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Melba Martinez's legacy at Mary Moody Northen Theatre

Our readers talk back.

A decade after The Kentucky Cycle's premiere, the hometown of playwright Robert Schenkkan has the opportunity to experience the work's power in with a homegrown production at the Mary Moody Northen Theatre.

Melba Martinez, artistic director at Mary Moody Northen Theatre for the past 12 years, has been fired from that position

The Mary Moody Northen Theatre's decision to stage Robert Schenkkan's monumental The Kentucky Cycle is laudable, and the St. Edward's University student actors and their Equity counterparts put their all into every moment of effort, but the production's nuggets of brilliance are lost in technical inadequacies, inconsistent acting, and awkward staging.

The SITI Company's J. Ed Araiza is transforming the way Austin actors view their art

For their production of A Raisin in the Sun at St. Edward's University, director Melba Martinez has her designers and cast support Lorraine Hansberry's play in almost every conceivable way, and the rewards to be reaped from their investment are great.

Need a laugh? St. Edward's University has the cure with Lend Me a Tenor, which features a tremendous amount of acting talent, most of it student, working their butts off to entertain you.

On a Mary Moody Northen Theatre stage painted with splashy autumn colors evoking fallen leaves, Melba Martinez and Michael Massey, co-directors/designers of this production of Death of a Salesman, take their audience on a trip through the dying world of Willy Loman, and a powerful trip it is.

The Mary Moody Northen Theatre revival of Barefoot in the Park, Neil Simon's early comedy about newlyweds in a nosebleed-high love nest, can't disguise the shortcomings of Simon's script, but with the vitality that Director Melba Martinez and an expressive, animated cast bring to the production it's always pleasant just being in the characters' company.

For this active Austin actress, there was something special about Refraction Arts' hillbilly/kung fu/rock & roll 'Hamlet'

Picasso at the Lapin Agile: Expecting the Best

By any other name

With The Leaf Storm, choreographer José Luis Bustamante and songwriter Lourdes Pérez have become the wind, blowing past boundaries between artforms to share their vision in collaboration and spinning elements of their lives into an artistic whirlwind.

Cine las Americas Festival of New Latin American Cinema

Managing the busy new Mexican American Cultural Center is inspiring work for Amparo Garcia-Crow

A Majestic future for Grape Vine Market? Plus: Noodle-ism and Mangia aren't just local favorites.

Austin helps the Lysistrata Project become a global phenomenon, and Governor Rick Perry and Austin Mayor Gus Garcia speak out in favor of the Long Center.

There is potential in this material for overwrought melodrama, but as realized on the Mary Moody Northen Theatre stage, Miller's morality play has a simmering urgency.

That special thing that happens between artists and boards of directors can be a lot like a love relationship: Intimate. Fulfilling. Long-term. Working as one body. However, it can be and often is complicated.

The Austin Theatre Critics Table presented its eighth annual awards for achievement in the Austin arts in a lively ceremony at the Continental Club

It’s been six long years since Frontera artists Vicky Boone, Margery Segal, and Annie Suite have all worked with each other on a play, but the threesome still send off fireworks together, as C. Denby Swanson

May

Seasons in the Sun

Hans Frank's 'Ham' offers a political drama in which a seemingly good man experiences a dangerous pressure from all sides