Drama Queen

Silver Palms revealed

The Silver Palm Awards, South Florida's "other" theater awards, will be given next month to 16 theater professionals and the ensemble cast of Mosaic Theatre's The Irish Curse.  Founded four years ago by playwright Tony Finstrom, TV host and actress Iris Acker, and critic Ron Levitt, the Silver Palms (unlike the region's 36-year-old Carbonell Awards) vary in number and category each year.  Critics (including me) make suggestions of award-worthy work to the founders, who make the selections.

Actors to be honored this year are Karen Stephens (pictured) for her work in Bridge & Tunnel and Eclipsed at Women's Theatre Project (WTP), and Clybourne Park at the Caldwell Theatre Company; Deborah L. Sherman for Goldie, Max & Milk at Florida Stage, No Exit at Naked Stage and Three Days of Rain at The Promethean Theatre; Marckenson Charles for Superior Donuts and A Behanding in Spokane at GableStage, and Stuff at the Caldwell; and Dennis Creaghan for A Behanding in Spokane at GableStage, Freud's Last Session at Palm Beach Dramaworks and August: Osage County at Actors' Playhouse. 

Honored in the outstanding new talent category are Renata Eastlick for Kiss of the Spiderwoman at Slow Burn Theatre and Eclipsed at WTP; Elvire Emanuelle for Eclipsed at WTP, and Clay Cartland for Song of the Living Dead at Promethean.

This year's Silver Palm-winning playwrights are Michael McKeever for Stuff at the Caldwell and South Beach Babylon at Zoetic Stage, and David Michael Sirois for Brothers Beckett at Alliance Theatre Lab.

Jeffrey D. Holmes has won a Silver Palm for his direction of The Pillowman for Infinite Abyss, and Michael Leeds for his staging of The Light in the Piazza at Broward Stage Door Theatre. Winning set designers are Sean McClelland for August: Osage County at Actors' Playhouse and Tim Bennett for Stuff at the Caldwell.

Other Silver Palms go to Slow Burn Theatre Company as outstanding emerging company; Paul Homza for his Superior Donuts fight choreography at GableStage; David Cohen for his Stage Door musical tracks; and Mosaic's Irish Curse acting ensemble (Ken Clement, Ryan Didato, Todd Allen Durkin, Shane R. Tanner and Barry Tarallo).

The awards will be presented during the Theatre League's holiday party Dec. 5 from 7:30 to 10 p.m. at Bimini Boatyard, 1555 SE 17th St., Fort Lauderdale.  League members attend free, others pay $25.  Call League executive director Andie Arthur for reservations at 954-557-0778.

(Photo of Stuff shows Silver Palm-winning playwright Michael McKeever, seated, with actor Nick Richberg on winner Tim Bennett's artfully cluttered set.)

 

'Clybourne Park' wins drama Pulitzer

And the winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for drama is....Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris.  Sound familiar?  If you happened to catch the Caldwell Theatre Company's dazzling January production of the play in Boca Raton, it sure does.

Seeing a Pulitzer-honored play in South Florida beforeit wins drama's top prize is, it goes without saying, an uncommon experience. Yes, that happened in 2002 when Coral Gables' New Theatre premiered a Nilo Cruz play it had commissioned -- Anna in the Tropics -- and the play went on to win the 2003 drama Pulitzer, altering the Cuban-born, Miami-raised playwright's life.  But it's usually the other way around:  a play wins the Pulitzer, then South Florida theaters start competing for the rights.

So a big bravo to Caldwell artistic director Clive Cholerton for recognizing a great, provocative play about the tenaciousness of racism from the time of A Raisin in the Sun to today.  Cholerton and a strong cast put together a memorable, unsettling interpretation of Norris' challenging script, a play that uses both drama and deliberately disturbing comedy to make its points.  As I wrote in my Miami Herald review, Clybourne Park is "the kind of play that challenge-hungry director, actors and audiences adore." Add the Pulitzer jury to that list.

Norris, who has a long history as an actor and playwright with Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company (much like fellow Pulitzer winner Tracy Letts), now lives in New York, where Clybourne Park had its January 2010 world premiere at Playwrights Horizons.  He has already won several major drama awards, but the Pulitzer opens the floodgate of opportunities like no other prize.  This smart, youthful-looking provocateur turns 51 next month.  He's seasoned, edgy and outspoken. Inevitably, movie and TV producers will come calling. But I'm not really worried that Norris will abandon writing plays.  As he said in a New York Magazine piece during the New York run of Clybourne Park, "...I wouldn’t want someone to just wipe their ass with the script I’ve written.”

