Arts Blog

It's only the second day of July and already there's tons of news on the Broadway front. I hadn't expected anything to much to happen until the end of the summer.

But you can't keep Broadway down - not even in the soggy weather soaking New York City.

Tony award winner Hair not only topped the Billboard Broadway chart with their cast recording, but it will be the first Broadway musical to perform on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien on July 13.

At the National New Play Network's annual conference, which Kitchen Dog Theater hosted here in Dallas last month, the local pups got voted two awards. One was for a show already finished, in fact -- the rolling premiere of Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes, which headlined KDT's new play festival in May.

The big news, for us at least, is that a writer nominated by Kitchen Dog, Elaine Romero, received the annual new play commission for her piece Ponzi.

It's a real mark of how serious that mid-cities community institution, Artisan Center Theater, is about upping the ante that it has hired John Davidson as artistic director, effective Aug. 1. Wilkerson just directed a successful My Fair Lady for the company -- and that was surprise enough, since Wilkerson is hardly a community theater sort of guy.

He had been appearing on Broadway and in major national tours for years when he did a couple of guest stints in the Dallas area -- most notably playing Emile de Beque in the Dallas Theater Center's fabulous South Pacific a decade ago. Then he and his wife, a Dallas native, moved here to found a very ambitious new company about five years ago. After a production of State Fair in Grapevine that didn't get the audience it deserved, the company folded. But Wilkerson and his wife, Margaret Shafer, have made occasional local appearances, and he has been touring as one of the Three Redneck Tenors (though he's actually a baritone).

Wilkerson will be running Artisan's educational program and directing four shows a year with the company, beginning with a Mikado that holds auditions July 13 and 14.

It's odd that this comes the week that Theatre Arlington announced that it will no longer have an artistic director, with the departure of B.J. Cleveland. Artisan's future will certainly need watching.

Nobody longs for unemployment and poverty. But it's been proven that adversity and hardship can bring out creativity. The Post WWI and Great Depression era were periods of great creativity. Now we're in a new depression of sorts. Social pain of a sort we're having these days gives everyday folks something of real substance to write about, and sing about. And there's two shows going on in town that honor the hardships that create the kind of great art I'm talking about.

Matt and Kim Lyle moved to Chicago nearly a year ago, but they've stayed active with two new shows from Matt's hand at area theaters. Now they are reprising their hit The Boxer for one night only, Aug. 22, before they take it to the New York Fringe Festival. The performance will be at 8 p.m. at the Dallas Children's Theater's Rosewood Center for Family Arts. Tickets are $20 through July 10, $30 thereafter -- the show is a benefit for the Fringe trip. Call 214-334-1659. or go to www.theboxer.org.

(Photo of Jeff Swearingen and Kim Lyle by Mark Oristano)

Since the current show in Theatre Three's basement, Woody Guthrie's American Song, is set mostly in the Depression, it's appropriate that the organization is offering people who have been laid off in the current economic crisis an amazing deal. They can see the show for a nickel -- it they call and reserve a "nickel special" ticket and bring a pink slip or other proof of unemployment when they attend.

It's finally summertime. Summer means vacations and vacations mean tourism.

Tourists keep my adopted city running. Restaurants, shopping, museums and theatre all benefit from the influx of new, excited people visiting New York City. But those tourists need directions and recommendations to really enjoy all NYC has to offer without spending too much money. Most importantly, where to eat!

Since I spend most of my time hovering around the 10 block radius surrounding the Broadway theatre district, I have compiled a list of fantastic and inexpensive places to eat based on my own needs to eat and save money.

My pal, Joy Tipping, always uses the phrase "if the F5 ever hits" as if it is her own ten point scale. I know one place that better survive the F5 if it ever hits! My special strip center, my familiar, is that section on Mockingbird Lane near the Palomar Hotel.......the strip center occupied by Premiere Video and Pocket Sandwich Theater.

Nothing against Netflix or Blockbuster. I just prefer Premiere Video. Sam and Heather run the place. They've made it a kind of a haven for the arts community.

Pocket Sandwich Theater is special, too- where other theaters have companies- Pocket Sandwich Theater has a family. It's a theater with a great big heart. I was reminded of that heart on Saturday when Pocket hosted the memorial service for friend and fellow playwright, Steve Lovett.

Russ Jolly, the former Broadway actor now in business in Richardson, frequently has good stories about his days and connections in New York. (He was a prime source about Rent creator Jonathan Larson when I did a feature biography on the late composer some years ago.)

Russ worte this morning about his connection to the Woody Guthrie review now in the basement of Theatre Three, which was created by Peter Glazer:

Peter Glazer was first assistant stage manager during the original run of Big River and to my recollection called the cues during the majority of the performances. He's teaching at UC Berkeley now and has a great old Berkeley vibe. Anyway, he had me and another cast member from Big River along with two other actors do the first staged/sung-thru reading of American Song way back in 85 or 86 while we were stilling running Big River. We performed it at The Writer's Theatre which was a small company founded by Tom Fontana who was the creator of St. Elsewhere. I recently reconnected with Peter and have kept in touch with the others in the first cast Linda Kerns, Nicole Orth and Scott Wakefield, who appears on Texas stages on occasion. It's always funny for me to read about shows like this 25 years later and recall the humble origins.

(File photo of Russ Jolly from 2003, Willy Welch and Alexander Ross in Woody Guthrie's American Song by Ken Birdsell courtesy of Theatre Three)

The Lexus Broadway Series, the tour presenter for the new Winspear Opera House about to open at the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts in October, is scooping its own first show. The Lincoln Center South Pacific is the first subscription item in December. But today the organization announced that it is bringing Billy Crystal's Tony Award-winning one-man show, 700 Sundays, from Nov. 17 through Nov. 22.

Crystal's tribute to his late father set the record for one-week sales for any non-musical show on Broadway back in 2005. A short tour hit some American cities and Australia. AFter a two-year hiatus, the actor-comedian is reviving the piece for a six-city tour.

It's a coup for the series and the DCPA to get a star as big as Crystal duriing its first month of regular operation. Tickets go on sale in July and will be available only to subscribers of the main Lexus Broadway Series.

(Photo by Carol Rosegg)

Matthew Posey subtitles his new piece "An Autopsy of Hunter S. Thompson," and that gives a pretty good sense of what the show is about. The famous "Gonzo" journalist is holed up in an L.A. motel, drinking and tripping and hallucinating. His bed morphs into a car before our eyes, so the hero can go on an imaginary road trip with a couple of hallucinated buddies and (sometimes) his estranged son. At other points, Posey as Thompson sits at a table, typing his "new journalism" Occasionally he pulls out a gun to menace others in paranoid fashion or to threaten suicide.

Like Johnny Simons at Fort Worth's Hip Pocket Theatre, Posey creates an enormous amount of new material. By my count, this is his fourth world premiere since his new Exposition Park space, Ochre House, opened last October.Also like Simons, Posey's ideas are often brilliant -- but the worst ones often don't get weeded out and the best ones sometimes don't get developed or polished.

I probably enjoyed this piece more than the two other Posey plays I've seen in the last year. I especially liked the way Ross Mackey, who also plays the son, stands in the doorway playing electric guitar for almost the whole show. Mackey's original music and sound design is quite brilliant -- the sounds are frequently surf-ish during the short first act (like his band's, Astrochrist, presumably), more psychedelic during the wilder second act.

Another impressive element is the frequent changes of tone to the whole show -- an especially dramatic switch right before the end. The use of video adds something too, though that's one of the elements that might have been developed more given more time and resources.

Of course, Posey -- a pioneer in alternative Dallas theater back in the Deep Ellum Theatre Garage days -- remains one of most hilarious and eccentric comic actors. There's more depression than laughter in this show, but it's memorable just the same. It runs through June 27.

You've had your time in the sun, Billy Elliot. Join the ranks of Spring Awakening, Jersey Boys and In the Heights. It's time to start thinking about next year's musical juggernaut.

The 2009-2010 Broadway season is upon us...and it can sing and dance. In some cases, it can shoot spiderwebs out of its wrists.

Musicals cost money and they make money. Musicals tour around the country and pour out of sound systems. If plays are the life blood of the theatre, then musicals are the muscle. Here are some of the musicals coming to Broadway this season.

Ahh, we have bid a fond farewell to the 2008-2009 Broadway season. The 2009-2010 season is at the starting gate, chomping at the bit to get moving.

In discussing the new season's offerings, I have decided to separate the plays from the musicals. As art forms they are different animals and deserve to be recognized on their own.

New plays are the life's blood of the theatre. New voices, new ideas and new stories keep the heart of Broadway beating. While revivals outnumber new works this season, there are some promising new plays set to open.

I took my two younger boys to The Wizard of Oz yesterday at the Music Hall at Fair Park and we were enthralled as much by the kid-packed audience in the full house as we were by the show on stage. We spotted at least five incredibly cute little girls dressed up as Dorothy in blue gingham and "ruby" slippers and tons more clutching their little Toto dolls (some well worn from home-hugging, others brand new and bought from the Dallas Summer Musicals gift shop for $25).

We went early enough to catch the free Kids Club before the show where the 12 local kids playing Munchkins and Winkies were in their star element, happily signing autographs for kids who had just decorated red toy slippers with red sequins and glue. You can read about them here.

Most of the kids told us it was their first time in the theater and that they loved seeing their favorite characters come to life. And we could hear them during the show, laughing and clapping and going "aww" every time "Toto" scampered across the stage.

Click below to read what three of them told us afterwards:

Emily Alicia Rivera, 5, of Richardson, dressed up as Dorothy

During a fifty-year career, Joan Crawford was simply too big to be overlooked. Everything about her was oversize: her eyes, brows, mouth, jawline, shoulders, her gestures and of course, her famous shoulders. Beautiful as she was, she had a mannish quality that inspired a cult of sincere admirers- some of whom derive tremendous amusement from repeated viewings of the bad movie inspired by daughter Christina Crawford's 1978 book "Mommie Dearest" - a book about the star's most questionable starring role- as that of "mother".

The book is simply awful and so was the film. And now there's "Mommie Queerest", a new theatrical spoof of the movie, which is really so much fun to watch, in part because Joan Crawford was so beautifully mannish and larger than life that she was ripe for gay spoofing, but also because here in Dallas Queen Joan is being played to GORGEOUS perfection by drag actor extraordinaire, Coy Covington, in Uptown Players production of the new spoof.

Almost scene for scene, the awful movie script is brought to hilarious life at the Rose Room (Station 4) on Oak Lawn. And our Queen Joan has the biggest wire hanger ever.

The over-the-top, over-populated opening number on the Tony Awards seems to have paid off, according to the ratings. The Tony Awards pulled in their highest numbers in three years - 7.45 million viewers. Before anyone starts popping the champagne, let's break it down to figure out what that number really means.

