred Molina, Fiestein had recently closed out his Tony Award-winning drag performances in “Hairspray.” He wondered if there would there be any question of his famously unusual voice carrying the role.
“I insisted on singing the whole musical score for Jerry, Sheldon and Joe in a tiny studio with folding chairs,” he says. “I didn’t want there to be any surprises. For them.”
He reports that they laughed through the performance. “I said: ‘You still think this is funny after 40 years?’ ” One of the creators even wept.
Though some critics insist that an operatic baritone sing Tevye, Fierstein follows in the Broadway tradition of Ethel Merman, Carol Channing and other stars with character voices who made the transition from speaking to singing — the scariest moment in musicals — more credible. Which is important, given the emotional attachments audiences have made with this music.
“The songs in ‘Fiddler’ are practically folk music by now,” he says. “Everybody knows ‘Sunrise, Sunset,’ ‘Matchmaker,’ ‘Tradition.’ You hear them at every bar mitzvah and wedding.”
To prepare further, Fierstein read everything he could by Sholem Aleichem, who wrote the original Tevye tales. The actor listened to every recording of the musical, including one in Yiddish. He also watched the silent film version of “Tevye and His Daughters,” gaining more insight into his character’s pain when his daughter, Chava, decides to marry a Christian.
In other words, Fierstein immersed himself in what he calls “the classic American musical.”
“I tore that script apart,” he says. “I talked to the boys (his term of endearment for Bock, Harnick and Stein, the eldest now 97) over and over. They came to the show every other week.”
Fierstein concentrated on what audiences would have perceived back in 1964.
“They were still a lot of anti-Jewish feelings around them,” he says. “Jews were still not allowed in some hotels. Signs read: ‘No dogs or Jews.’ That’s hard for more modern audiences to understand.”
Especially those for whom the “Fiddler” experience rests on the 1971 film with Topol or a high-school production. (For the record, Fierstein doesn’t care for the movie adaptation, which he considers beautiful, but not true to the spirit of Aleichem.)
He says that the biggest mistake interpreting Tevye is making him an Everyman, just one of the people in the village.
“He’s a special person,” Fierstein says. “Because of his love for his girls, his love of life and his imagination. He’s bridging the world of shtetl life into modernity. Shtetl life is death. Many who left didn’t make it, either. Tevye survived somehow. He moved into modern life. You watch him bend and bend and bend. He embodies modernity.”
Fierstein thinks the world has taken a step back from modernity with the rise of rigid fundamentalism. Yet he’s still convinced of the positive effect of musicals.
“A magic happens,” he says. “Three minutes into the show, you look out, and what used to be a mass of individuals are all now wearing the same goofy smiles. They are in Musical Comedy Land. They feel they are being taken care of.”
Soon after opening in “Fiddler” on Broadway, Fierstein exited through the stage door to find a Hasidic family — a mother, a father and three children — on the sidewalk, waiting to see the cast.
“There was this child with piercing eyes, just staring at me,” he remembers. “I said, ‘Cookie, are you OK?’ He replied in the most innocent way: ‘Are you really Jewish?’ Which took me right back to my first experience with ‘Fiddler.’ That made everything worthwhile. Or the (Jewish) phrase: ‘That has been enough.’ ”
Costumed go-go guys and gals were stationed throughout the silent auction area. Austin’s showpiece band, DrumJam, welcomed bouncy guests into the dramatically unveiled dining area. Ecstatic performers circled each winner of live auction items. The costumed performers, in turn, motivated a few winners to jump up on chairs and tables, twisting in triumph. The evening was rounded out by the inevitable — and inevitably infectious — Zach mass disco.
Larry Connelly and Mary Herr Tally
Personally, I might have changed a few things to focus and to tighten up the evening, but once again, bravo to the organizing committee, starting with event co-chairs Mary Herr Tally and Larry Connelly. Turns out I know all the other leaders fairly well, too: Donaji Lira, Venus Strawn, Susan Lubin, Candace Partridge, Sergio Durante, Karen Landa and Michael Smothers. A creative gang!
Venus Strawn and Joanie Bentzin
It was an evening for luxuriating in friends, old and new. Start with my immediate table-mates, Tanya Acevedo and Kate Hersch, both wonderfully funny and insightful. Kip, looking handsome as always, sat between the classy bookends Carla McDonald and Eric Groten. Others at our table included Maria Groten, Jack McDonald, Robert Hersch, Annsley Popov, Stephanie Coultress and Todd O’Neill. Wow. Just wow. I’d have this group over to our house for a dozen dinners.
Eric and Maria Groten
Earlier in the evening, I talked Galveston and Surfside with Cliff Redd and Rick Johnson, social calendars with Kevin Smothers and Michael Pungello, racy news with Stephen Rice, hunting for truffles with Eva Womack, hotel living and Zach’s plans with Elisbeth Challener. Among the former and current politcos in attendance this very political week: Chris Riley, Mark Strama, Louise Epstein, Mike Martinez, Donna Howard and Eddie Rodriguez.
Another stellar evening. Lower attendance than I expected (650?). But with so much else going on, that fate was in the stars.
Photos courtesy of Seabrook Jones www.juicythis.com
When power lawyer and power philanthropist Becky Beaver invites you to her “cottage” for the first time, you smile indulgently. Surely she means the term ironically. But no. Beaver and husband John Duncan moved into a modest, bungalow-like house on busy Bull Creek Road, just north of 45th Street, back in 1980, when the neighborhood was a bit dicier and she had just started her firm and her family.
Lynn Yeldell and Becky Beaver
They never left. The former dairy included a creamery and well house, once part of an 100-acre farm. It really is a cottage, though. Additions to the back, upstairs and above a garage probably tripled the floor space. Yet it retains the narrow coziness of a cottage, now crammed with local art and comfy furniture.
Sherry Smith and Lise Ragbir
And sometimes guests. It proved a warm venue Friday for the latest reception from the Art Divas, a creative membership group of Women & Their Work. Membership is not open to your columnist, given the chromosomal gap. Yet, attending my second such reception, with its devout attention to the art and artists present, I felt like an honorary member. A divo?
Gemma Ainslie and Bonnie Tamres-Moore
I spent quality time with Arthouse’s Sue Graze, Fete Accompli’s Quincy Adams Erickson, former Quebecuer Lise Ragbir (who has started an informal French-speakers group in Austin), among others. Humorously, I dawdled even longer with the only other male guests, Stephen Moser and Stephen Rice, already dear friends. Turns out we had mounds of gossip to hash out. More of that kind of discussion tonight at Zach Theatre’s Red, Hot and Soul gala.
Judy Jensen and Sally Webber
Note on Saturday night: As my patient Twitter and Facebook followers know, I’m sick that I can’t attend CASAblanca at the Four Seasons, the Chef Smackdown at Stubb’s and the Art Night Austin after-party, all tonight as well. But look, it’s just not possible to do any of those key social events justice in a “drive-by.” I’m going to stick with RH&S at the Austin Convention Center for this particular evening. Next season …
Socially and organizationally, the Austin Classical Guitar Society belongs in a class with Conspirare and Austin Chamber Music Center. Each group has taken a sometimes ignored subset of the classical repertoire and made it essential for Austin audiences. The growing groups have been rewarded with a deeper, broader impact on the city’s social life.
Rachel Feit and Heather McKissick
ACGS’s Matthew Hinsley thus joins earthshakers such as Craig Hella Johnson and Michelle Schumann, the leaders of Conspirare and ACMC. I recall when Matthew was but a University of Texas student, a fresh-faced guitarist and singer with a promising, self-promoted CD.
Leah Nelson and Thomas Echols
Now, his group stages a summer festival that crams 60 events into six days. It books the finest classical guitar artists from around the world and commissions new pieces, such as Graham Reynolds’ “Power Man,” which will be performed by hundreds of guitarists at the fest.
Amy Houghton and Trevor Hunt
Saturday’s mini-gala, Guitars Under the Stars, at the Mexican American Cultural Center raised money and awareness for ACGS’s student programs, which reach hundreds of aspiring artists in dozens of schools. After nibbling and chatting with the likes of Leadership Austin’s Heather McKissick, Alamo Drafthouse’s Karrie and Tim League, Austin Chronicle’s Rachel Feit, West Austin News’ Alana Mallard, former Austin City Council Member Louise Epstein, returning Austin musicians Leah Nelson and Thomas Echols (back from a Southern California sojourn), Hinsley and others, I heard two of the sampled pieces.
Alana Mallard and Zach Mallard
Young virtuoso Vincent Turner cascaded through the gigue from Bach’s Violin Partita No. 2. Then eight students from McCallum High School performed a preview of Reynold’s insistent “Power Man.” The music and the socializing suggested that ACGS is headed to the stars.
On January 8, 2002, Austin theatrical producer Charles Duggan hosted a birthday dinner for his friend, Nolan Miller, costume designer for the 1980s evening soap, “Dynasty,” among other TV series and films.
Held at the stylish L’Orangerie restaurant in Beverly Hills, the party’s guest list included celebrities Nolan had dressed: Sophia Loren, Joan Collins, Joanna Carson, Phyllis Diller and Diahann Carroll. (Pause to imagine that pride of lionesses around one table.)
Carroll, a regular on “Dynasty” and its sequel, “The Colbys,” made a grand entrance — 45 minutes late to a sit-down dinner — swathed in presumably fake furs and dressed to kill.
“One smile melted any tension about her late arrival,” Duggan remembers. “She was, hands down, the most glamorous that evening — and certainly the most glamorous star I have ever met.”
Carroll will lend Austin some of that magnetism this week, appearing with the Austin Symphony Orchestra during its pops concert Feb. 20 at the Long Center.
She balks when asked the nature of glamour by phone: “What does the word even mean?” Carroll says in an courtly but playful tone. “It doesn’t mean well-groomed. It doesn’t mean well put-together. It doesn’t mean well-behaved. Maybe it’s all of the above.”
Carroll, who has mastered Broadway, Hollywood, Las Vegas — and just about every glamour spot in between — would rather be known for her singing and acting talents.
“Glamour is not that fascinating to me in the end,” she says.
Raised in Harlem, Carroll watched her star rise steadily in the 1950s in movies such as “Carmen Jones” and “Porgy and Bess,” but especially, at age 29, on Broadway in “Little House of Flowers,” the island musical written by Truman Capote and Harold Arlen.
“It was a beautiful experience,” she says. “You want to make sure you give your best effort working with people that extraordinary.”
She didn’t land the part of young Violet, however, right away.
“Truman felt I was too innocent to play the ingenue,” she says. “I went off to do the film of ‘Carmen Jones’ (the rambunctious, all-black version of the opera ‘Carmen’), then auditioned again. He felt I was a little more seasoned — to play a 15-year-old!”
For just her second Broadway role, legendary composer Richard Rodgers wrote “No Strings” with her in mind for the leading lady.
“It was a surprise,” she says of the part for which she won a Tony Award. “I had no idea in advance. He saw me on ‘The Tonight Show’ … Jack Paar must have been the host then.”
The story of two free spirits in chic postwar France, it featured — de facto through its casting, though it’s not explicit in the script — one of modern Broadway’s first interracial relationships. Carroll broke another color barrier in 1968 when she starred in “Julia.” Playing a widowed mother and a nurse, she was the first African American actress to carry a hit television series virtually on her own.
“I haven’t seen it in a very long time,” she says of “Julia.” “But when I do, I’m proud about how candid it was … about what was put in front of the American public. Julia was quite a lovable woman. It was a naive but charming show.”
Given her own historical breakthroughs, how does she feel now, with the Obamas in the White House?
“Naturally, I’m thrilled,” she says. “They are holding up a mirror to their lives through their high standards. He’s a wonderful representative of the many faces of the United States of America.”
She’s doesn’t know the president personally, but met Michelle Obama, whom she found “an intelligent young woman with a quite lovely feminine side.”
If “Julia” showed Carroll as competent, professional and nurturing, “Dynasty” gloried in post-”Dallas” excess, turning up the jets on the gaudy glam factor.
“We had wonderful clothes!” she says. “Nobody remembers the stories or plots, but they remember the wonderful clothes.”
She remains friends with co-star Joan Collins and looks forward to catching up with Duggan when she visits Austin.
Two later projects— “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years ” and “Sunset Boulevard” — stretched Carroll’s range, the first about black women who lived to be 100; the second an extravagant musical version of the 1950 movie about a faded silent film star.
“I was aware of the Delanys for many years before their story was developed for Broadway,” she says. “When I learned of the television version, I wanted to be a part of it. So I auditioned …”
Wait. Diahann Carroll had to audition?
“Meryl Streep auditions!” she corrects me. “And I really wanted the part. People don’t understand how you see yourself doing a certain part.”
As for “Sunset Boulevard,” she tweaked part of Norma Desmond during its long, high-profile Toronto run.
“What happens to Norma happens to many females in our industry,” she says. “Which is a rather a frightening thought. But that’s how things are dealt with in this thing called show biz. Aging is not a allowed.”
And yet … Carroll has worked consistently, often in Vegas, Reno or Florida when TV, Broadway and film parts were not available. (Don’t forget she was nominated for an Oscar for “Claudine” in 1974.) How does she keep going — and looking so good — well into her (cough) seventies?
“I don’t think there’s anything unusual about my routine,” she says. “You watch what you eat. I’m pretty good about that.” She pauses. “And it’s important to keep everything ‘up!’” With that, Carroll roars with laughter. Maybe that’s one of the secrets to everlasting glamour.
Had I departed earlier, my conclusions would have been dead wrong. Arriving at the B Scene party for the exhibition, “Desire,” at the Blanton Museum of Art, I encountered a tweedy, older set. Not the young, hip tribe targeted by the museum’s social campaign, which includes monthly B Scene events.
Laura Moliter and Elizabeth Moliter
I mingled with art lovers, music lovers (Suzanna Choffel headlined) and party lovers (including bristle-haired copywriter JJ McLaughlin, who is always sniffing out a new scene). I spoke with “Desire” curator Annette Carlozzi and her still-new hubby Dan Bullock.
Meg and Adam Hulse
‘Desire’ accumulates pieces and performances from dozens of media. I’ll let the critics describe it, but I was happy to discover that Women & Their Work director Chris Cowden and I singled out the same dark, flower-strewn sculpture. I also snuck upstairs to see the Veronese altarpiece exhibit in its final days.
My visit to the main galleries contrasted sharply with my experiences at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts the previous week. The older, more traditional museum — located in a city twice our size with a long history of arts collecting — impressed me with its masses of exquisite Asian art. The Blanton, however, did not pale in comparison. In fact, for the quality of individual works and their vivid presentation, I’d give the UT museum the upper hand.
Ryan Masters and Teal Stamm
Back to the social observations: I had planned on cutting out early to make a fashion show, but was frozen by a dozen or so conversations. By then, the place was packed, filled with eccentric beards, odd club-wear, zany haircuts and other accessories of youthful vogue. The target demographic had arrived!
Kimberly Lewis and Albert Yeung
In fact, I watched as older museum members gravitated to the administration building across the plaza, muttering about the pack in the blue atrium. Would have loved to attend the Director’s Circle party the night before, when, according to more than one report, Denise Prince arrived in a costume so sheer, she might as well have been naked. A performance?
Within the relatively cozy world of Austin musical theater, a male voice like Andrew Cannata’s comes along once in a generation or so. Joe York’s warm, booming baritone made its first mark in the 1980s. Stephen Michael Miller’s delicate tenor glided onto the scene in the 1990s.
Cannata, 23, a recent graduate of St. Edward’s University, impressed Zilker Summer Musical audiences as a junior TV writer in “My Favorite Year,” amused Zach crowds playing a Boy Scout perfectionist in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” He also scored major roles in “Parade,” “Little Shop of Horrors” and “On the Town.”
Yet it was his performance last season as the romantic lead in the classic musical, “The Pajama Game,” that elicited unprecedented raves and an Austin Critics Table nomination for Outstanding Singer. Under the tutelage of music and stage director Michael McKelvey, Cannata has smoothed out the breaks in his blooming tenor and has relaxed into a natural acting style.”
“McKelvey breaks down your boundaries,” Cannata says. “He urges you to do what comes naturally.”
As for musical theater’s third required skill, dancing, Cannata says: “I can follow choreography.”
Thursday, Cannata opens in “John and Jen,” a two-actor, vestpocket musical produced by newborn Penfold Theatre, which presented the award-winning “The Last Five Years,” also directed by McKelvey, in 2009. He plays four people, two of them children, in a family story told from the mid-1950s to mid-90s.
“I had to distinguish between the children, so I concentrated on props,” he says. “It’s tough show to make work.”
So far, Cannata has assayed several characters younger than his biological age. His succinct features and wonder-infused looks aid in credibility.
Cannata, who remembers attending his first musical, “Fiddler on the Roof,” almost as soon as he could walk, comes by his artistic bona fides familially. His father, a particle physics expert who delved into computers, played piano in the theater; his sister and brother performed on the musical stage. The seventh of nine siblings in an Irish/Italian Catholic family, Cannata, an almost-lifelong Austinite, comes to theater with a built-in fan club.
“It’s in our blood,” he says. “The family sang three masses a week. A lot of my musical skills were developed there.”
A professional services engineer for LifeSize video conferencing service by day, Cannata dreams of taking his computer and theatrical skills to a bigger, tougher market, say, Chicago maybe.
“I go back and forth,” he says. “It would be hard giving up such a good job and theater community.”
It makes me proud that so many improvised Haiti relief benefits popped up in Austin this week. My social time was limited Wednesday, so, instead, I spent few sweet minutes surveying a little party at Annies for Austin Lyric Opera. (Our newspaper has done an excellent job of spreading the word about local Haiti benefits; my added voice would have been very small.)
Erika Wuerzner, Marianna Mooring and Katherine Altobello
This early-evening amusement was tied to ALO’s’s production of Emmanuel Chabrier’s “The Star.” Cast members appeared in costume, which fit the 19th-century Parisian look of Annies on Congress Avenue, one of 2009’s most auspicious nightlife additions. (“The Star” opens at the Long Center on Jan. 30.)
Love Nance and Robert Nash
The cafe served crispy fries, some sort of bruschetta and its award-winning calamari salad, which I adore. I spoke with owner Love Nance and her sociable word-spreader, Robert Nash, who I hadn’t seen in an age.
Lizette Garza and Katie Shanahan
I met willowy, soft-spoken Marianna Mooring, who used the social occasion to introduce herself to a room full of strangers. I also forced Charles Peveto, expert on so much of Old Austin, to agree to lunch and a peek at his Texas art collection. Didn’t have to break any arms.
Paula Kothmann and Charles Peveto
He and Nash are headed out to Marfa today. Perfect weather for it. Jealous.
Almost 10 years old, Austin Cabaret Theatre nears institutional status. Producer Stuart Moulton, himself an entertainer, has brought to Austin universally consecrated acts such as Eartha Kitt, Elaine Stritch, Ann Hampton Callaway and Carol Channing, as well as onetime Texans Billy Stritch, Amanda McBroom and Sharon Montgomery.
Stuart Moulton and Christy Duvauchelle
The switch from hotel and banquet settings to the Long Center, then, made perfect sense. As the did the recent upgrade in the pre-show dinner menu. The Kodosky Lounge serves for most acts, but for its gala, Moulton seated more than 200 in the lounge for eats, then shepherded them downstairs to the Rollins Studio Theatre for the big show.
Charles Duggan and Stanislav Pronin
That’s when Moulton, after an extended vamp, earned the right to say: “Ladies and gentlemen, Judy Garland!” That dream cabaret act, in fact, took the form of Jim Bailey, longtime impressionist, who was doing Judy back when Judy was doing Judy.
Dr. Bill Jones and Anton Nel
Now, let’s see. Last year, Judy would have turned 87, had she not passed into immortality in 1969. Bailey, for his part, is 60. He still twitches, strays and warbles just like Judy in the late years. It may be that I’m now 56 — and 40 years has passed since Judy’s death — but one act of Judy-ism was enough for me. No more her Carnegie Hall quip: “We’ll just have to stay here and sing them all night.”
This city owes an immeasurable debt of gratitude to Ada Collins Anderson. The social pioneer and civil rights leader, born in 1921, has been a pathfinder in so many ways, it’s hard to calculate the cumulative effect.
Rose Demerson and Ada Anderson
Among her achievements — later in life — was the founding of the Leadership Enrichment Arts Program, which offers low-income and minority youth a chance to experience the performing and visual arts. Friday, LEAP celebrated its 20th year of exposing students to the arts and giving them opportunities to participate at the Crown Plaza at Interstate 35 and US 290.
Sherry Ransom and Susan Baughman
I tried to discern social trends in the crowd of maybe 150, seated in blue-ribboned chairs before dinner. It was predominately African American, but not exclusively so. Older Austinites took the lead at most tables, but younger ones bounced up to give speeches, perform on instruments or network with the elders present.
Carla Jackson and Kelvin Phillips
The tightest bunch of guests gathered around Mrs. Anderson herself, clearly a touchstone for the evening. Sweeping from table to table was Sherry Ransom, LEAP executive director, who whispered that later a new scholarship would be named for Ada and her late husband, Marcellus J. “Andy” Anderson, the nation’s first black Realtor. (It was a kept secret from Ada until the formal announcement.)
Derrick Leon Washington and Zakiya Larry
I ran into Victoria Corcoran, who is doing the Lord’s work helping small to medium-sized nonprofits to grow. Sitting back to back were New Orleans transplants Christine Perrault Moline and Terrence Moline (on one side) and New York transplants Carla Jackson and Kelvin Phillips (on the other). Vibrant Zakiya Larry, Miss Black Texas USA, the evening’s emcee, posed for me with stylish Derrick Leon Johnson.
Anderson has received many accolades over the years. Let’s hope there are many more to come.
I’ve been reporting the results of A List reader polls for a couple of years. I can usually predict in advance which reports will receive the most comments. This is one.
Our readers voted City Theater as Best Theater Company. With 58 percent of the tally.
Esther’s Follies, an Austin comic tradition since 1978, took second with 14 percent.
Greater Tuna, almost as old as Esther’s, came in third with 6 percent.
Hyde Park Theatre, The Vortex, Salvage Vanguard, Austin Playhouse, Rude Mechs, ColdTowne and Latino Comedy Project bunched up below that.
Zach, Austin’s largest and most acclaimed theater company, received no votes.
Those are the results. Unhappy readers should vote next time. And if you must leave comments, snarkiness persuades no one here.
Last we had heard from stage producer Charles Duggan, five years ago, he had pulled up stakes, moving first to Italy, then to Mexico. The Broadway-toughened wizard behind the commercial success of the “Greater Tuna” series — and backer of the valiant, but ultimately untenable Austin Musical Theatre — wanted his twin sons, Justin and Declan, to grow up with a wider world view, becoming bilingual, perhaps trilingual.
Duggan kept track of his Austin-based operations, true, working out of a computer. But he left a gap in the social scene. Once a looming presence, Duggan, blessed with leading-man looks and the cultivated demeanor of a diplomat, slipped off the social radar.
Then a violent crime shook his family. An armed invasion at his residence outside Guadalajara — he and the twins weren’t home — left his staff traumatized and Duggan looking to the familiarity and safety of Austin.
So, a year and a half ago, the single father relocated to the Tarrytown neighborhood. Slowly Duggan emerged from seclusion — the boys were now in school — to attend charity dinners and to serve on nonprofit boards.
“If I’m going to be stay, I’m going to be actively involved,” Duggan says.
Though most of his money was made in real estate, not theater, as many believe, the itch to produce persisted. So Duggan did what he does best: He cooked up a new show.
“A Texas Christmas Carol,” which plays Dec. 29-Jan. 3 at the Long Center, is a musical variety show that Duggan and the Long Center leaders hope becomes as indelible a holiday tradition as “The Nutcracker,” “Messiah,” “Santaland Diaries,” “Rockin’ Christmas Party” and “A Tuna Christmas.”
True to Duggan’s playful, generous personality, it comes with two twists. A cast of local talents that includes the Biscuit Brothers, Jill Blackwood and Tish Hinojosa joins disparate groups like Amazing Grace Gospel, River City Brass Quintet and Tapestry Dance Company. The show also provides opportunities for a dozen Austin charities, such as Austin Children’s Shelter, Con Mi Madre and the St. David’s Foundation, to share in the ticket sales. (Call 474-5664 or go to thelongcenter.com for more information.)
I met Duggan at his home — dignified and traditional on the outside, but full of wide-open playscapes for the boys, now 7, inside. They showed me their giant posters of comic-book characters and map of the world, notated with the countries they have visited.
“The boys like it this way,” Duggan says, pointing out places where the furniture will go, as we picked through the theatrical ephemera warehoused there. We spent a long, rainy afternoon catching up on theatrical news and the life of the Duggan family abroad.
Yet the conversation kept returning, as it does with a producer, to the new project. Justin and Declan, by the way, have already caught the theatrical bug, hoping to appear in small roles in “A Texas Christmas Carol.”
“They want to be stars,” Duggan says, sounding like a benign version of a central-casting Hollywood producer. “But you have to work your way up to Frosty.”
For Part 1 of the Joe Papp story, scroll down to the previous post, or link here.
His subject is a lion. Joe Papp, who grew up on the rough streets of Brooklyn before joining the Navy and studying theater, stalked the New York stage with a prodigious personality, kind and fatherly one minute, abrupt and dismissive the next. An avowed socialist, the used the theater a social and political hammer, while advocating a radically egalitarian notions like free Shakespeare. He built two enduring institutions, the Shakespeare in Central Park and the Public Theater, as part of the New York Shakespeare Festival, both on the cutting edge of contemporary theatrical practice.
He also conquered Broadway again and again with hits such as “A Chorus Line,” “Sticks and Bones,” “That Championship Season,” “Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “Pirates of Penzance.” (He also produced “Hair” first, but not later on Broadway.)
Papp typically nurtured playwrights early in their careers, saying “I want to produce all your plays,” then expected filial loyalty thereafter. Without him, the world might not know David Rabe, Wallace Shawn, Ntozake Shange, Larry Kramer, Miguel Piñero, Jason Miller and numerous other writers. With his wife and literary manager, Gail Marrifield Papp, the producer often adopted projects in their infancy, most famously Michael Bennett’s slow development of “A Chorus Line” out of group therapy-type sessions with New York dancers.
Turan doesn’t shy away from Papp’s disasters, such as his takeovers of Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center (he immediately alienated his Upper West Side subscribers) and Broadway’s Booth Theatre (he opened and closed his New American Playwrights series there with “The Leaf People,” an experimental play about indigenous Amazonians’ first contact with outsiders, performed in an invented language).
Turan details Papp’s frightening rift with playwright Sam Shepard over the Public’s production of “True West,” of which star Tommy Lee Jones says: “Of all the versions of that play that were done at that time, around New York and around the country, ours was distinguished by being the worst.” (Shepard, who refused to travel to New York during rehearsals, bears considerable blame.)
But there are also all the glorious, unexpected triumphs, like the poppy production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance,” despised by Savoyard purists, but adored by almost everyone else. The casting process that brought Linda Ronstadt, then at the top of the charts, and Rex Smith, dismissed as a teen idol, together with theatrical stalwarts like Kevin Kline and George Rose is as sensational as it is enchanting.
Papp’s two raging passions — Shakespeare and social justice — are never far from the page in “Free for All.” Almost single-handedly, he made Shakespeare available to the masses, even defying New York power broker Robert Moses to do so.
Hoping to mirror the city around him, Papp also introduced counterculture, black, Hispanic, female and gay artists to the public, whether they were creating a choreo-poem (“for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf”); an intense prison drama employing ex-convicts as performers (“Short Eyes”) or incendiary tale crucial to the HIV-AIDS activism (“The Normal Heart”).
He could be a hectoring bully, who woke critics from their beds, shamed backers into donations and forced his tastes on audiences. Yet Papp left the theater a better place. Turan places Papp’s reputation on a higher plane.
Kenneth Turan overcame three almost insurmountable obstacles. The journalist and co-author of “Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told” had already lost his literary collaborator, Papp, before the theatrical producer died in 1991. Prior to that, Papp had suppressed the material that Turan, longtime film critic for the Los Angeles Times, had collected about the New York Shakespeare Festival, Public Theater and Papp’s other theatrical ventures.
Yet, almost 20 years later, once Turan had convinced Papp’s survivors that the oral-history project would make historical sense, he still faced the daunting task of cutting and splicing together hundreds of interviews without interstitial prose. He cites some theatrical reviews — good and bad — at the start of chapters to provide context about the shows Papp produced.
Turan trusts the reader to either know the speakers — some, such as Martin Sheen, Raul Julia, Sam Waterston and James Earl Jones, are celebrities whose careers Papp fostered — or to flip to the “Cast of Characters” printed at the back of the book. There, he identifies each quoted speaker with the slimmest of biographical sketches. (Example: “George C. Scott. Actor. Five Tony nominations. Four Oscar nominations. Oscar for ‘Patton.’ Died in 1999.”)
The results are dazzling. Turan has written a book — Papp is listed as co-author — as fluid as a novel and, at times, as chilling as a character-driven movie thriller. Especially for the inveterate theater fan, it’s the oral-history equivalent of a page-turner.
After leaving the directorship of the University of Texas Performing Arts Center, Pebbles Wadsworth traveled extensively, in part because her lawyer husband, Chris, insisted she not take on any projects for at least a year, she says …
Jack Crosby, Pebbles Wadsworth and Richard Isackes
As soon as that year ended, Wadsworth put her considerable energy, connections and skill to work on moving a Victorian cottage from Smithville to her nearby ranch, C Rock, renovating it and creating a rural mecca for performing and visual arts amid the rolling pastureland southeast of Bastrop and southwest of Smithville …
Sherry and David Dalgleish
The Arts Cottage welcomed its first full audience on a drizzly, muddy Sunday. Yet it was all good cheer inside, as 50 or so patrons — including a former UT president and some high-powered philanthropists — snacked on bites from Smithville’s Back Door Cafe, waiting for announcements and performances …
Andrew and Mary Ann Heller
The work of Austinite Roi James, as well as Smithville artists (a poet, a jeweler, a sculptor) claimed their share of the conversation before Wadsworth managed to seat everyone and explained the Arts Cottage concept …
Terri Moore, Bill Livingston and Pam Buchanan
Not surprisingly, the idea is as big as the cottage is small. Wadsworth wants to prove that rural communities can establish sustainable arts centers for education, exhibition, performance, seminars and workshops. She’s formed a nonprofit and wants to spread the blueprint to other small communities …
Paulino Lopez and Judith Rhedin
Performances were delayed an hour, so, alas, I missed them to make other engagements. Yet I’m absolutely certain this is not the last you’ll hear of the Arts Cottage, which combines some of the best ideas from Round Top and Winedale with a particular emphasis on the local community.
Finishing off Friday night — I know, I’m behind on these social reports — was the Omar Lopez concert at Central Austin Presbyterian and the Mix ‘n’ Mash party at Mexic-Arte Museum …
Lacey Richter and Amanda Bulger
Lopez is a singular artist with legions of Austin fans. He sings and plays an amplified violin, which allow him to slide from jazz to pop to classical to sacred and soundtrack. His holiday concert for all ages feasted on a full 20 selections, but I could only stay for the first mystical hour …
Deanna Gonzalez and Rachel Marion
Then it was time to plow through the bitter cold to Mexic-Arte Museum for their Mix ‘n’ Mash holiday event …
Patricia Petty and Mike Willoughby
This appropriately named fandango blends an art sale, a silent auction, edibles and, when I arrived, an adaptable DJ …
Joseph Guerrero and Gabrielle De Ville
Prices were reasonable and bidding on the art was heated, while the crowd flowed among the four main spaces …
Aziel Garcia and Sadie Villareal
Oh, for the day when Mexic-Arte can use the whole building!
I checked in with the Austin Classical Guitar Society soiree at the gracious Bell Mountain home of Louise Epstein and John Henry McDonald …
Daniel Ching, Louise Epstein and Sandy Yamamoto
The Moroccan food, devised by Ginette Jordan, was outstanding …
Karrie and Tim League
The conversation, for the hour before the concert, was scintillating …
Ly and Kevin Barrett
I so wanted to stay and hear the Miró Quartet, who have transformed chamber music in this state, and were the big attraction this night …
Bill Kanengiser and Matthew Hinsley
But I had promised to attend at least two more events that evening, so I winced as I begged my hosts’ indulgence as I headed down the West Austin mountain.
They applauded at entrances. They applauded at exits. They laughed before, during and after the jokes, which came at an approximate rate of one every 30 seconds …
Stephen Mills and Brent Hasty
The audience for “Tuna Does Vegas” was ready to deliver a standing ovation the moment they sat in their Paramount Theatre seats on Saturday …
Andrew Brooks and Elizabeth Childers
The fourth in the series of comedies about small-town Texas gives the true believers everything they want and more …
Drew and Lori Saldana
All their favorite characters head to Las Vegas, Nev. for what, at times, looks like it will develop into a farce, but is instead lovable collection of equally stressed sketches …
Rob and Sarah Coffman
Austin writers and stars Jaston Williams and Joe Sears — plus almost invisible writer and director Ed Howard — could play the Tuna cycle for another 25 years, slipping cultural and political timebombs into their sometimes pointed, sometimes soft-edged satires of small-town mentalities …
Vivian Alvarez and Michael Lehrter
My favorite of the cycle — and still the most satisfying for character and narrative — is “A Tuna Christmas.”
My Facebook date for the evening, Bhavna Sharma, and I agreed the best line in “Vegas” came when Vera is threatened with retaliation from organized crime, she says ” “I can beat that, I have friends who are Southern Baptists.”
This is not a formal review. The show has closed. Its student actors have returned to classwork.
But I must record that “Bat Boy: The Musical,” produced by the department of theater and dance at Texas State University, was the best show I’d ever seen in San Marcos.
A good deal of credit goes to director Kaitlin Hopkins, also a member of the original off-Broadway cast. Yet every single one of the actors — even the ultra-campy ones — could have joined that original cast.
The self-mocking show has always creeped me out a bit, in a good way, dealing with a half bat, half human dealing with small-town hysteria about his presence in the community. I’d liked the production a few years back in East Austin, but missed the Summerstock version.
I can’t imagine a better production than this one.
“These are the listening seats,” said the patron next to me.
Mike and Emma Muniz
Indeed, the sound for the Austin Symphony Orchestra is rich, crisp and warm — altogether — in the Dell Hall mezzanine at the Long Center. You don’t benefit from onstage facial expressions, but I’ll take the music any day.
Caroline Crichlow-Ball and Marc Boyd
Judging from the behavior of my cohorts, the assembled drank up the translucent Mendelssohn and the transcendent Ratliff, the second accomplished with the impeccable Conspirare symphonic choir. (Which city is so lucky to have a Peter Bay, a Craig Hella Johnson and a Richard Buckley as conductors for its professional performing arts?) Read Jeanne Claire van Ryzin’s formal review of the concert.
Jennifer Smith and Betsy Knotts
The number of empty seats physically pained me. It always does. Upstairs, downstairs, everywhere, empty seats. The recession? Disinterest? Weak marketing? Guess we won’t be earning an extra Sunday matinee any time soon.
Joseph Diiorio and Coby Condrey
Hey, here’s a thought: What if everyone on ASO’s gargantuan board of directors, and those hundreds of donors listed in the program, all attended the classical concerts, and brought along a couple of friends? No more empty seats!
