ActorHubBub

Who am I this time?

2013-03-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

I never know exactly where this juggling act will take me. Which juggling act? The one for which my Job Description makes use of numerous slashes. Actor/Theatre Director/Casting Director/Writer.

So far, Writer is the hat that pops on and off the easiest, and always at my whim. No one's paying me to do it and it happens whenever I decide to jot something down. The jot might become a blog post, a Twitter tweet or a scene, but there is no discipline involved ... yet.

And Casting Director? The most fickle. When it's least expected, I'm selected ... but most recently the jobs have come few and far between. Little projects, and "scouting" talent as I see everything I can and report back to my colleagues in town. And just as I get ready to make an official announcement of retiring from that profession, something gets me back into the ring.

I'm reading plays, and have a few projects I'd love to direct, and if all goes well I'll have a show in production in the not-too-distant future.. But there is no concrete offer yet, no plan in place. Now, however , it's my return to performing, after a 17 year hiatus, that has me most "pumped".

Acting has been the constant, surprisingly enough. It's where it all began, with my first grade, after school report to Mom, breathless and beaming ear to ear, that "the teacher said I read with expression!". In my memory, I've barely gotten my coat off when I'm telling her the news. Two years ago I followed a Twitter tweet, which led me to the ensemble of "The Miseries of the World" in the World Premiere production of Tod Machover's Death and The Powers: The Robots' Opera. A collaboration between the A.R.T., M.I.T., and Chicago Opera Theatre, it was how i had the opportunity to work for director DIane Paulus and choreographer Karole Armitage, who together created a movement piece with our ensemble, which was performed within the opera. I was cast the following summer in the winter 2011/12 production of Chekhov's UNCLE VANYA as Telegin, for the Apollinaire Theatre Company production at Chelsea Theater Works in Chelsea, MA. This past spring, I auditioned for area directors, producers and casting personnel through the Annual StageSource auditions. That audition led to invitations to audition for some projects that conflicted with the revival of Uncle Vanya in Oct/Nov, though callback auditions for the Huntington Theatre Company led to being cast in another ensemble, that of the Citizens of Grovers Corners, who are The Dead in the third act cemetery of David Cromer's production of OUR TOWN. Since closing, I've been auditioning and will next perform the role of Blue in Keith Reddin's ALMOST BLUE, May 3-18, with Theatre On Fire at the Charlestown Working Theater, followed by The Doctor, the most famous stranger in theatrical literature, in Wax Wings' production of A Streetcar Named Desire at the Factory Theatre, late June/early July (more to follow).And then I'll never work again.

That's The Actor's constant fear, in a society that doesn't support the Arts enough to guarantee a living wage to actors in pursuit of a career. Very few of us make a living out of just being an actor. The ubiquitous waiters and waitresses aside, actors work in all industries and positions. Through permanent jobs and in temporary positions, I've had dozens of titles, from dishwasher to assembly line worker, retail clerk to phone receptionist, insurance claims adjustor to food stylist's assistant (when I "picked out the good pieces" of Cinnamon Toast Crunch from scores of cases of boxes, poured into garbage bags and sifted through for the "hero pieces" that would then fill the perfectly photogenic cereal bowl of hand-selected sweet and crunchy morsels).
We live in hope, which springs eternal.
And my most recent new title? Playwright ... well, "aspiring playwright". I finally. after years of toying with the idea, wrote a 10 minute play for submission to this year's Boston Theatre Marathon, but was not selected. Oh, well ...
But that won't stop me, just as the many auditions over the past 35 years, that did not lead to acting jobs, haven't stopped me from moving on. And trying. trying. trying again.
And so in the coming week, I'll do another StageSource Audition,and go into rehearsal for ALMOST BLUE.
Watch this space:)

CLYBOURNE PARK: SpeakEasy's 21st Season Continues

2013-03-28T11:17:00.000-07:00

CLYBOURNE PARK/SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Roberts Studio Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, BCA

SpeakEasy Stage Company continues it's mission with a visit to CLYBOURNE PARK

In a statement on it's website (www.speakeasystage.com) , SpeakEasy Stage Company says the mission is "to connect, inspire, and challenge our audiences with the most socially relevant theatrical premieres featuring the most talented artists in Boston." And halfway through the 21st season, following exemplary productions of The Motherfucker With The Hat, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and Other Desert Cities, that mission is being fully realized, show by show. And now, with the sold-out and extended run of Clybourne Park, they once again honor that mission.

The Pulitzer and Tony Award winning play, by Bruce Norris, opens with a first act that parallels Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In the Sun (which, in a great show of mutual support and planning, is being currently revived by the Huntington Theatre Company at their BU Theatre mainstage). Bev (Paula Plum) and Russ (Thomas Derrah), the grieving parents of a Korean war veteran whose return home is marked with tragedy, are preparing to sell their home in the white middle-class Chicago neighborhood of Clybourne Park to the black Younger family of Lorraine Hansberry's play. The fears and prejudices of the white neighborhood are represented by the visits of the white clergyman (Tim spears) and the Linders, Karl (a character in "Raisin", played by Michael Kaye) and his pregnant wife (Philana Mia). The other two characters in Act One are the black maid, Francine (Marvelyn McFarlane) and her husband Albert (DeLance Minifee).

In Act Two, the acting ensemble is back for a fast-forward to 50 years later, in 2009, as Steve and Lindsey (Kaye and Mia as the penultimate white yuppie couple) grapple, with the aid of their lawyer (the chameleonic Plum), with a black couple (MacFarlane and Minifee) over concerns from the neighborhood organization about plans to destroy the historical home and build a McMansion. As the meeting careens around issues of race without really addressing them, a construction worker (Derrah) digging in the yard unearths literal secrets while the assembled group exposes secrets of their own.

The drama inherent in the situations is contrasted nicely with a surprising and welcome amount of comedy. The versatile ensemble fills Christine Tedesco's skeletal set with crisply defined characters, under the keen direction of Bevin O'Gara, who trusts the actors and allows the play to unfold as it tells it's story.

Originally set to close this Sunday, Clybourne Park has been extended through Saturday, April 6, but tickets are selling quickly for the added week. Don't miss it.

THE LILY'S REVENGE, ART/Oberon, closes Sunday 10/28

2012-10-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

Company, Act Five, THE LILY'S REVENGE

I know that sometime in the future, at a party, an audition, during intermission or after a show, I'll be able to draw attention with the phrase, "Well, I saw THE LILY'S REVENGE at Oberon".
And I'm very happy I did.
With a limited three-week run and a fixed audience of 150 per performance, there weren't that many opportunities to see it, and with my Uncle Vanya performance schedule (both shows opened the same week, days apart) I only had two chances: either Tuesday October 16 or Tuesday October 23. As the 16th was sold out when I was able to buy a ticket, I went to the A.R.T. Box Office at the Loeb Drama Center, and was able to get a $25 ticket (each performance had a limited number of tickets on sale at @ $25, while the rest of the tickets were $45; and, as it was open seating, the ticket price didn't define where one sat) for Tuesday October 23, and counted the days.
Since I first read about the New York production and followed it's reviews, I've been reading about this show, and when the ART announced it as part of the 2012/2013 season, I wanted to know more. Had I not committed to performing in the revival of Uncle Vanya I would have auditioned myself (I was invited to audition by the A.R.T. casting coordinator, who also asked me to spread the word that this show wanted to hire many locals, union and non-union). I surfed on over to taylormac.net to see and read his own description of the event, and became immersed in the material there, including photos of the original NY and subsequent SF productions, interviews, and a piece on collaboration, that reads:
"I believe theater is community action and as a playwright I am a community organizer. LILY continues this approach to making theater. It is a five-act, five-hour play with a cast of 40. The first four acts have roughly ten performers each, the final act has all forty. Each act is directed by a different director. A sixth director creates the intermission performances (what I loosely refer to as kyogens), which also utilize the entire ensemble."
And that's basically how it went here in Cambridge at ART/Oberon in only the third production of THE LILY'S REVENGE. But here, the cast numbered thirty-something, and one director, Shira Milikowsky a graduate of the A.R.T. Institute, and Artistic Director Fellow at the A.R.T., presided over the entire show: all 5 acts and the kyogen intermissions.

Written and conceived by Taylor Mac, the multi-talented performer has been involved with each production so far (there was a New Orleans production in October 2012 produced without him), and by performing as "Lily" with a new community of performers and artists, he increases the "fish out of water" (flower out of pot) feel of The Outsider, a flower amongst other flowers and metaphorical prototypes: The Bride, The Groom, The Great Longing (A Curtain), etc. By employing local actors, singers. musicians, artists and performers of all kinds, the show creates a community force that Lily faces and forges ever onward in it's quest to marry The Bride.

Margaret Ann Brady texts and Twitters to communicate during one of the Kyogen intermissions

Though publicized as "5 acts, 5 hours", the show clocked in at about 4:20 ... appropriately so for this trippy "happening" of a show that might have been conceived in the Haight/Ashbury or the Greenwich Village of the 60s. In style and substance, it pays tribute to the early 60's Off-Off Broadway Ridiculous Theatrical Company aesthetics of Charles Ludlam, the Radical Faerie movement started in the United States among gay men during the 1970s sexual and counterculture revolution, and the 80's Alphabet City/Drag/Gender Illusionist parody/homage of Charles Busch, while becoming a thing unto itself, unique not only production to production but also night to night. The "Kyogen", drawn, like the structure of the play, from Japanese Noh Drama, are so completely interactive and individual that no two audience members will have the same experience: while listening to a nonsensical "frat guy" interpretation of Susan Stewart's theses in the men's room (complete with "football-play"-like diagrams drawn with a bar of soap on the bathroom mirrors), I forfeited getting a neck and shoulder massage from a cast member, but later I stopped by the "disco dressing room" where performers, mostly in drag, danced and dished, surrounded by costume pieces and flamboyant accessories that audience members could try on, select, and wear for the remainder of the show (or until the novelty wore off). This effort to get the audience to "let it's freak flag fly" (a 60's slogan, not a show quote) worked, and the feeling in the audience was a relaxed open attitude, willing to follow where they led us. From the earliest moments, there were the elements of direct address, an "is he or isn't he a "plant" character entering from the audience (along with the entrance of an actual plant), and the use of some old and "hoary" "audience involvement" bits of borrowing someone's seat and actual audience/actor touching. I managed to avoid getting drawn in, literally, until, in the final moments, Taylor Mac lept from the stage and planted a kiss smack dab on the lips. I kissed a former Lily ... and I liked it.