In years past, the Tony Awards were scheduled up against such ratings monsters as the Sex and the City season premiere and the final episode of the Sopranos. Our little awards show didn't stand a chance. Just last year, Tiger Wood's return to golf with a torn knee tendon proved far more interesting than In the Heights' win for Best Musical.

The numbers are up 1.2 million over last year's rating of 6.26 million. That increase is significant, but what else was on television for people to watch? CBS had the Tonys, but ABC aired Game 2 of the NBA finals with Kobe Bryant and the Lakers against Orlando. Apparently that was not as sexy a match-up as say, LeBron James and the Cleveland Caviliers.

The 63rd Annual Tony Awards burst into living rooms last night at full-tilt. The commercials promised viewers more performances than ever before. But was it enough? Ratings won't be published until tomorrow, so I cannot wait to see what the Nielson families were watching Sunday night.

With moments to remember, moments to forget, and moments to dissect, I have whittled my opinions about last night's telecast down to six major categories.

Only one real surprise tonight, as you can see from my Tony story -- Elton John snubbed again for his score for Billy Elliot. I'll admit it was perhaps the least distinctive element in the show, and I've never been a particular fan of the singer-composer. But when Mel Brooks could pick up a Tony for music (dreck) when his show The Producers swept in 2001, surely John deserved a little credit here...especially since it was his idea to make a stage musical of the hit movie in the first place.

It was sweet the three kids one best actor, and they were winsome in their confusion over what to say. But it was a REALLY bad idea to put perfunctory excerpts of touring musicals on the broadcast. The shows didn't look their best in the first place, so the desired effect of luring audiences was an unlikely result. Nobody wanted to see five avatars of Franki Valli (from Jersey Boys) flailing away while we waited to see whether Next to Normal might just upset Billie for best musical.

It didn't, of course.

Wow, (Sir) Elton John lost out to the obscure composers of Next to Normal for best score. The man can't get no respect on Broadway. Could it harbinge an upset on the order of Avenue Q instead of Wicked??? Nah, it couldn't happen...could it?

Billy Elliot is definitely going to win a great many awards, though not quite sweep. (It lost the costume design prize to Shrek.) The most moving moment in the preliminary hour in which the design awards were handed out came from book writer Lee Hall (who also wrote the script for the original Billy Elliot movie). He talked about the moment in the movie where Billie's dad comes to London to see him dance as an adult. They weren't able to find a way to put that in the stage version, he said, but it happened in real life -- for the second time -- when his dad came to see the musical. That moment in the movie was based on the event in Hall's real life.

7:12 p.m. (CDT) Even more touching was most of that opening montage. Going from Elton John singing a number from Billy Elliot as the three boys danced, then adding West Side Story and Guys and Dolls (at the same time!). Then going to with every other musical on Broadway, more or less -- Dolly Parton and her cast from 9 to 5, Liza Minnelli, and everybody all at once with the cast of Hair in "Let the Sun Shine In." Even the stars in the audience were shouting.

Then some good jokes from Doogie Howser...and on to Jane Fonda. Wow.

We'll be here blogging about the Tony Awards as they are handed out tonight. Join us with your observations, beefs or WHAT-THE-HEYS.

Holy bank robbers! Now I've heard everything: Just got an e-mail announcing a world premiere by the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, and it's one that carries with it a big local angle involving Dallas. The renowned La Jolla Playhouse will stage the world-premiere musical Bonnie & Clyde from Nov. 10 to Dec. 20 in the Mandell Weiss Theatre on the campus of the University of California at San Diego. Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel) will handle the music, Don Black (Sunset Boulevard, Song and Dance) will write the lyrics, Ivan Menchell (The Cemetery Club, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) will write the book and Jeff Calhoun (Deaf West's Big River and Pippin, Grease!) will direct. Do I smell Broadway? The La Jolla Playhouse took Big River to Broadway, as well as The Who's Tommy, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Walk in the Woods, Dracula, Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays, Jersey Boys and the Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife.

Photo: Actress Faye Dunaway in the movie version of Bonnie and Clyde

On Sunday night, viewers across our great nation will be treated to the Tony Awards: an evening of spectacle; a night of performances by the kind of fare Broadway is known for; three hours of nothing but dance, drama and dizzying talent. And only a handful of awards.

What, you say? But how could that be? It's an awards show. Well, awards are only the B plot. The A plot is a whirling, celebrity-filled extravaganza devoted to ticket sales, both on Broadway and in theaters throughout the country.

If you've been catching up on your "NCIS", you will have seen commercials for the Tony Awards. "With performances by Elton John! Dolly Parton! Poison! And scheduled to appear: Nicole Kidman!" Is it the Tony Awards or the Grammys? It's almost impossible to tell.

The stories flowed last night (June 2) at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. The Dallas Theater Center celebrated its 50th anniversary with a program featuring past artistic directors and representatives of past directors. Robyn Baker Flatt, representing her father Paul Baker (who sent a taped message since he was unable to travel--he's only 97!), told about the struggles her father had with theater architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Adrian Hall then said those struggles were nothing compared to the ones he faced with the city of Dallas when trying to build the Arts District Theater.
Others on stage included Trey Birkhead, representing the late Mary Sue Jones, the company's only woman director and wife of Preston Jones; Richard Hamburger, who served from 1992-2007; actress Linda Gehringer, representing the late Ken Bryant; and current artistic director Kevin Moriarty, who moderated the discussion. The discussion drew laughs and frequent applause from the packed audience. Gehringer said she looks upon her time in Dallas as a truly joyful time in her career. She still keeps in touch with members of the company from those days.
Now, the comapny is leaving its beloved home for bigger quarters in the Dallas Arts District. A tribute to its history is available in the book, Staged Right.

In what began as a peek backstage at the '80s themed musical Rock of Ages while it was still off-Broadway at New World Stages, has now blossomed into a full-on theatrical experience by the cast and crew at their new home on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theater.

Six of the eight fantastic Rock of Ages webisodes parody what goes on backstage while the audience is watching the show. With the ever-present din of music blaring over the loudspeakers, actors change costume, practice dance moves, eat, warm-up their voices and generally try to make each other laugh while waiting for their cues.

As we say in the theatre, most of the drama happens offstage.

The theater community says "bye for now" to Allison Tolman, who just moved to Chicago this past week. Lawson Taitte refers to her in print as "the greatest actress of her generation". (Hopefully that's not what made her leave town!)

She does raise the bar. The first time I met her she beautifully performed a piece I'd written, a piece which I thought was a rather difficult part to execute. I loved her work and told her so. Well, she said, it was sooooooo easy for her to perform-nothing to it. She had that look in her eye that said "Challenge me more! Make me work!" (I was her fan from that moment on.)

Before she left town I wanted to find out if EVER this starpower babe felt...well, like a fraud. "I, for one," Allison said, "whenever I am introduced to a new group of people, become instantly convinced that they dislike me."

How can this be? She's so incredibly likeable! And she's the greatest actress of her generation. (just teasin' ya, Allison). We're gonna miss ya.

I adore cats, and the idea of a play built around a woman playing a cat was almost fiendishly irresistible to me. But I have to mostly agree with critic Lawson Taitte's review of Indoor/Outdoor, currently on stage at WaterTower Theatre in Addison. The premise is charming, and the actors (Jessica Cavanaugh Wiggers, Regan Adair, Renee Krapff and Joey Folsom) all do their level best. But the script by Kenny Finkle and direction by Terry Martin are all over the place. The script is just plain creepy at times, what with the love story of Samantha (the cat, played by Wiggers) and Shuman (her owner, played by Adair), then the interfering wanna-be "cat therapist" (Krapff) and Oscar (Folsom), an alley cat who's the object of Samantha's affections (much to Shuman's dismay). The cats never once get truly -- well, catty; this love story is far too sweet and gentle for felines, and it's also extremely weird that with all their catting around, Samantha remains kittenless. Also, the play tries way too hard at the end to wrap things up in a nice ball of yarn. Despite its flaws, though, it's a funny, endearing two hours. It'd just be a lot more funny and enjoyable in 90 minutes, with a firmer hand from the director. It runs through Sunday. Go here for tix and more info.

PHOTO: Mark Oristano

The Tony Awards are one week away. The anxious nominees are in the home stretch, beginning to squirm with anticipation. "What will I say if I win? What will I do if I lose? What am I going to wear?"

Since the nominees only have one week left before they either start being referred to as "Tony winner (enter name here)" or begin rending their garments in envious resentment, I feel like throwing caution to the wind and making some predictions. Let's start at the very beginning; it's a very good place to start.

I need to kick off the predictions with a disclaimer: I have never backed a winner in my life. I was always the one standing at the back of Radio City Music Hall, deflated at the realization that my personal pick was indeed not the winner of whichever category. Take these predictions with a grain of salt. I'm no Kreskin and I love an underdog.

Everything's bigger in Texas, we all know that. Apparently everything is held to a higher standard, as well.

Today's big news on Broadway has nothing to do with Broadway. Everyone's buzzing about the new bill regarding lighting designers which passed through the Texas legislature on Wednesday.

Texas House Bill 2469 essentially eliminates most lighting designers who may be looking for work in Texas. According to the bill, "(a) A person may not perform or offer to perform lighting design services unless the person is: (1) licensed as an engineer under this chapter; (2) registered as an architect, landscape architect, or interior designer."

These restrictions are not required by lighting designers working on Broadway. To be hired as a lighting designer on a Broadway show, the only requirement is to be a member of the United Scenic Artists union.

For years, there was Rosie. Before that, Liza. Not once, but thrice, there was Hugh. Last year: Whoopi. And striking now while his iron is red hot, the three-named comic genius - Neil Patrick Harris - will be hosting this year's Tony Award telecast.

The Emmy-nominated star of How I Met Your Mother may seem like an unlikely choice as host. The former (and stable) child star of the early 90s sitcom, Doogie Howser, MD (blessedly returned to our collective consciousness by Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle in 2004) has been unwittingly preparing for the Tony hosting gig over the last decade.

Harris brought his enormous talent to New York making his Broadway debut in 2001 in the Pulitzer-prize winning play, Proof, after performing in Los Angeles productions of Rent and Sweeney Todd. He continued to tread the boards on Broadway for several more years, starring as the Emcee in Cabaret and in the original cast in the revival of Assassins. But it is his television work in the deliciously silly How I Met Your Mother that finally brought him the recognition he so richly deserves. Newsflash people: I'm a fan.

Kitchen Dog Theater has been uncharacteristically tardy in getting out the details of the staged readings that make up much of its annual New Works Festival (which opens this Friday, after all). So far, I can't even find the details on the KDT website, although I've pushed about every button I can find. But, dear readers, if you push on past the break, you can find the names of plays and playwrights and times of performance right here!

Cara Mia Theatre, which has been inactive awhile, will return to the boards of the Latino Cultural Center December 9-19 with an original play, Crystal City 1969. This new work by former Cara Mia artistic director David Lozano (right in file photo) and Raul Trevino deals with a civil rights protest by Mexican-American students. Political theater isn't the usual yuletide fare -- and so much the better for Cara Mia!

Jonathan Norton is setting up a new group called the Playwrights' Forum, which he hopes will be meeting on the last Saturday of each month at Teco's Bishop Arts District Theatre in Oak Cliff. Here's the official announcement:

• ATTENTION: LOCAL PLAYWRIGHTS
• You are invited to attend the first meeting of
• The Playwrights' Forum.
• SAVE THE DATE
• Saturday, June 27th 2009, 12pm @ The Bishop Arts Theater Center
• 215 S. Tyler Street. Dallas, TX 75208
• About The Playwrights Forum:
• Here's how it works. Each meeting will follow a book club format. Each month 3 - 4 playwrights will submit up to 30 pages of a play they are writing via email. The group will read each submission and then we will meet once a month to give feedback and encouragement. Monthly meetings might also consist of the following activities:
• Impromptu readings of selections from that month's work * Share and tackle fun writing exercises
• Gripe * Share resources and information * Gripe some more
• Meetings will take place at the Bishop Arts Theater Center thanks to the generous donation of meeting space by TeCo Theatrical Productions. Tentatively, meetings are scheduled for the last Saturday of each month.
• To RSVP for June 27th or If You Are Not Able to Attend But Would Like to Learn More:
• Please email Jonathan Norton at nortonj@smu.edu or contact Jonathan Norton at 214-694-8755 daytime or 214-768-8254 evening. Or contact TeCo Theatrical Productions at 214-948-0716 for more info.
• We Hope to See You There.

Last weekend found me in Minnesota, where I flew to attend the funeral of a friend. I failed to get a return flight on Sunday, which allowed me to check out the Tony "Kushner Celebration" at the Guthrie Theater, a jewel in downtown Minneapolis. I had heard of the Guthrie for years; it has to be one of the best regional theaters in the country. I strongly recommend you check it out -- and believe me, you can do so cheaply. Going to Minnesota, I found, is a bargain -- provided you go before Memorial Day, when it suddenly becomes more desirable. There's a lot going on there: A new, open-air baseball park set to open downtown for the 2010 season, hiking and biking trails, cool restaurants and numerous artistic offerings. I saw the Kushner musical Caroline, or Change, which came to Theatre Three in 2007. Most of all, seeing the Guthrie gave me hope for what will happen before the end of 2009 in downtown Dallas -- a downtown theater.

Photo: The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minn.

Theatre Three has been saying that its production of 'Lost in the Stars' is attracting national attention, and they're not exaggerating. At last night's opening, Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout was on the top row checking out the rarely performed Kurt Weill musical tragedy. Jerome Weeks, who was sitting next to him, brought him over at intermission to chat with the Dallas Theater Center's Kevin Moriarty and Lee Trull (and me). No mention of the show yet on Teachout's popular and always interesting blog, About Last Night, but I can't wait to read his impressions.

Former Dallas Morning News colleague Tom Sime has another new production in the Big Apple. His vampire thriller Bloodletters, seen in Dallas last year, runs Wednesday through May 29 in the basement space of the Bleecker Street Theatre, where Tom is playwright in residence. The production is under the aegis of the Modern Stage, Tom's own company, and Joe Black.

Not much suspense as we build up to June 7's Tony Awards: Elton John's "Billy Elliott' swept another round of awards yesterday as it won 10 Drama Desk categories. This event wasn't much help in predicting which show will win the drama Tony, since the winner there was Lynn Nottage's off-Broadway Pulitzer Prize honoree, 'Ruined.'

We ran a story this morning taken from a WFAA-TV news report last night about the Dallas Summer Musicals' management group deciding not to manage downtown's Majestic Theatre any longer. I talked to DSM president Michael A. Jenkins today about the story -- I was worried that his company no longer intended to present or produce in the Majestic space, long the home of its winter series (and recently the venue for Frost/Nixon and The Pajama Game tours).

Jenkins said that the story didn't include the whole picture. In June, DSM's 10-year lease to manage the Majestic expires. He doesn't want to renew it under the current terms because, he says, $1 million over the last decade. His group isn't averse to submitting a new proposal to manage the building, according to Jenkins -- so long as it is protected against such a loss. Not only will all the DSM events booked into the Majestic take place as previously announced, the company is booking shows into the space next year. It even hopes to produce a prominent world premiere there -- to make that happen, Jenkins will be on a plane to New York tomorrow.

I'm sure part of the Summer Musicals' upsetment over its terms at the Majestic involves the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, set to open in the fall. It will host a series in direct competition with DSM -- and the city is being asked to subsidize the venue, while he's been losing money on a city-owned space. We'll wait and see whether the DSM management group will still be in control of the Majestic after all, on more favorable terms.

(File photo of Michael Jenkins at last year's DSM gala, along with Dolly Parton -- who wrote the songs for the current Broadway musical 9 to 5, partially backed by the Dallas organization.)

Television star Neil Patrick Harris will host the Tony Awards, to be broadcast on CBS June 7. You might not identify the former Doogie Howser as a stage luminary, but he did star in the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins and step into the run of Rent for a while as Mark. The Tonys tend to be TV's best, most literate awards show, full of genuine (and apparently spontaneous) wit -- though not always We can hope that Harris is up to it. He's funny, I hear, on How I Met Your Mother...but is that him or the script writers?

Dallas playwrights, take heart if it seems that your local theater companies are less interested in you than some out of town ones are. I talked this afternoon to Yussef El Guindi, who wrote Kitchen Dog Theater's upcoming new play festival main attraction, Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes. El Guindi lives in Seattle, a city with a reputation as one of America's best theater scenes. But none of the companies there have produced him (though one gave him a prize).

Things were much the same two years ago for Allison Moore, thrice produced at KDT and a semi-regular at Louisville's Humana Festival. She hadn't had a major production in her base town, Minneapolis, either -- and that's another of the country's cities with great theatrical reputations.

By the way, if you're a theater person thinking of moving to Seattle, don't. El Guindi says the smaller companies there have mostly imploded because of the current economic crisis. Besides, we all want you to stay right here.

(Photo of Yussef El Guindi courtesy Kitchen Dog Theater)

The Hip Pocket will be back in its larger (outdoor) space northwest of Fort Worth again this summer, we hear, after a season in which they had to move to a corner of the property because of some code issues. This new season is heavy on interesting adapations -- something Johnny Simons does very well. My wife remembers the fear our first trip to Hip Pocket inspired her during the company's first season. I was so impressed by their version of Tarzan that she was afraid I was going to run off and join the circus...and we weren't even married yet.

After the break, you'll find the details as the theater sent them to me.

This came in from Undermain artistic director Katherine Owens on Friday, while I was out on vacation:

David Rabe was in town for last Saturday's performance of The Black Monk at Undermain. He landed just before the tornadoes blew in and though the storm forced us to move our celebration indoors we managed to get everyone on the set for an after-show dinner.

Second Thought Theatre will be doing a staged reading of a script by one of its founders, Steven Walters, this Friday and Saturday, May 15 and 16, at WaterTower Theatre's studio space. Steven has moved to Los Angeles after his season on "Friday Night Lights," but he's still got his Baylor-nourished obsession with spirituality: The new play, "Little Light," is about a religious writer in a crisis of faith who meets up with a woman who works in a gentleman's club.

I don't usually get to staged readings, but I'd make an exception of this one -- if I didn't already have commitments both nights. Hope you can make it and let us know how it turns out.

(File photo of Steven Walters in a show with Diane Worman.)

Winners of New York's Outer Critics Circle Awards were announced this morning. No big surprise that "Billy Elliott" waltzed off with the most, seven. Slightly more surprising, "Shrek the Musical" did pretty well too, with both top acting honors and some design prizes. All in all, looks pretty much like I expect the Tonys will look in three weeks.

I've seen a lot of musical theater. I'm old. But I must say, the production of Rent currently on stage at the Music Hall at Fair Park (a national tour brought in by the Dallas Summer Musicals), is probably the best musical I've ever seen, on or off of Broadway, period. The friend I was with agreed, and I agree with everything Lawson Taitte said in his review.

To summarize: Get yourself down there before the show closes Sunday. This is once-in-a-lifetime stuff, made even better by the appearance of three of the original cast members, including leads Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal (that picture shows them in 1996, and they still look just the same; I want to know what kind of moisturizer they use), as well as Gwen Stewart, who blows everyone else off the stage toward the end of "Seasons of Love."

At Thursday night's performance, the DSM did a really nice thing and invited some local high school kids who'd been forbidden to perform the school edition of Rent on their campus earlier this year. In a Q&A with the very gracious cast after the performance, the students asked great questions, such as what it's like to play to audiences who often have the material memorized. "We have one chick who's been following us around, from city to city," Rapp said with a laugh. "When [the character] Maureen is getting everyone to go 'Moo,' she always has to jump up and be the first person in the audience to shout, 'Moo!' " And if you don't know what that refers to ... well, that's another reason to mooooove yourself (sorry, I couldn't resist) to the Music Hall, post haste.

Ticketmaster has times, prices and tickets.

Photo by Joan Marcus: Anthony Rapp (left) and Adam Pascal

I went to see 'Rent' Thursday expecting to love it all over again. I've worn out my CD of the original Broadway soundtrack, and I'm this close to wearing out my DVD of the film.

What I was not prepared for was the emotional impact of the show. As Lawson said, "This is powerful stuff." My only visualization of the music came from the film. But once you see the show, you instantly recognize the film, which I enjoyed, did not do justice to the raw feeling in the show.

In 2002, the almost brand new Uptown Players got a huge boost in audience built by its production of a little play by Del Shores called "Sordid Lives." As I recall, (because I was IN IT) our production opened the same time as the movie by the same name.......and its star, Leslie Jordan, was in our opening night audience. Monica Green gave us an opening night party at the now absent, but so swank, Cuidad. And the cast was treated like British royalty (in drag) everywhere we went for at least a month.

Uptown Players was obviously off to a great start and I was in a show I would NEVER forget (for MANY reasons). I finally got a chance to catch up with the playwright today and thank him for one of the most wonderful onstage experiences ever.........and since he will be in town next week, it's a great time to tell you about what he's up to.

Watching the musical Sarah Plain and Tall at the Dallas Theater Center affords audiences here a rare opportunity to watch a diamond emerge from the rough: so brilliant and fascinating already, you wonder how they're going to make it better, even as you know they will.

Like seeing Mike Modano play junior hockey, or Roger Staubach hurl footballs at Navy, or hearing LeAnn Rimes at the Johnny High Revue when she was age 8 -- greatness takes shape in front of you.