 Steppenwolf, Norris' former theatrical "home," had already announced plans to begin its 2001-2012 season with Clybourne Park. With the added cachet of the Pulitzer (not to mention the play's Chicago setting), that production should be a big draw. But South Florida theater fans can, for a change, feel a little smug. Thanks to the Caldwell, we got it first.

(Gregg Weiner, Karen Stephens and Brian D. Coats pictured in Clybourne Park at the Caldwell Theatre Company)   

Bailey wins Abbott Award

Though the results of voting for the 35th annual Carbonell Awards are secret until Monday''s ceremony at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, special awards are traditionally announced in advance.  This year, the George Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts -- the highest honor given at the Carbonells -- goes to Patrice Bailey, dean of theater at Miami's New World School of the Arts.

The drama division's top administrator since 2002 is an accomplished director and teacher, and under her leadership, New World has had an ever greater impact on South Florida's theater community.  New World grads are acting at theaters all over the region (and around the country), directing, writing plays and making a life in the theater for themselves, a life built upon the fundamentals they acquired at New World. 

Also getting a special honor at this year's ceremony is the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, which will receive the Ruth Foreman Award in recognition of its contributions to theater, artist and audience development throughout its 20-year history.

The Carbonell ceremony, which honors the best work in South Florida theater during 2010, begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Broward Center's Amaturo Theater, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale.  Tickets are $25.  Call the box office  site at 954-462-0222 or visit the center's web site for details.

'Theater prom' tickets on sale

South Florida's theater community has taken to calling the annual Carbonell Awards "theater prom."  Oh, they recognize that the region's top theater honors, which inevitably seem to be both exciting and controversial, are plenty meaningful to both nominees and winners.  But when the 35th annual Carbonells get rolling at 7:30 p.m. April 4 in the Broward Center's Amaturo Theatre, the crowd of actors, directors, designers, critics and theater fans will be dressed to kill and ready to party.

This year's ticket price is $25 for individuals, $20 each for groups of 10 or more.  They're available by calling the Broward Center's box office at 954-462-0222 or visiting the web site.  The Broward Center is at 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale.

After the ceremony, which is being hosted by actor-playwright (and double Carbonell nominee) Michael McKeever and directed by Zoetic Stage artistic director Stuart Meltzer, there's more theater prom fun courtesy of the South Florida Theatre League.  The League is hosting the Carbonell after-party from 10 p.m. to midnight at the Green Room, 109 SW Second Ave., just a few blocks from the Broward Center.  Admission is free with a Carbonell ticket stub, and with that comes a free welcome drink, a ticket for a second drink, a buffet and a cash bar.  And who knows what kind of post-prom drama?

Carbonell nominations share the love

Nominations for the 35th annual Carbonell Awards -- our region's version of the Tonys, the Helen Hayes Awards, the Joseph Jefferson Awards and so on -- have just been announced, and the results are a little more equitable than they have been for the past few years.  (That is, unless you're associated with the Caldwell Theatre Company, New Theatre, The Naked Stage, The Promethean Theatre or the Women's Theatre Project, which got a single nomination apiece.)

Still, people from 13 different companies have reason to go to the ceremony at the Broward Center's Amaturo Theatre on April 4.  Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County theaters collected 36 nominations each, while Broward theaters came back strong with 27.  Top nominated musical? Miss Saigon at Actors' Playhouse, with 11. Top play? Blasted at GableStage, with 7.

For all the details and a complete list of nominees, check out my story at MiamiHerald.com.

Silver Palms announced

The Off Broadway-style Silver Palm Awards, a three-year-old honor given out at the closing party of the yearly South Florida Theatre Festival, will honor actors both experienced and young, a pair of theater companies, a director, a playwright, a choreographer, a musical director, a set designer and a pair of artists who made a comedy horror musical look special.

Married actors Laura Turnbull and Avi Hoffman will get Silver Palms for their separate achievements -- she for her work in Mosaic's Rock 'n' Roll, New Theatre's Equus, the Caldwell Theatre Company's Distracted and City Theatre's Summer Shorts/undershorts; he for Florida Stage's Two Jews Walk Into a War and GableStage's The Quarrel.

