Drama Queen

Colin McPhillamy shares an adventure

That Colin McPhillamy is an uncommonly fine actor comes as no news to anyone who has seen him in Palm Beach Dramaworks' current show, Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King.  Or to those who saw him at Dramaworks in Copenhagen or The Pitmen Painters, or in several plays at the late, lamented Florida Stage and Promethean Theatre.

The London-born, Royal Central School-trained actor is equally adept at drama and comedy (both skills on display in his current performance), and he has also been a director, teacher, producer, playwright and short story writer.

As it happens, McPhillamy knows his way around a memoir, too.  His new book, An Actor Walks Into China, details his adventures as he struggled to produce Western theater in China and Chinese theater in London.  Frustration, humor, keen observation and a sense of the dramatic (naturally) are all part of McPhillamy's entertaining story.

On Thursday at 2:30 p.m., the actor-author will read from his book at Dramaworks' Don & Ann Brown Theatre, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach.  Admission to the hour-long reading and talkback is $10, but that buys you a copy of his book.  Can't make it?  The book is also available via the actor's web site, on Amazon and at other online sites.

For information on the reading or Exit the King, call 561-514-4042 or visit the Dramaworks web site.

Free theater

The theater season will begin in earnest next month, but if you're itching to see something sooner, two companies have a couple of options -- and both are free.

Ground Up & Rising continues its "Zero Point" initiative -- a project aimed at attracting new audiences with bare-bones yet thrilling theater -- with Curtis Belz's hour-long adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, reimagined as a cautionary tale in a post-apocalyptic world.  The production features David Gallegos, Jenny Lorenzo, Claudio Pinto, Jose Antonio Paredes and Belz, and it's directed by Collin Carmouze.

The play will be presented this Sunday and Sept. 2 at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden, 2000 Convention Center Dr., Miami Beach.  Performances are at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. both days.  Call Ground Up at 305-756-4672 or visit the company's web site.

Next Tuesday, the new Crashbox Theatre Company gets launched with a staged reading of James Carrey's If This Play Sucks, Blame Facebook.  The playwright directs Noah Levine, Casey Casperson, Scott Douglas Wilson, Nori Tecosky, Johann Azcuy and Kaitlyn O'Neil in the play about two friends whose weekend stay at a lake house turns weird.

The reading is at 8 p.m. Aug. 28 at Empire Stage, 1140 N. Flagler Dr., Fort Lauderdale.  Admission is free, but donations are welcome.  For more info, call 954-678-1496, visit Empire Stage's web site or check out Crashbox on Facebook.

One night only

In South Florida's theater world, hope and talent spring eternal, despite the financial hard times that have imperiled or sunk several key companies.  New troupes spring up, hoping to become an ongoing part of what the region's theater has to offer.  Two of them have one-night events scheduled on Monday and Tuesday this week.

Tonight at 7:30, the new Our Stage Theatre Company debuts with a piece called Short Play Soiree.  High school alumni and current students from Miami's New World School of the Arts are behind the effort, and the requested $10 donation for admission will benefit Jackson Memorial Hospital's Art Cares program.  The collaborative program features company members Maite Christi Francois, Nile Harris, Armando Santana, Crystal Ferreiro, Julio Maxwell, Jaime Bernard, David Zaldivar, Brianna Hart, Krystal Ortiz and Sandi Besen.  The show goes on at GableStage in the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables.  Visit the GableStage web site for info.

(Also at GableStage, at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 31, Carbonell Award-winning actor and New World professor David Kwiat will share his poetry.  That event is free.)

The other event this week is a staged reading ofDog Sees God: Adventures of a Teenage Blockhead. Members of the new Outré Theatre Company.  Bert V. Royal's hard-hitting play may remind you of a popular, long-running comic strip featuring cute kids and a dog, but these characters are teens with every problem those years can bring.  Mike Westrich, Patrick Rodriguez, Clay Cartland, Kaitlyn O'Neill, Josh Harding, Christina Groom and Ann Marie Olson are in the cast.

