Theatre--Performance

Lafayette's Two Favorite Comedies Take the Stage at Cité des Arts:  Gros Becs by Stuart Stelly & Eulalie by Clayelle Dalfres

 PeeWee Leblanc is a hunter at heart. His desire to hunt Gros Becs, an endangered species, has lead to an endless chase from Vincent Guidry, the game warden.  It seems as though the years of chasing PeeWee are about to pay off. Or are they? If Rose Leblanc has anything to do with it, Vincent may just get his wish in catching PeeWee, and Rose may finally get PeeWee to mass.

Eulalie by Clayelle Dalfres is about a young girl in love. However, Eulalie's true love doesn’t love her “atall, atall”.  Eulalie may just capture the man of her dreams, with the help of Taunte Terese.  But none of this will happen unless Eulalie can pull off the love potion Taunte Terese has conjured up. Will Eulalie end up with the man of her dreams? Only time will tell.

The characters in these locally written comedies have been performed with finesse by Shane Guilbeau and Sandra Broussard over the years, and we're lucky they're bringing them back this summer.  If you need a good laugh, don't miss this show.

Performances are June 29-30, July 6-7, and July 13-14 7:30pm.

Reservations can be made by calling             337-291-1122      , or purchase tickets from our website at www.citedesarts.org.

Theatre--Review (ART at Theatre 810)

Acadiana Repertory Theatre has done something unusual by launching a New Works Festival. Various artists associated with ART will read the parts of characters from ten new plays, two on Friday, two on Saturday, and one on Sunday over two weekends. The plays are quite diverse, and the first weekend provided lively entertainment, though it’s always a little hard to gauge a play’s true potential without
seeing the blocking. Still, it’s fun to try. Thanks to an illness, I missed the Friday night performances but was able to catch Saturday’s and Sunday’s.

So far, Sunday’s entertainment is the clear winner. David Stallings’ Barrier Island had the sound of a compelling drama all too true about the Gulf Coast people and those who remain no matter what hurricane is barreling their way. It concerns Capadona’s Bar in Galveston, Texas, owned by Laura’s parents Margie and Charlie, but effectively rented to and run by Nate and Suzie, friends of the family one might say. Laura, who’s been gone for over a decade, has hastily returned with her son Daniel for two reasons: recent unemployment and her father Charlie has suffered a stroke. She returns home to discover the family’s finances in disarray, her mother Margie essentially is the throes of Alzheimer’s, and the house looks like a disaster area with opened food cans everywhere. The sturm and drang of the play comes in the second act, where the audience discovers that Laura’s family’s financial troubles are due to Nate and Suzie, who had stopped paying rent for the last year, citing financial pressures of sending their own children to expensive schooling. Even in the best of families such difficulties arise and the fighting is just as classic. There are no wasted characters in this gumbo, with a classmate of Laura’s named Trey Dobbs, to the bar regular named Bob, his daughter Cheryl and his granddaughter Stephanie, who’s taken a liking to a slow-witted patron
named Carl. There is a lull in Act one from about the thirty minute mark until the act ends at approximately one hour where the play tends to drag a little. The opening and almost all of Act two make the play well worth listening to, and a full staging of this play would certainly be interesting.

The other two productions on Saturday paled in comparison. Matthew Ivan Bennett penned the frank In the Open, focusing on two picked-on teenagers who exact revenge in the worst possible way. Set in Utah, in the heart of Mormonism, In the Open is a brooding, disturbing tale of Dustin and Jordan and the all-too-typical problems teenagers face in small town communities. Dustin’s mother, Chris—short for Christina,
I’m assuming—is in a dead-end job and finds solace both in her relationship with her co-worker, Valerie, supposedly a lesbian, and her soon-to-be-adopted Mormon faith, solidly shown through the works of a Mormon teacher Daniel, who happens to be Jordan’s father. That’s how Dustin and Jordan meet, through a prayer meeting between Chris and Daniel, but the pairing of the two boys leads to disaster. These friends exact lethal revenge on a racist teacher and his bully son, and though Dustin’s girlfriend of sorts, Stephanie, tries to stop the boys, she fails to prevent their attempt to intimidate their tormentors. Overall, the play had some thoroughly unbelievable dialogue between the teenagers, though the scenes involving Stephanie and Jordan had an appealing innocence. The actual teenager who attacks the bully is unexpected, something actually pleasant in theatre these days, but the final scene felt like a rushed and badly written attempt to tie up
loose ends. The final scene was anti-climactic and it slightly ruined what had been up to then a somewhat interesting production.

The least satisfying of the three productions was the play The Terrible Girls, a captivating title for a less-than-fulfilling play by Jacqueline Goldfinger. Perhaps the blocking adds to the production, but I found it difficult to warm up to the three protagonists, waitresses who work in a rural Southern bar in White Springs, Florida. One senses immediately that the three gals don’t necessarily get along, but they don’t leave either, something which becomes eminently clear as they are all linked by intrigue and murder. Minnie is the simple-minded and religious waitress, but Bertie is the somewhat sensible and more prudish character who’s offended by the salacious manner of Gretch, who goes after and picks up a deaf patron. In a scene of hilarity, Gretch is making out with the poor deaf fellow until she accidentally punches a hole in the dry wall and a skull comes rolling out. The audience is no longer in Kansas anymore as all three ladies prove that they have skeletons—literally—hiding everywhere. It’s Grand Guignol in the style of Hush… Hush… Sweet Charlotte, and the horror soon drenches everything in this production. The ending is rushed, little is explained as to who are these bodies or exactly how many there might be, how they get away with it all, and who actually did all the murdering. It’s a play that needs some work.

I’m looking forward to the second weekend of the New Works Festival, which is slated to include 100 Planes by Lila Rose Kaplan, and Human Capacity by Jennifer Barclay on Friday, Principal Principle by Joe Zarrow and A Place to Land by Chelsea Marcantel on Saturday, and A Home Across the Ocean by Acadiana native Cody Daigle on Sunday. Whichever play gets the most votes will become part of ART’s regular upcoming season, an intriguing way to select your plays. I look forward to seeing which play wins.
---Vincent P. Barras

Theatre--Auditions

Cooper Helm, director of Sam Shepard's Buried Child, is holding additional rehearsals on Friday, June 29th at 7 pm at Cite Des Arts.  He is looking the the female lead (age 20-30) and an older male lead (age 55-65).  


