Author: maryburruss

_{On June 18th, a two person actor/director team from the renowned Missoula Children’s Theater (MCT), will descend on the Paramount Theater with scenery, costumes, props, lights and make-up to train young wanna be Thespians and put on a musical in one week. Yeah, right! Even the most seasoned performer will tell you it is nearly impossible to put up a quality full-blown production in just six days. But amazingly it happens due to MCT’s expertise and tried formula for success.}

_{MCT co-founders Jim Caron and Don Collins started the educational residencies 37 years ago when they needed seven dwarves for a touring production of Snow White and were uncomfortable traveling long distances with children in tow. “Now MCT has 47 actor/director teams who visit over 1,200 communities in all 50 states and 16 foreign countries working with about 65,000 kids who perform for about 750,000 collective audience members,” says Chelle Robinson, Tour Marketing Associate at MCT.}

_{The program is more popular than ever as economically challenged school systems saddled with pressure to perform on SOL’s are cutting performing arts programs. “We are filled to capacity for both residencies this summer with a substantial waiting list for each,” says Paramount Theater Education Coordinator, Cathy von Storch who brought MCT to the Paramount in 2009 where it quickly doubled in size from one week–long residency to two. “MCT’s programs offer kids the chance to spark creative expression and learn commitment, teamwork, focus and follow through,” says Robinson of the intrinsic value in musical theater education. Sophia Brook (13) and her sister Chloe (11) have each been participating in the MCT program since 1st grade. “It’s a good opportunity for me to push myself to see what I’m capable of,” Sophia says. For children who may not crave the limelight but enjoy being part of the creative process MCT offers Assistant Director positions. Marc Rabourdin, 14, enjoys working with the technical aspects of the MCT productions. He says, “I’m not really into being an actor, but I really like the chance to learn the stuff behind the scenes, like sound and lighting.”}

_{Missoula Childrens Theatre makes local magic in every town they visit.}

_{One hundred twenty local children (grades 1-12) will participate in performances of The Frog Prince and Hansel and Gretel while kids who attend various other summer programs like the Boys and Girls Club will benefit from six individual drama workshops offered by the visiting MCT professionals. Lisa Brook, mother of Sophie and Chloe summarizes, “Our girls have been doing MCT shows for 7 years now, and every time, I am amazed to see everything come together at the end. Every year we look forward to the new production and are never disappointed.”} 

Missoula Childrens Theatre will hold a public performance of The Frog Prince on June 23 and Hansel and Gretel on June 30.  More information can be found at theparamount.net.

If you attended University of Virginia drama department’s production of Romeo and Juliet you saw something truly beautiful—and I don’t mean a tender rendition of Shakespeare’s most famous tragic love story. I mean the set. An intricate multilevel combination of stairs and faux cast iron flourishes interwoven with seeming miles of flowering vines, tall turn-of-the-last-century street lamps, and ragged fly drapes implying dangling Spanish moss all washed in a humid haze of luscious pink, blue, and purple lights. It was stunning.

Though the overall production was good, the scenery stole the show for me. (Having spent 12 years married to a scenic carpenter, five of which he co-owned the largest scenery shop in the mid-Atlantic, I know a few things about set design and construction.) Scenic design student Jeffrey Kmiec’s set showed off like a prima ballerina, spinning about the stage, posing and offering a statement. It was a high-quality professional set—a surprising find at the college level.

UVA’s atypical scenic success is attributed by Tom Bloom, chair of the drama department and head of the master of fine arts scene design program, to the exceptional people involved. “Where we are in the high caliber of our sets is credited to David Weiss and LaVahn Hoh. These two men set the bar for our program,” he says. Weiss who along with Hoh, literally wrote the book on theatrical special effects and teaches a course on the subject, established UVA’s design and technology program in 1974. It also helps to have superstar students. Bloom attends events like the University Resident Theater Association auditions to actively recruit extraordinary students. “We look for the best,” he notes. Students are accepted and work closely with the staff in a three-year rotation.

Kmiec, a recent MFA Drama graduate, was recruited to the school in this way. In addition to Romeo and Juliet he designed Pippin, Glass Menagerie, and Troy is Burning at UVA but had already earned some professional cred with set designs for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, Illinois Central College, and for a summer youth arts program outside of Chicago. He was attracted to UVA by the ample opportunities the department offers, which make him more marketable in a seriously competitive business. “UVA’s graduate drama program is unique in that it offers its designers an opportunity to design five main-stage productions over the three-year course of study,” he says. “This combined with excellent teaching opportunities, both in the classroom and in production laboratory, offers a well-rounded degree.”

