From Turnstyle.com and the Fusebox Festival, with a tip of the hat to Travis Bedard:

The Writer's Room Audio Project

(a sample: Robert Faires)

Robert Faires on writing

Robert Faires on the Fortress of Solitude (and a clue why his Twitter image is that of George Reeves in the 1950's b&w television series Superman)

(interviewer: Jill Meyers, editor of  American Short Fiction)

Robert Faires on home

(interviewer: Deepa Donde, independent producer of the project)

This podcast features writer Robert Faires, talking about his creative space. Faires is the Arts Editor for The Austin Chronicle and has been active in the city's theatre scene as a writer, actor, and director since 1980.

It's part of a series spun out of Fusebox Festival's The Writer's Room, A Home Studio Tour curated by Elizabeth Doss and Annie La Ganga.  [Click HERE to go to the Fusebox Festival web page with links to interviews with additional Austin writers (Amparo Garcia-Crow, Annie La Ganga, Bill Cotter, Wayne Alan Brenner, Katherine Catmull).]

Producer Deepa Donde in association with American Short Fiction gathered writers into a studio for this series. Donde got a preview of the walking tour, and shares these thoughts about Robert Faires' space.

"Behind the hustle and bustle of Austin's SoCo district are the homes of humble writers, chefs, musicians, and filmmakers. On that sunny Sunday afternoon, Robert welcomed us into his home, with the kind of Texan hospitality befitting one of the city's most prolific writers.

"The splendid display of comic books suspends you into this speeding time capsule of a time that can still live today. Superman, DC Comics, Teen Titans, Lost Annual Next Wave Agents, Thor the Mighty Avenger, and The Green Lantern (one of my absolute secret crushes as a young teenage girl). It was obvious to take note, the specifically placed figurines, an army of supermans, wonderwomans (I always take note of how many in a man's collection - it speaks volumes of his character - and he has a dazzling number.), In the spaces between those boyhood moments, there are glimpses into the man Robert is. The books of Tolkein, Tom Stoppard, Michael Chabon, the Keith Jarret album. Stephen Sondheim's Finishing the Hat & a beautiful book on Frank Llyod Wright. But what astounds us writers is his own comic drawings - his hand drawn replica of a comic book that he bought when he was 9. When comic books only cost 12 cents. And as he points proudly to a replica of the Daily Planet, where for a moment, I imagine that this mild-mannered reporter who works for a newspaper of a mid-sized city, could bear resemblance to Clark Kent. This intimate beautiful journey into Robert's home reveals a writer's transformation from the inspired place of a young boy to the man he has become today. And if you are lucky, there might be a chance to find out, like I did, that the really best martini in Austin is one made by a master like him."

The Writer's Room, A Home Studio Tour was part of the 2012 Fusebox Festival in Austin, Texas. Originally published on Turnstylenews.com, a digital information service surfacing emerging stories in news, entertainment, art and culture; powered by award-winning journalists.

announces its 2012-2013 season:

You Can’t Take It With You

by George Kaufman and Moss Hart

November - December 2012

The Vortex, 2307 Manor Rd

Director-Mick Darcy

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this comedy introduces us to the Sycamores, a family that delights in eccentricity.  They may seem mad, but they show us that those who pursue convention for its own sake and who need to conform to society’s conventions are the maddest of us all.  This play about living life to the fullest, following your own dreams, and daring to be unconventional has been a perennial since its debut in 1936.

Quills

by Douglas Wright

January 2013,

City Theater, 3823 Airport, Suite D

Director-Norman Blumensaadt

Sex. Perversion. Violence.  These are the themes of the tales that drip from the ink-laden quills of the notoriously irreverent Marquis de Sade in this Obie Award winning play. Confined to the Charneton Asylum for the Insane for the outlandish escapades he’d committed during the Napoleonic Era, the Marquis continues to pen his stories to the delight of the young seamstress, Madeleine, and to the scorn of Charenton’s devout Abbe DuCoulmeir.  When the Abbe attempts to silence the Marquis by taking his quills, his ink, and his paper, something intriguing occurs: the Marquis still finds a way to voice his scandalous yarns.  As the Abbe’s religious devotion clashes with the Marquis’s dedication to freedom of expression, the audience is treated to a tale of wit, irony, blasphemy, philosophy, and the struggle for power told partly as a blend of comedy of manners and Grand Guignol with a dash of grotesque exaggeration and a soupcon of gore.

Good People

by David Lindsay-Abaire

April – May; City Theate

3823 Airport, Suite D

Director-Karen Jambon

With humor and pathos, Good People, explores the struggles, shifting loyalties, and unshakeable hopes that come with having next to nothing in America.  Set in Boston’s Southie neighborhood, where a night on the town means a rousing night of bingo, where this month’s paycheck barely covers last month’s bills, we meet Margaret Walsh.  Margaret has lost her job, is facing eviction, and scrambling to catch a break.  When she re-acquaints with a friend from the old neighborhood, someone who is now a very successful doctor, she attempts to use their childhood acquaintance as a ticket to turning her life around.  Good People is tough and tender and explores the tension of class in America.  Pending availability of performance rights.

Child’s Play

by  Robert Marasco

June – July

The Vortex,  2307 Manor Rd

Director-Bob Tolaro

Something is amiss in a Catholic boys’ boarding school.  The students have become sinister, furtive, and conspiratorial as they steal up and down staircases after hours.  The menace erupts in savagery as the students torture one of their members and then another and then….  What is the disease that has settled in their souls?  Who is torturing the crotchety classics professor by sending obscene photographs to his dying mother?  And why? - The answer is hate in its devilish forms of pride, envy, and jealousy- a hate so perverse that is has infested the students and the staff.  The New York Times called this play “a powerful melodrama the will thrill audiences for a long time to come.” Pending availability of performance rights.

ALL PLAYS, LOCATIONS AND DATES SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

Via Deborah Martin of the San Antonio Express-News and www.mysanantonio.com:

‘In the Heights,’ ‘Frost/Nixon’ slated for Woodlawn

Greg Hinojosa’s first full season at the helm of the Woodlawn Theatre includes such big-buzz titles as “In the Heights,” “The Producers” and “Frost/Nixon.”

The theater’s season runs on a calendar year, so all of these shows run in 2013.

Here are the dates for the main stage: “The Producers,” Feb. 15-March 17; “The Full Monty,” April 5-May 5; “In the Heights,” May 24-June 23; and “Reefer Madness,” Oct. 3-Nov. 2.

The August and December shows are TBA.

In the neighboring black box, the season holds: “Bug,” Jan. 11-Feb. 3; “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,” March 15-April 17; “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” May 10-26; “Night, Mother,” July 5-21; “Frost/Nixon,” Sept. 6-29.

In addition, the theater will present at staging of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in the black box; those dates are also TBA.

Next up at the theater: “The Pillowman,” opening June 14 in the black box; and “Next to Normal,” opening on the main stage June 29.

from

Dougherty Arts Center demolition inevitable: Austin may not fund a new facility

05.16.12 | 07:30 am

The Dougherty Arts Center (better known as "The DAC") could be the next Austin landmark to face the wrecking ball. And it's going to happen sooner, rather than later.

What is not yet clear is whether the city will support rebuilding the popular hub, either at its current location — a long shot due to serious environmental problems — or somewhere else, taking a decades-old resource out of central Austin.

The DAC is just on the 78704 side of Lady Bird Lake, on Barton Springs road between the old Union Pacific railroad tracks and the new Palmer Events Center. Originally built as a U.S. Marine Corps and Navy Reserve facility back in the 1940s, the building is like thousands of other prefabricated, metal boxes built for the military immediately following WWII — cramped and not especially attractive.

But after the city took it over in 1978, the surrounding community made the most of the space, naming it for philanthropist and former Junior League of Austin president Mary Ireland Graves Dougherty and augmenting the old training center with studio and gallery space.

Just a few years after the abandoned National Guard armory down the street was reborn as the Armadillo World Headquarters, the postwar Naval Reserve building became a 26,200 square-foot community arts center with a 150-seat auditorium where the drill hall used to be.

If someone made a list of every class, performance, camp and concert that has taken place here over the years, it wouldn't fit into one of the tiny upstairs offices.

But the Dougherty Arts Center's fatal flaws aren't about the cramped quarters; they're about safety.

A 2009 State of the Environment study produced by the City of Austin reported there are more than 70 known abandoned landfills in and around the city.

One of them is directly under the Dougherty Arts Center.

Read more at www.austin.culturemap.com . . . .

Now available for Gilbert & Sullivan students and fans:

Papers, Presentations and Patter: A Savoyards’ Symposium

Papers Presented at the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, June 27–28, 2011
Edited and with an Introduction by Ralph MacPhail, Jr.
York, Pennsylvania, 2012

Gilbert and Gilbert & Sullivan

Ian Bradley

Was Gilbert a Little Liberal or a Little Conservative?"

Carolyn Williams
The Masculine Woman and the Feminine Man: Gender Parody in the Savoy Operas

Shane Kingston Magargal
A Greek Remark: The Savoy Operas Viewed through an Aristotelian Lens

Harry Benford
Components of Gilbert’s Genius

Andrew Vorder Bruegge
A Dull Enigma: Historians’ Analysis of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Impact on the Development of the American Musical Theatre

Sullivan, Gilbert, Gilbert & Sullivan— and A Soupçon of Cellier

John E. Dreslin

The Humor of the Operas: it's Not All in the Words

Elise Curran
Gilbert’s Girls: Comes a Train of Little Ladies

Sylvan H. Kesilman
The Principal Comic Roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan Operas

J. Donald Smith
The Writing and Composition of The Mountebanks: The Evidence of theAutograph Score, the Vocal Scores and the Early Librettos

Wisdom from the East and from the West

Thomas Drucker

Cheerful Facts about Matters Mathematical

Al Grand

Think British—Sing Yiddish!

Daniel Kravetz

Interfering in Politics: The Reality of Iolanthe

Marc Shepherd

The Curious Case of “Little Maid of Arcadee”
William Hyder

Shakespeare in the Park is seeking amale actor age 19 - 25 to take on two roles (the Duke and Balthasar) in upcoming production of The Comedy of Errors.