If interested or for more information, call Cite at 291-1122.

Theatre--Performance

The Rehearsal is a rip-roaring madcap satire play-within-a-play which boasts a lavish display

of 16th and 17th century period costumes of original design. The comic farce

features silly players who galumph and posture their way through the play, making

sport of the social conventions and the pompous theatrical practices of the time. Nothing makes sense, or does it?

The Rehearsal is about a playwright who believes he is savvy to the newest trends in

drama and literature. When he invites two gentlemen to sit and witness

his “future hit,” they find it to be cockamamey and utterly absurd.

 

The Rehearsal, performed first in 1671, penned by the infamous court wit, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, is 60 years post-Shakespeare (just past the Cavalier/

Musketeer period in history). Importantly, it is probably the very first example of the

Theatre of the Absurd. Mel Brooks is said to have based his work “The Producers”

on this hilarious play. Theatre of the Absurd author Harold Pinter was also a fan.

More exciting: Lafayette will be the 2nd city in the United States to produce this play (The American Shakespeare Center in Virginia was the first to perform the play in their 2011 season).

This comedy is produced and directed by Lauren Greene Whyte, a longtime theatre actress, writer, director with Lafayette Community Theatre, Abbey Players and Eavesdrop Theatre. She considers the play noteworthy for its uniqueness: “I am providing fantastic and colorful costuming at a level not unlike a Broadway production." (Whyte has been costuming for over 30 years.)

Other spectacular features being performed nightly are the period dance numbers performed with live instrumentation with music and instruments contemporary to the period, by Alice Wallace.  

Another audio sensation is the spectacular voice of alto soloist, Virginia Warnken, a native of Lafayette, who is presently a graduate student with Yale School of Music in New York City.  Ms. Warnken has allowed us to use her recording Handel’s “Solomon,” and we are delighted to further create the Restoration atmosphere with this fine Baroque music.

The Fine Arts Camp kids at Cité des Arts, as well as Lisa Osborn and Christy Leichty are creating a Hobby Horse which will spotlight on the production’s festivity and historic customs of the 17th century.

The Rehearsal is a brilliant meta-theatrical play staging subjects both modern and

historical, designed to appeal to all audiences.

Theatre--Performance

The Glass Mendacity

Cite' des Arts , 109 Vine St., Lafayette 

directed by Jody L. Powell

produced by NathanaelT Productions

"a streetcar full of laughs"......The Times Picayune

 "literature’s most dysfunctional family, the DuBois clan - Tennessee with a Twist"........Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival


Tennessee Williams’ more well-known plays "The Glass Menagerie", "A Streetcar Named Desire", and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" are family dramas, and as such, they are filled with fragile and damaged Southern characters who are driven to madness, alcoholism, deceit, and fantasy. Thus, they are easy targets for lampooning and parody, which is just what the authors of this play have done with them. In addition, the authors have taken family members from each play, mixed them up, and created an entirely new outrageous brood. Audiences with a strong familiarity of Williams’ plays will get the most out of the show, but the humor of "The Glass Mendacity" is broad enough to make it appealing to all.

In this mingling of characters where families are merged and relationships are shifted, Big Daddy, the patriarch dying of a spastic colon, is married to Amanda Dubois who still recounts the number of gentlemen callers she had in her youth (the number grows with each new telling). Together, they are the parents of Brick, so rendered catatonic by self-pity and alcohol that he comes across as a real stiff; Blanche, the tragic nut case, now married to the working-class brute Stanley Kowalski; and Laura, the dreamer whose shyness is underscored by her limp. True to her original story, Maggie the Cat, the scheming seductress, is still married to Brick. And of course, there’s Mitch, a combination of the gentleman caller and the lawyer acquaintance who properly greases the wheels and can’t keep his eyes off of Blanche.

The two-act comedy has plenty of verbal gags twisted from Williams' original scripts that will keep the audience in stitches. The actors deliver the original plays’ best lines with sharp characterizations and all the flair as if they were playing the originally written roles.

 The cast includes:
 Michael Cato as Mitch O'Connor
 Katryn Schmidt as Maggie the Cat
 Mary Gail Lamonte DeVillier as Amanda Dubois
 Brick Dubois as Himself
 Deborah D. Ardoin as Blanche Dubois
 John Snyder as Stanley Kowalski
 Billy Walker as Big Daddy Dubois
 Erin Segura as Laura Dubois

 Performances dates:
 Friday, June 29 at 7:30 p.m.

 Saturday, June 30 at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are available at citedesarts.org or by calling 291-1122 or at the door. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors and students.

Theatre--Performance (Musical Theatre)

Continuing IPAL’s tradition of a summer youth musical, Vincent P. Barras is directing

his third one in four years, Disney’s Mulan Jr., with a cast of fifty youngsters. The

play will perform July 12th through July 22nd at the Essanee Theatre in downtown New

Iberia. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday performances are at 7:30 and Sunday Matinees

at 3:00. Advance tickets are available at Delaune’s Pharmacy, Paul’s Flower Shop, or

Accentrics on Main Street. Tickets may also be purchased at the door. All tickets are

$10.00. Further information can be obtained by calling the theater at 364-6114, e-mailing

ipal@cox.net, or by visiting the IPAL website www.iberiaperformingartsleague.com

“It’s been a phenomenal experience from start to finish,” said Vincent P. Barras, but he

added, “At first, I thought it would be hard to top last summer’s production of Beauty and

the Beast Jr. until I realized that we didn’t need to. This production would stand on its

own two feet, and it has.”

The play Mulan Jr. covers a young woman named Mulan who embarks on a life-altering

journey. In Asia, the story of Mulan is as familiar as the story of Cinderella is in Western

cultures. Sharing the lead role of Mulan will be Lanie Marcantel and Sarah Menard, both

IPAL regulars who have been in previous youth productions.

