Drama Queen

Family-friendly theater in the spotlight

This weekend brings the 16th annual National Children's Theatre Festival at Actors' Playhouse in Coral Gables, an Area Stage/Theater Conservatory production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (also in the Gables), and the ontinuation of the lavishly designed original play The Red Thread at the PlayGround Theatre in Miami Shores.

The weekend celebration at Actors' Playhouse, earns the "national" part of its title from the competition for its featured musical.  This year's winner is Emperor's New Clothes, adapted by Lani Brockman, with music and lyrics by Susan Bardsley.  The free show and activities go on at the Miracle Theatre, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables, during the festival both Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.  The Musical Miracles will also perform, and there will be lots of creative activity stations for kids.  Call 305-444-9293 or visit the Actors' Playhouse web site for more info.

At Area Stage, Broadway producer Arthur Whitelaw -- the man behind the original production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown -- caught Friday's opening performance of the show, which will run through May 8.  Artistic director John Rodaz directs a cast of conservatory students in the musical about Charlie, Lucy, Snoopy and the gang.  Performances are 7 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday at Area, 1560 S. Dixie Hwy.  Tickets are $20 ($10 for students).  Call 305-666-2078 or visit Area Stage's web site for more info.

Continuing through May 27 is the PlayGround Theatre's visually stunning production of The Red Thread, a play-with-music by artistic director Stephanie Ansin and Fernando Calzadilla. Based on Chinese folk tales and myths, the piece focuses on the quest of the brave youngest daughter of a weaver after she sets out to retrieve his masterwork. Public performances are at 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, with many 10 a.m. weekday performances for school groups.  Tickets are $20.

The PlayGround Theatre is located at 9806 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores.  For info, call 305-751-9550 or visit the company's web site.    

 

Jai Rodriguez to headline Summer Shorts

Miami's City Theatre celebrated its 15th anniversary last summer with the world premiere of the full-length family-friendly musical Camp Kappawannaby Lisa Loeb.  So how to top that for the Sweet Sixteen summer of 2011?  Bring in Jai Rodriguez, actor and TV personality, to lend some extra buzz to the Summer Shorts acting company.

Rodriguez, one of the stars of Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (he also scored Broadway replacement gigs in Rent and The Producers), will headline this summer's company.  His fellow actors, according to festival artistic director John Manzelli, are Gregg Weiner, Finnerty Steeves, Ceci Fernandez and Steve Trovillion, a.k.a. "Mr. Summer Shorts." The summer's directors will be Manzelli, Trovillion, Barry Steinman, Gail Garrisan and Margaret Ledford.

Manzelli adds that the festival, which will be in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts June 3-26 (and at the Broward Center June 30-July 3), will include three late-night performances of Rodriguez' solo show Dirty Little Secrets, presented in partnership with Out in the Tropics.  The regular Summer Shorts lineup will feature nine pieces.

As a fund-raising kickoff, Rodriguez is coming to Miami Feb. 10 for a reception and sneak preview of the summer fare.  Manzelli says the actor will sing, others will read from a few plays that will be done at the festival, and there will be drinks and food.

The fund-raising event is at 6 p.m. Feb. 10  on the 30th floor of Sabadell United Bank, 1111 Brickell Ave., Miami.  Admission is $60 per person.  RSVP by Feb. 1 to City Theatre executive director Barry Steinman by calling 305-755-9401, ext. 15, or emailing barry@citytheatre.com.

Mad Cat headed for South Beach comedy fest in Tei play

Miami's Mad Cat Theatre Company, which revived its show Shepherd's Pie at last year's South Beach Comedy Festival, is returning to the 2011 festival with a new play by company founder Paul Tei. Tei, winner of multiple Carbonell Awards and an actor with recurring roles on two TV series (USA's Burn Notice and Disney's Zeke & Luther), will draw on two other talents for Mad Cat's comedy fest show, writing and directing The Preservation Society.

The comedy focuses on Polly Chekhov, a California comedy writer who comes home to Hollywood, Fla., for her grandma's wake.  Strange distractions, however, keep her from making progress on a eulogy.

In the cast are Melissa Almaguer, Sofia Citarella, Tiffany Hanan Madera, Betsy Graver, Troy Davidson, Margaret Prusner, Ricky Waugh and Tei's parents, Anne and Pio.

The Preservation Society will get two performances, at 7 and 9:30 p.m. March 4 at Backstage at the Fillmore, 1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach.  Tickets are $31 ($67 for VIP tickets).  For info, visit the Mad Cat or South Beach Comedy Festival web sites.

Tony winners coming

Two Tony Award-winning actresses are headed to South Florida next month, one for a play festival, the other to perform her solo show and conduct a master class.