The performance at 8 p.m. Tuesday is part of Conundrum Stages' reading series at Empire Stage, 1130 N. Flagler Dr., Fort Lauderdale. Admission is free, but donations are encouraged.  Learn more at the Outré web site.

McKeever's 'Stuff' gets a New York reading

Happy times for South Florida's prolific and widely produced Michael McKeever.  His play Stuff, which won the 2011 Carbonell Award as best new work after its world premiere at Boca Raton's Caldwell Theatre Company, will get an invitation-only staged reading at 3 p.m. Thursday in New York.

The play about the real-life, way-eccentric Collyer brothers -- born into great wealth, they descended into a world of hoarding and madness -- features an impressive cast for the reading, which is being directed by Shelley Butler.

Angels in America star Stephen Spinella will play Langley Collyer, David Greenspan his brother Homer.  Penny Fuller plays their mother, and Sheldon Best plays two men who interact with the brothers at very different points in their lives.

This reading of a play that got strong reviews for its South Florida debut could be a step toward a New York production for McKeever, whose work is produced at theaters throughout the United States and in Europe.

Durang, Ayvazian headline CityWrights weekend

Christopher Durang and Leslie Ayvazian are celebrated playwrights, actors and teachers.  This Friday and Saturday, they'll draw on all that expertise as they play various roles during CityWrights, a City Theatre-sponsored conference for playwrights backed by a significant grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's Knight Arts Challenge.

Durang, who is coming to the symposium as part of the Dramatists Guild's Traveling Masters program, is the award-winning author of such stinging, funny plays as Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, Beyond Therapy, A History of the American Film, Baby with the Bathwater, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Miss Witherspoon (a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize), and Why Torture Is Wrong, and The People Who Love Them(produced at Plantation's Mosaic Theatre in 2009).  He and Marsha Norman co-chair the play-writing program at Juilliard, and he has acted in his own work and in 10 movies.

Ayvazian, an adjunct professor at Columbia University, is an award-winning playwright and actress who performed her solo show High Dive in 2002  for City Theatre at Miami Beach's Colony Theater (South Florida actress Barbara Sloan also did the play in 2011 at New Theatre).  Her other plays include Deaf Day, Nine Armenians and Make Me, and her acting gigs have ranged from Broadway to multiple episodes in the various Law & Order series.

Other presenters and participants in CityWrights, which was put together by City Theatre co-founder and literary director Susan Westfall, include director of the Center for the Theater Commons and HowlRoundeditor Polly Carl, Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival coordinator Billie Davis, writer-musician Ivan Anderson, playwright and South Florida Theatre League executive director Andie Arthur, Atlantic Theater Company associate artistic director Christian Parker, Dramatists Guild Fund executive director Rachel Routh, literary agency head Susan Schulman, Broadway producer Joan Stein, director-writer-producer Roland Tec, former National New Play Network president and Florida Stage managing director Nancy Barnett, Samuel French literary manager Amy Rose Marsh, artistic directors Ricky J. Martinez of New Theatre and John Manzelli of City Theatre, and attorneys David H. Faux, Andrew Peretz and Steven E. Eisenberg.

At Thursday's launch party from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the Sabadell United Bank Building, City Theatre will honor playwright Carey Crim, whose Green Dot Day won the 2012 City Theatre National Award for Short Playwriting.  Currently part of the Summer Shorts festival at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, the play is about a couple trying hard, on schedule, to have a baby.  Fifteen other playwrights will be honored as finalists during the event.

Two days of CityWrights sessions will take place Friday and Saturday at Miami's Epic Hotel, 270 Biscayne Boulevard Way, with a wrap-up Samuel French presentationn on Sunday morning. Sessions will focus on the art and business of putting up a show, the rights of playwrights, writing and creative sessions, the art of collaboration, the playwright as actor and director, submitting work and more, and Ayvazian and Durang will read from their new work Saturday evening.

The cost of attending the entire conference is $325 ($275 for Florida professionals), and City Theatre is now offering a $150 day rate for Friday or Saturday.  For information, call 305-755-9401, ext. 10, email CityWrights@citytheatre.com or visit the company's web site.

 

 

 

Carbonells honor Harris; justice and satire on campus

Catching up with some varied news from South Florida's always-busy theater scene.