A new theater endeavor by Chelsea Bunn, this production will take place in Ramsey Park and be free and open to the public. Performance dates are June 22,23,24,29,30 and July 1st.

Rehearsals have already begun so time is of the essence! Interested parties should email a head shot and resume to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , along with their availability, to schedule an audition. This production will have improvisational tones so actors should be comfortable playing!

City Theatre, Austin holds auditions for She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith on May 16, 8:45 - 10  p.m.  and May 19, 10 - 1 p.m. Ten minute slots by appointment. The theatre is located at 3823 Airport Blvd. Suite D (click for map).

Call 512-524-2870 or contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to set up an appointment. Bring headshot, resume, and a one-minute prepared monologue.  Scenes may also be performed.  Show dates:  July 19 – August 12 with rehearsals starting at the end of May.

One of the great, generous-hearted and ingenious comedies of the English language, Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer offers a celebration of chaos, courtship and the dysfunctional family.  Hardcastle, a man of substance, looks forward to acquainting his daughter with his old pal’s son with a view to marriage. But thanks to playboy Lumpkin, he’s mistaken by his prospective son in-law Marlow for an innkeeper, his daughter for the local barmaid. The good news is, while Marlow can barely speak to a woman of quality he’s a charmer with those of a different stamp. And so, as Hardcastle’s indignation intensifies, Miss Hardcastle’s appreciation for her misguided suitor soars. Misdemeanours multiply, love blossoms, mayhem ensues.

Links to check out:  http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/68378/productions/she-stoops-to-conquer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She_Stoops_to_Conquer

by Dr. David Glen Robinson

The Up Collective is in one of my favorite places, in East Austin, specifically at 2326 E. Cesar Chavez St.  The name is easy to get—one has to walk upstairs to a second floor gallery where the play is performed.  The art on the walls is really, seriously good and is priced like it, too. Palindrome Theatre's set is simple, designed for mobility.  It has two standing door frames with no doors, a table and two chairs, a filing cabinet and two revolving set pieces representing windows.  On one side of each of the painted windows there is a city dayscape; on the other side, a nightscape.  Palindrome plans to travel The Accidental Death of an Anarchist to several indoor and outdoor locations, and the set by George Marsolek is well adapted to that plan.

The Accidental Death of an Anarchist is a famous farce by Dario Fo.  The play is based on terroristic events and police corruption.  The work is fictional, but it updates itself in every new production with references to contemporary events.  The play premiered in Italy in 1970, found immediate popularity, and toured widely in Italy to play before millions of theatergoers.  International productions kicked off in the 1980's.  The Wikipedia article lists successful major productions in the UK, United States, Sri Lanka, India and China.  As the world moved into the 21^st century, the play caught on in Pakistan and Australia and saw more productions in Britain and the United States.  This thing has legs.

Dario Fo is the ultimate Internationalist gadfly, set on this career early in life when he was drafted by Mussolini’s fascist army late in World War II.  He soon deserted and, with his family, worked for the Resistance helping Allied soldiers escape the fascist forces.  Can there be any doubt that these were his formative experiences, which taught him the language of defiance?  He articulated this defiance and all that goes with it in his play writing and career in theatrical production, still going on today.  The response to his work was near-uniform condemnation, criticism and outright suppression by governments, churches and mosques around the world.  What was the outcome of the hostility of officialdom? In 1997, Fo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his body of work.

Fo’s theatrical efforts have always been informed by early Renaissance Commedia dell’ Arte.  The traditional presenters of the commedia performed as costumed characters in the streets, and they quickly discovered that their biggest laughs came from fart jokes (and other bawdiness) told about dukes, bishops, kings and popes.  Hence Fo’s devotion to farce, improvisation, and references to government abuses.  Fo encourages producers of his plays to add local references and to rewrite dialogues as commentary on contemporary issues.  Give Austin’s small but active Commedia dell’ Arte community, Palindrome Theatre’s opening of a Fo play should find an informed and receptive audience.

Austin-based photographer Kirk R. Tuck writes and illustrates an article at his blog The Visual Science Lab about capturing an epic moment in the Zach Theatre's March-May 2012 production of The Laramie Project by Moisés and the Tectonic Theatre Project:

An interesting job with mixed light sources. On the stage.

by Kirk R. Tuck at The Visual Science Lab, May 12, 2012

Austin Live Theatre's backstage visit with director Bob Beare and the cast:

Blood Brothers

by Willy Russell

directed by Bob Beare

free admission; reservations at (512) 402-3086; donations gratefully accepted

Written by award-winning author Willy Russell, the plot of Blood Brothers revolves around the story of two twin brothers separated at birth. One brother, Eddie, was adopted by wealthy parents and lives an affluent life with endless opportunities. The other brother, Mickey, not blessed with similar circumstances, is raised in poverty by his birth mother. The tale spans more than 20 years of the boys’ lives and finds Eddie going to prestigious University of Oxford, while Mickey turns to a life of crime and ultimately prison. While trying to overcome the social divide, the boys both fall in love with the same girl. This proves to be too much, splits their relationship, and leads to tragedy.