Arriving first is Frances Sternhagen, who returns to Florida Stage, where she starred in The Exact Center of the Universe in 2001.  Sternhagen's will be the marquee name during the company's fifth annual 1st Stage New Works Festival Feb. 3-6.  She'll participate in a reading of Israel Horovitz's new play Beverley(about a love triangle involving folks over 70) at 8 p.m. Feb. 5, and she'll also be interviewed about her career by artistic director Louis Tyrrell at 7 p.m. Feb. 4.

Tickets to the festival range from $25 for a day pass to $100 for all festival events, which includes seven play readings, two panels, the Sternhagen interview and a party.  Florida Stage is in the Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach.  For info, call 1-800-514-3837 or visit the theater's web site.

Also headed to South Florida is Tony winner Donna McKechnie, the dynamic actress and dancer who originated the star part of Cassie in A Chorus Line.  McKechnie will do three performances of her solo show, My Musical Comedy Life, at the PlayGround Theatre Feb. 12-13.  She'll also conduct a master class for students 15 and older at the theater from 4 to 7 p.m. Feb. 7.  Participation is limited, and there's a $35 fee.  McKechnie's director, part-time South Florida resident Richard Jay-Alexander, will also offer a pair of student workshops on Feb. 19 -- one from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. for students 7-13, the other from 2 to 5 p.m. for students 14-17.  The fee for those sessions is $30.

McKechnie will perform her show at 8 p.m. Feb. 12, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Feb. 13 at the PlayGround, 9806 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores.  Tickets are $50 and $100 for opening night (the higher price is for premium seating and an after party), $30 for the matinee, $45 for the Sunday night show.  For information, call 305-751-9550 or visit the PlayGround web site or Ticketmaster.

Florida Stage unveils 1st Stage lineup

For its fifth annual 1st Stage New Works Festival, Florida Stage is shifting its staged reading extravaganza to a long weekend at its new home in West Palm Beach's Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.

Running Feb. 4-6, with a kickoff reception Feb. 3, this year's festival will feature readings of seven new plays -- some of which, as in the past, will get future full productions.

On this year's bill are Israel Horovitz's Beverley, a comic love triangle involving a woman and two men in their 70s; Deborah Zoe Laufer's Leveling Up, a play about video game addicts who just might have a future launching missiles; Kew Henry's Poet, about two muses assigned to Edgar Allan Poe; Carter W. Lewis' The Americans Across the Street, featuring a world-weary man whose greatest delight is ranting at his neighbors; Andrew Rosendorf's Brilliant Corners, about a divorced jazz lover whose family wants money; Christopher Demos-Brown's Captiva, a dark comedy about a family reunion upended by a hurricane; and John Herrera's Tiempo de amor, a play about a young woman torn between an older Spaniard and her controlling mother in 1920s Havana and Tampa.

In addition to the readings and opening party, a keynote address (past speakers include Marsha Norman, John Guare and Horovitz) will be part of the new play celebration.

For information, call Florida Stage's box office at 1-800-514-3837 or visit the theater's web site.

Humana Fest taps Ramirez

Marco Ramirez, the South Florida playwright who's currently a writer on the FX television series Sons of Anarchy, is no stranger to the Humana Festival of New American Plays, that annual spring gathering at Actors Theatre of Louisville (ATL) that remains one of the top new play showcases in American theater.  He has had two short plays -- I Am Not Batman and 3:59 a.m.: a drag race for two actors -- produced during past festivals, and both won him the prestigious  Heideman Award.

ATL has just unveiled the lineup for its 35th annual Humana Fest, which runs Feb. 27-April 17, and Ramirez is part of it.  Along with playwrights Dan Dietz, Jennifer Haley, Allison Moore and A. Rey Patamat, he has been commissioned to write a piece titled The End for ATL's 22-actor apprentice company.  Thematically, the piece will explore the apocalypse and what might come after.

Also part of the 2011 Humana Fest are six full-length world premiere plays: Adam Rapp's The Edge of Our Bodies (about a 16-year-old on the way to New York to share big news with her boyfriend), Peter Sinnn Nachtrieb's BOB (about the life journey of a kid born in a White Castle bathroom), Anne Washburn's A Devil at Noon (a "trippy" play about living in the world of the imagination), Jordan Harrison's Maple and Vine  (about two people who give themselves over to 1950s reenactors), Molly Smith Metzler's Elemeno Pea (about sisters whose lives have sharply diverged) and Patamat's Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them (about an isolated brother and sister).  A program of 10-minute plays will include Marc Bamuthi Joseph's Chicago, Sudan.

At special getaway weekends for locals, college students and theater professionals, you can see all the plays in just three days (with the exception of the 10-minute program, which is presented April 2-3 only).   Single tickets start at $23, and they go on sale Friday.  For info, visit the ATL web site.

