"The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley" - Melissa Swick Ellington reviews the new show at Columbia Children's Theatre

With a charming production of The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley, Columbia Children’s Theatre brings to life a beloved character and his exciting escapades. I first learned about Flat Stanley when my visiting aunt arrived in South Carolina with a cutout of the character, which she photographed in various places for a grandchild’s school project. Decades later, I enjoyed sharing the “original adventures” book by Jeff Brown with my young daughter, indulging in a sense of wonder at the wide world and its possibilities. The whimsical nature of the Flat Stanley book series inspires lasting affection in readers; Columbia Children’s Theatre crafts a surprising and delightful world that entices theatregoers. As realized in the musical (with book by Timothy Allen McDonald and music and lyrics by McDonald, David Weinstein, Jonathan K. Waller, and Stephen Gabriel), the Lambchop parents enjoy a cozy family life with Stanley and his younger brother Arthur. After bedtime, the two boys take the audience on an exuberant “I wish I were” romp through cherished adventures (think Harry Potter and Star Wars) complete with light sabers and air guitar.  Stanley’s “star wish” leads to his dimensional transformation after a fateful encounter with a mysterious bulletin board.  He learns that the life of a “flat kid” has drawbacks (getting stuck in a tree when flown as a kite) as well as perks (mailing himself to Paris.)  Clever wordplay transpires in the script, such as the “porkchop” versus “lambchop” confusion that delighted my daughter.   Characters advise young audiences to “find a little adventure,” “write a letter and drop it in the mail,” and “make a star wish.”

Anthony Harvey as Stanley achieves genuine commitment to a child role without condescension, a true gift of a performance. He shares talents in physical comedy (the hilarious doctor’s exam) as well as an appealing voice, with a particularly poignant song while stuck in a tree.  Harvey handles the flat costume with admirable confidence – who knew Flat Stanley could shake maracas and rock a time step, not to mention a kickline? As Arthur, Riley Smith dives into exuberant antics that delight the young audience; he avoids caricature by offering lovable honesty and real sweetness. Actors demonstrate versatility in diverse roles: Evelyn Clary plays a wacky postal worker and a serene Mona Lisa, while Julian DeLeon moves convincingly from sincere father to bumbling physician to flashy entertainer.  Diane Gilbert, Rachel Glowacki, David Quay, Imani Ross-Jackson, and Elizabeth Stepp give vibrant portrayals of various characters that develop depth through nuanced ensemble work. Two different casts share the roles; additional performers are sure to be equally strong in a production of this caliber.    (That second cast includes David Quay as Stanley, Ruth Glowacki as Mrs. Lambchop, Toni Moore as Mr. Lambchop, Elizabeth Stepp as Stanley’s brother Arthur, and Taylor- Noelle Hammond as Mrs. Cartero.)

“Why say it when I can show you in an extravagant musical number?” asks a Hollywood character; engaging songs and dances illuminate Stanley’s world with infectious vitality. Cindy Flach directs and choreographs her talented cast with creativity and ingenuity, and Paul Lindley II guides enjoyable singing voices with skillful music direction. The design team (Donna Harvey and Jim Litzinger) proves that Columbia Children’s Theatre really can take us anywhere: characters travel through the Lambchop home, a park, a doctor’s office, California, Paris, and Hawaii.  Lambchop family members’ costumes and even their tabletop décor reflect a patriotic red, white, and blue motif.   Forgotten lollipops stuck on top of the bulletin board illustrate the designers’ meticulous approach; details like these bring a child’s world alive onstage.  Go see the show to find out how acting, directing, and design can collaborate on laugh-out-loud visual comedy with particular effectiveness in Stanley’s museum experience.  CCT shows last season included marvelous puppetry (Knuffle Bunny, Goodnight Moon); Anthony Harvey’s puppet design maintains this high standard.  Stage managers Ruth Mock and Susan Hitt keep the backstage domain moving with fast-paced fluidity and seamless transitions. Visual effects are very well done, especially the picture frame imagery and the lasting impact of Stanley’s unique and astonishing flatness.

But what do the kids think? The children at the matinee I attended were rapt with attention throughout the show.  Light saber hijinks, surf music and “wipe-out” moves, sharp and sassy tap dancing, surprising mailbox revelations, and exciting pursuit of the “sneak thief” proved riveting for even the smallest viewer.  My own five-year-old daughter, while skeptical before the big transformation (“Is Stanley REALLY going to be flat onstage?”), became firmly convinced of the production’s integrity: “My favorite part was when Flat Stanley got flat. I really love and appreciate this show. I think kids will like the show because it is cheerful.”

The mind-opening power of travel, discovery of adventure through sending and receiving mail, and lasting love of family will resonate with audiences of all ages. Through the ongoing development of Columbia Children’s Theatre, Artistic Director Jerry Stevenson, Managing Director Jim Litzinger, and their collaborators make our city a better place – to learn as part of a welcoming community, to raise a family, to love the arts. Thriving theatre for young audiences produced with gratifying commitment to quality in all areas: who could ask for anything more?

The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley runs through this Sunday, September 29. Call the box office at (803) 691-4548, or visit www.columbiachildrenstheatre.com for ticket information.

~ Melissa Swick Ellington

Directing Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" at USC - a guest blog by Louis Butelli

So, here I am, about to eat dinner at Al-Amir restaurant in beautiful downtown Columbia, and prepare for one last, pre-tech run-through of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia with the company of actors and artists at USC’s Theatre SC.  We’ve been on quite a journey to get to this point. Having spent weeks reading, studying, and blocking the play in a rehearsal hall, and then having spent this week on stage at Drayton Hall as the set grew up around us, we are now on the verge of sharing this play with the public. As the show’s director, I couldn’t be more excited.

A little bit of background. I’ve been working as an actor, director, educator, and writer for the past 17 years. Back in 1998, I booked a job as an actor for a touring Shakespeare company which, at the time, was in residence at USC. For a couple of years, we would come to Columbia to rehearse, and then open our shows at the Koger Center before taking them all over the country. Those early years were very happy times, and it was through working for this company that I met director Robert Richmond, with whom I have continued to collaborate ever since, frequently at the Folger Theatre in Washington DC, where we have broken attendance and box office records, and been nominated for (and won!) several Helen Hayes Awards.

Here in Columbia, Robert and I created a theater piece based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, called A Tale Told By An Idiot. A comic book-inspired mash-up of the Scottish play with the story of original English terrorist Guy Fawkes, it played at USC’s Lab Theater on Wheat Street, and featured the talents of USC undergraduate theater students. People loved it. Some years later, I founded a theater company, Psittacus Productions, in Los Angeles and chose A Tale Told By An Idiot as our inaugural show. Robert came out to direct, we opened as part of the first annual Hollywood Fringe Festival, then transferred to the Son Of Semele Ensemble Theater, where we sold out and extended. The press was excellent, and we received an LA Weekly Theatre Award for our efforts.

My point in all of this is that, for the past fifteen years, I have felt a deep connection to USC, to Theatre SC, and to the great city of Columbia. When department Chair Jim Hunter invited me back down to direct Arcadia, I jumped at the opportunity.

For me, Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia is a very special play. To begin, it appeals to two very distinct parts of who I am, both as an artist and as a human being, about which more will follow.

In the play, we encounter two sets of characters inhabiting the same drawing room in anestate on the English countryside. The first set is living in the year 1809. We meet a brilliant 13-year old girl, her randy tutor, her elegant mother, and various hangers-on. The whole household is scandalized – one of the guests, a minor poet, has been cuckolded by the tutor. There are allegations, handwritten challenges to duels, love notes passed, all while the young girl makes an important mathematical discovery, many years before the rest of the world would catch up. Additionally, everyone is in a tizzy because of a visit from that most famous of Romantics, Lord Byron, who is lurking, offstage, throughout the show.

The second set of characters live in the year 2013 – or, at least, in “the present day.” Here on the estate, we meet the noble descendants of the family from 1809. There are three siblings – a twenty-something male who is an Oxfordian mathematician, a saucy teenaged girl, and a fifteen-year-old boy who hasn’t spoken since age 5. Visiting the family, to research her next book, is a thirty-something author. Into this idyll charges a hotheaded, fame-hungry professor in his late thirties. He believes he is on the verge of a new discovery that will shake the foundations of English literary studies, particularly on the subject of Lord Byron. Gradually, the artifacts left behind from 1809 start showing up in 2013, and we watch the present day characters getting quite a few of the details wrong…while inching ever closer to the truth.

Certainly, the play is populated by very intelligent, hyper-articulate people, who spend quite a lot of time talking – about theory, about math, about landscape gardening, about art, about poetry. More interestingly, though, they also discover that no matter how sure one may seem about their place in the world, it is love – and lust, and the terrifying un-knowability of other people – that throws a wrench in the works every time. As the mathematician Valentine says in the play, these things are “the attraction that Newton left out.” They are the flies in the ointment of a deterministic universe governed by “free will.”

As I said, this appeals to me personally in two ways. First of all, I am a pretty huge nerd. I love teasing apart big ideas. I love intellectual sparring and heated conversation. I love to read, and I love to research. That said, I am also an actor and a flesh and blood male. As follows, I also love the irrational. I know what it is to feel swept up with passion. I know what it is to run away with the circus. This play presses both of those buttons for me, and I hope that it will for you, too.

“Well, good for him,” you might think in reading along. “But so what?”

My point, I suppose, is to say that, in coming to direct this play – or, in fact, any play – one must find a point of entry. One must attempt to answer the question “why produce this play, and why now?” In the current climate of economic fragility, global unrest, mass shootings, a shrill and polarized news media, and a deadlocked government, why would one choose to put on a play that is simultaneously a “big idea” play, and a classic English farce?

There are two potential ways of answering that question, one of which is complex, and one of which is…less complex.

The complex, or at least the “literary” answer goes something like this: Stoppard, particularly in this play, reminds me of two literary titans from the history of drama, Shakespeare and Chekov. To be a bit reductive, both of those playwrights were conversant in creating drama during times of – and through the lens of – great social upheaval. Shakespeare wrote sprawling, imaginative plays against the backdrop of Elizabethan England, a place full of religious conflict, wars against the Spanish, bouts of plague, and a linguistic explosion. Chekov wrote stories about families languishing at a remove from society and, ultimately falling apart, in the years directly preceding the Russian Revolution. Both playwrights are concerned with people wrestling with lofty ideas while simultaneously unable to escape some of the baser parts of their own humanity.

At nine years old, Stoppard, a Jewish, Czech national, moved to England with his mother and English stepfather who, according to the stories once said to young Tom, “Don’t you realize I made you British?” Having been displaced by World War II, and having embraced England, and indeed Englishness, Stoppard has created a literary world that is characterized by rapid-fire wit, philosophizing, and issues of human rights, censorship, and political freedom. And sex.

As for his literary debt to Chekov, one might consider his play cycle, “The Coast of Utopia, which addresses social philosophy in pre-Revolutionary Russia and won the Tony Award for Best Play. As far as Shakespeare goes, I suggest that one re-watch the movie Shakespeare In Love, for which Stoppard won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Intimidated yet? I certainly was!

Here’s the less complex answer. This play is really, really fun. Yes, it’s very talky. Yes, it’s very heavy on ideas. Yes, it isn’t packed with a huge amount of “event.” Sounds a bit like an episode of Seinfeld, no?

Seriously, though. When I think about the question of “why this play, and why now?” I keep returning to the Internet. One of the things that sets our little moment on earth apart from any other throughout all of history is the presence of the Internet – not just in our lives, but in our pockets, and on our nightstands, 24 hours a day, every single day.

When I think of my own propensity to click along, chasing a notion or idea from link to link, from graphic to video to article to image, ad nauseum – it reminds me of following Tom Stoppard’s characters as one idea leads to the next, and we bounce between 1809 and the present day, until those worlds collide and overlap in the last scene of the play.

And yet…this is a piece of theater. For me, what the theater does, that no other art form does, is bring a whole bunch of strangers together in real time, under one roof, to trade these ideas with artists themselves. We’re all breathing the same air. You can see and hear us, to be certain. But we can also see and hear you. You impact our performance. Moreover, without you, we simply couldn’t make this work of art come to life at all. In short, theater, by its very definition, needs you to be there with us.

I suppose that’s a really long-winded way of gently pleading with you to buy a ticket to see our show. We’ve all become sort of fascinated by the weird, time-traveling world of this play, and have started seeing little idea nuggets from this play everywhere we look – be it noticing the way the beautiful tendrils of milk stir into uniform color and heat in a coffee at Cool Beans, or the way the tree trunks extend to branches and into leaves and into veins-in-leaves ad infinitum while strolling along the Horseshoe.

You might like our show, or you might find it a spectacular bore. Regardless: if we can all share a few laughs, and you come away with some food for thought, and some things you might want to chat about with friends afterwards, or Google when you get home, then the experiment was worthwhile.

Won’t you come experiment with us?

To close, I’ll just say that working on this play has made me obsessed with fractals. I’m not a good enough writer to unpack fractal theory here, so I’ve included a link to a video animation (click HERE.)  In short, fractals are at the heart of the theory that our 13-year old girl discovers in 1809, and that our mathematician in 2013 extrapolates.

The video is another metaphor for Arcadia. Sometimes seeing a thing unfold makes more intuitive sense than hearing some nerdy director talk about it. So, click this link, and watch this video animation of fractals. If it exhilarates you, then you should definitely come and see our show.

Thanks for reading! See you at the theater!

~ Louis Butelli

Born and raised on Long Island, New York, Louis has spent the past seventeen years working as an actor, teacher, director, and writer. From 1998-2008, he was Artist-In-Residence and Company Clown for the Aquila Theatre Company. During that time, he played in over 25 productions of the works of William Shakespeare and other classical playwrights, appearing Off-Broadway, at major regional houses, on tour in the US to 49 states and across Europe; taught over 300 masterclasses; wrote, adapted and appeared in a new production of Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Other credits include Folger Theatre; La Jolla Playhouse; LA Shakespeare Festival; Shakespeare Theatre Co, DC; Alabama Shakespeare Festival; Yale Rep; Long Wharf; Orlando Shakes; Pasadena Playhouse; Two River Theater, NJ; Alpine Theater Project, MT; Seaside Shakespeare of Nantucket; La Scala Opera’s West Side Story in Milan, Beirut, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Osaka, and Tokyo; many others. TV: The Unusuals, and All My Children (ABC), Law & Order, and L&O: Criminal Intent (NBC). He is co-founder and Executive Director of Psittacus Productions, for whom he has produced A Tale Told By An Idiot (LA Weekly Theater Award), and CYCLOPS: A Rock Opera (NYMF Award for Excellence, 3 LA Weekly Award Nominations, Pulitzer Prize Juror Nominee) which played a sold-out and extended run at the 2011 New York Musical Theatre Festival, and the World Premier of the company’s latest show, A True History, which had a workshop at the Obie Award-winning Vineyard Theatre in New York City. He is honored every day he is able to go to work in the service of a great story.

Arcadia opens Friday, September 27 at USC's Drayton Hall Theatre, and runs through Saturday, October 5.   Show times for Arcadia are 8 PM Wednesdays-Fridays, 7 PM Saturdays and 3 PM on the first Sunday. Tickets for the production are $12 for students, $16 for USC faculty/staff, military personnel and seniors 60+, and $18 for the general public. Tickets can be purchased in advance by calling 803-777-2551 or by visiting the Longstreet Theatre box office, which is open Monday-Friday, 12:30 -5:30 PM.  Drayton Hall Theatre is located at 1214 College St.  For more information, contact  Kevin Bush at 803-777-9353, or bushk@mailbox.sc.edu.

Cast in this production are graduate acting students James Costello, Kate Dzvonik, Trey Hobbs, Josiah Laubenstein, Cory Lipman, Melissa Reed, Laurie Roberts and Leeanna Rubin, as well as undergraduate students Jason Fernandes, Grayson Garrick and Liam MacDougall.  Acting instructor David Britt will also appear in the production.   Graduate students Xuemei Cao and Sean Smith will design the set and costumes, respectively.   Guest artist Baxter Engle will create the sound design.  Instructor Eric Morris will design lighting.  Guest artist Todd Stuart will craft the show's intricate props.

A New Era Exploding at Trustus - a review of Ragtime (the Musical) by Jillian Owens

It was the music of something beginning. An era exploding.

A century spinning.

In riches and rags,

And in rhythm and rhyme.

The people called it Ragtime.

Ragtime (the Musical) - based on the E.L. Doctorow novel of the same name - is a story of hope and disillusionment in the face of the American Dream.  This dream is interpreted in many different ways by the many characters in the show, which opened at Trustus Theatre this past weekend.  Ragtime opens during the “Progressive Era” in 1904.  Industry is booming, and excitement is in the air.  This air is filled with the strange, new, simple, and syncopated music of Ragtime.  The music (by Stephen Flaherty) is catchy and tender, simple yet deep, with lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and book by Terrence McNally.