Lily (Taylor Mac) and Subprime Deity Mary (Margaret Ann Brady)

John Kuntz's Poppy out on the street
(iphone photo by Karen Kosko)

The local performers in the cast make up a cross-section from both the mainstream and the fringes of Boston's theatrical landscape. A.R.T. mainstays Tommy Derrah as The Great Longing (a theatrical and domineering red velvet curtain, characterized mostly through Derrah's deft vocal work and facial expressions, highlighted by a pair of glaring eyes, until later, reduced to human size, he struts his stuff, and performs an outrageously comic striptease) and Remo Airaldi as the Master Sunflower (who is more a Mistress), actor/playwright John Kuntz as the Poppy (in ghoulish makeup suggesting the faded elegance of a Gloria Swanson), and, in her A.R.T. debut, Margaret Ann Brady as Mary Subprime Deity (one of the Marys, a group of former bridesmaids, a cross between the Radical Faeries and the Chorus in Marat/Sade), are the Equity actors in the group, with credits across the local boards. Gene Dante, a rocker and a performer with the Gold Dust Orphans, drag divas "Rainbow Frite" and "Sabina Sydney, Matt Mauriello, who was hysterical in Roller Disco: The Musical at Oberon last summer, and Alexander Cook (also a member of Actors' Equity) from Underground Theatre's Arabian Nights are among the familiar faces from the smaller stages, working alongside graduate students of the A.R.T. Institute.
Despite fears to the contrary, the evening did not drag on forever (pun intended). Each of the first four acts is divided by a kyogen intemission, and food and drinks are readily available at a few cash bars and a grilling station set up alongside the Zero Arrow Street building. Act four, a silent movie projected onto two opposite walls of the Oberon space (cropped down by hanging screens into a cube which we all stood within), segued into the fifth and final act. And when that act ended, in a moving speech by Taylor Mac that spoke of equality and the right to marry whoever one chooses, I was hoping for a cathartic celebratory dance that could involve the entire room. It didn't happen. Could be that, having received that aforementioned kiss, I wanted to dance from the joy in that unexpected "reality check". (There was some dancing earlier on, during the Dream Ballet Act Three, when cast members drew individual audience members onto the performance space.) Also, we started at 6, and it was nearing 10:30. But more than many other shows that have tried an audience-participation dance finale and only partially succeeded, this was an evening that needed to dance its way out. Nevertheless, it was an evening that will continue to percolate and pop up in memories of the colorful visuals, the delicious performances, and the genuine heart and talents of Taylor Mac.

A Murderous Pope

Up and Running: BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON/SpeakEasy, and THE CHOSEN/Lyric Stage

2012-10-24T08:28:00.001-07:00

I've fallen behind in covering shows ... as the previous post will detail, I've been "otherwise engaged" but still dashing around town to see everything I possibly can. Keep inviting me: I'll keep trying to get there.
So, here are a few current offerings ...

BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON

With perfect timing, SpeakEasy once again produces a knockout production of a recent New York hit that skewers the American political system by looking back, anachronistically and irreverently at the life of Andrew Jackson. The cast (including the triumphant return of Mary Callanan, the Boston singer/actress who just toured the country with the ABBA musical MAMA MIA) sells this show with the energy and talent of a company twice their number. As an antidote to the constant campaigning of an election year, the show gave me a cathartic opportunity to LOL, often, and often ROFL (though I thankfully did not actually get onto the floor).

The "emo" rock score is performed by a small kickass band and complimented by cast members occasionally strumming, blowing a horn, on banging on percussion props and instruments, often giving it a down home feel, while the genocide of Native Americans under Jackson's administration creates a solid and disturbing backdrop, and the history is told with the anachronistic and anarchic energy of a pulpy graphic novel.

THE CHOSEN

The Lyric Stage follows up last season's highly successful dramatization of Chaim Potok's MY NAME IS ASHER LEV with an adaptation of Potok's THE CHOSEN. The 1999 script, which, unlike ASHER LEV, Potok worked on before his death in 2002, focuses on the main relationships of the novel, with five actors seamlessly presenting the memory play: Charles Linshaw as the adult Reuvan Malter, Zach Eisenstadt as the young Reuben, Luke Murtha as his friend Danny Saunders, and Joel Kolodner as Saunders's father, a revered Rabbi, and Will McGarrahan as Reuvan's Father. Directed by Daniel Gidron, the production lovingly creates the moods and the tensions within the relationship of the childhood friends and their fathers.

UNCLE VANYA: Round Two

2012-10-24T07:42:00.002-07:00

Kate Paulsen (Elena) and Kevin Fennessy (Telegin) in Apollinaire's UNCLE VANYA

For the past two months, I've been in rehearsal and performance (we're entering the third of a four week run, that's been extended to five) for the remounting of Apollinaire Theatre Company's UNCLE VANYA. The Craig Lucas adaptation of Chekhov's play was produced last winter, running from Dec.29 for a run that was extended through January 22, and starred John Kuntz as Vanya.

That production was important to me for many reasons: for one, it was my return to acting after seventeen years (aside from a dip in the waters as one of The Miseries in the ART/MIT/Chicago Opera Theatre collaboration "DEATH AND THE POWERS: THE ROBOTS' OPERA", at the Cutler Majestic in the spring of 2011). Following a long career in theatre as an actor and award-winning director, in 1994 I was offered a job in casting with Carolyn Pickman (CP Casting) and followed it for a run that included my own Casting company and office, which was destroyed in a fire in 2002. (Though the company folded, I continue to "dabble" with some freelance clients and in consulting with colleagues). My last stage appearance was as the Narrator in the New Repertory Theatre's HOLIDAY MEMORIES, the holiday season show of 1994 that combined two Truman Capote stories, The Thanksgiving Visitor and A Christmas Memory. (Coincidentally, the New Rep is producing HOLIDAY MEMORIES once again this year, at their Watertown home in the Arsenal Center for the Arts).

But the winter 2011/12 production of UNCLE VANYA came at a very difficult time for me. My Mom, Georgia Ravanis Fennessy, died on October 25, 2011, and her funeral was on Nov.2, just 9 days before I went into rehearsal. (The auditions for UNCLE VANYA happened in late August 2011. I read that John Kuntz was playing Vanya and called director Danielle Fauteux Jacques to set up an audition. Casting was completed in early September and a rehearsal schedule went out shortly after. If I hadn't already been cast, I doubt I would have followed the funeral with an audition search).

Telegin (Kevin Fennessy) and Nanny (Ann Carpenter) at tea with the samovar

The rehearsal period and performances were just what I needed to get through a very dark time. The Theatre, capital T, picked me, wrapped its arms around me and carried me through. Mom was always so proud of my career in the theatre, and enjoyed saying "Kevin's an actor". She would beam with a mile-wide smile every time she told the anecdote of my returning home from school one day in the first grade, bursting with the announcement that "the teacher said I read with expression!". Having the world of the play to immerse myself into, and finding connections to my family in the play, were what kept me going through a period that included my birthday (1/21) and Mom's (1/22). (As I mentioned, UNCLE VANYA ran through Jan.22, with performances on both of our birthdays. And with our birthdays so close to each other, that end-of-January time of year became "our" time to celebrate).

It's a year later, and here I am once again performing in UNCLE VANYA, as the anniversary of Mom's passing approaches. The sadness and grief of October 2011 has gotten easier, as the happiest of memories fill my thoughts. I miss her now and always, but it does get easier and the joys with which she lived her life daily have become more available to me. She truly is with me, in my heart, and available whenever I need a reminder.

During the summer, we learned that John Kuntz had been offered a role in THE LILY'S REVENGE, in direct conflict with the planned revival of UNCLE VANYA. Initially this was taken by the company as a huge blow: how would the show go on? But this is theatre, and we all know from song and history that "the show MUST go on" ... and that of course it could, and should. We already knew we'd be recasting the roles of The Professor and Elena, as both of the actors in that original company had chosen not to continue in the revival. I looked at the challenge before us and made a casting suggestion: Diego Arcienegas, a respected and talented actor who could be, and indeed is, the right fit. Diego was auditioned, along with other appropriate and exciting possibilities, and was cast. With Diego and two additional "new" actors to the company, Jack Schultz as The Professor and Kate Paulsen as Elena (who Danielle discovered through additional auditions), the rehearsal period became more involved, but also richer than a "mere remounting" would have been. Our talented newcomers to the cast brought new energies and interpretations, which in turn offered us the opportunity to look at moments and relationships in a different light: not better, not drastically different, but "fresher" than just dusting off the sets and costumes and brushing up our Chekhov.

Diego Arcienegas (Vanya) and Kate Paulsen (Elena) in Apollinaire's UNCLE VANYA

Come see for yourself. UNCLE VANYA continues Wednesday through Sunday evenings (Wed., Fri., Sun. at 7:30, Fri. and Sat. at 8). As it's a revival from just last season, most of the area's critics weighed in with reviews on the first round, resulting in nominations from the IRNE and Elliot Norton's , including a win for Director Danielle Fauteux Jacques as Outstanding Director/Fringe Theater from the 2012 Elliot Norton Awards. We did receive a review from WBUR's Critic-At-Large Ed Siegel, which you can read here. Tickets and additional info at www.apollinairetheatre.com

Coming Monday night, October 1, The StageSource Party!!!

2012-09-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

"StageSource provides leadership and services to advance the art of theatre in the Greater Boston region. Our mission is to unite theatre artists, theatre companies, and related organizations in vision and goals that inspire and empower our community to realize its greatest artistic potential.

I count the start of my career as June 14, 1976, the opening of MAYDAY! , a play about the 1971 May Day demonstrations in Washington DC. A lifetime ago, but also, almost a decade before the arrival of StageSource, in 1985.
StageSource brought about a huge change in the theatre community, bringing the emerging scene together to support each other's growth and progress. From the Annual Audition, which serves union and nonunion actors companies and productions alike, to the many workshops, seminars, newsletters and events, StageSource is at the center of our community.
And no event was as much fun as the annual party, an opportunity to socialize and scmooze, which has been on hiatus for a few years.
But it's back!!! Celebrate the return of the StageSource Party, Monday Oct. 1, at Oberon. The party is a benefit for all the various programs that StageSource provides.

From the StageSource website:

"Enjoy an evening of fun, dancing, beveraging and high school hijinks theater style while supporting the services StageSource provides for the Greater Boston theater community. Break out your poodle skirt, dust off your K-tel albums, put on your Members Only jacket, grab your best Doc Martens and make some magic. StageSource will transform the Oberon into your high school gymnasium for an experience far superior to your prom featuring a photo booth, balloon popping, silent auction, light snacks, and a killer sound track so nostalgic we guarantee someone will be crying in a corner by the end of the night!"

Tickets are only $25, and are available here (or save a $4 service charge and go to the ART Box Office at the Loeb) or at the door.
There will also be raffles and silent auctions so bring some money and a generous spirit.
See you there!

The Fleeting Joys of August On The Fringe: R&J at Happy Medium, The Third Story at Titanic, and New Exhibition Room's ZOMBIE DOUBLE FEATURE

2012-08-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

As summer winds down, the doors to the kingdom are left unlocked for the people to play in the palace ... or something like that. In recent years, the spaces that are busy all season with resident companies become available, sometimes for lesser rates and mostly for limited runs, to the homeless theaters of the Boston Fringe. Two or three week runs, some longer, have opened and are running and closing this week and next, at the BCA Plaza and Calderwood theaters, Boston Playwrights Theater, and at the Black Box at the Arsenal Center in Watertown, among others.
I've seen a few (R&J at the BCA, The Third Story in Watertown), I'm seeing one tonight ("Zombie Double Feature", two one-act Zombie plays at BPT).