One of the most rousing songs, "Let's Never Do That," joined the action just four weeks ago, we were told during the audience conversation after final bows. Catchy music, reminding one audience member of Aaron Copland, evokes the geography as well as the characters. Not canned music, folks -- six musicians just offstage add untold richness to this wealthy production. We want the cast CD.

(Photo of Kate Wetherhead, Herndon Lackey and Becca Ayers, left to right, from Dallas Theater Center)

I've always been a big admirer of Jonathan Larson's score for Rent, not to speak of his witty, literate lyrics -- unique in such a "rock"-oriented show, I think. I love the way the songs pay homage to Broadway tradition, too: "Light My Candle" is in the line of great boy-meets-girl-and-changes-his-attitude songs, such as "People Will Say We're in Love" or " If I Loved You," while "La Vie Boheme" is a wonderful list song in the tradition of "You're the Top" -- and even dirtier! Also, Larson found a way to do musical recitative such as the stuff Schoenberg and Boublil wrote for Les Miz -- only it's good.

At the opening of the Dallas stop of the show's final tour last night, though, my appreciation ran even deeper. (Did I mention I was on the verge of tears during the whole first act and much of the second? This is powerful stuff.) This time I recognized more of Larson's achievement in putting his songs and even smaller units into larger forms. What came to mind, strangely, were the Act II finale of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and the Beatles' Abbey Road (especially that highly unified second side of the original LP). Like Wolferl and the Merseysiders, Larson cuts and layers his snippets of tunes together, occasionally breaking for a big song, but more often letting the thing flow. I even heard things that reminded me of symphonic development -- which made me take another listen to the way the composer uses that old musical comedy technique of the reprise in Act II. He doesn't just bring back the melody for another go-round to send the folks out humming. He uses it to make something fresh.

I'm not saying that Rent is as great as Le nozze, maybe not even as important as Abbey Road. But it's a masterpiece of its own kind.

I even found myself adjusting to Mimi's revival in the last scene. After all, in this libretto, Angel becomes a kind of double for Mimi -- and we've already had to face that death. I think it was one of the show's producers who made that argument to me in an interview some years ago. This time, though, I bought it.

Get yourself to the Music Hall. No day but today! (or at least today through Sunday!)

(Joan Marcus photo of Adam Pascal as Roger and Lexi Lawson as Mimi)

A story in today's Variety reminds us how many big, big names got blanked in the Tony nominations that came out yesterday. In so doing, it reminds us just how star-studded the season just concluded was.

A great many Oscar winners (Susan Sarandon, Dianne Wiest) and previous Tony winners (too numerous to count), not to speak of mere celebrities like Daniel Radcliffe (see photo) and Katie Holmes, got snubbed.

I don't remember when I read it or why I read it, but I have never forgotten a review I read of a Dallas Children's Theater production of "James and the Giant Peach." The review made me sick and it made me sad.

The reviewer viewed this "Giant Peach" as a dirty play and thought that children's theater is actually fun for adults to experience when it's layered with nasty stuff. Huh? Whoever wrote the review (I can't recall - but hopefully it was not the DMN) found plenty of dirty innuendoes in the set and in the story. Well, whatever......dirty children's theater would not be fun for me- I have a kid- and I'm thinking the whole point to children's theater is children.

I wasn't at all surprised by the Tony Award nominations for the 2008-2009 Broadway season just announced in New York. Billy Elliott has seemed to me the obvious show to clean up at the awards this year, ever since I saw it in New York last December. (Heck, you could have predicted its sucess several years before that, when it killed in London.) A couple of the recent "preliminary" award nomination lists saw 9 to 5 running ahead of Billy Elliott in number of nominations. But when 9 to 5 opened over the weekend, it got poor to middling reviews, especially from the New York Times. The Tony nominators are usually very influenced by those reivews.

The drama categories are far less clear, of course, This year's Pulitzer Prize for drama went to an off-Broadway show. (That was pretty standard for several years back in the 1990s but has been less frequent recently.) So there was no home-grown favorite. Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage has seemed to be tops on most lists and was today. (I've never been a fan of the French playwright's work, but I haven't seen this one.) If Reasons to Be Pretty by Neil LaBute pulls off an upset and gets a long run, that could throw a cramp in the Dallas Theater Center's plans to include it in its LaBute trilogy at the new Wyly Theatre next spring. For Texans, it was great to see the late Horton Foote's Dividing the Estate on the short list. It's not Foote's best play, but it still tops anything most lesser playwrights turn out.

The three boys who alternate in the title role of Billy Elliott -- David Alvarez, Kiril Kulish and Trent Kowalik -- are nominated as a single entity for best actor in in a musical. The file photo of them at right shows them in Times Square right after they landed the job.

I'm pretty much in total agreement with Lawson Taitte's review on this one: The main reasons to go see Frost/Nixon during its brief run at the Majestic Theatre, presented by the Dallas Summer Musicals, can be summed up in two words: Stacy Keach. I vividly remember sitting in front of the TV, at age 13, watching Nixon resign and feeling literally sick to my stomach with disgust. I never thought I'd see a performance that could actually make me feel, if not sympathy, at least a modicum of respect for Nixon, his intelligence and his absolute (if horribly misguided) belief that he was completely innocent of wrongdoing.

I was also quite impressed with Alan Cox, who as David Frost gets that 1970s-British-smarmy-reporter personality just right. His breezy performance early in the play is the perfect set-up for the serious turn he eventually takes. The production is also stunning, with a gigantic-screen TV that allows audiences to see Keach's expressions of anger and (brief) self-doubt very up-close and personal.

I wasn't that fond of the play itself, though -- the middle section, with those parts of the Frost/Nixon interviews that weren't really all that interesting, aren't all that interesting on stage, either. But go anyway -- when Stacy Keach finally wins the household-word acting acclaim he's long been due, you can say you saw him when. The show runs through Sunday. $15-$85. Ticketmaster.

Photo by MONA REEDER/Staff Photographer: Stacy Keach as Richard Nixon.

The Dallas Summer Musicals just announced that seats in the orchestra pit will be made available for $20 for every performance of Rent, which runs next Tuesday through May 10.

The tix will go on sale at the Music Hall box office, day of performance only, two hours prior to each show. They're available to anyone, cash only, with a limit of two tix per performance. The tradition of $20 tickets began in New York when the show moved to Broadway after a sold-out run at a small downtown theater.

Student rush tickets will also be available, for 50 percent off regular ticket price, one and a half hours before and up to curtain for each show. Current student ID will be required.

For more info, go here, or call 214-691-7200.

Because of swine flu cancellations, Kids Who Care is postponing its musical theater audition workshop, previously scheduled for Wednesday, to next Wednesday, May 13 at 4:45 p.m. at The Scott Theatre in Fort Worth.

Fort Worth's Artes de la Rosa is cancelling its annual Cinco de Mayo Festival scheduled for Saturday, May 2 at 7:30 p.m.. They are still planning all other May events at the Rose Marine Theater including Latin Express on Friday, May 22. Call them at 817-624-8333 if you have questions.

Jo Ann Holt of the Dallas Summer Musicals says she just talked to Michael Jenkins (who went to New York today for the opening of 9 to 5 - I saw him at the Majestic last night!). The DSM has no plans to cancel regular performances. But some school groups have canceled plans to attend Rent next week, and they are giving the schools full refunds.

Kimberly Richard says Theatre Three has no shows of its own up right now. The Nibroc Trilogy transfers to their basement tonight, but she has heard of no plans to change its schedule

From the Dallas Theater Center's Jake Cigainero: Dallas Theater Center hasn't experienced any absentee ticket buyers or loss in ticket sales due to the H1N1 flu virus situation. We fully intend to continue on with the regular performance schedule of Sarah, Plain and Tall through May 24 as long as we are able to do so in a safe and healthy environment. DTC will closely monitor the situation and comply with any city recommendations in the interest of public health.

This weekend's performance of As Thousands Cheer and all upcoming programming at the Irving Arts Center will continue as scheduled. The galleries and Sculpture Garden remain open for normal hours. Patrons are advised to use precautionary measures such as washing hands regularly, and covering nose and mouth when they cough and/or sneeze. For more information visit www.irvingartscenter.com

When I was visiting with the creators of the musical "Sarah, Plain and Tall," which has a boffo production currently running at the Dallas Theater Center, I learned one especially fun fact. The role of the little boy, here played with amazing aplomb by area sixth-grader Max Ary, is one of the few for which the people who originally performed and toured the one-act children's version who didn't return for this enlarged version.

Frankly, it would be a little weird if the original actor had. He's John Lloyd Young, who won the 2006 Tony Award for best actor in a musical as Four Season Frankie Valli in "Jersey Boys." Both roles, of course, used that phenomenal falsetto that made the adult actor able to sub for a youngster, when an actual child could have easily have gone on that two-van national tour.

"Sarah" composer Laurence O'Keefe agreed with me that his pal Young had been one of the things that really made "Jersey Boys." That show is not quite the same without him. Fortunately, young Max is so good you don't miss his predecessor in his current role.

(File photo of John Lloyd Young receiving his Tony Award)

Artisan Center Theater will conduct auditions Monday and Tuesday (May 4-5) for The Man With the Pointed Toes, by Lynn and Helen Root, to be directed by Dan Nolen. Auditions will be at 7 p.m. at 418 E. Pipeline Road (Belaire Shopping Center), Hurst.

Parts are available for six men and two women, ages mid 20s to mid 50s. The script is available at the theater box office for those auditioning to look at beforehand. For information, call 817-284-1200, or go to the Artisan Web site.

The Junior Players will conduct open auditions for students currently in grades nine through 12 for the summer production of Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It, from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday (May 2) at the Sammons Center for the Arts, Kurth Hall, 3630 Harry Hines Blvd.

Those auditioning should bring photos and resumes. Prepare a Shakespearean monologue of 16 lines and 16 bars of a song. Performances will be July 28 and Aug. 8 at Samuell Grand Park; rehearsals will begin June 15. For more information, visit the Web site. For an audition appointment, call 214-526-4076.

Arts writer and film historian Donald Bogle will speak Saturday, May 16, at a "Writer's Roundtable Breakfast" sponsored by the Black Academy of Arts and Letters. He'll talk about the status of African-Americans in film, television and theater, from battling stereotypes to achieving acclaim as major performers.

The event will take place at 10 a.m. in Room T314 of the Dallas Convention Center theater complex, Canton at Akard streets. For more information and tickets ($15 for breakfast and discussion), call 214-743-2400.

Wanted! Enthusiastic, seasoned actresses who still look cute in their jeans.

Well, producers and directors, if you want 'em, we got 'em- they actually can remember their blocking. And playwrights- start writing for them- they can remember their lines, too.

