Articulations
Is That Another Raindrop?
By Robert Faires, Fri., July 30, 1999
And ALAA may not be the last arts service organization to lose its executive director this summer. Another change is in the wind, but since it could not be confirmed by press time, it'll have to wait for a future column.
In the meantime, I'm pleased to note that not all the current personnel changes on the local arts scene are departures. At Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre, there's a new body filling an old vacancy. For what feels like longer than F@HPT has been in existence, we've been reporting on this daredevil theatre company's search for a managing director. They had one, then they didn't, then they were searching, then they had one but lost her, then they were searching again, and searching and searching ... Well, the search has ended, and the company is crowing over the addition of Julie Mann to the F@HPT team. Mann comes to Austin from the Theatre Big Time, New York City, where she has spent the past five years working in both nonprofit and commercial theatre. In addition to a two-year stint as assistant to the artistic director of the Women's Project, Mann has served as management assistant on the productions of How I Learned to Drive, The Hairy Ape, and A Delicate Balance, and company manager for A View From the Bridge and this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama, Wit. Welcome, Julie!
And while it's stretching it to call this change local, we feel compelled to note the latest addition to the University of Houston School of Theatre faculty. Sir Peter Hall, the celebrated theatre director and founder of Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company, will take the Lyndall F. Wortham Performing Arts Chair left vacant by the death this past February of director Jose Quintero. Hall will be teaching courses on Shakespeare and directing.