Also receiving Silver Palms for performance are Erin Joy Schmidt (for GableStage's Reasons To Be Pretty and Fifty Words, Mosaic's Dying City and Summer Shorts/undershorts), Nick Duckart (for GableStage's Farragut North, Mosaic's Why Torture Is Wrong, Florida Stage's Dr. Radio, Caldwell's Secret Orderand Broward Stage Door's The Glass Menagerie), David Hemphill (for New Theatre's Equus, Stage Door's Glass Menagerie, Naked Stage's Macon City, Farragut North and Summer Shorts/undershorts), Dan Kelley (for starring in and directing Stage Door's The Drowsy Chaperone) and Jackie Rivera (outstanding new talent for GableStage's Speech & Debate).

Other Silver Palm honorees are the Caldwell (for its concert versions of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park with George), New Theatre (for 25 years of new play production), J. Barry Lewis (for directing Palm Beach Dramaworks' Three Tall Women and Copenhagen), Christopher Demos-Brown (for his play When the Sun Shone Brighter at Florida Stage), Chrissi Ardito (for her Stage Door choreography of Bubbling Brown Sugar, The Drowsy Chaperone and Mack & Mabel, and for the Promethean Theatre's Evil Dead: The Musical), Eric Alsford (for his musical direction of Actors' Playhouse's Miss Saigon), Tim Connelly (for his Blasted set at GableStage), Taso Stavrakis (for his Evil Dead special effects at Promethean) and Tyler Smith (Evil Dead props).

The recipients will party and take home their awards on Monday, Oct. 25, from 7 to 11 p.m. at the Green Room behind Fort Lauderdale's Revolution Live, 100 SW Third Ave., Fort Lauderdale.  Admission is $25, but members of the Theatre League of South Florida get in free. Call League executive director Andie Arthur at 954-557-0778 to make a reservation.

PlayGround gets a grant

The Miami Shores-based PlayGround Theatre has just snagged a National Endowment for the Arts grant under the NEA's Access to Artistic Excellence program.  The $15,000 grant will help artistic director Stephanie Ansin and All Children Together inclusion specialist Lee Morgenstern continue their partnership withVSA Arts of Florida to enhance the experiences of disabled kids and adults who attend PlayGround shows.  The grant will help the theater expand its use of live audio description, sign language interpreters, open captioning, wheelchair-accessible transportation and touch tours of the theater.

One of two Florida companies receiving the NEA grant (Teatro Avante is the other), PlayGround will present two "shadow-interpreted" performance of its current show, The Love of Three Oranges , May 20-21.  American Sign Language interpreters will shadow the speaking actors during the performance, mirroring their actions and communicating the dialogue.

PlayGround is at 9806 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores.  For information, phone 305-751-9550 or visit the company's web site.

One more theater 'prom' is history

So the 34th annual Carbonell Awards happened last night, with not too many surprises except for everyone singing Happy Birthday to Oscar Cheda (visiting for the evening from his road gig with In the Heights) and a late-in-the-show tribute to Carbonell-winning sound designer Steve Shapiro, who's leaving South Florida for a prestigious teaching job.  But of course the winners were surprised -- some more so than others. 

John Manzelli, for instance, who now teaches at Barry University and is a Naked Stage founder, won best lighting design for his work on Marco Ramirez's Macon City: A Comic Book Play.  Manzelli, as he admitted in accepting the award, isn't reallya lighting designer.  But he's a multi-talented guy -- actor, director, teacher and, yeah, now lighting designer -- who figured out how to make Macon City look way cool. And now he's got a Carbonell to show for it.

The night's dominant theaters (check out my Miami Herald story for full results) were two Coral Gables companies with a gazillion Carbonells between them, Actors' Playhouse and GableStage.  Their wins -- six to Actors' for its great production of Les Misérables, five to GableStage (for Speed-the-Plow and Farragut North, plus the special Bill Von Maurer Award for the company's contributions to South Florida theater) -- were certainly deserved.  But if I were running a theater in Broward or Palm Beach County, I might be questioning (to put it mildly) the voting process today.  (For the record, I'm not among the folks who select Carbonell nominees or vote on winners.)

The awards show itself, staged for the second year by newly appointed Carbonells executive director Amy London, was solidly entertaining but a little more low-key -- somehow simpler -- than last year's bash.