Here's three of those vintage babes- all good friends, too.

Contemporary Theatre of Dallas has extended its hit production of The Cemetery Club through May 17 (no performance on Thursday the 14, though).

In my review of the Dallas Theater Center's world premiere of the expanded Sarah, Plain and Tall, I made an implied comparison to musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein and others. Normally, that's not a fruitful way to talk about a new work. But it seemed particularly appropriate in this case because the piece has so many parallels to the R&H classics and other musicals of that golden era.

The most obvious parallel is with The Sound of Music, since the first time we see the Kansas widower and his family, he is forbidding them to sing. The Sound of Music often gets a bad rap from critics because it IS slighter than the Big 4 R&H shows. Those others all actually contain the death of a major character (Jud, Billy Bigelow, Lt. Cable and the King of Siam) -- as well as serious threats to other characters.

The Sound of Music doesn't contain a death -- but it does have God and Nazis to give it a deeper, more universal context. "Climb Every Mountain," admittedly, carries a whiff or a rather cheesy sort of spirituality. But at least we see the relationship of the man, his children and the potential new mother as part of a much bigger, more meaningful world.

More after the break.

(Sarah Plain and Tall - (L-R) Kate Wetherhead as Anna Becca Ayers as Sarah background Herndon Lackey as Jacob - photo by Brandon Thibodeaux, courtesy Dallas Theater Center.)

The Drama Desk Award nominations came out today. Much more than the Outer Critics Circle Awards, the new dramas nominated come from Off Broadway. One interesting surprise: The stage musical versino of "9 to 5," which hasn't officially opened yet, topped 'Billy Elliott" in number of nominations. That's mostly because all three stars in the Dolly Parton tuner got nods, whereas the young boys in "Billy Elliott" didn't. I still think "Billy Elliott" will walk off with the top Tony Awards, but it's nice to know it might be a horse race.

A week later than Tina Parker promised it in her as-usual-hilarious curtain speech at "Titus Andronicus" last Friday, she sent over the announcment of Kitchen Dog Theater's upcoming season. It has new plays by three playwrights who have had great productions at KDT recently -- Allison Moore, Zayd Dohrn and Noah Haidle. I have to admit that one playwright's name is entirely new to me, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb.

A switch on the one classic entry: KDT has done oodles of Shakespeare over the years, often in high-concept productions like the current "Titus." But for the first time, it will do Chekhov next season. "The Seagull" should be a good match for the company. But, my, my -- have I seen many versions of "The Seagull" hereabouts, most of them quite memorable. Richard Hamburger's may have been the best thing he ever did at Dallas Theater Center, Katherine Owens' was lovely at Undermain Theatre, and (much longer ago) the late Norma Young and Hugh Feagin made a dashing older couple at Theatre Three. I know I saw a fine recent production at UT-Dallas, too, and I have a faint recollection that I might have seen one at Stage West, though I wouldn't swear to it.

So many Seagulls so far away from the ocean!

A few seats down the row from us at the opening of "As Thousands Cheer" at Lyric Stage tonight, Broadway director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall was sitting with Mr. (and I take it Mrs.) Roger Horchow. Marshall directed the Tony-winning Broadway revival of "Pajama Game" three seasons ago, but national audiences know her best as the director of the more recent "Grease" revival -- partly because she was one of the judges on the reality TV star search for the musical, "You're the One That I Want."

Marshall's connection with Horchow is that she choreographed his super version of "Kiss Me, Kate" (can it really have been a decade ago?!). I hear she's also good friends with former "Forbidden Broadway" star Diana Sheehan, who's making a hilarious local debut in "As Thousands Cheer."

If you get to Irving Arts Center for the show, be sure to check out Mark Oristano's really interesting photography show, "Hollywood/1935." It features portraits of many local theatrical celebs -- but in the style of the old-line Hollywood glamour publicity photos. I especially liked the one of Jac Alder sitting in three Theatre Three seats simultaneously. The one of Regan Adair makes him look like a leading man of the era, too. I hear the show had previously been up at KD Studio Theatre, but I missed it there. Don't you miss out this time!

Coy Covington, the actor who frequently and hilariously works at Uptown Players in drag, is a regularly columnist over at TheaterJones.com. His current piece about why actors work when they don't get paid and what they make when they do is a great. read.

(Mike Morgan file photo of Coy in Uptown's Die, Mommie, Die.)

WaterTower Theatre (like Theatre Three -- see below) announced its season at a party last night. An email glitch kept the lineup from me until just now. (Forced to choose, I remained neutral and went to neither shindig!)

The good news is that after a season in which two previously announced shows were replaced to lower production costs, WaterTower is again tackling some scripts with large casts -- a couple of them musicals. The season starts off with a bang with Park Cities native Doug Wright's masterly Grey Gardens. (I was rather expecting it to show up on either the Dallas Theater Center or the Theatre Three season, since both have connections to Wright.) The season ends with a revival of a personal favorite, The Full Monty -- which had a prize-winning production at Theatre Threee a few seasons ago but which I'm always ready to see again.

The bad news is that, as artistic director Terry Martin warned might have to happen because of the current economic climate, WaterTower has had to suspend its Studio Series, which has brought some interesting smaller shows to the company's second space over the last two years. Here's hoping that better times will enable WaterTower to try again soon -- and that Second Thought Theatre, which has been resident in the same space for several seasons, will muster the energy to keep on going. With the founders all having moved on, it has been hard for Second Thought to hold on. But it has still been producing some excellent work.

The full WaterTower season announcement follows after the break.

When you glance at Theatre Three's upcoming season, announced this evening, it's enough to get your blood-pressure going: "Royal Family" and William Finn's name in close proximity! For years, the Broadway composer has been working on a musical loosely based on the Kaufman-Ferber comedy. Could it possibly be that, miraculously, the rights problem finally got solved and, even more miraculously, the Dallas company got dibs on the project?

No, it couldn't alas. Theatre Three opens its season with the play, sans music, in June. The next show up will be Finn's "25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee." Great shows, both, but still....

The complete text of the press release announcing the whole season comes after the break:

Broadway star and director Tommy Tune will be in Fort Worth for National Top Dance Day at Arts Fifth Avenue, 1628 Fifth Ave., at 8 p.m. on Monday, May 25.

The great, still underrated actor Stacy Keach will be touring through Dallas in Frost/Nixon next week, and I interviewed him for an advance feature today. He plays President Nixon, of course, but he told an interesting story about another Commander in Chief.

The actor, who played a small role in W, last year's movie about the presidency of George W. Bush, says that while the 43rd President was in office, audiences seemed to link his Nixon character to the current incumbent. Responses in blue states were quite different than n red states. Keach says that has changed since Bush left office.

Interestingly, President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara -- longtime Keach fans -- came backstage to congratulate the star when Frost/Nixon played Houston. The 41st President asked the actor whether he thought he should see the W movie, and Keach remarked that it did have a rather negative take on the relationship between the two Presidents Bush. Still, the former President said, "I guess I need to see it," according to Keach.

It will be interesting to see whether President George W. Bush and Laura come to see the show here in Dallas.

{Photo of Stacy Keach in Frost/Nixon by Carol Rosegg.)

Neiman Marcus' downtown store will feature displays of Dallas Theater Center costumes, photographs and designs in window displays and in-store viignettes May 1-18. Except for a 1965 production of The Tempest, the displays will mostly be devoted to work down in the 21st century.

The Pulitzer Prize committee announced today it has awarded Lynn Nottage's Ruined its award for drama for 2009. The play opened at Chicago's Goodman Theatre last November and runs at the Manhattan Theatre Club through May 10. Nottage's previoius work includes Intimate Apparel (produced locally last year at WaterTower Theatre) and Crumbs from the Table of Joy (which had fine productions at Dallas Theater Center and Jubilee Theater). The 45-year-old, a graduate of Brown University and Yale Drama School, is only the second African-American woman to win the drama Pulitzer, after 2002's Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog.

Veteran actor (and filmmaker) Kevin Nash wrote me his reaction to Kitchen Dog's over-the-top Titus Andronicus. His tagline is "What a mess -- and I'm not talking about the mutilations, blood and gore."

He goes on to say:

• Kitchen Dog Theater's production of Titus Andronicus is an example of how an ill-conceived attempt to change the geography or time frame of a Shakespeare play for its own sake can go terribly wrong.

[In Ben Torres' photo, Rukhmani Desai (Lavinia), (center, is held captive by actors Andres Ortiz (Demetrio), left, and Micah Figueroa (Quiron) as she listens to Christina Vela (Tamora).]

The rest of his comments are after the break.

The Outer Critics Circle Awards are the closest thing to a predictor for the Tony Awards that cap the Broadway season every year. (They're different, in that they include off-Broadway stuff, but that's mostly in separate categories.) To judge from the nominees announced today, Billy Elliott seems to have a leg up on best musical (no big surprise there). There doesn't seem to be an overwhelming favorite for best Broadway play. Interesting that that Jane Fonda didn't get a nod from the critics for her return to the stage in 33 Variations, fhough the play got a nomination.

Nearing the end of my first year as Local Casting Director for Dallas Theater Center, I have seen close to four hundred local actors audition. They have sung songs, perfomred monolgues, read cold from a script, and even sent in videos. What I have learned is that just about every rule I learned in colege about auditioning is a rule I'd like to see broken. I want to hear 32 bars of a song -- not 16. I don't mind if someone sings a song or performs a monologue from the show they are auditioning for -- in some cases it's more helpful. I like it when they look right at me when they are acting instead of at some made up character just over my shoulder. A lot of times I wish we could all skip the audition process and just go get a cup of coffee. I'll see them in plays or get to know them as people and if the right role pops up we'll try it out. I don't like auditions anymore then they do -- they can be impersonal and strange. I like to see people's work, read about them in the press, hear about them from other theaters, and see them around town. This week we have our general auditions and I'm thrilled to see so many actors I haven't seen before and I emplore them not to worry about all the RULES for auditioning. Just relax, show off, have fun, and don't worry-- we're nervous too!

Audiences were often small and the productions were very often "cheap", but theater in the 90's was a mix of audience and show as sophisticated, inventive, educated, and striking as anywhere. I personally loved dimly lit productions performed in cavernous spaces- the Undermain theater for example- my favorite shows there, "Therese Raquin," "Camino Real," "St. Nicholas", "The Seagull," young, hip, uber-sexy they were (I am not sure uber was quite the term then, but....).

There's one intriguing, if not puzzling, thing in the upcoming Dallas Theater Center season announced yesterday. It's rather rare for the company to produce a recent American play that has already been produced locally. But as part of its The Beauty Plays package of dramas by Neil LaBute, the DTC will be doing Fat Pig, which Kitchen Dog Theater produced only three years ago.

That's odd enough, but even stranger is an addendum on one version of the press release/announcement. Dallas Theater Center company members Lee Trull and Christina Vela are also Kitchen Dog company members. They did two of the four roles in Fat Pig at KDT. I'd have thought that DTC would be trying to dish up something quite different from the previous local production in order to distinguish the two versions from each other -- but both Trull and Vela, the release says, will be in The Beauty Plays. Since DTC plays to produce the three four-character dramas with only six actors rotating among them (although staged by three separate directors), it would seem that Trull and Vela are likely to do the same roles again. Weird. (File photo of Christina Vela and Lee Trull with Ian Leson in the Kitchen Dog Fat Pig.)

Jocelyn Wiebe is directing a staged reading of the Bard's late and seldom performed romance Cymbeline for Shakespeare Dallas's Shakespeare Unplugged series. The performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Bath House Cultural Center. They're general admission, free for SD members, $5 for others.

Bruce Richardson -- usually a composer and sound designer! -- will follow with the even rarer Timon of Athems on May 1 & 2.

DTC publicist Jake Cigainero emailed me a copy of the speech Kevin Moriarty gave at this morning's official announcement of the company's upcoming season. It's long (as blog entires go, at least), but it contains a lot of juicy bits, including the news that company member Sean Hennigan will play Scrooge in next December's A Christmas Carol -- an appetizing prospect. I have copied the whole thing into the space after the break for those who want to know the whole scoop.

Here is Kevin's own account of the highlights of his message, excerpted from an email he sent me himself:

Among the highlights - beyond the colorful and entertaining guessing game building up to each play - was information about our upcoming 50th Anniversary events this spring (including a season-ending party at the Kalita which will include a conversation with past artistic directors and company members, together for the first time on stage at the Kalita) and the publication of a new commmemorative book celebrating our history. Also, I announced that in the coming months we'll be announcing three commissions of new plays from important American plawrights. And we looked back at the values underlying our work in the past year.

Putting God Goliath together has not been a quick process for local playwright Angela Wilson -- the play first got a staged reading by Kitchen Dog Theater 10 years ago. Wilson then let it stew in her mind for a decade, and now it's had another set of staged readings, Thursday and Friday, produced by WingSpan Theatre at the Bath House Cultural Center. Director Beth Bontley said the script had gone through seven drafts over the most recent two-month course of development.

Well, it all payed off magnificently. The play's a doozy -- it's got mystery, magic, seduction, the threat of imminent death, historical figures and the kind of dialogue that actors would kill for.

Before I go any further -- full disclosure: I've known Angela forever, and she's one of my best friends, which is why I would NEVER actually review of play of hers. If this gets to full production somewhere -- and it should -- it's all yours, Lawson! But this being blog-land, I can at least tell you my honest thoughts (and believe me, if I'd hated it, this would be a VERY short post !).

Two Richardson theater companies that partnered last month to produce The Foreigner at the Richardson Theatre Centre, have agreed to merge, culminating a whirlwind, two-month courtship.

The agreement between RTC and Labyrinth Theatre Friends includes moving the combined group into new, larger quarters at the end of the current production.

Teatro Dallas will offer acting classes for adults (no age limit) and teens (16 and older) starting next Monday, April 13, and running through April 29. The classes are from 7 to 9 p.m. Monday-Wednesday and cost $200 for the nine-class session.

At the close of the workshop, students will present their scenes to family and friends.

Classes are conducted in English and Spanish, and led by Cora Cardona, artistic director for Teatro Dallas.

To reserve a spot or for more info, call 214-689-6492 or go here.

Rover Dramawerks will hold auditions for J.P. Miller's drama Days of Wine and Roses from 7 to 10 p.m. tonight and from 7:30 to 10 p.m. Tuesday. Appointments are required; e-mail audition08@roverdramawerks.com.

Auditons will be at the ArtCenter of Plano, 1039 E. 15th St. (corner of K Avenue) in downtown Plano. Roles are available for men and women ages 30s to 60s, and one 8-year-old girl.

Those auditioning should prepare a one-minute memorized dramatic monologue, bring a resume and headshot, and be prepared to read from the script. Actors and technicians will receive stipends. Rehearsals will begin the week of April 20, for a planned performance run of June 4-27 at the Cox Building Playhouse in Plano.

For more information, go here or call 972-849-0358.

I have been meaning to catch up with Mark-Brian Sonna Productions since I had a tip from a trusted reader last year that the company's unorthodox interpretation of Dante's Inferno was really interesting. (My previous experiences with the for-profit group, which produces a full season at Addison's Stone Cottage, hadn't been all that encouraging.) So I ventured a look at the first performance of a new translation of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex by Ian Johnston last night -- a world premiere for this version.

While the show doesn't work entirely, I found it more interesting than the other MBS shows I have seen. It plays to Sonna's strenghts (he's a trained dancer with a love for the classics as well as a passion for mounting new work). Continue after the break to see my thoughts in more detail.

To prepare for Stephen Sondheim's upcoming visit to Dallas, the Dallas Institute has asked Theatre Three's Jac Alder and Lyric Stage's Steven Jones to give talks on April 7 and 21, respectively. Details and ticket prices are after the break.

Ned Rorem's operatic version of the Thornton Wilder classic is getting four performances in Denton, thanks to the University of North Texas Opera. Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday (4/3), Saturday (4/4) and Tuesday (4/7), and at 3 p.m. Sunday (4/5) in the Lyric Theater of the Murchison Performing Arts Center, at I-35E and N. Texas Blvd. Conductor Stephen Dubberly will give a talk one hour before each performance.

Tickets are $15 to $35; $35 tickets include dessert and wine. For information, call 940-369-7802 or go to www.thempac.com.

This just in from Angela:

I am excited about the read-through with the actors and director later on this week. My hope is that I get a sense that day of how close the play is to "ready" for a full-fledged first production. This is the first script I have written that will force me to look for a first producer because of the design elements. High ceilings for suspending Harry Houdini upside down and spinning him over a tank filled with water that splashes over the top of the tank probably limits a few locations for production.

I have loved the luxury of producing my own plays at Theatre Quorum. But I am discovering that losing a little control is just as exciting. Thinking and writing visually is thrilling

Irving's ICT MainStage will hold auditions for Arthur Miller's classic drama All My Sons (which recently had a Broadway revival starring Katie Holmes) this coming Sunday and Monday (April 5-6) from 7 to 9 p.m. The director is Marco Salinas.

Performers in their mid-20s to early 60s are needed, along with one 8- to 10-year-old boy. The show has mature themes and adult situations.

Performance dates will be May 29-June 13.

Auditions will be at ICT Studio, 2333 Rochelle in Irving. Call for audition appointments, 972-594-6104.

The Garland Summer Musicals will hold auditions for The Sound of Music and Mame this Saturday and Sunday. Singer, dancers and actors are needed; both productions will be directed by Buff Shurr. Performers should prepare two songs (one upbeat, one ballad), and bring photos, resumes and sheet music in the correct key.

The Sound of Music will begin rehearsals May 18 and run June 14-21. Mame will begin rehearsals June 22 and run July 17-26.

For an appointment time, call 972-205-2790. All performers will receive stipends. Auditions will take place at the Granville Arts Center, 300 N. Fifth St. at Austin in downtown Garland.

If you've ever stared at a piece of modern art and been utterly perplexed, or thought, "Well, gee, I could come up with that," or, conversely, if you've ever bought or admired a piece of art that your friends just didn't understand, Art is the perfect show for you. Yasmina Reza's biting comedy (translated by Christopher Hampton), about three friends whose relationship is sorely tested when one spends $100,000 for a white-on-white painting (with bits of palest gray, we're assured, if you peer at it long enough), explores all sorts of touchy subjects, most explicitly the nature of art and friendship.

Circle Theatre's production, directed by Jaime Castañeda, gets the downward spiral of the men's friendship just right -- it quickly, hilariously, turns from gentle teasing into crisp viciousness, and the cast could hardly be better. David Fluitt has the showiest part as the volatile, mordantly witty Marc, whose disdain for Serge's (Paul Jung) purchase sets the, dare we say it, deconstruction of a long friendship in motion. But he's matched here by Jung's slow burn (when he finally lets loose, it's wicked funny), and Jakie Cabe, as the nebbishy Yvan, has a monologue about impending marriage that brings down the house.

Kudos also to Circle's beautifully redesigned lobby, all done in tones of black, red and gray in a sort of industrial chic that works perfectly in Circle's basement space off Fort Worth's Sundance Square. The "circle" theme is played up in artwork, fixtures, even the carpeting, to nice effect. For this show, however, I couldn't help wishing they'd festooned the walls with all-white art for the audience to ponder pre- and post-show.

The show runs through April 11. Tickets and more info available here.

For a full review of Art, check guidelive.com Monday afternoon.

Susan Sargeant, artistic director of WingSpan Theatre Company, is producing the staged reading of Angela Wilson's script-in-progress God Goliath for performances April 9 and 10. Here's what she said about her function in the process, from an email she sent today:

As the Producing Artistic Director for WingSpan Theatre Company, I have the pleasure of selecting the play that will be explored for a Staged Reading Workshop. My process with God Goliath, has been in collaboration with Angela and Beth. Beth and I both supply Angela with feedback for each draft. This particular process has been wonderful because Beth has been very hands-on with Angela. So Angela has received engaged input from both of us. However, the most vital part of my role is to serve as a filter and an objective eye. I look forward to receiving Draft #6. This draft is the one the actors will create from for the Staged Reading in April.

Ashley Wilkerson, so terrific in last summer's Coco & Gigi in the Festival of Independent Theatres, is going the festival route again. Her one-woman show, Freckle in My Eye, has three performances beginning Thursday, April 2, at 7:30 p.m.at Dallas Hub Theater's fringe festival. Check out the whole fringe schedule. There's a bewildering array of events.

Project X's entry in the Out of the Loop Fringe Festival, Some People, is transferring to the Green Zone for the next three weekends (now that the company's co-production of This Is our Youth has vacated the space). Thomas Riccio's script finds mystical happenings in a suburban house. The show runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through April 10. Tickets are $10. For details, call 214-421-2400. {The photo shows Brad Hennigan and Lori McCarty in the play.)

Beth Bontley, the Fort Worth actor-director who's working on Angela Wilson's new play God Goliath as director and dramaturg for a staged reading by WingSpan Theatre Company on April 9 and 10, sends word on how things are going:

Step 1 seems simple, 'read play.' But it is more like absorb play, breathe it in. Each new play I work with begs different questions from me. God Goliath is a play in development that is about 20 years old. It began while Angela was in grad school and has had several incarnations since. Sometimes in cases like this, the play is like a tree with many branches, but has lost a connection to its root.