Romeo and Juliet, Happy Medium Theater, BCA Plaza Theater thru 8/25
From what one can read in all of the publicity material, Happy Medium knows that the real star of its production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is the director, Paula Plum. And it really is a triumphant fringe production, rising far above its limitations and my expectations.
While it feels somewhat like the culmination of a master class in performing Shakespeare with one of Boston's most respected "actor/director/teacher"s, it succeeds in presenting a clear and direct "no frills" production. The unit set, by Bryan Prywes, of three portals, the requisite balcony, an open plaza and darkened entryways, are aided by Daniel Chavez's lighting, to create a fluctuating environment for fluid scene changes. Too often on the fringe, costume budgets and constraints make for an incomplete picture, but that's not the case here, as Jillian Clark's costumes are very much of a whole. And though I think the physical production is nicely realized, I had some confusion as to where this production was set. With its vaguely Middle Eastern setting, and the contrast of flowing linen and vests on the Montague side and a more tailored "European" look to the Capulets, and a black Romeo and white Juliet, it was difficult to place the production. A woman, Kiki Samko, as the Prince and Chorus, added to the sense that this was happening during a culture clash in a world other than Shakespeare's Verona, and at another time, though it wasn't clear when. Angie Jepson's fight choreography is fantastic, and, again, well realized, especially in the performances of Michael Underhill as Tybalt and Jesse Wood as Paris..
The performances were also clear and direct. These mostly young actors presented intelligent and well motivated characters, without extraneous clutter. Besides Underhill and Wood, some standouts include Joey Pelletier's very physical and often lyrical Mercutio, the comic relief and timing of Mikey DiLoreto's Benvolio, June Kfoury's Nurse, and the majestic "single Mom" of Sharon Squires as Lady Montague.

The Third Story, by Charles Busch, Titanic Theatre Company, at the Arsenal Center for the Arts Black Box Theater, Watertown, thru 8/19 only
The newest fringe theater on the scene, Titanic Theatre Company, is made up of some fine veterans of the local theater scene, presenting the local premiere of Charles Busch's The Third Story. The script is another in a series of genre parody comedies from the author of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Sleeping Beauty, or Coma, and Psycho Beach Party (all of which I directed in their local premieres from 1993 to 1995). But Charles is also the author of the more realistic Broadway comedy Tale of the Allergist's WIfe, which earned Tony nominations, for Best Play ,and Best Actress for leading actress Linda Lavin. The Third Story lies somewhere in between.
It's a comedy full of Charles' famous way with words, puns and the period vernacular of Hollywood of the Golden Age, of hardened tarts and cigar chomping gangsters, chorus cuties and Grand Dames. The three stories that intertwine to make the intricate plot concern a Science Fiction/Gangster screenplay being written as we watch, a redemptive fairy tale woven by a Mother for her child, and the relationship of a Mother/Son writing team, a broken partnership trying to be regained.
The Titanic company rises to the challenge presenting one of the funniest shows currently running, and ONLY running through this Sunday.
The proverbial "Worth The Price of Admission" Medal goes to Rick Park's entrances, as Queenie, the Charles Busch "Leading Lady" who he manages to put his own stamp on, and as that character's clone, Queenie 2. Not a small person to begin with, Rick brings new meaning to "larger than life" in his Grande characterization of this Grande Dame. (His "sotto voce" asides are hysterically appropriate and wholly his own). I don't think I've ever seen Alisha Jansky look quite as tall, long and lithe as here in her period pencil line skirts and lab coats. (Alisha famously created the role of Chicklet's best friend, Berdine the ultimate 60's nerd, in my '93 production of Psycho Beach Party and it's '95 revival). Shelley Brown maintains a commanding presence as the Mother of the writing team and as a character in her screenplay, while Brett Milanowski is having almost too much fun with his creation of the sci-fi experiment gone wrong, though I can't imagine it being played any other way than gleefully. Erin Eva Butcher camps up the golddigging gun moll, all giltter and intent, while nicely underplaying the innocence of the heroine of the fairy tale. Jordan Sobel does a great about face in his two roles, as the screenplay's gangster and the screenwriting son. With the addition of eyeglasses, he changes pitch and tone, body language and characters as easily as changing out of his coat.
Congratulations to director Adam Zahler and the Titanic Theatre Company, and best wishes for a long and bright future. While the production may not completely solve the transitions of the plays difficult tones and themes, the characters and camp carry the show for a two-hour ride.

Zombie Double Feature : Terror at BPT (written and directed by Dawn M. Simmons) and Midnight at the Last Night Cabaret (written and directed by A. Nora Long)
The Zombie Apocalypse continues, this weekend and next, as two original one-act Zombie plays are presented by New Exhibition Room at the Boston Playwrights' Theater. The waiting areas begin to fill with couples, threesomes and small groups of theatregoers, as well as solos like me, while the front theater remains open and dark. It doesn't appear very inviting. And rather than enter, we all wait, slightly uneasy but just as ready for some chills and laughs as the Zombie genre intersects with Boston's fringe theatre.
And then it's 8:00 and the calmly patient audience is disrupted by characters darting through the lobby, and just as suddenly we're led into the back theater, where The Vicar will hold his revival meeting.
Part theme-event, part parody, the first half of the night, Terror at BPT, had us as captives in the theater where the Zombie Apocalypse has arrived.
In the second play, Midnight at the Last Night Cabaret, we are again playing the role of audience members at an impromptu cabaret in the BPT as the Zombie Apocalypse explodes outside the theater.
The lines between horror and camp, music and comedy blur as the "rules" of Zombie Culture are set up and broken. Some wonderful moments of tension and suspense are played out, while we await the inevitable gore and gross-outs. And the inevitable Michael Jackson flash mob dance number gets turned on it's severed head.
Both shows are basically theatrical excuses to allow the New Exhibitionists permission to get their Zombie on. The plays conform to the Basic Rules of Zombie-Dom: the undead seek fresh human meat and blood, and once bitten by a zombie, one dies and returns as one of the flesh seekers.
Terrence Haddad seems limitless in his ability to disjoint his joints and struggle with his Inner Zombie. Both the physical contortions he gets into and the verbal attempts he lets out combine to hysterical effect. And his final moments in Terror at the BPT rival Boris Karloff's monster for unexpected pathos. Greer Rooney performs another hysterical sketch with a "puppet", a prop that she wrestles with, giving it a life of it's own. In fact, Zombie puppets are also a part of this Apocalypse!
Every one, Hannah Husband, Lyndsay Allyn Cox, Bryan Daley, Terrance Haddad, Greer Rooney, Bob Mussett (and his ukelele), Melissa DeJesus, and Omar Robinson, brings a gleeful joy to playing with prosthetic body parts and innards, and the directors, A. Nora Long and Dawn M. Simmons, keep the pace flowing, though I felt that some bits meandered while getting to the point. It would be nice, for example, to have the musicians accompany more of the Cabaret songs, which might move them along. The addition of live musicians in such a rock-and-roll format was a great idea, and the pieces set to their soundtrack, "inadvertant" cabaret acts during which a zombie, attempting to perform a simple task, "becomes" the show, were nonverbal highlights, and I would have liked to see them more fully integrated into the Cabaret. (A sign at the theater announced that the musicians for last night's show were Brendan and TJ. I don't know how often they perform, or who the alternating musicians are or what their schedules are).
But even as is, the 2 hour 15 minute show, with intermission, moves along leaving little time to question and plenty of time to laugh.

Commonwealth Shakespeare: Call To Action!

2012-07-12T11:04:00.001-07:00

It's the show that gave Cole Porter's KISS ME KATE one of the greatest lyrical double-entendres in "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" ("If she says your behavior is heinous, Kick her right in the 'Coriolanus' ").
Steve Maler's Commonwealth Shakespeare Company presents CORIOLANUS, opening July 25 and running through August 12, 2012: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8pm; Sundays 7pm.
And, as posted on their website and in a recent email, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company relies on the help of volunteers to continue the beloved tradition of bringing the bard's words to the masses on the Boston Common.

"Each night we need more than 15 volunteers to help in ushering, handing out playbills, and supporting souvenirs and concession sales. Besides being outdoors in the oldest city park in the United States and seeing a world-class production of Shakespeare for FREE, volunteering for CSC is a way to support one of Boston's leading arts institutions with your most priceless gift: your time! We offer great incentives for your help including VIP seating and discounts on merchandise."
If you would like to sign up, CLICK HERE

Midsummer Openings: Indoor and Outdoor

2012-07-10T17:41:00.004-07:00

This week, two of Boston's Fringe Theaters are opening shows.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead/Han Muerto
Apollinaire in the Park, Mary O'Malley Park, Chelsea
From 2002 until 2010, Chelsea's Apollinaire Theatre Company had been taking on the huge task of producing free outdoor summer theater performances, in both English and Spanish on alternating nights. Some of the past productions have included Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, Chekhov's The Seagull, Ionesco's Rhinoceros, Rostand's Cyrano De Bergerac, and Cocteau's The Wedding on the Eiffel Tower & Other Absurdities of Love. But last year, cutbacks in funding caused the company to cancel what had become a summertime staple in Chelsea, serving a bilingual community with thought provoking and challenging plays in environmental stagings in the park, for free. Thanks to the work of a fundraising committee bolstered by a successful online "kickstarter" campaign, the program is back this summer with Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (in Spanish, "Rosencrantz Y Guildenstern Han Muerto"). Performances run thru Saturday, July 28, with shows in English on Wed. Thurs. and Sat. nights, and in Spanish on Fri. and Sun. All performances begin at 7:30, and audience members are encouraged to bring beach chairs, blankets, and coolers and picnic in the park. Come early to get a good spot ... but travel lightly: as it's an environmental staging, the audience will pick up and move to another location for each new setting.
Free.

True Believers
Vagabond Theatre Group
At the Factory Theater at The Piano Factory, 791 Tremont St @Mass Ave.

Vagabond Theatre Group presents True Believers by local playwright Thom Dunn, it's third world premiere production since it was founded in the fall of 2009 by Artistic Director James Peter Solis.

True Believers "tells the story of aspiring comic book artists, psychotic fanboys, cybernetically enhanced humans and girls who dress like Princess Leia as their lives intertwine during a week at a comic book convention. With character descriptions that include phrases like "Recently divorced. She took his entire Star Wars collection in the settlement. Yes, that includes his Han Solo in Carbonite coffee table. Not that he's bitter or anything." and "Seriously didn't mean to make Wolverine gay," this play is sure to entertain, engage and bring out your inner nerd!"
Opening Thursday 7/12 at 7:30, thereafter performances are Wed. Thurs. at 7:30, Fri. & Sat. at 8:00, and Sat. and Sun. July 15 at 2:00, through Sat. 7/22.
$18/$15 students and seniors. Tickets at Brown Paper Tickets

Judy At The Palace of St. George: Kathy St George IS Judy Garland

2012-07-05T18:36:00.003-07:00

Dear Miss Garland at the Stoneham Theatre, (781) 279-2200, till July 22 (for tickets, click here).