The opening year-in-theater number, though ably sung to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas by the Carbonell "Choir" (Steve Anthony, Irene Adjan, Barry Tarallo, Christopher Kent, Lisa Manuli, Julie Kleiner, Sally Bondi and the very bearded Avi Hoffman, in rehearsal for GableStage's The Quarrel), wasn't as clever as last year's opener.  The numbers from the nominated musicals were terrific, particularly Nathaniel Braga's head-over-heels Bigger Isn't Better from the Maltz Jupiter Theatre's Barnum, Everett Bradley's sexy a capella Some Like It from Caldwell Theatre's Vices: A Love Story, and the night's showstopper, David Michael Felty's glorious Bring Him Home from Actors' Les Miz.

Winners and presenters were on their best behavior (though presenter Ken Clement tried to get some faux bad blood going with the Women's Theatre Project).  GableStage's Joseph Adler, when not onstage accepting awards, got thanked a lot. Gregg Weiner, named best supporting actor in a play for Farragut North, said, "There's not a show that goes by that Joe doesn't bust my ass," something that always pushes him to get better.  Mad Cat Theatre founder Paul Tei, who had spent the day shooting Burn Notice, won best actor in a play for GableStage's Speed-the-Plow, and he happily detailed his career-long love of the play, his great recent experience with it (castmate Amy Elane Anderson is now his girlfriend) and his gratitude toward Adler, whom he called a "mentor and my second father."

All in all, it was a pleasant, inside-South-Florida-theater event, without the dramatic highs or lows that have marked past ceremonies.  Now that London is in charge of the Carbonell organization, it will be interesting to see how the always-delicate relationship between the theater community and those who carry out the Carbonell process evolves.

On Sondheim, a season and the Carbonells

Stephen Sondheim celebrated his 80th birthday on March 22, and because theaters like to celebrate significant birthdays of great artists, lots of Sondheim-centric productions, readings and events are happening this season.

Already in New York, the new revue Sondheim on Sondheim (starring Barbara Cook, Vanessa Williams and Tom Wopat) has opened at Studio 54, where it runs through June 13.  Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury are at Broadway's Walter Kerr Theatre starring in A Little Night Musicby Sonheim and Hugh Wheeler.  And on Thursday at Manhattan's City Center, an Encores! presentation of the Sondheim-Arthur Laurents musical Anyone Can Whistle(starring Miami's Raúl Esparza, Sutton Foster and Donna Murphy) starts performances through April 11.

South Florida isn't a place where Sondheim's work gets done often, but two Palm Beach County theaters are jumping on the birthday bandwagon.

A production of the Sondheim-John Weidman musical Assassins by the new Slow Burn Theatre Company will run April 29-May 5 at the West Boca Performing Arts Theatre (the place where New Vista Theatre performed before its economy-related demise).  Larry Buzzeo, James Carrey, Clay Cartland, Elijah Davis, Christina Groom, Matthew Korinko, Zachary Schwartz, Stephanie Simon and Rick Pena have key roles in the brilliant piece about presidential assassins.  Performances are April 29 and May 6 at 7:30 p.m., April 30-May 1 and May 7-8 at 8 p.m., May 2 and May 9 at 2 p.m., with tickets priced at $25 ($20 for seniors, $15 for students). The show goes on in the performing space at West Boca High, 12811 W. Glades Rd. Call 954-323-7884 or visit Slow Burn's web site for info.

Boca Raton's Caldwell Theatre Company, meanwhile, has just put out a casting call for its Broadway Concert Series presentation of Into the Woods, Sondheim and James Lapine's musical about the darker side of fairy-tales. Some major roles have already been cast, with Margery Lowe, Wayne LeGette, Elizabeth Dimon, Jim Ballard and Laura Hodos set to participate.  Equity auditions by appointment happen April 26, and the show will be performed May 21-23.  The Caldwell, where Lisa Loomer's Distracted opens in two weeks, is at 7901 N. Federal Hwy.