Mother and Father have a kind, though sterile marriage.  When Father, played by G. Scott Wild, heads off to explore the North Pole with Admiral Peary, Mother - played by Marybeth Gorman - is left to tend to their son, large house, and business affairs.  When she digs up something very unusual in her garden, a chain of events are pushed into movement that will change the lives of her small family, as well as the communities around her.

Ragtime shines thanks to one of the most talented casts it could have possibly pulled together, consisting of many Columbia theatre veterans, as well as a few talented new faces.  There are no weak links in this production.  Terrance Henderson pulls double duty as the charismatic ragtime musician Coalhouse Walker and the show’s choreographer.  Vicky Saye Henderson plays the radical anarchist, Emma Goldman, with gusto, Younger Brother - played by Kevin Bush - is passionate about finding something to be passionate about, and Scott Vaughan’s appearances as Houdini, though short, are very charming.  Chip Stubbs delivers a beautiful standout performance as Tateh, with a voice that conveys all the determination, elation, and heartache of a poor immigrant father struggling to reconcile his dream of America with the reality of his new world.  Stories are intertwined and alliances are made and broken.  With so many characters and stories, you’re bound to find at least a few you can identify with.

If you call the Trustus Box Office hotline, a friendly recording will inform you that this show has over thirty actors in the cast – the most they’ve had onstage at one time.  Upon hearing this, I must admit I was a little worried.  When Trustus tries to put on a large-scale show, it usually ends up being a mixed bag.  Their small stage can only hold so much spectacle, scenery, and cast members before things start to get cramped.

Fortunately, for director Chad Henderson, this particular big show doesn’t require a massive set or much spectacle beyond the talent of its actors.  That’s not to say the set is unimpressive.  Brandon McIver’s construction of his giant Statue of Liberty was well-documented on the Trustus Facebook page in the weeks before the opening.  This, along with fragments of early 1900’s Americana, are evocative of the period and theme.  The orchestra is small but skilled.  The costumes are period-accurate and lovely.

Between Henderson’s (Chad) stage direction and Henderson’s (Terrance) choreography, the actors don’t seem confined or cramped at all.  I would advise you to try to get a seat closer to the back as sight lines are a slight issue.  I can’t help but wonder…Is the success of Ragtime just the beginning of a new era of larger-scale productions for Trustus?  Are we ready for this “new music”?

~ Jillian Owens

Rockin' the Beehive - a review of "Beehive the 60's Musical" at Workshop Theatre by Melissa Swick Ellington

There are plenty of good reasons why Beehive - the 60's Musical has been brought back to the Workshop Theatre stage after a successful run fifteen years ago, and eight of them light up the performance with stunning vocals and infectious energy. Jocelyn Sanders and Daniel Gainey provide expert direction that shapes a fluid journey through 1960’s music, as the eight performers celebrate female singers and songwriters. While the first act presents a vivacious stroll through girl groups of the early sixties, the second half of the show really rocks the house with the rough, raw sounds of Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, and Janis Joplin. Medleys combine excerpts of familiar favorites through fictional characters, as in the extended party sequence that features “It’s My Party,” “I’m Sorry,” “You Don’t Own Me,” and “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” among others.

The Beehive ladies excel at inviting the audience into their world, as the performers handle the audience participation segments with friendly enthusiasm. Valdina Hall, a consummate musical theatre performer and a cast member in the first Beehive production at Workshop, launches the show with confidence. Her warmth and magnetism permeate the occasions when she addresses the audience directly, one of the show’s many strengths. (I enjoyed the good fortune of attending Beehive as the middle member of three generations of girls who love to sing. My mother observed, “When Valdina is on stage, you just feel like everything is going to be all right.”) Jordan Harper’s exquisite yearning and soaring vocals illuminate “Where the Boys Are” and “To Sir With Love,” while Tameshia Magwood thrills with her stirring rendition of “Proud Mary.” Devin Anderson is a true powerhouse who fires up the stage in “One Fine Day,” “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” and “Respect.” The rest of the cast (Rayana Briggs, Roxanne Livingston, Brandi Smith, and Safiya Whitehead) brings versatile talent to a slew of musical numbers; the directors deserve commendation for insightful pairings of singers with songs.

The design team makes cohesive choices that support the production with efficiency and purpose. Randy Strange’s scenic design features dynamic visuals and useful levels, while Barry Sparks provides masterful lighting design. The placement of the excellent band onstage proves valuable, as the music (directed by Roland Haynes, Jr.) is front and center throughout the performance. The band’s presence also enables energizing interaction with the performers. Singers and musicians benefit from Baxter Engle’s effective sound design. Choreography by Barbara Howse-Diemer evokes the girl groups of the sixties, evolving through different movement styles as the decade progresses. Costume designer Alexis Doktor provides visual evidence of the decade’s social changes as the performers replace pastel florals with psychedelic miniskirts.  Expectation of impressive wigs and hairstyles comes with the territory in a show called Beehive, and this production does not disappoint. Bobby Craft’s expertise as stage manager keeps the energetic show running smoothly. Design elements work very well together; the lighting and choreography establish a definite shift in tone with “The Beat Goes On.” A few issues with clarity of spoken dialogue over band accompaniment early in the show and a couple of awkward transitions are minor quibbles in light of Beehive’s audience-pleasing power. My young daughter proclaimed upon leaving the theatre, “That was a great show!”

Beehive at Workshop Theatre delivers an entertaining showcase of 1960’s music through the considerable talents of eight versatile and hard-working performers. Beehive earned great buzz from responsive audiences on opening weekend and deserves to pack the house with sixties music lovers through the remaining performances. Be assured that this production is not a series of imitations of the original singers. These Beehive performers make unique contributions to create something that is at once both nostalgic and new.

Beehive the 60's Musical  continues at Workshop Theatre through Saturday, September 28, with curtain at 8 PM, except for a 3:00 PM Sunday matinee on September 22. Contact the Workshop Theatre Box Office at 803-799-4876 for ticket information, or visit www.workshoptheatre.com.

~ Melissa Swick Ellington

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Jasper   welcomes a new critic to our theatre team.  Melissa Swick Ellington earned a Ph.D. in Educational Theatre from New York University. She has directed or performed in numerous productions in professional, community, and educational theatres in New York and South Carolina. She taught theatre in K-12 and university settings for over a dozen years.

Who is wrong and who is wronged? Ed Madden reviews "Collected Stories" at Trustus Theatre

There was a moment during a dress rehearsal of Collected Stories earlier this week that simply crushed me.  The stage was dark, and a stagehand went around the set in the darkness, slowly and methodically making a mess of the place.  A plant toppled, papers strewn across furniture and floor, prescription bottles scattered on desk and table, a curtain undone, a shawl tossed in the floor.

Collected Stories, a play by Donald Margulies, opens at Trustus Theatre this Thursday, August 15, and closes on Sunday August 18.  It’s a short run for a powerful little play, directed by Milena Herring.  In a sequence of short scenes over the course of six years, we see Ruth Steiner, an older writer and teacher, take on as her student and later assistant the seemingly innocent Lisa Morrison, a 26-year-old would-be writer.  I say seemingly innocent, as it’s never clear how manipulative and shrewd she really is.  As the balance of power between the two shifts, we wonder at the end who the real innocent might be.

Ruth is played by the indomitable Elena Martinez-Vidal, confident and pitch-perfect throughout the play.  A couple of moments feel performed for the audience as much as they are for Lisa—stagey, theatrical, but that feels right.  Ruth’s little Greenwich Village apartment is her stage, Lisa her pupil and audience, and she is acting out what a famous writer is and says. I’m reminded of that scene in Douglas Sirk’s 1959 Imitation of Life, when Susie (Sandra Dee) tells her mother Lara (Lana Turner), “Oh stop acting mother!”  But she can’t: she is always onstage.  Martinez-Vidal is fascinating in this part, especially near the end, when Ruth’s life and health are ruined, and still some dark vitality—and anger—drives her speech and action.  She bristles stiffly in what seems to be a conciliatory hug from Lisa.

Elisabeth Gray Engle as Lisa was a puzzle, a chameleon.  Ingénue or ingenious, devious or devoted, we’re never really sure, though Engle, like Lisa, slowly but surely finds her voice.  The moment she tells Ruth about a story her father hated, something shifts in the play, and we start to realize that Lisa, as Engle deftly portrays her, has more to her than we imagined.

Either character could have been a type character if not a caricature—the old Jewish writer and professor, the gushing would-be writer—but both actresses brought a real depth to their portrayals.  The room itself, the set, is almost a character as well. Early in the play, Lisa rhapsodizes on how wonderful it would be to live in a place like that, a place perfect for a writer.  She reads the space through Ruth’s fiction, noting a Matisse from this story, the view of a playground from that one.  So when the stagehand comes through knocking over a plant and strewing paper and pill bottles, we realize that something has gone deeply wrong.

Two primary issues drive the play.  One is power.  When Ruth and Lisa argue over the guilt of Woody Allen after his affair with his 19-year-old step-daughter, we can’t help but wonder about the balance of power in this relationship.  Ruth admits her own affair with an older man, the poet Delmore Schwartz, but she also says that she has never written about the affair, even though it was the bright moment of her life.  “Some things you don’t touch,” she says, a command this daughter-figure is, we know, bound to disobey.

The second issue is the ownership of stories—and in an indirect way, lives.  Ruth admits to exaggerating elements of her own biography for political effect, and the two women agree that writers “rummage” through other people’s lives for stories.  “We’re all rummagers.  That’s what writers are.”  When one accuses the other, “You’ve stolen my stories,” the glib reply—“They stopped being your stories when you told them to me”— amplifies rather than answers the ethical questions.

In 1993, American novelist David Leavitt was sued by English poet Stephen Spender, who accused him of using a section of his memoir World Within World as fodder for his novel, While England Sleeps, a fictional portrayal of someone very like Spender.  I can’t help but think this literary larceny inflects Collected Stories, which premiered three years later in 1996.  (Leavitt’s next published work was The Term Paper Artist, a wicked novella from the point of view of an author accused of plagiarism, who starts to write term papers for college students.)

Where does theft stop and imagination begin?

Even though Ruth may think she’s granting voice to the voiceless, or Lisa may claim she is paying homage, there’s still a real sense here of ethical risk, one that carries, for me, beyond the play.  This would be a fascinating play to discuss in a creative writing class, where questions of writing about real people, people we know, inevitably lead to complex conversations.  What happens when our families read themselves in our stories (no matter how fictionalized)?  Or what happens when we alter details in a presumably nonfiction piece for aesthetic effect.  Yeah, we all know art is the lie that tells the truth (pace Oscar Wilde and Julian Barnes), but playful paradoxes rub raw when real people feel wronged.

Collected Stories closes out Trustus Theatre’s 28th season, and runs Thursday thru Sunday, August 15-18 (with a matinee on Sunday).   It’s a rich play—and as a meditation on plagiarism, intellectual property, and dishonesty, a great way to start the school year.  See it while you can.  Contact the box office at (803) 254-9732 for more information, or visit http://www.trustus.org .

~ Ed Madden

Be the first to see "The Velvet Weapon" (winner of the 2013 Trustus Playwrights' Festival) on Sat. Aug.10 at 2 PM!

Love live theatre, but stymied by steep ticket prices?  Trustus has got you covered.

Love live theatre, but have commitments like jobs and children that keep you from going out at night?  Trustus has got you covered.

Love live theatre, but wish there were some way to see new shows other than traveling to New York?  Ever wish there were some way for new works of theatre to get a shot at an audience without having to worry about either being a Broadway blockbuster?  Trustus has got you covered.

Ever wish you could give feedback directly to a playwright, before the play ever even opens?  Trustus has got you covered.

Are you so tired of the famously hot August heat - punctuated by the monsoon-like August thunderstorms - that you wish you could just sit down in the dark somewhere with a cold beer or refreshing glass of wine, and watch some live theatre you've never seen before? Trustus has got you covered.

Tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 PM - that's Saturday, August 10th - The Velvet Weapon, winner of the 2013 Trustus Playwrights' Festival, will have a one-time-only staged reading at Trustus Theatre, open and free to the public.  The Trustus bar will also be open (although not free.)  There are only some 135 seats, however, so make sure one of them is yours.

The playwright, Deborah Brevoort, was kind enough to talk with Jasper about her new work, and you can read that exclusive interview here.  The cast for this reading includes:  Paul Kaufmann (last fall's Next to Normal and  I Am My Own Wife, both at Trustus), Trey Hobbs (Albany in USC's recent King Lear, Greg in reasons to be pretty at Trustus in 2010), Mandy Applegate (The Last Five Years and Plan 9 from Outer Space, both at  Trustus, and The Producers at Workshop) Hunter Boyle (Peron in Evita at Trustus, Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Workshop) Chelsea Nicole Crook, Eric Bultman, Cindy Durrett (numerous incarnations of Nunsense at Act One Theatre), Josiah Laubenstein (Edgar in King Lear, and Mike in Pine, the previous year's Festival winner  currently running at Trustus), Raia Jane Hirsch (The Motherf*@%er With the Hat at Trustus, Pride and Prejudice with SC Shakespeare Co.), and Kayla Cahill (The Shape of Things at  Workshop.)

Press material describes The Velvet Weapon as "a hilariously smart backstage farce that will leave you laughing while also engaging you long after you've left the theatre.  At the National Theatre of an unnamed country, in an unnamed city, a matinee audience rises up in protest over what is being performed on stage, and demands something new. They begin a performance of their own of The Velvet Weapon, a play by an unproduced playwright of questionable talent. Inspired by the Velvet Revolution in the former Czechoslovakia, The Velvet Weapon is a humorous exploration of populist democracy told through a battle between high-brow and low-brow art."

Director Chad Henderson shared a few thoughts with Jasper:

Jasper:   What has your involvement been in previous years with the Playwrights' Festival?

Henderson:  I directed Swing ’39 in 2011. I also acted in Copy Man under the direction of Jim Thigpen years ago.

Jasper:  Why is it important for an author to get feedback via a reading?

Henderson:  Probably the same reason I invite colleagues to come watch rehearsals of a show I’m directing before we open – its good to know what’s working and what’s not. In this particular case, Brevoort has written a farce – so pace and delivery is the name of the game it seems. The language on the page is the direct key to engaging an audience, so

Jasper:  How did you go about casting Velvet Weapon?

Henderson:  I was looking for people who are quick, humorous, and who have good timing.

Jasper:  For audience members who have never attended a reading before, what can they expect?

Henderson:  The actors (and it’s a great cast) will be reading without staging. Therefore, they will be acting while reading – but not walking around the stage. We would have loved to have staged this reading, however with farces there’s so much action that simplistic blocking would get in the way of the words being said. And since this is a celebration of a new work – we’re keeping it simple. But the script is certainly funny enough and endearing enough to entertain on a Saturday afternoon.

Jasper:  What sort of themes are addressed in this play?

Henderson:  “What is art?” is a question that strings through the narrative. Should art entertain? Should art explore the human condition? If it doesn’t explore the human condition – is it still art?

Be the first to see The Velvet Weapon, which will get a full production in the summer of 2014.  Curtain is at 2 PM tomorrow (Sat. Aug. 10) at Trustus Theatre, at 520 Lady Street in the heart of the Congaree Vista.  The Facebook "event" page for the reading is here.

~ August Krickel

"Pine" at Trustus Explores Emotions, Loss, and Family Dynamics

Pine, the winner of the Trustus Playwrights' Festival which runs through this coming Saturday, August 10th, has a double meaning in its title:  the aroma of the trees that dominate stage right, and the prevailing cloud of mourning that has surrounded an upstate New York family since the death of middle son Colin five years previously.  Never entirely a comedy nor a sentimental drama, this new play from Eugenie Carabatsos successfully explores the complex nuances of how ordinary people interact in situations we all face: loss of a loved one, inclusion of newcomers to the family, and changing dynamics when children become adults. The twist: Colin is still around.  His spirit lingers in his family's home, and comments on all the action as it unfolds on stage.

That twist is certainly nothing new, from literature (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Topper, Wilde's Canterville Ghost) to stage (I Hate Hamlet, Coward's Blithe Spirit) to film (the Patrick Swayze-Demi Moore movie Ghost, and big-screen versions of most of the preceding.)  Following the conventions of the genre, it's therefore no plot spoiler to assume that one or more characters have unfinished business, but as in life, nothing is clearly spelled out. Are some characters still grieving, or did they never have a chance to?   Is Colin trapped in limbo as a result, or is the unfinished business his?