The Eponymous Garden — located, naturally, on Garden Street — is a superb location for a small-scale fundraiser …
Andree Bober and Cheline Jaidar
Especially on a dreamy night like Tuesday night, when the gardens, designed by Daniel Gregory of Silver Sage Landscape Environments, form a fairy land of delights …
Sarah Bird and Doug Dorst
The gardens connect five houses, four of them owned by designer/legal eagle Lorne Loganbill and composer/performer Sterling Price-McKinney, who have returned from New York City to grace Our Town full-time …
Jenny Larson and Dustin Wills
Full disclosure: Kip and I rented one of the bungalows on their property in the Holly Street neighborhood for six years in the 1990s. The houses, including the Victorian main house, and gardens are MUCH improved, thanks in part to Gregory and renovation architect Emily Little of ClaytonLevyLittle …
James Dean Jay Byrd and Kyle Henry
Tuesday’s event, called the Parlour, was a creative fundraiser for Salvage Vanguard Theater, one of the city’s top warehouse theater groups, so there were performances, inventive raffles and signature drinks …
Daniel Gregory and Chris Meier
A splendid melding of arts, architecture and Austinites …
One American theater legend spoke in Austin on Thursday. Another on Friday …
Richard Schechner bussing his prof, Oscar Brockett
Stephen Sondheim’s remarks at the Long Center were dense, clear, anecdotal and on point. Richard Schechner’s were dense, clear, anecdotal and, by design, not always on point at the University of Texas …
Polly Strong and Linda Brucker
Schechner’s work may be less familiar to the average theatergoer than Sondheim’s. Yet to students of theater and of the 1960s, the New York University professor’s indelible contributions include co-founding the field of performance studies and the journal TDR: The Drama Review, as well as the Performance Group, which evolved into the Wooster Group …
Nicole Doorish and Jodi Jinks
Schechner is in town because the Rude Mechs are reviving his breakthrough piece, “Dionysus in 69,” which combines intercultural myths, environmental staging and rampant nudity with a re-reading of Euripedes’ “The Bacchae.” It opens in Austin Dec. 4 …
Shawn Sides and Buck Van Winkle
For the relaxed reception and circuitous lecture at UT, presented by the Humanities Institute, I brought along Oscar Brockett, another theater legend and co-founder of the field of modern theater history. He was my mentor in the PhD program at UT. Turns out he also taught Schechner at the University of Iowa back in 1958! …
Everlasting scamps Matt Hislope and Josh Meyer
Leave aside the Oedipal issues of performance studies elbowing out theater history in some drama departments (like UT’s), Schechner’s talk made the 1960s come alive. We are lucky to have a man who has taken so many notes and thought so thoroughly on the subjects of experimental art and social behavior as performance …
You might not think that a 90-minute talk with a Broadway composer on the Long Center stage would generate rapt attention, gales of laughter and two standing ovations …
Sandra and Bill Didlake
But if the conversationalists are Stephen Sondheim, Broadway’s greatest artist, and Robert Faires, quick-witted Austin Chronicle arts editor, an audience of more than 1,000 pay attention …
Paul Beutel and Laura Powell
Seated on two cushioned chairs downstage from Austin Lyric Opera’s rented “La Boheme” set, Sondheim immediately settled into rich feast of description, analysis and narrative, while Faires appeared a bit hesitant until he landed his first joke, based on a song title from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” (Hey, I would have been frozen with intimidation by the great man, despite Sondheim’s warmth) …
Allison Raven and Samantha Williams
They dug into the process of “setting” lyrics to music and vice versa. Sondheim explained how each of his songs is a one-act play, how the music forces the stresses in an actor’s verbal interpretation and how his music explicitly follows the patterns of conversational English …
Michael Mitchell and Martin Zimmerman
He also talked at length about his collaborations with James Lapine, John Weidman, George Furth, Larry Gelbart, Jonathan Tunick, Leornard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Jerome Robbins, Hal Prince and other creative and interpretive giants, along with stars such as Ethel Merman, Patti LuPone, Angela Lansbury and Elaine Stritch …
M Scott Tatum and Craig Saper
The revelations just poured out. I’m sure the audience would have stayed for another 90 minutes, but life goes on. The unsung hero in all this is Long Center managing director Paul Beutel, who insisted on this opportunity for Austin, even if it was not a guaranteed money-maker.
“The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” closed Sunday at Zach Theatre.
Given the audience response to this sweet, smart and joyful musical during its last performance, there’s a decent chance Zach will revive it sometime in the future. So stay tuned.
Just a little note on the concept of “Camp Lite.” That was a term applied back in the 1990s to “Beehive,” “Nunsense,” “Forever Plaid” and other off-Broadway shows that combined gentle irony, frisky songs and an obsession with pop culture.
Campy, yes, but without the dark, cross-dressing edge of Charles Ludlam, Charles Busch or their ilk.
Zach Theatre, thanks mainly to director Dave Steakley and designer Michael Raiford — as well as Austin’s deep pool of onstage talent — has mastered this form brilliantly. Zach always included as much audience participation as possible. No theater company in the country does it better.
“Spelling Bee” certainly fits the Camp Lite definition nicely. Yet its score by William Finn (“Falsettos”) marks a full integration of that genre with more serious musical-making. “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Hairspray” and a few other narrative musicals could also be grouped with “Spelling Bee” under another rubric: “Camp Plus.”
For more of “Stephen Sondheim: Broadway’s Greatest Artist,” scroll down to previous posts, or link at Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
The Essential Stephen Sondheim
10 shows every Sondheim beginner should get to know.
‘West Side Story’ — (1957) Leondard Bernstein’s music and Jerome Robbins’ direction/choreography received more attention, but Sondheim’s colloquial lyrics for New York gangbangers anchor this Romeo and Juliet retelling on the street level.
‘Gypsy’ — (1959) The ultimate backstage musical, with music by Jule Styne and book/direction by Arthur Laurents, it has also burnished the careers of Ethel Merman, Rosalind Russell, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone. Sondhiem’s lyrics are fresh today as when it premiered.
‘Company’ — (1970) Modern, urban singledom, dating and marriage received this up-to-the-minute treatment, later stripped down and emotionally magnified in the John Doyle revival.
‘Follies’ — (1971) The twilight of memory, marriage and show-business excess intertwine in this fantastical musical, which also gave the gift of ‘Broadway Baby’ to every belting singer.
‘A Little Night Music’ — (1973) Based on an Ingmar Bergman romantic comedy, this shifting musical belongs among Sondheim’s masterpieces, but has lacked proper revivals. Trevor Nunn’s upcoming Chekhovian transfer from London to Broadway will tell if the show has more chapters to tell.
‘Sweeney Todd’ — (1980) Almost every staging of this electrifying melodrama — Brechtian, operatic, microscopic, even Tim Burton’s eccentric movie — about a 19th-century serial killer has triumphed.
‘Merrily We Roll Along’ — (1981) The show Sondheim believes will find a wider audience. Melodic, personal, endearing, it asks what happens to youthful idealism. It must overcome a tale told backward.
‘Sunday in the Park with George’ — (1985) At first misunderstood, this Pointillistic contemplation of artistic inspiration has proved one of Sondheim’s most enduring achievements.
‘Into the Woods’ — (1987) One of Sondheim’s biggest hits reworks fairy tales with Bruno Bettelheim’s insights into personal development. (One of three collaborations with James Lapine.)
‘Assassins’ — (2004) Some Sondheim fans might think that the romping ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,’ pensive ‘Passion,’ skittery ‘Anyone Can Whistle,’ or translucent ‘Pacific Overtures’ belong in this last place. Yet John Weidman and Sondheim’s rip on presidential assassins looks deep into the American soul. Nobody ever forgets what they found.
For more of “Stephen Sondheim: Broadway’s Greatest Artist,” scroll down to previous posts, or link to Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
One musical that made a definite impression in high school and college drama departments is “Merrily We Roll Along,” which deals with the fraying of youthful ideals in a tale told backward. Yet it lasted only 17 performances in its first Broadway run. Later, Sondheim and Furth tinkered with it, and Lapine revived it on the road.
“We are satisfied with it now,” Sondheim says. “The problem, and this was true in the source Kaufman and Hart play, the lead is a character you get to like. James dug into it a little more, without softening it. Just helping audiences out. It may never satisfy them. People are turned off by unsympathetic characters. I like them, when something interesting happens to them.”
Although he was pleased with the movie version of “Sweeney Todd” — and he’s in negotiations for films of “Follies” and “Into the Woods” — he’s not ready to make any generalizations about the return of the movie musical, or the success of youth-oriented shows like “Glee” and the “High School Musical” movies.
“Mine are not that kind of musical,” he says. “They are not as freewheeling, when the stories are just excuses for the numbers.”
Sondheim is also uncomfortable talking about his legacy, though he would include the composing teams of John Kander and Fred Ebb (“Cabaret,” “Chicago”), as well as Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (“Fiddler on the Roof,” “She Loves Me”), as ones that will tend to endure beyond our time.
A notorious perfectionist, Sondheim, at 79, can look back with some pleasure on his work.
“Every now and then I see something of mine and say ‘that was good,’” he says. “It takes a long time not to be neurotic about it. Usually, I see only what’s wrong. Now I accept what’s good.”
For more of “Stephen Sondheim: Broadway’s Greatest Artist,” scroll down to previous posts, or link to Part 1 and Part 2.
Although he had been writing musicals for 25 years, Stephen Sondheim did not make his mark as a composer until 1970, with a string of grown-up hits: “Company,” “Folllies” and “A Little Night Music.”
“My first exposure to the fully formed Sondheim was when I bought the original cast album of ‘Follies’ in the 1970s,” says Long Center managing director Paul Beutel. “The raw yet soaring emotion of songs like ‘Too Many Mornings’ and ‘Losing My Mind’ — so perfectly captured in music and lyrics — just wiped me out.”
Although musical devotees call these “Sondheim shows,” the artist always emphasizes his collaborations with writers and directors (Harold Prince, James Lapine, etc.) and, especially, his prized orchestrator, Jonathan Tunick, whose full-orchestra sound undergirds Tim Burton’s movie adaptation of “Sweeney Todd.”
“He is a most generous man, a mentor who is always ready to lend his support — creative, emotional and intellectual — to the work of others,” critic and editor Rick Pender says.
Recently, two of Sondheim’s collaborators, George Furth and Larry Gelbart, died.
“George was an actor,” Sondheim says. “Music meant nothing to him. So writing with him was interesting. That’s one reason the songs don’t always fit into the script. They are commentary; raisins in the cake. But George’s dialogue is extremely brilliant. It’s dialogic.”
Gelbart, his collaborator in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” adapting the Roman comedies of Plautus, understood music, he says.
“In ‘Forum,’ the songs are respites from the farce,” Sondheim says. “And ‘Forum’ is a very tight farce. The songs are breathing places. Otherwise the comedy would be relentless.”
One reason Sondheim’s shows — almost never big profit machines — are regularly revived is they provide peerless opportunities for performers.
“Sondheim’s work demands that a performer be equally gifted as an actor and as a singer,” says director Dave Steakley. “Sondheim’s melodies and harmonies, as well as the speed of his complicated lyrics in passages of songs, are rigorous for a singer to master. Equal to this is the emotional investment and honesty required to convey his character’s multi-layered states of being.”
Patti LuPone, Angela Lansbury, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Raul Esparza, Audra McDonald and Elaine Stritch are among the prime Sondheim interpreters. One of Sondheim’s special muses, Lansbury, was in one of his early musicals, and she’s slated to play aged Madame Armfedlt in the upcoming Broadway revival of “A Little Night Music.” British director Trevor Nunn’s restaging of “Night Music,” transferred from London to New York, is simpler than earlier versions.
“The tone is Chekhovian,” Sondheim says. “That’s implicit in the piece anyway. It’s about shadow. But it’s still a comedy, done with chamber music in a chamber style.”
For Part 1 of “Stephen Sondheim: Broadway’s Greatest Artist,” scroll down to the post below or go here.
Born in 1930 in New York City, Stephen Sondheim wrote his first musical as a student whose schoolmates included the son of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. The elder artist had collaborated with composers such as Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers to produce classics like “Show Boat,” “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific.” In one of the happy coincidences of theatrical history, Hammerstein became a sort of surrogate father and oversaw the development of Sondheim’s tender aesthetic.
Although he studied music seriously, it was Sondheim’s lyrics that first drew the attention of Broadway professionals. And, in the postwar period, words made an emphatic point. Hammerstein had already linked the songs closely to the action, so that audiences actually paid attention to them.
“The next big change came with the rock revolution,” Sondheim says.
“People started listening to lyrics. Nobody really listened to Cole Porter’s lyrics, except the clever, comic ones. After the pop revolution, people had a lot to say: There was anger and passion — (expletive) the establishment. Before that, lyrics were generally anodyne: ‘I love you darling,’ and all that. I’m oversimplifying, but …”
Sondheim’s lyrics were so adept, so clever, so crucial to each show’s emotional progress, he was recognized as a singular wordsmith.
“I am continually in awe of the multiple-emotional layers and thoughtfulness of Sondheim’s work,” says Zach Theatre director Dave Steakley. “The recent spate of stripped-down productions, fewer orchestrations and chorus members, have revealed new truths for his fans and have become new, meaningful works on their own, instead of feeling lesser.”
More than 60 years after penning his first lyrics, Sondheim has collected them in a two-volume book that will include recollections and commentary.
“There are a lot of lyrics and a lot of comment,” jokes Sondheim, one of the few theater artists elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Reviewing thousands of lyrical lines — all stored in the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center — were there any surprises?
“Honestly no,” he says. “Every now and then, I would glow with pride and delight, or wince with shame and embarrassment. But I’m a slow writer. I worked on these things meticulously, so there are not a lot of surprises left. I really know every word.”
Stephen Sondheim, the creative force behind 18 major musicals, might be the greatest artist Broadway has ever produced.
Consider his music, lyrics and theatrical collaborations over the past 50 years. He transformed the way words go with music during the musical’s so-called Golden Age (“West Side Story,” “Gypsy”). He later fused music and lyrics into darker material (“Company,” “Follies” “A Little Night Music”), which led to his mature theatrical masterpieces (“Sweeney Todd,” “Into the Woods,” “Sunday in the Park with George”) and even his lesser gems (“Merrily We Roll Along,” “Assassins”).
Critics believe his work will survive for centuries, perhaps for millennia.
“Sondheim — more than any other composer or lyricist — has given us music and theater that is memorable, challenging, intelligent and inventive, yet emotionally and intellectually satisfying,” says Rick Pender, editor of the Sondheim Review, a national magazine devoted to its namesake. “I do not see this kind of multifaceted genius in any other Broadway artist.”
Sondheim is not so sure about his legacy.
“I wouldn’t make any pronouncements,” he says recently in a rare telephone interview. “Who knows if musicals will be done? Who does the musicals from 100 years ago? They are ridiculous. The songs are good. Not the musicals. You want to listen to an Irving Berlin tune, but not see an Irving Berlin show.”
(“Annie Get Your Gun” might be an exception.)
Thursday, the nine-time Tony Award winner — who also earned an Academy Award and a Pulitzer Prize — will make his first Austin appearance. He will extend a cycle of public conversations started two years ago with The New York Times opinion writer and former theater critic Frank Rich. At the Long Center, his colloquy partner will be Austin Chronicle arts editor Robert Faires.
Local musical aficionados can hardly wait for the verbal exchange.
“Sondheim represents everything that is good about American musical theater,” says Austin director Michael McKelvey, who recently staged an award-winning “Sweeney Todd.” “He is always original and thought-provoking, a composer with a grasp of all that Western music can deliver.”
The Notable Women movement had quietly exited the stage …
Toya Haley and Dr. Joni Wallace
As imagined by Vickie Roan, owner of the Menagerie, the group raised $1.3 million for the Long Center project, simply by setting aside the price of a latte a day for a year …
Jane Driscoll, Diane Lupsitz and Christina Hester
After the center opened, the Notables, as a group, slipped from view. Many of them reassembled, however, in the Kodosky Donor Lounge on Tuesday to catch up — and to learn details about the center’s upcoming 2nd anniversary party …
Tony Jelik, Bobbi Topfer and Beau Nutt
Slated for March 27, the party is built around the indestructible ’80s act Hall and Oates, with Asleep at the Wheel out in the tent, entertaining for the remaining festivities …
Patty Huffines and Vickie Roan
The color is purple for the party, which is a fresh twist for this gala-goer.
The Ballet Austin Guild and the Ballet Austin board of directors are not mutually exclusive …
Brooke Holmes and Darlene Byrne
The old-style guild and the new-style board work hand in hand, and membership overlaps …
Betty Oltorf and Louise Hein
And the two tribes joined for Vive le Vin, one of the guild’s top annual events, at the AT&T Center (I appreciate what the phone company does in support of various local groups, but oh I wish a more euphoniously named organization underwrote the UT executive education and conference complex) …
Cynthia Tays and Marilyn Rose
Several conversations buttressed my opinion that the ballet remains the buzziest large arts troupe in town …
Samantha Segar and Steven Burton
Zach Theatre, with its recently unveiled plans for a third hall, is not far behind. The ballet, however, is already there, with paid-for education center, paid-for Long Center and a well-earned national reputation.
Paul Baker, the founding artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center and a legendary presence on the Texas theater scene, has died of complications of pneumonia. He was 98.
The former director of the drama departments at Baylor and Trinity universities died Sunday in a hospital near his Central Texas ranch near Waelder, about 70 miles southeast of Austin.
In the 1950s, Baker invented revolutionary arts training known as “integration of abilities,” which won the attention of theater artists around the world.
“Irritating, arrogant, nuts — and a genius,” is how the late stage and film star Charles Laughton described director and teacher Baker.
The same man affected almost every theater hall built in Texas during the late 20th century by insisting that spectators share the theatrical space with the performers.
“In the long history of theater architecture, no single person has contributed more to its development than Paul Baker,” wrote Dallas architect Arthur Rogers.
A minister’s son, Baker was born in Hereford in 1911. His imaginative responses to the West Texas landscape deeply affected his later teaching on creativity.
Baker attended Trinity University when it was still in Waxahachie and then earned his master’s degree in drama at Yale University. In 1934, Baker accepted a teaching position at Baylor, where he met and married Kitty Cardwell, a math teacher and artist who later translated his theories to children’s art and theater. They had three children.
Two years later, Baker made a crucial voyage to England, Germany, Russia and Japan to observe theater. Insights from this trip helped form a new Baylor theater, Studio One, which placed the audience in swivel chairs embraced by six stages. Over the next decades, Baker would contribute to 10 other Texas theater designs that positioned the dramatic action around the halls, rather than on a 19th century-style picture frame stage.
In 1959, Baker co-founded the Dallas Theater Center, which served as the Baylor drama department’s graduate school. With Baker’s input, Frank Lloyd Wright designed the center, the great architect’s last building. Baker was artistic director for 23 years, promoting many performers and playwrights along the way.
By the early 1980s, Baker was tangling with the Dallas theater group’s board of directors. He wanted to retain the educational approach; they preferred an Equity union theater with well-known stars. In 1982, he resigned, and that spelled the end of the Baker era in Texas. His innovative Baylor theater was torn down, his Trinity theater severely altered.
In Austin during the late 1980s, Baker directed Preston Jones’ “The Oldest Living Graduate” at the Paramount Theatre and his own adaptation “Hamlet ESP” at Hyde Park Theatre. Austin philanthropists Ernest and Sarah Butler, for whom the University of Texas School of Music and Ballet Austin’s Eduction Center are named, were students of Baker’s. His “integration of abilities” inspires them to this day.
Baker was awarded the Texas Medal of Arts in 2007 for his contributions to arts education.
Baker is survived by his wife, Kitty, and three children, Robyn, founder of Dallas Children’s Theater; Retta, a former executive with the American-Statesman; and Sallie, who teaches theater and writing in Denver.
A Dallas memorial will be held in early December at the Children’s Theater’s Rosewood Center for Family Arts. Donations to the Children’s Theater or another charity are requested in lieu of flowers.
The subject itself makes audiences uncomfortable, especially in a musical …
Kellie Tseng and Arthur Marroquin
But “Spring Awakening” does not avert its eye from teen sexuality …
Steve Fall and Katherine Ordonez-Fall
I didn’t witness any departures from Bass Concert Hall during the simulated masturbation, coitus or violence, but some in the audience shifted around uncomfortably …
Robert and Patricia Megerle
Still, others laughed and cheered. The touring production was every bit as spirited as the original, though I couldn’t completely banish from my memory Lea Michele’s Broadway performance (this is before she graduated to “Glee”).
Rosalind Faires and Barbara Chisholm
Patrons glided in and out of the expanded, light-drenched lobbies, the most notable element from the recent major renovation. The concert hall seems to have settled on its core functions after 30 years.
Julie Ortman and Pam Ruder
[For those of you counting, this was Party No. 16 out of 25 on this Big October Weekend. Nine more posts to go.]
Austin artist Bob “Daddy-O” Wade is funny, generous and savvy.
Rattlesnake Annie and Bob Wade
He has thrived for decades by making sly Texas images, which include wholesome cowgirls, gigantic lizards and weird reflections of roadside culture.
Sam Shepard and Jim Franklin
Wade is an entertainer, no doubt. And other entertainers of all stripes embrace him.
Janie and Dick DeGuerin
During a follow-up party for Wade’s retrospective (“40 Years of Blood, Sweat and Beers”) at the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture on South Lamar Boulevard, we ran into a music promoter (Ihor Gowda), a musical icon (Rattlesnake Annie), an artistic icon (Jim Franklin), an American Studies professor (Jason Mellard), a museum director (Sue Graze), a celebrity defense lawyer (Dick DeGuerin, who declined to comment on the Evi Quaid imbroglio out in Marfa) and a certain playwright/actor (Sam Shepard) whose presence sent shivers through the outdoor party.
Andrea Mellard and Gerry Gilligan
Even the hinky parking situation at the attached Planet K couldn’t dampen spirits on this heavenly night.
Ed and Jessica Morris
As thorough and as appropriately located as this retrospective is, I’d love to see this same work at a roomier venue some day.
For more Facebook met Broadway in ‘Spring Awakening,’ scroll to posts below, or link here for Part 1 and Part 2.
Are teens as clueless as they were in repressed, authoritarian Germany of the 1890s?
“Today, with the Internet and TV saturated with sex, there’s a steady stream of basic information,” cast member Andy Mientus says. “In terms of the logistics of sexuality, it’s all completely available. But not the complicated issues like the psychology of sex. Parents must still be responsible for helping with that. I grew up in an open and honest household. No topic was too tender. We had open dialogue. I feel lucky that way.”
Mientus is proud that “Spring Awakening” is attracting traditional theatergoers as well as young people usually considered marginal fans of Broadway shows.
“It’s a serious, artful piece,” he says. “Look at it: Not linear or straightforward, although there’s a narrative one can grab onto, and there’s the nontraditional staging. But it’s also about young people and rock music. So it can appeal to a theater audience and a teenage audience.”
It helps that the latent love of Broadway musicals never really went away, as evidenced by the vast pop followings for “High School Musical” and “Glee.”
“For a long time, during its Golden Age, music on Broadway and music on the radio were the same,” Mientus says. “Pop music moved on. And show tunes became a ‘genre.’ They could have been lost to popular culture altogether, like vaudeville. Now they are getting back together again.”
Thinking back just three years, Mientus recalls his first ecstatic experience with “Spring Awakening,” sitting on the first row, buzzed by the music and the timely material.
“It was the show I had been waiting a long time to see,” he says. “It’s authentic. It’s my story.”
For Part 1 of Facebook met Broadway in ‘Spring Awakening,’ scroll down, or link here.
Andy Mientus trained at a theater program in Michigan. A little more than a year ago, the “Spring Awakening” tour was assembling and he auditioned. He won the part of Hanschen, a 15-year-old with a blast of blond hair, caught in more than one compromising sexual situation.
(Not to give anything away, but, due to a lack of sex education and adult transparency, the teen characters must process masturbation, abortion, rape, child abuse and suicide on their own. That was one reason Frank Wedekind’s original play was not produced for 15 years, before it was staged by directing legend Max Reinhardt.)
After winning the role, Mientus remained with the touring cast a full “season,” taking multiweek summer break when many such shows go on hiatus. He now returns to the road with some replacement actors, landing at Bass Concert Hall Oct 20-25.
Meanwhile, Mientus, the actor, has attracted a personal following online and, after a year, has become a practiced interview subject. (Google him for more results.)
Though his teen years are well behind him, Mientus recalls the emotional drama.
“I can certainly tap into that age and mind-set,” he says. “The stakes are so high. Getting a grade in an arbitrary class - calculus, say, when you are trying to become an actor - back then it was so life and death.”
Even the arrival of new company members to the touring “Spring Awakening” brings back pained memories from high school.
“It’s the first day of school all over again,” he says. “You thought, ‘Who was in your lunch period and who wasn’t.’ I mean, why couldn’t I just eat lunch by myself? But for a 15-year-old, that’s ‘Hamlet.’ “
Apparently, he’s not the only one affected by the vivid memories of confused teen years. The musical of “Spring Awakening” hit the public consciousness just as the value of abstinence-only sex education was being vigorously discussed, and not just in Texas.
“The show is about what happens when teens don’t have information and support,” Mientus says. “When they are trying to figure it out on their own. In the show, you see that sex is human. People are born with it. They have it all their lives. Ignore it or call it taboo, something that you put away, or silence, that doesn’t work.”
The musical adaptors retained almost all the material from Wedekind’s original play, and yet, to Mientus, it’s as timely as the morning’s headlines.
“It was a problem then; it’s a problem now,” he says. “The play has been trying to say something for more than 100 years: ‘We have these feelings. We are not wrong. We are not sick. We should not be made to feel that way.’ ”
For those who missed other editions of my 360 article on ‘Spring Awakening’.
Andy Mientus might be the American theater’s first Facebook hero.
In summer 2006, the drama student attended the off-Broadway production of “Spring Awakening” at the Atlantic Theatre Company in New York City. The musical, based on an 1891 German drama about teen sexuality, was buoyed by the kind of alternative rock music Mientus preferred, on and off-stage.
Looking for more information online, he discovered that the show hadn’t yet attracted a Facebook fan group. This, remember, was way back when the now-ubiquitous social-media site was restricted to college and high-school students, before adults amplified - or ruined - it, depending your perspective.
So, independently, Mientus, who grew up in Pittsburgh, created a group page. In December 2006, its readers multiplied by thousands when “Spring Awakening” moved to Broadway, earned delirious reviews and, eventually, a Tony Award for Best Musical. Discovering his online championing, one of the show’s producers asked Mientus if his fan page could become the musical’s official Facebook presence.
What had been to Mientus a personal crusade was now becoming a pop phenomenon.
“Maybe people were just ready for it,” Mientus thought.
On a parallel track, the producers were already pushing the show to young audiences through viral marketing, encouraging super-fans like Mientus to attend regularly, seated with the performers on stage during the action. Like “Rent,” “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and other such shows - not coincidentally Mientus’ favorites - “Spring Awakening” established its downtown street credentials before it cranked out the commercial marketing. The hit eventually spun off “The Guilty Ones,” a volunteer fan group that promotes the musical, cross-platform, everywhere it journeys.
“Every show uses the Internet now,” Mientus says. “But ours was one of the first to attack the opportunities on all fronts.”
I had always wanted to see the high-rise residence of Elisabeth Challener and Brett Bachman.
Brett Bachman and Elisabeth Challener
The managing director of Zach Theatre and the high-tech exec live at 5 Fifty Five, the lofty homes in Hilton Austin downtown.
Dr. Bill Jones and Anton Nel
Although they don’t perch way up in the penthouses, theirs is a pretty expansive space with major views on three sides.
Ted Siff, Janelle Buchanan, Richard Hartgrove
Their indoor entertainment area is the size of our house, as is their unique patio, located above the health club and peeking down onto the hotel’s swimming pool.
Dave Steakley and Karen Frost
I was there mingling with the Great Scotts, the support group for Zach Theatre. Talk about your Fortunate 500 bonanza, including Joe Long in a bright blue, modern sports jacket.
Dennis Karbach, Mary Tally and Robert Brown
Part of the evening was devoted to “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” the theater’s current production.
Lynn Yeldell and Robert Brown
Also to the soon-to-be-revealed renderings for Zach’s new theater campus plans at Riverside Drive and Lamar Boulevard. (Look to Jeanne Claire van Ryzin’s news reports on the subject.)
Just as some other major Austin arts groups are slowing down and turning inward, Zach appears to be opening up socially and financially.
Austin streets fairly vibrate on big game days. As early 9 a.m., locals and visitors were out and about. They perked up sidewalks downtown and destination districts like SoCo. While burnt orange peeked out from here and there, it was a feeling not reserved exclusively for Longhorns fanatics.
Couples kissed at bus stops. Dogs greeted packs of other pets. Locals doled out helpful directions. Visitors looked in vain for free taxis. Orange-bloods actually walked the three miles from our South Austin neighborhood to Royal Memorial Stadium.
I was not headed to the sold-out game during any of my Sunday walks. I saw, instead, two bracing theatrical productions. Meanwhile, I TiVo-ed the game and, luckily, avoided any leaky news about the score. (No social media, for instance.)
Attendance was light at Penfold Theatre Company’s “Three Days of Rain” at the Hideout and St. Ed’s “bobrauschenbergamerica” at the Mary Moody Northen Theatre. Too bad. Both proved special treats. I’ve met both playwrights, Richard Greenberg and Chuck Mee, respectively. Interestingly, each piece deals with an iconic, creative and sometimes controversial American of the late 20th Century.
The first play is a witty psychological mystery/drama about a Philip Johnson-like architect, his business partner and his wife, and, in Act 1, their three offspring. Three superb actors play both generations.
The second production is an attempt to stage Bob Rauschenberg’s images and early life as a pastiche. It shouldn’t work, but it does, with dizzying joyfulness contributed by student and pro actors.
Regarding Penfold, its three founders hope to build a theater in the under-served northern sectors of our metropolis, perhaps in Round Rock. It would be Austin’s loss. Their three micro-productions so far, “Art,” “The Last Five Years” and now “Three Days of Rain” have demonstrated extraordinary skill. (I missed “Art,” but heard nothing but praise from some pretty tough customers.)
St. Ed’s artistic director, David M. Long, took a big risk with the associative, counter-narrative “bobrauschenbergamerica.” Long, his team and the audience were rewarded with a performance as big-hearted and imaginative as the Texas artist who inspired them.
The Austin Symphony Orchestra is now comfortably settled in the Long Center for the Performing Arts, an ideal setting for its musical strengths …
Michele and Seth Kraal
And, until recently, the organization enjoyed a period of unprecedented stability, harmony and growth, onstage and off …
Lisa Tsang and Kate Hartgrove
Then, as arts reporter Jeanne Claire van Ryzin has reported crisply and delicately, ASO’s players, admirers, staff and board members were riven by the sudden, unexplained departure of promising executive director Galen Wixson …
Cassie and Dominic Bentley
With that social static in the background, the symphony opened its 99th season to an alert audience, pairing Mozart with Ravel, and at one point, Leon and Katherine Jacobson Fleisher playing on matched pianos …
Sharlene Strawbridge and Ruth Ann Eledge
My social/aesthetic complaint is far more mundane than questioning the orchestra’s erratic leadership — first Wixson is the Second Coming, then he leaves for “creative differences.”
What’s with the warehouse-style pallets used for risers in the cello section on Friday? A startlingly lighter color than anything else on stage, they distracted all through the filigreed Mozart and exotic Ravel.
Arius Holifield and Sally Strafford
Where are Wayne Bell, Stan Haas and Marla Bommarito-Crouch when you need a disciplined visual sensibility?
Austin social superstar Carla McDonald already plays so many roles: Businesswoman, wife, mother, arts advocate, fashion icon. Not to mention mate to a U.S. Congressional candidate.
Now she’s hitting the tube with the News 8 “Arts Minute.” She’ll be the onscreen talent for NowPlayingAustin.com, a program of the Greater Austin Creative Alliance, formerly Austin Circle of Theaters. It premiered Sept. 9 and will run Wednesdays, once an hour between 5 a.m. and 4 p.m..
“I feel honored to have been asked to host the ‘Arts Minute’ because my involvement with the arts has always focused on making them more accessible,” McDonald says. “My hope is that the ‘Arts Minute’ will encourage more people to take advantage of the wide variety of events that Austin’s vibrant and diverse arts community has to offer.”
McDonald currently serves on the boards of Arthouse and the Long Center for the Performing Arts, but she and husband Jack McDonald have supported just about every worthy cause in town.
Women & Their Work’s long-loved Red Dot Sale is a decorous analog to Arthouse’s Five by Seven event …
Chris Cowden and Deborah Green
Both exhibitions generate happy parties. Both raise money for their respective nonprofits …
Deanna Miesch, Kaci Borowski and Rebecca Wolf
Yet because of graduated access to the “red dot” purchasing of donated pieces, there’s no mad crush to beat other art-hungry patrons to the dotting, unlike the deliciously mad Arthouse event …
Lindsey and Mark Hanna
Respected art collector Deborah Green was among the first on the Women & Their Work scene (costs a little more for early access) on Thursday, and she purchased some tantalizing art …
Kimberly and Dan Renner
I was most impressed by some familiar artists — Virginia Fleck and Nine Francois, for instance — and others I knew less well — Marian Haigh, Jonathan Faber, Virginia Yount, Ann Chamberlin and Jon Lawrence.
Jason Urban and Leslie Mutchier
The exhibition stays up for a while, so don’t miss the melange.
It’s rare that an artist of Damian Priour’s stature is inspired by one place for so long …
Jane Sibley and Damian Priour
Guests at the opening of “Water Sparks,” a retrospective of Priour’s career at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum, were reminded of that on Wednesday …
Sheila Fox, Roger Colombik and Jerolyn Bahm-Colombik
The sculpture — abstract, conceptual and otherwise — spans so many decades, some of it very much of its time, other pieces timeless …
Andrew and Kim Penridge
All of them informed by Texas materials, especially limestone, but including the water of the title, mostly reflected in variants of glass, smooth or rough, and one of his preferred modes of expression …
Eric Cooper and Russell Martin
Appropriately, several decades of Austinites from several strata of society came out for the opening …
Lisa Wade, Jason Mellard and Andrea Mellard
Among the more familiar faces: Mike Levy, Jane Sibley, Jimmy Jalapeeno, Becky Beaver, Dr. Nona Niland, Nelie Plourde, Bob “Daddy-O” and Lisa Wade, Andrew Long, Dana Friis-Hansen and Brigid Shea.
Robert Brown and Dennis Karbach. Long Center, Austin Museum of Art, Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, Paramount Theatre
Sarah and Ernest Butler. Butler School of Music, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin Museum of Art, Austin Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Austin, Austin Lyric Opera
Lisa Byrd and Ana Ixchel Rosal. ProArts Collective, University of Texas
Joyce Christian and Rudy Green. Austin Museum of Art, ProArts Collective, Care Communities, St. Stephen’s School
Barbara Chisholm and Robert Faires. Zach Theatre, Austin Chronicle
Katie Hernandez Cowles. Women & Their Work, Austin Museum of Art, Mexic-Arte Museum
Mela Dailey and Peter Bay. Austin Symphony Orchestra
Charles Duggan. Long Center, Greater Tuna Presents, Austin Lyric Opera, Ballet Austin, Democratic National Committee Advisory Board
Sean Gaulager. Co-Lab, Cantanker
Dana Friis-Hansen and Mark Holzbach. Austin Museum of Art, Zebra Imaging, Rude Mechanicals
Sue Graze. Arthouse, Ballet Austin
Deborah Green. Austin Film Society, Austin Museum of Art, Arthouse, UT College of Fine Arts
Joan Plaster Haas and Stan Haas. Nelsen Architects, Long Center
Mary Ann and Andrew Heller. Heller Records, Austin Lyric Opera, Austin Symphony Orchestra, Long Center, UT College of Fine Arts
Sondra Lomax and Peter Lohman. UT Performing Arts Center, UT College of Fine Arts
Brent Hasty and Stephen Mills. Ballet Austin, University of Texas, Arthouse
Jeanne and Michael Klein. Blanton Museum of Art, Arthouse, University of Texas
Gail and Jeff Kodosky. National Instruments Corp., UT Austin, Texas State, ACC, KIPP, Austin Children’s Museum, Girlstart, Austin Lyric Opera, Austin Symphony, Ballet Austin, Conspirare, Long Center, Austin Chamber Music Center, Austin Classical Guitar Society, Zach Scott, KMFA, KLRU, Round Top Festival Institute, Austin Community Foundation
Rachel Koper. Austin Chronicle, Women & Their Work
Chris Mattsson and John McHale. Austin Museum of Art, Arthouse
Stuart Moulton and Brian Jenson. Austin Cabaret Theatre, Green Mango Real Estate
Anton Nel and Dr. Bill Jones. Long Center, University of Texas, Concierge Family Medicine
Bettye and Bill Nowlin. University of Texas, Austin Museum of Art, Austin Theatre Alliance, Austin Community Development Corp., UT College of Fine Arts
Arturo Palacios. Art Palace, Texas Biennial, Austin Museum of Art, Blanton Museum of Art
Sylvia Orozco. Mexic-Arte Museum
Candace Partridge. Long Center, Austin Lyric Opera
Paula and Damian Priour. Umlauf Sculpture Garden, Austin Museum of Art
Cliff Redd and Rick Johnson. Long Center
Lora Reynolds and Quincy Lee. Lora Reynolds Gallery, Arthouse, Blanton Museum of Art
Cookie and Phil Ruiz. Ballet Austin, Con Mi Madre, Girls Empowerment Network, Texans for the Arts, CreateAustin
Michelle Schumann and Matt Orem. Austin Chamber Music Center, Mary Hardin-Baylor University.
Jane Sibley. Austin Symphony Orchestra, Long Center, UT College of Fine Arts
Judith Sims. Austin Museum of Art, Art Divas
Dave Steakley and Tony Johnson. Zach Theatre
Ken Stein and Ken Lambrecht. Paramount Theatre, Planned Parenthood of Texas
Judy Willcott and Laurence Miller. Texas French Bread, Fluent~Collaborative, Arthouse, Blanton Museum of Art
Jennifer Wijangco. Texas Cultural Trust
Eva and Marvin Womack. Austin Lyric Opera, Proctor & Gamble, Long Center
The Top Picks for the 2009 Fortunate 500 list of socially active area citizens were published in Glossy today. In Out & About, we’ll mete out those Top Picks over the next four days. Then, beginning Tuesday, we’ll release the full lists and galleries.
ARTS
Top Picks: Annette DiMeo Carlozzi and Dan Bullock.
At first, they didn’t seem to match. She’s the urbane, contempo arts curator, as at home in New York or Miami as Austin. He’s down-home West Texas, with a background in business and communications, as well as folksy public speaking and singing. Annette and Dan recently married, blended their art collections and instantly tripled their social exposure.
A nationally recognized art consultant, Annette is curator of American and contemporary art at the Blanton Museum of Art. Dan manages family interests in West Texas, has assumed leadership roles with the Headliners Club, Wittliff Collections at Texas State University-San Marcos and Zach Theatre. During the past year, they’ve also socialized around — and supported — Arthouse, Austin Circle of Theaters, Austin Museum of Art, Communities In Schools, Conspirare, Deborah Hay Dance Co., Greenlights, Leadership Austin, Okay Mountain, Planned Parenthood, Seton Cove, Umlauf Sculpture Garden, and Women And Their Work.
For more 2009 Fortunate 500 updates, follow the category link below.
“Never forget: The first three letters in “news” are “N-E-W”!
I’ve repeated that truism hundreds of times, teaching entertainment journalism, or conducting workshops for publicists, artists or business leaders. The necessary point: Readers don’t want last week’s stories.
For that reason, Out & About is forever flitting about to the latest nightclub or restaurant, the most current entertainment, the buzziest personality, the latest scene, trend or fashion.
On the other hand, approaching the mid-point in middle life (age 55) earns me the right to luxuriate in the old as well.
Recently, I’ve rediscovered the indefinable pleasures of slow reading, cooking, travel and spectator sports. These subjects turn up more regularly on the austin360.com version of Out & About. Some readers wonder how they relate to social reporting.
Think about it. How can one tell Austin’s story if you leave out books, food, travel or sports altogether.
Another old friend has pranced back into my life: Broadway.
Musicals absorbed inordinate amounts of my energy during teen years. I collected original-cast albums. I took lessons in dancing, singing, acting, etc. That juvenile infatuation faded through drama school, teaching, graduate school, more teaching, reviewing, reporting, editing and so forth. Yet, for some reason, along with the aforementioned luxuries, I now reserve mental time for musicals. No explanations, no excuses.
That’s why I dropped other plans to catch “Star,” the flawed Julie Andrews movie about Gerturde Lawrence, at the Paramount Theatre last week. Too bad technical difficulties prevented use of the 70 mm print. The DVD projection just didn’t do the lavish production numbers justice.
It’s also why I’m re-cataloguing our CD collection and noting the omissions. Film critic Chris Garcia recommended a tremendous tool for this task: Amazon Wish List. The giant online retailer now organizes items that might someday complete the “Shows” section of our CD shelves, even as the format dies as surely as vinyl. (Under no circumstances are you to use this list for gifting. It’s a cataloguing tool, pure and simple.)
My inner musical queen quivers in anticipation for nights at Emerald City. That’s the cabaret/piano bar attached to Rusty Spurs, the still-new gay bar on East Seventh Street. I peeked in the other day to see the baby grand piano, curved stage and thicket of cocktail tables. Professional pepper-upper Bob Hemby has already booked some of the city’s best cabaret singers to tackle the American Songbook.
To my knowledge, Austin has never supported exactly this kind of piano bar. Kenny Luna’s former Ivory Cat Tavern specialized in other musical genres; Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar hosts a sweet, group-participation novelty game. Chicago House was a funky coffee house and the short-lived Bremond basement parlour was suitable only because Karen Kuykendall and Sterling Price-McKinney made it so.
Zach Theatre has periodically revived theatrical cabaret, and, of course, Austin Cabaret Theatre brings in the biggest names in the business, this season to the Long Center’s Kodosky Lounge.
But a piano bar where one can go and hear the American classics any day of the week? For me, that’s deliciously “O-L-D.”
Arts reporter Jeanne Claire van Ryzin is following a red-hot story on her Austin Arts blog as well as in the American-Statesman (see today’s story in the Metro section).
Keep watching and listening for developments on the departure of Austin Symphony Orchestra executive director Galen Wixson.
Inevitably, all the symphony principals — Jane Sibley, Joe Long, Peter Bay — will be affected by Wixson’s sudden departure, along with musicians, support staff and music lovers. Bookmark that blog!
At age 49, Paula Poundstone still thinks faster on her feet than the next 10 comics. (Dame Edna’s ad libs are equally fast, but she slows down the delivery pace for effect.) Poundstone’s improvised chats with audience members do not disintegrate into easy insults, as with so many comics, although she comes close to offending her conversation mates with the relentless attention.
At One World Theatre on Friday, she followed a precise pattern. She notices something — a out-of-season sweater, an oversized necklace, a shouted comment. At first, her questions are sweet, innocent: “So you wore that because it got down to 93 degrees today?”
Poundstone does not let up, however. She interviews. She repeats answers. She willfully mishears them. She comes close to heckling her fans, but the smile disarms. Eventually she launches into an extended rant, having found a topic for which she can argue the audience’s side.
To an architect, she posed: “Haven’t all the buildings been designed?” For a couple of government workers from College Station, she asks if they “stand guard against any ideas that might intrude.” To a brain surgeon, she suggests an extra year of medical school to teach scheduling. “Now you have a patient at 10. No you can’t have two. OK, 10:15 for the next appointment. Will it take you only 15 minutes to take care of the first patient? No? Well, you see …”
You bet the audience liked that line of questioning. Poundstone also free-associated about child-rearing, obsessive-compulsive disorder, aging bodies, politics and educational systems in Texas, California and Alaska, and the failure of CNN to maintain serious news standards (“That’s why there’s a FOX”).
Unabashedly Democratic, Poundstone professes the standard liberal openness to other ideas, but her partisanship is blade-sharp. Which plays well in Austin.
Gallery owner Judy Taylor has borrowed a swell idea from museums …
Rene Alvarado with his painting and a matching floral installation
She has matched major artworks displayed for the “In Bloom” exhibition with large-scale arrangements from area florists …
Candice McKay and Betty Oltorf
The arrangers soaked up the art, then responded with their own equally pleasing, if more ephemeral art …
Bonni Taylor and Laura Harrison
On Thursday, Taylor demonstrated the results for a Ballet Guild meeting at her Gallery Shoal Creek, located underneath Fino restaurant just off North Lamar Boulevard. One of her signature artists, San Angelo’s Rene Alvarado, explained the dense storytelling in one of his large, yellow canvases …
Judy Taylor and Rene Alvarado
The guild counts approximately 150 members and provides various, mostly quiet support for Ballet Austin, while encouraging members to branch out into experiences like the “In Bloom” exhibit.
“Wicked” fans were out — loud and proud — for opening night at Bass Concert Hall on Thursday.
Thomas and Karen Smith
Technically sold out for its entire three-week run, “Wicked” ranks up there next to “The Lion King” and “The Phantom of the Opera” for big Broadway bangs in Austin. We can thank the uncluttered Bass Concert Hall calendar for that. (Another blessing from the Long Center.)
Sheila Oshner and Laura Mackey
The audience embraced all ages and backgrounds. No niche musical this. And for good reason.
Andrea and Ashley Murillo
The songs soar, the story bubbles and the characters deepen as the musical, based on Gregory McGuire’s richly textured novel, develop.
Jay Boisseau and Nina Dandachi
Some minor sound difficulties and a seat to the extreme of house left didn’t ruin the opening night for me. I’m looking forward to the formal reviews like everyone else.
Summer Rydel and Michael Coffey
But if I were a critic, my review would be pretty gushy for this old-fashioned musical that manages to feel contemporary, using 19th-century stage technology to look 21st Century. Or at least magical.
For Parts 1 & 2 of the ‘Wicked’ interview with Winnie Holzman, see postings below …
You said in a previous interview that you’re not interested in good role models as characters. What did you mean by that?
I meant that ‘in quotes,’ not literally. There’s a pressure you feel when you are writing for television, writing teenage characters. This was probably back when I was writing ‘My So-Called Life.’ Sometimes people, especially on TV, communicating so strongly to country, people believe a character must be exemplary, perfect, an example of how people should behave — this was a long time ago, sometimes now what they are doing with teenage characters on TV can only be called ‘bad’ — but back then I was talking about imperfect characters. When they make terrible mistakes you see them struggle to become better, that’s more interesting and more real-life anyway.
That leads directly into my next question: Is it possible we all see ourselves as Galinda - consciously kind, but wanting to be more effective - and Elphaba - striving for knowledge, wisdom, but not fitting in - at different times in our lives?
Well yeah. One of things about the characters: They would like to be each other, on some level. That’s one reason they become friends. Elphaba would like to be beloved. Galinda would like to be brave enough to go her own way. That happens when we find friends — even in marriages, I think — we become friends with someone we would like to be more like. And that brings us back to your original question: One of the appeals of the show, even to men, even to straight men, is they can see themselves in the choices Elphaba and Galinda make. It’s not a prefect friendshp, they have terrible fights, they betray each other, they make mistakes. But, if you think in your own life, you might have fought with a friend, even hated that person, but you are so grateful that you knew them. We all want that from our friendships.
“Wicked” plays Bass Concert Hall Aug. 12-30. Go here for tickets.
For Part 1 of the ‘Wicked’ interview with Winnie Holzman, see posting below …
Looking back, what was absolutely essential to preserve from the source materials: The Frank Baum series, the 1939 movie and the Gregory Maguire novel?
The 1939 movie is a great American movie. Maybe our greatest America movie. Or at least in our Top 5. For people in my generation, there is so much love for it. We watched it growing up, every year. Stephen and I had to pay it homage. It’s just too important a cultural artifact to make light of. We couldn’t act as if the movie couldn’t matter. We treated the movie as if it were absolutely real. We asked: what happened when the camera just stopped rolling, what was the backstory? As for the original Baum story, the children’s story, it’s similar, although not as indelibly printed in our minds as the brilliant movie. The other element, Gregory’s book, was what we had the rights to. There were certain things that were just so delightful, like Galinda and Elphaba meeting in college. That’s an amazing, funny idea. What happened to them? How did they end of on opposite sides? Did they they end up on opposite sides? Is that really the truth? How do know what the truth is? Do you accept it from a power source, or do find your own answers? Do you dig a little deeper?
You and Schwartz added the love triangle and refined the evolving friendship between Galinda and Elphaba. Why was that essential to a stage musical?
I don’t’ know that it was crucial. You end up telling any story through the prism of what you yourself love to watch and love to write. Take Stephen, he does come back to certain themes in his shows. For myself, I love a love triangle. I like to watch it and like to write it. One of the things that happened when we were developing the show, we’d notice that we would have different readings. We had Kristin (Chenoweth, who played Galinda) early, earlier than Idina (Menzel, who ultimately played Elphaba). We had two witches, and when they were together on stage, it was incredibly interesting and dynamic. So we began to focus the show toward their friendship. You don’t know everything ahead of time. Then it’s not fun, not a creative process. You discover it along the way. I mean, we wrote countless drafts. What started to happen: The show was telling us what it wanted to be, not be too precious. It wanted to be about their friendship. Later we realized it was sort of a twist on a typical musical. Typically, a romantic relationship is at the heart of a musical. We had one at the heart, but just not boy/girl, instead the romance of this unlikely friendship, the passionate friendship of these two women who were so different. I don’t think there is another musical has a women’s friendship at the heart of it.
More interview to come ….
“Wicked” plays Bass Concert Hall Aug. 12-30. Go here for tickets.
Winnie Holzman wrote the book (libretto) for “Wicked.” A screenwriter whose credits include scripts for “My So-Called Life” (which she created), “The Wonder Years” and “thirtysomething,” she teamed with composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz (“Pippin,” “Godspell”) for the transformation of Gregory Maguire’s thickly layered novel — a reimagining of the Oz story — into a stage musical.
Out & About: It’s been six years since “Wicked” bewitched Broadway. It’s still a sensation. Why do you think?
Winnie Holzman: The people who create something are not always the ones to say. I think there are a lot of different elements, not just one thing. Part of it has to with its story about two young women, about standing up for the truth, standing up for what is right, standing up to the powers that be. Also the fact that it takes its characters from “The Wizard of Oz,” a great American story. It’s beloved, part of our heritage. It’s a privilege to work with these characters and see them in a new light.
Is there a special appeal to a particular audience? Young women? Gay men?
It can appeal to young women and gay men. But you don’t do the kind of business worldwide that we’ve done, if it’s just for a certain audience. It has a broader appeal, for people of a lot different ages and backgrounds. My family was privileged to see the show in Tokyo, in Japanese, all the songs, all the lines, from beginning to end. That tells you something about having a broad appeal. The Japanese are not really familiar with the books or the movie. And yet our show really has an audience there. You know, I have to tell you it drives me wild when I’m asked about ‘who is the audience?’ As if, if you are not a teenager or gay man, you are probably not going to get it. People should walk into a theater and see what happens. Not go in with too many preconceptions.
More interview to come ….
“Wicked” plays Bass Concert Hall Aug. 12-30. Go here for tickets.
When you’re popular, you’re popular. Art on Fifth has dominated the A-List vote for Best Gallery for the second year running. The veteran seller of fine-art prints, celebrity creations and more took a full 33 percent of the vote.
Coming in second was the Blanton Museum of Art, the monumental University of Texas institution and the most comprehensive repository of art in Central Texas. It pulled 19 percent of the vote.
Another longtime commercial space — Gallery Shoal Creek — attracted 7 percent, while Austin Museum of Art-Laguna Gloria and Austin Museum of Art-Downtown split the difference with 6 and 5 percent.
Two more institutions, the Ransom Center and Arthouse at Jones Center, along with near-campus D Berman Gallery, virtually tied at 4 percent.
Garnering less than 4 percent were Stephen L. Clark Gallery, Okay Mountain, Austin Galleries, Flatbed press, Art Palace, Women & Their Work, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Artworks, Slugfest Printmaking, Russell Collection of Fine Art, Davis Gallery, Haven Gallery and 4 Walls Fine Art.
“Greater Tuna” star Joe Sears vows it’s the funniest show he’s seen in years.
Jenny Littleton, Bruce Arntson
The taxonomic relationship between Nashville-birthed “The Doyle & Debbie Show,” now at the Long Center, and the Austin-generated “Tuna” series would be obvious to even the untrained eye.
Stan Haas, Joan Plaster
Both weave together sketches about a part of culture rarely satirized effectively on the stage. Love of country music and country life keep the sharply outlined characterizations from darkening into the blackest of humors.
Jaston Williams, Sharon Chapman
D&D is more focused: Only two main characters, one sideman. Doyle is a high-energy country performer of the old school who experienced a mysterious breakdown and has just returned to Nashville with Debbie, his third partner by that stage name, a young mother of three from deepest Tennessee who, despite low self-esteem, brings to the stage a startling talent.
Kathy Hemphill, Farley Hemphill
Both D&D and Tuna depend on the patience of the writers and performers to build scenes from low-drama ignitions. D&D, in fact, takes it very slow, the better to guarantee that the unpredictable climax is literally hair-raising. (A wig is involved. That’s all I’ll say.)
The late Saturday matinee audience lapped it up. We heard from Long Center managing director Paul Beutel that a possible Chicago D&D engagement is in the offing (Austin is only its second city and the Long Center its first theatrical engagement).
Steve Gould, Monica Gould
We also bumped into Sears’ onstage partner, Jaston Williams, in the lobby. He was seeing the show for a second time, in itself an endorsement. Williams has just renovated a mid-century modern house in Lockhart and is working with Sears on script polishes of the third and fourth installments of the “Tuna” quartet.
How exhilarating to enter a room full of powerful women.
Margo Sawyer, Molly Alexander
Not just a room, but a whole house! And I was one of only three men present (another was husband and co-host to artist Judy Jensen).
Cynthia Holmes, Linda Young Kaffie
Inside and outside their modest, lovingly tended home off North Lamar Boulevard, the Art Divas mingled.
Judy Jensen, Aralyn Hughes, Mary Gordon Spence
This group of women includes the past and present leaders of Austin’s major museums, galleries, cooperatives, advocacy groups and collecting circles, as well as visual and performing artists.
Lisa Choinacky, Elizabeth Chapin, Rachel Koper
I spent the most time talking to nationally laureled public artist Margo Sawyer and Downtown Austin Alliance’s Molly Alexander about projects in Galveston, Elgin and Houston. They understand how the civic and artistic spheres complement each other.
Hannah Bentley, Shelley Wood
Peeking out of corners of the art-festooned rooms were power lawyer and collector Becky Beaver, former Blanton Museum director Jessie Otto Hite, postmodern dance legend Deborah Hay, longtime Women & Their Work leader Chris Cowden, writer and environmentalist Mary Gordon Spence, comedian and real estate agent Aralyn Hughes and photographer Shelley Wood.
Bonnie Tamres-Moore, Keri Kropp
Now, some lesser seasoned women were present, too, but this is an informal club where membership is earned over time, I imagine. Bridging the generations was Rachel Koper, newly named curator of Women & Their Work, and probably best placed to wed the Austin’s abundantly represented artistic establishment with outliers aspiring to their stature.
Its roots go back to 1930s hootnannies and 1950s light operas …
Jaziel Crisostomo, Elyce Harris
Director Rod Caspers’ version of “The Music Man” honors that tradition …
Amber Hunter, Dearing Davis
His show is like a Fourth of July parade, cheerfully saluting small-town life in fictional River City, Iowa …
Aubry, Ainsley and Derrek Gibson
It explodes with talent, bracketed by simple, imaginative scenery and a spit-and-polish brass pit band …
Somyong Sukkij, David Robers
Caspers emphasizes the youthful energy of the script, not the melancholy or irony …
Conor Keelan, Kate Gester, Peggy Keelan, Daniel Keelan
Which is perhaps why the audience perked up for every number, but fell back on the hillside during the comic or romantic interludes …
Dusty Pate, Marina Parker
Everyone this social columnist talked to at intermission Sunday enjoyed this “Music Man,” and virtually nobody left at halftime, rare for the Summer Musical ….
A veritable Who’s Who of Austin arts lovers bunched around the basically bare stage of the Off Center for the opening performance of “Henry V.” Critic, editor, actor, director and writer Robert Faires had distilled Shakespeare’s sprawling history into a solo. He played all the roles himself.
Filing into the raw, familiar space were Boyce Cabannis, Annette Carlozzi, Dan Bullock, Forrest Preece, Linda Ball, Shawn Sides, David Jewell, Elizabeth Cobbe and dozens of other leading lights. At the end, they surged to their feet in appreciation for the 90-minute drama.
I particularly liked the light, comic bits and the stirring battle scenes, including the contrasting voices of common soldiers. “Henry V” plays through July 25.
I’ve learned more about art from Jonathan Bober than from the dozen or so art history classes I took as an undergraduate and graduate student — put together. He has patiently, methodically, even ecstatically explained hundreds of works in the Blanton Museum of Art collection.
Bober curates the Old Masters, as well as drawings and his original love, prints. Probably nobody in the world knows as much about Genoese art. His wife, Andree, runs the Landmarks program at the University of Texas, which acquires and places contemporary art on campus, including a collection lent the Metropolitan Museum of Art (including Tony Smith’s Amaryllis, 1965, pictured).
Husband and wife are breathtakingly smart and wise. Kip and I joined them in their Old West Austin house, modest from the exterior, but renovated to suit their collections of art, books and other interests. We nibbled on grapes, cheese and white wine, catching up on UT news and news of the world in general. Fantastic.
What would it cost … to underwrite an Austin production of “Ragtime”?
“100,000 would do it,” says Zach Theatre director Dave Steakley.
Steakley’s company has the talent and the interest. The Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty musical was among the most ambitious its generation. The Broadway production, with Brian Stokes Mitchell, Marin Mazzie, and Audra McDonald, blew my mind. The touring production, which played Bass Concert Hall, impressed, despite the downsizing caused by producer Garth Drabinsky’s financial “troubles.”
Based on the E. L. Doctorow novel that weaves together stories from the turn of the last century with special emphasis on race relations, it speaks to our times. No Austin company has produced it. It’s time.
See “Killer Joe.” The Tracy Letts trailer-trash comedy clicks, sparks and sizzles.
One thing puzzles me, though: All the formal reviews warn the audience about the dark subject matter: Murder for hire, gradations of rape, partial nudity, implied, attempted infanticide, etc.
What about Shakespeare or the Ancients? This rough stuff is as old as Thespis.
I guess it’s more disturbing now because Letts’ Texas-averse setting is contemporary and close, meaning Dallas County.
Making a statement about the future of his ascendant Capital T Theatre, director Mark Pickell synthesizes his ensemble down to the tiniest nuance. How to pick a stand-out among Ken Bradley, Joey Hood, Joe Reynolds, Katie DeBuys and Melissa Recalde, who don’t miss a quarter note?
If forced, I’d have to choose Recalde, whose mentally challenged 20-year-old virgin surprises with almost every half-absent, delayed-a-beat reaction.
But whom am I kidding? It’s a flawless production brought to a thrillingly bloody conclusion. Only three performances left at Hyde Park Theatre. Or wait for the inevitable revival.
On the floor and on the walls, Austinites cracked the whip at “New American Talent 2009” at Arthouse’s Jones Center.
Jardine Libaire, Gwen Riley
It may be my imagination, but a higher percentage of the artists chosen to participate in this annual art show came from Austin, even though the guest curator is from Chicago and couldn’t know the hometowns of the applicants. (Right?)
Vanessa Gully-Santiago, Michael Gully-Santiago
“New American Talent” is among Arthouse’s grandest traditions. No Whitney or Venice Biennial, nor Basel or Basel-Miami. Yet a fair indication of what’s out there in the contempo art world, nationally.
Deborah Green, John Livingston, Chris Mattsson
I came early to absorb the full, split-screen narrative of Amy Grappell’s family film. Oh my. I’ve known Grappell for almost 30 years. I had no idea her parents were that interesting, but in a way clearly hurtful other family members. Grappell treated the story in a strictly documentary manner.
Kollin Baker, Rachel Koper, Lauritz Sparkman Williams
Although only a fraction of the first-nighters got to see it, I’m betting others will return for the experience. Otherwise, the level of talent on display seemed higher than usual. I’ll let the art critics decide how.
Allison Watkins, Jodi Zik
Once again, however, Arthouse draws some of the hottest crowds. I thought the “Five by Seven” fundraiser was particularly lively. Yet this group — younger, with less ready cash — was equally engaging.
Patrick Hallett, Adam Rasmus
Another thing: Despite its expansion plans, Arthouse remains a lean organization. Not for them layoffs that have plagued other key Austin arts institutions. It’s almost as if, by choosing the narrow commercial structure on Congress Avenue, the leaders trimmed their ambitions accordingly.
The stunt almost stole the show. Just as I was crossing Congress Avenue to attend the members’ preview of “The Lining of Forgetting: Internal and External Memory in Art” at the Austin Museum of Art, a small motorcycle or motor scooter zipped across my path.
On the luggage rack sat a plywood cube painting with various crude markings, including something that looked like a target. Then the bike jumped the curb and entered the museum lobby through the double doors. Just as quickly, it turned around and departed.
“Not a museum stunt,” assured museum spokeswoman Shilpa Bakre.
Maybe not, but it was a stunt for the rider. The paint was fresh, since it smeared museum staff members who stopped the intruder. He was reported to have said: “Well, the doors were open.” Then: “I’m scared.”
The incident didn’t detract from the show, as hundreds of art lovers strolled through the exhibition from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. I can’t even come close to reviewing it, since the curator, Xandra Eden, is a dear friend and was a house guest this week. But I can report the chatter was very positive for the thought-jolting works, executed in many media.
I lingered to socialize with art veterans Judith Sims, Sylvia Orozco and Chris Cowden. (Many years ago, Eden toiled at Women & Their Work and what is now Arthouse.)
Also with Rachel Koper, who has just been named program director at W&TW. I think of her along with Sean Gaulager and Arturo Palacios as among the most effective grassroots prosletyzers about Austin art.
See the show. Friendships aside, it’s an eye-trigger.
Robert Faires thought up his one-man “Henry V” 18 years ago while working at La Jolla Playhouse.
James Armstrong, Eugene Sepulveda, Larry Connelly
He trimmed the script. Storyboarded the scenes. Discovered how much of Shakespeare’s play involved addressing an audience (straightforward, as in the Chorus; imaginary, as in Henry motivating the army).
Joan Lava, Robert Faires, Linda Ball
Faires didn’t get around to producing it during all that time. Yet, for his 50th birthday, his teenage daughter, Rosalind, convinced her mother, actress and theater leader Barbara Chisholm, to produce his “Henry” through her Red Then company. (His day job is at the Austin Chronicle; hers at Zach Theatre.) They mocked up a program and were off to the races.
Vicki McCullough, Richard Hartgrove, Emma J. Virjan
Wednesday, Chisholm invited guests to their Bouldin-area house for a tiny fundraiser. Everybody in the room was somebody in the arts world. Some were heavy hitters. They play opens in July at the Off Center. They listened to songs from Meredith McCall and Jason Connor, a short pitch, then a very short scene from the play.
Steven Tomlinson, Gary Cooper
Why the name Red Then for Chisholm’s production company? Love the answer: At La Jolla, a costume designer approached the female star of an epic production of “Elmer Gantry” to ask which color robe she wanted to wear during the climactic religious revival scene. “Red or white?” The actress asked what everyone else was wearing. Costumer: “White.” Star: “Red then.”
Now, that’s a theater story, no?
Kidder Turk Pipkin at the end of the evening: “I always wanted to do a one-man ‘Battleship Potemkin.’”
For Part 1 on the other writers and editors on the dais for the Austin Critics Table Awards, see post below.
Rachel Koper: I am a Detroit Red Wings hockey fan; I usually wear red and white when I watch them. My oldest cat is named after Russian/American hockey player Sergei Fedorov. Hockey has taught me how to pronounce and spell some French words like Roy and Russian words like Khabibulin. I have a weakness for reading trashy and/or violent novels by authors like Janet Evanovich, Dashiell Hammett, John D. MacDonald and Cormac McCarthy.
David Mead: “I would survive just fine without the arts in general, and music in particular, but life would be pretty dull. I would give Faires and Barnes stiff competition in any martini-mixing contest.”
Claire Ruud: Been reading “Mean Little Deaf Queer” by Terry Galloway and working on a needlepoint inspired by an 18th-century American sampler by Mary Eaton.
Joey Seiler: “My day gig as a tech blogger has made me an expert in kids’ virtual worlds, but moonlighting as an Austin critic is my personal career highlight. After almost four years of writing about Austin theater, I’ll be leaving next week to motorcycle around the country and attend New York University Law School.
Jonelle Seitz: If you’re in the theater right now and I’m not, I’m jealous of you. At a dance performance, I’m usually the one in the back of the house taking things way too seriously. I think bloopers in the theater are the best comedy. If scenery falls over or you get tangled up in a curtain (and you’re not injured), I’m going to laugh. Nothing personal.
Avimaan Syam: I have a day job as a software developer. I love food but strongly dislike grapefruit and olives. I have many dreams but have seen scant few of them fulfilled. I blame people other than myself for this.
Kate Watson: Recently, I’ve been working on a video about giving my youth to Texas and reading “Language to Cover a Page: The Early Writings of Vito Acconci.”
This opinionated crew bangs the metaphorical gavel on the 2009 Critics Table Awards, 7 p.m. Monday at Cap City Comedy Club. After inducting honorees into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame, they will hand out some 50 awards for art, classical music, dance and theater. This year, every effort has been made to streamline the free and informal ceremony.
The faces at the dais include familiar newspaper types: arts editor Robert Faires, arts writer Jeanne Claire van Ryzin and a social columnist (me). What about the others? What do readers not know about the less-well-known voters?
Elizabeth Cobbe: “In college, I set a school record in the 400-meter hurdles that lasted for two weeks. If you don’t know what “k2tog, YO” means, you’re missing out. I will be busy honeymooning in Canada instead of presenting at the awards ceremony.”
Claire Croft: Before moving to Austin to work towards my doctorate, I wrote about dance for The Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun. The first time I met the artistic director of the Washington Ballet, he looked very surprised and said, “Based on your writing, I thought you were 50 years old.” I used to perform, and among the many roles I’ve had, dancing the Rat King in the Nutcracker remains one of my favorites.
Erin Keever: “I teach art history at Austin Community College. I live in West Austin with a border collie mix and a big orange cat. My latest weakness is watching (too many) BBC miniseries”
Back to researching Farrah Fawcett’s Austin connections. This came to the newsroom from Nelie Plourde, director of the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum. Some of this is well-known material, but it’s worth repeating. For Part 1, see post below.
Fawcett occasionally modeled for her fellow classmates in Charles Umlauf’s classes. Umlauf sculpted several head studies of the young actress, the of which are in the collection of the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum. No one ever recognizes the one Umlauf did from life, but they all do recognize the two he did from photos of her during her “Charlie’s Angels” period, with her iconic hair, and another three or four of which are in her own collection.
Later, in late 1987 and early 1988, Fawcett commissioned Umlauf to do several stoneware studies of her infant son Redmond. Over the years she put together a nice, small collection of Umlauf sculptures, drawings and prints.
Her last visit with Umlauf was shortly before he died in November 1994. Fawcett was in Austin working on a film and came by the museum just before it closed. She had been up most of the night with the filming and dealing with the aftermath of a quake which had done some damage to her California house.
Both Charles and Angie Umlauf were here to welcome her and we started walking through the garden. Quite quickly the entire conversation became all about the original clay or plaster sculpture (for whatever bronze we were looking at), what tool had Umlauf used, why did he go with that patina, what about those ears, etc etc.
After about 45 minutes of this Angie and I retreated to the terrace and left them to their teacher/student conversation. Fawcett continues to stop by the Umlauf whenever she is in the area.
Over the last year, we have been in talks with Fawcett re: exhibiting her work here at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, as part of our series of annual exhibits of work by former Umlauf students.
How many times did Umlauf used Fawcett as a model for one of his sculptures? Not that many actually. But many, many folks “of a certain age” believe every single sculpture of a woman down here is based on her.
Fawcett had that same deep groove between her nose and upper lip that Angie Umlauf had, and that Umlauf used for the majority of his female sculptures — maybe that’s what makes her seem the model for all of them.
Back to researching Farrah Fawcett’s Austin connections. This note came to the newsroom from Nelie Plourde, director of the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum. Some of this is well-known material, but it’s worth repeating.
Before she went west to begin her career as an actor, Farrah Fawcett was a talented art student at the University of Texas here in Austin, studying sculpture and life drawing with noted 20th-century sculptor and University of Texas art professor Charles Umlauf.
For the rest of her life, Farrah had an “art shack” somewhere on her property where she continued to draw and sculpt. For years, when Umlauf went to Italy for his annual trips to oversee the casting of his bronze sculptures, Fawcett would send over the plaster models of her own sculptures so that Umlauf could oversee their bronze casting as well.
Fawcett and her family in Houston remained friends with Charles and Angie Umlauf. In 1985, when Umlauf was honored by the Houston Art Guild as Texas Artist of the Year, Fawcett came down to Houston to present him with this award.
Later, when (philanthropist) Roberta Crenshaw and her committee of Friends of the Umlauf Sculpture Garden were fundraising to build the new museum with private funds on City of Austinproperty adjoining the Umlaufs’ original sculpture garden, Fawcett contributed $10,000 towards the construction of the new museum.
In 2002, Fawcett’s work as a sculptor was recognized with a two-person exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which paired her work with that of another sculptor ,Keith Edmier, an exhibit that went on to the the Andy Warhhol Museum in Pittsburgh the following year.
Third in a series of capsule profiles for the Austin Arts Hall of Fame, part of the Austin Critics Table Awards, held 7 p.m. June 1 at Cap City Comedy Club. The event is free and informal. Some other capsule profiles will appear in the Seeing Things blog.
It takes a long line of leaders to nurture an arts company beyond its 50th birthday. Ballet Austin, founded in 1956 as the Austin Ballet Society, has been blessed with thoughtful leadership throughout its history.
Among its leading lights were Eugene Slavin and Alexandra Nadal, who incorporated the company and raised its professional status, hiring 14 dancers in 1982. They brought in top guests, such as Mikhail Baryshnikov.
In the grand ballet tradition, Slavin and Nadal learned directly from masters who learned directly from the greats of dance’s classical era. Born in Buenos Aires, Slavin trained at the Teatro Colon, then worked in New York under Anatole Vilzak, who succeeded Vaslav Nijinsky at the Maryinsky Theatre. He made his American debut at Carnegie Hall and joined the famed Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, where he partnered the legendary Maria Tallchief. He began his choreographing career with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.
Nadal was born in the West Indies and studied in Chicago with Russia’s Andre Commiacoff and former Sadler’s Wells Ballet soloists Richard Ellis and Christine DuBoulay. In New York she continued her studies with Maria Swoboda and Leon Danielian (who later taught at the University of Texas). At 17, she joined Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo’s American tour. She danced for superstars such as Agnes de Mille, Leonide Massine and Eliot Feld.
Since the 1980s, the couple has run the Slavin Nadal School of Ballet in North Austin, extending the classical tradition through successive Central Texas generations.
Second in a series of capsule profiles for the Austin Arts Hall of Fame, part of the Austin Critics Table Awards, held 7 p.m. June 1 at Cap City Comedy Club. The event is free and informal. Some other capsule profiles will appear in the Seeing Things blog.
For some Austinites, Mary Margaret Farabee defines enlightened philanthropy. Not only has she helped scores of arts and service nonprofits by staging fundraisers and chairing volunteer committees, she has done the hard work of training the next generation of do-gooders.
She received a B.A. in Plan II from the University of Texas in 1961 and an M.A. in American history in 1968. Wife of former State Sen. Ray Farabee, she is best known as the founding chairwoman of the Texas Book Festival, which she led for eight years. Free to the public, the festival has showcased more than 150 authors and has attracted more than 50,000 book lovers. Additionally, the festival has raised more than $2 million to 550 Texas public libraries.
Prior to that, she toiled in the fields of business development and public relations, serving, for instance, as KLRU-TV’s vice-president of development from 1986 to 1991. She lent her considerable persuasive skills and brilliant smile to projects, such as renovating the Paramount Theatre, establishing the Philosopher’s Rock and organizing the Charles W. Moore Foundation around the Center for the Study of Place.
Among her other longtime associations are the Heritage Society of Austin, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, UT Ransom Center, KUT, People’s Community Clinic, Witliff Collecctions at Texas State University-San Marcos and the Molly National Investigative Journalism Prize. Farabee’s the one philanthropist organizers want in their corner, because where she goes, legions of admirers follow.
First in a series of capsule profiles for the Austin Arts Hall of Fame, part of the Austin Critics Table Awards, held 7 p.m. June 1 at Cap City Comedy Club. The event is free and informal. Some other capsule profiles will appear in the Seeing Things blog.
Bonnie Cullum has remained remarkably true to her artistic vision, first revealed to Austin audiences more than 20 years ago. She snatched the public’s imagination during her University of Texas graduate-school years in the 1980s, when her ritual-based directing and playful, speculative performances borrowed liberally from world theater and religions.
In co-founding Vortex Repertory Company in 1988, however, Cullum expanded her reach to include commissioning new works and nurturing up-and-coming performance groups. The company’s first full-time home, a former movie theater multiplex on Ben White Boulevard, became a hothouse for provocative, sometimes sexually bold performances. Later, she purchased and renovated a large shed on Manor Road that became an ignition point for East Austin’s warehouse-theater revolution.
She has directed more than 60 world-premiere productions and dozens of published works. She founded the Summer Youth Theatre program in 1991 to provide artistic training for young Austinites. She came by her creativity through family as well as educational means — her father is jazz great Jim Cullum, her mother, Susan Estelle Kelso, a professor of theater. She is married to composer and artist Chad Salvata, a frequent collaborator on Cullum’s signature “cybernetic operas.” Cullum adds that she is “an initiated witch and teacher in the Reclaiming Tradition.”
This may confuse some readers: Joe Reynolds stars in “Killer Joe.” Joe doesn’t play Joe. Ken Bradley does. Joe also shares billing with Joey Hood. In other words, a whole lot of Joe going on. (Met him for coffee at — where else? — Jo’s. Could have been down the street at Dominican Joe.)
Reynolds has come a long way since 1987, when he played Orsino in Scott Shattuck’s storied production of “Twelfth Night.” He also played one of the sexually repressed kids in “Spring Awakening” (premusical). Anyway, he left the University of Texas for further study at Yale University, last I’d heard.
Since then, he’s worked in New York and Los Angeles, often under the name Joe Leroy Reynolds, if you’re checking IMBD. Like so many actors, he also waited tables and made the transition to management when opened Hollywood’s nightlife hit M Bar & Restaurant. Seven years into that venture, he bought Austin’s Saba, managing his star, M, from a distance.