The play calls for the character of Mulan to experience some physical pratfalls, and

Lanie Marcantel laughed, “Aside from the bruises and scrapes, it’s a really good

experience. Getting the lead was probably the best thing that happened to me this

summer.”

Sarah Menard, the other actress playing Mulan, noted, “If you have or haven’t seen the

movie, it doesn’t matter because this play will move you. It will make you laugh, cry, all

of it.”

This production is also unique in that it has several new youngsters from outside the New

Iberia area. Some like Hannah Broussard, playing Mulan’s mother Fa Li, are commuting

from Broussard, and several new cast members are from the Firelight Performing

Academy based in Youngsville. Thomas Luke, who’ll play the dragon Mushu—voiced

by Eddie Murphy in the Disney movie—has been in several Firelight productions,

including most recently the part of Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor

Dreamcoat.

“Everybody’s very inviting,” said Thomas, who is also competing in trampoline at the

National Gymnastics Competition. “Everybody helps each other out whenever they need

help.”

“It’s my first Disney Jr. play,” he added, “and I think it’s cool how we got everything

together in seven weeks and it’s going to be a cool play.”

Other Firelight youth include Adele Hebert, playing Hun, the Ancestor of Love, Trevor

Menard and Seth Ransonet, sharing the role of Chinese bureaucrat Chi Fu, Noah Delatte

as the Emperor of China, Sarah Palmintier as Laozi, the Ancestor of Honor, and Andrew

Palmintier as Magyar, a Hun soldier. Playing various ensemble members are Emma

Luke, Rebecca Palmintier, and Taylor Luke.

The play still has, however, a strong local element with recent NISH graduate Jacqueline

McCarthy serving as assistant director, and several local teens taking several roles.

Playing a tight-knit group of four soldiers are Mitchell Prudhomme (Captain Shang),

Ryan Berard (Qian-Po), Seth Derouen (Yao), and Alex Bonin (Ling.) This will be their

last chance to be on stage together in a youth musical as they enter adulthood and college.

“It’s quite bittersweet, because I’m quite close to these people,” Mitch Prudhomme

remarked, “but it’s the beginning of another chapter in my life. I know I’m going to act

with them again, but probably not in a youth musical.”

Other prominent roles include Kelbi LaShare as Grandmother Fa, and Abigail Daigle,

who plays both an imperious Matchmaker and the Evil General Shan-Yu. There are

also five ancestors who regularly appear and act as narrators for the show: Lin (Anne

Catherine LeBlanc & Rayna Theriot in a double cast role), Yun (Adele Hebert), Laozi

(Sarah Palmintier), Zhang (Kaylon Khamphilavong), and Hong (Jessica Vuong).

Performances at IPAL are supported in part by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the

Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism, in

cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council. Funding has also been provided by the

National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal agency.

Theatre--Workshops

Cite des Arts will present an informational discussion, free & open to the community, regarding the application process and financial aid issues at the top academic & professional programs in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, & nationally.  

Associate Professor McGee has mentored a number of local Louisiana students for successful acceptance to NYU Tisch Drama, California Institute of the Arts, Columbia, Emerson and Brown universities, Asolo Rep/FSU, Second City/Chicago, Northwestern U/Steppenwolf, and more.  

The acting workshop, July 10-14, 2012, from 4-6 pm will feature acting techniques of legendary masters Lee Strasberg and Michael Chekhov in exercises exploring modern classics plays by Chekhov, Williams, Shepard, O’Neill, and the hottest plays in the current New York season, including: Becky Shaw, Other Desert Cities, August Osage County, Good People, Venus in Fur, Sweet & Sad, Sons of the Prophet, Jerusalem, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, After the Revolution, and others. 

Actors of all ages and levels of experience are welcome to apply. Classes are at Cite des Arts from 4 00 - 6 00 pm, July 10-14. Fee: $200. For more information and to register: mcgeec50@yahoo.com

McGee served as Director of the Lee Strasberg Institute/NYU BFA Programs, Associate Professor for the MFA Acting Program at The Catholic University, Washington, DC, and currently also teaches acting and script analysis for film at The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Art. She studied at Yale Drama School & received her Master's at UC Berkeley and was among the first group of CODOFIL scholarship students to study in France at The National Acting Conservatory. 

Theatre--Performance

The Glass Mendacity

Cite' des Arts , 109 Vine St., Lafayette 

directed by Jody L. Powell

produced by NathanaelT Productions

"a streetcar full of laughs"......The Times Picayune

 "literature’s most dysfunctional family, the DuBois clan - Tennessee with a Twist"........Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival


Tennessee Williams’ more well-known plays "The Glass Menagerie", "A Streetcar Named Desire", and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" are family dramas, and as such, they are filled with fragile and damaged Southern characters who are driven to madness, alcoholism, deceit, and fantasy. Thus, they are easy targets for lampooning and parody, which is just what the authors of this play have done with them. In addition, the authors have taken family members from each play, mixed them up, and created an entirely new outrageous brood. Audiences with a strong familiarity of Williams’ plays will get the most out of the show, but the humor of "The Glass Mendacity" is broad enough to make it appealing to all.

In this mingling of characters where families are merged and relationships are shifted, Big Daddy, the patriarch dying of a spastic colon, is married to Amanda Dubois who still recounts the number of gentlemen callers she had in her youth (the number grows with each new telling). Together, they are the parents of Brick, so rendered catatonic by self-pity and alcohol that he comes across as a real stiff; Blanche, the tragic nut case, now married to the working-class brute Stanley Kowalski; and Laura, the dreamer whose shyness is underscored by her limp. True to her original story, Maggie the Cat, the scheming seductress, is still married to Brick. And of course, there’s Mitch, a combination of the gentleman caller and the lawyer acquaintance who properly greases the wheels and can’t keep his eyes off of Blanche.

The two-act comedy has plenty of verbal gags twisted from Williams' original scripts that will keep the audience in stitches. The actors deliver the original plays’ best lines with sharp characterizations and all the flair as if they were playing the originally written roles.