Advance publicity and opening scenes where Colin speaks to the audience make it clear that Colin really is a ghost, i.e. this isn't Next to Normal, and he's not the product of anyone's delusion.  As Colin, Hunter Bolton is up to the challenge of reacting to everyone's dialogue and movement without ever being acknowledged by the other characters.  He's terribly under-used in the first act, simply because there's no one with whom to interact. Still, a number of audience members commented on how skillfully his body language and facial expressions convey his presence and feelings, even when he's a passive observer.  The pace picks up significantly in the second act, when plot twists allow Colin to participate more, and the opening night audience gave the first scene of Act 2 a round of applause as a result.  Bolton takes his time with every line, and is both sympathetic and believable as a decent, ordinary guy who has found no answer to his question:  "If I'm gone, why am I still here?"

Indeed, all the characters are quite ordinary; one might almost say under-developed,except part of the point of the script is that this is a regular family, with no dysfunction beyond what would be expected.  Becky Hunter as sharp-tongued mother Rita, Rachel Kuhnle as independent sister Julie, and Cory Alpert as troubled younger brother Teddy all look like they and Bolton could be related.   Jennifer Moody Sanchez plays Rachel, Colin's fiancée (not his ex- fiancée, Colin is quick to assert, since they never broke up) who is still considered part of the family, but also is finally ready to move on with her life.  Josiah Laubenstein as in-law Mike has some nice moments of comedy with Kuhnle; I enjoyed his portrayal of Edgar in USC's King Lear a few months back, but the manic tone that worked for Edgar's feigned madness is a little distracting here, and there's no line that couldn't benefit from being delivered an octave lower.  He gets some of the show's biggest laughs, however, rejoicing when Rachel's new boyfriend supplants him as the barely-accepted outsider.  In one of the show's many relatable and accessible themes, boyfriend Miles (Harrison Saunders) has to compete with the persisting presence of Colin, and how many of us have had to compete with the metaphoric ghost of a significant other's ex?  Which is especially ironic, given that Bolton and Saunders fought for the hand of Juliet as Romeo and Paris in a memorable production in Finlay Park a few years ago.

I was prepared to say that Alpert's maturity makes him a little old for his role, but program notes reveal he is exactly the same age as his character, the teen who survived the car crash that killed Colin, and who states what I'm told is sadly all too common in such scenarios: "it should have been me."  His scenes with Bolton are genuinely moving, as each wrestles their circumstances, the former pleading "I'd rather have this than nothing," while the latter despairs "I'd rather have nothing than this."   Alpert and Bolton do nice work together as they reveal how family conflict can persist long after one of them is gone.  Carabatsos excels in natural dialogue that captures the quirks of everyday life, as when wine is spilled on Rita's best pair of slacks, and she gripes that even a new pair won't be that same "best" pair.  A culminating and cathartic scene allows each character to grieve in a different way, and to explain differing but understandable rationales.

Guest designer Chet Longley's set is more detailed than we have seen recently at Trustus, and includes a very believable patch of forest, and a simple recreation of the wooden-siding-covered exterior and interior of a home in the Catskills. I might have enjoyed a little more set decoration - mirrors or pictures on the wall, the occasional lamp or dresser - but as much space for movement needs to be opened up, in order for the cast to be able to move about freely with ever bumping into the invisible Colin. A nice touch is the way an upstairs bedroom is located directly above the kitchen, allowing Bolton to move easily from one to the other, perching on top of a refrigerator as a ghost might.

Director Dewey Scott-Wiley handles the challenges of blocking around an unseen and non-corporeal main character well, and takes full advantage of her cast's ability to wring emotion and meaning from pauses and silences as well as from lines.  Her sound design might need a little tweaking, however, as audibility and clarity decreases the farther a character goes toward stage right.  There is also a whooshing sound effect hat signifies Colin's presence that I never entirely "bought," although at the same time I can't think what, if anything, might work better.

Playwright Carabatsos graduated from college only three years ago, and is to be commended for her mastery of realistic dialogue and the ability to focus on and portray idiosyncratic character traits that we all possess.  Her skill not only derives from what must surely have been an excellent education at Wesleyan University, but also, I suspect, from good genes:  I discovered at opening night that her father, James Carabatsos, is the screenwriter of such films as Hamburger Hill, Sally Field's Heroes, and Clint Eastwood's Heartbreak Ridge. While completely unrelated to Pine, I must note that as recently as three weeks ago a group of baby boomers in a 5 Points bar paused while channel-surfing to chant "Swede, Swede, Swede!" along with Clint's platoon, that at least once a month for the last couple of decades I have quoted the "permission to speak freely?" line, and that also within this past month I quoted the immigrant soldier from Lost Battalion who proudly asserted that he was indeed an American: "I took the test!"

Pine is not the greatest play ever written, but it's certainly a good one.  It could probably stand another re-write or two, to tighten up the story and perhaps drop about 30 minutes of chit-chat.   The characters too could be more fully developed - we could see Teddy as more fragile, more lost, and more at risk, and Rita could be meaner and feistier, a la Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment (and everything she's done since.) Pine's tone is very much like that film, or the play and film Steel Magnolias, both full of memorable laugh lines but ultimately dealing with death.  It would be very easy to say the ending is all too predictable, but in the last half hour, I found myself desperately wanting just that ending and no other.  Which makes me think that the characters became people that I cared about. A friend and colleague noted that he felt his emotions were a little manipulated, and I can certainly see that.  My reaction, however, is excitement and joy that such a young writer has mastered the skill of manipulating emotions!   Either way, I don't think there was a dry eye in the sold-out opening night house by the show's end, and I rarely cry at live theatre.

Pine may not go on to win any Tony Awards - although it would be extremely cool if it did - but could certainly make for a decent Hallmark Hall of Fame movie.  What's much more important is this chance to nurture and encourage the growth of a new, talented author, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if one day Pine is seen as a promising early work from an acclaimed playwright.  But make those reservations now - there are only three more chances to be part of theatre history, with shows this coming Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at 8 PM.  Contact the Trustus box office at (803) 254-9732 or visit www.trustus.org for more information.

~ August Krickel

Deborah Brevoort's "The Velvet Weapon" Wins 2013 Trustus Playwrights' Festival - Chad Henderson Directs Staged Reading Saturday, August 10th

The Velvet Weapon, by Deborah Brevoort, is the winner of the 2013 Trustus Playwrights' Festival, and will receive a full production in the summer of 2014, preceded by a staged reading  this coming Saturday, August 10th, at 2 PM on the Thigpen Main Stage at 520 Lady Street in the Vista.  As sponsor of one of the nation's longest-running play festivals, Trustus has nurtured and fostered the growth of new playwrights such as David Lindsay-Abaire, who later went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Over the following year, each winning playwright has the chance to develop the script for production, with the opportunity for input from and consultation with members of the Trustus staff and company, based on feedback at the initial staged reading.  This year's reading will be directed by Chad Henderson, chosen by Jasper readers as the 2012 Theatre Artist of the Year.  Included in the cast are Paul Kaufmann (Next to Normal and I Am My Own Wife at Trustus) Raia Jane Hirsch (The Motherf*@%er With the Hat at Trustus, Pride and Prejudice with SC Shakespeare Co.) Kayla Cayhill (The Shape of Things at Workshop) Trustus Managing Director Larry Hembree, Eric Bultman, and Chelsea Crook.

The reading is free and open to the public, but seating is limited; the bar will be open, with liquid refreshments for sale.

Deborah Brevoort holds an MFA in Playwriting from Brown University and an MFA in Musical Theatre writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she currently teaches. She also teaches in the MFA playwriting programs at Columbia University and Goddard College. Her web site is www.DeborahBrevoort.com.  She is perhaps best known for her work The Women of Lockerbie, which won the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays Award, and the silver medal in the Onassis International Playwriting Competition. It has been produced across the U.S., as well as in Scotland, Japan, Greece, Spain, Belarus, Poland, Australia and England, and has been translated into seven languages.

The Velvet Weapon was inspired by the Velvet Revolution in the former Czechoslovakia, and is described as "a hilariously smart backstage farce that will leave you laughing while also engaging you long after you've left the theatre," and "a humorous exploration of populist democracy told through a battle between high-brow and low-brow art.  At the National Theatre of an unnamed country, a matinee audience rises up in protest over what is being performed on stage, and demands something new. They begin a performance of their own of The Velvet Weapon, a play by an unproduced playwright of questionable talent."

 The author kindly agreed to share some thoughts with Jasper via e-mail in this exclusive interview!

Jasper:  You have written drama, comedy, and the books for musicals.  Is The Velvet Weapon your first venture into farce?

Brevoort:   Velvet Weapon is my first farce, although one of my previous plays, The Poetry of Pizza, an Arab/American comedy about love, used elements of farce here and there. Albert Bermel, who wrote the definitive critical study on farce, said that it was “an older dramatist’s medium, because the techniques involved are so formidable.”   That surprised me; farces tend to feel so slight. They are like meringues that melt the minute they hit your mouth.   So, I wanted to try my hand at the form to see what was so difficult.  I was greatly humbled by it, I have to say.   These “slight” little plays are built like Swiss watches!

Jasper:  Do you find it challenging or difficult to move from one form to another, or does that give you a sort of freedom, to work in whatever form suits the material?

Brevoort:  I love writing in multiple forms.  I always find it difficult to move back and forth between them, but that is also the pleasure of it. As a writer, I have a couple of rules for myself. One is that I don’t ever repeat myself.  Another is that in every project I do, there must be something that I don’t know how to do. These rules help to ensure that I am always stretching myself as an artist, and that I don’t stagnate, or get too comfy.

Jasper:   Your theatrical career began at Alaska's Perseverance Theatre, and from there you moved into writing - how did that transition take place?

Brevoort:  I was the Producing Director of Perseverance Theatre, which means I was the person who raised all the money, and was the public administrative face of the theatre.  But Perseverance was an unusual company, because we were basically a group of artists who administered ourselves and the company. I started out as an actor, and worked in the acting company for the better part of 13 years.  I had always wanted to be a writer, so when we started offering playwriting classes at the theatre, led by Paula Vogel and Darrah Cloud, I took them. Paula snatched me out of the class, told me I was writer, and gave me a fellowship to come to Brown University to make the switch from theatre producing and acting to writing. I accepted the fellowship, and moved to NYC, where I’ve been ever since, working as a playwright, lyricist and librettist.

Jasper: I gather that contemporary themes, especially relating to political and social topics, recur in your work, although perhaps sometimes not overtly. Do you have a particular goal in your work?

Brevoort:  I am not aware that I have a political agenda or even that I have political themes - I just write what interests me.  And I am committed to writing each project truthfully, whatever that may entail.

Jasper:  How easy or difficult is it to make the audience think while still entertaining them?

Brevoort:  There are plenty of techniques you can use as a playwright to make an audience think or feel.  To me it’s simply a matter of craft.  It’s no harder to make an audience think than feel—it just requires different tools.  I do have to say, however, that the hardest thing to do is to make an audience laugh. That is 100 times harder than to make them cry.

Jasper:  Why did the "velvet revolution" in Czechoslovakia appeal to you as source material?

Brevoort:  I was very good friends with Pavel Dobrusky, a Czech scenographer who defected from the former Czechoslovakia and came to work with us at Perseverance Theatre in the mid-1980’s.  When the Velvet Revolution happened in 1989, Pavel worked with us on production called Wonderland, a sort of Alice-in-Wonderland take on the events taking place in Eastern Europe.  It was one of my favorite productions at Perseverance Theatre.

Fast forward 15 years:  Pavel and I both now live in NYC and got to talking one night about The Velvet Revolution and how we’d love to make a theatre piece about it.  Pavel knew all the theatre artists who had been involved—they were his old friends.  We put together a grant request to CEC Arts Link, which gave money to theatre artists to do projects in Eastern Europe.  We got the grant, which enabled the two of us to go to both the Czech and Slovak Republics and to interview all the artists who collaborated with Vaclav Havel to bring down the Soviet regime.  We spent about a month conducting intense, in-depth interviews with 43 of the ringleaders.

After the interviews, I remarked to Pavel that the Velvet Revolution was like one, great big back stage farce. Literally.   So, I wrote the play as a farce.

The goal was for Pavel to eventually direct the play.  But unfortunately, Pavel passed away.

Jasper:   Once you finished the play, you had readings at La Mama and the NJ Playwright’s Theatre?  How did that process work?   

Brevoort:  In addition to getting a CEC Arts Link grant to do the interviews, I got a playwriting fellowship from the NJ Council on the Arts, to write the play. The reading at the NJ Playwright’s Theatre was part of that fellowship.  Pavel directed the reading, which was done for about 30 NJ senior citizens, all of whom thought I was writing a satire about Obama.

The La Mama reading was part of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts “Performing Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe” festival, a citywide, 5-month event to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.  Pavel was no longer in NYC at that point, so he didn’t direct the reading. Many audience members at the reading were from Eastern Europe, so they got all the references in the play and recognized it as the story about Vaclav Havel.  The other half knew nothing about the Velvet Revolution and thought I was parodying populist democratic movements taking place around the world.

In February of this year I had a reading of the play at William Patterson University in NJ, and this time the audience thought I was writing about Occupy Wall Street.

This of course tickles me to no end; it was my goal that this play be about populist democracy not about the Velvet Revolution—and it appears to be working on that level because people are seeing references to American politics or world politics in it.  But I have also loaded the play with lots of inside jokes and references that only Eastern Europeans would “get”—and they seem to be “getting” them.

Each reading helped me to CUT the script. Speed of delivery is necessary for farce. If you have one syllable too many in a line, you won’t get a laugh.  So these readings have helped me to pare each line down so they work like darts.

Jasper:  How did you discover Trustus and the Playwrights' Festival?

Brevoort: I have heard about Trustus for many years,  most recently when I was the playwright-in-residence at Center Stage in Greenville, SC.  I’m delighted to get a chance to work with them!  I’ve never been to Columbia, so I don’t know anything about the community, and am looking forward to coming down and being there next year for rehearsals.

~ August Krickel

Eugenie Carabatsos discusses her play "Pine," premiering at Trustus Friday August 2nd

Pine, the new play by Eugenie Carabatsos and winner of the  Trustus Playwrights’ Festival will open on the Thigpen Main Stage at Trustus Theatre this Friday, August 2, at 8 PM, and will run through the following Saturday, August 10.  The author graciously agreed to share a few thoughts with Jasper, prior to her first visit to Columbia this weekend to see the world professional premiere of her new play.

Jasper:   What inspired you to become involved in theatre?  Is that your main focus as a writer?

Carabatsos:   My primary interest and passion is drama, though I would love to also be a novelist and perhaps create my own television show someday. As far back as I can remember, I have loved theater. My parents are theater-lovers, so they would take me to see plays and musicals frequently as a child. I remember I made my parents take me to see a community theater production of Annie Get Your Gun three times in one weekend. I always loved going to plays and telling stories, but it wasn't until my senior year of high school when I combined my love of storytelling and my love of plays and wrote my first play for my senior project. After seeing my play read aloud by actors, I was hooked.  I have not done any acting, but I have self-produced a few of my plays in festivals, which is a fun, challenging experience that I like very much.

Jasper:  Where did you grow up? 

Carabatsos:   I am from Bridgehampton, NY, which is a small town on the eastern end of Long Island. The area I live in is not unlike New England, so it was a very nice, easy transition to living in Middletown, CT for college.

Jasper:   Your alma mater, Wesleyan, is a very distinguished liberal arts college.  Did you study theatre or writing there?     

Carabatsos:  Wesleyan does have a wonderful theater and film program, but I actually was an English major, so I didn't get involved in the theater scene at all in college. For me, the best way to learn how to write well is to read well-written books, plays, and essays, so I definitely feel as though I gleaned a lot from my education creatively, even though I wasn't involved in the theater program there.

Jasper:  You wrote the first draft of Pine while attending an artist-in-residence program in the Catskills.   Was there anything in particular that inspired this story?

Carabatsos:   The play isn't based on personal experience. I was thinking about what it would be like for a young widow, and what her relationship would be with her "ex's" family.   I thought that relationship might be an interesting idea for a play. Then I thought, well what if the dead spouse was still around, but no one knew it? And that was the jumping off point. Then when I was in the Catskills, I thought that would be a perfect setting for the play.

Jasper:  Is there a significance to the title?

Carabatsos:   The title refers both to the idea of longing, and also to the smell that connects the family to each other and especially to the father.

Jasper: Is comedy a new medium for you?  And do you like to work with any recurring themes in your work?

Carabatsos:   Yes - when I wrote Pine, I hadn't dabbled in comedy at all.   I think the most recurring themes in my work are death, memory, and love. In terms of writing style, I am very interested in trying out different structures. Pine has a pretty straightforward structure, but most of my other work plays a lot with structure.