Reynolds now lives high up in the 360 Tower and rehearses in the afternoons for “Killer Joe,” which opens June 4 at Hyde Park Theatre. This darkest of dark dramas about a trailer-trash family was written by Tracy Letts, who conquered Broadway with “August: Osage County.”
Ads for “Killer Joe” warn, merrily: “Contains nudity, cigarette smoke, gunshots, violence and adult situations.” Must see.
Serious people are always dubious about how socializing can lead to serious good. Like art. Why not cut the cheap-wine openings and just show the art, expecting the audience, one by one, to get it on their own?
Here’s a counter-example: I met Claude van Lingen ever so briefly on a frosty night at Co-Lab on Allen Street in East Austin. The grimacing man with the unplaceable accent and short, white beard appeared like something out of Conrad or Melville.
His novelistic visage stuck in my memory. Also Co-Lab’s Sean Gaulager’s whispered endorsement: “He’s good. Very good.”
Last week I spotted van Lingen at the W Hotel & Residences art preview, approached him respectfully, then chatted up the South African-born artist and his sociable grandson.
Through Facebook and other means, I discovered that van Lingen was producing a multi-media show at Co-Lab a few days later. I missed the big social night, but arranged to see the exhibit, “1,000 Years from Now,” on Sunday.
Wow. The work — three parts of which were on display — has developed over 30 years, as van Lingen attempts to refract today’s issues and personalities for an imagined future consumption. It’s a thorny series that has already won praise in New York, Johannesburg, S.A. and elsewhere.
One element involved dark paper upon which the artist had signed with various writing implements the names of thousands of soldier killed in Iraq. As he wore down the paper inscribing name over each previous name, he continued the writing on a subsequent underlayer, which left the whole double-arms-length-wide aggregation ripped like a gaping wound.
A second part arranged neatly the printed names of those soldiers. At Saturday’s event, he invited guests to find names similar to theirs and to sign them in layers on the wall.
The most complicated part was a copse of long, thin, suspended planes. Some were blank, others were covered with mirrors, while still others were plastered with images from printed and televised media.
Over this, van Lingen projected cable news programs (in his conception, they should have been live shows, but Co-Lab doesn’t get cable). The effect was slightly startling and very sophisticated. I mulled it over as I walked the four miles back to the newsroom.
You see, socializing can lead one to quite serious art about quite serious issues.
At last, the final big gala of the traditional season.
Teresa Cantu, My-Cherie Haley, Sara L. Strother
The high-profile Molly Awards ceremony doesn’t count, since, like its namesake, Molly Ivins, the party is eccentric, coming in June.
Margie Burciaga, Gwyn Smith
Planning a gala for late May is a gamble. Yet the Paramount Theatre’s parent organization is willing to chance rain, wind and heat. This year, they ran the weather table.
Jerri Kunz, John McCollough
A cold front in May. And the rains passed by the pre-show party. Wow. That’s the luck of the good.
Christine Harmel, Clayton Whittet
I missed the concert, headlined by Boz Scaggs, an idol in the ’70s. The response was evenly split, among the guests, depending partly on whether you wanted Scaggs’ original takes on “Silk Degrees,” or something fresh.
A frolicking group Mr. Page, Kittybelle, Janey
The gala is best known, however, for the party tent. A long, long tent that stretches for two blocks down the middle of Congress Avenue.
Josh Loposer, Kendra Loposer
Making the circuit from the band stand through the silent auction tables to the dining tents was like digging through layers of Austin society.
Lawrence Strieb, Jasmin Fasl, Thomas Fasl
The highest set seemed clustered near the middle around circular tables. Youngsters were already dancing wildly to the band at the south end before dining ended. And a picnic-table-like area at the north end seemed reserved for hoi palloi.
Melissa Graham, Scott Graham
(Brenda Thompson, I don’t mean you, specifically, represent the masses. Although, for a second year you bravely took the very last table in the tents.)
John Broussard, Casey Dugon
Perhaps because of the snap in the air, or perhaps because the traditional season had finally dragged to an end, but even inveterate socialites seemed in an exhultant mode.
Sean Gallagher Forage, Amy Griffin
I joined them in that feeling. Though I didn’t stay for dinner. And I didn’t make it to Salvage Vanguard’s party. Three in one day was enough for me.
Saturday, the city’s arts critics met at the home of Barbara Chisholm and Robert Faires. In a mere four hours, culling through hundreds of nominations in theater, dance, art and classical music to arrive at 50 or so winners.
Those lucky souls will be honored, along with Austin Arts Hall of Fame inductees, on June 1 at Cap City Comedy Club. As always, the event will be free and informal. Very informal. OK, not shorts, if you are reading, Barry Pineo.
A reminder about the Hall of Famers: This year, we induct Mary Margaret Farabee, Daniel Johnson, Syliva Orozco, Bonnie Cullum, Damian Priour, Alexandra Nadal and Eugene Slavin.
My proposed contribution this year: Slicing an hour off the ceremony, which will start promptly at 7 p.m. I’m introducing a widely employed technology to do so. Writers Joey Seiler and Geoff West are helping. See you there.
When one considers the Blanton Museum of Art’s “Essence of Cool” gala, Mexic-Arte Museum’s “Gala de Plata” gala, Austin Museum of Art’s “Art Ball” and, now, the Arthouse’s “Five by Seven,” the visual arts community has certainly caught up with the performing arts companies when it comes to staging social events.
Dana Fox, David Fox, Chris Stone
Add to those major parties, recent art shindigs for the W Hotel & Residences, Art City Austin, First Night, Fusebox Festival, Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum’s Garden Party, and East Austin art collectives, and a whole lot of art-wise socializing is going on.
Marina Sifuentes, Dr. Tad Davis
“Five by Seven” has grown and grown and grown. The art has improved almost every year and the paying audience hit record numbers Friday night.
Ann Elizabeth Wynn, Joaquin Avellan
This party was co-sponsored by L Style G Style magazine, thus the delightfully gay spin on the evening.
Graydon Parrish, Heath Riddle
On top of the famous 5x7 works by hundreds of artists, Graydon Parrish donated an exquisite floral oil, which I believe Alisa Weldon and Lynn Yeldell purchased.
Susan Dell, Michael Dell
The guests and hosts list popped: Michael Dell, Susan Dell, Ann Elizabeth Wynn, Joaquin Avellan, Julie Thornton, Dana Friis-Hansen, Mark Holzbach, Becky Beaver, John Duncan, Kevin Smothers, Michael Pungello, Stephen Moser, Sue Graze, Stephen Jones, Carla McDonald, John Yancey, Graydon Parrish, Heath Riddle, Sam Davidson, Oliver Everette, Craig Rancourt, Andree Bober, Louise Hartman, Dr. John Hogg and David Garza.
Andree Bober, Louise Harpman, Elizabeth Alford
The only flaw: Loud. Very. The sound system pushed the stage chatter to the front of Arthouse, leaving guests with ringing ears.
Jordan Abel, Sam Davidson, Phil Philips
As 9 p.m. approached, guests positioned themselves in front of their favorite 5x7 cards and then the madness began. Yet even after the rush for tabs was over, the party continued.
The Edward Povey and DL Tolar Media Event at the Escala house of Jeff and Deanna Serra mixed a heady brew of provocative art, grand views and an unexpectedly weighty crowd.
Loren Jacobs, Janet St. Paul, Rory McNeill
Among the esteemed Austin personages on hand: Becky Beaver, John Duncan, Cookie Ruiz, Robert Faires, David Wyatt, Eugene Sepulveda, Maria Groten, Eric Groten, Tim McCabe, Dana Friis-Hansen and Mark Holzbach. Povey friend Anne Bobby represented Hollywood.
Stephanie Doulong, Adam McInnis
The crowd bubbled as they retreated from the sunset and drinks to the family room for an announced presentation. A slide projector on the fritz predicted the problems on the way.
John Hyink, David Joiner
A great deal of context from an emcee seemed, to me, unnecessary. And a out-of-sync series of images roughed Tolar’s smooth speech. Finally, Povey got up to speak and he’s a spellbinder — personable, thoughtful, even eloquent. Especially for a visual artist.
David Wyatt, Cookie Ruiz, Robert Faires
Yet the whole affair dragged on too long and guests grew visibly restless. Povey unveiled a large canvas that I had seen just days ago at his and Tolar’s home when it was only partially done. Then he announced a performance project with Bobby and the introduction of workshops with Austin Visual Arts Association.
Patrick Guertin, Alisa Matthews
All that seemed anti-climactic. The subject was peerless. But a tip for every party presentation-maker: Shorter is better.
After cocooning with paramour Joaquin Avellan, she’s out and about. Way out and about. Following months of absence, I’ve seen her at four events in the course of two weeks. And of course she’ll grace Arthouse’s 5x7 sale and party on Friday.
Kristi Pruett, Arturo Palacios, Sonya Berg
Wednesday, she previewed the kind of art she’s advising the W Hotel & Residences to purchase. It looked suitably skilled, edgy and local, to go with architect Arthur Anderson’s carefully calibrated designs.
Allen Beuershausen, Terence Jackson
W rep Bailey Tipps told me that the residences are 48 percent sold, including a closing and a rebid this week. Tipps comes to Austin from the Dallas W and has tailored his pitch to the locals who, he says, are buying the spots overlooking the Austin City Hall, starting at $365,000. He was surprised that green, south-facing views sell as well as skylines.
Mary Margar, Cici Williams, Rachel Farris (Mary’s name have been mangled on my iPhone)
The preview party took place in a model residence with false views and chic appointments. The guest list combined artists, downtown retailers, fashionistas and real estate sharpies. And the media, too, since it was a Tribeza-sponsored event. (I met the magazine’s new co-publisher, George Elliman.)
Carla McDonald, Ryan Hutchison — a meeting of the political parties?
Also spent time with funnyman/publicist Kevin Smothers, social connector Allen Beuerhausen, gracious Terence Jackson — who had purchased the hippest hat at T.J. Maxx for $2, gallery owner Jeff Kirk — South African-born artist Claude van Lingen and his charming grandson, who is studying business.
Prachi Moro, Michelle Garcia, Anthony DeJesus
Spotted model Zion, chefs Larry McGuire and Tyson Cole, editor Lauren Ford, First Night Austin’s Dave Sullivan, food-and-wine writer Karen Odom Spezia, and Tribeza’s Dale Dewey and Karen Landa. Also chatted up East Austin art guides Sean Gaulager, Arturo Palacios and Leslie Moody Castro.
Jane Rash, Susie Tull, Harriett Kirsh Pozen
Leslie Moody Castro, James Beard, Sean Gaulager, Sarah Stevens
The wine and beer flowed freely in the hot rooms (some people found cool AC breezes in closets, bathrooms and the false balcony). Eventually, things got a little silly. Not out of hand. Just pleasantly silly, as in trying out the dry bathtub for a photo shoot.
Danny Flores, Jens Steinborn
Oh, to live at the W. Austin City Limits theater and studio right downstairs. Three restaurants. Hotel service at any time. I have no intention of giving up our South Austin bungalow, but there’s no charge to daydream.
Perhaps because they aren’t as deadly serious about their causes. And they don’t stint on the hospitality.
Shanny Lott, Ryan Street
On balance, Austin arts groups stage more entertaining galas than our social service charities.
Troy Gourrier, AnitaRoberts
Thinking back over the traditional social season, now just ending, the most ecstatic gala was Zach Theatre’s “Red, Hot and Soul” at the Hilton Austin.
Andrea Osborn, Scott Ginder
High points go to the Ballet Austin’s Fete, Blanton Museum of Art’s “Essence of Cool,” Long Center for the Performing Arts first birthday party, Mexic-Arte Museum’s Gala de Plata, UT Performing Arts Center reopening, and the Texas Medal of Arts ceremony, despite its Mississippian length.
Kate Hargrove, Pat Robertson
There was nothing wrong with many other charity affairs — recall Center for Child Protection’s delirious “Dancing with the Stars Austin” — but the artists got the art thing down. It’s a natural advantage.
Kendall Camp, Jon Hamlin
Take Austin Museum of Art’s French-themed Art Ball, which conquered the still-uncertain spaces at UT’s AT&T Conference Center.
Jeff Serra, Carol Olson, Deanna Serra
The lobby was left wide and clear, light filtering in from the tardy dusk. The silent auction of high-quality art was confined to a screened-off portion of the banquet room. (Zach made the same winning choice.)
Kathy Escobedo, Fern Santini, Elaine Demetrion
Then, when dinner was served, the screens withdrew dramatically for the delicious meal (though the carnation-ball centerpieces were lost on me).
Craig Rancourt, Jo Freedman
Mary Margaret Farabee told about the wild character whose gift of Laguna Gloria gave birth to the museum. Later, she and husband Ray accepted the award named in Clara Driscoll’s honor.
Joaquin Avellan, Anne Elizabeth Wynn (yes, the lovers finally make their public debut! It’s a social headline)
In between, a duo of dancers from Blue Lapis performed a dramatic sequence of chiffon-acrobatics to “The Phantom of the Opera” score. I don’t know if it was the indoor setting, the controlled lighting or the intimacy with the audience, but Sally Jacques’ artists never were so riveting performing in short form.
Corey Fields, Alicia Carlin, Kellie Carlin
It was a glorious evening, set off by the presence and generosity of Jean and Dan Rather. Always an extra tingle when they are home in Austin.
Nancy Scanlan, Susan Apsinell Block
At times, the gala seemed like a meeting of the Fortunate 500.
Gloria Adkins, Bobby Adkins
And look who showed up! Stephen Moser (below) spirited and frisky from his previous social commitment at the Mobile Loaves and Fishes gala, which I just couldn’t squeeze into my schedule.
But that’s not why he and D.L. Tolar, his wife, also a painter, chose to live in Wimberley.
“We fell in love with the people,” the soft-spoken, soft-eyed Povey says. “They are so kind. And so open.”
Povey said the magic word — “open” — over dinner at his temporary Wimberley residence on Wednesday. To me, that’s the best way to describe the state of mind peculiar native to this region. Not “friendly,” which too often translates into an aggressive protectiveness of the status quo. Open.
Povey is planning a big media event soon to unveil some legacy plans for the artistic community. Yet I learned more during one intimate dinner than during 100 press conferences, gallery openings or artist lectures.
The couple’s rental house is overwhelmed by their Asian antiques and haunted paintings, only a fraction of which are on display, while they build a house a few miles north of Wimberley. Over inventive Thai food, our candlelit conversation spun deep into the night.
I hope it’s just the first of many such nights. They get Austin.
Coming to the University of Texas Performing Arts Center from the University of Richmond, the new director seems fearless, energetic and plainspoken. Those qualities aren’t always rewarded at Byzantine UT, but they should help reconnect Austin to the campus as the PAC reinvents itself once again.
Marji Calbert, Juan Pensado
At a reception in the renovated Bass Concert Hall lobby, I spoke with Panoff before the announcement of the 2009-2010 PAC’s season. (For that report — and all arts news — go to Seeing Things.) She seemed to understand the recent history of the seven-venue center, including the go-go ’80s, retrenchment ’90s and redirectional ’00s.
Martha Ernst, Marianne Scudder
Rising music entrepreneur Greg Vendetti was there, mixing with College of Fine Arts Dean Doug Dempster and School of Music Director Glenn Chandler. The Four Seasons Hotel provided the sumptuous spread.
Kristin Brown, Ivy Hayes
Also spoke with current and former department chairmen, such as Bob Schmidt and Ken Hale. (Like other almuni of UT’s No. 1-ranked program in theater history and criticism, I’m anxious that the university hire a historian of retired professor Oscar Brockett’s stature.)
Greg Vendetti, Jane Frederick
Back to the 2009-2010 season, I count more than 100 discrete events — not including multiple performances — on its well-designed calendar of events. (One could spend a third of the year at the center.) That’s amazing, but when you consider the $9 million operation is Austin’s biggest arts group, there are going to be a lot of moving parts.
One had never read the classic John Steinbeck novel.
Leticia Carpio, Sara Suminski
Another was a teacher who was interested in using “The Grapes of Wrath” in class.
Kellene Packard, Avery Dickens
Yet another had won free tickets on Facebook. For real.
David Lopez, David Prasifka
Yet the mixed crowd filled Zach Theatre’s Kleberg Stage for a Sunday matinee performance. And they listened attentively to the tale of Depression-era migrants from start to finish.
Tim Brown, Sandra Dahdah
My guess is they were more taken by the grit-between-their-teeth human drama in Dave Steakley’s musical adaptation of Frank Galati’s epic adaptation than by the vague philosophizing.
Jim Reynolds, John Aielli
Nice to know there’s a place for socially conscious theater in Austin. I joked with Hyde Park Theatre director and actor Ken Webster — famous for his short shows, like his current revival of “House ” — that two or three of his plays could fit into this one.
I talked to political legends and ordinary gardeners, working lawyers and rising artists, liberal activists and conservative donors at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
Victoria Corbett, Leslie Nowlin
Even the extended Johnson family was represented in contrasting modes by the legacy-minded Luci Baines Johnson and the whimsical Catherine Robb, who was wearing one of her grandmother’s White House gowns, despite being quite a bit taller than the late first lady.
Elena Barnes, Melanie Barnes
The night smiled on the gala again this year.
Deryn Davidson, Julie Krosley
The art — nature themed — improves every year, with big names like Lance Lescher and Kate Breakey leading the way. This time, credit super-active philanthropist Becky Beaver with that triumph.
Catherine Robb, Phillip Gibbs
I enjoyed a long conversation with John and Mary Jones, who usually fly under the social radar, but whose Austin home is complemented by a shared ranch, beach house and mountain cabin. (They obviously get along well with others.)
Mary Jones, John Jones
My (fake) cousin, Melanie Barnes, was there with her now-grown daughter, Elena. Last I saw her, she was a tender bud of a girl; now she’s a grown woman going off to college. Sigh.
Janet Wilson, Luci Baines Johnson
Some of my favorite people were there: Ray and Mary Margaret Farabee, Juan Miro and Rosa Rivera, Suzanne and Marc Winkelman.
Owen Brainard, Sally Brainard
The Center clearly appeals to Austinites concerned with the environment and sustainability as well as those more concerned with old-fashioned conservation and landscaping.
Kelly Ledford, Cassandra Jones
Not that those are conflicting goals, but that might help to explain the broad range of guests enjoying superior gala food and ambient music.
Claire Pinkerton, Joe Pinkerton
Does anyone hate the Wildflower Center?
Deacon Turner, Richard England
Personally, I love it when all the Austin partisans sit down together for the sake of art and nature.
How could you not want to see the inside of Chris Mattsson and John McHale’s house?
Dana Friis-Hansen, Camille Lyons
The long, idiosyncratic residence opened eyes wide, back when Tom and Deborah Green had it built on Niles Road, perhaps Austin’s most exclusive address.
Dale Dewey, Karen Landa
Now it looks fresh and bright, thanks to Mattsson/McHale touches. And the art. Which is what a dozen or so people had come to see.
Jeff Russell, Scott Pennington
It was another small Toast of the Town fundraising event for St. David’s Community Health Foundation. The money actually accumulates over the course of several events, and goes to scholarships in the health sciences. Twenty-five are given a year and, when the newest crop comes in, 65 will be funded.
Maria-Gisela Mercado-Deane, Daniel Deane
I spent the most time with Dana Friis-Hansen, who was there to explain the hosts’ electic art collection for the gathering, and with flawlessly attired Karen Landa and Dale Dewey, who promised confirmation of some much-rumored business news soon.
Debra Pennington, Nancy Bowman
My favorite quote of the evening, however, came from Nancy Bowman, who said with convincing charm: “I read your column. Being from Old Austin, I don’t know any of the people you write about. But I read it.”
The early state meets in the sprawling one-act play contest and other arts and humanities events have been postponed because of swine flu fears.
The official statement on the UIL Web site: “On the recommendation of Dr. David Lakey, Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, and in consultation with Texas Education Agency Commissioner Robert Scott, the University Interscholastic League is altering its schedule of events due to the outbreak of the swine flu in Texas. Effective immediately, all UIL interscholastic competition is suspended until May 11.”
More details from the staff:
“The complications of postponing our first three one-act play contests for Conferences 3A, 2A, 1A, originally scheduled for May 7-9, are huge,” said event spokeswoman Connie McMillan. “It will take several days to sort all of the details out. For the time-being, the 4A and 5A contests are still scheduled on May 15 and May 16. Hopefully we will be able to re-schedule during the last full week of May.”
Now who would believe that a pair of 20th-century operas would compete over the same Austin weekends — and sell out? While creating a whirlwind of social engagement?
Few seats sat empty for the Sunday matinee of Austin Lyric Opera’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites.” And for good reason. The voices and instruments spun ethereal gold from Francis Poulenc’s contemplative first act, while the second quickened the circulation with its electrifying staging.
Man I love it when the chorus is treated like a sculptural element rather than that fake opera/musical technique of pretending to interact naturalistically. Five singer/actors — Emily Pulley, Sheila Nadler, Suzanne Ramo, Dana Beth Miller and Jennifer Check — blew me away.
It’s especially gratifying that ALO is moving firmly from the two warhorse/one newbie formula to one warhorse/two newbies per season. Its “Cinderella” and “Dialgoues” were new to the company’s repertoire; next season, “The Star” and “Hansel and Gretel” serve as the newcomers. A salute to general director Kevin Patterson and his increasing young, cool audiences.
Over at the University of Texas, I’d never seen the McCullough Theatre so full. And filled with such a multivarious crowd. The premiere of Duke Ellington’s “Queenie Pie” marked its last, ecstatic performance Sunday night.
Now I must admit that the printed program and the opening scenes set my expectations up for standard narrative, which was stymied. And the show could have used some more dynamic dancers.
But by the second half, the dreamy production style matched the fable-friendly material precisely. Michaele Hite’s Harlem-inspired costumes dazzled for the entire show, as did the ensemble’s verve and the UT Jazz Band’s brilliance.
Veteran jazz singer Carmen Bradford blossomed in the second act, as did former UT student and musical theater rising star Keithon Gipson. Also stunning was current student Morgan Gale Beckford singing some of Ellington’s most ambitious tunes. Good on UT and the Huston-Tillotson University Concert Choir for this season’s most talked-about debut.
And to think it started in a shed. Strictly speaking, just part of a shed. Or could we dignify the original artistic crib with term warehouse?
Dr. Mark McLelland, Leisa McLelland, Bo Garner
Mexic-Arte Museum, which held its 25th anniversary celebration on Saturday, showed no signs of longevity in the mid-1980s.
John Bustamante, Sarah Strother, Andy Brown
Yet director Sylvia Orozco is tenacious. And smart.
Mary Pat Mueller, Rachel Saldaña, Stacy Tucker
She and her then-artistic partner moved operations to a semi-disused building on Congress Avenue before Congress Avenue was cool.
Divya Sachdev Tuteja, Guarav Tuteja
Then she convinced the City of Austin to save the building when the Frost Bank Tower rose next door.
Carlos Martinez, Esta Herald
Later, she convinced voters to approved $5 million in bonds to move the museum to the Mexican American Cultural Center site.
Tad Davis, Maria Sifuentes
Now, as reported on Sunday, she’s asking the city to stay put, since Congress Avenue is now the place to be.
Mzyrla Shepherd, Rodolfo Briseno
Along the way, Orozco forged lasting relationships with artists and institutions in Mexico, where she once studied and worked.
Monica Santis, Daniel Rodriguez
The Gala de Plata on a windy Saturday night certainly matched her group’s attainments and ambitions.
Rick Ary, Chad Proctor
The gala landed at the multi-level West Lake home of Dr. John Hogg and his partner, David Garza, which orders dozens of priceless views of Lake Austin and downtown.
Jon Dardee, Polly Price
Designed by award-magnet Kevin Alter, the house is a modernist puzzle box decorated with monumental art from several ages by Garza and Hogg.
Pike Powers, Jr. Kevin Flahive, Any Mooney, Mart Lutz
Many of the distinguished guests certainly dressed up. (I didn’t, having other events to attend that evening which would have been skunked in a tux.)
Elena Cuadros, Carlos Cuadros
Politicians, business leaders and arts backers drifted up and down the disorienting series of stairs, out onto the enticing, tree-brushed terraces.
Sylvia Orozco and Sylvia Swearingen
Kip spent the most time with Carla McDonald (they talked books, as they usually do), while my interactions were more promiscuous.
Anthony Romero, Leslie Moody Castro
Evidently, Mexic-Arte Museum has climbed to the gold tier on the gala circuit.
Denise Robledo, Maribel Medusa
Although valet parking was daunting — through no fault of the valiant parkers, sweating their way up and down that mountain — the evening felt infused with occasion and dignity.
The cloud cover may have dampened attendance. The sparseness on two visits — once Saturday, once Sunday — to the Art City Austin may have been misleading. We await the final numbers.
Alyssa Flores, Chris Edwards
Yet the two-day fandango still drew stimulating art-and-people lovers for our town’s best street arts-and-crafts fair.
Susan Smalling, Pat Chapman
The event, formerly called Fiesta, benefits both Austin Museum of Art and Blanton Museum of Art. Nice.
Eric Martin, Shanda Martin
The wind, at least, was a blessing. The humidity was not.
Chris Swanson, Laramie Gorbett
The First Street Bridge was blocked off for Art After Dark, the complementary food-and-drink affair. Also for the required live-music stage and the enormous metal alligator-gar-like fish sculpture.
Jin, Suh
We lingered at “Pink,” the clever installation that encouraged fest-goers to type out love letters that were manufactured on a factory line then distributed by bicycle anywhere in the city at the writers’ requests.
Casey Flinn, Tammy Steele, Scotty Stevenson
Ran into art ace Rachel Koper, who recommended the last tent to the east. That shady spot was occupied by Montana artist Jarrod Eastman, whose surreal paintings supported micro-narratives. I liked.
Tina Gramann, Taylor Flanagan, Calen Robertson
A Santa Fe sculptor with an engineer’s eye named Box produced elegant works that looked like crumpled paper or plans for devices. Also liked.
John Pratt, Megan Meehan
Edible Austin’s Marla Camp had helped lasso local producers of food and drink for a non-turkey-leg feasting area.
Shikha Gupta, Anand Joshi
Back to the weather and the crowd. It threatened rain all Saturday and Sunday, which may have discouraged casual arrivals. Luckily, it did not really pour until Monday. And when it did …
So who is this contempo crowd that clasps the FuseBox Festival to its collective bosom? We saw them at fest events and installations this weekend, including Pierre Rigal’s unforgettable “Érection,” Paul Villinski’s conceptual “Emergency Response Studio” and Jaclyn Pryor’s sweet “Pink.”
At the center of the mix, you’ll usually find the social connectors. Chief among these would be Ron Berry, the festival’s artistic director. His tastes are so broad and his hunger for conversation so palpable, Berry is able to talk just about anybody into anything.
All without ego. I can’t even imagine a Ron Berry diva fit. Although, Berry told me he was forced to evict someone from the U.S. Art Authority on Friday for bad behavior. Which brought up a lively discussion: What constitutes bad behavior at a contempo arts festival, where every kind of expression goes?
Also constantly connecting across genre boundaries are Austin Museum of Art director Dana Friis-Hansen and his partner, Rude Mechs board member Mark Holzbach. With a discerning eye, they support almost everything. They are often matched by Ballet Austin’s Stephen Mills and his partner, education expert Brent Hasty.
East Austin art pioneers Sean Gaulager and Arturo Palacios keep people connected, as do writer/curator Rachel Koper and, through a different subset, Arthouse director Sue Graze.
Coming from the dance community are illustrious Deborah Hay and her friend photographer Rino Pizzi. Also choreographers Ellen Bartel and Allison Orr.
One expect visitations from those entrenched in the contempo world, such as the Blanton Museum of Art’s Annette Carlozzi and her new husband, Dan Bullock. Also, sometimes, museum and education leaders Jessie Otto Hite, Judith Sims, Chris Cowden and Syliva Orozco.
Increasingly important are the mega-collectors, led by Houston transplants Jeanne and Mickey Klein. They’ve proved exemplary contempo models for Julie Thornton — whose newly minted testperformancetest imported some of the festival’s top acts — and her Austin Ventures husband John, plus, now, their entrepreneur/philanthropist friends Amy and Kirk Rudy, John and Carla McDonald, and Eugene Sepulveda and Steven Tomlinson.
Other collectors and propigators include Deborah Green and Chris Mattsson. Klein in-law Lora Reynolds of the Lora Reynolds Gallery is often out with the contempos, as is composer and renaissance man Graham Reynolds and his partner, Shawn Sides of the Rude Mechs, as well as his manager, John Riedie. Laurence Miller and his TestSite gang are often in attendance. Josh Meyer and Matt Hislope of Rubber Repertory are inveterate socializers (I also caught them in the factory line for “Pink.”)
This is by no means a complete list. But you get the contempo picture.
The Austin Shakespeare Festival has improved almost every year that I’ve witnessed its evolution. It’s still a mid-size arts group looking for a secure identity, but with veteran Ann Ciccolella at the helm, one assumes the classical company is headed down the right road.
Earlier this week, I attempted to attend ASF’s gala at the Curtain Theatre. That’s gamer/cosmonaut Richard Garriott’s Elizabethan theater out on Lake Austin. (Oh, how I wish they’d build one in Zilker Park. It’s sweet, if rough.)
So, following multiple events, I arrived after the core social part of the evening. Almost everyone was assembled in the theater for performance. OK. I figured I’ll wait out a couple of key scenes from “Romeo and Juliet,” catching the cool breeze and visiting with some folks outside the “Wooden O.”
Well, ASF was smack in the middle of performing an entire act of the tragedy. Come again? At a gala? That’s supposed to be social time. Entertainment heightens the occasion, but it should not overwhelm it.
I’m a Bard buff as much as anyone else, but, after offering my respects, I departed for my next social event. Hope to catch up with “R&J” when it opens in May.
All other theatrical tenors beware: Your roles are not safe. Andrew Cannata could claim them at any moment. The St. Edward’s University student so artfully sings the part of supervisor Sid Sorokin in Mary Moody Northen Theatre’s production of “The Pajama Game,” you’d think the musical clock was rewound to 1954 and the Golden Age of Broadway.
OK, so he’s not yet Harry Connick, Jr., who played Sid in the recent New York revival of the show about a union-management showdown in a pajama factory, but Cannata’s voice is destined for greatness. His leading lady, Sherry Mauch, gave the opposing union leader every bit of sass and sweetness that the part deserves — and she’s no vocal slouch either.
My companion that evening, Suzie Harriman, formerly of Austin Musical Theatre and a longtime radio host for a show on musicals, couldn’t stop talking about the young talent in director Michael McKelvey’s show. “Makes me wish I was young again,” she said.
I understand the sentiment. The cast looked like they were having a blast dancing Danny Herman and Rocker Verastique’s bouncy choreography. Jacob Trussel, Julia Duffy, Elizabeth Shortall, Jarrett King, Hans Klein and their factory-mates defined onstage exuberance.
This is not a formal review, so I can abstain from sharing my quibbles, but I understand why St. Ed’s has added shows for this brash hit.
My interview with Anna Deavere Smith, whose “Let Me Down Easy” plays Zach Theatre, will be published in the American-Statesman on April 27. Yet the raw transcript — with all its stops and starts — tells as much about the conversation as the edited article. So here goes, in segments … For Parts 1-6, see posts below …
Out & About: Do you know Paul Woodruff at the University of Texas? He’s classicist and head of the newly reconfigured undergraduate school, trying to improve education for the earliest-arrivers at the university, who had been ignored for a long time. Fascinating, fascinating man. He published a book this last year called ‘The Necessity of Theatre.” It blew me away. I’ll send a copy of it over to you. I thought about it while I was watching you, because he defines theater as ‘People watching people doing something worth watching.’
Anna Deavere Smith: That’ interesting.
The way you break things down reminds me a lot of the way he breaks things down and refines them. I don’t know how you choose which of the hundreds of interviews you do to present on the stage. Part of my mind was going to: ‘Are these the things that are most worth watching.’
No. No. For this project, I interviewed over 300 people. There are many things worth watching. This young woman who lost a whole family except for the two sisters in the genocide; who lost her sister, then found her sister, who I think was 10, and the story of how she survived, and now she’s a sophomore at Stanford, pre-med. When I asked her to define grace for me, she said — in Rwanda, they have this campaign of forgiveness, so that the people who were the victims forgive the killers of their families, and often the killers come and seek them out, they come to ask for forgiveness, and I talked to people who had that experience.
And she said that she, ‘At first I told you I forgave the people who killed my family. But that wasn’t true.’ She said, ‘To forgive someone, they have to ask you to forgive them. And these people who killed my family have never come to ask.’ And she said, “But my forgiveness is ready for them to come and take it. When they are ready to come. In the mean time, I’m giving them grace. I say “I’m not holding onto you in my heart any more.” To me, that’s worth seeing.
Is it hard losing those stories from the show?
The staff asked me that. Back to what my grandfather said: ‘If you way a word often enough, it becomes you.’ I learn a lot from getting to speak those words every night. They have something to do with my development. So, no. This is not a … that would be an interesting show to do a curating of the thousands and thousands of interviews that I’ve done. And even going through and saying: “Which ones are the ones that give me the most complex language?” This all started, I told you, with Shakespeare.
I had a teacher, this extraordinary teacher who, on the first day of class, said, ‘In Shakespeare, we expect it to go “ta da, ta da, ta da, ta da, ta da” — iambic pentameter. But if on the second beat it changes, it goes “ta DA da, ta da, ta da…” then that means something is going on.’ Best example was in ‘Lear’ — “Never. Never. Never. Never. Everything’s upside down.’ So some people really show me linguistically and syntactically that something is happening. I’ll give you an example in this show: Remember the mother and the child? The little girl had Leukemia.
So the mother at one point — and they were here opening night, the family — the mother at one point, she’s talking along about a variety of things about her daughter. And as she’s getting to the point that it’s getting clearer and clearer to her that something serious is going on, says ‘Everything the doctors told me, to put ice on it, to consider that it could be mono, that it could be this that or the other. And then one day I picked her up at school’ — and she turns to her daughter and she says — ‘had you had your brace on yet?’ and she says ‘her knee was so, so swollen she put her leg up on the — uh — dash’ and she said ‘Momma, I could barely bend my knee.’ And this was a woman had talked ‘brup, brup, brup, brup, brup’ and she stops and she goes ‘I said, “Oh. Uh. (Pause) You know. Uh. You know. Uh. OK.’
And that’s to me what my Shakespeare teaching was talking about. That’s what I’m looking for. I would say that here the job is more about: ‘How can we take these disparate parts and people from a lot of different places, who don’t have the same story and are not responding to the same story, and kind of create a series of segments that add up to a conversation.”
[We continue to talk, mostly about the education of artists and writers in today’s university environment, but off the record.]
My interview with Anna Deavere Smith, whose “Let Me Down Easy” plays Zach Theatre, will be published in the American-Statesman on April 27. Yet the raw transcript — with all its stops and starts — tells as much about the conversation as the edited article. So here goes, in segments … For Parts 1-5, see posts below …
Out & About: Looking at what has been written about this play, the subject has changed many times. And of course, you deal with that in the play. What are the main chapters? Was it originally about grace?
Anna Deavere Smith: It was originally about medicine. The head of the Stanford School of Medicine, at the end of the ’90s, when people still sent letters, sent me a letter on fancy stationary, asking me to come there as visiting professor. And I kind of just shelved that letter. Why? And two extraordinary doctors, Ralph Horwitz, whose now head of the Stanford School of Medicine, and (Dr.) Ashkar, who’s still at Yale. At one point, Horwitz asked me, what are you afraid of? And I don’t remember what I said. But what I thought what I was afraid of was making a fool of myself in front of doctors.
What they wanted me to do was come there and interview doctors and patients, and present that at medical grand rounds, which is a very fancy sort of convening of doctors. Often they hear from scientist. Not a fool, like me. And I use the word fool in the real sense, in the respectable sense of fool. But I did it. I went and did those interviews and I did grand rounds, and it was a very powerful experience. So powerful that I didn’t really have a desire to write a play about anything else in the last decade. And a whole lot of things have happened in that decade — Katrina, World Trade Center, any number of things have happened. And so the first production was medical ground rounds, a so-called production, very minimal, not even really a production. And that was about doctor patient relationships. And they invited me back on two other occasions to present.
And then I guess really the next time I did the material at Zach, following an intensive week or two at MD Anderson, just doing five interviews a day, and coming here and interviewing some people. And I did a staged reading for three or four days. I then went to the Long Wharf Theatre, where the theme was the resilience and vulnerability of the human body. I had a lot of interviews in Rwanda 10 years after the genocide. I went to Uganda to do interviews about HIV-AIDS and also South Africa. The production at the Long Wharf dealt with that, with the Africa part of my inquiry.
Then, at Harvard, I cast everything under the umbrella of a search for grace in the face of the fact that we are frail, we are vulnerable, and the rumor is true, we are mortal. In coming here, in large part because I think — I can’t be sure — the country is moving in a direction that will allow the beginnings of a serious conversation about health care. And so, in coming here and getting ready for New York, I’m trying to highlight the parts of this play, really taking it back to its beginning, and hoping that by the time I get to New York, I can contribute to a conversation about health care.