 The cast includes:
 Michael Cato as Mitch O'Connor
 Katryn Schmidt as Maggie the Cat
 Mary Gail Lamonte DeVillier as Amanda Dubois
 Brick Dubois as Himself
 Deborah D. Ardoin as Blanche Dubois
 John Snyder as Stanley Kowalski
 Billy Walker as Big Daddy Dubois
 Erin Segura as Laura Dubois

 Performances dates:
 Friday, June 22 at 7:30 p.m.
 Saturday, June 23 at 7:30 p.m.
 Sunday, June 24 at 2:00 p.m.

 Tickets are available at citedesarts.org or by calling 291-1122 or at the door. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors and students.

Theatre--Performance (Review: Spectral Sisters; 10 Minute Play Festival)

Performance Review
Spectral Sisters Productions
2012 Ten-Minute-Play Festival
by Gumbeaux Arts

The play is the thing with Spectral Sisters Productions in Alexandria, but thankfully, it is not the only thing. Started in 2002 with a vision to produce original work from local playwrights, SSP introduces the uninitiated to the mystical craft of writing a play, and then involves the most unlikely in the magic of its production. I am always amazed, yet never surprised at the outcomes I witness during SSP’s annual Ten-Minute-Play Festivals—assorted theatrical vignettes that transform mild-mannered citizens into playwrights, actors, and crew, while transporting audiences through time and space and back again, in little more than 90 minutes.

You can do a number of things in 10 minutes. You can take a walk, boil an egg, change a diaper, water your houseplants, “bust your belly fat” (really), even perform a Google search to find lists of things you can do in 10 minutes…

 Or, you can explore a minefield of adult child-parent relationships, chat with God about love at your local coffee shop, turn a prostitute’s prison cell into a prayer room, find the love of your life online… ohh, the possibilities are endless! And you could have done all of these and more in only one evening at the SSP Ten-Minute-Play Festival, held June 14–17.

This year’s crop of ten-minute plays might have been the best yet, featuring the winners of the SSP Play Writing Contest held earlier this year. The level of writing demonstrated that SSP’s formula for cultivating imaginative, thoughtful, and capable playwrights is actually working. None of this year’s winning writers might truly be considered a novice at this point in their craft, but all are veterans of the group’s free playwriting workshops held during the festival, and most had never written a play before becoming involved with Spectral Sisters. Now, they are writing plays that captivate, provoke, and outright entertain. The beauty is that, through Spectral Sisters, anyone of us can do it.

The play is the thing, and every play needs a cast, and every cast a director. This year’s casts were also strong and, with some exceptions, the actors were equal to their roles. It was as delightful to see veteran actors create magic moments onstage as it was to watch novices discover their own magic as they embodied characters on stage for the very first time. Equally, directors are most effective when they interpret playwrights’ stories and meld actors’ delivery and movements so seamlessly that their own efforts are virtually invisible. This feat is not easy, even for seasoned directors, and was achieved in many instances in the performances I saw on opening night, if not across the board.

Live theatre is risky business. That’s what makes it so dynamic and irresistible. Working with a mix of veterans and newbies, untested material, and volunteers who might never before have stepped behind a stage curtain, Spectral Sisters takes on more risks than most to bring us their annual Festival. And so do the writers, directors, actors, crewmembers and, of course, the audiences. Nothing could be more disheartening for any of us than a poor match between the strength of material and the capacity of talent to do it justice or vice-versa. In this year’s Festival, it was especially gratifying to see so many new works handled so well onstage.

I was excited most throughout this year’s presentations, not by exceptional production or effortless characterizations—though there were ample amounts of both; I was excited most by the heart and energy emanating from every person involved—the passion of the minds and souls onstage and backstage, in the booth and in the wings, creating and recreating reality after imagined reality, eight times in a row. Now, that is the thing!

The plays featured in the Spectral Sisters 2012 Ten-Minute Play Festival were:

Hell Broke Loose by Emilie Griffin (2nd Place Winner, 2012 Play Writing Contest), directed by Kristopher Prestridge

Soulmates by Michael Robertson, directed by Belle Rollins

Throwing Out Trash by David Holcombe, directed by Kendall From

Oh Say Can You See by David Sobel (1st Place Winner, 2012 Play Writing Contest), directed by Jef Goelz

Little Ease by William Griffin, directed by Joshua Goodnight

Church and State by Allen Rowlen, directed by Rae Swent

Life as A Chair by Jef Goelz (3rd Place Winner, 2012 Play Writing Contest), directed by Allen Rowlen

Coffee, Tea Or Me by Carol Conner, directed by Jillian Roland

Find out more about Spectral Sisters and their upcoming production, Beau Willimon’s Farrugut North, directed by Steve Barton, by visiting the website at www.spectralsisters.com, or contacting admin@spectralsisters.com.


Gumbeaux Arts’ heart has two beats: the arts and Louisiana. Reared in a New Orleans family whose artistic roots count at least four generations, Gumbeaux is always close to home when there is a stage to play on, an art form to play in, or a fellow artist to play with. Now residing in the heart of the state, Gumbeaux markets and advocates for community-based arts organizations and artists residing primarily in Louisiana—on a mission to spread the word about arts in Louisiana, a spicy cultural mixture with a flavor all its own! You can reach Gumbeaux at gumbeauxarts@suddenlink.net.

Theatre--Performance (Playwright Profile)

This is the next in a series of introductions to the playwrights whose shows are part of the ART New Works Festival beginning on June 22nd at Theatre 810.

This is Jacqueline Goldfinger.  Her play, THE TERRIBLE GIRLS, will be read on Saturday, June 23rd at 8:30 pm.

Jacqueline Goldfinger is a Barrymore nominated Philadelphia-based playwright/dramaturg who teaches playwriting at University of the Arts. She is the Playwright-in-Residence at Azuka Theatre where she is developing her new dark comedy, Skin & Bone. Her other full-length plays include Slip/Shot (PlayPenn, Lark Playwrights Week, Flashpoint Theatre Company, Weissberger Award nominee), the terrible girls (Azuka Theatre, Moxie Theatre, NYFringe, Barrymore Award nominee for Outstanding New Play), The Oath (Theatre Exile, Off-Off Broadway Maieutic Theatre Works, Penobscot Theatre), and The Burning Season (Winner of the National Plays for the 21st Century Competition). Her work is published by Playscripts and Smith & Krauss. 

