Results tagged “hydeparktheatre”

Lest this come off as a negative review, let’s get a few things straight up front about Capital T Theatre’s production of Killer Joe, currently playing at Hyde Park Theatre. The acting is across the board spot-on. The set, co-designed by Mark Pickell and Tommy Grubbs, is nothing short of spectacular in its authentic, exquisite disgustingness. And Pickell, who also directs, is clearly a man who understands timing, suspense, and recognizes that kid gloves have no place in the staging of this piece. That said, a warning to the faint of heart, past victims of violent crimes, and sufferers of PTSD: you might be better off going to see a matinee screening of UP. Because Killer Joe is, even in its lightest moments, about as light as a pile of bricks buried under a slurry mound of wet cement. And then, as the plot thickens, so, too, does the concrete, until you feel your innards tighten and your organs harden at the spectacle before your eyes. It’s like somebody took MacBeth, All in the Family, and Sylvia Plath, tossed them in a blender, and splattered them inside a beat to fuck trailer out in Dallas County.

This year, multiple-award winning actor and director, Ken Webster, celebrates thirty years of being in theater. He’s spent many of those yeas at the Hyde Park Theatre, bringing to life countless plays that are hilarious and dark, often at the same time. The thing about Webster and his domain—upon first glance we have but one man and one small room— both, rather than exhibiting signs of age, continue to hold up remarkably, amazingly, shape-shiftingly well. It’s something bordering on incomprehensible to contemplate how Webster can, time and again so utterly inhabit whatever character he is playing. His one-man shows are particularly magic as typically he will be onstage for a full ninety minutes— set totally spare, props precious few—and yet leave an audience feeling, as they stand to applaud (almost always the case) like they have been fully transported into another creature’s bizarre universe.

My Child, My Child, My Alien Child is a blend of sketch, slam and stand-up that will have parents and singletons alike reaching for tissues. Zell Miller III's unique storytelling blend only runs for three weeks at the Hyde Park Theatre: we insist you not miss it.

Let us begin this review of bombs in your mouth by lifting a definition for dark matter from Wikipedia: In astronomy and cosmology, dark matter is hypothetical matter that is undetectable by its emitted radiation, but whose presence can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter. And now, let us consider Hyde Park Theatre director Ken Webster has a thing for dark matter. You can pretty much count on his productions to evoke laughter and cringing, often simultaneously, as the plays he selects always leave room for plenty of between-the-lines interpretation. Webster is en garde! personified, keeping his audience on their toes as he continues to advance, advance, advance, refusing to retreat or even shy away from pushing them to think thoughts they might want to pretend aren’t there, but really, they are.

Week four of FronteraFest's Short Fringe at Hyde Park Theatre continues this week, showcasing more of Austin's best performance. Read on for show descriptions or click for tix!

It's been a great week to take in some fringe at Hyde Park Theatre. We've always enjoyed Maggie Gallant's work, and her latest piece, Our Angle In Heaven, is outstanding. We plan to check out the full version of the show in the Long Fringe: this Sunday at 4pm at the Salvage Vanguard Theater. We'll also catch the final Long Fringe performance of Daniel Huntley Solon's Sex, With Benefits on Saturday at noon, at the Blue Theater, because the portion we saw last night was so compelling, we have to see the whole story.

Tonight kicks off the first night of the Short Fringe at Hyde Park Theatre during FronteraFest 2009, a performance festival celebrating the spectrum of performing arts, from dance to music to theatre. You name it, it's probably been done in the 16 year history of FronteraFest. This year, FronteraFest also features Long Fringe performances showcasing longer works at the Blue Theater and Salvage Vanguard Theatre as well as a day of performance in unexpected locations, aptly named Mi Casa Es Su Teatro.

Relative Space was inspired by and created specifically for the Hyde Park Theatre. Throughout the performance we were continually pleased and surprised by the ways in which Rosario and the cast used the space, proving that this show cannot nor should not be performed anywhere else but HPT. Using just about every nook and cranny on stage and in the seats, DA! uses this space in a more creative way than we have yet seen.

This time of year, the coy and clever folks of Shrewd Productions turn Hyde Park Theatre into a naughty winter wonderland, and the troupe's Jingle Belles and Naughty Elves create a night of comedy, dance and classic burlesque for your holiday enjoyment.

Ken Webster has done it again. Black is this year’s black. Blackbird is this season’s latest thought provoking, stomach punching, try-all-you-like-you-won’t-be-able-to-shake-it offering from the little theatre on 43rd Street in cahoots with Capital T Theatre. Its directed by David Harrower and starts Ken Webster and Xochitl Romero as a pair (let’s not call them couple) that meets up after a decade and a half of a highly advisable, partially law-enforced separation.

Ken Webster never met a deep dark comedy he didn’t love. Once again, this time offering up his take on playwright Bert V. Royal’s, Dog Sees God, Hyde Park Theatre’s artistic director has produced and directed a humdinger of insightful sarcasm served up in perfect pitch black. There’s not a weak performance in the piece which imagines a more real, more down and dirty, emotionally raw world for players who resemble, remarkably, a certain collection of beloved cartoon characters original conjured by an artist who’s name rhymes with Marles Tultz.

Mark our words: Rotozaza's Etiquette, coming in April for Fuse Box, will sell out. // Hyde Park Theatre is holding auditions this Saturday. // Out of Bounds '08 is now taking submissions. // Troades at the Vortex is held over for two more weeks.

The first piece, Port Arthur, written and directed by HPT artistic director Ken Webster, is a lovely, Texas-style cross between Sartre and Kids in the Hall, where a very small cast (two) in a very tight setting (bus seat), play out a very ancient theme (sort of David vs. Goliath). Larius Likler, the second piece, is slightly longer than Port Arthur, with a really strong cast of four. Seventeen year-old Austin High student Kayla Newman is an über-standout as Beluga aka Condom, the youngest of three children including her brother, who aspires to be a serial killer, and her reluctantly pregnant, wisecracking sister. Their runaway mom checks in via voice mail while dad has a hard time keeping things together.

Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West, now playing at Hyde Park Theatre has nothing to do with Marfa or Alpine, so don't let the title fool you. Set in an Irish village where murder, suicide, and alcoholism are as common as eating and breathing, the play centers on two brothers who spend just about the entire show pissing off each other in increasingly creative ways. Compared to The Pillowman (which played last year at HPT), Lonesome West is almost sitcom light.

So, I produce and co-star a little show called The Dick Monologues. We have four shows this month—three more than usual. Two are in Dallas this weekend at the Water Tower Theatre as part of the Out of the Loop Festival. Two are here in town—one at the Victory Grill on March 21st and the other at Hyde Park Theatre on March 30th. Please tell your Dallas friends to come to the show up there. And if you want to attend an Austin show, please email me at spike@spikeg.com for info. This week, I present a piece I wrote that sometimes appears in the show. Big Dick on Buddha Mountain To meditate with the enlightened Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, is akin to playing guitar with Pete Townsend, making cookies with Martha Stewart, or tying your shoes with Mister Rogers. And so, despite my tight budget, when I heard that Thay, as he is known, was leading a retreat in California, I did what any overzealous aspiring Buddhist would do: I mailed off a hot check to procure my place at the monastery.

Hyde Park Theatre brings us Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West. Think of the brilliance of True West, but without the monotonous fuckin' crickets. Th-Sa @8pm through March 29. Tickets online. // Based on Euripides' Trojan Women, Troades at The Vortex explores life for the women of Troy following its decimation at the hands of the Greeks. Th-Su @8pm through March 29. Reservations: 478-LAVA.

Frontera Fest is such a playing-field-leveled egalitarian opportunity for creative types from all walks and skill levels to have a night in the spotlight. Totally worth the $12 -14 price of admission but don’t wait to figure this out later. The wait for unclaimed tickets on sold out nights starts an hour before showtime and baby it’s cold outside.

When I graduated from college, there's weren't a lot of gay characters in movies and TV. This was the mid-90's so when there was a gay character, he was usually dying of AIDS. I saw every one of these movies, but I was desperate to see characters more like myself.

Starting tonight and going through February 3, The Long Fringe portion of FronteraFest will showcase pieces up to 90 minutes at the Blue Theater. Max Langert's You're Happier Than You Think: Recalibrating Your Emotional Scale and Spank Dance Company's Dance Carousel 2008 kick off the shows with stories of downtrodden ocean liner passengers and innovative choreography.

Sunday, 1/13, 10pm at the Alamo Downtown, the big Dick cast and Austin's premiere naughty boy band, Cedar Fever, will thrill and excite you with performances, sing-alongs, and heaven knows what else.

Thirteen years after founding Salvage Vanguard Theater, Artistic Director Jason Neulander is stepping down. Neulander has grown SVT from a crazy little fringe collective to a powerhouse producer of cutting-edge works. No doubt it'll be very exciting to see what he gets into next.

Image courtesy Rude Mechs The Method GunThru 12/15, Th/Fr/Sa at 8pmThe Off Center (map)[info] | [tickets] The Dick Monologues12/16 at 2pmHyde Park Theatre (map)12/12 at 7pm (sold out)[info] | [tickets]In this season of family-friendly fare, we're pleased to highlight a bit of naughty-naughty for your holiday pleasure. Admittedly it's something of an intellectually flavored naughty-naughty, but hey, that's how we like it. Rude Mechanicals' current show The Method Gun contains nudity! Whee! Nude Rudes!! Which...

Photo by Bret Brookshire, courtesy Hyde Park Theatre Thom Pain (based on nothing)Through 12/22, Th/Fr/Sa at 8pmHyde Park Theatre (511 W. 43rd. Street)Reservations: 479-PLAY[info]Every so often when doing a review, we’ve gotta own up to something from our past. In this case, it’s that we used to be in a cult. In our defense, it was a good cult. Back in college we were part of the American Forensic Association*—"forensic" meaning “having to do with...

Photo courtesy Shrewd Productions X-Mas: Unwrapped!! A Holiday Burlesque11/30-12/15, Thu-Sat at 10:00pmHyde Park Theatre (511 W. 43rd. Street)479-PLAY for reservations[info] 'Tis the season for giveaways! And the lovely ladies of Shrewd Productions are sharing the joy by offering two free tickets for Friday and Saturday night's performances of Xmas Unwrapped!! A Holiday Burlesque. The Jingle Belles have returned by popular demand to take the chill off the cold winter nights. Or, er, the cool-ish winter...

Did you know that the vestige group was founded on Craigslist in 2006? Interesting, no? What's also interesting is their latest production, The New Jersey Book of the Dead. Billed as portraying a world "where people struggle to hold on to emotional connection in a world gone technological," we're pretty sure we can relate. The show's press materials also include the catch phrase, "Omnivore is listening. Spread the word." We're not sure what that means,...

For this Week's TWIT, we're revealing the contents of our crystal ball—lurking on the horizon are a one-night-only you do not want to miss, and remounts of two box-office smashes. Jambi says, "Get your tickets now!" The Vortex is hosting, an irresistible, oddball of a show; three German actors, two American actors, and two Austrian video artists (collectively GTA’s Road Theater) are driving cross country (track 'em here), performing Roland Schimmelpfennig's Start Up. In this...

Last night, Austin Circle of Theaters ushered in a whole new batch of B. Iden Payne Award winners. The event took place on the lovely St. Ed's campus; MMNT artistic director Ev Lunning Jr. hosted, along with members of the Actor's Equity association. Local heroine Karen Kuykendall was this year's Outstanding Honoree; Austin Chronicle Arts Editor Robert Faires presented her award. It was an elegant and exciting evening, to be sure! We weren't shocked by...

As we mentioned in last week's TWIT, Capital T Theatre Company is currently running Samuel Beckett's "most cheerful" play, Happy Days, at Hyde Park Theatre. In case you're not familiar with this particular Beckett work, it's about "a middle-aged woman, Winnie, [who] finds herself increasingly submerged in a mound of earth. An incurable optimist, she uselessly follows the daily routine of her life. Over the passage of time, her few possessions gradually dwindle, and her...

O, the mighty men and women of Austin's stages! They get so busy this time of year. There's more than enough to choose from this week, but here are the theater picks that top our list. ProArts Collective wraps up the Black Arts Movement Festival with Incognito on Thursday at 8pm, and Spoken Word Caravan on Friday at 8pm. The former is a one-man drama, performed by author Michael Fosberg, about a man who grew...

Fall finally arrived on Sunday, not that anyone would notice. However, autumn also brings a start to most theatre companies' 2007-08 season. Things are kicking on Austin's boards. Here're a few shows we're excited about. If you need to warm up, consider taking in Naughty Austin's Cellbloq. In the words of writer-producer Blake Yelavich, who says it best, "Yes, it's about a bunch of muscular guys in prison, but that doesn't mean it is strictly...