Kmiec, who will be designing for the Arkansas Shakespeare Festival this summer, is in good company as far as employed alumni are concerned. Sara Brown, a 2005 graduate, is a member of the faculty in MIT’s theater department. She has worked for such prestigious companies as Bang on a Can (Evan Ziporyn’s House in Bali presented at October 2010 BAM Next Wave Festival) and with Jay Scheib on World of Wires at The Kitchen in New York. 2002 graduate student Jenny Sawyers won best scenic design at The Kennedy Center College Theater Festival and was hired the next day to be an associate designer for award-winning Broadway set designer Santo Laquasto. Pretty impressive.

“They can really drill down into a discipline in their major,” says UVA drama’s technical director Steve Warner, who oversee’s the scene shop at the school. It doesn’t hurt to have a fat budget and two tricked out theaters—the Culbreth, a traditional proscenium arch style theater and the Helms a versatile black box theatre. (A third, the Caplin, a thrust stage, is currently under construction.) The Culbreth has a new state of the art computerized rigging system making the raising and lowering of “flying” set pieces easier. The Helms has a 16’x16′ trap space under the stage floor which facilitates actors and props entering and exiting from below. Soon a Kuku six access CNC router (Cav-bot), which is paid for by the School of Architecture, will be installed in the Department of Drama’s prop shop for collaborative use. This will allow students to draw things in 3-D on a computer then watch as a robotic arm carves it to scale out of foam facilitating more accurate prop and set execution.

Kmiec sites interdisciplinary work, like working with architecture students to create set pieces, as the magic that makes scenic design a worthy artistic endeavor. “It is in those collaborations—where you can see the idea turn into reality—that for me the real theatre happens,” he says. However the magic happens, in UVA’s theaters, it happens with mind-blowing sets.

Hold on to your top hats and canes all you Gleeks and other lovers of show tunes because Shelly Lee Cole and Ken Ellis are mashing up two of your ab fav composers for their new show, Phantom of the Follies. Oh! you guessed it from the title didn’t you?

It is all Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim songs. But to let all the Musical Theatre challenged in on the joke, the title, Phantom of the Follies is derived from Webber’s 1986 Broadway blockbuster, The Phantom of the Opera and Follies Sondheim’s hit show form the 1970’s. The show features a multitude of tunes from each composer’s work including a medley from the highly recognizable, West Side Story and the touching ballad, I Don’t Know How to Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar.

Cole, whose formal training isin opera and Ellis, who honed his performance skills on the cruise ship circuit, previously produced two similar concerts for Play On!. 2006’s Broadway Delights spot lighted a mixed bag of Broadway composers from different eras while Broadway Now and Then (2009) showcased older music in the first half and newer Broadway tunes in the second. Phantom of the Follies will be the first time the entire focus is on only two relatively contemporary composers.

“We chose Lloyd Webber and Sondheim because they are two of the best known composers of the 20th century and they have a wealth of material to choose from,” says Cole when asked why she and Ellis selected these particular two artists. “But,”she adds,” I think it was mostly because we love singing Lloyd Webber and Sondheim music.” Webber is featured in Act One which includes selections from Phantom of the Opera, Aspects of Love, Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar and Sunset Boulevard. Act Two is all Sondheim, showcasing songs from Sweeny Todd, Follies, A Little Night Music, Company and Into the Woods.

The show will focus on the music, often presented Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme stye from two black stools front and center with accompanist, Alice Layman stage left on a little side wing. A few costume changes for effect and a minimal amount of choreography by Ellis will utilize the repainted multi level set left over from Play On!‘s recent production of For Colored Girls For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf keep the show visually interesting. Cole says, “There is lots we can do with blocking. It’s a really fun set to work on. In terms of real choreography, Ken will be doing a little soft shoe number to All I Need is the Girl from Gypsy.”

There will be no designed sound in the hour and fifty minute show, “except for the piano, our un-mic’d voices and the sound of applause,” says Cole. Play On! Artistic Director, Alex Citron is designing the lighting to set the mood for the various songs. For those of you who really want to put on the Ritz, there is a champagne meet-and-greet with the actors following the matinee performance on May 20th.

When asked what she enjoys most about putting Phantom of the Follies together, Cole sites the artistic process. “Just being able to collaborate with Ken, we just work so well together.” Or perhaps she means, as Sondheim put it in Sunday in the Park with George, “Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.”

It’s so good it’s almost Blasphemy. 

Spring is a time of homecoming for the American Shakespeare Center. It is the season when the touring company returns to the nest to roost and perform three shows in repertory. This year’s tour, intriguingly titled, “Almost Blasphemy”, consists of two of Shakespeare’s most adored plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale matched with John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. At first glance, the relationship of these three shows to the tour name and to each other may be difficult to discern.

“We title each tour like a rock band or recording artist usually title their tours,” says ASC Artistic Director, Jim Warren. “We’re trying to get something that relates to all three titles in some way; something that sounds fun to say; something that looks good on posters and t-shirts!”