Theatre--Performance (Playwright Profile)

This is the next in the series of playwright profiles, introducing you to the playwrights associated with the ART New Works Festival, which will open on Friday, the 22nd of June at Theatre 810.

This is Matthew Ivan Bennett, author of IN THE OPEN, which will be read on Saturday, June 23rd at 6:30 pm.

Matthew Ivan Bennett is the Resident Playwright of Plan-B Theatre Company, with whom he's premiered several plays, including Di Esperienza, Block 8 and Mesa Verde—the latter of which was nominated for a Steinberg award by the American Theatre Critics Association. Three radio plays of his, Alice,Frankenstein, and Lavender & Exile, have been broadcast nationally through KUER and XM, and Frankenstein received the Best Feature Program award from the Utah Broadcasters Association (2009). His short works have been at Salt Lake's Wasatch Theatre Company, in Chicago's Circle Theatre, Hunger Artists Theatre Ensemble in Los Angeles, at Rising Sun Performance Company in New York, at Monkeyman Productions in Toronto, and at the Source Festival in Washington DC. His poetry has been published with the Western Humanities Review, Mixer Publishing, and he's a 2012 Honorable Mentionee in the Writers of the Future contest for Science Fiction and Fantasy. His new dysfunctional family comedy, A Night with the Family, will premiere at the Omaha Community Playhouse in 2013. Matt earned a Bachelors' of Theatre Arts at Southern Utah University.

Theatre--Performance (Cast Profiles)

This is the next in a series of profiles of the cast of THE GLASS MENDACITY, which opens Friday, June 15th.

Michael Cato (Mitch O'Connor) – A graduate of ULL’s Performing Arts department, Michael has been acting in the Acadiana region since 2006. His work has since extended to the field of sound design, for which he has received honors from the Kennedy Center American Collegiate Theatre Festival on five occasions. He is a member of Acadiana Repertory Theatre, based in Lafayette. Michael considers Dr. Watson in Hound, Freddie inNoises Off, and Howie in Rabbit Hole among his favorite roles he's played on stage. In this play, Michael finds himself in the mishmash of Tennessee Williams' male characters, and while he himself has never been to a monster truck rally, he’s certainly not lacking in the important humanities.

Theatre--Performance (Cast Profiles)

This is the next in a series of cast profiles from THE GLASS MENDACITY, which opens on Friday, July 15th at Cite Des Arts.

Mary Gail Lamonte DeVillier (Amanda Dubois) - Mary Gail has been enamored with acting since high school when she saw her first stage play, a production of The Glass Menagerie and declared, "I can do that."  Years later she indeed did portray the story's matriarch, Amanda Wingfield, on two occasions, once with her daughter, Jody Lamonte Powell, cast as Laura. She has had lead or supporting roles in over 25 plays, over 60 years. Prior credits include Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy, Emma in Over the River and Through the Woods, for both of which she won the Eunice Players' Theatre's Best Actress Irving Award, and Louise in Always...Patsy Cline, all directed by Jody. She retired in 1998 after a 33 year career as a Children's Protective Services Worker. After the recent death of her second husband, she returned to Opelousas to be near her family. She has three children and eight grandchildren, one of whom lives in heaven. She is grateful to Jody, her frequent and favorite director, for casting her in such a delicious role and allowing her to be part of such a talented group of actors.  Much like Amanda, Mary Gail delights in having her children near her, and can always find the humor in any situation, tragic or otherwise.

Theatre--Performance (Playwright Profile)

This is the second in a series of profiles of the playwrights who have shows presented in the ART New Works Festival.  This is Carol Carpenter, whose play, SWEET SWEET SPIRIT will be read on Friday, June 22nd at 8:30 pm.

Carol Carpenter writes about small town people who live far, far away from New York City, and she’s proud to be part of the Acadiana’s inaugural New Works Festival. Her play Sweet, Sweet Spirit will be part of Barrow Group’s 2012-2013 Development Series, won the High Desert Play Festival, and is being produced in Fall 2012 at the American Southwest Theater Company. Her play Good Lonely People won Best Playwriting at Planet Connections, Audience Favorite Award at MTWorks' NewBorn Play Festival, and was a semifinalist for Pandora Productions New Play Fest (Louisville). Her newest play, The Guadalupe, is part of On the Square’s 2012-2013 development season.

Other work has been headlined by Lily Tomlin and Bruce Vilanch (El Rey Theater, Los Angeles) and has received readings at Manhattan Theater Club, Geisberg Studio, Arclight Theater, Santa Fe Playhouse, Garson Theater Center, Columbia Gorge Repertory Theater, and the Engine House Theatre. Her monologues have appeared in the popular guerilla theatre piece The Inauguration Different (Santa Fe) and in Storyboard: A Collection of Monologues. This year, she will be featured in Sunstone Press's upcoming book on Southwestern theater artists.

In her previous life, Carpenter published five young adult novels with Random House Children's Books under her pen name Amanda Christie, spent several years as an editor and writer at Paramount Pictures, and she holds a master's degree in dramatic writing from the University of Southern California. She is a Sewanee playwriting alum and a proud company member of MTWorks. 

More about her work at www.carolcarpenterwrites.com.

Theatre--Performance (Playwright profile)

 David is the mind behind THE DIVINE VISITOR which will be read on Friday, June 22nd at 6:30 pm at Theatre 810. David has a great mind and a quick wit and ART is thrilled that we get to work with him. Check out his bio below and visit his website please!