Jasper: Are you a full-time author? 

Carabatsos:  Making a living off of writing has been a goal since I decided I wanted to be a writer. I hope to one day reach it!  I work both as a private tutor and academic tutor for a tutoring company that specializes in clinically informed tutoring. I have also previously worked for an online university as an adjunct teacher. I actually really enjoy my tutoring work, and I am passionate about education, but being a writer full-time is definitely the end goal.

Jasper:   Part of the Trustus Playwrights' Festival includes a staged reading the year before the actual premiere, allowing for feedback.  What was that process like?

Carabatsos:  I did not attend the reading, but I had a wonderful conversation with the director afterwards, and we discussed the feedback the play received. It was a really helpful conversation. The play has been revised since that first reading. The core of the play is the same, but there are some things that I expanded upon or made stronger connections to. For example, I gave a lot more information about the father, so that the ending had more weight. I also included a scene with Rita in the trees and allowed her to have a moment with her daughter, Julie.

Jasper: How did you discover Trustus, and are you familiar with the Midlands area?

Carabatsos:   I learned about Trustus through a posting on pwcenter.org, which is the website I use to find all of my play submission opportunities. I have driven through South Carolina on a roadtrip, but haven't spent any significant time there (or in the South in general). I am really looking forward to it!

............................

From press material:

Eugenie Carabatsos has written eight plays, all of which have been produced in professional or festival settings.  After Eternity (Winner of the Venus Theatre Festival), The Brink, and Stalled have been produced in festivals including the Alumnae Theatre New Ideas Festival (Toronto, ON), the Midwinter Madness Festival (New York, NY), the Venus Theatre Festival (New York, NY), and Manhattan Repertory Theatre Festival (New York, NY). Her ten-minute plays have been produced by the Playwrights' Round Table (Orlando, FL), the Short + Sweet Festival (Sydney, Australia), the Edward Hopper House (Nyack, NY), Manhattan Repertory Theatre, The Secret Theatre (Queens, NY), Silver Spring Stage (Silver Spring, MD), the Pan Theater (Oakland, CA), the Complete Theatre (New York, NY), and Love Creek Productions (New York, NY). In Their Glory has received staged readings as part of Alumnae Theatre’s New Ideas Festival in Toronto, and, by the Truffle Theatre Company in Brooklyn. A one-act version of the play won the Scholastic Arts and Writing Award for Best Play in 2006. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 2010 with a BA in English.

The Trustus Playwrights’ Festival is considered by various publications to be one of the best in the nation. Not only do winning scripts garner a professional reading, but they also receive a full production on the Trustus Thigpen Main Stage. Past winners of this festival including  Jon Tuttle, Stephen Belber, and Andrea Lepico have gone on to have their scripts published and performed all over the nation. Past winner David Lindsay-Abaire was even awarded the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award later in his career. Now NYC playwright Eugenie Carabatsos joins the fine company of Playwrights’ Festival winners as her play Pine makes its professional debut right here in the Capital City.

Pine, under the direction of Trustus Artistic Director Dewey Scott-Wiley, is a ghost story – with humor and a tremendous amount of heart. As the lights come up, audiences are introduced to the White family. Gathering for the Christmas holidays, we realize that older son Colin White seems to go throughout the house unnoticed. Further exposition reveals that Colin is actually a ghost following a fatal car accident years earlier. Colin constantly tries to avoid his overbearing mother and to communicate with his younger brother Teddy, but Teddy can’t see him…or can he? The plot thickens as Colin’s ex-girlfriend shows up to the White home for a holiday visit with her new boyfriend. The Whites' Christmas takes many turns as Colin’s memory and spectral presence make us wonder if Colin’s family is beyond his reach.

Sarah Hammond, a Columbia native who is now a successful playwright in NYC, is the Trustus Literary Manager and oversees the festival submissions. “We went electronic with our competition last year,” said Hammond. “This year, for the first time ever, we also eliminated the submission fee for playwrights, which increased the number of submissions substantially. We got 400 submissions this year from all over the country.” Submissions consist of playwright bios, a play synopsis, and a 10-page script sample  which Hammond has to peruse thoroughly. She then asks for full plays from 25-40 of the playwrights submitting. “When asking for those full scripts, we look first for voices that leap off the page,” says Hammond “Is it theater? Does it feel live? Some dialogue just sings, and that's apparent in a ten-page sample. There's a rhythm - an energy - that comes from a playwright's gut. While we don't have one aesthetic for the new work at Trustus, we do tend to favor scripts with a very strong current of personal truth.” After the full scripts have been read, the top five make their way to Columbia, SC where the Trustus Artistic Director chooses the winner. Obviously, Ms. Carabatsos’ Pine found itself in the winner’s circle in 2012.

Director Dewey Scott-Wiley has assembled a talented cast to bring Carabatsos’ characters to life for the first time. Long-time Trustus Company member Becky Hunter (Palace of the Moorish Kings) takes the stage as Rita, the matriarch of the White family. Hunter Bolton (Love! Valour! Compassion!) makes his Trustus debut as Colin, the ghost. Playing Teddy and Julie, Colin’s siblings, are Cory Alpert and Rachel Kuhnle respectively. Playing Julie’s husband is USC MFA in Acting candidate Josiah Lauberstein (Boeing Boeing). Portraying Colin’s ex-girlfriend Rachel is Jennifer Moody Sanchez (My First Time), and with her is Harrison Saunders (Red) as Rachel’s new boyfriend and soon-to-be fiancé.

Pine makes its premiere on the Trustus Thigpen Main Stage on Friday, August 2nd at 8:00pm and runs through August 10th, 2013. Main Stage shows start at 8:00 pm Thursdays through Saturdays, and Sunday matinees are at 3:00pm. Tickets are $22.00 for adults, $20.00 for military and seniors, and $15.00 for students. Half-price Student Rush-Tickets are available 15 minutes prior to curtain.

Trustus Theatre is located at 520 Lady Street, behind the Gervais St. Publix. Parking isavailable on Lady St. and on Pulaski St. The Main Stage entrance is located on the Publix side of the building.   For more information or reservations call the box office Tuesdays through Saturdays 1-6 PM at 803-254-9732, visit www.trustus.org .

~ August Krickel

Confessions of a Good Man Opens at Harbison, Tarzan + Doctor Dolittle Continue at Town and Workshop

Walking on Water (WOW) Productions playwrights Tangie Beaty and Donna Johnson have teamed up with author Kevin A. Rasberry to present their brand new production, Confessions of a Good Man.  The show is a prelude of sorts to Rasberry’s book, Evolution of a Good Man, which will be released in 2013 as well. WOW will be returning to the Harbison Theater at Midlands Technical College to bring this show to life for FOUR  nights only! Run  dates are Thursday July 25 - Sunday July 28, and tickets range in price from $20 - $30 (with group rates available.)

Confessions of a Good Man is an inspirational stage play that gives a glance into the mind and struggles of one man. The production tells the tale of three brothers who grew up in the same household, but ended up with three vastly different lives. Each of the brothers takes his own path to try and become like their father, the epitome of a good man. Although the goal seems to elude them all, each of their paths lead to the same place...home. Family secrets, lies and love both bind this family together and keeps them bound. Will a confession free or destroy them?

National Gospel recording artist Blanche McAllister-Dykes, a South Carolina native, will join cast members Kayla Baker, Dana Bufford, Deon Generette, Rod Lorick, Regina Skeeters, and Will Young, IV.   WOW Productions' mission is to inspire, educate, encourage and empower artists and audiences to make communities more conscious and compassionate places. WOW believes in utilizing local and upcoming artists who also share the desire to utilize the performing arts in making a difference in not only their surrounding communities, but nationwide.  For more information about WOW Productions and Confessions of a Good Man please visit www.wowproduction.org or call 803.807.2969.

Town Theatre meanwhile continues its run of Tarzan the Stage Musical, based on the animated Disney film, which was in turn based on the classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Tarzan’s adventure begins when a shipwreck leaves him orphaned on the shores of West Africa. This helpless baby is taken under the protection of a gorilla tribe and becomes part of their family. Growing into a great hunter and leader, Tarzan is much-loved by his ape mother, Kala, but yearns for acceptance from his ape father, Kerchak. When he eventually encounters his first human – Jane Porter, a curious young explorer – both of their worlds are transformed forever. Despite challenges, foes and differences, Jane and Tarzan find that together they can overcome all odds. This unlikely love story, full of adventure and songs by Grammy winner and rock icon Phil Collins promises touch your heart, while thrilling you as Tarzan literally swings over the heads of the audience and onto the stage.

Alternating in the role of Young Tarzan is Luke Melnyk (The Music Man) and Jadon Stanek (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) with newcomer Liberty Broussard and Caroline Quinn (Annie) alternating as Young Terk. Parker Byun (Miss Saigon, The Music Man) plays the grown Tarzan, with Town newcomer Celeste Morris as his leading lady, Jane Porter. The influence of parental guidance pervades the show in ape form with Kala, portrayed by Laurel Posey (Guys & Dolls) and Kerchak, taken by Scott Stepp (Annie Get Your Gun, The Odd Couple), and in human form with Professor Porter, played by Frank Thompson (White Christmas, Harvey). And what is a Disney tale without a scoundrel or two? Creating strife from the-get go is Kristy O’Keefe (Joseph…) as the leopard and Chad Forrister (The 39 Steps) as the conniving Clayton, a nefarious hunter. On the opposite end of the mischief spectrum is the feisty adult Terk played by Jackie Rowe (Peter Pan.)

Director/Choreographer for this production is Shannon Willis Scruggs; the Scenic Designer/Technical Director is Danny Harrington; and the Costumer is Lori Stepp. Don’t miss this opportunity to see Tarzan come to life on Town's stage, with only four shows remaining: Thursday July 25- Sunday, July 28. Curtain is at 7:30 pm, and 3 pm on the fimal Sunday matinee. Tickets are $15-25. Call the box office at 803-799-2510, or for more information visit www.towntheatre.com.

Workshop Theatre meanwhile continues its production of the family-friendly musical Doctor Dolittle , with book, music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, and based on the classic film.  This is a tale about the adventures of a doctor who learns to speak to animals, and who takes a journey from the small English village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh to the far corners of the world. In the beginning, Doctor Dolittle is wrongly accused of murder and the animals and his friends rally together to prove his innocence. Once Dolittle is pronounced innocent, he continues with his search for the Great Pink Sea Snail -- the oldest and wisest of the creatures on earth. This is the classic tale of kindness to animals based on the stories of Hugh Lofting.

Lee O. Smith (Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka) plays Doctor Dolittle, the wacky, but kind doctor who can talk to animals. He is joined by Kate Huggins (Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella) as Emma, Hans Boeschen (Legally Blonde the Musical, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella) as Matthew Mugg, Liza Hunter (Disney Camp Rock) and Marra Edwards (The Color Purple, Disney Camp Rock) as Polynesia, Doctor Dolittle's parrot, and Workshop newcomer Ben Connelly as Tommy. along with a host of youth actors.

E.G. Heard Engle (Disney's Camp Rock, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella) directs a talented cast of veteran actors and up-and-coming youth. Music director Daniel Gainey (Disney's Camp Rock, Songs for a New World) helps create a harmonious sound, and choreographer Katie Hilliger (Disney's Camp Rock, Hairspray) brings her energetic style to the dances.  For ticket information, call the box office at 803-799-6551 from noon to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, or visit www.workshoptheatre.com.  Only three performances remain:  Thursday July 25 - Saturday. July 27.

You can read reviews by August Krickel for both Tarzan the Stage Musical and Doctor Dolittle at Onstage Columbia.

Giulia's back, and Patrick's got her! Bakari Lebby brings "The Shape of Things" to Workshop!

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of, and cheerleader/advocate for the wealth of young talent that currently abounds in Columbia.  This weekend, audiences get chance to see some of the best and brightest, in Neil LaBute's  The Shape of Things, running for two nights only, Friday 6/28 and Saturday 6/29 at Workshop Theatre.

Recent USC grad and local musician Bakari Lebby first directed this play a couple of months ago in USC's intimate Benson Theatre.   He wrote one of the best guest blogs we've ever run, which you can see here, and my review (not technically a real review, as I saw a run-through rehearsal some days before the show opened) is here.  One excerpt:

For me, you could have successive nights of Hugh Jackman doing Les Mis live with a million-dollar stage set…. and I’d still rather see four dedicated kids on a bare stage doing something meaningful to them.  This show is sometimes described as a dark comedy, a serio-comedy, or a “dramedy.”  I’d describe it as a dark fable about contemporary relationships and society, set in the context of college dating, with some great moments of humor (in the vein of perhaps Sex and the City or Friends) as well as some chilling implications about the choices that people make for love.

It was a great theatrical experience, and Lebby hit a home-run with his directorial debut, aided in large part by Patrick Dodds (who played Moritz in Spring Awakening at Trustus, then sang "Those Magic Changes" as Doody in Grease at Town) as the protagonist's jerk best friend, and Katie Foshee as the female lead Evelyn, a role played on Broadway by Rachel Weisz.  I first saw Foshee and Lebby in the ensemble of jocks and brainiacs in High School Musical at Workshop in 2008, in which a radiant Giulia Marie Dalbec played Sharpay.

Now Lebby is bringing his production to Workshop for a special limited run, with Dodds and Dalbec taking over the leads.  As he describes it, "Jeni (McCaughan) at Workshop asked me if we could bring the show back for two nights, and I said yeah!   We offered the last cast their roles back, but the timing didn't work out for anyone other than Patrick.  Patrick and I talked about the option of having him play (protagonist) Adam.  We were both intrigued by it, because it would be a good chance for him to play a role in unfamiliar territory, in a show that he already has a handle on. That's just a really cool opportunity I think. He's doing a great job at it, and he is a different Adam than the last one, which is cool."

"Giulia is also a different Evelyn. It makes this production a bit different, which is really cool to check out.  Giulia is (like) my big sister and we haven't worked on a show together since High School Musical when I was 17, so I'm really stoked to get to work with her talent, and we already have a type of comfort and knowledge of each other, so we play well together. If that makes sense. It's always fun for me to see her in straight plays since we don't get a lot of that out of her."

Dalbec was almost every play produced in the Midlands over the last 5 or 6 years, playing everyone from Gypsy to Elle in Legally Blonde to Honey in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and was profiled in the March 2013 Jasper as one of Columbia's "Leading Ladies."  Dodds was featured as one of "Columbia's Theatrical Brat Pack" in  the November 2012 issue.  Both have been absent from major Columbia stages for far too long (actually, just a matter of months, but that's too long for me!) and without giving away the show's plot, there are perfect, ideal parts for each to play.  LaBute is an eloquent poet of the stage,  whose dialogue is so natural and realistic that his way with words is sometimes overlooked, just as his themes, which center around familiar, commonplace scenarios of modern relationships, are sometimes dismissed as not being important.  I suggest that the way people treat each other in their one-on-one relationships might just be the most important theme for humanity.

Joining this new cast are Kayla Cahill and Jeremiah Redmond.  Lebby says "Kayla Cahill is originally from New Jersey, and has a BA in Theatre from USC. She graduated in 2012. We were good friends in school. She was in Romeo & Juliet directed by Robert Richmond as the Nurse, and (played) Queen Elizabeth in The History of Queen Elizabeth I.   Jeremiah Redmond is from Lexington, SC and has most recently been seen in High Voltage's Reservoir Dogs and in Trustus's production of Kitty Kitty Kitty directed by Daniel Bumgardner."

The Facebook "event" page for the production is here.  An interview with Lebby can be found online at the Free Times.  For more information, visit http://www.workshoptheatre.com/ or call 803-799-4876.

~ August Krickel

A Whole Lot of Misbehavin’ Goin’ On! - Stephen Ingle reviews the new show at Trustus Theatre

  Having never been to a musical at Trustus Theatre before, I went in with an open mind, and my suspension of disbelief was as high as the sky. Upon discovering that Ain’t Misbehavin’ is a musical revue, my expectations lowered a bit. In fact, when I first walked in and saw that the band was the focal point at center stage, and that the set design was predominantly muted by a grey wash, I thought that perhaps this might not be quite the show for me. I mean, who wants the band or orchestra to be the focal point? However, from the first musical number, I could tell I was in for a very entertaining evening.