 

 

'Tis the season

Though the arts have been a year-round thing in Florida for a long, long time -- don't call us snowbirds -- it's easy to tell that the Season (with a capital "S") has begun once the calendar has flipped from September to October.  I know this because (in addition to working more than a month without an entire day off) I had an extraordinary three days last week, days and evenings full of moving arts experiences that made me love my job even more. If that's possible.

First I zipped across Alligator Alley to Sarasota to take in several performances at the second Ringling International Arts Festival.  If you've not been to the Ringling Museum of Art (and if not, whynot?), you've missed a Florida treasure on 66 acres by Sarasota Bay.  In addition to the museum, with its collection of rare Old Master paintings (plus modern and contemporary art), you'll find Ca d'Zan (the former home of circus magnate John Ringling and his wife Mable), the Circus Museum, the historic Asolo Theater (a gorgeous restored 18th century Italian theater inside the museum's Visitors' Center) and the FSU Center for the Performing Arts (home to the Asolo Repertory Theatre, where the new musical Bonnie & Clyde  will kick off the season Nov. 16-Dec. 19).

On the festival's kickoff Night of Premieres -- violinist Tim Fain playing a new piece by Philip Glass, the Czech Forman Brothers doing a snazzy operatic puppet show, the debut of Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz's newest play Hurricane, and the night's hottest ticket, solo pieces danced by Mikhail Baryshnikov and David Neumann -- I chose the Cruz's Hurricane, a still-evolving piece about a Caribbean family in crisis after a storm.  It is always a thrill to be part of a first audience, even more so if the man responsible for it all happens to be a Miamian and the first Latino winner of the drama Pulitzer.  And if you can talk to him before and after, which is one of the bonuses of hanging out at a festival.

The next afternoon, I saw Baryshnikov (whose Manhattan-based Baryshnikov Arts Center copresents the festival with the Ringling) and Neumann (a witty, intriguing dancer-choreographer) dance their solos program.  I had seen the younger Baryshnikov (that's him in the photo) dance at Jackie Gleason Theater almost 30 years ago, when his then-girlfriend Jessica Lange was pregnant with their daughter Aleksandra (I remember because Lange and I both visited the ladies' room at intermission).  But to see one of the world's great dancers, now 62, perform again was so moving that I nearly got teary -- particularly as he danced the program's final solo, Benjamin Millepied's Years Later.  Dancing on a bare stage as black-and-white film of a 16-year-old, Baryshnikov dazzled behind him, the mature dancer still thrilled.  He remains a superb actor-dancer capable of communicating emotion -- resignation, acceptance, inspiration -- with the smallest movements and experience-honed technique.   And (thanks to that special festival mixing-and-mingling thing) Baryshnikov and I were part of the same audience for the Forman Brothers' Opera Baroque.

On Friday, it was back across Alligator Alley and down to Miami to catch playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney's birthday gift to his high school alma mater, the New World School of the Arts.  About to turn 30 (which he did last Sunday), McCraney decided to throw a fundraiser to help graduating seniors travel to the auditions required for college and acting-program admissions.  The result was both a financial success (the event raised $5,380) and one of the most dramatically potent play readings I've ever attended.

Reading scenes from all three of his breakthrough Brother/Sister Plays -- In the Red and Brown Water, The Brothers Size and Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet-- McCraney and actors Glenn Davis (whose theater credits include productions at Canada's Stratford Festival, Chicago's Steppenwolf and Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum) and Sterling Brown (a theater, movie and TV veteran currently playing Dr. Roland Burton on the series Army Wives) brought the excerpts to vivid life.  McCraney, a fine actor (though he's way too busy as a playwright to perform any more), was so intense and tormented during a Brothers Size speech that he brought the audience -- and himself -- to tears.  The taste of his talent made his listeners impatient for next summer, when GableStage will present the South Florida debut of The Brothers Size, with McCraney directing.

 The season marches on with opening after opening: Dreamgirls tonight at the Adrienne Arsht Center, A Behanding in Spokane Saturday at GableStage, the world premiere of Cane at Florida Stage Oct. 29, a rare production of No Exit by The Naked Stage, also Oct. 29.  And after last week's extraordinary collection of performances, I can't wait.

 

24-Hour Project delivers again

The fourth edition of Naked Stage's 24-Hour Theatre Project is history, having played to a sizable audience of people who were appreciative, giddy and/or exhausted on Monday at the home of Boca Raton's Caldwell Theatre Company.

Katherine Amadeo, now Naked Stage's artistic director (seen in this photo from the first 24-Hour event with company co-founders Antonio Amadeo, left, and John Manzelli), ran the complex creative benefit with finesse.  Nobody got hurt, though actor Patti Gardner almost did when a park bench threatened to roll out from under her.  The eight short written-overnight plays were decent to delicious, their sleepless authors in varying states of near collapse.  As always, the quality of the work that South Florida's acting and directing talent pulled off in a mere 12 hours felt close to miraculous.