David L. Williams (Playwright) is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Cornell University, where he was a four-time award recipient in the Heerman’s-McCalmon Playwriting contest (two 1st prizes for his plays The Murder of Gonzago and Ingulf and two 2nd prizes for his plays Behind the Nine Ball and Near Tragedy). He is a member of the Dramatist Guild and has written more than twenty-five plays and musicals, and his work has been produced in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C. His unproduced play Spake won EBE Ensemble’s “You Fill In The Blank” festival (NYC) and was a finalist in HotCity Theatre’s GreenHouse New Play Festival (St. Louis) and Inkwell Theatre’s Inkubator Festival (Washington, D.C.). His most recent play, The Winners, won the 2010 HotCity Theatre GreenHouse New Play Festival, and had its world premiere produced by HotCity in St. Louis this past September. The Winners was nominated for a Kevin Kline award for best new play, and reviewers called it “a Pinter play with a dirty mind,” “disquieting stuff,” “a shocking look at human nature,” and “a sharp, edgy story.” His work has been featured in the New York International Fringe Festival on four separate occasions.  David recently moved from New York to Bellefonte, PA with his wonderful wife Kathleen.

http://www.playwrightdavid.com/

Theatre--Performance (Cast Profile)

This is Katryn Schmidt, another member of the cast of THE GLASS MEDACITY.

Katryn "Katt" Schmidt (Maggie the Cat) - With an extensive history in stage and film work, Katt brings a lot of passion and experience to the stage. Local theatre work includes Bella in Lost in Yonkers, Mrs. Webb in Our Town, and Prudence in Beyond Therapy. She also played many different women and even a few men in Parallel Lives: The Kathy and Mo Show, and was seen earlier this year in The Vagina Monologues in Lafayette. Her film work includes Lord Byron, which was screened at the Sundance Festival in 2011. Katt is excited to be working with such a talented cast and crew on this show, especially with her loving husband, Brick, whose affection she longs for and goes to great lengths to receive. Katt and her character share more than just a name; Katt spends her days in attempts to save the world and has learned much about relationships...one Brick at a time. Maybe one day she will meet her Stanley!

Theatre--Performance (Cast Profile)

Another member of the cast of THE GLASS MENDACITY, opening at Cite Des Arts this Friday.

Erin Segura (Laura Dubois) - Erin is a 2005 graduate of Northwestern State University with degrees in Liberal Arts and Dance. Since then she has been very active in theatres across Acadiana. Her favorite roles include Shelby in Steel Magnoliasat Teche Theatre in Franklin, Rita in Educating Rita at Cite' des Arts and Iberia Performing Arts League, Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream with Acting Unlimited, Inc. in Lafayette, Xanthias in The Frogs with Acting Unlimited Repertory Academy in Lafayette, and most recently, Mona Lipshitz (Merry Murderess #6) in IPAL's Chicago. Her next role will be that of Polar Bear in AUI's Wolves in the Walls. Erin loves theatre as a hobby and appreciates the friendships she's made through community theatre that last long after the show is over. Much like Laura, Erin is shy in "real life", and encounters people who are surprised to learn that she performs on stage.

Theatre--Performance (CastProfile)

Meet the cast of THE GLASS MENDACITY, opening on Friday, June 15 at Cite Des Arts.

Billy Walker (Big Daddy Dubois) - Billy is excited for his first production with NathanaelT Productions and Cite' des Arts since the bulk of his work has been done in New Iberia with Iberia Performing Arts League. His most recent performance was as Billy Flynn in IPAL's production of Chicago. Other performances include IPAL's The Unexpected Guest, Remember When, andGuys and Dolls, as well as Firelight Performing Arts' production of Oliver!. During the day he is a salesman for Manuel Builders. He loves being on stage and thanks his wife and family for their love and support. Billy notes that, much like Big Daddy, even though he has a rough exterior, he would do anything for his family!

Theatre--Performance

The Glass Mendacity at Cite' des Arts
Produced by NathanaelT Productions LLC
Directed by Jody L. Powell

 "a streetcar full of laughs"......The Times Picayune
"literature’s most dysfunctional family, the DuBois clan - Tennessee with a Twist"........Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival


Tennessee Williams’ more well-known plays "The Glass Menagerie", "A Streetcar Named Desire", and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" are family dramas, and as such, they are filled with fragile and damaged Southern characters who are driven to madness, alcoholism, deceit, and fantasy.  Thus, they are easy targets for lampooning and parody, which is just what the authors of this play have done with them.  In addition, the authors have taken family members from each play, mixed them up, and created an entirely new outrageous brood. Audiences with a strong familiarity of Williams’ plays will get the most out of the show, but the humor of "The Glass Mendacity" is broad enough to make it appealing to all. 


In this mingling of characters where families are merged and relationships are shifted, Big Daddy, the patriarch dying of a spastic colon is married to Amanda Dubois who still recounts the number of gentlemen callers she had in her youth (the number grows with each new telling).  Together, they are the parents of Brick, so rendered catatonic by self-pity and alcohol that he comes across as a real stiff; Blanche, the tragic nut case, now married to the working-class brute Stanley Kowalski; and Laura, the dreamer whose shyness is underscored by her limp.  True to her original story, Maggie the Cat, the scheming seductress, is still married to Brick.  And of course, there’s Mitch, a combination of the gentleman caller and the lawyer acquaintance who properly greases the wheels and can’t keep his eyes off of Maggie.


The two-act comedy has plenty of verbal gags twisted from Williams' original scripts that will keep the audience in stitches.  The actors have free range of the stage, delivering the original plays’ best lines with sharp characterizations and all the flair as if they were playing the originally written roles.

The cast includes:
Michael Cato as Mitch O'Connor
Katryn Schmidt as Maggie the Cat
Mary Gail Lamonte DeVillier as Amanda Dubois
Brick Dubois as himself
Deborah D. Ardoin as Blanche Dubois
John Snyder as Stanley Kowalski
Billy Walker as Big Daddy Dubois
Erin Segura as Laura Dubois
Performances dates:
Friday, June 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, June 16 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, June 17 at 2:00 p.m.
Friday, June 22 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, June 23 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, June 24 at 2:00 p.m.

 Tickets are available at citedesarts.org or by calling 291-1122 or at the door.

By Maureen Morley and Tom Willmorth
Story by Doug Armstrong, Keith Cooper, Maureen Morley, and Tom Willmorth
Produced by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing, Inc.

