Lowell Bartholomee News

There's just one month left to vote for the 2018 BroadwayWorld Austin Awards, brought to you by BroadwayHD! Readers are already setting records as they vote for their favorites. Regional productions, touring shows, and more are all included in the awards, honoring productions which opened between October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018. Our local editors set the categories, our readers submitted their nominees, and now you get to vote for your favorites! Voting will continue through December 31st, 2018.

There's just one month left to vote for the 2018 BroadwayWorld Austin Awards, brought to you by BroadwayHD! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers are already setting records as they vote for their favorites. Regional productions, touring shows, and more are all included in the awards, honoring productions which opened between October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018. Our local editors set the categories, our readers submitted their nominees, and now you get to vote for your favorites! Voting will continue through December 31st, 2018.

SOME HUMANS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS SHOW is a difficult show to describe as it is all over the map...and that is in no way a bad thing. This new work, by C.B. Goodman, was inspired by the 1903 public execution of Topsy, the elephant, and although there are clear echoes from the beginning, the inspiration never really becomes clear until the final moments, yet it never telegraphs the surprise ending, which takes a huge turn from the riotous belly laughs of the great majority of this highly entertaining and though provoking production.

'The rest of the world might be going to hell, but stories are better than ever,' says Sandy (Tom Green), the boss and leader of the think tank in THE ANTIPODES, the newest play from Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Baker currently on stage at Hyde Park Theatre in what is the second production of this fascinating new work. Hyde Park has a history of producing her plays, most recently having staged both John and The Flick. In THE ANTIPODES, Baker examines the very nature of story telling and also has some fun with the concept of time and how it is perceived. It is also interesting to note that the definition of antipodes is 'the opposite'. Baker, in the very construct of the play, is giving us the opposite of traditional plot structure. Sandy reveals a great deal of what Baker is attempting to accomplish in his early remarks to the group: 'If you think about the greatest thinkers in world history: Jesus, Socrates, Confucius; None of those guys recorded anything or wrote anything down. And what we know about them we know through other people telling stories about their stories. Could we go back to the beginning? Could we remake our collective unconscious?'

LUCKY STIFF is a musical farce with lyrics and libretto by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty, that is notable historically for several things. To begin with, It was the first collaboration for the team whose later collaborations include Ragtime and Once On This Island. It was created and performed at Playwrights Horizons off-Broadway in 1988, and won the Richard Rodgers Award for that year. LUCKY STIFF is based on a 1983 novel The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo by Michael Butterworth. It received a full production in London's West End in 1997 but, to date, has never had a Broadway production. In 2015, a film version was created but it has only been seen at film festivals.

SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS is a new play from Drama Desk Award-winner Bess Wohl that looks at how we address life's biggest questions when you can't use words. Under the watchful eye of their unseen guru, six people (who are about as different from each other as one can get) have gathered for a week-long retreat in the woods. What makes this retreat unusual is the fact that it is a silent retreat. In the process of listening to their spiritual leader, they discover that silence is not only golden, but also more than a little passive-aggressive. As they confront their inner demons, they find their vows of silence colliding with the basic human need to connect. Rules have been laid out (including no cellphone use except in cars with the windows rolled up, no candles or incense, no food in the rooms), but over the course of the retreat, every rule gets broken. In the quiet of the woods, they attempt to abandon technology and observe their vow of silence. There are some remarkable moments of tenderness in this play, but SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS is also a wickedly satiric look at this comodified inner peace industry where nirvana is just a guru, mantra or self-help book away.

GROUNDED is a 2012 drama from George Brant that won the National New Play Network's 2012 Smith Prize and the Fringe First award at the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Street Corner Arts production of the play is the first time his work has been done in Austin since he graduated with an MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. George Brant's play was one of the earliest theatrical explorations of this unnerving new form of war.

Austin Shakespeare will transform the Beverly S. Sheffield Zilker Hillside Theater into the world of a classic '50s sitcom for their Free Shakespeare in the Park production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Produced in collaboration with the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department for the 34th year, Shakespeare's famous comedy will be performed under the stars from May 3 - May 27 on Thursdays - Sundays at 8 pm, with a preview performance on Wednesday, May 2. Co-directed by artistic director Ann Ciccolella and Gwendolyn Kelso, this year's play will be a nostalgic tribute to shows like "I Love Lucy."

Theatre East is pleased to announce the five playwrights selected for the 2017-2018 5x5 Drama Series. BOB'S BIRTHDAY by Lowell Bartholomee, JUMPING UP AND DOWN HAPPY TOWN by Lori Fischer, OH, DANNY BOY by Edward Allan Baker, WE THREE by Julia Rae Maldonado, and FAINT TASTE OF CAT FOOD AND SOUR MILK by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich.