With a cast of only five members and non-stop musical numbers, one might not expect for there to be much character development, or relationships between the characters. In this case one would be wrong. Director Terrence Henderson took what could have been an otherwise repetitive evening of Thomas “Fats” Waller songs and dynamically wove a very fun and diverse tapestry of quirky characters, relationships, and amazing singing. This show is more than simply an homage to Fats Waller. Typically, I would choose the standout performances to highlight in my review. However, all of the performances were equal in effectiveness. Devin Anderson has once again shown audiences that she has both the vocal and acting chops to fill any stage. Last seen in The Color Purple at Workshop Theatre, Anderson has revealed to audiences that she is much more than a one-note dramatic actress. Her various characterizations and songs will make you laugh and feel as you may never have before. In my opinion, Avery Bateman is the stage equivalent to the Sun, and can blindingly brighten any theatre. Much like Anderson, I last saw Katrina Blanding in The Color Purple in a very dramatic performance. Like Anderson, Katrina created a wonderful, multi-layered character that I couldn’t take my eyes off of, even during another performer’s songs. Rounding out the cast are Kendrick Marion and Samuel McWhite, the latter of whom I also saw in The Color Purple. These two gentlemen, while providing the perfect foils for the strong female characters, each had his own particular flavor. Marion played more of the fun, charming, energetic, and nice guy while McWhite boasted as more of the player going through the female characters smoothly and confidently. They were the perfect bookends in the library of Waller tunes.

Much like other musical revues, and shows like Cats, Ain’t Misbehavin’ easily could have provided an evening of entertaining songs without any other substance. Henderson thankfully did not accept this as his vision of the production. Although the set was a bit bland, which I venture to guess could have been on purpose so the colorful characters and their costumes could be illuminated, it was divided into its own little worlds inside this Cotton Club. The bar seemed to have been a nice little rest area for the entertainers to have a drink, and a place for Blanding’s character to go fume about the attention Bateman’s character was getting from the men. The sitting area on stage left provided a place where the audience could be let in to the dynamic of relationships between the company members. Finally, the upstairs dressing room allowed us to peek behind the curtain and see how the “performers” took breaks.

All in all this revue proved to provide more than just songs from a time gone by. In fact, early in the first act there was a nice reminder of this time with a video projection onstage of Fats Waller and the era in which he lived. The music, under the direction of Walter Graham, was both playful and effective, and the members seemed to be having as much fun as the cast.  Additionally, I would be remiss if I did not mention that not only did Terrance Henderson direct, but also choreographed. The dancing was as fun, energetic, and seemingly natural as the acting and singing performances. As with the rest of the performances, the dancing resonated as more spontaneous and impromptu than choreographed.  Ain't Misbehavin' runs through Sat. July 20th at Trustus Theatre; contact the box office at 803-254-9732 for more information, or visit www.trustus.org.

~ Stephen Ingle

Blond Ambition Collides with Chef Boyardee: The Commedia Rapunzel at Columbia Children’s Theatre (plus the return of celebrity guest blogger Kat Bjorn, age 5)

The Spaghetti and Meatball Players seriously need to get out of town—and take The Commedia Rapunzel with them.  And that’s not a bad thing.  Columbia Children’s Theatre should take this hair-raising (or rather, lowering) show on the Commedia dell’Arte road, and see if they can pull a Muppets Movie and make their way to writer-director Sam LaFrage’s transplant home with that little street you may have heard of, called Broadway. The Commedia Rapunzel is the funniest play I have seen in years.  If you don’t believe me, just ask the dozen or so adults who nearly passed out from laughter by the end of Friday night’s opening performance.  Of course, children will be asking their parents for weeks why they laughed so hard about lines about Judge Judy, Julie Taymor and Jennifer Tilly.  On the way home this evening, I started to explain to my daughter, Kat, about the opening scene from a faux production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, then thought better of it.  I told her that the scene was mostly a joke for the adults, and, yes, that was lemonade Martha kept throwing in George’s face.

Dramatic beat.

The veteran pasta players, which include the exceptionally talented Elizabeth Stepp, along with Bobby Bloom, Paul Lindley II and Beth DeHart, have become such a well-virgin-olive-oiled machine that Columbia residents are experiencing one of those moments that occur once in a generation in a community:  when a group of inspired artists have been together long enough to click on all cylinders and deliver high-performance aesthetics.  I’m not sure we can call the Spaghetti and Meatball Players an artist’s circle so much as a dramatic dumpling.  But the results are just as satisfying.

LaFrage rightly describes Commedia dell’Arte as allusional theatre.  In this second of his Columbia “princess plays” (last year was The Commedia Cinderella), he has taken the art of the allusion to the outer limits of dramatic writing.  It is as if he has figured out a way to freebase Cap'n Crunch, and share it harmlessly with children.  For minutes on end, jokes from one end of the pop culture spectrum to the other fly at the audience in Gatling gun fashion, with many yuks sailing straight over the heads of children audience members, yet plenty landing squarely all the same, and with enough rubber chicken and Scooby Doo/Keystone Cops chase scenes to make up for the rest.

As alluded above, take a moment before the show to tell your children that this production will bear no resemblance whatsoever to Tangled, or to any other semi-faithful production of the classic fairy tale of Rapunzel (which one of the Meatballers tells us is German for “corn salad”).  Eventually the story will wend its way to a damsel with distressed hair locked away in a tower by a surrogate mother witch with a penchant for organic farming and small business entrepreneurship, played with spot-on, quirky compassionate conjuring by Beth DeHart (Carolyn Chalfant will alternate in this role.)   Only the title damsel, played by Elizabeth Stepp (whose comic acting really deserves notice by some producer at Nickelodeon) has a singing voice akin to one of those epic fail American Idol teens—and for a few moments, the audience doesn’t feel too terribly bad about her predicament.

Bobby Bloom keeps the zaniness from descending into total abandon with multiple roles, including especially the Commedia narrator Pantalone.  He also nails the part of Prince Prometheus Phoo-Phoo Something-or-Other II, who, clad in Viking helmet and Japanese smoking jacket, settles in the end for a date night at Red Lobster with Rapunzel—which must be the 21st-century version of “happily ever after.”  Paul Lindley II and LaFrage team up in several dynamic duo roles, including two Glee-inspired snobby Mockingbirds, and the outrageously redneck Baker and Baker’s Wife.  And Ashlyn Combs is a great masked transition player in addition to her surprise “bet your bottom dollar” appearance.

As for technical accolades, LaFrage perhaps deserves even more credit for his sound design than writing; I cannot imagine how many painstaking hours he and Stage Manager/Sound Technician Erin Huiett must have spent producing dozens of perfectly timed audio gimmicks.  Last but not least, while the set design is lean (though the show is pleasingly prop heavy), I kept looking at the patchwork of appropriately-ragtag fabric that adorned the set, wondering to myself with a smile whether they had stolen the material from my Aunt Helga’s bloomer drawer or from her curtains.

While there are a few moments that might frighten tiny tots—there’s no getting around the fact that Commedia masks are going to tiptoe into some little ones’ dreams—I just cannot recommend The Commedia Rapunzel enough.  Columbia Children’s Theatre puts on great shows season after season, but they really have outdone themselves this time.  I’m fairly sure I laughed even more than my daughter—I’m still rolling from the reference to NBC’s “the more you know” PSA's.  (See CMT’s special adults-only date night performance on June 22!)  But my daughter’s attention was held captive for the full hour and a half by the frenetic fireworks of LaFrage & Co.  Still, though, I know it’s going to take me the better part of the weekend to explain why it was funny when one of the actors held up a placard of that great comic fallback Alf.

~ Arik Bjorn

And now: an exclusive Jasper interview with the cast!

The Cast of Rapunzel Lets Down Its Hair with Kat Bjorn

Kat Bjorn:  Mr. Sam [LaFrage, the director], Mr. Jim [Litzinger, CCT Managing Director] said you are from Camden, South Carolina.  Now you live in New York City, “the city that never sleeps.”  What is the difference between the two cities?

Mr. Sam :  Oh my, where do I begin?  New York is much bigger!  I think five families live in Camden.  But it’s bigger than Lugoff.  And there’s lots of theatre in New York.

KB:  Mr. Sam, Mr. Jerry [Stevenson, CCT Artistic Director, and portrayer of the character Toad on stage] said he directed you when you were in 8th grade.  Did he dress like Toad back then too?

Mr. SAM:  [silence.]  Um, no.  I don’t think so.  He cast me as Willy Wonka.

KB:  Can you spell Commedia dell’Arte?

Entire Cast:  C-O-M-M-E-D-I-A  D-E-L  A-R-T-E.

KB:  Two L’s!  You forgot the other L!

Mr. Bobby:  Yes, but it’s pronounced Arté.  Ar-tay.

[Kat’s Papa mentally plans a later home lesson on Italian vowel pronunciation.]

KB:  What is Commedia dell’Arte?

Mr. SAM:  It’s a type of theatre in Italy that started in the street.  Very physical comedy.  And it was one of the first times that girls were allowed to be in plays.

KB:  Mr. Sam, why did you write a play about Rapunzel?

Mr. SAM:  Mr. Jim and Mr. Jerry selected the play and asked me to write it.  I really enjoyed it.  But it’s a weird fairy tale.  I mean, a girl gets locked up in a tower!

KB:  Mr. Sam, you have written two plays in Columbia now about princesses.  Who is your favorite princess and why?

Mr. SAM:  The Little Mermaid.

KB:  [jumps up and down]  That’s my favorite princess too!

Ms. Elizabeth:  Mine was always Snow White.  We were both brunettes and pale.

KB:  Yeah, but what about the apple?

[Cast thinks deep thoughts about this.]

KB:  What is Rapunzel’s hair made out of?

Ms. Elizabeth:  Weave.  Horse hair.

KB:  That’s what my Papa said, but I didn’t believe him.

Papa:  See!  Sometimes I’m right.

KB:  How come in these kind of plays the actors talk to the kids, but not in some of the other plays at Mr. Jim and Mr. Jerry’s theatre?

Mr. Bobby:  [provides long exposition on the history of the fourth wall in dramatic form.]

Mr. Sam:  Actually—

[Mesmerized by Mr. Bobby’s disquisition, KB motions to Mr. Sam to zip his mouth.]

KB:  Rapunzel, in real life, what is the worst thing that ever happened to your hair?

Ms. Elizabeth:  I had long hair past my bottom when I was your age.  One night I fell asleep next to a rolly brush, and it got all caught up in my hair.  It took my aunt hours to undo it.

KB:  Ms. Elizabeth, if you take off your Rapunzel wig, will your hair be long like mine, short like Mr. Sam’s the director, or bald like my Papa’s?

[Ms. Elizabeth removes her wig and lets down her long hair.  KB and Cast climb it and exit stage left.]

Rapunzel runs June 14-23 with performances at the following dates and time:  Friday, June 14 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, June 15 at 10:30 a.m. & 2 p.m.; Sunday, June 16 at 3 p.m.; Friday, June 21 at 7:00 p.m.; Saturday, June 22 at 10:30 a.m. & 2 p.m.; and Sunday, June 23 at 3 p.m.  (Saturday, June 22 is a Special Late Night Date Night for adult kids at heart beginning at 9:00 p.m.  Doors open at 8:00.)  There will also be three special matinee performances for kids and adults on Thursday, June 27; Friday, June 28; and Thursday, July 18 at 10:30 a.m.  Tickets are $8 for adult and children 3 and up.  The Columbia Children’s Theatre is located at the Second Level of Richland Mall, 3400 Forest Drive (corner of Beltline and Forest Drive).  Enter the Second Level parking garage walkway and park in Level 2-L for easy access.  Call 691.4548 for more information or to reserve tickets for groups of 10 or more.  To learn more about Columbia Children’s Theatre , visit http://columbiachildrenstheatre.com/ .

Jessica Ream, Sean McGuinness, Jenna Sach, Jessica Christine Owen, and James and Michael Dwyer featured at First Thursday on Main Street

Charleston has Spoleto, and Jasper is bringing you day-by-day, event-by-event coverage, but let's not forget about Columbia's own monthly celebration of the arts, First Thursdays on Main.  Festivities officially run 6-9 PM this Thursday, June 6th.  Below are some facts, figures and images taken from assorted press material:

Jessica Ream is the featured artist at Wine Down on Main (located at 1520 Main Street,  Suite 1B.) She was born in Columbus, Ohio, early in the year 1990, but was raised south of the Mason-Dixon line, in Carolina suburbia. She is a jack-of-all trades artist, and incorporates her knowledge of painting, photography, print and sculpture into her mixed media pieces. She began her studies at Columbia College but transferred to Savannah College of Art and Design where she graduated with honors, with a BFA in Painting. She returned to Columbia shortly after graduation, and currently works for the Columbia Art Museum while continuing her work as an artist.

A couple of doors down, at 1520 Main Street, Suite 1e, Frame of Mind is delighted to announce the return of one of Columbia's favorite daughters and artists to the FOM gallery, Jenna Sach, a familiar face and vital fixture among the Main Street community. For this FOM Series, she is sharing images close to her heart and taking us all on "The Journey Home." Sach says:

For this show I wanted to ‘bring it home.’ Though I have always taken photographs on my journeys to Europe, I've never displayed them (unless you count my mom’s walls). With this series I maintain my style, keeping the rich blacks in contrast to the cool whites. All the photos are taken from North Derbyshire, which is located in the East Midlands of England. A large portion of the Peak District National Park is within this county, as well as part of the Pennines. Within this region, there are various stately homes, castle ruins, gardens, caverns, and the beautiful rolling hills, for which it is so well known.

During a recent two week visit home, I traveled around North Derbyshire with my camera, occasionally making my family pull off to the side of the road, just so I could jump out and capture the landscape to share with you! For putting up with my artistic endeavors on this, and many others trips, I dedicate this show to them. Places featured include Buxton, Chatsworth Stately Home, Bolsover Castle, Tideswell, Castleton, Peveril Castle, Hardwick Hall and Haddon Hall.

Born in Southampton, England, Jenna Sach immigrated to South Carolina in 1990. Ever since she was a young girl, she has shown a fondness for art. However, it was not until she was 16 that she began her passion for photography. Jenna’s high school offered a darkroom course; it was her first experience developing film, and she fell in love. Over the years Jenna took pictures of the places she visited, but it was not until she arrived at the University of South Carolina that she began to formulate her style. There, she connected with her mentor and darkroom professor, Toby Morriss. Under his guidance, she perfected her printing and found her style. Morriss taught Jenna how to combine her two passions, photography and psychology. She obtained her B.A. in Experimental Psychology and hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology.

Jessica Christine Owen is featured in "A Study of Self and Others"  at S&S Art Supply (located at 1633 Main Street.) Owen is an innovative photographer who uses herself as the subject matter. Through physical alteration as a performative aspect of the final photograph, her works are beautiful and eerie, funny and disturbing, all rolled into one. DJ B will be out front spinnin' some awesome family-friendly tunes as well!

Her artist statement reads:

The term grotesque has the contemporary definition of being something strange, fantastic, ugly or disgusting. The grotesque has formed an attachment to other terms proliferated to describe aspects of experience, among them, the abject. The abject is something that exists between the concept of an object and of the subject. The abject becomes a reaction to the threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of distinction between subject and object or self and other. My intention is to create an emotional bond with the viewer through a combination of unlike things that challenges established realities or constructs new ones. By altering physical form through self-inflicted acts or complete physical alteration, the viewer is meant to see the blurred lines of what we perceive to be self and what is other.

Owen received her BFA in Photography and BA in Art History with honors from New Mexico State University in 2010. She currently resides in Columbia, South Carolina where she is pursuing her MFA in Photography at the University of South Carolina.

Anastasia & Friends (located at 1534 Main Street) is presents "Color Movement," an exhibition which features paintings by father and son, James Dwyer and Michael Dwyer, who have spent a combined nine decades creating abstract paintings, rooted in Modernism, with color as a primary focus.

Michael Dwyer:

I grew up in a home in which both parents were artists and paintings by them and their friends always hung on the walls. Although my mother mostly put aside her professional art career to raise a family, my father was an energetic and accomplished painter all the years I knew him, only giving up his studio work at the age of eighty-seven to care for my mother. My father also taught painting and drawing at Syracuse University for thirty-some years, including while I was there as an undergraduate. I never took a class with him, but I learned a great deal from my Dad, whether it was during dinner conversations or trips to museums. Probably, most of what I learned was just from the long-term exposure of having his paintings around the house.

As a kid, I loved to draw from the time I could pick up a pencil and I received enormous encouragement and support from both parents. Sometimes I’d visit my Dad’s studio and make little drawings while he painted. Once, when I was seven or eight, my father stretched a small canvas for me to work on (my first abstract painting!) while classical music played on the radio and he worked on a large canvas. The scale of his paintings – often seven or eight feet - made an early impression, too.

A few years before my father’s death in 2011, we had a couple of conversations about how we might be able to put together a two-man show, but we were never able to make that happen during his lifetime. Before he died my father shipped me about thirty of the paintings he’d made over the past few years. That shipment has allowed me to finally, and very happily, assemble this exhibition.

........