Theatre--Auditions

Cité des Arts will be having auditions for the play Buried Child June 22 from 5pm-7pm, and June 23 Noon to 3pm. Performances will be August 24-26 & August 31-Sept. 2, at Cité. Cooper Helm is directing.

In his 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning family drama, Buried Child, Sam Shepard takes a macabre look at one American Midwestern family with a very dark secret. When Vince brings his girlfriend, Shelly, home to meet his family, she is at first charmed by the "normal" looking farm house which she compares to a "Norman Rockwell cover or something"--that's before she actually meets his crazy family--his ranting, alcoholic grandparents (Dodge and Halie) and their two sons: Tilden, a hulking semi-idiot, and Bradley, who has lost one leg to a chain saw. Strangely, no one seems to remember Vince at first, and they treat him as an intruder. Eventually, however, they seem to accept him as a part of their violently dysfunctional family.

Character Breakdown:
Dodge: in his seventies
Halie: his wife, Mid-sixties
Tilden: their oldest son, forties
Bradley: their next oldest son, an amputee, forties
Vince: Tilden's son, twenties
Shelly: Vince's girlfriend, twenties
Father Dewis: a Protestant minister, age unknown

There are two boxes of scripts in the Cité des Arts office. Anyone who wants to read the play can borrow a script. Please note the $3 holding fee for the scripts.

Theatre--Review (Acting Unlimited at Theatre 810)

What fun it is to watch a theatre develop its groove. Theatre 810 has developed into a lovely intimate space that caters to intricate little gems of plays or one-act collections. Since the beginning of the year, Theatre 810 has hosted David Ives’ Lives of the Saints )a collection of seven one-act plays), PG-50 (three one-act plays), the double-billed Krapp’s Last Tape and The Zoo Story, and A Woman’s Journey, two one-act plays. Add to this mix The Complete Women of William Shakespeare, a collection of two one-act plays devoted solely to the women of Shakespeare’s life. It’s a cavalcade of femininity on the stage and an opportunity for the women of Acadiana to show their acting chops.

The first play, Second Best Bed by Tim Kelly, is the stronger of the two plays, mostly due to its compact, poignant and funny story concerning Shakespeare’s will. A gathering of gossipy women has converged on Anne Hathaway’s house to discover not the contents of the will—this they already know—but the reaction by Shakespeare’s widow that she has been left only one item: the second best bed. The humor is evident as the play begins—the maid calls the vicious gossip-mongers a bunch of geese—but the revealing tenderness is what people absorb, for the ending is not what it seems.

The second play, When Shakespeare’s Ladies Meet by Charles George, begins nicely enough but its raison d’être—to milk as many jokes from what would happen should Shakespeare’s fictional women converge to give each other advice on love—tends to get old after a while. The audience experiences some hearty laughs upon seeing Juliet (Romero and Juliet), Portia (The Merchant of Venice), Desdemona (Othello), Ophelia (Hamlet), Cleopatra (Antony and Cleopatra), and Katherine (The Taming of the Shrew) exchange witty banter and actual Shakespearean lines. Three performances are noteworthy from this play. Monique Arabie brought just the right touch of loving innocence and naiveté to the part of Juliet, and Erin Claire Couvillion was delightfully batty as the doomed and detached Ophelia. Jan Corzo, however, played Portia as a shrill shrew, an odd choice that was jarringly out of sync with the rest of the cast. Her noisy, strident performance needed some restraint because Portia’s intelligence does not equate with harsh braying.

On the technical side, the two plays win some and lose some. The set, borrowed almost completely from Walter Brown’s considerable collection and Duncan Thistlethwaite, is perfect as always, and it brought back warm memories of William and Judith. I question not the use of a photograph on the table in When Shakespeare’s Ladies Meet, but only its extremely modern look; it stands out in a most distracting way. The costumes were all pitch perfect except for one: Ophelia’s lavender and silver outfit, while gorgeously stunning and sparkly, clearly is a Mardi-Gras-style outfit that stood out for the wrong reasons. Also there were too many extraneous characters on stage during the latter play: three witches, two women both stage right and stage left, and three fairies. They were unnecessary characters who had little stage business other than to distract from the six ladies on stage. The three witches were particularly egregious in this manner, upstaging the story with their toiling and boiling. And why put the maid (played nicely by Laura Blum) on stage for the prerequisite introduction of turning off cell phones and pointing out exits? It gives the impression that a seasoned actress like Laura made a mistake and entered too early.

Kate Schneider has made a promising directorial debut with this collection of one acts, and has utilized the intimate nature of Theatre 810 to great effect. The plays will continue this weekend as well as next, with Friday and Saturday evening performances at 7:30 and Sunday Matinees at 3:00. Call 484-0172 for tickets to this delightful pairing of Shakespeare’s women.
---Vincent P. Barras

Theatre--Performance (Musical Theatre)

What happens when you put five musical directors in a room together? The audience will reap the rewards of a performance worthy of the legendary musical Camelot. Director Debi L.Crawford decided that she needed a team of singer/directors who could pull off the feat of bringing this show to the stage at the Eunice Players’ Theatre this summer.

All the directors are distinctly connected in the world of musical theatre. There was only one person that Crawford wanted as King Arthur in Camelot so she called her good friend, Darrel LeJeune of Basile. Their friendship goes back three decades, working together on several musicals such as Damn Yankees and Pajama Game back in the 1980s. He then appeared in Grease and then the duo co-directed the musical Godspell in 1994. Fiddler On The Roof in 2007 was the last show where LeJeune played the lead and Crawford directed. Last year, LeJeune directed the musical Godspell at Basile High, where he
is the music and art teacher.

Then she called another familiar face of the theatre, Angie Benoit McBride, to play the lead role of Guenevere and serve as music director. Crawford first cast McBride in the musical Nunsense as the novice nun in 1991 and 1998. Over the years, they have collaborated on numerous musicals which McBride would direct and Crawford would work on costumes or choreography. Crawford asked McBride to appear in a cameo role in Fiddler On The Roof as the dead butcher’s wife and as fate would have it, Angie met her future husband, Duncan.