Producer Jay H. Harris has been named the 2012 recipient of the George Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, an honor to be presented at the Carbonell Awards ceremony on Monday, April 2.  The Carbonells are, of course, South Florida's top theater award.  And the Abbott award, named for legendary producer-director-playwright George Abbott, is the Carbonells' most prestigious honor.  Harris has a huge theater resume, having supported productions at numerous South Florida theaters (including New Theatre's world premiere of Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics, which won the Pulitzer Prize and which Harris then produced in London).  He has also produced shows in numerous other American cities and in New York, where his production of Say Goodnight Gracie was nominated for a Tony Award.  Harris also played a major role in the evolution of the Carbonell Awards program, serving on its board from 2001 to 2008 and helping devise the current voting structure.

Harris will be honored, as will a host of Carbonell nominees and winners, during a show and ceremony beginning at 7:30 p.m. April 2 in the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale.  Tickets are $25 in advance, $35 at the door, and the public is invited.  Numbers from each of this year's nominated musicals are part of the show, and admission to an after-party at the Green Room, 109 SW Second Ave., is free with a Carbonell ticket.  For information, call the Broward Center box office at 954-462-0222, email carbexec@aol.com, or visit the Broward Center's web site.

*** 

Sister Helen Prejean, the author of Dead Man Walking, is coming to speak about capital punishment at the Florida International University campus April 13, in a free presentation running from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the campus' Graham Center student union. In honor of her appearance the FIU Theater Department and Honors College are joining forces to present readings and a performance of three justice-themed plays.  On Thursday, students from the Honors College will do a reading of Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank's The Exonerated. David Mamet's Oleanna gets a reading by theater students on March 29. Then Phillip M. Church directs theater students in a reading of Tim Robbins' adaptation of Dead Man Walking April 5.

All performances take place at 7 p.m. in the FIU Black Box Theater at the Wertheim Performing Arts Center, 11200 SW Eighth St., Miami. Admission is free, and talk-backs follow each event.  For information, call 305-348-3394.

***

Though you won't have long to go (sorry), if you've managed to miss Urinetown during its earlier South Florida stagings at Actors' Playhouse, Slow Burn Theatre and so on, you have another chance to see it this Thursday-Sunday. John Manzelli directs students from Barry University's Department of Fine Arts in the Tony Award-winning musical about the strict regulation of bathroom privileges during a drought.  Ranging stylistically from the stinging social satire in the manner of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht to spoofs of other Broadway musicals, Urinetown is provocative, funny and not for the kiddies.

Performances are at the Broad Center for the Performing Arts, 11300 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores.  And get this: Admission is free.  Performances are at 7 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, with no reservations required.  Need info? Call 305-899-3291.

Arts Garage celebrates new plays

New play work was Louis Tyrrell's passion during the 24 years he served as artistic director of the late, lamented Florida Stage.  So it's no surprise that Tyrrell is launching his new venture, the Theatre at Arts Garage in Delray Beach, with a smaller-scale version of a new play festival, the kind of event that was a big draw at the debt-burdened Florida Stage before it suddenly shut down in June.

Though the artsy location in Delray Beach off bustling Atlantic Avenue is more intimate and modest, the names involved in the New Play Fest are big ones, including keynote speaker (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Marsha Norman.

The festival, which begins Thursday and runs through Sunday, offers six play readings over its four days.  Tickets to the readings and Norman's speech are $15-$20 for each event, or you can pay $112 and get into everything.

The fest begins with a reading of Lauren Gunderson's Exit, Pursued by a Bear at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.  Des Gallant directs Nancy Noto, Andrew Wind, Taylor Staniforth and Scott Douglas Wilson  in a play described as a contemporary Southern revenge comedy.

John Briggs directs the 7:30 p.m. Friday reading of William Mastrosimone's Oblivion.  Antonio Amadeo, Marckenson Charles, Cliff Burgess , Natasha Sherritt, Steven Chambers and Andrea Conte appear in the play about a composer who tries to rescue a drug-addicted young woman.