'Is it now? I thought I had more time.' So begins Will Eno's new play WAKEY WAKEY, currently receiving a regional premiere production at Hyde Park Theatre. It is, in fact, only the second production of Eno's new work. These first words are spoken by Guy (Ken Webster), a man who is coming to terms with the knowledge that his time here on Earth is extremely limited. He is about to die. In a profoundly moving and luminously human meditation, Guy proceeds to utterly shatter the fourth wall in order to engage the audience in questioning why we are here and examining the various paths we take only to all arrive at the same place when all is said and done. WAKEY WAKEY is a subtly sublime examination of what, in the human experience, is actually worth celebrating and treasuring; and it does it while maintaining a decidedly dark, yet humorous tone. While this may sound like a depressing subject, Guy reminds us that 'We're not here to mope, right? We're here to listen to music and drink some grape juice, maybe get a free T-shirt. We're here to say goodbye, of course - there's always someone or something to say goodbye to, and it's important to honor the people whose shoulders we stood upon and fell asleep against.'

Yale Repertory Theatre presents the world premiere of FIELD GUIDE created by Rude Mechs, inspired by the novel The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, January 26 February 17, at Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street). Opening Night is Thursday, February 1.

Shakespeare's HENRY IV (Part 1) is easily the most entertaining of his history plays and Hidden Room pulls out all the stops to wring every moment of excitement from the story. Director Beth Burns, using a script cut by American Shakespeare Center's Dr. Ralph Alan Cohen, presents a stellar cast at the top of their game to the utter delight of every audience member.

Set in a drug study lab at Rauschen Pharmaceuticals, where volunteers are taking the experimental antidepressant RLU37; THE EFFECT, a new play by Lucy Prebble, examines two couples and the effects this new drug has on them. The play is not only a powerful and darkly funny indictment of Big Pharma, this ultimately deeply moving play examines such topics as sanity and neurology while also looking into such ideas as fate, and touching on the inevitability of physical attraction in a closed environment. The final question you are left with is who is really in charge of your destiny. Is it you or is it your brain? Prebble has written a very intelligent play that manages quite successfully to walk the thin line between comic and tragic. She is looking squarely at the question of what makes us who we are. This is black comedy of the highest order which requires skilled performers and a skilled director to pull off successfully. Happily, this production has those necessities in spades.

One of the most popular and longest running performance events in the country, FronteraFest, returns for its 24th year.

One of the most popular and longest running performance events in the country, FronteraFest, returns for its 24th year. A collaboration between Hyde Park Theatre and ScriptWorks, the Fest runs from January 17th through February 18th (Short Fringe, featuring pieces 25 minutes or less) at Hyde Park Theatre, 511 West 43rd Street,  (B.Y.O.V., Bring Your Own Venue) January 25th - February 5th, held at multiple locations and Mi Casa es Su Teatro for one day only on February 11th primarily in private homes (see website to purchase tickets, view full schedule and location details www.hydeparktheatre.org). The Long Fringe, which traditionally hosted pieces over 45 minutes has been canceled for the first time, due to the theatrical venue crisis in Austin. 

FAHRENHEIT 451 is a play based on the 1953 dystopian novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury. The novel is regarded as one of his best works. It presents a future society where books are outlawed and 'firemen' burn any that are found. The title comes from the temperature at which paper becomes combustible. There was a 1966 film adaptation of the novel and Bradbury himself developed it into this play in the late 70s. Bradbury has stated that he wrote it to address his concerns about the McCarthy era and the threat of book burning. In later years, he stated it was a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature. The story is set in an unspecified city at an unspecified time in the future somewhere after the year 1960.

SONG ABOUT HIMSELF is Mickle Maher's latest play which is set in a dystopian future where viruses and malware have effectively destroyed the Internet. The populace had been so obsessed with social media that this destruction has left a world of people who communicate in little more than mumbles and broken descriptions of emojis. This fascinating piece would work quite perfectly as an episode of Black Mirror in that it is a look at a technical future gone horribly awry. It also is a clever use of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, widely considered to be the first 'Poem of Chaos'. The world of Maher's play is clearly a world in chaos, and identity is a central theme of both works. SONG ABOUT HIMSELF uses extremely minimalist staging and Maher has created an original language that is part broken description of social media actions and part corruption of Walt Whitman's poetry. While familiarity with Whitman will enrich your experience, it is in no way necessary to the experience.

Austin Shakespeare is kicking off the 2016-2017 season with a staged reading of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (Part I only), running September 22 - 25, 2016 at the Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center for the Performing Arts. Mantel's best-selling novel, which was adapted for stage by Michael Poulton, is a thrilling reimagining of life under Henry VIII with an unlikely hero at the center, Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith who rose to become one of the most powerful men in England. After a sold-out Broadway run and rave reviews, Austin Shakespeare is thrilled to produce the Southwest premiere of Wolf Hall with a fully costumed staged reading directed by Artistic Director Ann Ciccolella.

This week, we go around our Broadway World to feature stories in South Bend, Austin, Sacramento and more. Check out our top 10 stories around our Broadway World below, which include THE TEMPEST at The Shakespeare Festival at Notre Dame, the regional premiere of HAND TO GOD in Austin, and THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME in Sacramento, just to name a few.

HAND TO GOD is a fiendishly funny black comedy about the divided human soul written by Robert Askins. It was originally produced Off-Broadway in 2011 and 2014 and made it's Broadway debut in 2015, receiving five Tony Award nominations, including for Best New Play. Described by Askins as an 'irreverent puppet comedy...about a possessed Christian-ministry puppet,' the play takes it's title comes from a Southern expression about honesty. Capital T is currently presenting the regional premiere of the play in a production that is as good as theatre gets.