“Almost Blasphemy” comes from the first scene in ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore where the Friar tells Giovanni:

‘Repentance, son, and sorrow for this sin:
For thou hast moved a Majesty above,
With thy unrangéd almost blasphemy’.”

Touring rookie actor, Eugene Douglas, sees themes of rash decisions with serious repercussions and conflicts between spirituality and earthly delights in this collection of plays. “I see motifs in all three of romantic relationships run amok,” he says. Douglas plays no less than five roles betwixt the three productions and describes the plays thusly, “With Tis Pity, you have a genre bloodbath. With Winter’s Tale, you have a lyrical tragicomedy. With Midsummer, you have magic and romance and slapstick at the forefront. Each play has elements of these things, but are unique in their individual presentations.”

The grouping of plays offers a variety of choices for new patrons as well as for repeat visitors to ASC’s Blackfriars Theatre. Midsummer Night’s Dream, which has been performed several times in the company’s 24-year history, is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies. ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore is a gory, twisted re-imagined version of Romeo and Juliet is rarely performed (this is the second time in ASC’s history). The Winter’s Tale, with it’s half tragedy/ half romantic comedy mash-up provides the perfect middle ground between the other two plays in both tone and popularity.

In order to keep the more oft performed plays fresh for ASC regulars, costuming is a key element. This season is the first time that Midsummer Night’s Dream will be performed in traditional Elizabethan dress. In contrast, the costume influence for ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore is Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. “The entire look of the show is something akin to ‘steampunk modern meets Alexander McQueen outrageous modern’,” says Warren. “Tis Pity has some outrageous modern costumes because it’s a lot like a Tarantino movie: violent/funny, dramatic/comic, full of smart characters with great dialogue. I also went with modern costumes for ‘Tis Pity so that audiences coming to see all three Spring Season shows get to see three very different flavors of costume styles.”

“I think each of these shows demonstrates a different level of reality,” summarizes Denice Mahler, a Blasphemy Tour actress. “They all, like life, evoke laughter and loss, tears of joy and pain. There’s a catharsis waiting to be had in each one.” Well, if that is blasphemy it sounds pretty entertaining.

For more information go to: americanshakespearecenter.com or call 1-877-682-4236.

When Tim Cunningham went to UVA’s Rural Area Medical Clinic in Wise, Virginia, he was reminded of visits he had made to medical clinics as a member of Clowns Without Borders. “It blew my mind how this clinic in the richest country in the world was run like clinics in rural Africa and Asia,” he said. As a capstone project for his nursing degree, Cunningham captured the patients’ experiences via recorded interviews. A few days later he had seven hours of stories and a mission to translate them into a palpable format “to raise awareness of these populations and their struggles of not having health care.” Drawing from his performance experience and a desire to incorporate more creativity into the medical learning environment, Cunningham distilled the recorded interviews into a one-man play.

“Out of Their Way” is currently a one-man show that Cunningham labels, “a work in progress.” It was recently performed at the school of nursing as an introduction to a workshop on effective listening skills for nursing and chaplaincy students. The 85-minute production features impersonations of people Cunningham interviewed at RAM delivering monologues from the collective material. “I interviewed about 30 people and I started hearing repeating themes,” he says. “The majority comes from one particular person and sound bites used from other people I interviewed.”

From a theatrical standpoint there are many problems with the show that detract from the intended message of compassionate care. Cunningham’s clown training peeps through the main fabric of the work at times, distracting the audience from the voices of his characters. He presents an entire monologue on stilts, supposedly to represent a tall person, which serves more in confusing the audience rather than enhancing the show. A newscaster character at the end of the show spouting out multiple facts about the failings of the American health care system is too heavy handed and out of context to the rest of the play, degrading the purity of the RAM patient characters and their words.

Where Cunningham shines is his interpretation of the people he met at RAM as “ He does a really good job of capturing the spirit of people and the challenges they face without insurance,” says Audrey Snyder, Assistant Professor in UVA’s School of Nursing. There are some truly wonderful moments in the production where the stories of this underserved population shines. One line from a character called Ed describes a catch 22 situation for an unemployed minor with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, “Too sick to work but not sick enough to get benefits.” Another character has just had several teeth pulled and is excited because his mouth will shortly be pain free, demonstrating gratitude for a service most of us would find appalling. And perhaps the most poignant and beautiful moment of the piece, is when the audience witnesses Eve’s physical reaction to clear vision after receiving glasses from RAM as she begins to read to her young son–a puppet Cunningham has cleverly constructed out of props used in previous monologues.

What surprised Cunningham most during his interviews were the positive attitudes of the patients. “No one was expressing self pity. People were so grateful.” Although the experience of “Out of Their Way” was a little uncomfortable (like the guy who had his teeth pulled) the overall effect is a positive one.