At 2 p.m. Saturday, Margaret Ledford directs the reading of Jessica Goldberg's Better, a play about a family dealing with a fatal illness.  In the cast are David Sirois, David Nail, Amy McKenna, Bruce Linser, Peter Haig, Barbara Bradshaw and Deborah Sherman. 

Norman delivers her keynote address, Writing the Third Act, at 7 p.m. Saturday.  At 8 p.m., Tyrrell directs a reading of her play Nightly News from the War on Women, about human trafficking and violence toward women.  In the cast are Alan Gerstel, Julie Rowe, Damian Robinson, Mayumi combs, Lou Tyrrell, Karen Stephens and Jessica Peterson.

On Sunday at 2 p.m., Clayton Phillips directs a reading of Bruce Graham's The Outgoing Tide, a play about a family and a man who decides to take charge of his life.  Actors Kelli Mohrbacher, Dan Leonard, Barbara Bradshaw and Peter Tedeschi are in the cast.

The festival's final reading  is at 7 p.m. Sunday.  Israel Horovitz directs his own Gloucester Blue, a play involving secrets, sexual tensions and much more.  David Nail, Amy McKenna, Robert Walsh and Wayne LeGette are featured in the cast.

The Theatre at Arts Garage is at 180 NE First St., Delray Beach, and it really is in a garage, so parking is no problem.

Need info?  Call 561-450-6357 or visit the organization's web site.

Stage Door sets a season

In November, Broward Stage Door Theatre founders David Torres and Derelle Bunn revealed that they were in negotiations with Costume World founder and CEO Marilynn Wick to sell the two-theater Coral Springs company they founded 18 years ago in a former movie theater.  The duo had taken on a new venture in the Miami Beach Stage Door Theatre at the Byron Carlisle last summer and felt they were ready to focus on their new venture.

Apparently, that deal for the Coral Springs theater isn't panning out. Torres sent a message Tuesday with titles for a planned 2012-2013 season at the original Stage Door location, explaining, "Due to the fact that ongoing negotiations seem to be stalling and are likely to not come to fruition, the Stage Door is moving ahead with plans to announe the '12-13 season as if there will be no deal."

So here's the lineup, a mixture of comedies, musicals and a thriller:

The new season will kick off with Neil Simon's Rumors Oct. 19-Nov. 11, followed by Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks Nov. 9-Dec. 2.  Fiddler on the Roofis the December highlight, running Dec. 7-31.  The World Goes 'Round, a revue celebrating the music of John Kander and Fred Ebb, runs Dec. 28-Jan. 20, 2013. The Golden Age Broadway classic Damn Yankees runs Jan. 18-Feb. 10, 2013.  Then come Deathtrap Feb. 8-March 3, the Jerry Herman revue Jerry's Girls March 1-2 and Beau Jest April 5-28, all in 2013.

Torres and Bunn have tinkered with their current-season Miami Beach lineup as well. Jon Peterson returns in Song Man, Dance Man Jan. 20-29, with shows at 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.  From Feb. 17-March 11, Miami Beach Stage Door will present Ira Levin's comic thriller Deathtrap.

 Need more info? Call 954-344-7765 or visit the Coral Springs theater's web site; for Miami Beach info, call 305-397-8977 or visit the new web site.

Costume World's Wick offered her own perspective on Wednesday, issuing a statement that said Stage Door management rejected her second offer to buy the theater.

"I am extremely disappointed that I could not put this financial package together," she wrote.  "I had many high hopes for the space, including a renovation, working with the vast array of talented artists and technicians in professional theater in South Florida, and showcasing our incredible costume inventory.  But I guess it wasn't meant to be."

Wick leaves open the possibility that a deal may still be worked out and says, "In the meantime, I will continue to support and encourage the Broward Stage Door and their faithful audience, and I wish them all success with their exciting new season."

See stars at Mosaic, GableStage

Plantation's Mosaic Theatre and GableStage in Coral Gables both have hit shows at the moment:  Eric Simonson's Lombardi, about legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, at Mosaic, and Red, about abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, at GableStage.  Both plays are running through Dec. 4, with some performances sold out or nearly so, so if you're interested in going and have been procrastinating, call or click for tickets. 