Excellent. I can see that in the development of the play. I wish you were still teaching acting.
I’m teaching it — I love teaching acting — but in my classes, they are acting, and part of my appointment at NYU is at the law school. Thinking about how to work with the lawyers. And I teach together with some extraordinary minds — Carol Gilligan, do you know her? — the psychologist and this extraordinary legal scholar, Peggy Cooper Davis. I thought what I could try to do there was to think with these young lawyers, how do they engage with people. As a result of my work with Peggy and Carol, I now teach a course called ‘On Engagement.’ It’s really very individualized, only about 15 people, I interview the people ahead of time.
Having them tell me and me tell them what it looks like they use in order to engage. Whether that’s like what we are doing here or what they want to use in the world or in their profession. But then to investigate how much more they have that they are not using in those engagements. And I use acting to do that. I use exercises I’ve used over the years to do it. So much of what I do comes out of a profound interest in engagement, but the process is acting.
My interview with Anna Deavere Smith, whose “Let Me Down Easy” plays Zach Theatre, will be published in the American-Statesman on April 27. Yet the raw transcript — with all its stops and starts — tells as much about the conversation as the edited article. So here goes, in segments … For Parts 1-4, see posts below …
Out & About: There an actress, what’s her name, she’s in “Two and a Half Men,” you know who I’m talking about …
Anna Deavere Smith: Holland (Taylor)
Yeah, yeah. Has she talked to you?
We saw each other when I did Ann, so we’ve been exchanging e-mails.
Is it part of your process to leave you and your identity somewhat blank to the public? I know almost nothing about you. I do research and find all the professional stuff. I respect this and I’m not trying to pierce this, but your privacy is amazingly well preserved.
Well, I think that I haven’t invested in creating a public narrative. And I think that most people who are in public aren’t really aware … the public space is such a sophisticated space right now, that people create that narrative. I know from being on movie sets and getting to know artists, and I never invested in that. And part of it goes back to my problem with psychological realism.
And as a playwright I made a decision that I never … the most I’ve ever said is this teeny, tiny snippet about my father. I decided not to write a play about my African American upbringing at (address) Baltimore, Maryland. I decided not to write about being in an all black elementary school when we were in an experiment and white people would come and sit in the back of the classroom certain times of the year and watch us learn … I never understood why. I decided not to write about being in one of the first integrated classes in an all Jewish high school. Decided not to write about the seven Negro women who go to an all-women’s college, the biggest group of colored people who’d ever arrived there.
My life is rich! But my project has been something else. My project has been a reach for the other. I’m sure people think I’m kind of liberal. Even that, when I wrote my place in Washington, I traveled on the Republican campaign, I traveled with Dole. It was important to me to be able to continue to have that kind of access. We live in such a partisan world, I didn’t pull that off. And I think by dent of the fact that I deal with race, people make certain assumptions, as to where I stand politically. So I did not clothe, dress, fix, condition, create a narrative, a public narrative.
My interview with Anna Deavere Smith, whose “Let Me Down Easy” plays Zach Theatre, will be published in the American-Statesman on April 27. Yet the raw transcript — with all its stops and starts — tells as much about the conversation as the edited article. So here goes, in segments … For Parts 1, 2 & 3, see posts below …
Out & About: In your teaching, do you take the classical approach as well?
You know, I teach so many … every year I teach something different. I don’t teach a typical acting class any more. I would like to, but I haven’t in a long time. And now I teach in a theoretical program at NYU, Tisch, in the performance studies department and they are mostly theory people. My class is a practical class and I use acting as a media, but I’m not training people to be on the stage or to be movie stars, not training those kinds of people right now.
Is the play changing, even now?
It won’t change while I’m here. It will change for New York, but it won’t change here.
And when will it open in New York?
In the fall.
Are there intervening productions?
No.
Will you go into another rehearsal period?
Oh yeah. I’m still rehearsing now. I came in today at 10:15. I won’t stop rehearsing. One of the reasons I came here is the chance to continue to work on the characters.
Interesting. Explain your connection to Austin. I missed you before here. I had another job at the paper at the time and didn’t have the opportunity to meet you or see the show before. You seem to have a real connection here.
Right, well I have a good friend who lives here, Chula Reynolds. And I was friends of Ann Richards. And — I can’t remember when I first came to Austin, it was for something, maybe it was for the Texas film awards, I did some kind of presentation. And so that’s my first connection to Austin. The other theater is named after Chula’s mother, the Kleberg, and she’s been a great patron of this project, supported some of the research, and a lot of the work. And she has a connection here with Zach, so that’s what introduced me to Zach.
When you started doing Ann Richards at the matinee I was at on Sunday, they just perked up immediately and responded to vocally. Are you finding that audiences here connect with that section of the play particularly.
Audiences everywhere are responding to that section, because I’ve also done Ann in two other plays and, well, a play and in speeches. And in all the places where this play has been, audiences always respond to her. That’s her gift, that was her gift. It’s a great gift to me to be able to experience what it is she evokes from an audience. And it is that she … she puts herself in their position. And she’s a great orator, a great storyteller.
It’s a great range of sounds she’s able to make. And she’s also a step ahead of them, but her timing is so good, they think they’re slightly ahead of her. She’s leading them, but they don’t realize that. I’ve been at a lot of events where Ann spoke and I watched how she worked a crowd, and she’s really, really an expert. I once interviewed her in San Francisco in a big, big, big hall and she just works a crowd like nobody else.
My interview with Anna Deavere Smith, whose “Let Me Down Easy” plays Zach Theatre, will be published in the American-Statesman on April 27. Yet the raw transcript — with all its stops and starts — tells as much about the conversation as the edited article. So here goes, in segments … For Parts 1 & 2, see posts below …
Out & About: Is John Lahr right, is there more of you in this play?
Anna Deavere Smith: He says “There’s more of us in the play.” I think he’s right to that extent that he says. “This is something in me and inevitably in all of us.” So I don’t know, for example, in the two plays about race riots or the place about Washington, I don’t know how much the audience identifies or empathizes. And they do to greater and lesser degrees, depending on their capacity for empathy. I think everyone is touched — I don’t know if everyone is touched — I think we are all concerned about our health and the health of the people we love. And the rumor is true: We are mortal.
It is true. What do you mean when you say that, as an actress, your identity if for rent but not for sale?
Right. Yeah, well that’s a sort of clever phrase that I thought about. It’s because, well selling, for me, for anybody, but for me, given my heritage — I haven’t had my genes checked but I’m pretty sure — that they were slaves, the notion of being for sale is kind of outrageous. The notion of being a product for sale. But in terms of being an actress, tempermentally, my identity is always for rent. If I’m renting it out of my enterprise, for my plays, our I’m renting it out to John Wells for “The West Wing,” and now “Nurse Jackie,” I’m happy to give it over. I think that Lahr’s sentence is so fantastic — and I’ve been thinking about this for years — it’s one of the best definitions, you know, essentially, I don’t like to … I find my expression in others. And that’s really what acting is. It is using your own body and psychological, vocal make-up in order to express something that came to you from someone else, whether that’s a playwright, or an ad writer, or, in my case, these people I’ve interviewed.
My interview with Anna Deavere Smith, whose “Let Me Down Easy” plays Zach Theatre, will be published in the American-Statesman on April 27. Yet the raw transcript — with all its stops and starts — tells as much about the conversation as the edited article. So here goes, in segments … For Part 1, see post below …
Anna Deavere Smith: And then I got started in wanting to understand, why in Shakespeare it was sufficient just to say the words. What was going on that you could just say the words and then very profound things that we would call emotional or psychological could happen. Very, very long story short: That led me to this project which has been, since the ’70s, going around America with a tape recorder. And now Africa, the first place, the first continent outside of America I’ve gone to work.
Going around with a tape recorder, talking to people, recording their words, using something my grandfather said to me when I was young: ‘If you say a word often enough, it becomes you.’ And really studying — and now, I have to say, with even greater care — as I was trained to study Shakespeare’s texts, studying what people say to me. And every sound they make is important and precious. That’s what I’ve dedicated my creative life to. And so, in terms of identification and empathizing, I would say ‘Let’s put those two words aside,’ my goal is to find a connection with a stranger, quickly. And that it doesn’t have to do with ‘Oh, I can identify with that.’ Right? I kind of don’t go on to that step.
Out & About: Is it hard to turn off, the identification impulse?
It just not a part of … when I’m talking to that person, and they start to tell me things about them. Not thinking ‘How is that like me?’ I’m not thinking that. That’s the basis of psychological realism. ‘Everything in the world,’ psychological realism says, ‘lives inside of me.’ Right, so a murderer lives inside of me. I know from talking to some murderers, that it is very hard for me to, quote/unquote, to identify with that. And I don’t know … I’m sure I have the seeds if I were on the wrong side of a genocide, I don’t know. I know. I haven’t encountered the circumstances. Psychological realism would as me to imagine the circumstances. I respect that.
But nonetheless I think I’m looking for a connection and maybe then what that connection becomes like empathy. I’m really … the best way to put it: I’m putting myself into someone’s shoes and trying to imagine what it would be like to be them. And that’s the goal of psychological realism, too, but the process is different. I start from the outside of me to the outside of them and then I’m trying to get inside them and sometimes I get surprised that I am getting so far inside them, or what I think is inside them, and then — boom! — something jumps up inside me and says ‘Boom! I’m here!’ In fact, I do have an identification, but that’s usually a pretty profound experience, not something to be just playing with.
My interview with Anna Deavere Smith, whose “Let Me Down Easy” plays Zach Theatre, will be published in the American-Statesman on April 27. Yet the raw transcript — with all its stops and starts — tells as much about the conversation as the edited article. So here goes, in segments …
Out & About: Tell me more about the difference between identifying and empathizing. I find that fascinating.
Anna Deavere Smith: Well, ah … help me understand: Is this for an article or is this for your blog?
Everything is a blog first. Then it becomes an article. I’m hoping it’s a big article. But that depends on …
How I behave?
(Laughs.) No, no, on what we come up with today. I hope it’s a centerpiece.
Like next week?
Yeah. Well before the close of the show.
OK. Good. Perfect. Great. Well, now you say ‘tell me more about it,’ have I written something about it?
There’s stuff in the program: It’s in the context of you talking about reminding yourself that the person you are talking about is not you.
Right. OK. Well. So. I guess it starts, to be really boring, with how I was trained, way back in the Dark Ages. And there were two extremes … I had very good training, partly at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco when Bill Ball was there. And there were 50 people in the acting company. I lucked out and they plucked me out of school and put me in the company. Then when I was going to leave, Bill Ball said, ‘I heard you were going to New York. Do you want to hang around? We’re going to have an MFA program. We’ll have a few students, do you want to be one?’ I think I was the first to write a thesis. Really, I had extraordinary training. Nothing has matched it in terms of intellectual development and lessons in life. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
I had not intended to be an actress. I sort of tripped on an acting class and all these lights went off. The extremes in my training were that, on the one hand, what was called classical training, so we were trained physically and vocally. I’m going to allude to a little bit of this Friday at the unveiling of Barbara Jordan’s statue because she had in her statement on the Articles of Impeachment fit into what was happening to me in classical training — rigorous physical training, rigorous vocal training, training about interpreting text and understanding meaning in older texts, Shakespeare, the Greeks and so forth … Restoration plays. Then on the other hand, of course, we had psychological realism and that was what our acting classes were about. And after about one year of psychological realism, I was less interested in that, and more interested in the classical part of my training. And that had to do with the fact of its rigor.
I really didn’t understand, I mean, it sounded so subjective — that we were given certain ground rules by the teacher. I kinda thought — and therapy wasn’t what it is now — but I thought ‘I don’t really want this guy, this teacher … and I’d seen his behavior all around in all kinds of ways outside the classroom … I don’t want him analyzing me. If that’s going to happen, I’ll go to a doctor. I don’t want that to happening to me. And I don’t want it to happen in public.’ So I was less interested in that.
You’d be hard pressed to find a more enchanted location for a medium-sized party than the grounds of Big Red Sun on East Cesar Chavez.
Judith Sims, Denise Prince
The exotic plants and decor are already in place at this breakthrough landscaping center. One can move from leaf-bound niches and coves to an ample shared social space improved by raised areas for performances and announcements.
Marla Tucker, Keri Kropp, Miles Horton
The Gala Ganesh for Women & Their Work was further enriched by the fabrics and accessories worn by the guests, many in the tradition of the subcontinent. We’re not talking about ultra-high-design gowns, but rather gorgeously threaded fabrics employed in all manner of draping.
Barbara Ann Kelso, Steve Redman
Many longtime friends of the arts — Judith Sims, Jessie Otto Hite, Mary Margaret Farabee, Barbara Ann Kelso, Chris Cowden — mingled with newcomers in the scented garden.
Shawn Smith, Ann Burman
We spoke with former State Sen. Ray Farabee about his political memoir, also about Billy Lee Brammer’s much-praised political novel, “The Gay Place,” for which he expressed mixed feelings.
Mary Jane Nalley, Honor Guiney
Respect was paid to the namesake deity through genuine dance and musical performances. If I am not mistaken, that was exquisite Anuradha Naimpally onstage.
Frances Jones, Wanda Davis
So Gala Ganesh and the AIA Awards meant two intoxicating party locales — Browning Hangar at Mueller and Big Red Sun — for my foreshortened Saturday evening out.
Who knew an empty, wood-beamed hangar, open at both ends, could be so inspiring?
Tamara Toon, Michael Waddell
The 1940s-era Browning Hangar at the Mueller Development, formerly the city’s airport, soars like some modernist monument. It was meant for purely utilitarian purposes — parking and fixing airplanes — and now awaits its next role.
Kristina Schlegel, Habib Irshad
Austin’s architects were taken with it, since the AIA-Austin Awards were staged, partly under the Browning’s noble curve, partly in a nearby tent.
Jordan Kasper, Samara Spence
The hangar was one of only a few structures — including the scooped air traffic tower and the Austin Studios hangar — salvaged by arts and architecture lovers at the old airport.
Natalie Navar, Julie Seay
Guests, especially the women, dressed in vintage wear dating back at least to the 1930s. One elegant attendee even put a Marcel wave in her hair! A few vintage cars were polished to perfection. Nothing like the raging hordes of oldie autos on South Congress Avenue the same evening, but sweet for posing.
Camille Jobe, Alan Cano
Ran into Mayor Will Wynn, who helped save the airport structures, while pushing central-city development during his tenure. All appropriate for someone who studied architecture in school. Fritz Steiner, dean of the UT School of Architecture, was glowing. After all, the Browning is now as much a object of landscape design, his specialty.
Patrick Winn, Michele Winn, James Haynes
I couldn’t stay for the actual awards — in fact, my entire evening was severely truncated by traffic and parking issues — but on the way out, I heard a tribute to my absolutely favorite Austin designer, Emily Little.
Shannon Carabetta, Keven Gedko
As you know, Little was named a “Fellow” of AIA nationally, a high honor in the profession, something like becoming a platinum member. It goes along with Little’s other honors, including being inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame.
I had given myself plenty of time to make “Avenue Q.” Uptown traffic was light. Key choke points were easily avoided.
Deftly playing the north-flow odds, I swerved into the left lane on Red River Street just in time to enter the LBJ Library and Museum parking lot. More than enough time to make the musical at Bass Concert Hall.
Uh oh.
I’d parked in this lot — free — for 25 years. Used it just the other day when I guest lectured on media relations, though that was during the day.
(I offer a lot of free workshops on a variety of subjects. Next week: St. Ed’s.)
I flipped, though, when I saw the line of cars and the sign: “Event Parking $7.”
It was not the dollar amount. That’s a reasonable charge in that usurious biz.
Yet, unprepared, my pockets jingled with maybe two quarters. The sign might have well read: “No Parking.”
Oh well, I’ll head to the … no, the UT Thompson Conference Center lot, almost empty, bore a sign that, without permit, cars would be towed away. At any time.
Swell. I cruised the streets along Dean Keeton. The only open space was snatched by a giant SUV. My consolation: It probably took him 5 minutes to parallel-park that behemoth.
So obviously now I’m feeling pretty petty about the situation. The truth is, I still don’t pay for night parking in this city. I walk. Or I park at a distance. If I’m stuck at a place with valet-only parking — house parties in the hills, for instance — I tip the valet handsomely. But if I have a choice, I find a free space.
At 7:55 p.m. — five minutes before curtain — I give up. No “Avenue Q” for me. My apologies to Broadway Across America for missing it. And to the other events I skipped while I was trying find a parking space.
I know some of you are thinking: As social columnist and self-styled expert on Austin nightlife, Michael Barnes should have known better. I didn’t. I had heard about the new charge for parking, but it didn’t sink in.
“Mister Z Loves Company” is one of those shows that defines contemporary Austin theater. It’s outrageously creative. It’s also, plain and simple, outrageous.
Loli Kantor, Tammy Kantor
In fact, parts of it are designed to offend, patently. Yet forewarned audiences secure in their tastes are bound to be mesmerized by parts of it, tickled by other parts.
Dustin L. Struhall, Julianna E. Wright
It’s the love child of Rubber Repertory, which is basically the vaudevillian team of tall, thin, reddish Josh Meyer and short, cut, limber Matt Hislope, along with artistic conspirators.
Tyler Jones, Amy Lewis
To describe it is to rob “Mister Z” of its immediacy. Yet one must share a little. The central couple are the boys in nearly identical masks that make them look a little like a despoiled Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Tamara Mico Jones, Howard Hughs III, Lea Stunning McCauly
They interact, let us just say vividly, mostly on the subjects of sex, loneliness and socializing. They are backed by a chorus of bacchants dressed loosely as French maids.
The Sphinx, Ernie Boden
Anyway, RR has revived this show from their early days — meaning six or so years ago — at the Vortex. It fits neatly into the host Bonnie Cullum’s vision of ritual, spectacle and sexuality.
Alana Maclas, Heather Barfield
Cullum was quite proud of her new deck, which is a beauty. The Vortex is a handmade theater, built essentially from a shed, not even a warehouse. And each step of the way, Cullum and crew have created amenities that make the Vortex a place to gather and linger.
Erin Haggerty, Collin De Lamar
I’m enormously proud of Cullum. We went to graduate school together in the 1980s and socialized easily then. During my years as arts critic, we naturally developed more of a professional distance.
Paul Soileau, Carlos Treviño
Now, it’s so liberating just to kick back on her new deck and treat her as a person, not potential object of formal review.
Amy Bell, Harrison Witt
Back to RR a bit. Meyer and Hislope have miraculously kept not only the look from six years ago, they maintain that energy and sense of wonder that fueled the original “Mister Z.” and softened the routines that, even now, make me a little queasy.
The HBO movie takes an unabashedly feminist angle on the story. As Big and Little, Lange and Barrymore go adrift at the moorings and their descent into reclusive aberration makes a lot of sense, psychologically. It helps that the stars enunciate the Beale’s rarified accents dead right and, with the aid of make-up, they credibly play mother and daughter over the course of 30 years.
It also benefits from views of the estate at various stages of glory and decline. This includes the mountains of filth that, before the documentary was made, had been cleaned out by municipal authorities, and structural failings, which Jacqueline Onassis and Lee Radizwill paid to stabilize. In the movie, we see the sprawling foulness only through newspaper clippings.
The 2009 drama shows the jazzy Manhattan that Little Edie briefly conquers. We are introduced the married man (Daniel Baldwin, looking deceptively like his brother, Alec), who becomes another of her romantic disappointments. Ken Howard earned the thankless role of stuffy Phelan Beale, a one-note character that appears almost sexist in reverse.
As in the documentary, all eyes zero on the two women. Jessica Lange has played fragile, misunderstood eccentrics before, and has won major awards for those performance, but Drew Barrymore stretched her acting muscles to play Little Edie. The only thing missing from her complex portrayal was the real woman’s overtly sexual come-ons during the documentary’s making, especially toward “The Marble Faun,” a comely gardener, absent in the HBO drama.
Did we need this movie? Perhaps not. Maybe the ineradicable images from the 1975 documentary would have sufficed for all time.
Yet director and co-writer Michael Sucsy and his team have made a convincing case that the Beales’ story is the stuff of enduring drama, worth retelling in more than one medium.
Little Edie rebels and heads off to New York City at the end of the first act, but we know she’ll return. Her mother’s blocking actions are supposedly protective, yet the subterfuge foreshadows of the future invalid’s cruel frankness with her daughter. Confusing the audience’s sympathies further, 1941 Big Edie and later Little Edie were played by the same astonishing actor, Christine Ebersole.
For its part, the HBO movie absolves the mother of specific villainy for daughter’s breakdowns. Blame is shifted instead to Phelan Beale, Edith’s husband, for staunching both women’s artistic impulses, and for insisting that Edie marry into that odd American aristocracy that includes future global figures, Jacqueline and Lee Bouvier, Edie’s near-contemporaries and cousins. Phelan Beale and, later, his sons make what they think are perfectly sensible demands on the pair of nonconformist women, but they all the men, including Big Edie’s sexually ambiguous pianist and buddy, come off as beastly.
Yet more than 30 years after the documentary was filmed, along came a Broadway musical by the same name, successfully imagining a key, earlier sequence in the Beale family history, then luring audiences back into the 1970s world of the Maysles film. (Two non-musical stage adaptations also briefly appeared.)
Despite a score that wavered between opera and music hall, it ran ahealthy 308 performances and won multiple Tony Awards, including honors for actresses Christine Ebersole (pictured) and Mary Louise Wilson, who uncannily impersonated Little and Big Edie respectively.
Now, here comes an HBO drama, set to air 7 p.m. Saturday, that traces the entire Beale story through a seamless web of flashbacks and flashforwards. Two admired actors who have enjoyed their shares of offbeat roles, Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore, portray Edith and Little Edie at various ages and degrees of detachment with the world around them.
And there’s every chance this version could be considered a minor masterpiece in its own right.
Any comparison between the first Texas Medal of Arts ceremony 10 years ago and the one Tuesday night at the Long Center would be unfair.
Dana Douglass Swann, Janet Stein
That is, unfair to organizers of the first one, because compared to that diesel train wreck, this one was like the Kennedy Center Honors played to Texas swing.
David Campbell, Alison Campbell
Let’s start with the crowd assembled at dusk on the Long Center Plaza, which has, in my experience, enjoyed nothing less that perfect weather for every gala I’ve attended there.
Galen Wixson, James Dick
Perhaps because former first lady Laura Bush was the marquee awardee — or maybe because they have a lock on statewide offices — the famous folks were mostly Republicans.
Ed Bailey, Debbie Sheffield
We bumped into Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Speaker Joe Straus. Heard that Comptroller Susan Combs was there, but I didn’t see her (odd, since she towers).
Molly Hubbard, Regan Gammon, Jan Hughes, Elizabeth Arnold
Also prominent were arts patrons from Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and, interestingly, El Paso. It is a statewide honor, after all. That didn’t change the tone of the event, although the hair rose a little higher and the jewels weighed a little heavier.
Andrea Starick, Melinda Thomas, Donna Squyres
The assemblage strolled very slowly to the dinner tent, open to the light breeze. Topic No. 1 was the army of Secret Service and other security forces there, some guests speculating that a Austin-style political protest might erupt around Bush. (That is so over.)
Mary Saucedo, Frank Saucedo
I sat with representatives of CenterPoint Energy — yes, the old HL&P — who had scored a key victory in the Lege that day. (Don’t ask me to explain what I don’t understand.) Everyone else at the table was kind enough to discuss notions of “social giving” with me.
Anthony Haley, Nancy Brazzil, Nelson Nease
The governor then conferred the medals on a dais. All the recipients took the honor pretty seriously, even movie maker Robert Rodriguez, who bounded to the stage with a big grin. Something about a heavy medal dangling from a multi-colored ribbon makes the TMA look quite serious.
Laurie Watson, Kerry Hall, Steve Hall
Like molasses, the guests then moved inside the Long Center for the public presentations and performances.
Steve Spada, Kathleen Evans
Here’s where comparisons to early medal ceremonies would be rude, since, even with some early glitches, like a sound error for the Kilgore Rangerettes, this year’s went as smooth as the Academy Awards — a mostly good thing.
Clint Black, Ray Benson
Smooth, in other words, but not short. In fact, if you included the champagne and dessert, which I skipped, the whole shebang probably lasted six hours.
Heidi Smith, Marilyn Carter
Clint Black and Betty Buckley sang. She received a standing ovation for “Memory” from “Cats,” which won her a Tony Award. James Dick played the piano opposite Stephanie Chen, one of the Young Masters nurtured by Texas Cultural Trust, which gives out the awards. Mike Judge and Rodriguez goofed around, breaking the dignified tone of the ceremony, thank goodness.
Ron Hall, Janine Turner
And Ray Benson sparked up the slow spots in the show. One dubious choice: Los Lonely Boys for the closer. The audience was already restless and many of them were immune to the musical magic from the Boys.
Doug Dempster, David Lake, Betty Buckley
OK, yes, it was too long for a school night, but I enjoyed almost every minute of it and look forward to the ceremony’s return in two years.
Sometimes, I break down and do what I want to do. And that often means luxuriating in Austin’s bottomless pool of talent.
Late Saturday night, I caught the CD release party for the Soldier Thread, now among my top Austin bands, at La Zona Rosa. The artists kept apologizing for technical difficulties. Somebody must be an obsessive perfectionist, because this blend of alt and ambient — symphonic in its own right — was just right for me. (Before they took the stage, Pompeii, a longtime crush, proved they still have the stuff.)
Sunday afternoon, I strolled down to Zach Theatre to catch the very last performance of “Shooting Star,” a wise comedy about a former couple stranded in an airport. Austin is supremely lucky to have artists with the goods such as writer/director Steven Dietz, as well as actors Barbara Chisholm and Jamie Goodwin. You knew it was going to be worthwhile, but still … fantastic when they all deliver.
It will startle no one to discover that the city’s liveliest and most polished gala is staged by the city’s liveliest and most polished professional theater.
Jinny Kwan, Tyler January
It had been years since I attended a “Red, Hot and Soul” event for Zach Theatre, long enough ago that the joint was still known as Zachary Scott Theatre Center.
Zach’s fearless leaders Dave Steakley, Elisabeth Challener
What the volunteers and staff — headed by the philanthropist Larry Connelly, who grows younger by the night — accomplished began with the space itself.
Indigo Red, Allison Barr
It was divided into three zones: lobby, silent auction room and dining area. All three became fashion showcases with models either dressed in slightly macabre manner by Stephen Moser and Pink, or done up as characters from musicals (“Sweeney Todd,” “Cats,” etc). Two of those rooms came with runways. (Nothing succeeds like excess.)
All-in-sterling Nina Seely, Frank Seely
The sixth-floor lobby — often cluttered at galas — allowed plenty of mingling room and key watering spots for the 700 guests. The silent auction room was organized by theme and, again, there was plenty of elbow room without it ever seeming empty.
Sharon Tate-alike Patricia Paredes, Robert Brown
The dining area, however, festooned with Copacabana feathers and blinking disco lights, proved the pièce de résistance.
Samantha Walden, Matthew Champion
Tables were spaced far enough apart for good flow, and yet near enough for an across-the-aisle conversation. The music tended loud, but not oppressive. More motivational.
Chris Popov, Annsley Popov
I sat with Maria and Eric Groten, whose serene demeanor never ceases to amaze me (maybe that vanished later during the frenzied disco scene).
Allison Spell, David Ponton
A central platform provided equal visual access to stage, while twin screens projected performers into giants. We heard divas, saw a musical-themed fashion show and witnessed a fast-paced (if overlong) live auction.
Venus Strawn, Mary Herr Tally
At my table was Bill Jones and his wife Johnita. He’s the Vinson & Elkins attorney who’s also chairman of the Texas A&M System board of regents. I’d met him briefly at the Dancing with the Stars event. When asked, he explained the $50 million A&M prescription drug center with conclusive lucidity.
Emily Clay, Linda Wilson
On my other side were Tony Johnson and (briefly) his partner, Zach artistic director Dave Steakley.
Dale Dewey, Karen Landa
I peppered Steakley with questions about musicals I’m surprised he hasn’t staged (“Hairspray,” “Ragtime,” “Chicago”). I liked his answers.
Johnita Jones, Bill Jones
Johnson and I just had fun. And also he was one of the first to storm the dance floor.
Stephen Mallard, Annie Frierson
Not me. It was off for a look-see on Sixth Street, then a couple of bands at La Zona Rosa.
Lorraine Wallace, Chris Wallace
Still, I have to catapult “Red, Hot and Soul” into the Top 10 of annual Austin galas. I’m sure it’s been there for a while, I just didn’t know.
Michael Smothers, Disco King Larry Connelly
And hey, raising $300,000 in this economy ain’t bad either.
The Texas Cultural Trust, which hands out the Medal of the Arts, dovetails into Laura Bush’s preference for private philanthropy over taxpayer subsidy. It was founded to provide a steady, private stream of money for the Texas Commission on the Arts, but altered its mission to include hands-on advocacy of arts education.
“We have a very strong history of philanthropy in this state,” she says, pointing out that the state’s museums and libraries were often founded by individuals or, in rural towns, women’s clubs. “And its important for all Americans to have a good arts education, not just for (shared culture), but for the economy.”
Accepting the medal for all the people who work year in-year out at the Texas Book Festival, she’s ready to take a participatory role again in the popular statewide event, which has raised almost $2.5 million for public libraries, especially in rural areas. She’s especially proud of the Reading Rock Stars programs, which introduces name authors to students.
“They can start thinking about growing up to be a writer,” she says. “And they get a book. For some of these students, it’s the first book of their own.”
What of the persistent rumor that she’s shopping for a third home, this one in Austin?
“Well, that’s not true,” she giggles. “We love Austin, but we’ll stay with good friends there, and keep our house in Dallas and our ranch in Crawford.”
Next week, Laura Bush will make the short trip down from Dallas, where her Preston Hollow home is blooming with dogwoods and azaleas. She hopes to jaunt down to Austin often to visit her old Midland friends who have settled here. Also to shop, as she did last week, for the new home.
“I miss Austin,” she repeats more than once with urgency. “I’ll be coming back and forth.”
Austinites remember Laura Bush’s outspoken advocacy for the arts, staging exhibitions at the Texas Capitol, introducing artists to the media, serving as honorary leader for campaigns such as the one for the downtown Austin Museum of Arts (a building project that collapsed twice in her absence).
“There’s something about artistic expression,” she says. “It brings out the best in people and bridges all sorts of gaps.”
She says she has already feasted on the Dallas art scene since her return from Washington D.C., where the National Gallery was just a short walk “right there on the mall.” She recently made public introductions for Zahi Hawass, head of Egyptian antiquities, when the King Tut exhibit opened at the Dallas Museum of Art. He had served as her personal tour guide twice in Egypt.
As our state’s first lady, Laura Bush connected Texas to the rest of nation through the bonds of art and literacy, especially through her signature project, the Texas Book Festival.
As our nation’s first lady, she connected the United States to other countries by the similar means, including the National Book Festival, also by encouraging private arts philanthropy in countries from Rumania to Pakistan.
Now, she’s prepared to connect Texas directly to the international community. At former President George W. Bush’s planned Freedom Institute — which will open before his presidential library is built — Laura Bush intends to amplify her ongoing global work on women’s rights, literacy and disease control.
And Texas culture has been added to the agenda.
‘“I’d partner with other countries to make sure we understand each other,” she says. “And other countries could get clear picture of what our cultural life here is like.”
Bush is among those receiving the Texas Medal of Arts on Tuesday at the Long Center for the Performing Arts. The biennial ceremony, which raises money for the Texas Cultural Trust advocacy group, will recognize the former first lady’s founding role in the Texas Book Festival, but also her reinforcement of the arts, here and abroad.
It may at first seem odd to confer an arts medal on a patron. After all, aren’t arts prizes supposed to honor creativity and quality in artistic areas such as music, film, theater, dance and visual art?
Yes, but in the arts, the artist is only half the equation. With no audience, there is no art. And arts patrons are like super fans — they appreciate the product keenly, but they also give of their time and treasure to insure the art can thrive.
Edith O’Donnell, who will receive the Texas Medal of Arts next week, is one such super fan. The Dallas civic leader and philanthropist has spent a lifetime supporting art and art education. Inspired by an art history professor, she continued her own aesthetic schooling at the Dallas Museum of Art and Southern Methodist University.
A graduate of the University of Texas, she and her husband Peter O’Donnell, Jr. were granted honorary degrees by SMU in 2008 for their roles in advancing the arts and education. They’ve also received the James K. Wilson Award for service to the arts in Dallas and the Linz Award, a Dallas civic honor.
In 1989, Edith O’Donnell helped create Young Audiences of Greater Dallas (now called Big Thought), which spreads the artistic fire to thousands of students each year. In 1994, O’Donnell founded Advanced Placement Art and Music Theory, which spread to 21 high schools and junior highs, and hosts the Young Master’s Competition each year.
O’Donnell has served on the Texas Commission on the Arts and the board of Friends of the Governor’s Mansion, as well as the advisory board of the University of Texas College of Fine Art. Her efforts have led to tens of millions of dollars funneled to artists and arts educators.
If you announced a pick-up concert by pianist James Dick, you’d be virtually assured a full house at any nearby recital hall. And many of those musical admirers will tell you they’ve seen Dick perform countless times over the decades.
With roots firmly planted in Central Texas, Dick has served as a performer, teacher and festival director for as long as most Central Texans can remember. He’ll receive the Texas Medal of Arts next week at the Long Center for the Performing Arts.
Dick’s signal achievement is the International Festival-Institute at Round Top. Founded in 1971 in a green hamlet between Brenham and La Grange, this teaching and performing experience was named by The Economist as one of the finest summer music festivals in the country. It now offers programs year-round and is considered the matching gem to Shakespeare at Winedale just down the road.
A hard-working native of Kansas farm country, Dick graduated from the University of Texas, receiving Fulbright Fellowships for study at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Early in his career, Dick won several international competitions, then he went on to play with top-flight ensembles, such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Symphony and National Symphony Orchestra. His international honors are numberless; closer to home he was named the Texas State Musician in 2003.
What of creating an institute and festival smack in the middle of rural Texas?
“This is a cultural arts center,” Dick told an interviewer in 1996. “It’s not just a place with one point of interest … what I like about this place is you can be as provincial as you want to be, which is very important, and at the same time see … very internationally and very world class … and that’s how we all see it.”
The Texas Medal of Arts will be presented by the Texas Cultural Trust April 7 at the Long Center for the Performing Arts.
Like other Broadway divas, Betty Buckley made “Meadowlark,” from the failed show, “The Baker’s Wife,” her own. Her performance during a gala at the Paramount Theatre combined tenderness and brass, dreaminess and intensity, employing what critic Clive Barnes called her “vinegar and molasses” voice.
That’s been Fort Worth-bred Buckley since Day 1: A contradiction in terms. Soon, she’ll be among those annointed with the Texas Medal of Arts, and the only question her fans will ask: “Why not sooner?”
Buckley is best known to general audiences for two roles, the mother, Sandra Sue ‘Abby’ Abbott Bradford, on the 1970s TV drama series, “Eight Is Enough,” and the empathetic coach, Miss Collins, in the bloody 1976 classic, “Carrie.” Incredibly that was her first major movie role, and she shared the screen with fellow Texan Sissy Spacek.
Yet Buckley had already conquered Broadway. Her 1969 debut proved instantly memorable, Martha Jefferson in “1776,” singing the show-stopper, “He Plays the Violin.” The Casa Mañana graduate later replaced Jill Clayburgh as the female lead in the long-running hit “Pippin.”
Despite her other Broadway triumphs, such as the towering “Sunset Boulevard” — and stumbles, including very limitded performances in the disastrous musical version of “Carrie” — Buckley will be remembered for introducing one of a dozen or so indelible Broadway melodies. In the mega-hit “Cats,” she sang “Memory,” and, basically, nobody has topped her performance of that melancholy song since.
There’s always been the sense that Buckley could forge yet another blazing late-life career, perhaps in cabaret. But she needn’t try too hard to impress us. That’s already mission accomplished.
The Texas Medal of Arts will be presented by the Texas Cultural Trust April 7 at the Long Center for the Performing Arts.
Nobody thought the Long Center for the Performing Arts was going to top last’s year’s party. The revelry to inaugurate the complex was a gala to end all galas. We won’t see the likes of that extravaganza for years to come.
Austin Symphony Orchestra music director Peter Bay, opera singer Mela Dailey, and new ASO executive director Galen Wixson.
Yet a birthday party is no small thing, especially when there is much to celebrate — paying off the center, trimming the operational budget enough to sail through rough economic waters, identifying new fundraising instruments and naming opportunities.
