theaterboy®

Artistic flowering

Well, wouldja look at at that: Hyacinth is gonna produce a second show. And not by Robert Kapler, either...

Call for Actors for "Fifteen Rounds with Jackson Pollock"

Hyacinth Theater Co. is seeking nonunion theater actors for a production of a new full-length play, "Fifteen Rounds with Jackson Pollock," written by Bruce Clarke and directed by Delia Taylor. The play traces the artistic rise and fall of the expressionistic painter. The show will run July 21-Aug. 8 at Warehouse Theater, 1021 7th St, NW, Washington, DC.

Auditions will be held Monday, April 5 and Tuesday, April 6, 7-10 p.m., at Warehouse Theater Café (same address - 7th and New York Ave.). Rehearsals begin the week of June 6. No monologues required. Sides will be provided at audition. Copies of the manuscript available for perusal at audition.

Roles are paid by modest stipend.

Seeking five males, ages 25-55, and two females, ages 25-45.

Hyacinth Theater Co. was founded in 2002. Last summer it launched with the world premiere of "Love in Exile," about the life of V.I. Lenin.

For more information or to schedule an audition, contact Robert Kapler, Robert.Kapler@verizon.net, or call 301-403-8860.

For more information still, see this theaterboy entry.

More light shed on Mystery

Yale Rep and Second Stage Theatre have announced Thoroughly Modern Millie's Gavin Creel as the lead in Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's latest, The Mystery Plays.

Full story at Playbill.com...

Divas. Stepsisters. Drag

So the Washington Opera --whoops, the Washington National Opera, if you please -- is doing La Cenerentola, which as you all surely know is just Cinderella with variations, right? Tboy's two-stepping buddy Sean, who's like 5'10" and maybe 120 pounds, is playing one of the wicked stepsisters. That's right, drag at the Washington Opera -- and not just drag, but big, pageant drag. "They have me in so much padding that I look just like Divine," Sean sez, "minus the trashy clothes."

Damn, tboy was hoping for trashy clothes, too. Still, he's thinking Sean in a dress is still enough that Betty Brown Casey is gonna have an aneurysm...

Here's how you get cheap seats at the young-audience outreach performance. Well, not all of you: If Tboy is reading Artistic Director-boy's last comment correctly, he's roughly 85 now, so he'll have to pay full price...

Many of you were first introduced to Generation O through our Young Artist performance of 'Don Giovanni' last spring. We have another Young Artist performance again this year, and you are invited to join us on Saturday, April 17th at the Kennedy Center Opera House. Invitations have been e-mailed, but tickets are being held for our Generation O members. Order today before we sell out this event!

The afternoon includes a pre-performance lecture by renowned musicologist Saul Lilienstein, the performance of Rossini's comic masterpiece, 'La
Cenerentola' by the Young Artists, and a post-performance reception with an opportunity to meet the artists and your fellow Generation O members.
In addition to these events, you will also receive a Commentary on CD to prepare you for the event and access to our Generation O website that
provides the history of 'La Cenerentola.' This complete ticket package is only $25 or $20! Click here to purchase tickets today.

Monday playreading...

The Kenan Fund/Kennedy Center Artists-in-Residence
Present a reading of . . .

Belly of the Whale
By Scott Organ

With Daniel Frith, Jason Stiles, Brian Sutherin, Jennifer Etzkin, Maggie Marlin
and Rick Foucheux.

Directed by
Andrew Wassenich

MONDAY MARCH 29, 7:30 PM
AT THE WAREHOUSE THEATRE
1021 7TH STREET, NW
WASHINGTON, DC

ADMISSION IS FREE

SCOTT ORGAN is a graduate of James Madison University. His play City was produced at the Circle X Theatre Company in Los Angeles, where it won the LA Dramalogue Award for best new play. It was subsequently produced at the 1st New York Int'l Fringe Festival, directed by Tony Award winner Michael Rupert, and at The Flea Theatre in New York, directed by Kevin Moriarty. ...BELLY OF THE WHALE was first produced at the 2nd New York Fringe Festival, by The Filling Station and was co-directed by Andrew Wassenich and the playwright. ...

Space and the times...

From Deborah Kirby of the fledgling Journeymen Theater:

I could think of no better way than just proverbially standing on top of the hill and shouting ...

"WE NEED REHEARSAL SPACE!" :)

Ok -- that being said -- here are the particulars:

Space requirement: any open space - at least 20' x 20' (more is better) --
we will be happy to set-up and break-down if necessary
Dates: May 25 - June 26,
Tuesday - Friday evenings from 7:00pm - 10:00pm and
Saturdays from 10:00am - 2:00pm
Payment: $1,000 (or less if that is an option -- hee hee)
Benefits: A warm fuzzy feeling -- oh, and two tickets to see the show! :)

Thanks for your help and your thoughts! We will be happy to follow-up any
leads you might have!

Boxing Day at WSC

Next up in WSC's Arlington Dramatist Project reading series at Clark Street Playhouse:

Boxing Day By Martha King De Silva

De Silva's a member of DC’s Playwrights Forum, a Charles Macarthur Award nominee (for Stretch Marks, I think) and I wanna say her stuff's been done at Horizons, among other places. The show, according to WSC's wordsmiths, is "a stark and desperate portrayal of three women trapped by familial obligations into sharing a holiday feast." Delia Taylor directs; it's this coming Monday (the 22nd) at 7:30. Pay what you can; open-forum discussion afterward.

Final reading in the series, on the 29th, is of Eric Lane's Heart of the City -- "a lyrical ode to the Great City, exploring the personal and cultural struggles of its displaced inhabitants."

Steven Carpenter directs that one, with Jeff Baker, Ally Currin, Norma Fire, Maggie Glauber, Scott Kerns, and Daniel Ladmirault on the stools.