A sense of movement has been an important element in my work for a long time. Earlier pieces often conveyed a feeling of forms drifting in space. Then, there was a shift toward using linear composition to create direction. I wanted the viewer’s eye to move along a variety of circuits and have experiences along the way. I also found from my earlier collage work, that I like the crisp, definitive edges that result from cutting shapes with scissors, so I began using masking tape for a similar effect.

Recent works often have a sequential aspect that comes partly from a fascination with similarities between visual art and music. Thinking of musical composition as one note followed by another, and so on, I wondered if this might be a basis for a painting. Ultimately, I’m always after that transcendent moment when abstract elements come together in a way that‘s thrilling and somehow right.

Dwyer also provides this artist's statement from his father James Dwyer:

Since space is the fundamental characteristic of drawing, painting, sculpture, and architecture, I have long understood that eloquence in those forms is to be achieved through the structuring of space. Within the past ten years or so, I have stumbled my way into a style based on low relief as its principal component.

In low relief I have discovered that I can offer variable visual and tactile experience controlled only in part by me. The viewer is invited to share in control through physical viewpoint. Elements within a work change, or are perceived as changing when seen from different angles. This, I believe, can bring about an especially intimate and creative communication.

"Color Movement" will open as a part of the First Thursday art crawl on Main on June 6th, from 6 PM to 9 PM and run through June 28th.  Special thanks to Maria Kennedy Mungo for preparing delicious food for this very special opening.

Tapp's Art Center, located at 1644 Main Street, is home to several dozen artists' studios, as well as changing exhibitions inside and in the display windows on Main and Blanding Streets.  Included in those window exhibits is Sean McGuinness, aka That Godzilla Guy:

This will be a big event, marking Godzillafications all up in your grill, so to speak! I will have my largest window display ever, and I will also be in the Tapp's Courtyard selling my artwork. If that isn't enough, my art will also be hanging inside the Tapp's Arts Center as part of a charity event benefiting local police canines. Last year I held my first-ever "Meet Godzilla @ Tapps". The presence you guys helped me create got noticed by all the local merchants, and started me on the path to becoming "That Godzilla Guy" [in retrospect, it was like you helped lodge some shrapnel in my chest, so I could go on to build a wicked suit of armor in a cave with a box of scraps!] Please come visit, and be part of the magic.

And if there is any question as to the meaning of the term, McGuinness has helpfully provided a definition:

Godzillafications [noun] God-zill-a-fi-ca-tions (g d-zɪlə-f -k sh n):   An artwork or consequence growing out of That Godzilla Guy’s [Sean McGuinness] unique vision to interject his Godzilla Collectibles into established works of art, photographs, or concepts. It ranges from serious gravitas to social and political satire, yet always centers around a deep love of the kaiju [giant monster] eras of past, present and future. The purpose is to not only spread the love of Godzilla and his eternal, relevant messages, but to also connect people with art who would not normally appreciate traditional arts or even Godzilla himself.

Godzillafications are crafted through non-traditional means using kaiju collectibles, digital photography, Photoshop, and artwork covered and/or homaged under the Fair Use Act. If available, permission of the original artist is obtained. Godzillafications can also consist of inserting a kaiju into a photo with no digital manipulation at all. The artwork is then printed out on high quality cardstock or matte polypropylene, then sealed to a wood plank or inserted into a recycled frame. Godzillafications are also a movement, inserting themselves into art shows, galleries, window displays, street performances, internet videos and webcomics.

Use in a sentence: Art Appreciation Through Godzillafication.

Also, the cast of the upcoming Trustus Theatre production of Ain't Misbehavin' will be giving a sneak-peek performance at 7 PM in the courtyard, next to Tapp's!

Midlands Theatres Announce New Seasons!

Dueling Shreks.  Dueling Les Miserables. Dueling Clybourne Parks, dueling Hamlets ...well, I guess technically any production of Hamlet is a dueling Hamlet.  Neil Simon and Anthony Shaffer. Tom Stoppard and John Guare. Tammy Wynette and Patsy Cline. Dracula and Frankenstein, Ash and Elvis.  Revivals of classics, and brand-new shows direct from Broadway. Looks like there is something for everyone in the next year! I'm not sure that Jasper has ever broken any news before, but to my knowledge, this is the first report from last week's "One Last Hurrah" celebration at the Art Bar, the culmination of One Month, One Columbia. Representatives from many of the area's theatres announced their seasons for 2013-2014.  A few were not able to make it, and I've lifted some titles and dates from their websites.  Others do a calendar year format rather than a "school year," so in those cases I've listed what info is available.

First Disclaimer: I have not included commercial venues (like the Township, the Koger Center, etc.) that book productions, but they have some great shows coming up too.  Nor have I included one-time shows, high school shows (however excellent they may be), church and religion-based events, dance and music productions, etc.  I'm all in favor of those too, but this is about local community and professional theatres.

Second Disclaimer: theatre seasons often change, so this is in no way a definitive or comprehensive listing.  Look for something in a future print issue of Jasper - The Word on Columbia Arts for details and more specific dates and information.

Third Disclaimer: the event was held at the Art Bar, so my memory may not be perfect.  If there's anything significant that I have listed incorrectly, drop me a note at akrickel@jaspercolumbia.com .

That said, in no particular order, we have the following shows to look forward to!

Town Theatre

Les Miserables - September

The Foreigner - late fall

Elvis Has Left the Building - January

Stand By Your Man: The Tammy Wynette Story - March

Shrek: The Musical - May

..........

High Voltage Theatre

Dracula (a new stage version by Chris Cook, developed in collaboration with Dacre Stoker, great-grand-nephew of Bram Stoker) at the West Columbia Riverwalk Amphitheater - October 10-13, 17-20, 24-27, 30-31

classic thriller at Tapp's Art Center (details tba) - February

classic thriller at West Columbia Riverwalk Amphitheater (details tba) - Spring

..........

USC's Theatre South Carolina

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard - Sept. 27 - Oct. 5 at Drayton Hall

The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov - Nov. 15-23 at Longstreet Theatre

The 39 Steps by Patrick Barlow - Feb. 21 -  March 1 - Longstreet Theatre

Hamlet by William Shakespeare (OK, like you didn't know that) - April 18-26 - venue tba

plus a full season of black box shows (details tba)

Stage 5 Theatre

Hamlet - September

Lombardi - November

Special Holiday Event - December

Clybourne Park – April

..........

Lexington Arts Association (at the Village Square Theatre)

Shrek: The Musical - September 20 - October 6

Steel Magnolias - November 1 - November 10

Always…Patsy Cline - December 6 - December 15 (non-season show)

9 to 5: The Musical - January 17 – January 26

Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka JR. - March 7 - March 23

a musical revue (details tba) - May 9 - May 18

..........

Workshop Theatre

Beehive - September

Sleuth - late fall

Crimes of the Heart - January

Biloxi Blues - March

Young Frankenstein - May (including Frau ....BLUCHER!)

..........

Theatre Rowe

Murder Ahoy! - June 27 - July 28

Over the River and Through the Woods - August 16-17, 23-25

The Altos (tentative) - September 20-22, 27-29

Little Shop of Horrors - October 18-19, 25-26, 31

Chapin Theatre Company

How to Eat Like A Child (based on the book by Delia Ephron) - Aug. 2-4 at the Old Chapin Firehouse / American Legion Building

Unnecessary Farce, by Paul Slade Smith -  Sept. 19-22, 26-28 at Harbison Theatre at Midlands Technical College

..........

South Carolina Shakespeare Company

Hamlet - Oct. 16 - 26

Les Miserables - Apr. 16 - May 3

..........

On Stage Productions

An Evening of One-Acts - September

Yes, Virginia - The Musical - December

Second Samuel - February

Hey G - April

..........An Evening of One Acts -  September - 

Columbia Children's Theatre

The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley - September

Ho Ho Ho! - November/December

Puss In Boots (a new comic version by CCT's Jerry Stevenson) - February

The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fair(l)y (Stoopid) Tales - April

The Commedia Snow White - June

..........

Trustus Theatre

Thigpen Main Stage:

Ragtime - September

Venus in Fur - November

A Christmas Carol - December

Clybourne Park - January-February

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, by Tom Stoppard, with music by Andre Previn; featuring the SC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Morohiko Nakahara - Feb.-March

See Rock City and Other Destinations - spring

The House of Blue Leaves - May

Evil Dead: The Musical - summer - groovy.

Winner of the Playwrights' Festival - August

Side Door Theatre

Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche (returning from its sold-out run in January) - Fall

El Diario De un Psiquiatra (A Psychiatrist's Diary) - a world premiere by Julia Vargas, presented in Spanish by La Tropa - November

Love, Lost and What I Wore, by Delia Ephron - January

a NiA Company show - Spring

Off-Off-Lady Series

The Adding Machine (pending rights) April 24-May 4 - venue tba

In the Red and Brown Water - June - at the Harbison Theatre

..........

WOW (Walking on Water) Productions

Confessions of a Good Man - a new play by local authors Tangie Beaty, Donna Johnson, and Kevin A. Rasberry - July 25-28 at the Harbison Theatre

other original works in 2013-14 - TBA

..........

If you didn't notice, including the groups collaborating in the Side Door, that's 15 different theatre groups!  In little bitty Columbia, SC - who knew?  Well, you probably did, since as I'm saying more and more these days... Columbia has always been a theatre town.  Look for details on all of the above in coming months here, and in print issues of Jasper - The Word on Columbia Arts. And many thanks to Larry Hembree and Debora Lloyd, the co-chairs for Theatre for OneColumbia, for organizing and facilitating One Last Hurrah!

~ August Krickel

"By The Way, Meet Vera Stark" - a review of the new show at Trustus

Trustus Theatre's new production of Lynne Nottage's play By The Way, Meet Vera Stark tackles an odd paradox from early Hollywood: talented actors of color were finding professional success on screen in mainstream films that starred white performers, but most commonly were cast as maids, slaves, "mammies," and other stereotypical roles. Hattie McDaniel, for example, broke the color barrier when she won the Oscar, but still she played a servant, not a teacher, mother, or romantic lead. Employing a dizzying array of narrative and dramatic techniques, Nottage traces the career of the fictional Vera Stark (Michelle Jacobs), an aspiring African-American actress in the early '30's who works by day as a maid for the frivolous Gloria Mitchell (Katie Mixon), a Mary Pickford-like starlet famed as "America's Little Sweetie Pie." Advance press material notwithstanding, Vera Stark is neither a screwball comedy (although it is sometimes funny, if perhaps not hilarious) nor a riff on Gone With the Wind (although Mixon sometimes channels the breathless drawls of Vivian Leigh and Olivia de Havilland.)  Gloria is desperate to land the lead in The Belle of New Orleans, a weepy film melodrama that draws from classics like Camille and Dion Boucicault's The Octaroon. That term, by the way, turns up frequently: it's a 19th-century term for a person with one-eighth black heritage, who would still have been classified as a slave. (A mixed-race friend of mine once laughingly used that term to describe herself, and later a co-worker asked "What did you say you were again?  A Macaroon?")

Vera, clearly a close friend, confidante and sister-figure for her scatterbrained employer, wants a shot at playing the “Belle's” maid, an actual dramatic role with lines beyond "Yes, ma'am." In moments that define the play's central issues, Vera and roommate Lottie (Annette Dees Grevious) discuss the inherent irony of Vera's situation; these conversations, and scenes where Vera flirts with ambitious, driven jazz musician Leroy (an earnest and smooth Jabar Hankins) could be excerpts from a good August Wilson drama set in the 1930's. Strangely, however, different scenes and different characters in the first act are written in drastically, sometimes jarringly different styles. When Jacobs and Grevious banter with Janell Bryant (as their saucy friend Anna Mae, who intends to find stardom via affairs with white producers and directors who think she's Brazilian) the mood lightens, and the laughs come fast and furious, in the vein of socially-conscious comedies from the '70's like Good Times.  Hollywood types turn up: Bobby Bloom as a no-nonsense producer who could be from a realistic 1940's drama, and Clint Poston as an idealistic director, clearly an Otto Preminger figure, but as broadly comic as if Franz Liebkind's accent and Roger DeBris's flamboyance were taken from The Producers and morphed into a single character.  Bloom's studio exec, by the way, could easily have been one-note, and played by an older man, simply a quasher of any projects that won't sell at the box office. The youthful Bloom gives a remarkably three-dimensional performance, proving that there are no small roles, only small actors.  With the simplest of tools - suspenders instead of a belt, hair parted a certain way, a cigar held like Bogart, wire-rimmed glasses, assertive body language - he perfectly conveys an Irving Thalberg-like visionary, who wants to give audiences a brief escape from the grim realities of the Depression.

Mixon, meanwhile, dives into the role of the vodka-fueled Gloria with as much gleeful abandon as she dove into that quiche a few months ago in the Side Door Theatre, flamboyantly vamping like Lydia Languish or other 17th and 18th-century heroines of classic farce. When all these characters are on stage together, the show comes closest to capturing the spirit of a vintage screen comedy, a la Golddiggers of 1933, or How to Marry a Millionaire, with Grevious taking the older, more cynical Lauren Bacall role, Jacobs becoming sweet Betty Grable, and Bryant as the luscious but clueless Marilyn Monroe.  But if these references to obscure shows and characters you may not be familiar with are becoming a little annoying, that to some extent is my point. The author clearly intended this mash-up of genres, and each cast member does just fine, but at times the effect is confusing, as if disparate characters from separate plays all found themselves on stage together.

The storytelling chaos coalesces into something different entirely, however, as Act Two becomes a retelling of, reflection on, and subtle satire of the themes we saw in Act One. Three modern scholars (Grevious, Bryant, and Wela Mbusi) debate the legacy and sociological impact of Stark's life, as we see first a "clip" from The Belle of New Orleans, featuring Gloria, Vera, Lottie, and even "Brazilian Spitfire Anna Fernandez" (i.e. Anna Mae) in the roles that defined their careers, followed by a clip from a 1970's Merv Griffin-style talk show, where we see the older Vera and Gloria reunite. Here director Dewey Scott-Wiley brilliantly captures the differing levels of narrative: we the audience are watching a contemporary academic forum, whose participants are in turn watching a 40-year-old TV clip (acted out live by the performers from within a framed portal;) the talk show guests are in turn watching a film clip from 40 years earlier, the very movie that the characters were obsessing over live on stage in the first act.  Confused?  It actually makes perfect sense, and is a superb payoff to the confusion of Act One. Vera has become a parody of herself, much like the aging Josephine Baker or Eartha Kitt, and we learn that she ended her life soon after this TV appearance, dying young like Dorothy Dandridge, who likewise struggled for mainstream roles in Hollywood.  Leroy turns up as a bitter and defiant Charlie Parker-style burnout, excellently embodied as an older man by Hankins, while Gloria has naturally become a beloved screen goddess of yesteryear.  Scott-Wiley's inventive staging places the live action of the 70's clips behind scrims, eliminating the need for any significant make-up effects, while the 1930's movie was actually filmed in black-and-white by Jason Steelman, and directed by Scott-Wiley.  While it is supposed to be a parody of the era and its cinematic and acting conventions to some extent, the movie-within-the-play is actually pretty decent, with some nice angles, and plenty of attractive shadows, beams of light, and shades of gray.  Bloom doubles as the talk show host, and again manages to create an entirely different character, saying volumes with his pained expression as his interview/reunion devolves into a catfight.

Scott-Wiley doubles as scenic designer, and the art deco-influenced set is serviceable, but looks unfinished. The scrim effects are outstanding in the second act, but really should have been covered up by paintings, tapestry, anything, in the first act. Portions of the stage become particular locales (Vera's apartment, the exterior of the studio, etc.) but little is done to give any sense of change, and the actors' blocking within these smaller areas sometimes seems cramped and constrained. Costumes by Amy Brower expertly define varying eras; a number of characters wear striking creations from La-Ti-Da Jewelry Designs, which are also featured on display in the theatre's bar/gallery area.

Nottage has won just about every award imaginable: Pulitzer, Obie, Guggenheim, even a MacArthur "Genius" grant, but I don't think any were for this play.  The show is enjoyable enough, but never entirely decides what it wants to say, or what kind of play it wants to be. It's never a complete laugh-fest, nor do the more serious moments delve particularly deeply into material ripe for exploration. I also fear that some of the structural madness and much of the very broad comedy in the first act may turn off patrons who expect more from Trustus.  To them I say that the second act is the pay-off, and it's worth the wait. Remember - the venue is called "Trust Us" for a reason.

By The Way, Meet Vera Stark runs through Saturday, May 18th on the Thigpen Main Stage at Trustus.  Information can be found, and tickets may be purchased online at www.trustus.org , or call the box office Tuesdays through Saturdays 1-6 PM at 803-254-9732.  And you can read James Harley's review of the production at Onstage Columbia and at the Free Times.