Dr. Bill Jones, philanthropist Maria Groten, pianist Anton Nel
And that doesn’t even address the grand success of the halls themselves. The three primary arts groups — symphony, opera and ballet — never looked or sounded so good. And, as arts writer Jeanne Claire van Ryzin recently reported on Page 1, there’s evidence of improved revenues for those constituents as well.
Event planner extraordinaire Autumn Rich, public relations pro Karen Frost
As for the birthday party, it began with good weather news. The storm clouds parted for a glorious sunset on the plaza, as guests mingled between expertly placed stages and refreshment stands.
Performers Yasmin Youssef, Christian Moore
The dinner took place in a tent on the west side of the center — an ambitious 5-course affair eaten over many thanks from Long Center head Cliff Redd and a short auction conducted by writer/performer Pat Hazell.
Longtime partners Doug Jacobs, Jeff Mikeska
Note to gala organizers everywhere: Please don’t put the press all at one table. We already know each other. We’re there to report fresh stories, and we can’t do that in a press scrum, pleasant thought that may be. I did spend some useful time prepping for the upcoming Texas Medal of Arts gala with Texas Cultural Trust leader Amy Barbee. But still…
Courtney Sculley, Joe Navarro
Marvin Hamlisch led off the entertainment in the Dell Hall. The composer, conductor and pianist has had 30 years to polish his career-spanning stand-up act — when, as a young pianist, he was told he might play at a party for Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel, he rushed to the opportunity, “I’m not Jewish for a hobby,” he quipped.
Loyal Long Center backers Rusty Tally, Mary Herr Tally
Sweet, grounded singer Linda Eder followed. I had forgotten she’d won “Star Search” in 1988. She has that perfect competition voice — technically proficient in the Barbra Streisand belting mode, with fewer of Streisand’s phrasings than in past concerts. There’s something missing in the emotional anchors for the songs, but it’s hard to argue with the purity of her Broadway-inspired instrument.
Jennifer Failla, Daniele Palumbo
There’s no point in listing all the local notables who attended. I knew just about everybody at every table. Even guests to whom I introduced myself, turns out I already had met. So it was no social adventure, but rather a love-in for the arts.
Sunny Hui, Sammi Hui, whom I’d met at a July 4 function
Many of the rising Texas playwriting talents, luckily, reside in Austin. Or Austin and the world, since they reflect as much the aesthetics and world views of artistic communities scattered around the globe as much as a Texas. Kirk Lynn, Dan Dietz, Steve Moore, C. Denby Swanson and Steven Tomlinson belong to this tribe, although only Moore’s “Nightswim” digs deep into its Texan roots, while Tomlinson’s plays best distinguish between Austin and other places in the Southwest. (Prolific and popular Steven Dietz and Suzan Zeder are both Seattle transplants with continental associations; we are waiting to see if Texas sustains their imaginations.)
A trio of playwrights who did hang their star on the oversized Texas personality are Joe Sears, Jaston Williams and Ed Howard. Their phenomenally successful “Tuna” series presents, in expanded sketch format, characters and diction quintessentially small-town Texan. Yet while their range expanded — “A Tuna Christmas” being the most thoroughly conceived narrative — the quartet of comedies remains a pastiche of great pleasure, but not lasting dramatic literature. (Nor would they claim it as such.)
That leaves Foote. He is not Texan in the way that Tennessee Williams is Southern — standing in for a whole region of the imagination. Rather, he is a writer of graceful specifics, and those happen to be incontrovertibly Texan.
I’m convinced he will be read and produced 100 years from now, a fate not guaranteed any other Texas playwright.
So while readers and audiences agree Horton Foote owned an uncanny ability to compose Texas stories, characters and language, they are not so sure he’s the state’s greatest playwright.
Who are his competitors? Professional Texan Larry L. King has certainly made a pitch. The great outlaw journalist is a master of one-liners and the comedy of unmasking. Yet his plays ramble structurally and his characters descend into type. His one big money-maker, “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” is duct-taped together with expert songs and novelty numbers, the latter contributed by his co-equal in creation, Tommy Tune, who actually senses what will work in the theater (the camp touch doesn’t hurt).
Thirty years ago, Dallasite Preston Jones made a brave leap forward with his “Texas Trilogy,” which sprung from the Dallas Theater Center to the Kennedy Center before sinking in New York. His characters and dialogue remain flavorful, but Jones has never recovered from the hype of his first big foray onto the national scene.
Terrence McNally, of course, is likely the most successful Broadway playwright to have left Texas, but he left early and didn’t return to his state for material, even when he used his native city as the title of “Corpus Christi,” which is rather about a band of homophilic followers of a Christ figure.
Ramsey Yelvington, Eugene Lee, Carlos Morton, Mary Rohde, Oliver Hailey, Jack Heifner and James McClure long ago proved their regional sensibilities and skill at local color, but not much more. More recently, much hope weighed down the shoulders of a younger El Pasoan Octavio Solis, but his star has not shone steadily.
(Pictured: Hallie Foote outside theater for “Dividing the Estate.”)
I once spent a long, warm afternoon with Horton Foote.
My introduction was made through Austin philanthropist, writer and director Mari Marchbanks. The playwright’s daughter, Hallie Foote, an actress who embodies the emotional reticence and riptides in her father’s characters, met us on the wide, east-facing front porch of his Wharton home.
For most of the afternoon, Foote entertained us in his parlor or living room of the cottage, dark from the wood slats uncovered with plaster or dry wall. Ancestral portraits hung on the walls, but Foote deviously claimed they were not related to him.
It was, of course, one of the family residences portrayed in his plays. The study was the only room clearly his — papers and memorabilia everywhere — and two large windows looking out on a semi-tropical lawn and another house haunted by family ghosts.
Foote himself smiled kindly, regularly twinkled his eyes, resembling character actor Henry Travers, who played the angel Clarence in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Originally an aspiring actor, Foote had become a character — meticulous, wise, ready for a under-the-table witticism that maintained his general geniality, not unlike Austin humorist John Henry Faulk.
Marchbanks was wooing Foote. She wanted to name the studio space at the recently re-opened State Theatre after her favorite playwright. He was wary. “What is this theater company like?” he asked when was out of earshot.
With Hallie, I recited dialogue from Foote’s “1918” and “On Valentine’s Day.” I knew these better, because they had been made into immaculate, low-budget films back in the 1980s when Dallas tried to launch itself as a movie production center.
I certainly didn’t know the stage versions, but Texas companies did not produce Foote, except “The Trip to Bountiful,” and later, “The Young Man from Atlanta,” after it won the Pulitzer Prize. (Set in suburban Houston, “Young Man” is a family sexual mystery drama that can’t help but feel a bit dated.)
I bring up the lack of statewide production history because of that original contention: Foote, despite all the respect and the awards, has not been broadly embraced by his home state. I suspect it’s because he doesn’t trade in that larger-than-life stereotype of Texans that even very good playwrights and screenwriters succomb to eventually.
He’s not the West. He’s the South. And that bothers people, even admirers, inside and outside Texas.
Horton Foote died last week at age 92. Sitting still with the news for a few days produced two conclusions. Foote, the playwright and screenwriter, was not more broadly embraced in Texas — along the lines of, say, Larry McMurtry — because he did not exemplify state’s Western mythos. And yet he dramatized Texan speech, character and sense of place better than any of his stage or screen contemporaries.
Take his most recognized screenplays. “Tender Mercies,” which chronicles the pained domestication of an alcoholic country singer, feels more like a Midwestern than a Western, dug into the farming midlands rather than spreading out over the grazing West. And yet it could not be seen and heard any place but north central Texas. Foote’s adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” was centered in the Deepest South, hundreds of miles from Texas. Still, it comports gently with the writer’s past, which was indisputably Southern of the most genteel variety.
Foote grew up in Wharton, a cotton port on the Colorado River that later served as a rice-growing center. It was settled primarily by immigrants from Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia who fanned out over the Gulf Coastal Plain during the late 19th century. This is a lowland Southern Texas most outsiders don’t know about and most Texans don’t acknowledge.
But it served as the setting for many of his 30 or so plays, mostly famously “The Trip to Bountiful,” his only material that matched as well the stage as the the screen. Here, the inland Gulf Coast sinks into the bones of the characters, the urban striving of the Houstonians, the ghostliness of the former cotton centers and, most of all, the played-out land of the title, once bountiful, then abandoned, now overgrown with semi-tropical brush.
Most people remember Geraldine Page’s mannered, explosive performance, but anyone who had spent time in that part of Texas recognized “The Trip to Bountiful” as refining it more closely than any other dramatic work.
Lily Tomlin’s show at the Paramount on Saturday will draw on some of those inspirations, touring through her familiar characters. But she’ll also ad lib, talking about Austin, she says, and taking questions, like Carol Burnett, who recently appeared at the same theater.
“I get more of the smart alecks,” she says. “I’m not as revered as Burnett might be. I get more of the fringe people.”
She described a near-riot she caused in Flint, Mich. early during the Iraq War.
“Someone asked, ‘Who would I rather have for president, Bush or the Marquis de Sade,’” she snorts. “I riffed on it and a fight almost broke out. ‘We’re for the war,’ some shouted, ‘We need to be there!’ Then someone else: “Then you go fight the war!” I tried to get people on the stage to discuss it. Nobody came up.”
Speaking of controversy, what about Proposition 8, the recently passed California initiative seeking to ban gay marriage? (Tomlin and her longtime partner, Jane Wagner, have become prominent backers of gay rights, after years of being out to industry insiders.)
“I’m hoping it gets turned over,” she says. “As much as I was repelled by Prop. 8 and taking rights away, I grew up in the church. These are like my relatives. I told another journalist, when (Pres. Barack) Obama chose (proposition supporter) Rev. Rick Warren to speak at the inauguration, these people don’t frighten me. He’s like one of my uncles.”
Tomlin is hoping a generational transformation and perhaps, “people who are rigid and calcified will evolve and have a change of heart.”
One of Tomlin’s less controversial and more local causes is the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, to which made an early contribution and which she toured, speaking to the assembled students.
“One of the young girls, about 12, asked, ‘Do you think your work has made the world better,” Tomlin says. “I don’t often get that question. I had to search my soul to be honest.”
Lily Tomlin reflected on the loss of Austin leaders — Lady Bird Johnson, Ruth Denney, Ann Richards, Molly Ivins — who served as role models for two or three generations of women … and men.
“Molly I didn’t know as well,” she says. “But what a fantastic gang of women!”
Tomlin is still close to New York Post columnist Liz Smith, who helped launch Ann Richards into the world of international consulting after she lost the governorship to a recent president.
“She’s is still going strong,” Tomlin says. “She just had her 86th birthday and she turns out so much stuff every day. She absolutely candid and totally reliable. And totally heartfelt.”
Among the “amazing Texas women” she got to know was stage manager George Boyd’s mother in Teague.
“George’s mother very tall, the first time I met her, ankling across the Dallas airport terminal, hair piled on top of her head,” Tomlin fondly recalls. “She carried a purse that looked like a box and was verbose as she could be. The purse turned out to have cocktails in it. Whole little bar. Texas women are dazzling.”
Tomlin’s roots tend more to Detroit than to Dallas, but she spent time with southerly relatives in Kentucky, and her family were pillars of the Southern Baptist community in Michigan.
“When a famous preacher came to town, you’d go down early to get a front-row seat,” she says. “I ate it up. I was attracted to anything theatrical. That’s where I got Sister Boogie Woman (one of Tomlin’s classic characters). She’s not black, you know, but mountain Southern — all for freedom and cheap thrills for seniors.”
Tomlin drew many of her inspirations from the predominantly black Detroit neighborhood where she grew up.
“It was full of characters and I was attracted to all of them,” she says. “It was a funny, wonderful, sad, outrageous microcosm.”
Lily Tomlin’s original Austin connection was her production stage manager, George Boyd, who grew up in Teague, 150 miles to the northeast. He knew the capital city’s underground social scene well.
“We’d hang out at his house in between Austin and Dallas,” Tomlin said by phone, prior to her Paramount Theatre appearance Saturday. “That’s what started it. Then I played three weeks at the University of Texas in 1983.”
That residency cinched the deal. Tomlin grew fond of Ruth Denney, the legendary drama teacher who founded the Houston School of Performing and Visual Arts before teaching in the UT theater department. Then Austin investor Chula Reynolds introduced her around to other Austin-linked women, including columnist Liz Smith and then-Travis County Commissioner Ann Richards.
“I hit it off with everybody,” Tomlin remembers. “Ann was a striking person, a touchstone. When she ran for state treasurer, Liz, Ann and I would stage fundraisers, one at Esther’s Follies. We all had the same birthday (Sept. 1). Liz was the funniest. I was a distant third.”
Through the 1980s and ‘90s, Tomlin made so many visits to Austin, she purchased three lots on the Pedernales River.
“Wish I hadn’t sold them. That was a big mistake,” she says. “But maybe I’ll look a bit again. I still have so many friends there. It’s an easy place to be.”
You might already know the emerging band No Show Ponies, whose CD, “The End of Feel Good Music,” arrives April 7. One of the Ponies, Ben Brown, caught up with Pres. Bill Clinton at the big initiative here, along with his fiancee, Courtney Spence, of the celebrated Austin Spence family. All three pictured.
Marshall Kuykendall dropped us a note saying that Haley Haiser, his granddaughter by the late Karen Kuyendall, is performing in the Kids Acting Theatre . Recall that Haiser is also related to humorist John Henry Faulk (Karen’s uncle) and movie actor Guich Koock (Karen’s brother). “It’s in the genes,” Marshall says.
Belated congratulations to Michelle Polgar and her team for “Cyrano de Bergerac” at Mary Moody Northen Theatre. It all the right romantic notes. Especially keen was MMNT’s new artistic director, David M. Long, as the panache-plashing Cyrano.
Despite its third failed attempt to build a permanent downtown facility — and its sneaky manner of relaying the disappointing news under cover of a weekend — Austin Museum of Art at least can still draw several rooms full of art fanatics on a springlike winter night. And it can still throw a festive party.
Allana Villareal, Richie Nichols, Kenisha Williams
The Members Preview for the double-barrel “Outdoor Realism” and “States of America” fired up words of praise for large-scale landscape photographer Clifford Ross and fictional mapmaker Lordy Rodriguez. The first creates enormous, glossy, impeccable views of mountains and surf, while the latter plays with our expectations of American geographical features for fun and edification in expertly defined maps.
Casey Boyterp, Sandy Carson
A pop band played the northwest room. And folks spilled from the lobby onto a sort of sidewalk lounge (AMOA could go much further with this concept on lovely nights like Friday).
Elizabeth Hastings, Dunya Bean
Yet the galleries were never empty, and conversations could be heard from guests clearly not from Austin, people who came to town specifically for these artists, superstars in their corners of the art world.
Andrea Mellard, Brent Bayless, Nikki Treviño
But I had the most fun catching up social news from arts insiders Eric Garcia, Mark Holzbach, Sean Gaulager, Arturo Palacios and such. The art world could use more ambassadors like these guys.
Eric Garcia, Lana Butler, David Kaz
It should be said that AMOA, like other Austin arts groups, attracts an unusually high number of young people — unlike other cities, where a Members Preview would be the exclusive province of the economically entrenched.
You want populist art? Go to Austin City Hall. There, hundreds of artists are represented during a year-long exhibition called The People’s Gallery.
Habib Irshad, Kristina Schlegel
As almost everyone knows, the annual gallery was the brainchild of writer and arts patron Anne Elizabeth Wynn. Didn’t see her there last night, but COA arts czar Vince Kitsch presided over the mass viewing instead, which is properly so.
Kristen Randolph, Jessica Billitteri
An assortment of guests roamed three floors of the building, poking their heads at the art, which, from one quick tour, held to fairly high standards of quality. The masses were loving on their art, too, so the The People’s Gallery — despite the name’s queasy association with totalitarianism — operates on a populist level as well.
Genevieve Appl, Deborah Lykins, Theodore Kemna, Ben Appl, Eli Appl
Around town, it was kinda hard to avoid art Friday. Many of the hardcore arts types were either coming or going from two previews, one at the Blanton Museum of Art (which I missed, but will see later) and the other at the Austin Museum of Art (which I altered my schedule, on sculptor Steve Brudniak’s suggestion, to make — more on that later).
Tania Ramirez, Talib Jones
Back at City Hall, the art walkabout gave me the opportunity to reevaluate architect Antoine Predock’s muscular building. The more I see, the more I like, even if the sometimes small, angled rooms don’t operate smoothly for all functions.
Wur Ogunji, Nicol Vlado
It makes a potent statement about the city and remains the only example of large-scale, assertive architecture built during the last two Austin booms. Help me out here, is there another example? We built some handsome office buildings and lots of exciting residences, but public architecture on this scale and with this kind of distinct point of view?
Steve Brudniak, Jamie Teer, Sun McColgin
Only the Barbara Jordan Terminal comes close, and it’s discreet, functional by comparison with City Hall. I still harken to Larry Speck’s gentle curves and wide expanses of glass, plus the marvelous convenience of it all. But it doesn’t take big chances or make big statements. (It doesn’t have to — it’s an enormous social hit.)
Austin teacher, musician and University of Texas Tower shooting survivor, Lana Kay Leeds Swanson, 63, died of pancreatic cancer late Sunday night.
For decades, Leeds — the professional name under which she was best known — trained young talents in voice, theater and piano. She founded Austin Children’s Repertoire Company and taught at Zach Theatre, among other cultural institutions.
Not content with bringing children and young adults up to professional standards, she also organized Christmas shows for senior citizens at the Summit Home.
Most recently, Leeds worked with stage director Jacki Loewenstein as music director of “Wanda’s World” and the upcoming “Willy Wonka Jr.” at Zach Theatre.
An alumnus of the University of Texas music department, she was known as Lana Phillips when, at age 21, Charles Whitman sprayed the UT campus with gunfire from the Tower. Hit outside a clothing store on Guadalupe Street, her shoulder was gashed, keeping her from playing the organ, her primary musical instrument, for a time.
“I wasn’t scared until I got shot,” she told a newspaper reporter in 1966. “I was watching the Tower and watching people get shot. I didn’t think I was within range. Plus I was standing behind some other people and I thought they would get shot before I would. I was wrong.”
Leeds also conquered advanced lymphoma when her now-adult children were still very young.
“She always had a strong survival instinct,” Loewenstein said. “She loved life and felt a need to live life to the fullest. She was the most spirited, positive, warm teacher I’ve ever worked with. She motivated so many students to find their voices.”
She is survived by husband Murrey Swanson and her children Megan and Stuart Mitchell, sister Marsha Hogue and father, Marshall Phillips. Services are planned for 2 p.m. Friday at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home on North Lamar Boulevard.
Co-Lab has rattled Allen Street in Deep East Austin since June. Your tardy social columnist dawdled a full nine months before checking it out.
Sean Gaulager, Levi Evans
Another Himalayan effort from Sean Gaulager and gang, Co-Lab is a simple shed with a pitched roof and a wide lawn. Yet the amount of cultural activity here — gallery shows, installations, performances, screenings, band gigs — could fill 100 other arts venues.
Jacline Denson, Kevin Contrino
Sunday’s collection of works, “Farewell Analog!: A Bittersweet Farewell to the Analog Signal” opened a year ahead of its time, but what the hey. The centerpiece was a swirl of broken-down TV sets, while the walls were stretched with slogans, murals, manipulated images, many dealing with televised sex and violence, naturally.
Ryan Fennel, Elena Scher
It would be inane to describe the crowd of two dozen or so guests as “lovably scruffy,” since that would not distinguish them from any other East Austin art gathering. They daubed their customary outfits with hints of urban winter wear and were entirely easier to photograph than the nervous pack at Salvage Vanguard earlier.
It’s not easy photographing fringe culture for a social column. Artists get skittish about some stranger flashing a camera in their faces. Some stare into the distance. Others make faces. It’s all in good fun.
Duncan Malashock, Jess Williamson, Kyle Dixon
The semi-collective, Totally Wreck, presented four pieces — by my count — at Salvage Vanguard Theater on Sunday.
Lee Webster, Sean Ripple
I’d say violence, fame, identity and interior/exterior references were common themes, but what do I know? I’m no longer a critic — and grateful for it.
Instead, I met a half dozen canny people — some artists, more followers — and caught up with Salvage Vanguard Theater interim director Jenny Larson (and her shy, but potentially performative daughter Renna). Also chatted briefly with Sean Ripple about following the arts social scene via Facebook, etc. Worth a follow-up interview or two.
Jenny Larson, Renna Larson
Hey listen, I’m just going to throw this out there for anyone to bite: SVT is one of Austin’s theatrical gems and they could use $50,000 to pay off their air-conditioning contractor. I’m grateful they’ve got the AC! I lived through the really fringe years of Austin arts, when AC was a luxury. (I swear Jenny didn’t put me up to this; it was my idea to spread the word.)
“The Essence of Cool” gala at the Blanton Museum of Art promised an arts complex transformed by the design firm Lounge 22, a vast, horizontally-striped, water-inspired installation by artist Teresita Fernandez and enough power, wealth and intelligence in one place to re-charge the stalled economy.
Leonard Drew, Rachel Lehmann
And the economy could very well could have been Topic A at several tables during dinner.
Sen. Kirk Waston, Liz Watson
The event honored Jack S. Blanton, the Houston oilman and foundation honcho who provided signal guidance for the Blanton building project over the course of two decades.
Kelly Blanton, Ellen Susman
Members of his extended family popped up everywhere, along with other Houstonians whose formal apparel was slightly but noticeably more histrionic than that of their Austin counterparts (in the direction of trains and wraps). Daughter-in-law Kelly wore perhaps the most eye-catching gown of the evening, a flowing gold concoction.
Nicole Covert, Luci Baines Johnson
Our favorite frock of the evening was worn by Luci Baines Johnson, a fur-accented Elizabeth Arden number almost exactly the color of Michelle Obama’s “lemon grass” inaugural ensemble. We thought we recognized it and, indeed, it was worn by Luci’s mother, Lady Bird Johnson, at formal White House functions.
Susanne Dawley Byram, John Byram
“She loved Jack Blanton so much,” Luci said about the former first lady and the man who help ensure the future of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. “She would want to honor him tonight.”
Nicole Daspit, Abheek Sarkar
Luci also talked about a small impressionist painting the Johnsons were giving the museum. (Daughter Nicole Covert looked dazzling, too, but her gown didn’t dredge up decades-old memories, so we let it pass.)
Jeanne Klein, Jacqueline Klein
We chatted with UT Pres. Bill Powers about the Bass Concert Hall reopening and with Sen. Kirk Watson about committee assignments in the Texas Senate.
Former UT prez and museum guiding light Larry Faulkner was there with his wife, Mary Ann, as were Admiral Bobby Inman and his always refined consort, Nancy (he’s back in charge of the LBJ School, since James B. Steinberg was drafted by the Obama administration).
Erin Driscoll, Jon Driscoll,
Mayor Will Wynn hobnobbed with poobahs from both Texas cities (some from Dallas, etc., too). Jeanne Klein wore a futuristic gown by Kei Ito — I caught her there with daughter Jacqueline, whom we never see because she lives in Santa Barbara.
Among the arts and letters elite were Jessie Otto Hite, Dana Friis-Hansen, Mark, Gabriel Perez-Barreiro, Annette Carlozzi, Chris Mattsson, Tom Staley, Sondra Lomax. Always in the best of crowds were Carla and Jack McDonald, Ann and Roy Butler, Evan Smith, Becky Beaver, Gail Chovan (resplendent in a turban) and Evan Voyles .
Thomas Carmichael, Barbara Carmichael
Expect more news from the gala on Jeanne Claire’s blog (she stayed later than I did). I understand some significant gifts were announced.
Let’s start by saying I am Jaston Williams’ No. 1 fan. Loved the “Tuna” series. Adored the Austin-based writer/performer’s soul-baring solo shows about growing up in West Texas.
So don’t go looking for an under-the-table Jaston Williams dig here.
Yet when I received a press packet from the Lubbock Community Theatre advertising the debut of Williams’ “Blame It on Valentine, Texas,” I was taken aback by the line above the title for the coming attraction at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center Theatre show — “4-Time Tony Award Nominee.”
How do we say this? Jaston probably deserves a Tony Award nomination, but Broadway voters have not wised up to that fact yet.
I rifled through the press material and I think I see where the theater’s publicity department went wrong. He’s a 4-time nominee for the Helen Hayes Award, given in the Washington D.C. market, where the “Tuna” series is almost as popular as in Austin.
I know Jaston is cringing right now. And the LCT is wishing it could recall the mail. Only Jaston could come up with the appropriate, half-indulgent West Texas joke to insert here, maybe about the psychic distance between Lubbock and Broadway or the Kennedy Center being roughly equal.
The hype did not match the Long Center’s — by a long shot. But then again, the alterations were not as dramatic. Except out front, where Bass Concert Hall is a completely transformed building, ripe for social engagement.
Mindy Graves, UT Pres. Bill Powers
For the John Legend kick-off concert, Austinites flocked to the five lobbies, doubled in size. The welcome began in the capacious ground-floor lobby, continued to the third-floor cafe and fourth-floor private club. As one guest put it, the modern lounge feel of these areas felt “metropolitan.”
Dean Doug Dempster, Kath Anderson
UT President Bill Powers spoke, although the corner conversation nooks in the members club echoed every competing conversation. College of Fine Arts Dean Doug Dempster also addressed the mob, which included former Performing Arts Center Director Pebbles Wadsworth.
Paul Beutel, Cliff Redd
Dempster announced the incoming director of the PAC (for that news and more, go to Jeanne Claire’s blog).
Ann Butler, Michele Baylor
Representatives from the major Austin presenting houses were there: Cliff Redd and Paul Beutel from the Long Center; Ken Stein plus board members from the Paramount.
Andrew Heller, Mary Ann Heller
Ready for the entertainment were Zach Theatre’s Dave Steakley and partner Tony Johnson. (Later, Steakley interacted ecstatically with the opening singer.)
Kathryn Garvey, James Gorski
We ran into Mary Ann and Andrew Heller, both glowing from their inaugural ball experience (Andrew sang with the Austin Community College Jazz Band). Joanne and Chris Crosby huddled with Wadsworth, who looked beautifully relaxed in retirement.
Dr. Netsanet Hopkins, Quincy Hopkins
So were politicos past and present, such as Texas Rep. Dawnna Dukes and her predecessor Wilhelmina Delco, who shared stories, gleaned from a Wildflower Center gathering, of supreme politeness during the presidential inauguration in D.C. (She watched from the comfort of her home.)
Beverly Silas, Rob Lippincott
Also everywhere was former Mayor Roy Butler and his wife Ann, who has served on the PAC’s board for ages. I asked the mayor if he remembered the Bass opening in 1980. He smiled wisely and said, “I remember it, but not the year!”
Glen Hitchins, Melissa Hutchins
Others in attendance included Texas Cultural Trust honcha Amy Barbee, Shout editor Rob Faubion and his partner, JoeLane Schumann, hostess and assistant dean Sondra Lomax.
Mark Rosen, Kanitra Fletcher
I noshed on tiny deviled eggs and chocolates tipped with coffee beans, then settled into the slightly altered hall (see Jeanne Claire’s previous descriptions of the sound and decor improvements). Opener Estelle Shine lived up to her name and put smiles on the full house with her bouncy dance music. Sitting on the second row, I lost some of the front sound — and most of her words — but that was redeemed by proximity to her electric presence.
John Legend
That dear proximity was only amplified when Legend took the stage. The 30-year-old songwriter with the baby-boxer features knows he’s a smooth sex symbol and he played it to the hilt. If his songs soon start to sound alike, he never let his performance droop.
I can tell you without blushing, I was there for the big shots with the big hearts.
When the Texas Medal of Arts folks announced their 2009 honorees — see the hot list on Jeanne Claire’s blog — I knew there would be plenty of artists and arts lovers at the Austin City Limits studio on the UT campus.
And I was certain it would be a classy affair, to use a word (“classy”) that I need to retire, but can’t in this case.
I talked to former Ambassador Pam Willeford — co-chairwoman of the awards this year — about her experiences on previous inauguration days. (Once she sat up on the main dais with the Bush family.) “I love the pomp and ceremony, but also the amazing way our country transfers power,” she said. “I’m getting chills just thinking about it.”
I caught up with San Antonio Express-News reporter Hector Saldana, who is now also covering Ramiro Burr’s Latino music beat, but with a more local focus.
I spoke with sculptor Jesus Moroles about his National Medal of Arts honor and his 2008 TMA, his work at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, a recent meal where he was flanked by the first ladies of the U.S. and Mexico, and his donation of a sculpture to the TMA for fundraising purposes.
I chatted with Ernest and Sarah Butler about their recent trip to Zurich, of full opera houses and half-empty planes. (Why, oh why can’t we travel now, when prices are so low!)
In a digital version of “the dog ate my homework,” my newsroom computer ate all the personal photos from today’s lunch but these two. This is Ginger Gearhart and Joci Straus.
I dallied with previous TMA honoree Ginger Gearhart of Fort Worth, whose nonprofit Imagination Celebration has given FW-area children more than 4 million arts experiences.
And I talked ever so briefly with the gracious arts supporter Joci Straus, who founded the awards and whose, son, Joe, is now Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. Quite a dynasty in the making!
From the evidence of applause during the pre-show curtain speech, Sunday’s matinee of “The Last Five Years” matched older Austin Playhouse subscribers with younger followers of Penfold Theatre Company, the co-producer. This hit musical of shattered romance is only the second Austin production from this insurgent group of artists who met as students at Abilene Christian University.
Jason Robert Brown’s chamber piece — two actors, two instrumentalists, one set — is destined to appeal to older hearts and minds because of its calm, wise, mature portrayal of love won and lost. Younger audiences probably appreciate the experimental nature of the story, told backward and forward at the same time, bringing the two characters face to face only at midpoint, as well as Brown’s skittery, conversational score.
This production is the brainchild of Michael McKelvey, a godsend to Austin’s musical theater community. He’s turned around so many shows as musical director, and here he proves he’s a natural stage director as well.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention something about the staggering performances. I’ve come to expect a lot from David Gallagher. After all, he shot to the top of the musical acting pool in “Honk” while a student at St. Ed’s. Here, he skips between twitchy elation and scabrous anger so expertly it makes one shudder with recognition. But who is Annika Johansson? Hailing from Amarillo — by way of Abilene and Chicago — Johansson so completely embodies the more difficult “backwards” view of the story, her performance arrives on our collective doorstep like an unforeseen miracle.
The show runs for only a week more in the hand-towel-sized Larry L. King Theatre at Penn Field. Still, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the producers revived “The Last Five Years” as soon as possible. I’d see it again.
Seventeen years. Yes, that’s right, “Beehive” opened at Zach Theatre in 1992. A whole generation ago.
Amani Dorn, Kaye McNulty
That means three or four generations have buzzed to the music of the girl groups from the 1960s, including those who only know the songs from this sizzling revue. The mind reels at the associations racing through the audience for Friday’s preview.
Noellia Hernandez, John Boulanger
My first all-out rave review, after three years as the American-Statesman’s theater critic, was of “Beehive.”
Rick Pizzini, Rebecca Schoolar
I saw the evolving versions of Dave Steakley’s staging at various locations, including the Pararmount Theatre, as it saturated Austin’s popular culture.
Ana Oelschlegel, Lillie Wade
Of course, “Beehive” begat “Rockin’ Christmas Party,” which continues to rake in the seasonal bucks for Zach.
Laura Krupicka, Kelsey Krupicka
What struck me about the show, then and now, was the extraordinary talent on display. And audiences, young and old, still go crazy over the glorious songs.
Beth Bonnet, Dene Simone
Fantastic to have three of the original cast members — Andra Mitrovich, Rebecca Schoolar and Judy Arnold — in this revival.
Dave Steakley, Bryan Bradford
It’s also a kick to see some return of curvy-voiced Laura Benedict relative newcomers Amani Dorn and Noellia Hernandez, who was SIX when “Beehive” opened in Austin.
When Pebbles Wadsworth retired from the University of Texas Performing Arts Center in 2007, nobody believed she would lean back in a rocking chair watching the world go by. Even if she did purchase a ranch outside Smithville and accompanied her husband on a year of world travels — to keep her from taking on projects.
That’s just not going to happen. At one point, she identified the historical Central School in Smithville as potential community and arts center. It wasn’t long before the Smithville City Council named her to the Friends of the Central School Committee, tasked with the repurposing of the building. Now she’s got a project.
“(It) could further enhance cultural awareness in Smithville and the surrounding area,” Wadsworth told the Smithville Times, “and help preserve the town’s unique heritage for generations to come.”
I didn’t know Pat Hingle. Except on the stage and screen. He played a range of crusty characters and everymen, recently in “Talladega Nights” (2006) but going all the way back to “On the Waterfront” (1954). His IMBD acting credits number an incredible 193 movies and TV series — many during the medium’s “golden age of drama.”
Memorable among his screen performances were Ralph Follet in “All the Way Home,” Ace Stamper in “Slendor in the Grass” and Jim O’Connor in the TV version of “The Glass Menagerie” with Shirley Booth (my first exposure to the material). On Broadway, he shined in “1776,” “Child’s Play” and “That Championship Season” during my watch, many more before then.
He died Jan. 3 at age 84. Hingle entered the University of Texas in 1941. He returned after a stint in the Navy and got interested in drama because that where the pretty girls were. He earned a B.F.A. in Drama in 1949. He certainly performed in the Curtain Club, the extracurricular stage group, during the Walter Cronkite, Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones days.
Does anyone recall his Austin days? Contact me if you do.
“I had the best of both worlds,” she says, since her variety show, which ran for 278 episodes. “I find that I love the rehearsal period. I love the first few months of doing a (theatrical) show. After a while, I have to psych myself up — At 9:05 p.m. I walk over to the desk and say this line.”
She admits to being spoiled by TV variety shows.
“It was like doing a musical comedy revue a week,” she says of Garry Moore’s series. “We were on stage with the audience, but had different songs, character, guests each week. I patterned my show after his. We’d barrel through it like a live show. I always depended on the studio audience’s reaction. If they were laughing, we were doing OK for the audience at home.”
But what about losing Burnett as a potential Mama Rose in “Gyspy” or Annie Oakley in “Annie Get Your Gun,” among the big Broadway roles she could have played in her prime?
“I was lucky enough to sing those songs on my show,” she says with quiet satisfaction. “And I had Ethel Merman on as a guest for a whole hour.”
Yet, because of royalties contracted to accompanying musicians, those songs didn’t make it into the show’s first syndication, comprised solely of the comic sketches. Luckily, most of the intact episodes are now available on DVD.
To another generation, Burnett is best known for playing Helen Hunt’s mother in “Mad About You.”
“It was so cleverly written,” she says. “Helen and Paul so great. And I loved doing ‘Desperate Housewives,’ too. It’s always about how good is the writing.”
OK, so back to the unscripted question sessions: How does she think so quickly on her feet?
“I count on people asking some of the same questions,” she says. “But that’s not all. Someone will request the Tarzan yell. I’ll say ‘yes, but I have a story first’ …”
And Burnett’s memory for stories is prodigious. For someone past 70, she’s able to recall comic anecdotes in incisive detail.
She sticks by a motto for keeping the creative juices — and memory — flowing: “The more you do the more you can.”
Carol Burnett’s conversational nimbleness started early. Her parents suffered from acute alcoholism, so she was raised by a movie-mad grandmother, first in San Antonio, then Hollywood, and later quipped her way through high school and college.
Her Texas connections are now scattered. But her house in San Antonio — where she lived in the 1930s — was rescued, moved to a different district and repurposed as a school.
“It was an old Victorian house with a wrap-around porch on West Commerce, which was, even then, not the best neighborhood. More recently, all the houses have been taken down, except that one. It’s all car dealerships and stores. A couple of years ago, they wanted to tear it town, but people protested. It’s now a landmark, for anyone who cares for that.
“And they are naming it for me! I’m going down there for that.”
Visiting the house recently brought back long-out-of-reach memories.
“I used to skate in the house,” she says. “The sidewalk was buckled out front and the hallway was on a slant. I’d roll myself down and stop myself on the screen with my hand. The skate marks are still there.”
Later, she’d skate to school in California, and even later, she used the experience to land a juicy entertainment assignment.
“They wanted me for a Dinah Shore replacement show. They asked, ‘Can you ice-skate?’” Like the periodically hungry young performer that she was, Burnett said “Oh sure.”
“I took myself to the ice palace,” she says laughing contagiously. “I couldn’t even stand up. I hung on the railing forever. Then I pictured myself roller-skating and skated as if I were roller-skating. I didn’t fall after that.”
Though she shot to fame in the mid-1950s, Burnett’s career wasn’t settled for a long time. She made a minor name in cabarets singing “I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles,” then won supporting roles on a morning children’s show and a quickly canceled sitcom. She also became a favored guest during the first golden age of game shows, when actual talents were an expected part of the gig.