Local zeroes?

Among the issues buzzed about at the Helen Hayes party and afterward was why the Ford's Theatre production of 1776 was nominated in the non-resident musicals category. It was pretty much a home-grown effort, right, even if much of the cast was imported?

Was it a Helen Hayes fuckup? A fumble at Ford's?

Here's the deal, straight from the boss lady:

"Immediately following the nomination announcement, the management of Ford's Theatre brought to our attention that 1776 was in fact a resident musical, not a non-resident production, as it had been listed in the nominations.

We pulled the original notification form that the theatre had submitted for this show. Someone other than a member of the artistic leadership had completed this information and, in fact, indicated that the show was a non-resident production.

Ford's assumed complete responsibility for the error and said they would accept whatever the Helen Hayes Awards deemed an appropriate outcome. We sent this issue to the tabulators to evaluate if in fact the scores for the three nominees in [the categories for] which 1776 was cited fell within the range of all nominee scores in those categories. In each of the three categories - outstanding resident musical, outstanding supporting actor, resident musical, and outstanding lead actor resident musical - the scores legitimately qualified the artists and the production as nominees. They have been moved to the appropriate categories."

That's a neat-enough solution, Tboy thinks. Though as one correspondent pointed out, it doesn't help the show's designers, who might have rated nominations in the resident category. Or did HH make that calculation as well?

"Since the show was balloted as a non-resident production, for which design categories are not a part, the judges did not evaluate the work of any designers or directors. As the discovery was made long after the show closed, it would not be fair to re-ballot the show to include an evaluation of other work eligible for resident categories. 

While we have never encountered this situation before, it has prompted us to require that theatre information sheets must now be signed by either an artistic or managing director to verify designations such as resident/non resident; musical/play; and whether the show is a world premiere."

--Linda Levy Grossman

Sounds like a sensible fix. Next question?

KCACTF sked

From Gary Maker:

The below FYI gives you a bit of time to Web search the titles to see if there is any story that is of particular interest to you. I know that I, if in town, will want to check out John Patrick Shanley's Danny and the Deep Blue Sea -- the work that put Mr. Shanley on the theatrical map back in '84. Critics have called the work a "darkly uncompromising love story," but I don't believe any of the local theatre companies have ever presented this work by the Oscar-winning writer (Moonstruck).

Sez Tboy: Anybody know of a production?

We area theatergoers have had a chance to hear his dialogue come richly alive when Project Y did his Italian-American Reconciliation at the Source Theatre space a few seasons back. Can't recall where it was, but do believe Shanley's Psychopathia Sexualis was also produced here.

Tboy sez: That would have been at Source--and the director was Joe Banno.

American College Theater Festival Schedule Set For Kennedy Center in April

The Thirty-sixth annual American College Theater Festival has set the schedule for the six collegiate productions and the evening of ten-minute plays to be presented at the Kennedy Center next month. Each full production is the winner of a regional competition. Seventy-four productions competed for all expense paid trips to showcase their shows at the Kennedy Center. Each regional festival also featured a ten-minute play competition and the winners will be staged here under student directors with casts drawn from the participating full productions. Tickets are $5 per performance and there are a host of additional activities during the festival. Here's the line up:
• April 12 - 13 - A Plague of Angels by Mark St. Germain, University of Evansville and Buried, conceived and directed by Colette Searles, University of Maryland - Baltimore County
• April 14 - 15 - Good Morning Athens: A Rock Musical music and lyrics by Sean Keogh
• April 17 - Danny And The Deep Blue Sea by John Patrick Shanley, University of Texas-El Paso and the Ten-Minute Play Festival
• April 17 - 18 - Quid Pro Quo by Garrett Zuercher, Marquette University and The Human Show by Margolis Brown, University of Nevada-Las Vegas

Source of angst

So we've all heard by now that slow-paying tenants were one source of Source Theatre's woes. And we know that some of the same are feelin' the hurt from having their seasons disrupted by the sudden announcement of the house's imminent closure. Tboy has heard from theater types who think these companies deserve the grief--that they earned the burn.

Maybe. But what of that other company--the one that had signed a contract for a multi-week Source run? The one that had paid its deposit? The one that got minimal notice of the shutdown? Tboy hears that as of earlier this week, Source hadn't been in any hurry to return the deposit or negotiate any kind of compensation. (He's curious, by the way, about what penalties the contract specified for default by either party.) He also hears that the company in question isn't at all happy about the mess.

"It's probably worth noting," writes a source associated with this troupe, "that if the board at Source really thinks it's going to bring the place back to life again, busting contracts and alienating multiple theater companies probably wasn't the best course of action. I know we won't exactly be anxious to sign a new contract with Source when it re-opens, given this fiasco."

Williams festival auditions

From Chris Henley by way of Gary Maker:

The Kennedy Center seeks local Washington, DC* actors for TENNESSEE WILLIAMS EXPLORED

three plays which will be performed during the spring/summer of 2004,
total time commitment for each show listed below:

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
April 5 - May 30, 2004
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
May 10 - July 4, 2004
THE GLASS MENAGERIE
June 14 - August 8, 2004

Open Call Auditions: Friday, March 26, 2004
Appointment times will be given out, starting at 10:00am
All actors must arrive by noon in order to get an appointment for that day

Please prepare one Tennessee Williams monologue, no more than two minutes in
length

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Report to the Opera House Stage Door in Hall of Nations
BRING RESUME AND HEADSHOT

Audition Info Hotline Number 202-416-8203

* These are local (within 50 miles of the DC area) auditions only.
Please no out of town auditioners at this time.

If you have previously auditioned,
there is no need to do so again