Drama Queen

Take up the challenge

The Miami-based John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has done all kinds of good both at home and around the nation.  The foundation has awarded millions in grant money to support innovative journalism and community programs -- and, here in South Florida, to support arts groups, institutions and individuals with creative ideas that can benefit those who live here.

Precious little of the grant money in the first two years of the Knight Arts Challenge, however, has gone to funding theater-related programs.  Teatro Avante was among the 2009 winners, getting a grant to add a Latin American theater conference to the 25th annual International Hispanic Theatre Festival coming up in July.  And other than a 2008 grant to Miami Light Project for its annual Here & Now Festival, that's about it, theater-wise.

So if you work in theater and have a great idea, now would be the time to put a proposal  together and submit it. The 2010 Knight Arts Challenge has a March 15 deadline, and on March 9, there's an information session at the LIttle Haiti Cultural Complex, 260 NE 59th Terrace, Miami.

As the Challenge promotional materials note, the requirements are simple: 1. Your idea has to be about the arts; 2.  The project has to take place in or benefit South Florida; 3.  You have to raise matching funds.

How about it, theater folks?  For more info, visit the Knight Arts Challenge web site.

Carbonell nominations revealed

This morning brought news of the nominations for the 34th annual Carbonell Awards, South Florida's version of the Tonys or the Joseph Jefferson Awards or the Helen Hayes Awards or however you want to look at them -- though I think by now the Carbonells are as well-known nationally.  I say "news" because I'm not on the nominating/judging panel, so the long list of names was just as much of a surprise to me as to anyone who wasn't in the secret room last night where the tough decisions got made.

For a full list of those honored with nominations, check out my online story.

I'm posting a photo of Paul Tei and Gregg Weiner (and Amy Elane Anderson) in GableStage's Speed-the-Plow, because both guys have reason to smile today. Tei got nominated as best director for Broadsword at his own company, Mad Cat, and for his leading performance in Speed-the-Plow.  Weiner did even better: a best actor nod for Dumb Show at Promethean, two best supporting nominations for A Doll's Houseat Palm Beach Dramaworks and Farragut Northat GableStage, and a chance to share in a best ensemble win for Farragut North or Broadsword.  Wonder if Weiner, who played the devil in Broadsword, really does have magical powers....Just kidding, but I'm thinking he'll be buying a lot of drinks for his friends come April 12, which is when the winners will be revealed.

All in all, it's a pretty solid list of nominations, though I would have paid more attention to Rock 'n' Roll and Dead Man's Cell Phone at Mosaic, and might have pushed for The Glass Menagerie or Mauritiusat New Theatre. 

Amy London will again direct the Carbonell Awards show, which happens at 7:30 p.m. April 12 in the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center.  Tickets go on sale Friday and cost $25 ($20 each for groups of 10 or more).  Check it out (on Friday) at the Broward Center's site. 

Crazy Christmas fare, an honor and the Humana Fest lineup

If you're fond of gents in dresses and unorthodox takes on Christmas classics, Cinema Paradiso has a live pre-holiday treat for you.

New Orleans-based performers Varla Jean Merman (a.k.a. Jeffery T. Roberson), Yvette Hargis and Ricky Graham are doing a wee tour of Scrooge in Rouge: A British Music Hall Christmas Carol, and they're bringing it to Cinema Paradiso Nov. 27-29.  The three tackle more than 20 characters and provide a Christmas Carol unlike any that have come before it.

Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday-Sunday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday at Cinema Paradiso, 503 SE Sixth St., Fort Lauderdale.  Tickets are $45 ($30 for Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival members).  Visit the FLIFF web site for info.

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Congrats to Mario Ernesto Sánchez and the International Hispanic Theatre Festival (IHTF), which was honored Oct. 30 with the FIT de Cádiz-Atahualpa del Cioppo Award.  The award recognizes the festival, which will turn 25 in July, for its championing of "the values of Ibero-American theater."

Sánchez, founder of Miami's Teatro Avante and the IHTF's longtime artistic director, picked up and award in Cadiz and remarked, "Despite the difficult time the world's economy is going through, all our sponsors, volunteers, artists, technicians, researchers, academics, programmers and audiences enable us to keep our commitment to the survival, continuity and development of our Hispanic cultural heritage, which contributes so much to everyone's quality of life."

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The playwrights and works that will be showcased at the 34th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays -- the country's best-known new play fest -- have just been announced. 

No South Florida playwrights made this year's cut, but Deborah Zoe Laufer, whose plays End Days, The Last Schwartz and The Gulf of Westchesterall premiered at Manalapan's Florida Stage, got one of the slots with her new play Sirens(which was also to have been featured at Florida Stage this season, 'til it got pulled for further "rewrites").  It's described in the Humana Fest materials this way:  "Enchanting music, memories of passionate youth and Facebook Scrabble conspire against drifting empty-nesters Sam and Rose in this captivating comedy.  Will a 25th anniversary cruise to the magical and mythical Greek Isles rekindle their relationship?  Rose hopes so, but Sam has other ideas."