~ August Krickel

Director Milena Herring talks with Jasper about "Collected Stories," opening at the Art Museum Wed. May 15

Jasper :  How did  you first discover Collected Stories, and how did you come to direct this production? Milena Herring:  I have wanted to direct this show since first reading the script in New York in 1997.  Donald Margulies is a gifted playwright, one of my favorites, and I had directed another of his plays, Sight Unseen.  I saw an early, first-run production of Collected Stories at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in the Village, starring Uta Hagen and a young Debra Messing. That was an indelible production. I moved to Columbia in 2010, but I never forgot about Collected Stories. Then last spring, Dewey Scott-Wiley was feeding my cat while I was on vacation, and I left a copy of the script for her to peruse and perhaps consider for a Trustus production. It turned out that the Trustus season had already been chosen, but they were adding an Off-Off-Lady Series, and she and Larry Hembree thought it would be a good addition to that.

Jasper :  The show will be presented in conjunction with the South Carolina Book Festival.  What are some themes that the show touches on, that might be of particular interest to Festival attendees?

Herring:  One of the central questions asked in the play -- Who owns your memories? -- may be of particular interest to attendees of the Book Festival. Literary appropriation, intellectual property rights, whether a person’s life events are suitable for another to use in their own creative process -- I think these are provocative issues that will be interesting to everyone. Collected Stories really explores very universal themes of lost love, betrayal, and aging. Lest that sound too heavy, let me add that the play explores these themes with great comic as well as dramatic writing.

The story is centered on a respected short-story writer and professor in her mid-fifties, Ruth Steiner, and Lisa Morrison, a naive and talented graduate student and aspiring writer who Ruth hires as her assistant. Taking place over six years, Collected Stories eavesdrops on Ruth and Lisa as their relationship evolves from mentor/protégée to loving friends to adversaries and, ultimately, disintegrates over some of the issues I’ve just mentioned. The playwright doesn’t come down on the side of either character, but lets the audiences decide for themselves who is wrong or right. I love that.

It takes very skillful actors to perform a full length 2-character play.  The beauty of Collected Stories is the many layers of meaning and depth of the two characters as they transition and evolve over 6 years. I have a director’s dream in Elena Martinez-Vidal as Ruth and Elisabeth Gray (EG) Engle as Lisa.  Elena and EG are inhabiting the roles fully, and finding nuances and subtleties in these two flawed but honest women. They are also a joy to work with, and we are having a wonderful time.

 Jasper :  The Off-Off-Lady series of plays has taken Trustus out into the community, into alternative venues. Tell us about the space you are using for this production.

 Herring:   We are fortunate to have the use of a huge, loft-like space on the 2^nd floor of the Columbia Museum of Art. Most people have never seen this space before, and it is exciting to be part of building new audiences for Trustus in unusual venues. I believe people will leave our production at the Columbia Museum of Art not only debating about the issues explored in the play, but wowed by the unique theatricality of the setting.

Jasper : Columbia is fortunate to have you back home, but most of your career has been in New York.  What were some highlights?

Herring:  As soon as I finished my theatre studies at USC, I moved to Manhattan and lived there for almost 30 years. For the first six of those years, I pursued my dreams of acting. I studied with Sanford Meisner, and I made the usual, endless rounds of auditions. I got parts in Off-Off-Broadway showcases, Upper Eastside Shakespeare productions in church basements, small roles on All My Children and One Life to Live. I shot a TV commercial that went national, but nothing that could really sustain body and soul. So, with several friends I started a theatre company, and began to hone my skills as a director. For the next 8 years I served as the artistic director of Leap Productions, in a small 99-seat theatre. We did 5 shows a season and among the off-Broadway plays and musicals I directed there were Eleemosynary by Lee Blessing, Sight Unseen by Donald Margulies, A Cowboy's Dream by John Foley, Painting Churches by Tina Howe, Lips Together, Teeth Apart by Terrence McNally, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me by Frank McGuiness, Oil City Symphony by Mike Craver and Mark Hardwick, and Smoke on the Mountain by Mark Hardwick and Connie Ray, among many others. We all worked 70 hours a week doing everything from marketing the season to writing grants, and I loved it. I always say that if I’d had a trust fund, I might still be doing it. But eventually the building we rented was sold, and by that time I was exhausted. Frankly, I needed to make some money so I could afford to actually GO to the theatre. My last 15 years in Manhattan, I worked in advertising and as a professional fundraiser, and enjoyed having weekends off.

Jasper :   Columbia theatre, and the arts scene, has certainly changed in the last few years. What are some of your impressions now that you are back home?

Herring:  I was in my first play at Town Theatre when I was 8, and I didn’t stop acting in local productions until I moved to New York at 23.  I cut my teeth under the tutelage of the beloved children’s theatre director, Mary Lou Kramer. Later, I was part of the first generation to grow up with Workshop Theatre where my mother, the late actress, director and drama teacher, Bette Herring, was one of the founders. It was a great privilege to have the opportunities afforded me by supportive parents who made sure I got to dance classes at Calvert Brodie, rehearsals all over town, and still made me do my homework-- even if it was done backstage!  Columbia had two strong, healthy community theatres when I was young and it has an even larger and more diverse performing arts community today. When I was ready to leave New York, one of the reasons I chose to move to Columbia was because of the vibrant and exciting things happening in all of the arts here. Columbia is fortunate to have a first-class art museum, a wonderful symphony orchestra, several ballet and modern dance companies, a large variety of music outlets - I could go on and on. It was, and is, clear to me that Columbia understands how important the arts are to its financial health. By supporting the arts, a city is repaid exponentially by its ability to attract new businesses and industry, by growing its tourism dollars, and by a culturally enriched population.

Collected Stories, sponsored by Callison Tighe and Muddy Ford Press (publishers of Jasper - The Word on Columbia Arts)  opens Wednesday, May 15 at the Columbia Museum of Art, and runs through Sunday, May 19. Contact the Trustus box office at 803-254-9732 for ticket information.

~ August Krickel

A World of Wealth, Becky Shaw, Bark! The Musical, King Lear, and My First Time - all this weekend!

There is a world of theatrical wealth this weekend (in addition to Artista Vista, the Columbia Museum's Artist of the Year event, FOLKFaulous at the McKissick Museum, and a dozen other cool happenings. Indeed - no less than FIVE shows are opening, or continuing their runs.

OnStage Productions presents A World of Wealth, a new musical by Robert Harrelson and Gloria VanDalen.  That's right - a world premiere of a new musical, right here in town!  The cast includes Christy Shealy Mills, Zanna Mills, Emma Imholz, Liberty Broussard, Tracy Davis Davenport, Charlis Wright, Gene Davis, Kristen Kimery, Zach Tenny, and Corin Wiggins.

From press material:

When a wealthy family decides to move uptown NYC from the south to bring the family closer together the chaos begins. Love and Money have always appeared to the forces opposed to each other as we find out that Money is more than dollars and cents. The show is a funny but dramatic look at family values and believing in friends to make life exciting. Songs such as A Spanglish , Forever Friends and I Don't Want to Grow Up and More proves the show to be a sure hit! This dramatic, comedic and  heartwarming production will run April 26th 7:30pm   , April 27th 2:30pm  and 7:30pm , April 28th  2:30pm , May 2 and 3 , 7:30pm  , May 4 , 2:30pm and 7:30pm , May 5th, 2:30 PM -  at The On Stage Performance Center,  680 Cherokee Lane, West Columbia, SC 29169. For questions please call Robert Harrelson at 407-319-2596 or check On Stage Productions website at www.OnStageSc.com

Stage 5 Theatre meanwhile is producing Bark! The Musical, which opened for a preview run last weekend, and officially opens tonight. The theatre is located at 947 S. Stadium Rd., near Williams-Brice.

The entire show is presented from a dog’s point of view. Through song and story, the audience is exposed to the tenderness, aggression and frustration of these beings as they share personal stories of past and present, owners and friends, and their desire to be loved and part of a family. For more details see www.mbfproductions.net .

Cast:

- Robert Bullock as King, the older and wiser Labrador and leader of the pack

-  Crystal Leidy as Golde, the rugged, sarcastic, take-no-guff, tell-it-like-it-is female bull dog

- Brock Henderson as Rocks, the Jack Russell Terrier puppy that is full of spunk and energy

- Avery Bateman as Chanel, A French poodle,a diva former show dog with attitude aspiring to be an opera singer

- Charlie Goodrich as Sam, A grey pit bull mutt that is  sexy, handsome, street tough and macho to hide his insecurities

- Britt Jerome as Boo, a sock-a-holic Cocker Spaniel, a bit frantic, but protective and caring mother figure

Directed by: Michael Bailey Assistant Directed by: Crystal Leidy Musical Direction by: Brock Henderson Choreography by: Mandy Applegate Produced by: Charles Chavers

Music by David Troy Francis, Lyrics by Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, Robert Schrock and Mark Winkler, Additional Lyrics by Jonathan Heath and Danny Lukic, Book by Mark Winkley and Gavin Geoffrey Dillard.

Show Dates: April 19- May 5, Shows- Friday and Saturday at 8 PM, Sunday at 3 PM.

USC's Lab Theatre is presenting Becky Shaw, by Gina Gionfriddo for this weekend only.

From press material:

Performances are at 8pm nightly, April 25-28, 2013. Tickets are $5 and are available at the door on a first-come, first-served basis. The Lab Theatre, the university's intimate "black box" performance space, is located in the Booker T. Washington building at 1400 Wheat Street, across form Blatt PE center. Becky Shaw contains adult themes which may not be suitable for children.

A 2009 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Becky Shaw tells the tale of a blind date (from hell) that opens a Pandora's box of familial and romantic entanglements. Newlyweds Andrew and Suzanna fix up two romantically challenged friends, but when scathing Max meets anxious Becky, it's obvious that the evening will not go according to plan. "Blithely cynical and devastatingly funny…witty observations on the emotional damage inflicted by neurotic people in the name of love…Gionfriddo is some kind of genius." – Variety

Director David Britt, a USC Theatre Instructor and Production Manager of the Lab Theatre, was inspired to stage Becky Shaw after seeing the play in New York a few years ago. He recalls that after seeing the play he and his friends got into a heated discussion about dating and what they were willing to tolerate in terms of "baggage." Britt says, "It was a wonderful discussion that was sparked by a wonderful play…I hope that audiences who see this show will have similar conversations."

Britt has assembled an exceptional cast of actors whose challenge is to portray the subtle nuances in Gionfriddo's characters. "I needed intelligent and sensitive actors who would enjoy the raw humor of these characters but would also be able to play their vulnerabilities."

Playing the title role of Becky is sophomore theatre major Grace Stewart. Also starring are undergraduate students Katie Atkinson, Stephen Canada, Hunter Bolton, and graduate acting student Catherine Friesen. Undergraduates Amanda Alston and Kasey Beard are the stage manager and assistant director, respectively.

"Most of our neurotic behavior is fairly common," says the director, "we just don't know it. I want the actors working on this show, as well as our audiences, to discover how much alike we all are. If you are an individual who thinks you are isolated in your problems…well, you aren't."

For more information on Becky Shaw or the theatre program at the University of South Carolina, please contact Kevin Bush by phone at 803-777-9353 or via email at bushk@mailbox.sc.edu.

My First Time continues at the the Trustus Side Door Theatre through Saturday 4/27. From press material:

The Trustus Side Door has been taking patrons on a “Sexploration” this season, and audiences have responded by packing houses nightly. The Side Door’s current production My First Time is sure to thrill and titillate as four actors relay hundreds of stories about real people’s first times. My First Time opens in Trustus’ intimate 50-seat Side Door Theatre on Friday April 12 at 8:00pm, and runs through April 27, 2013.

In 1998 - a decade before blogging began - a website was created that allowed people to anonymously share their own true stories about their first times.  The website (www.myfirsttime.com) became an instant phenomenon as over 40,000 stories poured in from around the globe that were silly, sweet, absurd, funny, heterosexual, homosexual, shy, sexy and everything in between. Producer Ken Davenport adapted hundreds of stories from the website into an acclaimed 90 minute evening where these true stories and all of the unique characters in them are brought to life by four actors. The show was such a hit in New York that it enjoyed a two and a half year run Off-Broadway before it closed in 2010.

Trustus’ founding Artistic Director Jim Thigpen had wanted to bring My First Time to the Capital City many times throughout the past 3 seasons; however the opportunity never presented itself. This season, with all of the Side Door shows under the umbrella of “Sexploration”, My First Time was an obvious choice.

Company member and director Jade Johnson cast four talented actors to relay the hundreds of stories that comprise My First Time. Trustus company member G. Scott Wild (Next Fall, Avenue Q) joins Trustus alum Shane Silman(Plan 9 From Outer Space, The Motherf**ker With the Hat) in reliving the men’s first times. Trustus welcomes two new talents to the Side Door as Jennifer Moody Sanchez and Brandi Perry give us the scoop from the women.

My First Time runs through Saturday, April 27, 2013.  Shows on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays start at 8pm. The Sunday matinee on April 14 will be at 3pm. The doors and box office open thirty minutes prior to curtain. All Trustus Side Door tickets are $15. Reservations can be made by calling the Trustus Box Office at (803) 254-9732 or online by visiting www.trustus.org.

Trustus Theatre is located at 520 Lady Street, behind the Gervais St. Publix. Parking is available on Lady Street and on Pulaski Street. The Trustus Side Door Theatre entrance is through the glass doors on the Huger St. side of the building.

For more information or reservations call the box office Tuesdays through Saturdays 1-6 pm at 803-254-9732. Visit www.trustus.org for all show information and season info.

You can read Susan Levi Wallach's review of the show here, and James Harley's review at Onstage Columbia.

King Lear continues at USC's Drayton Hall.  You can read a Q+A with lead actor James Keegan here, and August Krickel's review of the show here.  From press material:

Theatre South Carolina will stage Shakespeare's revered tragedy King Lear, the epic tale of a ruler's loss of power and descent into madness, April 19-27 at USC's Drayton Hall Theatre.

Show times for King Lear are 8pm Wednesdays-Fridays, 7pm Saturdays and 3pm on the first Sunday.  There is an additional half-price late night performance on Saturday, April 27 at 11pm.   Tickets for the production are $12 for students, $16 for USC faculty/staff, military personnel and seniors 60+, and $18 for the general public.  Tickets can be purchased by calling 803-777-2551 or by visiting the Longstreet Theatre box office, which is open Monday-Friday, 12:30pm-5:30pm, beginning Friday, April 12.

Shakespeare’s gale-force drama rips back the curtain on a family torn by greed and an unquenchable lust for power.  The aging King Lear decides to split his kingdom between his three daughters, but tests their loyalty first to finalize the arrangement.  When his most devoted daughter, Cordelia, refuses to flatter him, Lear disowns her, paving the way for a venomous plot to usurp the throne concocted by his remaining heirs.  The King flees, leading him on a spiraling descent into madness as he fights to regain control.  King Lear is a riveting story about the corruptive nature of power and a broken man’s agonizing struggle for redemption.

James Keegan reflects on playing King Lear at USC

Theatre South Carolina will stage Shakespeare's revered tragedy King Lear, the epic tale of a ruler's loss of power and descent into madness, April 19-27 at USC's Drayton Hall Theatre.  Continuing a tradition of reinventing the "look" of classic plays to augment their timlessness and relevance to modern audiences, guest director Cristian Hadji-Culea (Director General of the National Theatre of Iasi, Romania) and Obie Award-winning  scenic designer and USC professor Nic Uluru depict Lear as the head of a major corporation, who finds his immense power and sense of entitlement challenged when his authority is usurped by two of his daughters. Joining a cast of USC undergraduate and graduate theatre students are guest artists Terry Snead, Park Bucker, Paul Kaufmann, and, in the title role, professional actor James Keegan, who has worked with the Folger Shaksepeare Theatre in Wshington, DC, and the Blackfriars Playhouse at the American Shakespeare Center in Virginia.   Mr. Keegan graciously took time to share some thoughts on this challenging role and production. Jasper :  How did you become involved in this production of King Lear, at USC?

James Keegan:   I recently worked with Robert Richmond, a theater professor here at USC, on a production of Shakespeare’s Henry V at The Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC; Gary Logan, who directed a production here at USC last year served as dialect coach for that production.  Gary is the head of the Academy of Classical Acting MFA program at The George Washington University; both my son and daughter-in-law took their MFA degrees at that program, where they were fortunate to have Gary as a teacher, mentor, and friend.  The last time I played the title role in King Lear was in 2009 at The American Shakespeare Center; in that production my son, Thomas, played Burgundy and the Doctor, and my later-to-be daughter-in-law, Alyssa Wilmoth-Keegan, played Cordelia.  I suspect Gary had heard about the production from Tom and Alyssa, so that when Robert Richmond asked Gary if he knew of an actor who might play Lear in the USC production, Gary felt he knew enough to recommend me.  I like to think that my work with Robert also helped to convince him I might do the job well.  As all these crossovers suggest, the classical theatre world is a small one, and in this case—as in others—that has worked to my advantage.