She really caught fire doing quick-study variety on “The Garry Moore Show,” then conquered Broadway in the riotous fairy tale “Once Upon a Mattress” in 1959. She returned to the stage rarely, playing in Sondheim concerts or revues, for instance, until she committed to the Broadway run of “Moon Over Buffalo” in 1995.
Carol Burnett’s current traveling questionnaire now starts with a collage of clips from her show and, especially, previous question sessions. Then, almost daring the comic gods, she’ll repeat: “Let’s bump up the lights,” revealing, in this case, a thousand or more potential comedy-killing clunkers in the house.
“I never know what they are going to ask,” she says by phone from California. “It keeps me on my toes. Some people think we put plants in the audience, but I’d never do that. It’s all very spontaneous.”
So no prepping the audience, like Graham Norton’s elaborate proceedings before his BBC talk show, which prompts ticket-holders to bring certain comedy-ready items to the studio?
“Who could write that stuff?” Burnett says of her audiences’ off-the-wall questions and requests. “I wouldn’t want that. It wouldn’t be truthful. The fun is in the interplay with the audience.”
Of course, she encounters the same sort of rattlers and village explainers familiar to anyone who has opened up a public appearance to questions.
“They’re nervous,” she says. “And the audience gets nervous. So I’ll jump in and say: ‘That reminds me of a story!’ You can’t say: ‘Please be quiet!’ Do it gracefully without hurting their feelings.”
She also gets the kidders and the pranksters. Also the big surprises. Last year, during a live show, a man asked if he could have a 25th birthday hug.
“Cute little guy,” Burnett remembers. “I gave him a hug and the audience sang ‘Happy Birthday.’ He went back to his seat. Then a man stood up — nice looking in a suit and tie. ‘I’m not 25. But it’s my birthday. I’m 40.’ The audience started to giggle. ‘I always thought you were very attractive,’ he said.
“So I had fun with it. He started coming for me. I said, ‘But we don’t really know each other.’ The audience laughed. He told me his name. ‘Hi Bob. So you’re 40 today. Have you thought in terms of an older woman?’ He starts to back off. The audience laughs at his discomfort. ‘What’s the problem,” I ask. ‘Are you involved with somebody else.’ ‘Sort of.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I’m a priest.’
“I said, ‘Forgive me father for I have sinned.’ Nuns in the audience were doubled over with laughter.’”
Carol Burnett can sing. Carol Burnett can dance. Carol Burnett can act.
Yet one thing Carol Burnett can do better than almost anyone else — talk, at length, impromptu and before a vast audience.
Whenever her bang-framed eyes ignite and her rubbery lips quiver, Burnett can engage anyone — fan, interviewer, colleague — with the conversational fluidity of a swan, the goofy grace of a classic comedian.
That’s when it sinks in. Burnett’s not just the star of a long-ago TV variety series bearing her name. She belongs up there with the most versatile and prolific comedians of the past 50 years.
Burnett no longer sings, dances or acts as often as she formerly did. She’ll take a recurring part in a sitcom, stage a reunion special, or perform in a studio or concert version of a musical. Or she’ll accept a plum role in a movie, like voicing Kangaroo in “Horton Hears a Who.”
But she still talks. A lot.
In fact, she’ll engage Austin audiences in public conversations at the Paramount Theatre on Friday and Saturday. The mass-talk format grew out of the question-and-answer sessions she portioned out to audiences in CBS’ Studio 33 during the 11-season run of “The Carol Burnett Show.”
“Let’s bump up the lights,” she’d memorably chirp before tapings, allowing fans freedom for three or four minutes to interact with the Texas-born performer however they pleased.
She embodied an exuberant sensuality that scratched its way into pan-sexuality. He was a dour, if comic intellectual who severely altered the way words were spoken — or not spoken — from the stage and on the screen screen.
Eartha Kitt and Harold Pinter died during the Christmas pause. Both are linked to Austin.
Kitt roared and purred from the stage as part of Austin Cabaret Theatre’s 2007-2008 season at the Mansion at Judge’s Hill. It ranks among the most memorable cabaret performances in recent Austin history.
Pinter’s work and letters are inextricably linked to collections of papers at the University of Texas’ Ransom Center, including the those of his predecessor, Samuel Beckett, and his successor, David Mamet.
Hearing her over-articulated, under-projected recordings of “Santa, Baby” or “I Want to Be Evil,” one might be tricked into thinking Kitt was merely Lena Horne with bite, or Peggy Lee with soul. Yet in person, the volcanic Kitt commanded every corner of a room, even if lounging on a chaise. She was more likely to prowl around the audience, stalking her glamor victims like a latter-day, liberated Marlene Dietrich.
If Kitt brazenly, almost carelessly glittered her way to camp apotheosis, Pinter carefully constructed each word of his serio-comic public persona. He began with BBC radio plays, then conquered the London and New York stage with enigmatic works of family menace in the 1960s. Actors adored Pinter, whose powerful subtext and profound silences also influenced not only Mamet, but a whole generation of writers such as Sam Shepard, Edward Albee and even August Wilson.
Both artists were outspoken. Kitt famously upset a White House dinner party with an outburst against the Vietnam War, upsetting Lady Bird Johnson (and making it difficult to book her in Austin). Long a leader of the British Left, Pinter ranted against American power and politics in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Two of the top stage experiences of my life can be attributed to Kitt and Pinter. The former ripped through every song in her repertoire for Austin Cabaret Theatre, almost frightening me (and others) with her ferocity, before soothing us with her generosity. In a city that only occasionally sees top-notch cabaret acts, Kitt’s was like three or four Broadway plays compressed onto a tiny stage.
Pinter’s plays I had performed as early as high school. “The Homecoming,” “The Birthday Party” and “The Caretaker” were so regularly performed in the 1960s and ’70s, whole scenes are pressed into my memory. “Betrayal,” his attempt at the age-old puzzle of reverse chronology, come closest of any playwright’s to saving the punch for the final moment.
But the peak Pinter moment came for me in 1976, when John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson played the primary roles in the West End premiere production of “No Man’s Land.” Here, two classically trained lions of the English stage played men at the end of life, one clearly successful, the other mendicant. As a young American theater artist, I assumed that classical actors could not do justice to Pinter’s blunt, thoroughly modern prose, but Gielgud and Richardson embroidered each Pinteresque ellipsis and pause with a lifetime of exhausted wisdom.
Personality-wise, Pinter and Kitt were leagues apart. Yet both simmered with resentments against class and power. Kitt’s strategy embraced the role of predatory sex kitten, but one with killer wit and confidence. Pinter’s later plays seemed cold, either too much to the political point or too little. Yet his earlier works can teach future generations about the interplay of control and power at the microscopic level.
If you are unwilling to poke fun at yourself, you probably should not be the newspaper’s social columnist.
Last night, I finally appeared as Mother Ginger in “The Nutcracker.” Almost 10 years ago, Ballet Austin’s executive director, Cookie Ruiz, visualized local celebrities playing the traditional burlesque role, whose over-sized hoop skirt hides a bunch of bon-bons, played by adorable children. (Ann Richards came to her in a dream, the way I heard it.)
The manifestly generous Forrest Preece has acted as the Mother Ginger wrangler ever since. Countless other ballet companies have adopted the celebrity practice. Within the newspaper, I followed the distinguished hoop-skirts of former editor Rich Oppel, retired food writer Kitty Crider and inimitable humorist John Kelso. (I had refused the offer in the past because of potential conflicts with my job as arts reporter, then entertainment editor, my former assignments.)
I was particularly nervous following the performance Friday of my Austin Chronicle counterpart Stephen Moser, who arrived with three changes of clothes, including two fur coats and two fragrances, as well as armfuls of radiant jewelry. From all accounts, Moser set a very high bar. My only option was to unleash the inner ham, contrasting that with my soft-spoken public persona.
Preece and Ballet Austin image-maker Lance Johnson served as my keepers, ushering me to ripe spots backstage so I could watch the action (my bit was a mere 3 1/2 minutes long in the second act). They also shared a Whole Foods spread in the star’s dressing room with my party, which included my partner Kip Keller, the big-hearted Austin newcomers Craig Rancourt and Oliver Everette, dear friend and teacher Lawrence Morgan (who knows a thing or two about drag) and my personal trainer Alex Dotte (who does not — as far as I know).
Ballet Austin’s team runs “The Nutcracker” like a well-oiled machine. Scores of performers are precisely choreographed backstage, along with enormous stage scenery and properties. An expert make-up artist (Wendy) and costumer (didn’t catch the name) outfitted me briskly, tenderly. Ruiz and artistic director Stephen Mills spread encouraging words, as did former dance critic and current UT Assistant Dean Sondra Lomax, who visited the dressing room with her family. Backstage, some of the veteran dancers — Allyson Paino, Tony Casati, etc. — winked me luck.
So what to do onstage? Mother Ginger stands in a cage about five feet off the ground. One can move around fairly freely, but the audience only sees movement above the waist. The music is divided into three sections — fast, slow, fast. During the first, I entered with back to audience, studying a hand mirror, only to discover the audience (enormous mugs), then making up my face with giant prop lipstick, power puff and comb. For the fast segment, I mimed writing social notes, taking party pictures and Twittering (the audience responded to the first two, but my imaginary iPhone didn’t carry past the footlights). Finally, I exploded with pent-up nervous energy in the final section, doing frenetic Carmen Miranda moves, inspired by the hat. Shimmying the giant breasts was required and appreciated by a roaring audience.
Everyone was extremely kind and I had a great time. Dignity lost. Notoriety gained.
Is it the holidays in Austin without the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar?
Mychal Mitchell, Edy Baily
Last year, when the Austin Music Hall was still under construction, the Bazaar moved to the Austin Convention Center. It stayed.
Tonya Engel, Lorraine Bier
Despite the disjuncture between the insular, antiseptic setting and the tradition-rich, arts-thick Bazaar, the place was packed for the Asleep at the Wheel Quartet performance on Sunday.
Alice Duffy, Jon Bohrer
I have to say the art is inviting. I was tempted by several items. Earlier in the week, Kip purchased a handmade pen and leather-bound journal for gifts.
Johnny Austin, Greg Shotwell
Besides the music and the shopping, there’s the people-watching and socializing.
Frank Garymartin, Simply Smashing Sarah
The Bazaar always draws a heterogeneous horde. Well worth delving deep into the Convention Center.
Sometimes you just want a few show tunes. Ann Ciccolella knows that. Austin Shakespeare Festival’s “Celebrate” consisted purely of Broadway songs, executed smoothly, expertly by a musical-tested cast.
Jacqueline Delk, Stephanie Delk
Throw in a few bossa nova tunes and some comic dances. And 75 minutes of a Sunday afternoon matinee went down like bubbly.
After the show, we met the cast for a little get-together upstairs at the Butler Dance Education Center. Made me think, once again, we could use a lot more cabaret in Austin. Especially if Jill Blackwood, Michael McKelvey, Kirstin Dorn, Greg Holt, Stephanie Delk, Jamie Goodwin, Molly Wissinger and gang take the stage.
As Anton Nel pulled his bench up to the gleaming Steinway concert grand, Dr. Bill Jones, his partner announced: “When we sent out the invitations, we expected regrets from at least one third of you. We were wrong.”
Teresa Long, Anton Nel, Sarah Butler
Ignore an opportunity to hear Nel, Austin’s concert paragon, play for an intimate mob at his vaulting apartment above Barton Creek? You can bet nobody turned down the invitation. Nel’s doctoral students from the University of Texas served appetizers and wine to the crush. Despite the elbowing, everyone wore a smile of sublime anticipation.
Monica Torres, Artina Hunter
Among the notables were folks whose names decorate Austin’s arts projects: Joe and Teresa Long, Ernest and Sarah Butler, Jeff Kodozsky (didn’t see Gail, but she could have squeezed behind a group of conversants), Jane Sibley, Joe and Tana Christie, Cliff Redd and Rick Johnson, James Armstrong and Larry Connelly, Sharon Watkins, Andrew and Mary Ann Heller, Eva Womack, Alan and Connie Green. We met foreign intelligence expert George Friedman and his wife Meredith (he holds a dark view of publishing’s future and the quality of oversees reporting) and, for the first time, greeted former Ambassador Pam Willeford and her husband Dr. George Willeford III.
Ambassador Pam Willeford, Dr. George Willeford III
Nel hushed all with his youthful Beethoven, melancholy Brahms, Scottish-themed Mendelssohn and valedictorian Chopin. The last piece he played upon request, even though he hadn’t brought it out in years. Is there another serious pianist alive who carries that much music around in his head and hands?
Matt Bird, Betsy Bird
Magical. Remember, Nel, who recently concertized with the Austin Symphony Orchestra, plans a March 29 recital at the Long Center. Don’t miss it. He’s an Austin nonpareil.
I wondered if I would choke up. I didn’t know Shannon Leigh personally. I don’t recall seeing the young slam poet perform live, although I’m familiar with her style through clips.
Yet I wrote her obituary for the American-Statesman earlier this year. And the story stuck with me. Starting at an extraordinarily young age, the Austinite exhibited rarified talent and zoomed to national recognition before moving to study in Atlanta.
There, she continued her love affair with diving and it was during a caving accident in Florida that she lost consciousness, slipped into a coma, then died two weeks later. There’s no way to process the loss of a young person, with so much of life waiting, but losing someone exceptional like Leigh, such a shooting star, must be inconceivable for family and friends.
Friday, her fellow slam poets — led by a shaken Mike Henry — saluted Leigh. It was a year-in-review concert at the Rollins Theatre, and every poet I heard blazed — frenetic Mike Whalen, swaying Faylita Hicks, zealously imaginative Lacey Roop, sweetly pleading Danny Strack, stealthy duo Tony Jackson and Da’shade (and their classic “Blerds”), finespun Andy Buck, always electrifying Zell Miler III with complementary Ebony Stewart, always transgressively funny Big Poppa E and accelerating Jonathan “Kori” Sterling.
In a documentary video, Leigh refers to the “dark” material that other poets used but she eschewed. One thing I noticed about her poem, “Warrior,” also shown in the video tribute, was the singular absence of anger or hostility. Why are so many slam poets still angry, I wondered, gently. I guess that’s like asking why rockers still rebel, 50 years after the cultural revolution was won. Leigh — a prophet? — looked beyond anger and darkness.
Advertising and art are often allied. The Screamer Company takes that alliance a step further. Scott Creamer’s little agency, tucked behind a bungalow on Leland Street off South Congress Avenue, weaves assertive art into almost all his campaigns.
Roland Castruita, Scott Creamer
So it’s no wonder the company periodically puts out a booklet of small reproductions and throws a party to draw attention to the art. “Three” launched Thursday night, as guests from the business and creative communities mingled from the Mac-dotted rooms to the offices’ inviting deck. Throughout the evening, artists painted on prominently placed canvasses.
Lisa Seegers, Adam Chong
Creamer moved here from Chicago seven years ago, settled with his partner above Bouldin Creek, and has built his firm from one to seven employees. Punny Screamer promoted such projects as the Williamson Open and Faces of AIDS. At his offices, I met bankers, printers, publicists and a beer-maker named Chris Orf — I was the first-ever recipient of his business cards. Makes one feel like a pioneer.
The economy has not been kind to arts nonprofits this year. Yet the folks behind Austin Shakespeare Festival expressed nothing but good cheer at the group’s holiday party on Tuesday. At The Tap Room, artistic director Ann Ciccolella addressed three dozen exuberant Shakespeareans, who had reason for their upbeat mood.
Suzanne Kennedy, Stanley Wilson, Ann Ciccolella
After all Ciccolella, formerly of Zach Theatre, had turned around the mid-size company. She staged a critically acclaimed production of “Macbeth” starring majestic Marc Pouhe at the Long Center’s Rollins Theatre. And she has cultivated the group’s relationship with game-maker Richard Garriott, the only Austinite with a full-scale Elizabethan theater in his backyard.
Cyrus Cassells, Gretchen Weicker
I chatted with board members, actors and others who used words such as “miracle,” “unprecedented” and “salvation” when they talked about Ciccolella’s short tenure. Throwing the holiday party at the brick-bound, underground Tap Room on Colorado Street was, by the way, a smart move. Let the revelers purchase their own ale, mingle in the Dickensian gloom and walk away with good vibrations about the Shakespeare game.
Warehouse theaters generally don’t attract top social influencers and connectors to their openings. Yet the premiere of Michael Mitchell’s “Still Fountains” sprinkled representatives from real estate, banking and politics with legates from philanthropy, arts, education, fine dining and media. Of course, it helped that political activist, teacher and social entrepreneur Eugene Sepulveda and playwright, teacher, coach and consultant Steven Tomlinson made their debuts as producers of Mitchell’s two one-act plays.
Douglas Taylor, Michael Mitchell
The pairing of his traditional playlets — in the Tennessee Williams mode — with experimental director Katie Pearl might have proved infelicitous, but the actors raved about her sensitivity to the material and to their growth in the roles. “Highway Home” is a familiar post-funeral family drama, spiked with alcohol and wit, while the tighter, richer “Them” is a classic encounter between two strangers juggling sexuality and morality. Jude Hickey, Gina Houston, Garry Peters and Douglas Taylor gave each character a distinct, authentic voice. Taylor and Hickey, in particular, traded energy and subtext with rare delicacy.
Eugene Sepulveda, Steven Dietz
Almost as interesting was the theater in the Salvage Vanguard Theater lobby before and after the acts. A prominent contingent from the University of Texas playwriting program was present, including back-from-leave Suzan Zeder and red-hot writer Steven Dietz, whose work is all over town. Many of the young artists and techs trained, however, at St. Edward’s University, where undergraduates not only gain more practical experience than at UT, they quickly find productive niches in the Austin arts environment.
Steve Moore, Katie Pearl, Ron Berry
Mitchell, recovering from lymphoma, looked and sounded fantastic. Maybe the creative process and the promise of the premiere aided modern medicine.
In some ways, “The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II” (Knopf, $65) defeats the purpose of coffee-table books. It’s all about the word. Despite the historical images, one wants to linger over the obscure shows from the early 20th century, then luxuriate in the emotional potency of his collaborations with Richard Rodgers, particularly “Oklahoma!” “Carousel,” “The King and I” and the recently recovered “South Pacific.” Despite his frequently sexual lyrics, Hammerstein, scion of a theatrical family and mentor to medium’s greatest talent, Stephen Sondheim, was a “cock-eyed optimist” and unabashed romantic compared to Rodgers previous writing partner, the acidic Lorenz Hart. How that sensibility evolved from the Columbia University student show, “The Peace Pirates” (1916), through “The Sound of Music” (1959) — not his finest hour, despite its heart-piercing simplicity — is made much clearer through this volume. But my, after a while, we want to put this 422-page book down, if only for circulation’s sake.
Every 10 to 20 years, George Bernard Shaw comes back into fashion. I don’t mean his plays. The major titles — “Pygmalion,” “Heartbreak House,” “Major Barbara,” “Arms and the Man,” “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” “Candida” — are never far from the theatrical boards.
I’m referring to Shaw’s Fabian socialism and preachy disquisitions on controversial topics. His opinions sound especially tinny during intermittently quiet or consensual political and social cycles. “Getting Married,” a comedy with virtually no action and a lot of speech-making about the social institution around a kitchen table, probably sounded fresh during the feminist/swinger 1970s, but rather tendentious in the 1980s, when marriage was not up for widespread discussion.
Marriage is back in the news, thanks to the unexpectedly quick acceptance of gay partnerships and the political backlash against their advances on the social front. So Different Stages, Austin’s most literate community theater, has revived Shaw’s “Getting Married” at The Vortex.
Shaw zeroes in on the difficulty of divorce in the English civil sphere, but also hashes out the age-old entanglements between church and state on the issue. At one point, the unhappily single or married relations attempt to hammer out a “partnership contract” to replace marriage.
Director Norman Blumensaadt’s cast handles the language pretty adroitly — Tyler Jones is unusually adept at turning a conventionally snobbish juvenile into a credible leading man — so I smiled for almost three hours. One entirely un-Shavian scene dramatizes a ecstatic religious vision by one character, played with zest and zeal by Emily Errington.
Almost everything else transpires on an intellectual plane and the marriage debate sounds as timely as this morning’s headlines.
Gramophone has released its Top 20 orchestra rankings ahead of the UK magazine’s December edition. I don’t pay sustained attention to these things, but it looks like Boston and New York are slipping, while Los Angeles, justly, is in the ascendant. The Top 5 are hard to argue with, but I reserve mixed feelings for No. 6, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (through recordings only).
Chicago has always been my favorite American symphonic ensemble. Nice to see Michael Tilson Thomas’ San Francisco in the mix and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra recognized for its work, never just a supporting actor at the opera house.
Houston and Dallas? Not even close to this list. Perhaps in the Next Next 20.
The Top 10: 1) Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterda; 2) Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; 3) Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra; 4) London Symphony Orchestra; 5) Chicago Symphony Orchestra; 6) Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; 7) Cleveland Orchestra; 8) Los Angeles Philharmonic; 9) Budapest Festival Orchestra; 10) Dresden Staatskapelle
The Next 10: 11) Boston Symphony Orchestra; 12) New York Philharmonic; 13) San Francisco Symphony; 14) Mariinsky Theater Orchestra; 15) Russian National Orchestra; 16) Leningrad Philharmonic; 17) Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; 18) Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; 19) Saito Kinen Orchestra; 20) Czech Philharmonic
Perhaps if the acoustics at the Bass are actually fixed, the UT PAC could host one of these a year for the next 20 years. Would be educational. Of course, the College of Fine Arts must pick a permanent successor to Pebbles Wadsworth first.
The moment I beheld the invitation from Lora Reynolds Gallery for the Benjamin Butler show, I was determined to attend the opening reception. Something about the frame-filling organic forms, executed in black and white in a way that was both minimal and maximal, convinced me that Kansas-bred, Chicago-trained, New York-based Butler had arrived.
Anne Eastman, Benjamin Butler, Don Mullins
The social set at Lora Reynolds’ immaculate space — postmodern dancer Deborah Hay, museum leader Dana Friis-Hansen, ballet master Stephen Mills, Arthouse director Sue Graze, top collector Mickey Klein, furniture dealer Jeff Kirk, veteran contempo promoter Laurence Miller — clearly agreed. And Butler’s brief, composed gallery talk confirmed that he is synthesizing a gushing stream of modernism, kitsch, regional landscape painting, abstract expressionism, etc. (Besides the organic forms, he’s playing with gestural drip painting.)
Bhawna Sharma, Helen Oh
Reynolds’ new gallery at the base of the 360 Tower, by the way, is roomier and more accessible than her previous one across Shoal Creek to the west. Its four public rooms are finished out to perfection. That little neighborhood is filling out quite nicely.
Already historic, Barack Obama’s election will change the way we experience almost everything in American society. Case in point, “Big River,” Roger Miller’s musical version of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” During director Scott Shattuck’s production at Stephen F. Austin State University, I listened to the audience listening to the material in a completely fresh way.
The nearly full house — a fair mix of ages and backgrounds — slowly, thoughtfully processed Twain’s serio-comic take on slavery, religion and social mores. They were especially alert to the use of the N-word, not just from the mouths of relatively unsympathetic and clearly racist characters, but also easily slipping from the tongues of otherwise kind and empathetic ones.
Shattuck’s production didn’t exaggerate the show’s dark side, but the serious moments were all the more memorable because of the contemporary social context. I don’t think a single person in the house fully realized how earth-shattering it was for Huck to choose eternal damnation in order to help free runaway slave Jim — hell was a more immediate and explicit threat during the 19th century, which we glimpse in the horrific tarring of the film-flam artist/actor.
Yet nobody in the audience could avoid the symbolism of a white boy treating a black slave as a brother — and vice versa — as well as the transformative power of that relationship. Happily, the cast hit the light and the dark notes equally well: Winsome David Hathway as Huck, grounded Waldron Archer — an Austin Community College transfer — as Jim, high-flying JT Hearn as Tom, seasoned Brittnee Stout as Mary Jane Wilkes and silver-toned LaDonna Jackson as Alice’s Daughter, rescuing two somber scenes with her singular voice.
This is my idea of luxury: A whole night spent visiting with a tiny gathering of friends, old and new, in an intimate setting. That’s what Kip and I enjoyed last night relaxing with Long Center for the Performing Arts exec director Cliff Redd and his partner Rick Johnson. Along for the ride was retired lawyer, arts backer and expert conversationalist Richard Hartgrove.
We started out at Redd’s Cat Mountain home, a modest mansard-roofed residence from the street, but a multi-level entertainment palace inside. Redd’s collection of Asian art accents every room. The five of us could have lounged in the atrium for hours with Drake and Jeffrey, Redd’s cream and standard poodles, and some ancient Bourbon.
But we headed out on what Redd calls the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” of North Austin Asian eateries he adores, landing at a tremendous Chinese barbecue spot called Din Ho. Oh my. Every dish — chicken, beef, pork, fish, eggplant, whatever — topped the previous. Simple presentation. All the labor and love goes into the food.
Then back to Cat Mountain for more leisurely conversation that ranged from early years in Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and San Angelo to the latest developments in the Long Center’s evolution. Lots of dog talk. Galveston talk — Redd’s East Lake Victorian is undergoing renovations after Hurricane Ivan. Partner talk. Singles talk (do men these days type too narrowly). Much that cannot escape the cone of silence.
Also medical talk. Redd is recovering from a heart attack. He had nothing but high praise for the Seton crew that made sure “every minute counted.” Johnson is playing a parallel role in Redd’s recovery to Kip’s in mine. The main thing is trying to slow both of us down. Redd, after all, parcels out his work day in 15-minute increments. At least I try to stretch out the units to 30 minutes. Anyway, he looks and sounds well, but we both should listen to Rick and Kip.
We’ve stayed away from this story: Scott Eckern, artistic director of California Musical Theatre, resigned his post after it became clear he contributed to the Proposition 8 campaign. The Broadway medium is famously gay-friendly, so Eckern thrust himself into the line of fire by so publicly opposing marriage equality.
Some commentators felt he suffered unfairly for speaking his mind. (This is not, however, a First Amendment issue, which concerns government censorship, not, as in this case, public opprobrium.) Others believe that, in an industry so dependent on (often cheap) gay labor, Eckern’s position was an affront to his longtime colleagues. Fair points all.
What intrigues me, however, is the sudden and potentially permanent rift in the core audience for musical theater. I’ve written for years about how Broadway’s coded emphasis on emotion and romance, rather than naturalistic themes, has brought together diverse fans who read into “West Side Story” or “Fiddler on the Roof” their own relationships — romantic, familial or societal.
But now, two crucial constituents are at loggerheads: The gay brigade and the suburban faction. Whose emotional reality ultimately counts? Sounds like a good theme for a musical — or a season of healing musicals.
Soon, all Austin socializing will be scrambled by six weeks of on-and-off holidays. Meanwhile, these tasty tidbits are ready to sample.
Thursday: Texas Legacy Luncheon at the Four Seasons Hotel; Cissi’s Market Wine Bar VIP Tasting; A Legacy of Giving Holiday Party at Benold’s on West Anderson Lane; Texas Wine & Food Foundation presents Big Reds & Bubbles at the Driskill Hotel; Austin Monthly issue party at a private Rollingwood residence; Premiere of Catherine Hardwicke’s “Twilight” at the Bullock Texas History Museum; Songwriters in the Round at Lambert’s
Friday: Preservation Awards at the Driskill Hotel; Hill Country Nights with Hayes Carll for Hill Country Conservancy at TDS Wildlife Exotic Game Ranch and Pavilion; First Anniversary Party at Pangaea. (I will be in Nacogdoches, of all places, seeing my dear friend Scott Shattuck’s production of “Big River” at Stephen F. Austin University. When possible, friends come first.)
Saturday: Lighting of Macy’s Great Tree at the Domain, “Benjamin Butler: Dark and Leafless” opening reception at Lora Reynolds Gallery; Christopher Carbone Birthday Party at the Peacock; King of Kombat at the Crockett Center; L.M. Rivers’ Pre-Thanksgiving Birthday Bash at the Doubletree North
Sunday: East Austin Studio Tour; Different Stages’ “Getting Married” at the Vortex
Tuesday: Butter Ball Event for Coats for Kids at the Belmont; H-E-B Feast of Sharing at the Palmer Events Center
Wednesday: Pre-Thanksgiving Fete at Perry’s Steakhouse & Grille
They’ve been an item for many months. Now Annette Carlozzi and Dan Bullock are married, joined during a small family ceremony over the weekend by Flint Sparks. Carlozzi is, of course, one of the curating stars at the Blanton Museum of Art, while Bullock runs a communications company and has contributed to countless organizations, not the least Leadership Austin and major arts groups such as Zach Theatre.
The bride and groomed retired to the Westwood Country Club for a party that joined their respective communities. Ernie Gammage and the Newmatics provided the tunes. UT professor Michael Smith and New York curator Regine Basha discoed; arts patron Mickey Klein and New York artist Rochelle Feinstein added a dash of salsa. (Would like to have witnessed that!)
Other guests included a good chunk of the Fortunate 500: James Armstrong and Larry Connally, Karen Oswalt, Jane Sibley, Jeanne Klein, Maria and Eric Groten, GSD&M chief Duff and Liz Stewart, Dave Steakley and Tony Johnson, Stephen Mills and Brent Hasty, Evan and Julia Smith, Sarah Bird and George Jones, Fran Mcgee, Carol and Chris Adams, Damian and Paula Priour, Dana Friis-Hansen and Mark Holzbach, Bob “Daddy-O” Wade and Lisa, Becky Beaver, Jesse Hite, Quincy Erickson and Arturo Palacios.
After decades of delay, everything went just right one Sunday afternoon. The University of Texas’ art museum, first proposed in the 1970s, did not open the handsome galleries in the Michener Building until 2006. The subsidiary Smith Building — gift shop, cafe, auditorium, classrooms, etc. — waited for two and a half more years. Even still, many of the Blanton Museum of Art’s offices are not completed.
Helen and Rosalie Tack
Yet, as always with long-awaited projects, it didn’t seem to matter once the doors opened. Families flocked to the crisply finished stone and open atrium led to the promised shop and cafe, while upstairs waited the vertiginous, fan-shaped auditorium. Outside, the trapezoidal plaza sucked people up toward the former Jester Beach where the Guy Forsyth Band got toddlers to geriatrics syncopating.
Bep and Mitzi Markase
Behind the cafe counter was star chef Josh Watkins keeping a sharp eye on the latest addition to his University of Texas dining empire; he also oversees the four restaurants at the nearby UT hotel. (“How are they treating you?” “Oh, we’re busy, busy.” Interesting answer.) In the plaza, surrounded by visitors, was Blanton interim director Anne Wilson, probably sharing the phrase “gateway to the campus” a thousand times.
Jed Perl, Jonathan Bober
We tracked down Blanton master curator Jonathan Bober and The New Republic Art writer Jed Perl to the America/Americas galleries. Perl, urbane in a mod jacket, reported that, the previous night, he had purchased a basic Taco Cabana taco and a beer from the nearby convenience store, because Watson’s UT eateries closed earlier than his New York haunts. Not exactly what you expect to be discussing with the author of the richly textured and recently published “Antonie’s Alphabet: Watteau and His World.”
Unlike Austin’s other vintage arts groups, Austin Museum of Art needs no help appealing to the smart set and to the young crowd. Once the exclusive domain of Old West Austin, supported by a trailblazing University of Texas art department, AMOA now easily attracts the cream of the Fortunate 500 — even shy literary noteworthies such as Sarah Bird — as well as urban artists and their urban converts.
George Jones, Sarah Bird
The big draw on Friday was sculptor Damian Priour, a champion socializer, whose “Chair Project” crowded into the south galleries. He has been attracting followers for three decades, while serving on the boards of multiple arts institutions. Justly, his fan club spans generations.
Joe Dickson, John Livingston
Equally alluring for other art lovers were the photographs of Sebastiao Salgado. The artist/journalist, working in elegiac black and white, records human physical labor on mammoth projects like dams, factories and, famously, the ship breakers of Bangladesh. Every one of these poised images is worth serious reflection. Spend some time at AMOA.
Many readers know Oscar Brockett. He’s the guy who invented modern theater history with his seminal textbook in 1968. That book has gone through nine editions and has been translated in Chinese, Farsi, Italian and numerous other languages. He was also my mentor in the doctoral program at the University of Texas theater department, a graduate program that he built into the nation’s best.
Brock, as he is known, now retired, is 85. For the past year, he’s been in and out of the hospital. I caught up with him last night in his condo overlooking downtown Austin. And Brock proved as lively as ever, his color good and his mood upbeat. He’s about to complete another book, this one on theater design, always a time of relief for the prolific author.
I can tell he misses going out. For years, he’d accompany me to movies or theater once every week or so. Brock also socialized graciously, helping out with the annual Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner events staged by the Spice Boys for Project Transitions, for instance. Let’s hope his health improves enough, so that he can partake in his beloved Austin more fully soon.
It’s official. I’m a Mother Ginger. To witness my humiliation, purchase tickets for the 7:30 p.m. Dec. 23 performance of Ballet Austin’s “The Nutcracker” at the Long Center.
I’ll be the one in the giant hoop skirt, onstage for, oh, 2 or 3 minutes. Haven’t heard yet what my signature props will be. Craziness.
But I’m not alone. Look at the list of notables who have done the Mother Ginger deed: Michael Dell, Rich Oppel, Joe Sears, John Kelso, Lance Armstrong, Ann Richards, Ray Benson, Luci Baines Johnson, Evan Smith, Lloyd Doggett, Robert Rodriguez, Larry Faulkner, Molly Ivins, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Mike Laosa, Kinky Friedman, Peter Bay, Kevin Rollins, Shawn Colvin, Joe Long, Richard Buckley, Turk Pipkin, Sarah Butler, Marcia Ball, Karen Kuykendall, John Paul Dejoria, Mayor Will Wynn.
Photo: Gwyneth Muller ’s outtake of Justin Peck as Mother Ginger at the New York City Ballet. Wish I looked that good in old lady drag.
After a brief medical break, Cliff Redd is back in action as the executive director of the Long Center. His first big announcement: The outine for the performing arts center’s first anniversary party.
It’s not until March 26, but it’s worth planning ahead. Oscar-winning composer Marvin Hamlisch and big-voiced belter and sometime Houstonian Linda Eder will top the bill, along with a 32-piece orchestra.
Heading up the gala: Eva Womack — a great sport at the “Cinderella” opening — and Candace Partridge, supported by Sandy Ball, Helen Baxter, Kat Brooks, Linda Bush, Gloria Evans, Maria Groten, Richard Hartgrove, Wendi Kushner, Joanna Linden, Susan Lubin, Marcy Melanson, Martha Moore, Forrest Preece, Margot Smith and Connie Webb.
Tickets are pricey, but not the priciest in town: $250 for singles. Tables for 10 now available for $10,000, $5,000 or $2,500. For tickets or information, contact Jennifer Bengali at 457-5119.
I remember 35 years ago, pressing my nose against the metaphorical glass at the Metropolitan Opera, watching people in gowns and tuxes dine in the lobby just before the curtain. I didn’t really want to dress up, but dinner would have been nice.
Susan Gatlin, Eva Womack
Watching the upper classes enjoy their perquisites didn’t alter my enjoyment of the operas (first two at the Met were Richard Strauss’ “Salome” and Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.”) I never really thought much about that kind of privilege in an artistic setting. I figured the smart set made it possible, through their donations, for somebody on a student’s budget to see the world’s greatest art form on the world’s biggest stage.
Andrew Heller, Mary Ann Heller, Karen Landa
Saturday night, I felt like Cinderella crashing the ball as I sat among Austin’s glitterati in the Kodosky Donor Lounge at the Long Center before Austin Lyric Opera’s “Cinderella.” Strangely enough, I didn’t feel out of place. A lot of that had to do with the company. Across the table was always glamorous, but always down to earth Karen Landa, as well as the golden couple, Larry Connelly and James Armstrong.
Michael Morrow, Laura Legett
Kip and I were flanked by two of our favorite dining partners: Investor and former state Sen. Joe Christie and his accomplished wife Tana. Name a subject, and the two can tell stories, from the politics of late Gov. Preston Smith to the kind of woodpeckers nesting in their West Austin gardens. Originally for El Paso, they love Marfa, and are planning to join the Eugene Sepulveda caravan for New Year’s Eve out there.
Nina Seely, Wendi Kushner, Frank Seely
The opera? We’ve always smiled for Rossini’s take on the tale. Charming music, sweet comedy. And ALO’s artistic team seemed to know all the soft spots in a production updated to Hollywood in the 1930s. We won’t quibble with some misdirections, but instead say it’s the best ALO version of a standard opera in quite some time. Under three top leaders, the company seems to have always excelled at new or modern pieces, or sometimes radical updates, having more trouble just making the core repertoire fresh. This “Cinderella” should stay in the rep.
Alison Willis reports on the ongoing “Serie Project” on “A Sleepy Company”:
Serigraphy is the process of printmaking commonly referred to as screen-printing. “The Serie Project,” headed by Sam Coronado, an Austin Community College graphic design professor, is a longtime Latino arts organization that produces serigraph prints created by up and coming and established artists.