Also on the bill at this year's festival Feb. 21-March 28, 2010, are Fissures (lost and found) by Steve Epp, Cory Hinkle, Dominic Orlando, Dominique Serrand, Deborah Stein and Victoria Stewart; Ground by Lisa Dillman; Phoenix by Scott Organ; The Method Gun by Kirk Lynn and the Rude Mechs; The Cherry Sisters Revisited by Dan O'Brien (music by Michael Friedman); and Heist! by Sean Daniels and Deborah Stein.

The 34th Humana Festival takes place at Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky, with single ticket prices ranging from $30 to $56.  Special ticket packages for theater professionals, new play lovers, educators and students are available starting Friday.  For information, call 1-800-428-5849 or visit the Actors' Theatre web site.

(Humana Festival poster by Richard Wilkinson)

Another way to honor South Florida theater

The annual Carbonell Awards, coveted and often controversial, have honored South Florida's theater artists for more than three decades.  But tonight during the closing party of the South Florida Theatre Festival, the much younger Silver Palm Awards will recognize a variety of outstanding work done in the region between Sept. 1, 2008, and Aug. 31, 2009.

Receiving Silver Palms for performance are Angie Radosh(pictured, as Amanda Wingfield, with Cliff Burgess as Tom), for Speaking Elephantat the Women's Theatre Project and The Glass Menagerie at New Theatre; Israel Garcia, for Mauritius and The Taming of the Shrew, both at New Theatre; Barbara Bradshaw, for The Chairsat Palm Beach Dramaworks and Dead Man's Cell Phoneat Mosaic Theatre; John Archie, forRadio Golf at Mosaic and The Whipping Manat the Caldwell Theatre Company; Gregg Weiner, for Speed-the-Plowat GableStage, The Seafarer at Mosaic and Dumb Showat The Promethean Theatre Company.

Matthew William Chizever wins the Silver Palm as outstanding new talent for his work in Cannibal the Musical at Promethean and La Cage aux Folles at Broward Stage Door Theatre.  Barbara Stein is being honored for her producing work on 1776 and Les Miserables at Actors' Playhouse.  Clive Cholerton gets a Silver Palm for his direction of Vices: A Love Story and The Whipping Man at the Caldwell; Margaret Ledford for Cannibal the Musical, Dumb Show and The Banality of Love at Promethean; and Bill Castellino for Cagney and Some Kind of Wonderful at Florida Stage.  Castellino's collaborator, Christopher McGovern, is being honored for his outstanding musical direction of both shows.

The Silver Palms are also honoring GableStage artistic director Joseph Adler for his support of the theater community and his consistently outstanding work; stage manager Lara Kinzeland her crew for their work on Palm Beach Dramaworks' Private Lives; and both Becon Television and Florida Media News for their support of theater in the region.

Also at tonight's bash, Barry Steinman and Antonio Amadeo will receive the Theatre League's annual Remy Awards for their service to the league.

League members get in free, but anyone is welcome to attend the party at Revolution Live, 200 W. Broward Blvd., Fort Lauderdale.  Admission is $20, and the fun begins at 7:30 p.m.  E-mail andie@southfloridatheatre.com to make a reservation.

Alex Weisman wins a Jeff

Alex Weisman is 22, finishing up his senior year in the theater program at Northwestern University outside Chicago. When he got cast in Alan Bennett's The History Boysat the TimeLine Theatre Company, he juggled performing with classwork -- for a much-extended, 25-week run, as it turns out.

On Monday, the multitasking paid off in an unexpected way for the actor who intends to stay in Chicago after he graduates.  He received the prestigious Joseph Jefferson Equity Award as best actor in a supporting role/play  for his performance as Posner. TimeLine's History Boyswon five Jeffs, more than any other production in theater-rich Chicago.

Weisman's mom Betsy, who works as accounting manager of the Broward Center's Broward Performing Arts foundation and who serves as a Carbonell Awards panelist here in South Florida, was in the audience with hubby David on Monday. On Wednesday, she was still bubbling and giddy as she noted that Alex will soon play the Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol at Chicago's famed Goodman Theatre.  Since  graduating from the University School at Nova Southeastern University, she says, her son has been in 20 shows -- and counting.

Congrats!

(Photo of Donald Brearley as Hector and Alex Weisman as Posner by Lara Goetsch.)

McCraney wins again

Tarell Alvin McCraney, the Miamian whose young play-writing career has been widely celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic, has just become one of three inaugural recipients of the Steinberg Playwright Awards.  The international writer in residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company, he's being honored as a playwright whose works show great promise, something also recognized by the New York Times when it named McCraney winner of its first Outstanding Playwright Award last spring.