Jasper :  Often an actor will bring some new insight or perspective to a role that he or she has played before.  Anything in particular that you are anticipating in playing Lear this time around?

Keegan: When I last played Lear, my father had already passed away at the age of 86—in his waning years, I had watched him become physically compromised by a stroke, and that experience was certainly part of my 2009 performance.  Since that time, my mother too has died, experiencing some dementia in the final year of her life, and I have lost other older friends, including a great teacher and mentor, the poet W.D. Snodgrass, who was a lion of a man, but who also had one of the most tender and generous hearts it has been my privilege to encounter.  I like to think that the best of "De" is part of my Lear.

Also, the last time I played Lear, it was in a production that was set in the medieval era, and this time around the setting is contemporary and corporate. I should note, however, that our director, Cristian Hadji-Culea, wants also to keep a sense that the world of the play is timeless, so there will be some anachronistic elements thrown in—for instance, it is planned that in an early scene in which I am dressed in a business suit, I will also be wearing a hawking glove (something from the old aristocratic world) on one hand.  Also, the cut of the play is different; Cristian seems to want to emphasize a more modern philosophical world for the play.  In Shakespeare’s original conception, the play is pre-Christian, and therefore there are many references to the gods as a power; in the contemporary setting, those references seem out-of-place, and therefore they are largely cut, or viewed as performative and ironic.

Finally, new director, new cast mates, that’s the excitement always—seeing what other actors will bring to the stage and within what concepts and structures I will be challenged to bring to life the character.  I want to learn and be shown what I didn’t know about the character and about the play and about myself.

Jasper :  Lear is one of the great tragic roles – recently you also played Pistol, a memorable but smaller role in Henry V.  Actors in college chomp at the bit to get the primo roles, but so often professional performers who have been around for a while have no problem doing supporting roles, whether for the challenge of creating a character with less material, or to be part of a good ensemble doing good work, or just to have a break from so much time on stage.  Any thoughts on this?

Keegan:  I suppose I should quote the old adage that there are no small roles, only small actors, but there are roles that are so small that, at this stage in my life and career, I would not take them.  The decision to accept a contract is a combination of some of the things you have mentioned: a great role (whether lead or featured—Pistol is a marvelous character in Henry V and the play’s representative, with Fluellen, of the common man at war); a fine ensemble of actors; an effective and collaborative director; a theater where one enjoys working or where one has long wished to work.

Playing Pistol, for instance, I never thought of the role as small because the character is clearly so important to Shakespeare, for he draws him so lovingly and so fully.  Pistol is a braggart soldier and therefore he may be called a stereotypical character, but Shakespeare sets him down inside an actual military campaign, where we see his cowardice, his hopes, his losses. In the production I just did at the Folger, the director, Robert Richmond highlighted Pistol’s narrative line, so that he became a kind of counterbalance to King Henry: the young king is victorious and rises and gains, just as Pistol is defeated, and watches his friends and his fortunes fall.

Furthermore, I have worked for thirteen seasons at The American Shakespeare Center, where the season involves five plays presented in true rotating repertory, so that a dozen actors in the company are playing all the roles in every play, ad presenting a different play every night. This means that while I may play a big role in two of the plays, I am likely to play several small roles in the other plays.  For example, in the 2012 Summer and Fall seasons there, I played two big roles—Henry II in James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter, and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and then I played much smaller roles in the three other shows—Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which I played Antonio, who has half a scene, and Outlaw #1 (need I say more?); King John, in which I played Hubert, a beautiful but minor character, and James Gurney, who appears in half a scene and says nothing; Cymbeline, in which I played King Cymbeline, who, in spite of giving his name to the play’s title is a fairly flat and un-engaging character, and whose daughter, Imogen, is the true center of the play.  Such work serves to curb the ego and to remind me of how important all the characters are to the full and effective telling of the story.  And the clear and engaging telling of the story is, of course, the foremost responsibility and concern of the theater professional. 

Jasper : So many of us may recall Shakespeare as a burdensome assignment from English class, yet in his day Shakespeare was about as popular a form of mass entertainment as there was (and was even looked down on by some of his peers as not being cultured enough.)  Certainly the visual elements of this production will help with accessibility to modern audiences, but as an actor what challenges do you face to make the play, and the role, relevant and meaningful?

Keegan: Shakespeare’s great plays are always relevant, for they deal with the great human themes: love, ambition, family ties, leadership, responsibility, vengeance, forgiveness, redemption.  I am an educator too, so I have taught Shakespeare in the classroom to my students at The University of Delaware.  It is unfortunate to my mind that most American students receive their first introduction to Shakespeare in the high school classroom.  Don’t mistake me, I have great respect for the high school teachers I know and work with, but Shakespeare wrote in a poetic style and in a modern English that had some usages that we do not retain (use of “thee” and “thou,” for instance), and, more importantly, Shakespeare wrote for the stage, not for the page.  The language of the plays was to be accompanied with action, and most any audience member will tell you that he or she understands and remembers much more what is done (the action) than what is said (the text.)

That said, I think Lear works particularly well in a modern setting—for I think it is a fundamentally modern play.  It creates a world where goodness has a rough time of it, where externals and words are valued and privileged over the spiritual and over actions.  How often in our culture of the lobbyist and the sound bite do we see language abused?  How often do we see individuals tried in the media? We grow cynical about our leaders, about moral rectitude, about love itself.  But we are so ready to come back!  Many of us are so ready to shrug off that cynicism, are so prepared—like Kent, and like Cordelia—to believe still or to believe again in the nobility and goodness of our fellows, even if it costs us everything finally.  Anyway, that’s what I believe, and it seems to me that that is what Shakespeare believes in King Lear.  The play always reminds me of something I read once in Miguel de Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life: paraphrased, it goes something like this: if it turns out in the end that there is no God, we should live in such a way that that will have been an injustice.  The play reminds us that we must “see feelingly” if we have any hope of seeing the truth of ourselves, and that we must “speak what we feel, not what we ought to say,” if we have any hope of having fruitful community with one another.

Oh, and, for the record, I have never ever wanted a break from time on stage.  So far, anyway.

Jasper :  The roots of Lear's motivations, and his madness, have been debated for centuries, everything from dementia to bi-polar disorder to general orneriness and stubbornness. Any hints or clues as to what we will see in this production?

Keegan:  This production seems to me to lean toward the ornery and stubborn side so far.  Later in the play, when Lear is abandoned by his family and stripped of his followers and wandering in the storm, that ornery and stubborn nature gets pushed to an extreme and Lear suffers a psychic break—a kind of dementia.

However, as in any dementia, he has extremely lucid moments that lead him to a deeper self-discovery and a profound understanding of the treacherous nature of valuing quantitatively as opposed to qualitatively.  He has learned to make something of nothing, though at the outset of the play he could not see how to do this because he, like his counterpart Gloucester, saw only in superficial terms.

Now, Gloucester, having gone into blindness and despair, and Lear, having gone beyond the rational into the mad logic of his Fool, have achieved what they lacked in the play’s opening scenes: insight and profound knowledge of themselves and the harsh world where love still resides and where those who truly love us stick by us no matter how we may have wronged them in our blindness and in our arrogance and in our self-centered folly.

Jasper :  Given that you are only in Columbia for a few weeks - what is your impression of the theatre program at USC?  And have you had a chance to get a feel for the greater community, either as a place for the arts, or just as a place to live, work, and study?

Keegan:  My exposure to the theatre program at USC has been fundamentally through my work with the MFA actors and some of the undergrad students in the program, and I have to say that that experience—especially with the grad students, with whom I have been working most closely--speaks well of the program as a whole.  The class of MFA actors speaks well of the faculty in that whoever put these eight young artists together managed to assemble a truly supportive working group: the most impressive feature of working with James Costello, Kate Dzvonik, Trey Hobbs, Josiah Laubenstein, Cory Lipman, Melissa Peters, Laurie Roberts, and Leanna Rubin is that they genuinely seem to like, care about, and encourage one another.

I am glad to be part of their introduction to working with classical theater, and I hope to have some classroom time with them soon to discuss in greater depth some of the challenges of and techniques for working with Shakespeare and his contemporaries.  I have been impressed as well to see their attention and patience in the rehearsal room.  We are working with Cristian Hadji-Culea, a fine director with very clear ideas about how he views the world of the play, but also a director from a different theater culture than ours and one who has some limitations with English.  They have continually worked to realize his vision of the play—I admire actors who say “Yes,” and see the challenges they are being offered not as obstacles, but as opportunities to learn and to grow.  When one is working hard with emotional material, one can easily grow impatient with such challenges; what I have seen in rehearsal are actors who are willing to release ego and embrace new possibilities.

I like Columbia very much.  I recently spent the afternoon in your lovely museum of art.  As an undergraduate at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, I always loved going to the Worcester Art Museum, and when I worked in Pittsburgh several years ago I was a regular visitor to the Carnegie Museum of Art near the theater where I was working.  The great thing about these museums as compared to the Metropolitan in New York City, where I grew up, or the National Gallery in Washington, DC, which I visit with some frequency, is that they are what I call  “afternoon” museums—smaller city museums with fine collections that you can visit over several afternoons and feel like you are getting a feel for the entire collection and the ideas of its curators.  The larger museums can be overwhelming to me, and I have to limit myself to seeing only a set number of galleries or pieces on a given visit.  But it is so wonderful in museums like Columbia’s to spend an afternoon and see everything that is currently on display.  I also very much liked the current exhibit of Impressionist art, particularly for several Bonnard canvases—he is a favorite of mine, and one especially beautiful John Singer Sargent painting, from when the artist was 24 and just starting to make a name for himself.

I am also a runner, and although the spring has been a bit cold these past few weeks, I have availed myself of your nearby parks.  I love the run along the river and canal here in the city (I have yet to see any gators though) and the trails through Sesquicentennial Park and Dreher Island Park, where I really need to get a cabin with my wife some time—it is so beautiful out there.  Finally, I’ve found some pretty good sushi in town and that always makes me happy! I could definitely see myself returning were someone to ask (too subtle?)

.................................

Show times for King Lear are 8 PM Wednesdays-Fridays, 7 PM Saturdays, and 3 PM on the first Sunday.  There is an additional half-price late night performance on Saturday, April 27 at 11 PM.   Tickets for the production are $12 for students, $16 for USC faculty/staff, military personnel and seniors 60+, and $18 for the general public.  Tickets can be purchased by calling 803-777-2551 or by visiting the Longstreet Theatre box office, which is open Monday-Friday, 12:30pm-5:30pm, beginning Friday, April 12.

For more information on King Lear or the theatre program at the University of South Carolina, please contact Kevin Bush via email at bushk@mailbox.sc.edu or by phone at (803) 777-9353.

~ August Krickel

"Knuffle Bunny - A Cautionary Musical" - Alex Smith reviews the new play at Columbia Children's Theatre

Mo Willems is something of a rock star if you’re a kid between the ages of 4 and 11 (or even if you’re just the parent of a kid that age.)  His career in children’s entertainment began illustriously on Sesame Street, where as an animator and writer he won six Emmy awards between 1993 and 2002.  During that time he also created two animated television series, The Off-Beats and Sheep In The Big City.  Since 2003, he has been a wildly successful author of children’s books, introducing the world to such immortal characters as Cat the Cat, Piggie and Elephant, Edwina, The Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct, Leonardo The Terrible Monster, Naked Mole Rat and Big Frog.   His lovely illustrations and easy storytelling simultaneously create tales whose worlds are complex and self-contained, yet are wrought in such a simple way that the lessons they teach are so subtle that you don’t feel like you’re being beaten over the head with them.   Above all his writing and his drawings are VERY funny, making them a joy for both children and adults. All of the same qualities which make Willems’ books so appealing are on full display in the Columbia Children’s Theatre’s musical staging of Knuffle Bunny, subtitled A Cautionary Musical.  With book and lyrics by Willems and music by Michael Silversher, this adaptation of the Caldecott Medal-winning adventures of the beloved stuffed animal of the title, Trixie (the toddler who loves the bunny), and Trixie’s Mom and Dad, is staged as confidently as ever by director Chad Henderson, whose genre-defying talent as a theatrical director shines in this family-friendly production.   Henderson, as usual, has brought together a cast and crew whose talent coalesces to create a brisk, wonderfully entertaining evening in the theatre for children and their grown-ups alike.

This "cautionary tale" is straightforward enough: Dad, in an attempt to give Mom some time to herself, decides to take their daughter Trixie to the laundromat a few blocks from their home in the big city.  Trixie drags along her favorite stuffed animal, Knuffle Bunny. In the process of laundering the family’s clothes, Knuffle Bunny is accidentally put in the washing machine, and not until they return home between cycles does Dad realize what Trixie (who hasn’t learned to speak yet) has been trying to tell him throughout their journey home: Knuffle Bunny has been left behind. Mom, Dad and Trixie all rush back to the laundromat, where Dad embarks on a hero’s journey to recover Trixie’s missing doll. To say that hilarity ensues would cheat all of the above described action of how wildly entertaining and very funny it is.

Mom and Dad are expertly played by Kathy Sykes and Paul Lindley II, respectively. They are portraying archetypes, which can easily be overplayed and stereotypical in lesser hands, but as Mom, Ms. Sykes conveys all the frustration, patience, nurturing and love which mothers exercise with their children (and, often, with the fathers of their children) in such a sincere and earthy way that we laugh at and with her because of the familiarity her portrayal evokes. Lindley as Dad is all bluster and bravado which mask his genuine sensitivity and insecurities about his ability as a parent and a spouse; in other words, he is every dad.  Lindley, in addition to serving as the show's musical director, is a comic actor of immense talent (he was side-splitting as "Snail" in CCT's recent staging of Frog and Toad), and in his hands Dad is the perfect over-serious, overwrought and over-compensating foil to Ms. Sykes’ “straight-man” mom. Their performances, individually and as that archetypal institution of “mom and dad,” are worth the price of admission alone.

And then there’s Trixie. Having an adult play a child onstage is another dangerous proposition: the temptation to over- or under-play the impossibly endless and variant characterizations which make up the earliest eras of childhood make the task a difficult one for any actor...or, as one of the show's songs explains, "Trixie Is Tricky".  Hats off, then, to Sara Jackson, who embodies the pre-verbal toddler Trixie with all of the requisite foibles of a child that age without ever falling into the easy traps of being too cutesy or commenting on them.  The strength of Ms. Jackson's performance lies in the fact that despite the fact that, for instance, the role calls upon her to do something as outlandish as speak for 95% of the play in incomprehensible toddler-speak, she takes Trixie as seriously as an actor would take any adult role. This not only makes her character completely clear and interesting, it allows her to nearly bring down the house with laughter when she delivers, with straight-faced sincerity, a ballad about her troubles whose lyrics consist of no recognizable human language. It is a high point of the show.

There are so many other elements which make Knuffle Bunny such an excellent show: the hard work of a fine ensemble of actor/puppeteers (Julian Deleon, Anthony Harvey, Brandi Smith and Christina Whitehouse-Suggs) who play multiple roles and are particularly wonderful in a scene where Dad does battle with some troublesome clothes in an attempt to find Knuffle Bunny; Donna Harvey's costume and puppet design which ably bring those troublesome clothes, Knuffle Bunny, and all the other characters, animate or not, to colorful life; Baxter Engle's superb projections, which build upon Willems' own layout in the Knuffle Bunny books, creating a living backdrop out of actual photographs of New York city and otherwise broadening the staging possibilities in the Children's Theatre's modest space (this may be the first production in Columbia to stage a musical number inside a washing machine); and, of course, a cameo appearance by Willems' other Caldecott Honoree, the troublesome Pigeon - in the form of an excellent marionette, designed and built by Lyon Hill - who in the play's final moments literally "steals the show," and opens up the welcome possibility that this may not be the end of Knuffle Bunny's stage adventures...

The Columbia Children's Theatre's top-notch production of Knuffle Bunny is so well-crafted and performed, that it makes the prospect of further musical journeys with Mom, Dad, Trixie and Knuffle Bunny a tantalizing prospect indeed. It is the best kind of family entertainment around, and it should not be missed.

~ Alex Smith

Knuffle Bunny - A Cautionary Musical runs Friday, April 19th at 7:00 PM, Saturday, April 20th at 10:30 AM, 2:00 PM, and 7:00 PM, and a final matinee Sunday, April 21st, at 3:00 PM.  For ticket in formation, visit their website, or call (803) 691-4548.