Each artist creates a serigraph print of one or several of their pieces of work and “The Serie Project” makes the art available to the public through a series of numbered, affordable prints. Some of the prints are also exhibited at various museums around the country. This service is provided at no cost to the artist.
Every year “The Serie Project” invites 15 to 18 artists to participate in the program. The artists are selected through a juror and referral system. The artist is then invited to Coronado Studios to work with a master screen-printer, learning how to create and produce a 50 edition run of their prints. Each year, they produce between 750 and 900 prints.
While attending Coronado’s graphic design class at Austin Community College, I was afforded the opportunity to visit the studio on the east side of Austin. The studio, which is located in an inconspicuous old house, is also rented out to local artists and screen-printers for poster and t-shirt production.
I stumbled on a lot of colorful concert posters hanging on the wall created by some talented artists. So far, over 150 artists have participated in this program and many of the prints have been featured in museums and other venues across the United States and in the PBS feature “Art Journeys.”
Dreamed about blogging last night. A lot. Can’t remember specifics. Yet, on giant colored screens, my writing grew looser, less like essays, my first love, more like free associations.
Jed Perl’s “Antoine’s Alphabet: Watteau and His World” is loose. Much like Wayne Koestenbaum’s “The Queen’s Throat.” Except about 18th-century art, not homosexual response to opera.
Perl sketches. He noodles. He goes way off track in his impassioned defense of Antoine Watteau, the painter of French court and theatrical life.
His apologia reminds me of Perl’s praise of Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin’s painstaking still life work in “Eyewitness: Reports From an Art World in Crisis.”
It’s a bit precious and scattered. Knopf indulged the New Republic’s visual art writer’s ornate whimsy through delicate prints and rich packaging. Still, a thematic alphabet? Maybe the cheapest gimmick in the publishing game book.
If his slim book could be compared with any other, it would be Peter Brook’s elegant and immensely influential 1968 contemplation, “The Empty Space,” which identified four types of theater: “Deadly, Holy, Rough and Immediate.”
When the Brook connection was posed during our conversation, Woodruff’s inquisitive eyes went round. He had read the British director’s works and was hugely impressed by Brook’s productions in the 1960s, while Woodruff was living in England, but he didn’t cite him directly in “The Necessity of Theater.”
“He was among those who first opened my mind to what is possible in theater,” he says. “I should have recognized that I internalized so much from Brook.”
What, then, are we looking for, ultimately, as humans, in theater or socializing? Emotional connection, Woodruff says.
“We praise emotions in the theory in our culture but we don’t represent them,” he says. “We may be nervous about getting too close to them.”
So why are emotions so important?
“Understanding is something we do with our emotions,” Woodruff says. “Theater draws that out of you. And a good theater watcher can understand with his emotions. And it feels good to exercise the emotions. And we feel enormous pleasure in being connected to other people. In theater, the connection can be at the deepest and most raw level.”
The connection can also be made out there on the party circuit.
“A good audience understands what it watches, through an emotional attunement that is governed by ethical virtue,” he writes.
On the largest theatrical scale, football games fascinate him, even if he’s not a close follower of the sport. (Ironically, he holds the Darrell K. Royal Professorship in Ethics.)
“How can you connect with people more directly than at a UT football game these days?” he asks. “It’s the most powerful form of theater, especially on a college campus.”
As with other UT academic superstars — Nobel-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, constitutional scholar Sanford Levinson — who think systematically, Woodruff is smitten with the emotion-engulfed world of theater.
“I’m fascinated by emotion and the role of emotions in our lives,” says Woodruff, who wrote plays before he saw his first one onstage, and imagined the enacted dramas of his father’s opera recordings growing up in rural western Pennsylvania. “Opera brings out the big emotions like no other art form does. The Greeks in theory didn’t believe in emotion. The teaching was that a virtuous man would not betray grief or anger. And yet the Greek tragedies are overwhelmed with huge emotions.”
Woodruff faults those around him who don’t watch carefully.
“I overhear my colleagues talking about students,” he says. “Even the professors best at paying attention can fail to see (students) as fully developed characters, in theatrical terms. ‘That little obnoxious student,’ they say. It might help to know that, say, the student’s mother loves him, or maybe it would help more to know his mother hates him. There’s always a back story.”
Woodruff’s ideas come in clustered thought-bursts: Watching people encourages a capacity for caring through emotional connection. Virtue comes easier to those who pay attention to the conditions of others. Certain kinds of human experiences depend on witnesses, especially witnesses whose imaginations enable cognitive empathy.
“Humans don’t exist as independent, lonely trees on the veldt,” he says. “We are who we are through our interactions. A large part of that interaction is paying attention to each other in more theatrical ways.”
Now, when Woodruff says “theatrical ways,” don’t flash to “Waiting for Godot” performed in a cold, black box of a theater. Woodruff gathers heartier affairs — weddings, funerals, trials, executions and sporting events — under his broader definition of theater. He excludes literature, film and other forms of related, recorded drama. Watchers and watched must both be present.
I’d add to the theatrical mix more social events: Backyard barbecues and glittering galas, book signings and movie premieres, musical concerts and club gatherings, intimate dinner parties and vast outdoor festivals. In other words, everything Out & About covers.
After all, while socializing, we also seek emotional connection by giving and taking attention. An intimate dinner party entails as much ritual, spectacle, choreography and improvisation as does the small theatrical presentation.
Given his rigorous training, Woodruff subdivides theater into categories and separates the functions of plot, character, action, choice, mimesis and sacred space. He delves into the dialogue in “Hamlet,” “Antigone” and other seminal dramas.
Yet his breakthrough conclusion is that theater leads to, not escape from the self, as entertainment so often promises, but “human wisdom — knowing ourselves.”
Theater is people watching people doing something worth watching.
So concludes Paul Woodruff, philosopher, classicist and University of Texas dean of undergraduate studies.
Socializing also is people watching people doing something worth watching.
So concludes your Out & About social columnist.
The difference: In the latter activity, the watcher engages the watched more directly.
As a former theater critic, I was drawn to the logic of Woodruff’s argument in “The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched,” which will be discussed at the Texas Book Festival on Sunday.
With a philosopher’s universalizing simplicity and a classicist’s grasp of Western drama, Woodruff upends decades of academic guff about the role of the spectator in the theater. Instead of the spectator as distorter, intruder or even violator, Woodruff’s audience — modeled perhaps on his own gentle, thoughtful personality — is the essential witness, empathizer and collaborator for the theater artist.
“People need theater,” Woodruff writes. “They need it the way they need each other — the way they need to gather, to talk things over, to have stories in common, to share friends and enemies. They need to watch, together, something human.”
Woodruff ranks theater alongside religion and language as essential distinguishing human characteristics. I’d add socializing to the list, for many of the same reasons.
Both kinds of watching and being watched, social and theatrical, start early in life.
“We hardly take ourselves very seriously unless we can get others’ attention,” the slender, hesitant Woodruff says at rain-splashed Mozart’s Coffee Roasters on Lake Austin Boulevard. “The first thing we know as an infant, after finding a mother’s breast, is how to get her attention. And newborns are excellent at that.”
Yet the process doesn’t stop there.
“Learning how to give attention is a little harder,” he says. “We are naturally wired for getting it more than giving it.”
Let’s just agree that he was ahead of his time. When Lytle Pressley opened Spazio in 1999, almost no one believed a high-end modernist/contemporary furniture gallery with a sprinkling of expensive art would survive on West Sixth Street. Sure, the high-tech boom had spread wealth near and far, but faux Tuscan villas in the hills far outnumbered the few examples of modernist Central Austin infill.
Lytle Pressely with Haven Farcy, who hung the show, and Diana Amador. Note the easy mix of cultures.
Not only did Pressley survive the tech bust that followed, he proved the skeptics, like myself, wrong. Now, a parade of smaller, but equally high-minded furniture stores — including Kirk, Loft and Design within Reach — compete for the same downtown market, as multiplying modernist residence towers provide a ready supply of shoppers.
Joy Kling, Susan Brandt — mix in more cultures.
Pressley has not given up on art, either. Saturday, he opened a show for Greg Miller, whose big, graphically sophiticated concentrations of American pop culture seem as much at home in Austin as in his current base, Los Angeles. Already, several of the pricier pieces had sold, pre-opening.
Artist Greg Miller and girlfriend, graphic designer Barbara Chan
One of the joys of this job is reconsidering people on repeated exposure. I can’t claim to know Pressley personally, and this black-clad, silver-maned, vaguely distant figure — who might look more comfortable in Berlin or Chelsea — usually hovers in the margins of his own shows. But I’m now willing to give Pressley credit: He saw this trend coming, identified it as “Austin” and as his own.
Talk turned to politics — don’t imagine that everyone agreed; it is Austin — at our table, which included Kate and Robert Hersch, who did such a good job with the Film Society gala, Austin Ventures foursome Carla and Jack McDonald, Julie and John Thornton and jaunty Brilliant publisher Lance Avery Morgan. Others nearby included Admiral Bobby and wife Nancy Inman, immaculately dressed Karen Landa and Dale Dewey, UT Fine Arts Dean Doug Dempster and his fundraising sidekick, Sondra Lomax, all-round arts philanthropists Sarah and Ernest Butler, place-namers Teresa and Joe Long, power pair Elizabeth Christian and Bruce Todd, Endeavor newsmakers Amy and Kirk Rudy, inveterately social Joan and Ben Bentzin, as well as cool redheads Melanie and Ben Barnes.
Cookie Ruiz, Melanie Barnes, Ben Barnes
Seems Ben was shopping at Central Market, when a woman approached him. “Are you that Barnes guy?” she quizzed. “Yes ma’m,” he answered. “Well you got something wrong in your column …” and, as you might guess, she lit into him. Ben apologized again, saying: “Just e-mail me at the Statesman and we’ll get it right.”
Rare image: Your columnist with hostess Maria Groten.
Ben Barnes, this giant among Democratic Party power-brokers — the man who might have been president had it not been for Dick Nixon’s dirty tricks — fell on his sword for your (unrelated) columnist.
If ever Austin charities instituted a league of competitive galas — and Lord help us if they did — Ballet Austin’s annual Fete would rank in the Top 5 every year.
Jack McDonald, Karen Landa, Dale Dewey, Carla McDonald
For the 2008 iteration, the Fete did not match the historic singularity of the Long Center opening, nor the international celebrity tally of the Nobelity Project or Roddick Foundation fundraisers. It wasn’t attended by as many political stars as benefits for health and human services, especially those dedicated to protecting women and children, nor as many sports figures flashing burnt orange as one sees at University of Texas events, nor the Hollywood glamour of the Texas Film Hall of Fame parties.
Kathleen Ward, Greg Ward, Jennene Mashburn
Instead, the Fete relies on one distinction: Class. Ascending the stairs to the Long Center plaza, one was met immediately with refreshments and warm welcomes from the many hosts. Eveningwear looked lustrous, stylish, never gaudy. Befitting the Frank Sinatra theme, a saloon singer crooned, while guests lingered too long, deep in conversation and glittery-eyed over the framed Austin skyline on a serene October night.
Frances Thompson, Robin Thompson, Lisa Trahan
On to the dining tent, where tables were spaced in a civilized manner and table-hopping was encouraged. Each station was laden with scented floral arrangements, but the one small element that made Maria and Eric Groten’s hosting efforts bewitching were the faceted, crystalline boughs that hung over most tables, mesmerizing the guests.
Erin Horton, Kate Hersch
The food, including intensely marinated hangar steak, came in modest portions, so nobody felt overstuffed by the time Ballet Austin’s dancers performed in the Dell Hall one selection from the weekend’s season-opening fare. Dance icon Suzanne Farrell was introduced by artistic director Stephen Mills, but she did not speak. During Twyla Tharp’s “Nine Sinatra Songs,” we mostly noticed the newcomers, who add strength and panache to the established troupe.
I am of the firm belief that Ron Berry can do anything. The cool operator with the open demeanor and the quizzical expressions is a technical wiz for multimedia companies such as Thinkwell. He founded the innovative theater group Refraction Arts, opened the Blue Theater in a warehouse behind Goodwill Industries on Springdale Road. He co-wrote the most ambitious locally-conceived epic I’ve ever witnessed in Austin, “Orange,” which dramatized civilization’s decay in a Los Angeles-like metropolis.
His highest achievement, however, might the be the Fuse Box Festival, which combines theater, dance, art, film and other forms in what some critics have called the most provocative such festival in the country. It’s an international event that arrives each spring behind SXSW (April 23-May 2, 2009) and is distinguished by artist-friendly projects that promote creation of the pieces on the ground. This coming year, he plans to include collaborations with entrepreneurs and arts writers.
Berry spoke during a Fuse Box preview at the home of Steven Tomlinson and Eugene Sepulveda. The Rude Mechs’ Lana Lesley also testified about the fest’s effectiveness to a small group that included philanthropists Amy and Kirk Rudy. Video testimonies from playwright Lisa D’Amour, the collaborative artists in the Debate Society and director Phil Soltanoff continued to build the case for the 2009 iteration that will include experimentalists Forced Entertainment, Nature Theater of Oklahoma and Miguel Gutierrez.
It doesn’t take much to draw a crowd to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum on a crystalline autumn evening. This week’s occasion was debut of the Kay and Hayes Pitts Family Pavilion. That’s a rather long name for a lovely niche in the gardens for weddings and other such formal occasions.
Colleen Briggs, Peggy Frary, Barbara Kelso
Already, the repository of Austin’s most celebrated — and sometimes misunderstood — sculptor hosts hundreds of weddings, parties and other social events each year. It’s the mainstay of the nonprofit arts group. This curled platform, defined partly by water and made formal by a metal overhang, feels organic, green, emotionally taut.
Ransom Baldasare, David Webber
Dignitaries were present: sculptor Charles Umlauf’s widow Angeline, modernist painter Michael Frary’s widow, Peggy, museum director Nelie Plourde.
Erin Rogers, Rachel Farris, Jessica Bourne
Also social luminaries, such as Nieman-dressed Karen Landa, Ohio-electioneering-bound Robert Nash, architect David Webber and his euphoniously partner Ransom Baldasare and salon owner Barbara Kelso. The catering, by Lyndie Clement, was elaborate and exquisite. Tunes by trumpeter Ephraim Owens made the night smile indulgently.
Despite the conflicting Longhorns game, the Long Center was packed to the gills for concert pianist Anton Nel’s date with the Austin Symphony Orchestra. The Austin superstar is a veritable computer of keyboard music, playing a Schumann and a Mendelsohnn like there was no tomorrow. Peter Bay had the audience on its feet time and again for the glorious sound in the Dell Hall.
I wish Christopher McCollum were there. Many years ago, the theater scenic designer, who now works in Memphis, accompanied me to a symphony performance at Bass Concert Hall. After spending the previous years working in Swiss, French and German theaters, McCollum, a returning Austinite, was horrified.
The symphony fell dead on the ears. Not only was Bass Concert Hall cold to the sound, but the previous music director could not rouse the musicians to any level of artistic passion. McCollum helped advise the early backers of the Long Center. He’s one of many unheralded arts lovers who deserve our gratitude.
We ran into Southwestern University Dean Paul Gaffney and orchestra conductor Lois Ferrari, saddened by the death of the school’s swim couch, Danny Davis, and into Claude and Susan Ducloux (pictured), who told a sweet story about seeking out records of Claude’s father, Walter, who co-founded Austin Lyric Opera, at the Prague Opera, where the elder Ducloux conducted in the 1940s.
Ecstasy is not a word commonly associated with a museum event. Yet the Austin Museum of Art’s La Dolce Vita festival at Laguna Gloria was as close to a bacchanalia as one can obtain in the visual-art business.
Renee Miller, Isabel Stensland, Anna Kichorowsky
The weather, of course, cooperated. Bliss on the banks of Lake Austin. Packs of pleasure seekers roamed the grounds, dipping their glasses for the grape and scooping up the delectables served by dozens of Austin restaurants. We met bankers and artists and just plan art lovers. Everyone glowed.
Michele Skelding, Carlos Ortiz
We ate rare steak and tuna. Also ribs. Seafood in a wrap. Healthy stuff in small portions. The only signature wine we tried was a new red from Becker Vineyards, our perennial favorite. The other estate booths were mobbed. Twin Liquors, of course, handled the rest of the thirsty at multiple tables.
Hilary Schmidt, Eli King
At 9 p.m., the mob grew restive. A DJ kissed the dance zone located deep in their brains. People from all sorts of backgrounds — especially women, who beamed contentment in this setting — writhed in front of the small stage. Bacchus would be proud.
Remember Nicholas Rodriguez? He played Tony in “Master Class” and Ramon — yes, in the buff — in “Love, Valour, Compassion.” both at Zach Theatre. He lent his lustrous tenor in workshop and student productions at the University of Texas and elsewhere.
Well Rodriguez quickly worked his way up the theatrical ladder, appearing on Broadway in “Tarzan” and in numerous American and European tours, often in leads (Jesus in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” Che in “Evita,” Claude in “Hair,” etc.)
Now he’s been selected to appear on Monday for a Disney-ABC Television Group Casting Project showcase, performing for industry types. He’s among 13 performers culled from 600 candidates who will be afforded this extra expose at the Acorn Theatre in New York. No word on whether this will be ultimately televised.
For all the normalcy of his life, Watts has always been chastened by danger.”
“Living in Los Angeles, we kept moving one step ahead of the violence,” he says. “We made it out to Thousand Oaks, and right away there was a murder right across the street. Great area. But it just kept coming. We lived through our share of earthquakes and race riots. It just got hairy.”
So he loaded his family up for the move to Texas and a superior Leander school district for his daughters. Chris Rhea’s yearning song “Texas” played a role. (Watts’ story brought the lyrics to my mind. He instantly begins to sing them.)
As soon as he arrived, a massive storm cell hit Jarrell and the surrounding area.
“‘I thought you said we were going someplace safe,’ my daughters said.”
Memories of big storms during his Oklahoma childhood also may influence his art of jeopardy.
“I remember waking up all the time in the night to those World War II sirens going, my mom and dad with flashlights, taking us down into the cellar. How can that not scar you?”
He also shares with his fellow Baby Boomer a lingering Cold War nuclear anxiety.
“I had a recurring where I’m in a theater and they announce we need to go home because we are under attack. I’m running through my neighborhood and there’s a ditch. I jump in. A flash with no sound comes running through the neighborhood.”
That anxiety manifests in more than nightmares. During Desert Storm, Watts was convinced that the big one had come, and so searched out culverts and drains to hide his family.
A 30-minute coffee session at the Green Muse on West Oltorf Street does not fully excavate the motivations behind Watts’ images of anxiety, but the surface is now permanently scratched.
“When I go to the place where I want to create, that’s the stuff that’s there.”
Watts’ biggest triumph — an album cover with a “Silence of the Lambs”-like mask for one-hit wonders Quiet Riot — also represented a low point in his business acumen.
“When I met them, they were practicing in a hand-made studio next to a Midas brake store,” Watts remembers. “I thought: ‘These guys are not going anywhere.’ I did the job for just $2,000 (with no royalties). The album went triple platinum. They sold that image on everything. Just when MTV started, I walked by the television to see a Quiet Riot studio concert. The camera panned audience and everyone wore a plastic replica of the mask I made. It as a real freak-out moment.”
Watts was primed for big profits when the second album Quiet Riot came out — his contract was “the size of the New York phone book” — but the recording tanked. He was never into QR’s music anyway, preferring classical or class rock from his youth, acts like Led Zeppelin.
“I don’t lift a brush without music on,” Watts says. “I get lost in it”
“Go figure,” Stan Watts says. “Maybe I need to lie down on the couch for this question.”
No, Stan, that’s for emotionally unsettled. You’re the definition of functioning mental hygiene, father of five grown daughters, a longtime householder concerned about property taxes and quality education.
“My work has always been dark,” Watts says. “I always put a low-key, low-light affect into my pictures.”
Given a normal turn of events, Watts would have spent the past few decades working the Oklahoma oil patch like his hometown buddies. But in 1976, he entered a painting in a national contest. His image was selected to appear in a New York exhibition — he took the train to the big city to participate — and it was reprinted in a major publication, “200 Years of American Illustration.”
One image became his passport to an art career in California, then the epicenter of illustration. He was hired to design rock album covers for groups like Black Sabbath, advertisements for products like Friskies cat food (“it paid the bills big time”) and the posters for movies such as “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “The Howling.”
To match these projects, he invented a quirky painting technique. He took composite photography of sculptural elements or, say, a drawing in black and white, then blew up that image into a large print. He quickly applied an acrylic sealer to create a textured surface, after which he substituted colors for black and white.
“It creates a niche between photography and illustration,” he says. “Illustration at the time, in the 1970s, was very bright, flat, smooth. My stuff is the antithesis — moody, dark, textured — more realistic than illustrated.”
Not Headbanger or Wolf or some other tough biker handle. Just plain, Midwestern Stan. Stan Watts.
Alright, yes, he rides a motorcycle. But not a chopper or a touring bike. Just an Indian Chief Vintage, an elegant red-and-cream, American-made machine that looks like something out of the Jazz Age.
So hardly a rebel — with or without a cause.
Watts is a nice guy with a sunny disposition. So why has this stubborn non-malcontent spent the past 30 years dreaming up psyche-searing images — slashers and storms, creepy puppets and snaking tornadoes, anthropomorphized animals and anatomically incorrect humans — for rock album covers, movie posters and edgy advertisements?
For 10 of those years, this son of Ponca City, Okla. has made those nightmarish pictures in suburban Cedar Park. Here he sits at a South Austin coffee shop, hair slightly stringy, but still rocker-ready for a man in his mid-50s. He grins readily from behind his pale-colored road glasses.
So why the unsettling pictures?
“Go figure,” he says. “Maybe I need to lie down on the couch for this question.”
For his part, Joseph had never seen the “O.C.” One thing that clinched McKenzie for the “Johnny Got His Gun” role was a candid Web image.
“I saw a picture of Ben walking down the street of LA — whistling. Nobody whistles. Not in LA,” Joseph says. “I said ‘That’s the one.’ He has to look like he stepped off the battlefield in World War I. He has to be an Everyman. He has to be a boy at the beginning and a man at the end.”
After just a few screenings, he’s been delighted by the reaction of McKenzie fans to the material, composed almost entirely of words and very little cinematic visualization.
“It’s been a long time since people listened in movies,” Joseph said. “Audiences, younger audiences, are having that experience for the first time. It’s a bench, a chair and Ben.”
Joseph received two calls after the first screening in Washington D.C., one from Mark Cuban’s group, asking what cities they’d like to play, the other from the Pentagon asking if he wanted a tour.
“Ninety-eight percent of films don’t get distribution,” Joseph says. “How did we get here? This is surreal. Thank god for Dalton Trumbo and Ben.”
Poised beyond his years, McKenzie, 30, is a veteran of saturated media promotion, having survived 92 episodes of an evening soap opera with generational impact. Joseph, 51, runs Garry Marshall’s Falcon Theatre and has won awards as a director and producer in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Yet theater doesn’t produce the kind of 24-hour attention that a hit TV show generates.
McKenzie and Joseph came together over matching needs. Joseph was obsessed with the stage version of “Johnny,” as well as Jeff Daniel’s legendary 27 performances in the role (at McKenzie’s current age). McKenzie was looking for ways to build on the career platform of “The O.C.” — for which he expresses gratitude — while escaping the peg as a brooding, good-looking kid.
“It lasted only four seasons,” he says of “The O.C.,” contrasting it with other pop watersheds like “90210.” Instead, he wants to follow in the footsteps of actors who outgrew their youthful vehicles. “There’s a guy you may have heard of — Johnny Depp — likeable guy, pretty good actor. He was on a show called ‘21 Jump Street.’”
McKenzie, who has been stumping for Barak Obama in his spare time, hadn’t read the Trumbo book, but was immediately entranced by it when the “scary” project was proposed.
“The writing is very rich; the character is incredible,” McKenzie says. “You get very few chances to play something like this on stage or in film in your life. And it’s so timely. The story is almost 100 years old, if you consider it takes place in World War I, but we’re still talking about generals sending 18-year-old boys — and now girls, too — off to war that they don’t understand while they were there.”
Benjamin McKenzie, like his primary medium, is cool.
Rowan Joseph, like his, is warm. Very warm.
Seated side by side at Jo’s Hot Coffee promoting their movie, “Johnny Got His Gun,” the television actor and the theater director present a study in extreme contrasts.
Austin-bred McKenzie, star of “The O.C.” and the upcoming TV pilot sketched out as “L.A.P.D.,” could be any size. His physical presence concentrates instead in his cleanly sculpted features and aquamarine eyes.
His forehead tilts forward, not as a weapon in a charm offensive, but almost to hood his responses. McKenzie keeps something in reserve, an essential on the screen. (A budding Robert Redford then?)
He speaks in short, declarative sentences, factual without elaboration, while avoiding the impression of obfuscation. (“I live a quiet life in the hills above L.A. Way up. Above the perpetual chaos of Hollywood and West Hollywood. A little yard. A dog. I hang out at my house.”)
Pennsylvania-born Joseph is a rumpled eruption of emotions. Always in movement, always in thought, he’s making intellectual connections — theater, books, movies, actors, lighting — faster than anyone could absorb them.
If McKenzie recedes into reflection, Joseph can’t wait to rhapsodize about his first movie project, how he envisioned McKenzie as Dalton Trumbo’s injured World War I soldier after seeing his “Junebug” and a picture on the Internet; how the movie was made on an $83,000 budget with just a bench and a chair, how he relied on his theatrical background to simulate water with $53 worth of dry ice.
Most miraculous of all: How the 77-minute movie with a single actor was picked up for distribution on the first inquiry to Mark Cuban’s Truly Indie company.
“At Bass Concert Hall, you would have heard about half of those notes,” said Jo Anne Christian about the acoustics at the Long Center, which she helped promote. Indeed, Leila Josefowitz’s shimmering cascades of sounds and entirely original cadenzas for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto would have been lost at the University of Texas hall where the Austin Symphony Orchestra formerly played.
Wayne Bell, Jane Sibley
This was the first official concert of the first official season for ASO at the Long Center. (Only two years to go until its 100th anniversary.) Some in the crowd, like Christian, were draped in gems. ASO doyenne Jane Sibley trailed a russet-colored wrap while clinging to the arm of preservationist architect Wayne Bell, a third major player in the Long Center development.
Manuel Chavez, Lorena Martinez
Symphony first-timers such as Lorena Martinez expressed intense pleasure at the program, which included Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger” prelude, Stravinsky’s “Firebird” Suite and a surround-sound piece, inspired in part by the Congress Avenue bats, by Christopher Theofanidis and Mark Wingate.
Lisa Spencer, Jim Spencer
Not sure what the formal reviews will say, but I personally was impressed by the tonal richness of all four pieces as heard from the mezzanine, right in front of UT composer Dan Welcher and down the row from Zach Theatre exec Elisabeth Challener and hubbie Brett Bachman. (Prospecting the Long Center as a new home, Elisabeth? We won’t tell.)
James Garza, Abel Guevara
Audience members ran the gamut from music-composition graduate students in jeans to senatorial-looking businessmen in tuxes. The plaza was once again the place to congregate before and after the concert as well as during intermission. The Long Center organizers have wisely positioned an elegant refreshment franchise out there. Work it!
How many season launches become routine recitations of standard events? Many of them, over the years, at the University of Texas Performing Arts Center. Not this one. It’s premier facility, Bass Concert Hall, has been out of commission for months. Its staff has been reorganized and its only programs — other than student and faculty work — have been scattered concerts and one lame musical at Hogg Auditorium.
Wei Wei, Amy Lu, Shell Ysng
So anticipation ran high at the McCullough Theatre on Thursday as the PAC staff and Doug Dempster, dapper dean of the College of Fine Arts, introduced the acts for the coming year. Among those in the noshing crowd: Former PAC leader Pebbles Wadsworth and veteran social leaders Ann and Roy Butler, who I don’t see out much these days.
Greg Krieg, Danielle Hoxie
Arts reporter Jeanne Claire van Ryzin has done an excellent job of keeping readers up to date on the calendar, so I won’t belabor the actual schedule. Some of the familiar names on the bill (some deceased, but lending their artistic inheritance): Philip Glass, Bill Cosby, Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Itzhak Perlman, Frederica von Stade, Samuel Ramey and Sonny Rollins.
Ann Butler, Pebbles Wadsworth
Of course, we musical queens are terribly excited about the strongest touring season ever — particularly “Wicked,” “Spamelot” and “Avenue Q” — gift of the Long Center, which cleared out the Bass schedule.
Back on his old stomping grounds, Matthew McConaughey dived into Barton Springs, attended a lopsided Longhorn victory at the expanded Royal-Memorial Stadium, hung with Austin buddies and titillated admirers with his appearances at the Paramount premiere of “Surfer, Dude,” which he produced as well as starred in, and the after-party at the Belmont, where he kindly allowed his picture to be taken with fans, even though cameras were generally forbidden.
If there’s one thing the Bronze One knows, it’s how to chill. It’s not that his movie career has slowed down. Besides “Surfer, Dude,” which is unexpurgated McConaughey almost as much as “At Liberty” is all Stritch, his co-starring role in “Fool’s Gold” with every dude’s girlfriend, Kate Hudson, and his potent supporting turn in “Tropic Thunder” also appeared in 2008. “Hammer Down” and “The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” are expected in 2009.
McConaughey has worked pretty steadily since Richard Linklater’s “Daze and Confused” broadcast his core persona to wider audiences in 1993. Many a brash young movie star has faded before the 15-year mark. Not McConaughey. His prolific mixture of light comedies and fairly substantive dramas begs comparison with another native Texan and sometime Austinite, Dennis Quaid, also compared to Marlon Brando in his youth, although for different reasons. (And to round out the coincidences, Elaine Stritch actually dated Brando, until the former convent girl fled that Lothario’s apartment when he emerged from a back room in pajamas.)
Here’s the point: McConaughey is no slacker. Yet is he milking his looks and charm while reaching no higher than the lowest rungs of his talent potential? Ask people which of his roles they remember most, and they’ll say David Wooderson from “Dazed and Confused,” way back at the beginning of his career. Since then, he’s confounded his critics in “Amistad,” “A Time to Kill,” “Lone Star” and other movies, plus he was memorable in “Reign of Fire” with Christian Bale.
Yet will anyone care about McConaughey when, like Stritch, he’s 83?
I hope so. He’s a genial guy. And like Quaid, he’s been generous to his partly adopted city of Austin. Perhaps he won’t have to suffer, as Stritch did, to discover that it’s really all about the work.
When she was not performing her soul out for Austin Cabaret Theatre with a six-piece orchestra, Broadway legend Stritch walked obsessively in the West Campus area, dropped by Starbucks and Eddie V’s, guarded against those diabetic episodes that threaten her everyday peace, and peppered fans with argus-eyed questions about Austin.
But mostly, she worked. With the help of ACT host Stuart Moulton, she and musical director, Rob Bowman, sequestered themselves inside a University of Texas rehearsal room, where she labored over “Elaine Stritch at Liberty,” the career-and-personal-history show she has performed worldwide since 2002.
Note that date. She has delivered the act hundreds of times since its inception as a collaborative project with The New Yorker critic John Lahr and director George C. Wolfe. In the two-part show, Stritch tells her own rollercoaster story and sings numbers she has performed thousands of times — the first she introduced during the revue “Angel in the Wings” — in 1948! So why the need to rehearse?
“She’s a perfectionist,” Moulton said during a post-show cool-down at Rain on Sunday. “Everything must be just right.”
That, and, as an artist, Stritch has continued to search for meaning in “At Liberty.” Songs, such as “The Ladies Who Lunch,” which she once performed with ferocious acidity, or “I’m Still Here,” which in other hands sounds almost like an anthem, she now delivers with potent helpings of vulnerability and mortality.
Austin audiences embraced Stritch and her still-robust Broadway belt with respect and affection, which Stritch returned in kind. (Moulton reports that she reserved the highest praise for them: “They get it. They get it!”)
Yes, we got it. And, into her ninth decade, Stritch’s star has never hung higher.
Two major celebrities tarried in Austin last week.
One is 83, the other somewhat younger, 38, hauling around an even younger girlfriend, 24, and a newborn in tow.
One made her name on the stage, the other zoomed to stardom on the big screen.
One had never visited Austin before, the other once lived here, returned often after relocating to the West Coast, although his visits have been spaced fewer and farther between of late.
One performed a series of four 150-minute cabaret shows at the Mansion on Judge’s Hill while in town, the other made brief appearances before the press and public at the Paramount Theatre and the Belmont.
One was once known as a beauty, a wit and something of a lush, the other is known as a beauty, a charmer and something of a party dude.
One shrunk to mortal size once she left the stage, showing her age and disabilities, the other beamed with golden good health, clothed or half-clothed in public.
How Elaine Stritch and Matthew McConaughey responded to Austin and how Austin responded to these celebrities tells us something about all three.
I’m a firm believer in the proposition that, if you can put four or five thoughtful people around a table with a problem — and perhaps some food or drink — they can come up with a fresh solution within an hour. This time, the people in question were theatrical producer and new-form festival founder Ron Berry, business professor and playwright/performer Steven Tomlinson, arts editor and theater artist Robert Faires and philanthropist/activist Amy Rudy. (And me, but you knew that.)
The question: How to better include entertainment journalists in the Fuse Box Festival conversation. Berry’s fest has broken so many barriers in the past few years, between audiences and artists, between geographical separated innovators, etc., that it already has sparked interest in other creative capitals (and rave local reviews). The producer, who also works with multimedia companies in town, had yet to discover, nevertheless, how to include writers who traditionally arrive once a project is completed and write — usually reviews — for an audience that, for the most part, has not seen the art.
Almost immediately, the coffee discussion at La Tazza Fresca on Guadalupe Street struck out in promising new directions regarding a workshop connected to the fest. We generally agreed that traditional entertainment journalism was on the decline and that it must evolve — in terms of delivery media, form, content, readership, target disciplines — to remain a part of the larger artistic process. We also felt that Fuse Box could attract alert writers/entrepreneurs who could delve into the art-making process as witnesses, contribute exercises that could be turned into art and help audiences, artists and philanthropists write about their experiences.
I’m fairly certain something substantive will come from the short session, including a path for entertainment journalists of the future, who must face the evaporation of traditional jobs and genres, while adapting to exciting new ways to respond to art.
After “Sail Away,” which helped make Stritch into a star in the U.K. — she lived there for 13 years and earned a TV hit with “Two’s Company” — she headlined more musicals, memorably as the original Joanne in Stephen Sondheim’s “Company,” belting out the face-melting “The Ladies Who Lunch.”
This and other signature Stritch songs play crucial roles in full during “At Liberty.”
“This show works. It’s seamless,” she says. “Some fans ask: ‘How did you get all those songs to fit?’ I say: ‘Honey, you know I didn’t write those songs.’”
Her tart wit sometimes gets the intimidating but warm-hearted Stritch into trouble.
“I have an evil streak in me,” she says with a verbal wink about interacting with audiences. “No, I don’t. I’m especially crazy about the ones who come to see me. I wouldn’t let them down for anything in the world.”
Best known for musicals, Stritch also riveted audiences in nonmusical roles, including two indelible Edward Albee characters: Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and Claire in “A Delicate Balance” — one an angry drunk, the other a quiet but equally destructive lush.
“At Liberty,” written with The New Yorker theater critic John Lahr, doesn’t just traipse over her 60-year career, recalling the show-biz highs and lows. It’s a searingly frank examination of Stritch’s psyche and what drove her to success and, at times, self-destructive behavior. (One telling anecdote involves her shocking the producers of “Golden Girls” during an audition interview, likely losing a shot at that lucrative series.)
She’s gratified that “At Liberty” has proven as therapeutic for audiences as it has been for the title character and performer.
“I never let it be instruction, never preachy, “ she says. “Still, I feel like I’m doing some good for somebody. Young kids come up to me to say they’ve straightened out their lives. Thank God for the humor or it wouldn’t be playable.”
Stritch calls on deep reserves of energy and soul in nightly performances, despite ongoing battles with diabetes and arthritis, as well as the threat of exhaustion. (She and musical director Rob Bowman must rest for days at any of their stops, before and after a run of “At Liberty,” an opportunity she takes for inveterate sightseeing.)
“I walk into the theater looking like a gym champion who won the gold medal and walk out looking like Dame May Witty,” she jokes, recalling the British character actress who, late in her career, played ancient women. “It takes everything out of me. Talk about reliving your life. Hey, now I know what it’s like to work with Elaine Stritch.”
The self-threshing solo show prompts moments of philosophical reverie for the perpetual live wire.
“There used to be an expression my father used: ‘Give the boarders all the eggs they want.’ I’m not quite sure what it means, but I bet you’ll figure it out by the time I get to Austin.”
Ly and Kevin Barrett
Michael Mitchell and Martin Zimmerman