Kathy St. George in DEAR MISS GARLAND

By the time Kathy St George, implores us, as Judy Garland, to forget our troubles and, "come on! Get happy!", I did a quick reality check. Troubles, I got plenty, but forget them? I already did.
DEAR MISS GARLAND is the new and improved version of a show Kathy St George and Scott Edmiston created as Kathy's love letter to Judy Garland.
The first act covers the history of Kathy and Judy, growing up as a fan. Like many of us, Kathy first got to know Judy Garland from the annual network television broadcast (when the only networks were ABC, CBS, NBC and, later, PBS) of The Wizard of Oz. (The rest of you had videotapes and discs to view anytime you wanted to: its how my niece, at 4, was able to recite the segment "The house began to pitch ..."). She followed Judy's career by seeing all of her films, and as a performer she was drawn to her material. Together with director Scott Edmiston, St. George has crafted a show that has a very intimate first act (which could just as easily play in a cabaret room), which deals personally with Kathy's connections to Judy Garland, with songs and stories, sometimes giving a glimpse of Judy's character in those anecdotes and songs. But mostly it's Kathy, relating to us her love and passion for Judy and her material. As much as it is the cliche of all cliches, there's a segment that closes Act One that alone is "worth the price of admission", and I laughed throughout her whimsical, virtuosic performance. It's a segment that everyone relates to, and ties the first act together well.
Act Two is mostly a recreation of some of the song performances captured on the recording JUDY AT CARNEGIE HALL. St George's music director/pianist/accompanist Jim Rice, who was the sole musician for Act One, is joined by others to create a 7 piece orchestra to provide a bigger sound for the second act. Kathy,in the unmistakable iconic wardrobe pieces that help her define her characterization, hits one song after another out of the park, with an easy, dead on impersonation of Garland's energy, emotion and drive. She doesn't use any artificial makeup enhancements to look like Judy. She plays the gestures, and finds the emotion in those gestures. This is the chance to see a singer/actress at the top of her form in material she was made for. I've only seen Tracy Bennett (the British actress playing Judy Garland on Broadway in "End of the Rainbow") in a segment on the 2012 Tony Awards broadcast, but based on the little I saw, I think Kathy's Judy could go up against hers and come out on top.
As an encore, Kathy comes out wrapped in an oversized faux black mink, and says "What becomes a legend most?", which is the line from a series of ads for a fur line called Blackglama, featuring gorgeous icons, (Sophia Loren, Judy Garland, Diana Ross, Bette Davis, Ann Margret, Joan Rivers, Janet Jackson, and even Tommy Tune, etc.), dressed in Blackglama mink.
In this show, it's Kathy who becomes a legend most!

A Visit to the Plaza Theaters at the BCA, 6/29 & 30: Polaroid Stories and A Midsummer Night's Dream

2012-07-02T13:02:00.000-07:00

The Plaza Theaters at the BCA

Polaroid Stories, thru 7/14

A Midsummer Night's Dream "a cappella" Opera, closed.

First a little history: when I returned to Boston after my training at York University in Toronto, in 1976, the small theater scene was extremely limited. There were fewer theater companies and spaces, and mostly a non-equity landscape for actors. I worked initially at the Boston Arts Group Theater, a Boylston Street walk-up that housed a small company, Boston Arts Group, and was used as a rental space. That show was MAYDAY, a play about the May Day demonstrations in Washington DC in 1971. Written by Michael Wikes and directed by Andy Golov, two BU students, with a cast that included BU acting students as well as other young adult performers, it was my first play outside of college, and the only time a show I was in a show that received a review by Elliot Norton (it was a slow summer ...). I then auditioned for, was cast in, and began rehearsals, all in one day, two plays with Maxine Klein and her Little Flags Theater company: FANSHEN by David Hare, adapted from the sweeping chronicle by William Hinton of the Chinese revolution as seen from the small village of Long Bow, and TANIA, Maxine's original play with music about Tamara Bunke, a woman revolutionary who worked in the Bolivian jungles with Che Guevara. At the time, Little Flags worked out of a space at the BCA that eventually became Hammersley's Bistro. Whenever I pass the restaurant, I'm reminded of singing songs of revolution and performing plays about communism in third world countries. The National Theater was steadily decaying at the other end of the block, where eventually the Calderwood Pavilion took it's place. In the center, next to the Cyclorama, was a space called the Ehrlich, now the Plaza Theater. The Plaza Black Box wouldn't be created for at least another decade, and within a few years the Ehrlich became The New Ehrlich, with it's own company, as well as being a rental space. I performed in a few shows, and in 1985 directed The Star Spangled Revue of 1942, a 40's "book revue", which featured among its cast of 8, Bobbie Steinbach as a Vera Lynn-inspired "Lila Darby", Christopher Tarjan (currently the resident director of Shear Madness) as "radio personality Allen Ray", and Margaret Ann Brady as a kind of cross between Ethel Merman and Kate Smith (her rendition of a 40s war song, Marching Through Berin, practically shook the roof off the old place).

All these years later I took in two shows last weekend in the Plaza Theater and the Plaza Black Box.

POLAROID STORIES, by Naomi Iizuka, is being produced by three of Boston's current Fringe companies: Hearts and Daggers Productions, Boston Actors Theater and Happy Medium Theater Company, and provides the opportunity to get to know a bit about all three. Co-directed by Artistic Directors Joey C. Pelletier of Hearts and Daggers and Happy Medium's Elise Weiner Wulff, it has a cast of young actors representing all three companies as well as additional performers from the Boston theater scene. The young ensemble portrays "street kids living on the edge in a desolate, urban landscape". Written in 1997, the scenes and monologues could be happening at various times in recent history, and the production, while presented in a contemporary timeframe, wasn't specific enough to ground it in today. I appreciated the opportunity to be exposed to the work of this cast, consisting mainly of actors I hadn't yet seen perform. The production is sparse, and therefore relies on the actors to create the realities of these characters, who are given names and situations from Greek myths. I was intently focused and their work kept me so, though I wasn't as engaged as another writer, Alan Chase, whose rave for the show can be found here. At only $20 ($15 with a student ID), the show is very affordable and definitely worth checking out, to see the work of the next wave of Boston's actors, directors, and theater artists..

The room is not very well cooled, so be prepared on warmer nights: a few floor fans were brought in at intermission that made things much more comfortable. On the Friday night I was there, we had just experienced a few very hot days, so don't worry that it's sweltering: just dress lightly, have a cold drink with you. and make use of the program to quietly fan yourself.

On Saturday night, I saw OperaHub's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the East Coast Premiere of a new opera, described by the company thus:

"GLEE meets La Scala in this innovative, genre-defying take on Shakespeare's beloved tale of love--and magic--in the woods. Melding opera, musical theater, and a cappella styles, this is A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM for the twenty-first century".

Composer Michael Ching's opera uses Shakespeare's text, but in place of an orchestra, there was what they're calling a "voicestra", a chorus of singers who, joined occasionally by a keyboard player and a vocal percussionist, provided the accompaniment. This was a pretty straightforward "Dream", in mostly modern dress, which included a few children/fairies, and had the audience tossing beachballs onto the set when we first went into the woods and encountered Oberon and Titania. I appreciated the concept and production more than the material. The Globe's Jeffrey Gantz reviewed the piece, and his review can be seen here.

The Plaza Theater, unlike the Black Box, was quite nicely air-conditioned.

street kids living on the edge Polaroid Stories & A Midsummer Night's dream

LOCAL CASTINGS: Huntington Theatre Company's OUR TOWN

2012-06-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

Huntington's OUR TOWN Continues to audition ...

One of the most highly anticipated shows of the 2012-13 Theatre Season for audiences and actors alike, is the Huntington Theatre Company's presentation on OUR TOWN, in the production directed by Chicago's David Cromer. What started as a local Chicago production and went on to become the longest running revival ever of Thornton Wilder's play in New York, OUR TOWN will be presented at the Roberts Studio Theater at the Calderwood Pavillion this fall/winter. Led by director David Cromer reprising his role as the Stage Manager, the cast will include original cast members of the Chicago and New York productions, and will be filled out by local actors in major and supporting roles, for which the Huntington has been auditioning since February of this year. With rehearsals beginning Nov. 13, and the production running from Dec. 7 through January 27, these roles are among the longest running to be cast in Boston this season, with a total of over 11 weeks of work from first rehearsal to closing.

While some local actors await the call for a callback audition with Mr. Cromer, the Huntington has announced another open casting call. Submissions from actors who have not previously been submitted or auditioned should be made ASAP by email to aintern@huntingtontheatre.bu.edu.

Here's the full audition notice:

OUR TOWN Call for Huntington Theatre Company The Huntington Theatre Company is seeking actors for the roles of Farmer, Sam Craig, Si Crowell, Joe Crowell Jr., Simon Stimson, Wally Webb, Irma and the Citizens in the production of OUR TOWN by Thornton Wilder, directed by David Cromer.
**If you have already audition for OUR TOWN, you need not submit to this call.**
Date and time of the audition still TBD, but will be before July 7th. Slots will be given in 5-minute increments and sides from the script will be emailed out. A reader will be provided for you.
The Huntington is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Non- Equity performers are encouraged to submit.
Performers may schedule an appointment by contacting: Alex Lonati, aintern@huntingtontheatre.bu.edu Please send your headshot and resume via email.
The Huntington Theatre will be using an LORT D contract for this production.
Dates of the Production: First Rehearsal: November 13, 2012 First Preview: December 7, 2012 Opening: December 12, 2012 Closing: January 27, 2013
CHARACTER BREAKDOWN:
SIMON STIMSON male, old enough to have seen a peck of trouble. Must play piano. Simon is the organist and choir director of the Congregational Church. He is the town scandal with a commonly known but never spoken of drinking problem. He can only articulate his sadness and rage and isolation after his suicide.
WALLY WEBB male, 10 or so. A bizarre little boy.
JOE CROWELL, JR. male, mid teens. A very bright young man who will graduate first in his class, be granted a scholarship to MIT but die in France in WW I. He is resistant to change
SI CROWELL male, mid teens. Si delivers the Grover’s Corners Sentinel in 1904, after his older brother retires. Si, like all the Crowell boys, is resistant to change.
SAM CRAIG male 20s. A Grover’s Corners boy who left town to go out west. Out West it seems, is Buffalo, New York.
FARMER male 50s to 70s. A older, the town’s deceased farmer
IRMA , 30s to 50s a woman among the dead.
CITIZENS, any age. Various types. People among the dead in Act 3. Non-Equity only

From Russia With Attitude

2012-06-25T01:06:00.001-07:00

Kevin Fennessy and Erin Eva Butcher:
Chekhov on the Catwalk

The Theatre Communications Group Conference 2012, held for the first time in Boston last week at the Park Plaza, threw a Late Night Party, THE BOSTON BASH, on Friday June 22 at the Boston Center for the Arts' Cyclorama. The party committee, including Jennifer Johnson of the Charlestown Working Theater and Ari Barbanell of ART/Oberon, coordinated a fashion show of actors in costume from shows throughout the region: from the Huntington and ART to the Portland Stage Company, Watertown's New Rep, and Boston's Company One, among others. Among the group, there were Elizabethan costumes, a paniered Marie Antoinette gown, "Chad Deity" of Company One's upcoming play, "The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity", in gold lame boxing trunks, a Donkey Show Disco Boy, and a couple of Brides (including Jenna Lea Scott in her Korean Bride Costume form the Lyric Stage's AVENUE Q, designed by David Cabral, accompanied by Erica Spyres "wearing" her Kate Monster puppet). We were like a bizarre Halloween costume parade. I walked the runway in my costume as Telegin, AKA "Waffles", from the Apollinaire Theatre Company's production of the Craig Lucas adaptation of UNCLE VANYA, by Anton Chekhov, accompanied by Erin Eva Butcher, our Sonya, in costumes designed and executed by Toni Bratton Elliot.
We were a big hit. We strode out together, got to the end of our runway and busted a few dance moves. Then I slid out of my woolen jacket and cap, dragged it behind on a runway sashay to the hoots and hollers from the theater crowd. Erin paraded back, and we stomped off together. Motivated by the heat of the night and in the heat of the moment I made my few minutes on the catwalk count.

And don't think I'd miss the opportunity to remind you, again, that the award-winning production of UNCLE VANYA is returning by popular demand, at the Chelsea Theater Works, from October 10 thru Nov. 4, Wed. thru Sun. evenings. The original production's cast members Erin Eva Butcher (Sonia), Ron Lacey (Astrov, nominated for an Elliot Norton Award), Ann Marie Shea (Maria), Ann Carpenter (Nanny), Mike Handelman (Workman/Musician), and I (Telegin, AKA "Waffles") are joined by newcomers Diego Arcienegas (Vanya), Gordon Jack Schultz (Professor), and Kate Paulsen (Elena). Directed by Danielle Fauteux Jacques, Apollinaire Artistic Director and recipient of the 2012 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Directing/Fringe for this production. Last winter we sold out every show, and many were shut out. With an audience limited to 30 members per performance, many shows are selling out already. Don't miss it this time.
For more information and tickets, visit https://www.apollinairetheatrecompany.com/tickets/tickets.html .

Emerging America Festival @ Oberon

2012-06-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

As one of the three presenting organizations (the other two being The Huntington Theatre Company and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston), the American Repertory Theater is presenting shows at Oberon, the company's second stage, a " a destination for theater and nightlife on the fringe of Harvard Square".
For the Festival, Oberon will play host to three productions and a party. The following comes from the Emerging America Festival website ...

PIRATES OF PENZANCE

By Gilbert and Sullivan; Directed by Sean Graney; Performed by The Hypocrites
THURSDAY 6/21 at 8PM, FRIDAY 6/22 at 10PM, SATURDAY 6/23 at 6PM and SUNDAY 6/24 at 4PM
Run time: 80 min
Recommended for all ages
TICKETS: $20

Bringing the sold-out production from their native Chicago, The Hypocrites treat this hilarious musical in an entirely thrilling new way. Treat yourself to an eighty-minute exotic excursion featuring bathing beauties, philosophizing pirates, and grown men in remarkably short shorts! Warning: If you want boring, stay away; this experience will cause immense joy and the compulsion to spontaneously sing along. Come ashore with the “Very Model of A Modern Major General,” the Pirate King, and a banjo-picking Mabel. The show features beach balls, sunshine (the artificial kind), and tons of fun music.This show is a promenade production, and while some seating is available on a first come first served basis, audience will be asked to flow with the production and spend time standing.

STEVE CUIFFO IS LENNY BRUCE

FRIDAY 6/22 and SATURDAY 6/23 at 8PM
Run time: 1 hour
Ages 18+
TICKETS: $20

Celebrated performer Steve Cuiffo has immersed himself in the work of Lenny Bruce, delivering sublime, hyperreal, verbatim resurrections of the great American thinker’s monologues. The New York Times has declared, “Lenny Bruce is brought back from the dead in the form of Mr. Cuiffo,” who will perform a compilation of Bruce “bits” on still-hot topics, including organized religion, race, illegal and prescription drugs, sexual mores, obscenity, and the Constitution. It’s fifty years later, but Bruce’s often prophetic, freedom-loving skewering of American culture is as dazzling, hilarious and insightful as ever.

THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE

By Stickball Productions; Based on the novel by George V. Higgins; Adapted for the stage by Bill Doncaster; Directed by Maria Silvaggi
SATURDAY 6/23 at 3PM and SUNDAY 6/24 at 6PM
Run time: 1 hour 40 min
Ages 18+
TICKETS: $15 - $25
The godfather of badass Boston crime stories comes to life in this stage adaptation of George V. Higgins’ famous novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Set in the winter of ’69, Eddie Coyle is a bottom of the barrel hood trying to stay alive and out of jail among his “friends” – bank robbers, student radicals, bartenders, hit men, cops and informants. The Friends of Eddie Coyle has been called the best crime novel ever written; Higgins' dialogue comes to life on stage with this encore performance at OBERON, following its sold-out run.

FESTIVAL CLOSING PARTY

SUNDAY 6/24 at 8:30PM
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

The last show may be over but the party is just beginning! Come celebrate with us at the Emerging America Festival at the closing night party. This is your chance to mingle with this years artists as you share stories, dance, laugh, and raise a glass together while the music plays on the dance floor at OBERON. This is one final event not to be missed.

Extra! Extra! or " I Oughta Be In Pictures"

2012-06-21T11:24:00.009-07:00

Summer is the season for filmmaking in Boston. Well, it's the busiest season for Hollywood features shooting in the Bay State. Ever since the state enacted it's policy of tax incentives for the motion picture industry, it's not unusual for a movie to shoot entirely on location throughout the state.
In the pre-tax incentive years, a major featured tended to shoot here for a few weeks to a month or so, capturing it's exterior shots, the locations that absolutely HAD to be shot on location: The Swan Boats ... Faneuil Hall Marketplace ... Harvard and MIT ... historical sites and iconic images of New England, rowing along the Charles, fall foliage in full bloom, etc. But with the incentive of saving money by shooting here, producers have been following the savings.
THis weekend on Saturday there's an open casting call for a movie starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, the as yet "Untitled Female Buddy Cop Comedy" (see info regarding the casting call below).
Here's a listing and some advice on what's shooting this summer and how best to get yourself "in the movies".

GROWN UPS 2
A sequel to the hugely successful Adam Sandler movie GROWN UPS, again starring Adam Sandler, with Kevin James, Chris Rock, Maya Rudolph, David Spade and others from the original, as well as additonal names such as Andy Samberg and Taylor Lautner. Shooting on the North Shore in the Marblehead/Swampscott area, Grown Ups 2 had it's open casting call last month and has been shooting for the past month, continuing through August. Extras Casting is by Kristan Berona of Sande Alessi Casting/LA, one of Hollywood's busiest casting companies for feature films and television. To be considered, you can connect with them on the Sande Alessi Casting/Boston Facebook page, but fair warning: Do NOT respond, comment, request work, etc., on Facebook: it's a means of receiving info regarding last minute or upcoming needs for the movie, and instructions on how to submit for those jobs will be clearly detailed in the notices. They specifically request that potential background performers do NOT comment on their postings, as they don't have the time to go through Facebook notes while busily doing the day-to-day casting. If you did not go to their open casting call, they ask the following:
If you did not make it to our open call, READ THE FOLLOWING VERY CAREFULLY. We will not be responding to posts about this.
Click the link below and it will automatically download our registration card. Print it out, fill it out completely and write neatly please. If cards are not filled out completely, we will not be able to cast you. Once your card is filled out, please staple a current, color photo of yourself to it. Mail it (do not email, do not stop by, etc) to: Extras Casting, 45 Congress Street, Suite 4120, Salem, MA 01970

http://cloud2.snappages.com/49aff3626513244ac39fcb5a80e033ffdd20c9c2/MasterRegCard.pdf

cloud2.snappages.com

LABOR DAY
This is an adaptation of the novel, LABOR DAY, by Joyce Maynard. The film stars Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin, and is being directed by Jason Reitman. Set in New Hampshire, the movie has been shooting around Massachusetts, initially in Western MA, in the Amherst area, though they've recently moved into the Natick area and surrounding communities. The casting company for this movie's extras is Boston Casting, located in Allston. But hold on: before you jump on the green line, the best way to get listed is right here online. Go to www.bostoncasting.com, and click on the Talent Application link on the upper lefthand side of the home page. As this movie includes scenes that take place in the 60's and the 80's, they are very interested in knowing if you have period-correct automobiles for possible use in the movie.
Enter your information and current photo(s) that REALLY look like you (not enhanced or touched up studio shots) and make sure you also add yourself to the Boston Casting mailing list on their home page. Occasionally, last minute rush call castings will go out by email, and as always, the "early bird gets the worm".

THE UNTITLED BUDDY COP COMEDY
This is the feature in prep for shooting in July and August. Starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, it's the film that is having it's open casting call for both union (members of the newly merged SAG-AFTRA actors union) and nonunion extras this weekend. The Extras Casting company for this movie is Billy Dowd Casting. Billy Dowd has had a long successful casting career, working on major features over the past three decades. He's been associated in the past with CP Casting, but he's his own independent casting director, with credits on movies and tv projects associated with some of the biggest directors and names in the industry.
Here's the casting notice and the basic information:

Billy Dowd Casting
is holding a

NON-UNION EXTRAS CASTING CALL
[ADULTS 18+ ONLY]

for an

"Untitled Buddy Cop Comedy"

starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy

The film is shooting in Boston this Summer

Saturday, June 23rd
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

The Boston Teachers Union Hall

Carson Place

180 Mount Vernon Street

Dorchester, MA 02125

http://btu.org/directions

CHECK YOUR GPS -- There is more than one Mount Vernon Strreet in Boston

The BTU is located in the rear of the Bayside Expo, off of Day Boulevard.

Looking for the following types: [ALL ADULTS 18+]

- Ex-Convicts/ Inmates

- Ladies of The Night (Hookers)

- Cops/FBI/Detectives

- Prison Guards

- Drug Dealers/ Junkies

- Energetic & Attractive Party People/ Night Club Goers ( Ages 21 - 40 yrs old)

Please bring a recent snap shot/photo (and a pen!) with you to the open call.
If you have a HEADSHOT & RESUME bring (at least!) TWO.
PLEASE NO phone calls to Billy Dowd Casting or the Boston Teacher's Hall.
Thank You!

THE WAY, WAY BACK

Written by the Academy Award winning team of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (The Descendants), this also marks their directorial debut. Starring Steve Carrell and Toni Collette, who worked so well together in Little Miss Sunshine, it's a coming-of-age story based loosely on Jim Rash's own life with his Stepfather.
The Extras Casting is also being done by Billy Dowd Casting, (see above), and attendees to his casting call for the Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy movie will also be considered for this film.
This movie, however, needs families and children. If you missed the open call a few weeks ago, and you can't attend this Saturday (which is the best way of being included in Billy's files for work on either movie) you can send a current picture and all of your contact information to:
contact@billydowdcasting.com.

As always, no phone calls!

Break a leg, and have a great shooting summer!

EMERGING AMERICA FESTIVAL: The Hotel Nepenthe

2012-06-20T21:06:00.004-07:00

Photo Credit: Jeff Adelberg

Tumbling forth from the fertile imagination of actor/playwright John Kuntz come the characters and situations of The Hotel Nepenthe, dovetailing, careening, doubling back and ultimately dancing with the spontaneity of kids at a party. And the $25 ticket price makes for an affordable excursion into a theatrical wonderland. Presented by the Emerging America Festival on the stage of the Wimberley, outfitted to contain the mysterious set and an 85 member audience.
The "random events" that make up a life are never easily understood, followed, or sensibly arranged, and neither are the characters and events of The Hotel Nepenthe. While following along might frustrate the linear minded theater-goer, this show clues us in at the start that we're in for a different kind of ride. In the opening moments, Kuntz and company parody the warnings and advice of an airline stewardess, asking the audience to "keep the tray table in an upright and locked position", "silence and turn off all electronic devices", and the women gesture to the lavatories while John Kuntz himself warns us that "you better have gone before because there's no intermission". And we're off on a flight of fancy through the corridors, rooms, taxis roads and bus rides of The Hotel Nepenthe. Like most of John's plays, there is an overload of pop culture references, 60's and 70s television theme songs, recurring character names that may or may not signal connections, and an epilogue that anyone who knew John in the 80s and 90s ... well, any time at any party, will recognize as a thematic dance poem, a story in movement that exemplifies the joy and glee with which he entertains us and himself.

Photo Credit: David Gammons

The set is a mysterious landscape that functions as those hotel rooms and well-traveled roads along the way. Live video gives us alternative views of both events in the foreground and on the periphery of a given scene, and the lighting creates the moods, tensions and mysteries we encounter. Above, a faux-dropped ceiling allows for fluorescent lighting and the feel of a less-than-luxurious Hotel (despite the leopard bathrobes), and also for a rainbow (watch for it at the evening's end). The quartet of actors is the perfect ensemble, who performed the play in it's premiere, produced by the Actors Shakespeare Ensemble in February/March 2011: Kuntz, Daniel Berger-Jones, Georgia Lyman and Marianna Basham, directed by David Gammons. That production earned both the 2011 Elliot Norton and 2012 IRNE Awards for Outstanding New Play, as well as the 2011 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Ensemble, and Elliot Norton Award nominations for David Gammons for Outstanding Director/Mid-Size Theater, and Marianna Basham for Outstanding Actress, Mid-Size Theater.
Presented by the Emerging America Festival, Thursday June 21 at 7:30 and 10:30, Friday June 22 at 8:00, Saturday June 23 at 2:00 and 8:00, and Sunday June 24 at 2:00. Individual tickets ($25)and Festival Passes ($50-$85) available at www.emergingamericafestival.com/tickets.html.

Apollinaire In The Park 2012 and the Kickstarter Campaign

2012-06-20T10:05:00.001-07:00

This summer marks the return, after a year's hiatus, of Apollinaire Theatre Company's annual Apollinaire In The Park performances, a bilingual summer event outdoors in Chelsea at Mary O'Malley Park. Rather than rewrite what's already been written, here's a reprint from their Kickstarter campaign page. Please support the efforts to provide free summer theater in Chelsea. While my personal association with Apollinaire only began this past winter with UNCLE VANYA, the company under the leadership of Danielle Fauteax Jacques has been toiling away for many years, and this past season, Danielle received the Kenneth MacDonald Award for Excellence from the Independent Reviewers of New England, as well as the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director/Fringe for the Apollinaire indoor production of UNCLE VANYA (which was nominated for an additional two Norton's, Outstanding Fringe Production and Outstanding Actor/Fringe for Ron Lacey as Astrov).

Check out the articles below, visit their Kickstarter page and donate what you can to help the Apollinaire In The Park series continue with this summer's offering, ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD.

One Play, Two Languages

Who else in Boston – or in the United States – mounts an outdoor show every summer, for free, that’s performed in English one night, then Spanish the next? Since 2003, Apollinaire’s outdoor moving stage has brought modern classics ranging from Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba to Chekhov’s The Seagull to Ionesco’s Rhinoceros to Chelsea’s Mary O’Malley Park.

Bring Theatre Back Under the Bridge

Apollinaire's 2010 production of Cyrano, staged in 5 locations in the park, brought together Chelsea’s English and Spanish speaking residents along with attracting audiences to Chelsea from throughout the state and beyond. Unfortunately, funding from our traditional sponsorship base ran short and a hiatus occurred in 2011. Now a new campaign has been launched to produceTom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead for 14 free performances from July 11-28, 2012.

From the Oscar winner who gave us Shakespeare in Love, this wickedly funny companion piece to Hamlet turns Shakespeare inside out and shows us what's going on offstage from the point of view of Hamlet’s school chums.
Tom Stoppard serves up a feast of wordplay, wit, and slapstick while exploring the timeless questions of identity, illusion, and being on a boat.
An instant modern classic, R&G Are Dead won the 1968 Tony Award for Best Play, has appeared on stages all over the world.

Why Kickstarter?

The true cost to bring free summer theater to the community is over $30,000. Kickstarter allows Apollinaire the opportunity to ensure the production doesn't run in the red and keeps free summer theater alive. Your valuable and generous donation will help us reach our goal. If we don't reach the kickstarter goal of $5,850, your donation will not be processed and Apollinaire in the Park receives no funding at all.

Please help us get there and bring bi-lingual theater back under the bridge.

Your donation helps us cover production costs which include:

Actor Stipends for our cast of 16
Designer Stipends for Costumes & Sets
Stage Manager Stipends for our team of 6 running the show in 3 locations
Sets, Costumes & Props
Park Permits, Insurance & Rehearsal costs
Postcards, posters and marketing

Thank you for supporting Apollinaire in the Park!

Emerging America Festival 2012

2012-06-20T08:18:00.003-07:00

Hotel Nepenthe
Emerging America Festival

Pirates of Penzance
Emerging America Festival

Experiment America
Emerging America Festival

This week, Boston celebrates the third annual Emerging America Festival.
Co-produced by the Huntington Theatre Company, American Repertory Theater, and the Institute for Contemporary Art, the Festival began in 2010 and was immediately successful.
From the website:

"From June 21 through 24, Emerging America will bring together some of the country’s most promising performers, writers, companies, and directors for a weekend filled with energy, imagination, creativity, and drama.

Emerging America spans Boston and Cambridge with events happening at all three artistic homes throughout the 4-day festival: the A.R.T.'s OBERON, 2 Arrow St. Cambridge MA; the Huntington’s Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, 527 Tremont Street, Boston; and the ICA at 100 Northern Avenue, Boston."

For the next four days, I'm taking in all the events I can, in and around volunteering for the Theatre Communications Group Conference, for the first time taking place in Boston.

Subtitled "Model The Movement", the conference brings together theatre-makers from around the country in workshops, meetings, "breakout sessions", and, of course a big party!

That's me as Telegin, in UNCLE VANYA, www.apollinairetheatre.com

This year's party will include a "Fashion Show" of costumes from area designers and theater companies, modelled by actors in character from shows currently running and from the past season. I will be walking the runway in my Telegin costume, along with Erin Eva Butcher in her Sonya togs, from Apollinaire Theatre Company's UNCLE VANYA, in designs by Toni Bratton Elliot. (Here's a reminder: Apollinaire's UNCLE VANYA, nominated for three Elliot Norton Awards, and directed by the Norton Award "Outstanding Director/Fringe Theater" Danielle Fauteaux Jacques, will return in a limited engagement in October. Please visit www.apollinairetheatre.com for information and tickets to the Oct.3-28 return).

Anthony Rapp in WITHOUT YOU this week at the Modern Theatre

2012-06-20T06:23:00.001-07:00

Boston audiences only have this week to experience WITHOUT YOU, Anthony Rapp's moving, cathartic and rewarding solo piece about "love, loss and what I sang". Directed by Steve Maler (who directed Rapp in the title role in the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's 2002 production of HENRY V, in the free Shakespeare On The Common series), this one-week engagement follows performances in Pittsburgh (2008) and at the New York Musical Theater Festival (2010), and precedes a run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August followed by a London premiere.
Initially a show about his experience playing Mark, the career defining, and changing, role in Jonathon Larson's Pulitzer Prize winning "rock opera" RENT, it's also about his relationship with, and the loss of, Jonathon Larson, who died suddenly of an aortic dissection, believed to have been caused by undiagnosed Marfan syndrome, in the early morning on January 25, 1996, the day before RENT's Off-Broadway opening. But it is also the story of the love and loss of his Mother who died after a long and debilitating cancer illness that also coincided with the life of that musical. Through songs from RENT, as well as original music by Rapp and his collaborators (there was no program on Tuesday night), and his personal narrative, Rapp shares his life and his story, intertwining his midtown out-of-work barrista days with the audition that led to playing Mark, who captured a generation "living with, not dying from disease". His anecdotes become the throughline, from first audition to the sing-through tribute, onstage at New York Theater Workshop's Off-Broadway theater, attended by Larson's family and friends just days after his sudden death.
On Tuesday night, the full house was silent through the most moving final sections, including a recreation of Rapp's performance of SEASONS OF LOVE at the sing-through tribute to Larson, and this show's title song, the ballad WITHOUT YOU, at his Mother's memorial.

Bye Bye 2011-12, Hello Summer

2012-06-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

With the Elliot Norton Awards two weeks ago, and last night's Tonys, the 2011-12 theater season officially comes to a close. And the Summer Theater Season begins!
As a Boston-based (well, Cambridge, actually ...) theater artist, I bemoan the loss of the outdoor summer theaters of my past ... The long- defunct Open Door Theater in Jamaica Plain and the more recently lost Publick Theater along the Charles River in Brighton.
For me, the Open Door was a rite of passage, a rough hewn natural amphitheater (a big ol' hole in the ground caused by pre-historic glaciers, or so I've been told). The theater was, as the late Susan McGinley, founder and force-of-nature, called it, a cross between theater and summer camp. Each night the entire company was involved in both set-up and strike in the transformation from verdant gorge to rough-hewn theater, from lighting poles and set pieces to the makeshift dressing areas made up of open automobile trunks propping up mirrors and a truck trailer costuming storage unit.

