Search

Leaders in the campaign to build the Long Center for the Performing Arts have decided to scale back the long-delayed project and build only two out of four theatres in an attempt to get it off the ground.

A Chuck Mee play is a veritable playground for young artists, but while they put a lot of thought and effort into the UT Department of Theatre & Dance production of The Trojan Women: A Love Story, the students behind it only scratched the surface of his work.

The Zachary Scott Theatre Center revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a real horror show, making the clash of Edward Albee's middle-aged marrieds George and Martha both titanic and terrifying.

Second Youth Family Theatre's Beauty and the Beast is no less magical than other versions of the tale, but its real enchantment comes from the way it show us its fairy tale characters discovering each other's hearts.

Ballet Austin's Stephen Mills has a deft touch at getting the Bard to the barre.

Seeing actor David Stokey in the Mary Moody Northen Theatre production of A Flea in Her Ear, carrying off the spectacle of a man whose life has utterly unwound for the most preposterous of reasons, provides a refreshing reminder of the pleasures of farce.

Sixth Street, Saturday, September 27, 2003

How Late It Was, How Late, adapted from James Kelman's novel, finds the Rude Mechanicals depicting a sightless, Scottish ex-con's odyssey through the humiliating and confusing bureaucracy of Britain's welfare state with intensity, hilarity, and the company's outstandingly creative theatrical vision.

Six of the finest theatrical artists in Austin discuss their work behind the curtain designing lighting schemes, mixing sound, and creating and constructing sets and costumes and how their careers have been affected by the fact that they're women.

Theater at the J's production of Cabaret makes good use of the large hall at the Dell Jewish Community Center, creatively weaving the cabaret's musical shenanigans into the more serious larger story, in which the central characters fend off the accelerating horror of Nazi Germany by choosing not to see it.

A bright design firm on the Austin theatre and film scene, Star Costume & Clothiers, falls to earth, and folk artist Brother Jeremias Mysliwiec passes away.

Quasar, Brazil's most celebrated modern-dance troupe, brings its ferocious athleticism to Austin to launch the UT Performing Arts Center's new ArtesAméricas initiative spotlighting artists of Latin America.

With The Heads, Hands, and Toe Show, Tongue and Groove Theatre literally takes out the middle, man, using low-tech effects to create a series of movement pieces where only the arms, feet, and heads of the performers are visible, and the overall effect is simple fun.

Word and Thought, a new comedy by Southwestern University grad Joshua Lellis, tracks a biographical drama about Alexander the Great on its disaster-ridden lurch toward opening night, and its premiere from Cameo Productions and the Austiner Ensemble proves that a theatrical catastrophe is still good for a laugh.

The Austin Circle of Theatres has released the nominations for the 2002-03 B. Iden Payne Awards.

In Broadway Texas Academy's production of Guys and Dolls, the cast of youthful actors look to be joyfully immersed in Damon Runyon's picturesque world, reveling in the extravagant personalities of its gamblers, gangsters, and nightclub dancers with knockout gams.

After three years of leading the drive to build the Long Center for the Performing Arts, David Fleming has resigned as the center's President and CEO.

David Fleming decides not to wait around for the Long Center to open.

Theatre critics have a place to sharpen their craft and learn about their profession, and Robert Faires reports on his stint as a teacher there.

Zachary Scott Theatre Center's production of the comedy Fully Committed is a thrill ride for an audience, with Becky Mode's script and Dave Steakley's choice direction wittily capturing the mania of restaurant life, while Martin Burke's chameleonlike star turn -- playing 40 characters -- imbues the central character with heart and soul in the midst of a soulless, if comic, mob.

Although it harbors minor inconsistencies, Allen Robertson's The Bremen Town Musicians, set in Depression-era America and scored with gospel and bluegrass music, is a fine play for family viewing. It has enough talking, singing animals to satisfy any kid and music that is highly enjoyable in and of itself.

A trip to Minnesota, where the state Legislature recently approved major support for two theatre construction projects, inspires a new way of looking at arts funding in Texas.

With tempOdyssey, which follows a temporary office worker named Genny through her first and only day in a new office, Dan Dietz has written an amazing play, and the amazingly talented cast gets this world premiere off to a great start, but an interminable second act makes this voyage one you'll be glad is over.

In the Zachary Scott Theatre Center production of Side Man, director Dave Steakley conducts the play's overlapping conversations and monologue "solos" like a good bandleader, but that fine work can't compensate for the distance from the action created by playwright Warren Leight in depicting the gap between jazzmen and their families.

At the age of 88, legendary dancer Fayard Nicholas continues to spread the good word of tap, and this week he does it in Austin as the Festival Legend at the third Soul to Sole Tap Festival organized by Tapestry Dance Company.

Twelve of Austin's cultural heroes will be inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame at the 2003 Austin Critics Table Awards ceremony, and here is an introduction to them and some of their significant contributions to the local arts scene.

The proposed Mexican-American Cultural Center may block fire access to the adjacent Villas on Town Lake.

No matter where you are in the Hill Country, you're never too far from a theatre. From Boerne to Kerrville, Marble Falls to Uvalde, community theatres are enthusiastically serving up choruses of "76 Trombones" and Odd Couples with a Lone Star twang, as well as some theatrical surprises.

Gaslight Theater is only the second U.S. company to stage Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, as adapted by Richard Helweg and Michael Franco, and while their faithful tribute beguiles in places like the original, it runs a little too long and treats the source a little too reverentially.

A painful week for friends of the theatre with the passing of educator and director Gil Sharp and producer, director, and actor Don Phillips, Jr.