Working with a playwright for the first time is quite delicate. One must sense the structure of the play, of course. And just as important, one must sense how the playwright likes to hear suggestions, comments and possible direction. My goal is to help the author find the truth of their story, rather than force my ideas on it. And this creating thing can be quite intense and quite fragile, a metaphoric gestation and delivery process.

For the rest of her thoughts, continue reading after the break.

This revival of Kurt Weill's musical based on the South African classic novel Cry the Beloved Country is a big deal. It's very rarely done. For details, read past the break.

WingSpan Theatre Company is doing a staged reading of local playwright Angela Wilson's play God Goliath on April 9 & 10. I just got an email from Angela telling me how excited she is over the top-flight actors who are doing the show. The co-founder of Theatre Quorum, Angela has been working harder on writing screenplays than on stage pieces over the last couple of years. It's good to know she's back in theater mode again.

Susan Sargeant and Beth Bontley and I have been developing GOD GOLIATH to get it ready for the first actor rehearsal. First of all, did Susan tell you who the actors are? Ashley Wood, T.A. Taylor, Pam Dougherty, Cindy Beall and Carrie Slaughter. As if that isn't enough, Susan and Beth are unbelievable! I cannot tell you what they have contributed to the development of this piece. It has been enough to get me excited about playwriting again, about theater again. I am stoked.

Having said that, GG is a HUGE play. It is going to take a big theater to produce it for the first time- which is partly why I sat on it for years. Theatre Quorum could have never produced it and can't do it now. I am really hoping that the play will be ready for production after this workshop and staged reading. We'll see, of course, but the possibility seems to be closer than ever.

Check back here for updates on God Goliath.

For the first time in its 10-year history, the Column Awards took place in Irving in Carpenter Hall at the Irving Arts Center. The hall was packed Monday evening for the four-hour-plus theater awards show which recognizes talent in 57 categories. Special guest this year was Tony-award winning actress Cady Huffman, who performed her signature number from The Producers. She also helped present the awards for best play and best musical.
Irving's ICT MainStage theater company snagged the most awards for one play--its musical Nine, which won 10 awards including best musical, non-equity, as well as best musical actor non-equity for Donald Fowler, best musical actress non-equity for Sara Shelby-Martin, best musical director non-equity for Michael Serrechia.
Dallas Theater Center snagged several awards for its production of The Who's Tommy, including best musical director equity for Kevin Moriarty, best musical supporting actor equity for Gregory Lush and best musical actor equity for Cedric Neal.
While regular co-host Michael Urie of Ugly Betty fame couldn't make it this year due to taping his popular show, he sent video messages. Paul Williams stepped in to host along with column award founder John Garcia, who was bedecked in a black tuxedo and glitter.
He thanked supporters for attending and also expressed appreciation to Mayor Tom Leppert who sent a proclamation naming the day "The Column Awards" Day.
After the show, guests enjoyed a white and silver 10-year anniversary cake. For more news, visit www.thecolumnonline.com.

The Trinity Shakespeare Festival at Texas Christian University will begin on June 9 and 10 with performances of Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night. The younger roles -- crucial in these plays, of course -- will be played by students. But a healthy ensemble of professional actors has also been hired. Emily Gray, for instance, will play Juliet's nurse. (When she and her husband Matthew ran Classical Acting Company, he played the role in drag. I wonder if they're the first husband-wife duo ever to tackle the part?)

The two shows will rotate in repertory in TCU's two main theater spaces. (Many of the actors are in both shows, so obviously they won't both be up the same nights.) Performances run through June 29. Other top local performers who'll be onstage are David Coffee, Brent Alford, David Fluitt, Trisha Miller Smith, Bryan Pitts and Jeff Schmidt.

Echo Theatre's production of the Nibroc Trilogy, a hit at the Bath House Cultural Center, will be transferring to Theatre Three's basement May 7-30. Jac Alder cited this as an example of the collegiality of Dallas' theater community at the meeting about the future of the Kalita Humphreys last week. And I had also heard talk of the transfer from its male star, Ian Sinclair -- the busiest male actor in Dallas these days. Sinclair has to finish his run in Undermain Theatre's The Black Monk before he can move back to Nibroc.

Stacy Keach, who's starring in the stage tour of Frost/Nixon set to open at the Majestic Theatre here in about six weeks, was hospitalized after a mild stroke in Los Angeles yesterday. His understudy (who also stood by for Frank Langella on Broadway) went on for him. Let's hope that he gets back on his feet soon -- I'm not sure they'd continue the tour without at least this much star power.

The co-production of Tracey Scott Wilson's The Good Negro that the Dallas Theater Center debuted last fall had its New York premiere at the Public Theater last night. It got a favorable review from The New York Times, too. Note that the actor playing the role based on Martin Luther King, Jr. has changed. I thought the fine Billy Eugene Jones was wrong for it; Curtis McClarin is doing it at the Public.(Photo of Rachel Nicks and Curtis McClarin by Joan Marcus)

The Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs is developing a new master plan for the future of the Kalita Humphreys Theater, home of the Dallas Theater Center for the last 50 years. A team of a dozen distinguished consultants has been studying the history of the building (designed by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright, arguably the most famous architect in history). Now they're seeking input from arts groups and the public at large. I went to the Tuesday meeting at the South Dallas Cultural Center. There's another, open to everybody, at the Latino Cultural Center at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.

With the DTC moving to the Wyly Theatre in the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, the fate of the historical building is up in the air. The city wants to exploit (in a good way) the historical and aesthetic heritage -- without turning it into a mere museum. Theatre Three's Jac Alder spoke out eloquently at the Tuesday meeting for the need to have the needs of potential arts users uppermost in mind. Architect Ann Abernathy of Booziotis & Company, the architects who are the primary consultants, clearly wants to make sure Wright's intentions are to the fore. It's an interesting balance to be worked up.

The one thing I spoke up about was my own ambivalence about the new lobby space and south entrance added about 20 years ago. It's handsome in its own way and much improves the building's comfort and usability. But every time I enter the door, I'm struck by how un-Frank Lloyd Wright the addition is. (Wright loved narrow, cramped spaces like the original lobby.) I'm glad the decision about how to resolve that issue isn't in my hands: I have no idea what I'd do.

The last two shows I saw at this year's Out of the Loop Festival both happened in the Studio Theatre. Director Jocelyn Wiebe did what she could with [sic], but the piece about three artistic wannabees in adjoining walkup flats is flimsy stuff. (The gay guy's got a hopeless crush on the straight guy, the straight guy's got a hopeless crush on the gal; they all feel betrayed by the gay guy's ex. Boring.)

For me, though, the festival ended with a bang -- a buzz created by Theatre Britain's Vincent River. Philip Ridley's script is quite a bit more conventional than the two that Kitchen Dog Theater produced...there's even a danger of falling into preachy sentimentality. Fundamentally, though, this play about two strangers mourning the same person is sound -- and director Robin Armstrong put together a heck of a production (which was also graced by the best designs seen in this year's Out of the Loop).

Theatre Britain founder Sue Roberts-Birch is always on the lookout for British dramas with great roles for women of a certain age, and she found one in Vincent River. She plays Anita, the mother of the title character who was recently killed in a gay bashing. She has changed neighborhoods to get away from the gossip, but has noticed Davey (James Chandler) following her. Turns out Davey found Vincent's body. We soon realize that Davey is far more distraught than the facts should indicate. Eventually both characters painfully (and virtuosically) tell their stories. The play ends on an indecisevely weak note, but it's a great ride -- one of the highlights of the 11-day festival, for sure.

Be on the lookout in Tuesday's Dallas Morning News for my final thoughts on this year's Out of the Loop.

The snippety attitude Variety took when it discovered this week that Baylor University was sending performers to New York (in a show that originated at WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Festival last year) says a lot about contemporary American theater, maybe contemporary American culture in general. (Hey, group prejudices existed even in biblical times. Remember the line to the effect "What good thing could ever come out of Nazareth?'

The really interesting thing is that Baylor seems to be turning out theater artists that take religion very seriously without failing to be cool. In the past, Second Stage Theatre has brought to Out of the Loop some extremely well-written plays by Steven Walters that dealt with issues of faith. And just now I saw a new play by Baylor grad Clay Wheeler (now on staff at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut) that is even more specifically religious in nature.

In Wheeler's Holy Mother of God, best friends Cal (Sky Bennett) and Thommy (Matthew Clark) are both aspiring writers working in a New York coffee shop. We learn that a tragedy they shared affected them in differerent ways. Cal has become closed on and lost his faith, while Thommy sees visions of the Blessed Mother. We see them too, in the person of actress Ginger Goldman (who seems to be making a career lately of playing cool visitors from heaven). Cassie Bann plays Cal's girlfriend, a literary agent.

Amber Jackson, a Baylor MFA candidate, directed the show for Rite of Passage Theatre Company. (The program doesn't make clear whether this is a new entity or has been in existence in Waco.) The playing is amusing and even touching -- not a script that's ready for the big time yet, but extremely promising and unique in its attitudes. The acting is very strong, though the two men seem a tad young in context.

It's interesting, too that these writers coming out of Baylor aren't necessarily Baptist. Holy Mother of God, as the title indicates without irony, deals with Catholics.

On the next-to-last day of WaterTower Theatre's 2009 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival, I got to two shows. SceneShop's The Interrogation of Vince Banyon turned out to be a weak script, weakly performed. Grayson Harper's world premiere script has one of those big-concept gimmicks that in this case makes no sense at all. It's little discredit to the actors that they didn't have us believing a minute of it.

After the dinner break, it was nice to come in out of the cold and catch Amy Stevenson's final cabaret set of the festival. She's singing better than ever, and she was gracing the folks in the lobby with some old favorites from Show Boat and Chicago. We were almost late to the 8 p.m. show because we lingered to congratulate her. (My wife's a huge fan, for one thing.)

The scuttlebutt about Diwa Theater Company's debut production, Cowboy versus Samurai, had been all negative. Just goes to show you shouldn't believe everything you hear. This new Asian-American company (which claims it might be the first ever in Texas) didn't come up with a polished product. But, thank goodness, it started out with a real, and actually amusing, play (by Michael Golamco) -- maybe not a masterpiece, but cleverly written and with attractive characters, perhaps on the level of one of the second-tier TV dramedies such as October Road.

Travis (Tung Tran) has moved to a little town in Wyoming because L.A. was getting on his nerves. His buddy Chester (Chester Gayao) is trying to be a militant Asian-American, but he's a little fuzzy on what to do because he's never been out of the town and he doesn't even know what country his parents adopted him from. The new teacher in town, Veronica (Monalisa Amidar), is a Korean New Yorker who only dates white guys, so -- a la Cyrano -- Travis writes love letters to her signed by his white cowboy pal, Del (Austin Rucker).