At the Open Door, I made lifelong friendships and professional relationships. I had the opportunity to play roles "against type": a less-than-macho wit-matched Petruchio opposite actress and former BU acting teacher Josie Good; a lanky Sancho Panza opposite the Don Quixote of the sonorous Patrick English. It was also where, in the summer of 1981, I was given the opportunity to make my Boston directing debut with HAVE, a sprawling Hungarian peasant tragedy/epic, with a cast that included many who went on to become some of Boston's bright lights, from former Shear Madness star Michael Poisson, the voice-over and theater actress Dorothy Gallegher, Marina Re (now based in NY), to the award winning actress and teacher/coach Paula Plum; Portland, OR's Mikki Lipsey; Kelvin Keraga, James Mullen, Brooke Stark ... (it was a cast of, if not hundreds, dozens, like, two dozen plus...). For The Open Door Theater's 20th Anniversary season, I directed the Boston premiere of the Frank Galati adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath, a production that earned me the Boston Magazine Best Theatrical Director award in 1995, and set the wheels in motion for my permanent return to Boston from my seven year sojourn in NY, and led to the development of my company, Raven Theatrical (94-98, Elliot Norton Fringe award in '97). That Grapes cast included Liam "Kelly" Sullivan in his post-academic debut as the younger Joad brother Al, the ten year old Ari Graynor, Boston stalwarts Donna Asali, Susan Bigger, Bob Deveau, and Bill Doscher; George Hahn, ; as well as my Raven Theatrical cohorts Patrick Donnelly, Ken Mason and Kelly Lawman, with an original musical score by Peter Bufano of the eclectic musical group Cirkestra. That production of The Grapes of Wrath was cited (along with the children's musical "Emil and the Detectives") by Boston Magazine when awarding me Boston's Best Theatrical Director, 1995.

My experience at the Publick, besides many shows as an audience member, was limited to one: I played the Groucho role in A Day In Hollywood/A Night In The Ukraine. It was directed by Artistic Director Spiro Veloudos, and was one of, if not his first forays into directing a musical. Needless to say, Spiro went on to become the Lyric Stage Company of Boston's Artistic Director, where he has very successfully directed many well received and award winning productions of both musicals and straight plays. Besides me, the Marx Brothers quartet was comprised of some of my closest friends: Jimmy Russo as the Chico character,Jim Quinn as the "Zeppo", and Lisa M. Troy (who later eventually became Mrs. Jim Quinn) as the "Harpo". While I (and most of the critics) was disappointed in my vocal work in the show (none of us felt I really reached a Groucho sound ...), I was extremely pleased with myself, physically. Still today, I can look at the video of the show, turn down the color, and enjoy my physicality, having captured Groucho's walk, his ability to leap with abandon, and to circle around the Margaret Dumont character like an airplane around the Empire State Building. (It was also one of my Mom's favorite roles of mine, and she would giggle and laugh just at the memory of "the way you jumped up on that piano").

So as the summer rolls around, in comes ROLLER DISCO: THE MUSICAL, at Oberon, playing Wednesday and Thursday nights all summer. Based on the movie "Roller Boogie", it sends up the era in a similar vein as XANADU, which had a great run at SpeakEasy Stage Company that just closed last Sunday. Unlike XANADU, however, this show has an original score that pulses with the beats (and bass lines) of the 70's disco anthems and ballads, and the cast is all rollerskating, all the time. Having seen an early preview, I'll only say that it is it's own show, reminiscent of Xanadu but with an original approach that works well in the Oberon space.

Also this week, CAR TALK: THE MUSICAL (is every summer show titled with a colon and the suffix "The Musical"?). This is the debut of a newly rewritten version of the show produced last year at Suffolk University, directed by Suffolk's Wesley Savick, and co-produced by Underground Railway Theater and Suffolk University at the Central Square Theater in Cambridge. This week, there are 2-for-1 preview tickets available. The cast features some of Boston's funniest musical performers, including Maureen Keiller, Leigh Barrett and NH's Scott Severance.

XANADU SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Roberts Studio Theatre, Calderwood Pavillion at the BCA, thru June 9, 2012

2012-05-13T19:38:00.003-07:00

Irreverent and self-referential: that's as academic as I'll get in describing the sweet and silly spoof of the 80s "Razzie" winning movie musical XANADU.
Book writer Douglas Carter Bean takes the screenplay and turns it into a framework that SpeakEasy director Paul Daigneault 's ebullient cast uses to take us on a roller-skating ride through a score that includes Magic, Evil Woman, and the title song Xanadu. It's the pure solid gold talent of this ensemble that had me laughing almost non-stop for the 90 minute story of Muses, Demi-Gods and Roller-Skating Disco-Dreams.
While I enjoyed the Broadway production, which received Tony nominations for Best Musical and Best Book in 2007, XANADU was practically screaming out for this earnest "small theater" production that makes the most of its limitations, turning them into it's clever and entertaining assets.
Without reservation, each one of the nine cast members delivers: McCaela Donovan 's Olivia Newton John Demi-Goddess, Ryan Overberg 's hunky artist/discopreneur, Robert Saoud's power-businessman haunted by a Muse in his past, and the double and triple cast turns from Shana Dirik, Kathy St. George, Kami Rushell Smith, Val Sullivan, Cheo Bourne, and Patrick Connolly. If you're thinking "why see a terrible movie musical on stage", forget about the movie and see if for the cast, the powerhouse trio of musicians, the creative period and fantasy costumes by Gail Astrid Buckley, Crystal Tiala's circular set that puts the audience on three sides, Karen Perlow's lighting, and the biggest disco ball in town.

He's BAA-AACK ! ! !

2012-05-13T19:21:00.000-07:00

Blog me once, then blog me twice, then blog me once again,
It's been a long long time ....

It's been so long since I've written ... and things have been rough since last I wrote. A hip replacement (excellent recovery), family illnesses, and the death of my Mom, Georgia Ravanis Fennessy (1/21/1929-10/25/2011). I've been doing my writing on Facebook, and, for no good reason, haven't been writing here. But I'm back, and looking forward to ongoing communication.

I started this blog around the time of the 2010 Elliot Norton Awards, and here I am a week before the 2012 Awards starting back in.

Just a few comments on what I'm doing here:
Reviewing?
Well, no, not really, though sometimes I'll have things to say about performances I see at theaters around town. I'm hoping to promote local theater, while giving my take on what I see and what's going on in Boston and throughout New England.
Listings?
Well, I'll try to be a source for what's going on, but I can't promise I'll be able to keep up with absolutely everything. That's where you, readers, theater companies, publicists and others, come in. Email me info about your events and I'll try to list all that I can. And I'll try to get to everything I can, too. I've been getting back to theater in a big way, both by going to shows and events, and by auditioning again.

And what about the many hats I wear?
That's a topic that has confused people ever since I started writing plays, casting my cousins, brother, and friends in them, and acting in, and putting on, shows in the backyard when I was 10.
I started acting in "Halfway To Concord", the fifth grade play about "David Lovett", a colonial boy whose family ( I remember he had a sister, "Elspeth") took a part in Paul Revere's ride, though I don't recall what it is they did. Though a fictional family, I did my research, and on a Sunday ride with my Uncle Pete, my Mom, my brother Bob, and my Greek Grandparents, YiaYia and Papou Ravanis, we drove all over Concord and found the Lovett House, which I believed then was where my character lived. I really never found out if he was an actual person, and I've always wondered if there was a historical context to our fifth grade Patriot's Day play. But though I didn't know it, that was the start of my theatrical research, and also the beginnings of the support I've found throughout my life from my family for all the things that interested me. We literally travelled up and down every road in Concord, though now that I think about it ... the play was called "Halfway to Concord" ... shouldn't we have been looking in, say, Belmont? Arlington? It never occurred to me then. But I'll never forget that afternoon, sitting up front with my Mom and Uncle Pete, craning my neck out the window to read every historical signpost and placard.
The first actual play I recall directing was in high school, as a student project. I directed George Bernard Shaw's one-act, "Passion, Poison and Petrifaction". A one-act comedy, and the thing I remember most is that I decided to have "Hail, Britannia" sung at the close of the play, only I was sure the lyrics were "Hail! Britannia! Britannia all the way!", which amused my drama teacher greatly. It was 1969. I was 15.
I studied musical theater for only one year at the Boston Conservatory of Music. At that time, the Conservatory (we didn't call it BoCo then ...) had a strong Dance program alongside its obvious concentrations in Music, but the Theater program wasn't as strong. That year I was introduced to the true study of acting by my teacher Phoebe Wray, a dynamic teacher and performer who I later learned had a career that began in the Off Off Broadway movement in places like the Cafe Cino, with playwrights such as Lanford Wilson and Robert Patrick, and who continues to teach at BoCo.
But aside from Phoebe, and a wonderful voice teacher named Lillian Lee, I didn't feel I was getting enough, and didn't feel up to competing with the level of song and dance "triple threats"that, even then, the Conservatory was attracting. So, at the urging of a friend, I auditioned for the Theater program at York University in Toronto, and for the next three years was in the Performance Stream, with a minimum of 9 hours a week of combined voice/movement/acting classes, in what I found to be a more complete Conservatory-like program. It was at York that I began to direct, and took great advantage of the resources. Each year, Student Project Week opened up the department facilities for student use. One year a friend and I produced an experimental piece using the poetry of a Boston writer I had met at the Conservatory. Another year I played Dick in DAMES AT SEA. And another year I played Bobby (at barely 22), the lead in Sondheim's COMPANY, while co-directing and choreographing. And in my third year, I became Artistic Director of the York Cabaret, a student run cabaret theater in an on-campus pub. One of the Cabaret's shows was "Passionella", based on a Jules Feiffer story, which makes up Act Three of the musical THE APPLE TREE, and among the cast members was Risa Bramon Garcia, who went on to a hugely successful casting career (She cast Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan, Roseann Barr's sit-com, and countless other projects over decades of casting solo and with her business partner Billy Hopkins), producing (100 Cigarettes, etc.), and is now a renowned acting teacher and coach based in LA and working throughout this country and in Canada.
So, in a sense, I've always worn many hats. It's only been in the bigger arena of an adult career that I've confused so many who wonder what I'm up to.
At present, though I continue to freelance and pursue casting opportunities, and scout talent as a consultant to others in casting, I'm focusing on a return to theater, in both Acting and Directing. In only a year of seriously putting myself out there as an actor, I performed with DEATH AND THE POWERS: THE ROBOTS OPERA at the Cutler Majestic, in the ensemble of "The Miseries of the World", directed by Diane Paulus and choreographed by Karole Armitage, and as Telegin in the Elliot Norton Award nominated production of UNCLE VANYA with Apollinaire Theatre Company, which returns in October 2012 for a month of performances. Other opportunities are coming, and I'm exploring opportunities to direct again. "Watch this space" for more information ...
.

Who What When & Where: Boston's 2010-11 Season Shuffle

2010-09-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

The 2010-2011 theater season is shaping up to be the most exciting Boston's past, present, and future.

Grab your iPhones, your blackberries, your organizers, or your keyboards, and kiss old habits goodbye. This season is going to be about where you're going, what you're seeing, and when the curtains rise.
The addition of Arts/Emerson and it's schedule, presenting international artists at a variety of venues; the ART's use of multiple locations; collaborations among the Huntington Theatre, SpeakEasy Stage and the fringe-y Company One; the presentations of double-header productions at the Lyric Stage and Actors' Shakespeare Project.
These are some of the theatrical events that will keep audiences on the run this fall and winter, and set the pace for the rest of the season and the future of Boston theater.