During Fiddler an actor from Opelousas came to auditions and nailed the role of Perchik. Duncan McBride came with a vast amount of experience and freshness. Since Fiddler he has directed several shows at Opelousas Little Theatre and played lead in numerous musicals there, most notably Jekyll and Hyde.  He presently serves as president of their theatre. Duncan will portray the role of Lancelot and will coordinate the fight scenes.


The missing element to this well rounded team was a pianist. Once again, after numerous phone calls, Crawford was able to persuade Jimmy Broussard of Crowley to be the show's accompanist. Broussard is well connected to the Eunice Players’ Theatre both as a pianist and lead singer. He played Danny Zuko in Grease and Jesus in Godspell which Crawford directed. He has also directed several shows, most recently Grease for The Acadia Players’ theatre, and he serves as president of that theatre.

So there you have it, a story of five intertwined personalities who love music and theatre and together, they will provide a wealth of experience for this summer musical.

Camelot will open at the Eunice Players’ Theatre on July 25th and run through August 4th. Tickets for this musical will go on sale Monday, July 9th. For ticket information, please call 337-457-2156 or 337-546-0163.

Theatre--Performance (Musical Theatre)

NathanaelT Productions is proud to announce the cast list for Reefer Madness! The New Musical. The cast list is as follows:
Jimmy: Travis Guillory
Mary: Katelyn Stelly
Lecturer: TBA
Jack: Josh Hart
Mae: Kristina Marshall
Ralf: Erik Schneider
Sally: Kelli Johnson
Dancers/Chorus: Dancing with a Purpose Company Dancers

Theatre--Performance

Call it Love Letters, the Louisiana tour. The staged play by A. R. Gurney played recently in February at Theatre 810 in Lafayette, and then again in late March at the DuChamp Opera House in St. Martinville for the Evangeline Players. Vincent P. Barras played Andrew Makepeace Ladd III in both productions, but the first incarnation starred Amanda Newbery, a teacher of talented students in Lafayette Parish, while the second production involved Jody L. Powell, a regular at the Eunice Players Theatre. Now, Jody Powell and Vincent Barras are teaming up again for another round of Love Letters to be performed at the Delta Grand Theatre in Opelousas on Friday (June 8th) and Saturday (June 9th) at 7 pm and Sunday (June 10th) at 2 pm. Call 407-1806 for tickets or check out the link:

“I’ve always wanted to do this play ever since I saw Jack Reedy and Gail Andriano perform it at the Lafayette Community Theatre back in the 90s,” Vincent P. Barras commented, but then he laughed, “I never thought that I would be performing it three times in a span of four months!”

Jody Powell has been enjoying the experience as well. “It’s always a joy to be in a good play, and to be on stage with Vince.” She herself is simultaneously directing the play Glass Mendacity so at times, she’s finding it all a bit overwhelming. “I love theatre… almost as much as Hanson.” (For those of you who don’t know, Jody is a devoted fan to the band Hanson, which regularly performs in Tulsa, Oklahoma.)

This isn’t the first pairing for the two actors. Last November, Jody Powell directed A Nice Family Gathering for the 42nd season of the Eunice Players’ Theatre, and she cast Vincent P. Barras in the role of Carl Lundeen. The show went on to win six Irving Awards—the Eunice equivalent of the Tony—including Best Play and Best Director for Jody Powell. “I loved every minute of that experience,” Vincent recalled. “The Eunice crowd was so inviting, and the cast and director were awesome.”

Love Letters, by A. R Gurney, took a circuitous route to Broadway, first appearing in New Haven, Connecticut in 1988 starring Joanna Gleason and John Rubenstein. It quickly moved to the off-Broadway Promenade Theatre in March 1989 where Kathleen Turner took over the role of Melissa and John Rubenstein reprised his role as Andrew. In October of that same year, Love Letters made its Broadway debut starring Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst, though it ran for only a few months. Since that time, Love Letters has appealed to numerous theatre companies specifically in a fund-raising capacity, and has drawn such talented actresses as Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Harris, Stockard Channing, Swoosie Kurtz, Nancy Marchand, and Elaine Stritch, and actors like James Earl Jones, Cliff Robertson, Richard Thomas, Christopher Reeve, Richard Kiley, and Robert Vaughn.
 
The Acadiana premiere of this play is believed to be Lafayette Community Theatre’s 1996 production starring Jack Reedy and Gail Andriano, an actress who won a Les Masques Best Actress award for her work. Since then, it has been revived numerous times in this area, the latest being a three-weekend run at Cité des Arts involving three different pairings of artists each week: Shane Guilbeau and Sandra Broussard; Ray and Laura Blum; and Cody Daigle and Cara Hayden. Its simple conceit—two characters reading their love letters before an audience—draws the listeners into the chamber piece, and the intimate surroundings of many Acadiana theatres accentuate Gurney’s words.

The play centers on Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, who are childhood friends whose lifelong correspondence begins with birthday party thank-you notes and summer camp postcards. Romantically attached, they continue to exchange letters through the boarding school and college years—where Andy goes on to excel at Yale and law school, while Melissa flunks out of a series of "good schools." While Andy is off at war Melissa marries, but her attachment to Andy remains strong and she continues to keep in touch as he marries, becomes a successful attorney, gets involved in politics and, eventually, is elected to the U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, her marriage in tatters, Melissa dabbles in art and gigolos, drinks more than she should, and becomes estranged from her children. Eventually she and Andy do become involved in a brief affair, but it is really too late for both of them. However Andy's last letter, written to Melissa’s mother, makes it eloquently clear how much they really meant, and gave to, each other over the years—physically apart, perhaps, but spiritually as close as only true lovers can be.

“So come out and see Love Letters at the Delta Grand,” Jody Powell added. “It’s a lovely space for an intimate evening of good theatre.” And Vincent quipped, “I’ll let you know the next venue for the Louisiana Tour. We’re thinking Monroe or Shreveport.” Call 407-1806 for tickets or check out the link: