A Berkshires Summer Hit

Every so often, one works on something truly new, and it works out so well!

The raving reviews are now in (cast: beware if you don't read reviews!) of pride@prejudice by Daniel Elihu Kramer at Chester Theatre Company (the site of my Berkshires directorial debut).

Here are a few links and quotes:

Fuse Theater Review: Jane Austen Tweets In Chester, MA

"...two hours with nary a dull moment and the actors seem to be having as wonderful a time as the audience..."

The Arts, Etc.: pride@prejudice

"Austen's leading characters are all there [played by a cast of five]. They've stepped out of the novel's pages, not the least bit dusty, and filled the stage with vibrant life."

"Crisply, sensitively and lovingly directed by Ron Bashford ..."

In The Spotlight: pride@prejudice

"This is a delightful production and one not to be missed. It breathes new life into a beloved story, and very well could inspire a re-reading of the novel."

Only six performances left! If you can make it to Chester, please come!

www.chestertheatre.org

Just a little bit more

So, some of you know that my brother, who teaches high school drama in Santa Rosa, CA, is taking a group of students to perform at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland this summer. Due to the woeful state of finances in California, his school is offering no financial support -- and the demographics of his school mean that parents cannot afford to pay either.

My bro has done an amazing job of raising most of the money needed for this life-changing journey for these students. But he still could use a little bit more, including enough for a very eager and hard-working alternate!! Here's the info. Send a check!! (In any amount.)

The Elsie Allen High School Drama Department is invited to perform at The American High School Theatre Festival at The Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland in August 2011!

Who We Are
Since the opening of Elsie Allen High School in 1994, the drama department, under the direction of Rob Burt, has been fostering creativity and helping students develop intellectual and social skills to carry them into the world beyond. This full-time program is designed to serve the needs of a highly diverse student population (about 75% Latino) by providing as many opportunities as possible to develop acting, directing, writing, designing, and interpretive skills.

Our Special Artistic Focus
What really sets Elsie Allen apart from other programs is the rigorous ever-evolving playwrighting curriculum that has produced several award winning plays. As there is no better way to learn theatre than to create it, all Drama Production students write a fully realized one-act play. This year we will also be taking submissions from the advanced drama class. The top four or five are selected for production in the annual Elsie Allen Playwrights One-Act Play Festival. Mr. Burt casts and produces the plays. The students do everything else. Early in the process the writers collaborate with a student director of the play. Each student in the cast is responsible for a different design or technical element; hence the students learn how to develop the work organically, always honoring the words of the playwright. At the Lenaea High School Drama Festival at Sacramento State University Elsie Allen’s original productions have been very well received earning many awards for playwrighting, directing, acting and overall performance.

Our Remarkable Opportunity
After Leslie McCauley, the Artistic Director of the Santa Rosa Junior College Theatre Department, nominated Elsie Allen an extensive application was submitted to the American High School Theatre Festival Board of Advisors. This group, made up of college theatre professionals, chose Elsie Allen to be one of a 75 American high schools out of over 2000 nominees to perform at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest theatre festival in the world, based on its outstanding playwrighting program, awards, and educational philosophy. Because the trip will occur outside of the school year Santa Rosa City Schools cannot sponsor it. Elsie Allen will send students, Mr. Burt and a chaperone to the Fringe Festival for two weeks in August of 2011 to perform a group of plays written by past and current Elsie Allen students.

Why We Deserve Your Support
No Sonoma County school has ever had representation in this festival. In Elsie Allen’s existence, no program has ever been invited to travel outside of the state. For the city and county to rally around this school that has weathered such a long history of perceptual misunderstanding would serve to lift its public image. Great things have been achieved at Elsie Allen over the years; it is time the public has the opportunity to participate in our success.

How You Can Help
We are closing in on our goal of the $60,000 it will take to send 8 students with a chaperone and Mr. Burt to perform in the 2011 American High School Theatre Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. We'd love to raise enough to send an additional, alternate student, too! Please call 707-528-5489, email rburt@eahs.srcs.k12.ca, or write Elsie Allen High School directly at 599 Bellevue Ave. Santa Rosa 95407 for more information or simply send a check for any amount made out to EAHS Fringe Aid. Thank you.

Darcy!

I'm pleased to announce my Berkshires directing debut!

pride@prejudice, a wonderous small ensemble adaptation of the Jane Austen novel, by Daniel Elihu Kramer, for the Chester Theatre Company. July 6-17.