My favorites were the three funniest plays. Tony Finstrom's program-launching Henry VIII's Mail Order Bride featured Stephen G. Anthony as a disabled former TV star reading opposite two young actresses (the equally hilarious Lindsey Forgey and Julie Kleiner) auditioning for a play about Henry and fourth wife Anne of Cleves.  With great work from Amy McKenna as a lust-filled playwright-director and a cheating (but funny) cameo from director Avi Hoffman as her kvetching elderly hubby, Finstrom's bubbly play got the evening off to a wacky start.

The second half of the program got off to a similarly buoyant start with Andrew Rosendorf's Dinner With Dracula, in which the crooning Count (Christopher A. Kent) lures a Facebook innocent (Andrea Conte) to his castle for a "bite," much to the dismay of his smitten housekeeper (Laura Hodos).  "Dinner" turns out to be a very much alive out-of-work actress, Lela Elam, who offers a wildly funny, profane and truth-filled rant about what it's like to be...Lela Elam.  Under Barbara Bradshaw's direction, Dinner was a stitch.

Unsurprisingly, the most artfully hilarious piece came from one of the region's most successful playwrights, Michael McKeever.  OMG...ROTFLMAO featured an ebullient Karen Stephens speaking that IM shorthand to share news of her engagement with her uncomprehending (and deadpan funny) best pal (Nancy Barnett); her friend's almost-grown kids  (Adam Simpson and Carrie Santana) also figured into the Internet shenanigans.  McKeever, whose sizable collection of funny short plays has helped raised start-up money for the new Zoetic Stage (he's one of its founders), is a real master of the form, here layering abundant laughs atop a cautionary tale. Director Adalberto Acevedo and a cast that nailed the prolific playwright's latest took a happy audience to a place just shy of ROTFLMAO.

The other plays of 24 -- Andie Arthur's A Rebel's Guide to (Utter) Compliance, David Michael Sirois' Amputease, Lucas Leyva's Fardel's Bear, Christopher Demos-Brown's A Storybook Funeral and Juan C. Sanchez's Armed & Hammered -- risked more stylistically and thematically but didn't quite fly.  Even so, the kind of pressure-cooker creativity that Naked Stage's most theatrical of benefits brings out remains an impressive delight. Can't wait for next time.

24-Hour Theatre is cooking

Playwrights, directors, actors and titles got matched last night when The Naked Stage's annual 24-Hour Theatre Project kicked off the frenzied process for its annual fund raiser, this year at the home of the Caldwell Theatre Company in Boca Raton.

If you go to tonight's one-and-only performance of eight brand-new short plays -- and you should, because 24-Hour is one of the most enjoyable and impressive examples of just how much talent calls South Florida home -- here's what (and whom) you'll see.

Andie Arthur's play A Rebel's Guide to (Utter) Compliance, directed by Hugh Murphy, features Andy Quiroga, Patti Gardner, Lisa Manuli and David Dearstyne.  OMG...ROTFLMAO by Michael McKeever, directed by Adalberto Acevedo, features Adam Simpson, Carrie Santanna, Karen Stephens and Nancy Barnett.

David Sirois' play Amputease, directed by Des Gallant, features Amy Miller Brennan, Shane Tanner, Mark Della Ventura and Sally Bondi.  Christopher Demos-Brown's play A Storybook Funeral, directed by Michael Leeds, features Tracey Barrow-Schoenblatt, Terry Hardcastle, Lorenzo Gutierrez and Matthew William Chizever.

Amy London is directing Juan C. Sanchez's Armed & Hammered, which features Dave Corey, Jeffrey Bruce, Jackie Rivera and Clive Cholerton.  In Lucas Leyva's Fardle's Bear, directed by Shari Upbin, are Ken Clement, Elizabeth Dimon, Irene Adjan and Ryan Didato.

Andrew Rosendorf's Dinner With Dracula, directed by Barbara Bradshaw, features Lela Elam, Christopher A. Kent, Laura Hodos and Andrea Conte.  And Tony Finstrom's Henry VIII's Mail Order Bride, directed by Avi Hoffman, features Julie Kleiner, Lindsey Forgey, Stephen G. Anthony and Amy McKenna.

The performance begins tonight at 8 at the Caldwell, 7901 N. Federal Hwy., Boca Raton.  VIP tickets are $50, with just plain folks tickets priced at $25.  The proceeds will help fund Naked Stage's upcoming production of No Exit Oct. 29-Nov. 1 at its home Pelican Theatre on the Barry University campus, 11300 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores.  For tickets, call 1-866-811-4111 or visit the Naked Stage web site.

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.