The Steinberg Award, which also goes to playwrights David Adjmi and Bruce Norris, bestows total cash prizes of $100,000.  McCraney and Adjmi will receive $25,000 each, with the rest going to Norris.  The awards to early-career playwrights will alternate every year with the $250,000 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, which last year went to Angels in Americaauthor Tony Kushner, who announced this years winners today.

McCraney and his fellow winners will receive their prizes and the "Mimi," a statue designed by Tony-nominated set designer David Rockwell, on Oct. 26 at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre.  The ceremony comes during the Oct. 21-Dec. 13 run of McCraney's Brother/Sister Plays -- In the Red and Brown Water, The Brothers Size and Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet -- at New York's Public Theater.

Congrats -- again -- to a writer whose increasingly famous work has yet to be seen in his hometown.

McCraney's still soaring

Tarell Alvin McCraney, whose grittily poetic plays are being produced on both sides of the Atlantic (though still not in his hometown of Miami), will receive yet another honor next week, adding to the many he has received since graduating from the Yale School of Drama in 2007.

On Wednesday, May 27, McCraney will receive the first New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award in a ceremony at the newspaper's Manhattan headquarters.  Honoring an American playwright who has made a recent professional debut in New York (McCraney was chosen for The Brothers Size at the Public Theater), the award was determined by a committee of three Times arts editors, Times contributor Sylviane Gold and four impressive playwrights: Edward Albee, Richard Greenberg, James Lapine and brand-new Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage.

It has been a good spring for the 28-year-old McCraney.  He's back from his part-time job as RSC/Warwick International Playwright in Residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company, was just profiled as part of the Advocate's Forty Under 40 rising stars in various fields, and his trilogy of "Brother/Sister" plays is running at the Tony Award-winning McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J., through June 21.

Now, if he could just catch a break in Miami.

Raúl Esparza ties a Tony record

I'm in New York this week, seeing seven of the shows vying for various Tony Awards; taking the train out to the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J., to see Miami playwright Tarell McCraney's "Brother/Sister Plays" trilogy; doing various interviews (including chats with former South Floridian Marc Kudisch, Tony nominee for 9 to 5: The Musical, and Colombian hottie Sofia Vergara, soon to open in Miami in Chicago).  I'm alsoceleb-spotting:  In addition to the famous folks I'm watching onstage (Marcia Gay Harden, James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels and Hope Davis, all Tony nominees for their work in Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage; a radiant if dance-challenged Allison Janney, another Tony contender, in 9 to 5), I saw former Alias star and Broadway veteran Victor Garber when I had dinner at Bond 45 last night.

I also caught up with Raúl Esparza, the former Miamian who has become a Broadway star and frequent Tony nominee.  He's in contention again this year, this time for the leading actor in a play Tony for his searing performance in the now-closed revival of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow.  And with that nomination, Esparzaties a record held by Boyd Gaines:  The two are the only actors to be nominated in every Tony category for which a male actor is eligible.  But Esparza did it faster.

Gaines, who has won four Tonys and was nominated for a fifth, won his first in 1989 for his featured performance in the play The Heidi Chronicles.  He won again in 1994, for his leading work in the revival of the musical She Loves Me; again in 2000, for his featured performance in the musical Contact; was nominated as lead actor in a play in 2007 for Journey's End; and won again in 2008 for his featured performance in the revival of the musical Gypsy.

Esparza has yet to take home a Tony, though it seems inevitable that, sooner or later, he will. He tied Gaines' record in just six rounds of Tony nominations:  in 2004, as featured actor in a musical for Taboo; in 2007, as leading actor in a musical for Company; in 2008, as featured actor in a play for The Homecoming; and this year as leading actor in a play for Speed-the-Plow, which got loads of press for Jeremy Piven's controversial early exit from the show (he said his docs said the mercury level in his blood was dangerously high).

Esparza and costar Elisabeth Moss (of TV's Mad Men) finished out the limited run, first opposite Norbert Leo Butz, then with Mamet veteran William H. Macy in Piven's role.  But Esparza got the stellar reviews and yet another Tony nomination.  He's not expecting to win -- he thinks the voters will go for Geoffrey Rush in Exit the King -- though of course he'd love to hear his name called when the winner is announced at Radio City Music Hall June 7.  He's already in rehearsals for his next show, the production of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at Central Park 's Delacorte Theater June 10-July 12 (he'll play Orsino to Anne Hathaway's Viola).

But no matter how it goes at this year's Tony ceremony, the versatile Esparza has every reason to savor his record-tying nomination.

Jerry Herman wins another Tony

Nominations for the 63rd annual Tony Awards will be announced bright and early Tuesday morning by Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon and In the Heights creator Lin-Manuel Miranda.  You can bet that the two former Tony winners (she got it for Rabbit Hole, he for Heights, which will hit South Florida next season) will look impossibly perky that ungodly hour when most normal theater folk are still fast asleep.