The actors' inexperience shows (espeically Gayao's and Rucker's). But each of the four actors is well cast in the role and gives intelligent and often funny line readings. Amidar directed the show herself, which only accentuates the performances' awkwardnesses. Still, I enjoyed this show more than many others in the festival this year.

Playwright Itamar Moses, whose "Back Back Back" is currently in previews at the Dallas Theater Center, told me during a lunchtime interview today that Michael Emerson was in the New York production of one of his first plays, "Bach at Leipzig." You know Emerson, of course, as the nefarious Ben on TV's "Lost."

"I thought, why isn't this guy more famous?" Moses said. "He's not only an amazing actor, but the nicest guy in the world. Actually, his character in my play was a little like the role he's playing now -- a mysterious but kind of lovable villain."

Stage West is holding its third annual Texas Playwriting Competition, with entries due April 15. My former colleague Tom Sime won the first and got a staged reading for his script. (He's had eight in recent weeks in New York, where he's now living -- more power to him!)

Details after the break.

Del Shores, the popular playwright-screenwriter whose Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Houseweife has been a hit for Uptown Players, is doing new his one-man show Del Shores the Storyteller at KD Studio Theatre on March 27.

"I wanted to try this out in Dallas first, because, frankly, I feel
safe and most loved there," Shores says.

Details after the break.

Plays about sports tempt writers into all kinds of strained metaphors, but here's a simple one: The Play about the Coach is a winner. WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival imported this production written and acted by Paden Fallis, a former Dallasite now living in New York, for the first of three performances on Thursday night. It's under the aegis of Rocketship Productions, a New York company devoted to new and under-produced scripts.

Not many local actgrs could be as convincing as Fallis in portraying a college basketball coach. The performer looks like a rare breed of eagle, his sharp eye taking in everything on the imaginary gym floor and his predatory mind looking for any advantage. The unnamed character is at the end of his rope -- barely hanging on to a slim lead against a rival with a much better record, getting cellphone calls from an unnamed party who seems to be an angry wife.

Fallis uncannily imitates every young-ish coach we've ever seen on TV, hiking up the inseam of his pants as he squats to take in the action, pumping a fist while making a quick lateral move himself, talking trash to the ref, the rival coach, his own players, whoever comes into his line of sight. You can almost smell the testosterone. The writing is unnecessarily arty at times (the soliloquies only confuse us, and the coach is implausibly fond of quoting Shakespeare). But the performance is powerful enough to make this one of the best shows in the current Out of the Loop.

American Actors Company, the Baylor University-based professional theater, took Craig Wright's The Unseen to New York's Cherry Lane Theatre this week. (The same production was one of the hits at last years Out of the Loop Festival at WaterTower Theatre, remember?) Variety gave it a very respectful review, but seemed a little nonplussed that a Baptist university does theater. No word yet from The New York Times.

Thomas Riccio's Some People, presented by Project X: Theatre, had the first of three performances in WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival this evening. At nearly 100 minutes, it's a substantial piece -- blending suburban satire and Jungian depth psychology. The very literary might think it a blend of Strindberg's Ghost Play with Mozart's The Magic Flute or Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage (with a smidgeon of Ionesco or Jean-Claude von Italie thrown in).

That is, the play features a middle-aged married couple succumbing to anomie in the suburbs. He sits watching TV or has altercations with the neighbors. She shops a lot and has conversations with both her hair products and an imaginary friend who lives a much more interesting life. Their teenage daughter worries that she's sprouting a tail. Eventually they discover that their Uncle Bill has been hiding in a closet for 18 years -- and that the navel of the world is right there in their own house.

The original electronic score and extensive video projections add a lot to the piece, though sometimes it seems very off the cuff, almost improvised. The theme of spiritual regeneration is quite hopeful, but it does leave us wondering -- if the navel of the world exists in all our houses, how do we find it and how do we use it to discver the secrets of the universe?

Flying Man Productions, a new company, gave the world premiere of Green as part of the 2009 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival. Only three performances were on the schedule, and I caught the last one on Monday. Brandon Smith's script embodies the same paranoid political fantasy -- the government destroying an invention that could have produced unlimited cheap energy -- that Davad Mamet executed more gracefully in The Water Engine decades ago. Smith's play has more surface plausibility, at the cost of a certain prosaic dullness.

Josh Blann directed and also played the patent office examiner. Beau Trujillo was excellent as the suspicious and secretive inventor. Jennifer Green didn't have much to work with as the inquisitive new girlfriend, and Ryan Mananlansan didn't really seem the outdoorsy type as the inventor's lawstudent sidekick. All in all, an honorable first outing, but not all that interesting a play.

American Idol winner Taylor Hicks is set to star in Grease when it comes to Casa Manana and Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth September 1-6.

Media types had a chance to meet new Dallas Center for the Performing Art pres/CEO Mark Nerenhausen Monday. Nerenhausen took over last week, after 11 years running the Brouward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Nerenhausen is a man of no few words. Did any single question elicit an answer less than five minutes long? As he admitted, being on the job only a week didn't prepare him for much in the way of specific answers. But that didn't stop him from philosophizing at length on things like "making the arts available." Prize statement: "Our job is to create desireable outcomes."

He did acknowledge that most new performing arts centers have run up deficits in their first years, but he said that's no different from startup businesses. He said there's a "three- to four-year cycle before a PAC really hits its stride."

He also said there are only about 30 performing arts complexes in the country, as opposed to one-off theaters, and only about 12 in the DCPA's league.

Along with the Starwars guy, the big out-of-town act this first weekend of WaterTower Theatre's 2009 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival was Seattle journalist (that's right) David Schmader. I missed his annotated presentation of the cult film Showgirls, but this afternoon I caught his one-man show Straight. Basically, he tells the story of research he did a few years back on the movement to convert gay people to the straight life. Schmader doesn't look or talk like an actor, though he's done a fair amount of performing over the years. Columnist Dan Savage and playwright Chay Yew worked with him to direct this 1999 piece.

Basically, Schmader went undercover to dig up dirt on a yoga-based psychologist and then on a religion-based retreat. He's clearly passionate, even furious, about the topic of gay identity. Yet he represents the people he encounters in these settings fairly, even with a certain amount of empathy. The most interesting part of the show is the growing interaction between Schmader and his macho but simpatico Texas dad.

Later I saw Fairytale Blues by Joshua Bridgewater and Mary Humphrey.(His group is called Ninety Eight Theatre Company, hers Marypearl International Productions.) It's a musical-within-a-musical-within-a-musical in which the characters all bear names from nursery rhymes. Basically Rosie Bo Pee (Kristina Franklin) wants to get out of her unpleasant urban environment and get to fame and fortune in Hollywood Hills. The show has a lot of promising moments that don't add up to much. Humphrey plays T. Wolf, and her big song about money is the show's highlight. But things dribble out at the end with a double monologue -- and no song at all in the last quarter of the piece.

An ad hoc group called Uncommon Ground (whose common ground has mostly been working for Uptown Players) put together a production of Jason Schafer's comedy I Google Myself for this year's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival at WaterTower Theatre. It's a funny play with an amusing premise: A guy googles his own name (which we never learn) and finds the top 37 hits refer to a gay porn star renowned for dishing out a bit of sadism. Turns out the inspiration for the persona (and the name) came from a junior high bully with the moniker. We meet him, too. Eventually all three attain so much notoriety they're on a TV talk show together.

The play has something to say, along with all the sadomasochistic jokes. The audience at Sunday's matinee clearly loved the broad-as-the-Missisippi performance, but I thought director Bruce R. Coleman should have pulled way back on Kevin Moore as the chief googler. Moore is actually a fine actor and can be subtle when he wants to. Here, though, he's a cartoon (at least until the final scene). His cast mates, Chad Peterson as the porn star and Joel McDonald as the bully, are far more nuanced but equally comical.

In a week of notable theater, perhaps the most moving thing I've seen was at Addison' Stone Cottage Theatre today in WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival. An ad hoc group calling itself Mad Mamas produced Last Lists of My Mad Mother. In Julie Jensen's script, Pam Dougherty plays a middle-aged writer taking care of her mother (Jeanne Evans), who suffers from increasingly advanced Alzheimer's. Lisa Fairchild plays the out-of-town sister, very free with her advance but not so forthcoming with the help. Kerry Cole directed.

I've been a fan of Pam's for nearly 30 years. No one in town does realistic American drama better. She's wonderful here, but matched every step of the way by her acting partners. Evans did this show more than a decade ago in Edinburgh, Scotland, and it's a shame we've had to wait so long to see her performance here at home. Her portrait of frailty, stubbornness, vacancy and finally elation is a masterpiece -- sometimes hard to watch, but always true and always touching.

In its first seasons, WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival featured several established local theater companies -- like a winter version of the Festival of Independent Theatres. Those smaller companies sometimes found OTL frustrating because it generally offered fewer performances than its summer counterpart. So gradually the festival offerered fewer and fewer such productions, concentrating more on guest acts from out of town and one-person shows.

This year only a couple of established Dallas companies are appearing in OTL. Second Thought Theatre, which is a guest compan y at WaterTower year-round, is doing James McClure's Pvt. Wars, originally the companion piece to the SMU-trained playwright's Lone Star. T.A. Taylor (whose son Christian is one of the three actors in the show) tells me his wife, Giva, designed the costumes for the original New York production many years ago. For my impressions of the Second Thought version, read on past the break.

On Thursday I saw the One Man Star Wars Trilogy, one of three simultaneous performances opening WaterTower Theatre's 2009 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival. It was fun, as you can see from my review -- you have only till Sunday to see it.

But there's much, much more to come. I had to go to Kitchen Dog Theater to see Psychos Never Dream tonight, but over the weekiend I'll be seeing five more shows at the Loop and blogging about them. Over the course of the next nine days I'm hoping to make it to 14 entries in the festival...not quite everything, but as close as one person can come (while seeing three other shows opening in Dallas during the same week).

Check here for updates. Festival can be found on the WaterTower website.

The Dallas Opera had a nice box lunch for a few of us media types Friday with Jake Heggie, composer of the "Moby Dick" opera that Dallas will premiere in April 2010. Tenor Ben Heppner will star as Captain Ahab.

Herman Melville's hefty novel might seem a challenge to reduce to a three-hour opera. And Heggie, who has already turned Sister Helen Prejean's "Dead Man Walking" and Graeme Greene's "The End of the Affair" into operas, admitted, "We have to cut like crazy." But ultimately, he said the novel is about "one man's obsession with wanting to control the universe."

The idea for a "Moby Dick" opera originated with playwright Terrence McNally, the librettist for "Dead Man Walking." But when a second bout of lung cancer sidelined McNally, he yielded the project to Gene Scheer, librettist for "The End of the Affair" and a newer collaboration, "Three Decembers." Heggie and Scheer have also been working with dramaturg Leonard F