The play not only tells the story of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy, but explores our love affair with the great book, Austen and the pleasures of reading (and writing blogs!).

More info is here.

Capitalism and Art Anime

For freelance theater folk, this is a recognizable conversation... but perhaps it says even more about the way a consumer-based culture is blind to the desires of art. It's also a great example of the way in which animation is effectively alienating.

Civility rules (or at least tries)

I just got this announcement of our Pride week here... note the mixer for members of Pride Alliance and the campus Christian group!

A college review

For an example of a nicely descriptive college theater review, click here.

The King has exited

More pics later, but for now, this one, and a few more if you click...

Exit The King II

My students collaborated on this promo for our production of the (until recently) neglected Ionesco classic...



(pics by the cast & Michelle ; video by Josh; end sound by Greg)

Exit The King

AC Theater and Dance on Facebook

Follow Amherst College Theater and Dance Department on Facebook!

Click here!

Hero's Hubby...

Hero's hubby snapped some pics of Much Ado last week. Click on either pic to see more.

The best things in life... ISC in L.A.

This nifty website maps the locations of well over a hundred Shakespeare festivals and theaters across the country, far more than I'd thought. America is truly the land of Shakespeare performance, thriving far and wide, despite an overall lack of big media attention.

One relatively young addition to this panoply of Shakespearean summer theater-making is Independent Shakespeare Company (ISC) in Los Angeles. The company offers all of its performances for free in Griffith Park, and has a standing company of actors who have been working with one another for up to a decade or more. ISC is committed to an authentic and specific artistic mission, and the founders work deliberately to include all members of the company in the evolution of that mission's praxis.

One day while I was driving in L.A. with the company's producing director, David Melville, he shared his opinion that a "professional" company is one that serves its audience. I was struck by the simplicity and artistically healthy attitude of his definition. As we all know, fiscal and status concerns can unduly influence the sincere work of theater-making, no matter what size the organization, and during every part of the producing process.

You can read about ISC's mission at their website under About/Mission+History. Personally, I felt the company's shared sense of purpose most palpably toward the end of our rehearsal process. Once so much of the basic work of analysis, staging and practice were out of the way (the bulk of the rehearsal period), the ISC folks were especially eager and adept at applying a thorough-going sense of story-telling to our work together.

A moment came when I could more specifically state the story of our production, in terms of everyone's understanding up to that point -- call it "the definition of what was emerging," if you will. Within a couple of days the company members were identifying and exploiting multiple opportunities to adjust and deepen their performances to bring out that story -- and inspiring me to make complementary improvements to the staging. Of course, as a director, I always try to unify a group of actors around a goal once they are comfortable enough in their roles, but I rarely have had the experience of an entire cast so uniformly stepping up to the plate, providing their own inspiration sans individual ego.

The L.A. Times review of "Much Ado" felicitously mentions "the company’s mission to bring appreciation of classical theater to a broader public." In practice this means an open park, free admission, an accessible style that includes audience interaction -- and a post-performance plea for donations to be tossed in buckets, with a heart-felt caveat that attendance alone is the most important contribution an audience member makes to creating live theater. In a professional landscape of freelance "actor-for-hire" and "management vs. artist" practices, this spirit of generosity -- reciprocal giving, rather than paying-and-getting -- is a feature of the experience that inspires both actors and audience members to be in a community with one another. In this way ISC provides an example of a mission that inspires creativity among its members.

With only a minimal marketing budget, ISC's focus on the primary interaction between cast and audience has helped them build a large and loyal following, mostly by word-of-mouth. In a consumerist culture such as ours, where a living production is often sold like an inert product, it is so easy to forget that theater is meant to be a shared experience. It's great to know it can be a celebration, with a simple and sustained commitment to that goal.

Send These Kids to Scotland!

In the wine grape country of Northern California -- Santa Rosa to be precise -- an unusually comprehensive high school theater program that includes a special focus on student playwriting, has been invited to perform at the grand-daddy of all international theatre festivals, The Edinburgh International Festival in the summer of 2011.

This is a great accomplishment for a multi-cultural, urban high-school theater program, and a testament to the value of arts education (one of its most ardent participants was recently named a Presidential Scholar). For the students who go to Edinburgh, participation in an international festival of this scope will be a life-changing experience.

The catch? They have to pay their own way. Elsie Allen High School is not the high school in Santa Rosa where the kids from affluent families tend to go, so they will depend on raising the money through as many small (and some large) donations as they can. The goal is $60K. Check out this video and note the number to call to contribute!