Mosaic artistic director Richard Jay Simon is helping drive his show's solid box office with a series of celebrity talk-backs after certain performances.  This weekend original Broadway Lombardi star Dan Lauria and the coach's daughter, Susan Lombardi, will chat with the audience after the 7 p.m. Sunday performance.  Columnist Dave Hyde and ex-Dolphins player Jim "Crash" Jensen are to talk after tonight's 8 p.m. show.  Columnist Ethan Skolnick is seeing the show at 8 p.m. this Saturday.

Other special guests who have confirmed are CBS4's Jim Berry (8 p.m. Nov. 25), the Herald's Greg Cote (3 p.m. Nov. 26), Local 10's Will Manso (2 p.m. Nov. 27) and Local 10's Andrea Brody (8 p.m. Dec. 2).

With Lauria in town this weekend, Simon has engineered a fundraiser for both his theater and GableStage.  The actor, who played the dad on the popular TV series The Wonder Years, has written a dark comedy called Dinner With the Boys. He, Mosaic's Lombardistar Ray Abruzzo and actor Richard Zavaglia will do two benefit staged readings of the play.

The first is Monday, Nov. 21, at 7 p.m. at GableStage in the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables.  Admission is $25 for subscribers, $30 for others.  Wine and light refreshments come with the cost of the ticket.  For GableStage info, call 305-445-1119 or visit the theater's web site.

Mosaic's reading is at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 22, in its theater at the American Heritage Center for the Arts, 12200 W. Broward Blvd., Bldg. 3000, Plantation.  Again, subscribers pay $25, others $30, and you get wine and munchies.  Call 954-577-8243 or visit the Mosaic web site.

Go to either, and you're seeing stars while helping a not-for-profit theater company fund its work.

(Photo of Ray Abruzzo as Vince Lombardi by George Schiavone)

'Standing on Ceremony' -- but not here

In one of those what-the-heck moments (I have those sometimes when I check my email), I note that Monday is the first Off-Broadway preview of Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays.  Eight short plays on the subject of marriage equality make up the evening.  Those plays are Jordan Harrison's The Revision, Joe Keenan's This Marriage Is Saved, Wendy MacLeod's This Flight Tonight, Doug Wright's On Facebook, Neil LaBute's Strange Fruit, Paul Rudnick's The Gay Agenda, Moisés Kaufman's London Mosquitoes and José Rivera's Pablo and Andrew at the Altar of Words.  The cast, a terrific one, includes Craig Bierko, Mark Consuelos, Polly Draper, Harriet Harris, Beth Leavel and Richard Thomas.

I'm not planning a trip to New York soon, but I wish I could be there Monday, when a special 8 p.m. performance at the Minetta Lane Theatre will be at the heart of a national event.  Evan Wolfson, the founder and president of Freedom to Marry, will speak before the show.  Playwrights Rivera, Rudnick, Wright and Kaufman will participate in a post-performance Q&A moderated by New York Times writer Patrick Healy.

Here's what is making Monday really special, though. At more than 40 professional and college theaters throughout the United States, actors and others will read the Standing on Ceremony script, bringing the art and the message to their local communities.  The New York introduction and post-show discussion will be live streamed, and theatergoers can ask the playwright panel questions via Twitter at #asksoc.

In Florida, just two theaters are participating: Mad Cow in Orlando and American Stage in St. Petersburg.  Which leads back to my what-the-heck moment. 

I know many gay and lesbian couples who would marry, if only it were legal in their state -- Florida included.  I know many happy, long-time gay and lesbian couples who work in theater in South Florida, artists who are unhappy that the right to marry is denied them.  And yet this event, which could shine a bright spotlight on the issue, isn't happening here. 

The hectic start to South Florida's theater season is under way, so maybe the theaters or artists who would have participated just felt too swamped.  I don't mean gay theaters specifically, or gay and lesbian artists specifically.  This is art tackling an issue that should matter to everyone who cares about equality. 

Find out more about the play (which opens Nov. 13) and the national event here.  What a shame that we can't gather here to share this experience.