Jumping the gun in several non-competitive categories, the Tony folks on Monday announced the winners of four special awards.  The prestigious 2009 Tony for Lifetime Achievement goes to the University of Miami's own Jerry Herman, whose string of Broadway hits as a composer-lyricist includes Hello, Dolly! and Mame and La Cage aux Folles.  Herman, for whom UM's Ring Theatre is now named, is a member of the Theatre Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and he has already collected Tonys for Dolly! and La Cage. But this one has to be special.

Each year, the American Theatre Critics' Association offers the Tony committee a recommendation for the Regional Theatre Tony Award.  This year's winner is the Signature Theatre of Arlington, Va.  Under the artistic leadership of Eric Schaeffer, the 20-year-old company has turned its suburban Washington D.C. home into a place where new musicals are developed and where established musicals are freshly interpreted -- the work of Stephen Sondheim in particular. 

Also being honored at this year's Tonys is actress Phyllis Newman, who receives the new Isabelle Stevenson Award for her work raising more than $3.5 million for the Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative of the Actor's Fund of America.  And press agent Shirley Herz, a theater publicist for more than half a century, receives the Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre.

The Tonys will be broadcast from Radio City Music Hall on CBS-TV from 8 to 11 p.m. June 7.  For more information on the awards and nominations, visit the Tony Awards web site.

Carbonell Awards become a "theater prom"

The 33rd annual Carbonell Awards were handed out Monday night in a moving, entertaining, raucous and altogether memorable ceremony in the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.  Countless talented South Florida theater folks were involved, but the mind and vision that shaped this year's show belong to Executive Producer/Director Amy London, who did a spectacular job.  (That's Amy at left with playwright/actor/Carbonell program designer Michael McKeever.)

London's Carbonells weren't as flashy as those in recent years.  No orchestra, no Vegas/cruise ship production numbers, no out-of-town "celebs" without connections to (or knowledge of) South Florida theater.  Instead, the show was by, of and for the region's theater artists.  And it was also both more meaningful and more memorable.

Thanks to the magic of Power Point, when nominees in each category were announced, a production photo or picture of the artist at work reminded everyone of the richness of the talent that graced South Florida Stages in 2008.  Instead of random Broadway musical numbers, London's show featured a number from each of the productions vying for the best musical Carbonell.  After a terrifically witty opening number by Laura Hodos and Maribeth Graham (Carbonell-skewering lyrics set to the tune of Stephen Sondheim's Getting Married Today from Company) and the presentation of four design awards, the entire cast of GableStage's Adding Machine (except for Ken Clement, who didn't sing in the show) emerged to demonstrate why London's musical-highlighting notion was such a fine idea.

Oscar Cheda, Jim Ballard, Stacy Schwartz, Graham -- all of whom won Carbonells for their work in the show -- and the stellar "chorus" (Irene Adjan, Erik Fabregat, Lisa Manuli and Barry Tarallo) sang the heck out of one of the musical's devilishly complex numbers, as their Carbonell-winning musical director Erik Alsford accompanied them on the piano.  Later, director Joseph Adler and the show itself won Carbonells.  That musical moment was a vivid demonstration of how artistic risk can bring rewards and of how deep South Florida's talent pool has become.

  Because of the dominance of Adding Machine, GableStage had a great night. So did Mosaic Theatre, the company that American Heritage School grad Richard Jay Simon started at his Plantation alma mater and built, with amazing speed, into one of the region's powerhouse companies.  Mosaic's production of Conor McPherson's The Seafarer brought it multiple Carbonells, including best production of a play and best director for Simon.  Gregg Weiner (at right in photo with Seafarer cast mate and fellow nominee John Felix) was named best actor.  Dennis Creaghan, who beat out Felix for best supporting actor, acknowledged his cast mate by musing that maybe there should have been a recount, Felix hollered good-naturedly from the audience, "I want one."

Among the evening's other high points:  When Actors' Playhouse artistic director David Arisco received the George Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, he actually spoke about the honor's legendary Broadway namesake, recalling how much it had meant to have Abbott in the audience at Actors' when he staged Damn Yankees (a show Abbott co-authored and directed on Broadway in the year Arisco was born).

Among low points:  award recipients who took advantage of London's decision not to put a time limit acceptance speeches by gushing and babbling endlessly; "artists" who seem unable to speak into a microphone without dropping f-bombs; one obviously alcohol-powered actor-director who kept yelling another director's name from the audience.  The Carbonells may have turned into a happy "theater prom" this year, but they're a celebration of a professional community, not a time-trip back to high school.

The theater community will, inevitably, do plenty of Tuesday-morning quarterbacking about who did/didn't win Carbonells.  But the show itself?  London did herself and South Florida theater proud.