Upcoming: Will in L.A.

click on the sun above

Much Ado About Nothing
August 5 to August 29
Griffith Park, Los Angeles, California

Life is Still a Dream

It seems sometimes as though life turns in circles, like a dream... Earlier this year, I brought Sheila Callaghan's Fever/Dream to the students of Warren Wilson College. It is, of course, an adaptation of Calderon's classic, Life Is A Dream. Callaghan's brilliant take on the original was to mine its plot for contemporary themes related to the competing unrealities of corporate life and new electronic media.

Now, I've made plans to spend a night in New Mexico to see the premiere of the contemporary opera version by composer Lewis Spratlan. Spratlan won the Pulitzer Prize for the work, as presented in concert, but the upcoming Santa Fe Opera production is the premiere of the whole. Spratlan was my professor at Amherst College way back when, and I heard about the opera then. I've always wondered when it would find its way to the stage. So, it's oddly circular for me personally that I'll hear the work just before returning to Amherst myself.

A nifty NYTimes article about Spratlan and the opera is here. Could it be that the opera is finally having its debut (and Callaghan's play was so successful) because life today can seem so virtual, so dream-like?

Of course, I could be wrong, and mostly life is more circuitous than circular. It may be fitting that I'll be going to Santa Fe by way of Los Angeles, where I'll be directing Much Ado About Nothing for Independent Shakespeare Company. On second thought, that's a circle, too: I was in their inaugural production of Henry V on the lower east side more than a decade ago, before all this virtual nonsense was even dreamt of...

All that has nothing to do with this show, but it's refreshing to think that what is old can be new. And it's getting standing O's (yes I know how self-promotional that sounds! but hey, I'm packing and need a lift).

EXTENDED!

What the Butler Saw has been extended through June 6!

Read the rave here. If you are in the Asheville are, tix are available here.

Take a Peep

Amanda, the managing director for NC Stage, found this picture of a "What The Butler Saw" machine online. According to the source, these "tourist amusements used a set of flicking cards containing sequential photographs to simulate moving pictures; they were cheap attractions in the entrances to indoor amusement arcades on piers or on the seafront. They tended to contain quaint and voyeuristic flicks: a typical one still in use at Southend pier in 1963 had a butler peeping through a keyhole to see his lady employer showing her ankles and voluminous bloomers." The machine below may from the Edwardian era.

As an example of the inspiration for the title of Orton's last play, this photograph symbolizes Orton's was interest in the tension between exposure and voyeurism on a multiple levels.

In the well-known incident, Orton was arrested for withdrawing books from his local lending library, altering photos and captions, and returning the books -- a kind of vandalism, but one which turned unsuspecting library patrons into voyeurs and consumers of satire. To complete the picture, Orton sometimes spied on people as they looked at the altered books, to see their reaction...

When Joe Orton was jailed for defacing the books in his local library, the sentence (at least as described in retrospect) was considered harsh. Orton speculated the sentence for him and his boyfriend were stiff because of their sexuality. Orton credits his experience in prison with a revitalized conviction (no pun intended) that the power structure was thoroughly corrupt -- and with a new sense of freedom and courage in his writing.

Ironically, the books that Orton and his lover, Halliwell, creatively vandalized, are now preserved and on exhibit in the same library in Islington from which Orton first withdrew them.

You can see images of some of the altered book pages and dustjackets here, and the story of the incident here.

While some folks see What The Butler Saw as a mere farce, others see a more radical project behind Orton's work. I'm not sure that the play should feel like Pinter, but an interesting opinion about the playwright and current perceptions of him is here.

A review of our current production of Orton's What The Butler Saw has been published here.

pRiCk Up YoUr ReArS (e)

Have you seen the bio pic about Joe Orton, Prick Up Your Ears?

It's rentable (or Netflixable), but in the meantime, here's a link to a YouTube installment:



For info on the current Asheville production of Orton's What The Butler Saw, go here.

How would you define Ortonesque?

This is a nifty poster from 1975 Royal Court Theater revival of What The Butler Saw, recalling Orton's 'crime' of using creative cutouts to alter library books (and decorate his flat). The revival resurrected Orton's reputation, following the rather unsuccessful 1968 production of the play -- and Orton's grisly murder...

To find out more about Mr. Orton and his last, especially brilliant, play, go here.

Of course, the most direct way is to come to the theater!

Paint spoiler

I hate to give things away before opening, but this is already looking rather nice...

May 12-30, click here.