***

Palm Beach Dramaworkshas just revealed its 11th season lineup, a nicely balanced selection of challenging, entertaining plays.  The 2010-2011 season begins with George Bernard Shaw's Candida Oct. 6-Nov. 21.  Then comes Mark St. Germain's Freud's Last Session(Dec. 15-Feb. 6), about a contentious meeting between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis on the day England enters World War II.  Donald Margulies' Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner With Friendswill run Feb. 23-April 17.  The season winds up with Martin McDonagh's funny, horrific The Beauty Queen of Leenane May 4-June 19, 2011. Palm Beach Dramaworks is at 322 Banyan Blvd., West Palm Beach.  Call 561-514-4042 or visit the web site for info.

***

Just a little over a week to go until the 34th annual Carbonell Awards ceremony takes place in the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale.  South Florida theater's biggest night begins at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 12, with tickets priced at $25.  It will be followed by an after-party at Revolution Live, 200 W. Broward Blvd., from about 10 p.m. to midnight.  Anyone who goes to the Carbonells gets into the party free with an awards show ticket stub. Call the Broward Centerbox office at 965-462-0222 for tickets, or get more info at the Carbonell Awards site.

This year's ceremony will again be directed by Amy London, who was just elected president of the Carbonell board and hired as the organization's executive director and fund-raiser, thanks to a grant from producer Jay Harris. Harris and public relations executive Savannah Whaley, who played major roles in keeping the awards program going after the death of Sun-Sentinel critic/Carbonell executive director Jack Zink, will step down after this year's event.

News about Cruz, Heuer and Whitehead

It's the thick of the season, and though this weekend brings a little lull in the recent frenzy of openings, there's still plenty of arts news to share.

The lineup for the 2010 Ringling International Arts Festival has just been announced, and among the four premieres that will kick off the festival at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 13, is Capricho, a brand-new commissioned work by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz.

Cruz is writing and directing the piece, which will premiere in the historic Asolo Theater at Sarasota's Ringling Museum.  It will be a busy time for him: The world premiere of another Cruz play, The Color of Desire, is slated to kick off the 2010-2011 season at Actors' Playhouse in Coral Gables Oct. 6-Nov. 11.

Premiering at the Ringling Fest at the same time as Cruz's play are world premiere dance solos featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov and David Neumann; Tim Fain premiering a violin piece by Philip Glass; and Czech circus "nomads" the Forman Brothers performing the music-puppetry piece Obludarium.

Also part of the next festival are Moscow's Theater Art Studio performing The Boys (based on The Brothers Karamazov) in Russian, and British performer Andrew Dawson in Space Panorama; cabaret performers Sanda Weigl and The Takeishis in Gypsy in a Tree, and jazz performer Kate Davis; and dance performances from Les Slovaks Dance Collective, Rubberbandance Group and the John Jasperse Company.  The festival, a collaboration of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and New York's Baryshnikov Arts Center, happens Oct. 13-17 at the bay-side Ringling complex in Sarasota.  Package tickets are on sale now, with tickets to individual events going on sale May 15.  Call 941-360-7399 or visit the festival web site for more information.

***

Robert Heuer, the General Director of the Florida Grand Opera, was honored last month with a spectacular concert celebrating his 25 years of leading the company.  Now comes word that next month, Heuer will collect another honor for his South Florida arts leadership.

Heuer has just been chosen the 2010 recipient of the George Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts in recognition of his work with Florida Grand Opera and the key role he played in getting Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts built. The Abbott, which recognizes achievement in any facet of the arts, is the major award presented at the annual Carbonell Awards (which, of course, honor the best work in South Florida theater during the previous year).

This year's ceremony takes place at 7:30 p.m. April 12 in the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale.  Tickets are $25.  Call the Broward Center box office at 954-462-0222 or visit the center's web site for more information.

***

And speaking of Carbonell winners, Miami's own Reggie Whitehead has been touring in a production of Porgy and Bess, winning raves for his performance as the charismatic Sportin' Life -- check out a sample on You Tube.  The tour of this George Gershwin-Ira Gershwin-DuBose Heyward masterpiece brings Whitehead back home, quite briefly, for a performance at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium, 2901 W. Flagler St., Miami.

Orchestra Miami performs the glorious score, and the cast features soprano Kishna Davis as Bess, bass-baritone Patrick Blackwell as Porgy.  Charles Randolph-Wright staged the production.

Tickets cost $25 to $65.  For information, call 305-547-5414 or get tickets via the Orchestra Miami site or via Ticketmaster.  And a special note, if you happen to be older than 12 but younger than 23:  Culture Shock Miami is offering tickets to Porgy and Bess for just $5 each.