This Is The Week That Is

2010-09-22T08:50:00.000-07:00

Arts events around the world with a connection to Boston (and/or me)

Is it just me, or does this week hold for all of us events that will shape the future of the Arts and Media, locally, nationally, and internationally?
Here are my picks for some of the events that have long gestated and will now spring forth, shaping and affecting my world.

Wednesday September 22

Bus Stop at the Huntington Theatre, Boston
Tonight's opening of Willian Inge's Bus Stop , featuring Norton Sustained Excellence Award winner Karen MacDonald, the uber-talented and locally controversial Will Lebow, and BU graduate and up-and-coming actor Noah Bean, marks a continuation of renewed interest in American playwright William Inge. It promises to rescue the single set, three-act play from it's identity as a motion picture vehicle starring Marilyn Monroe. Directed by former Huntington Artistic Director Nicholas Martin, through Sunday, Oct. 17.

The Divine Sister, by Charles Busch, at the Soho Playhouse, NYC

Following a sold-out Off-off Broadway run last spring, playwright/actor Charles Busch (my personal muse) stars as Mother Superior in a return to the genre parody campy comedies of his early Theater-In-Limbo beginnings. (Note: Throughout the mid-90's I directed sell-out Boston premieres of his plays Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, it's companion piece, Sleeping Beauty, or Coma, and the Frankie and Annette inspired Psycho Beach Party).
Featuring Obie winner Julie Halston (my co-muse), Allison Fraser, and Jennifer Van Dyck. Open-ended run.

The Whole Truth, ABC TV, premiering on television sets nationwide

Okay, "it's only TV", but the series features "The Rise And Rise" of MA native Stephanie Lemelin, model/actress/producer and animal rights advocate, as series star Rob Morrow's assistant Rhoda. (I cast Stephanie in her first film, the beautifully written and produced short Late Summer by UCLA grad David Ottenhouse, also starring Sheila Stasack, Robert Walsh, and Gus Kelley. A former intern fo Lynda St. James of The Cameo Agency, Stephanie also served a stint as a Kevin Fennessy Casting intern.)

Thursday September 23

Death And The Powers: The Robot's Opera World Premiere at L'Opera de Monaco

Composed by Todd Machover with a libretto and lyrics by Robert Pinsky, this is the opera world introduction of a co-production of the ART, MIT's New Media Lab, Opera Futurum and the Chicago Opera Theater, in association with Opera Boston. (See my previous entry, "The Robots and Me". DATP will have it's American Premiere at the Cutler Majestic in March).

American Gothic by Tennessee Williams, World Premiere produced by Beau Jest Moving Theatre at the Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, Provincetown, MA

Boston-based Beau Jest, founded by Artistic Director Davis Robinson (currently on the faculty of Bowdoin College in Maine) and winners of the 1995 Boston Theater Critics Circle Award and the 2010 Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) Award, presents it's second World Premiere Williams play in as many years, following the success of The Remarkable Rooming House of Madame LeMonde. With Robinson and Lisa Tucker, co-founding member of Beau Jest. Through Sept. 26.

Fräulein Maria, Arts Emerson at the Cutler Majestic, Boston

The exciting new entry to Boston's Performing Arts scene, Arts Emerson's inaugural presentation features Boston dancer/choreographer David Parker (son of the late writer Robert Parker and philanthropist/Arts mainstay Joan Parker) as Liesl Von Trapp in Doug Elkins' modern dance production, performed to the score of the movie The Sound of Music. Classic Rogers and Hammerstein songs collide with hip-hop, and Elkins dances the role of Maria.
One week only.

My Generation ABC TV, premiering on television sets nationwide.
Another personal Boston connection marks the "big three" network debut of Casting Director David Rapaport. (David's introduction to casting began as an Emerson College KFC intern. Subsequently, I hired David as a Casting Assistant. He went on to intern with the great, late, Mali Finn, becoming a Casting Associate then striking out with casting partner Lindsay Kroeger, and then on his own as David Rapaport Casting. My pride is showing.)

Thursday, September 23 through Sunday September 26

Arts Emerson, Emerson College at the Paramount Center, Boston

Emerson College's Arts Emerson is "throwing open open the doors to our spectacular home, the Paramount Center, a cornerstone in the revitalization of downtown Boston".
An exciting four day introduction to the gorgeous reimagined Paramount Mainstage and it's various components.

Friday, September 24

Enron by Lucy Prebble, Zeitgeist Stage Company at the BCA

Under the direction of Artistic Director David Miller, the award-winning company presents a cast of Boston actors in the ambitious local premiere of the international British hit (and Broadway failure), a multi-media event based on the financial scandal of the fin de siecle.
Through Saturday Oct. 15.

That's just a sampling of the events happening worldwide with connection to the "Athens of America".

The Robots and Me

2010-09-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

Death and the Powers: The Robots' Opera (Todd Machover, composer, Robert Pinsky, Libretto and Lyrics) has it's World Premiere on Thursday, September 24, in Monaco at L'Opera De Monaco)

It's the most technically complex music-theater piece I've ever been involved in.

Wait a minute: Opera? Technology? Me?

Appropriately enough, I first learned of the opportunity to participate through Twitter. A Twitter account I follow retweeted another Twitterer's tweet, responding to an ART post seeking volunteers to get involved in an ensemble rehearsal workshop. Directed by ART Artistic Director Diane Paulus, the ensemble would be choreographed by the great Karole Armitage (dubbed The Punk Ballerina in her early dance career).

Anyone who knows me knows my desire to revive my acting career, which began "post-academia" in 1976 (as I described in an earlier post. More info can be found at the Boston Irish Reporter , which featured a story in 2009 about my life in casting).

Having trained in Performance and Directing at Toronto's York University, I began a side career in directing in 1982 (the American premiere of Have by Hungarian playwright Julius Hay for Open Door Theater, the musical Boy Meets Boy for Boston's gay theater company, Triangle Theater, and a double bill of Trial By Jury and HMS Pinafore for Harvard's G&S Society at the Agassiz theater in Radcliffe Yard, which featured Broadway/TV/Film actor Craig Bierko, then a BU student, as Dick Deadeye). In 1995 I received Boston Magazine's Best Theatrical Director award (for the Boston premiere of Frank Galati's The Grapes of Wrath , outdoors for Open Door theater, and a revival of the children's musical Emil and The Detectives,, adapted by Andy Gaus and Karen MacDonald).

In 1994, while I was casting my 30+ member ensemble for The Grapes of Wrath, I began an association with Carolyn Pickman of CP Casting, who generouly allowed me to come in and use the company's actor headshots. Over two days I think I touched every headshot in those files. Carolyn stopped me one day and said, "What do you want to do, work here?". And so I did, until the end of 1997, when Boston actress/producer Christy Cashman offered to partner with me, and in 1998 we opened Kevin Fennessy Casting (the partnership dissolved in 2000, and I continued "on my own"). After surviving a devastating office fire in 2002, followed by a stress-induced heart attack, KFC ("We're Not Chicken") struggled on till the present. I still cast smaller projects and pursue other film casting jobs.

I jumped at the chance to work with Paulus and Armitage, albeit as a non-Equity volunteer. (I had forfeited my AEA card after performing with the New Repertory Theater in their 1994 production of Holiday Memories, as the Narrator, a Truman Capote stand-in, in this adaptation of two Capote stories, The Thanksgiving Visitor and A Christmas Memory. My last AEA, job as I chose to focus on casting).

Working with Karole brought me back to my ensemble-oriented university training. It was the mid-70's, when Canadian theater embraced an eclectic theatrical palate, especially anything that wasn't particularly British or American. After spending the previous year at the then rather traditional Boston Conservatory of Music, where acting classes meant a 45-minute scene and monologue class twice a week, the York theater program's 3 hour voice and movement workshops 3 times a week and the annual Student Project Week, when the department's facilities were turned over to the student body to experiment, perform, and empower us, was theatrical paradise. And I was the Rebel Yank, revelling in the experiences.

The opera tells the story of Simon Powers, his assistant, wife, and daughter. The set moves, illuminates, and supports projected images and people, and features a "chorus" of MIT designed and created Robots, all controlled by offstage technicians on a myriad of computers, laptops, and iPads. At one point in the midst of all this technology, a 30-member ensemble of "The Miseries of the World" storms the stage in a highly physical dance/movement piece.

For a week this summer at the end of June and another at the end of July, the ensemble met with Karole at MIT. Very quickly, Armitage assessed and learned the individual strengths of this volunteer ensemble, ranging in age from 12-65. In a pure and organic way, she exploited those strengths, a sculptor molding her human "clay".

As it evolved, I found I was one of the opening moments, hurling myself onstage from behind the set, landing on my knees, crawling and pleading for help, while lighting and sound supported the entrance of The Miseries.

Under the guidance of Broadway costume designer David Woolard, we created our own costumes. He described his vision of The Miseries as representative of all ethnicities, classes, and time periods. I decided my Misery would be a downsized 20th C. businessman, using components of a suit from 1979 (which, ahem, I could still fit into), distressing it with rips and tears with a razor and my hands, dipping the shirt and tie in double-strength coffee, rubbing in a paste of water and cigarette ash, burning holes and edges of shirtsleeves, tails, and cuffs with a lighter. On top of this, and as makeup, a pasty white pancake and spray creat the look of volcanic ash.

We toiled through technical rehearsals (I even volunteered to stand in for both soloists and robots during lighting sessions), and our work culminated in a full dress rehearsal on the stage of the beautifully restored Cutler Majestic Theater downtown. The enormous set was then disassembled to be shipped to Monaco for this week's premiere.

In Monaco, the company is putting together a local ensemble and teaching them the piece that the Boston ensemble created. But our Boston ensemble will perform in the American Premiere in the spring of 2011.

The decades between college and the physically taxing workshop, however, have taken their toll. The abandon with which I thrust myself into the experience resulted in increasing leg and knee pains: I exacerbated a condition I was completely unaware of. X-rays and orthopedics revealed to me and my doctors that I have acute arthritis in my right hip, it's cartilage eroded due to years of working on my feet in just about every job I've ever held, living most all of my life in third and fourth floor "walk-ups", genetics, and possibly from infant hip dysplasia (back in the mid-50's, when I was born, doctors weren't looking at such things). My left hip shows no arthritis, just minor signs of an active life well-lived, but my right hip is basically bone-on-bone. (I was told by my doctor that x-rays show I "have the knees of an 18 year old".)

In retrospect, this explains the minor aches and pains that have been coming on over the past few years. And so, on Wednesday Oct. 6, I'm undergoing total hip replacement surgery at New England Baptist Hospital, the best orthopedic facility in the region if not the country, with Dr. James Phillips , likewise one of the best in his field.

When I told a friend about my hip, he replied "Now you'll have the knees of an 18 year old and the hip of a Robot".

One of my goals in recovery is to be physically sound enough to perform with the opera in March at the Majestic.

I can't wait to work with my Robot brethren.

In costume for Dress Rehearsal in August