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--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 (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--Fundraisers

Fundraisers this week! (Updated)

Acting Unlimited Inc, has created a Kickstarter project to help fund its summer production:  an original adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Wolves in the Walls.  They are trying to raise $3,000 to help fund the puppets and set involved in the  production.  For a look at the information and the Kickstarter.com project, visit here.  This project ends in 18 days.

NathanaelT Productions is running an Indiegogo campaign to collect money to pay artists, but not fund productions.  For a look at the information and the Indiegogo.com campaign, visit here.  This project ends in 93 days.

Acadiana Repertory Theatre has just started an Indiegogo.com campaign to raise money for their Inaugural New Works Festival.  They are trying to raise $2,000 and have 24 days left.  For more information on their projects, visit here.

Theatre--Performance/Festival

2012 New Works Festival
June 22 - July 1
Theatre 810
Downtown Lafayette
Join the Acadiana Repertory Theatre for its innaugral New Works Festival - and help us choose a show for next season!

ART will present readings of ten unproduced shows by ten up and coming playwrites from across the country, and each audience member will have the chance to rate each show after the reading of it - letting us know what you'd like to see us do in a full-scale production during our 2013 Season or another future season!

Come and see a single show, buy a pass for one weekend, or buy a pass for the entire Festival! Have a voice in what ART produces during 2013, and watch a show come to life from a simple reading to a full-blown theatrical production!

Keep an eye out here on our website for more information as we announce the readings and interview each playwrite about their work. Or keep tabs on the progress of the New Works Festival by liking Acadiana Repertory Theatre on Facebook, or following ART on Twitter. 

Theatre--Review (ART at Theatre 810)

Last weekend, Acadiana Repertory Theatre marked its second production with another award-winner, God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza. A gripping indictment of civilized manners in an increasingly hectic world, it won the Olivier Award (UK) and the Tony Award (US) for Best Play. Following on the heels of Doubt, another four-character play, ART has produced a highly enjoyable evening directed by Shana LeDet Qualls, and I can summarize the play in these three words: solid, erudite, and rushed. There are three more performances this Thursday, Friday and Saturday at Theatre 810, so please catch this production.

The play consists of two couples, Michael and Veronica Novak, and Alan & Annette Raleigh, who have assembled at the Novak apartment to discuss in a most civilized fashion an incident that occurred between their two sons. Benjamin Raleigh has knocked out two of Henry Novak’s teeth with a stick, and both couples wish to avoid unpleasant accusations and legalities, though accusations will certainly fly later. What begins as a pleasant afternoon to soothe out a sticky situation turns into a vitriolic indictment of nearly everything civilization has to offer. Alliances continually shift in this intermission-less play, and the characters and the audience feel as if they are walking on quicksand, unsure of what bombshell will fall next, and whose side will the characters be on. It reminded me a great deal of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with the exception that the four characters were more on equal footing.

Shana LeDet Qualls has assembled a fine cast with this quartet, though in some ways, each person on stage could have used a little more refining. As the completely oblivious parent thoroughly wedded to his iPhone, Gabe Ortego captured the lawyer Alan Raleigh quite well. Alan has long ago realized that his son is possibly a thug and may have given up completely on him, but Gabe shows a good understanding that all young men have rites of passage and he even bonds briefly with Bobby Bender over their similar childhood experiences. Elizabeth Satterly as the long suffering Annette Raleigh probably has the most fun when she gets her revenge on her husband, and believe me, the audience is on her side when she does it. Satterly gets to deliver delicious digs at her husband—“Since you’re no use….”—and she relishes those lines, but her slide into drunkenness is somewhat abrupt and needs a little work. The only character in jeans on the stage, Bobby Bender reminds us that his character Michael Novak, is the odd-man out, the Neanderthal in the group, so to speak. He sells household fixtures and does well enough, but compared to the other three, he might as well be the equivalent of the wrong side of the tracks. But Michael has refinements—his taste in cigars and liquor—and at the same time, Michael has fears (he can’t touch rodents and disposes of his daughter’s pet in the more tactless way.) At times, Bobby’s exasperation came naturally, yet at others, it seemed a little forced, but overall it was a sympathetic portrayal of a man just as infuriated with his wife as the Raleighs.

It perhaps isn’t fair to single out Lindsay Fite Finley as Veronica Novak, but it many ways, it’s the character that Yasmina Reza wrote the best. It is not coincidental that though all four Broadway actors were nominated for Tonys, it was Marcia Gay Harden who took home the prize. Veronica Novak is the epitome of a New York liberal, who though copious amounts of education has elevated herself to a position of rectitude, where it is her solemn duty to perfect all civilization, even to the point of telling others how to raise their children, if only for their own benefit. Lindsay has the best lines to say, the most exasperating asides to deliver, if only to remind everyone how enlightened she has become. Dressed in a flowing top with billowing pants and sauntering through a living room as pretentious as she is, she comes across as a benevolent force of nature, and Lindsay takes it to its full extent. There is one moment, however, where I wish she had used some dramatic pausing. It’s one of the first moments when her armor is beginning to crack and she’s beginning to let loose; her transition to those next lines to show her slow ascent into “commonness” with the other three characters needed more deliberation on her face and in her actions. Instead, she launched into the next lines as if she wallowed with the “little people” all the time. It was the only inauthentic moment in an otherwise exquisite performance.

You may wonder why I used the word “rushed” in my first paragraph. It is simple: the performance of this richly-textured play was rushed. What should have been a ninety minute performance took a paltry seventy minutes, and that’s a shame. It’s such a wonderful play filled with such talented actors; there was no need to push so quickly through the material leaving the audience no time to completely absorb the commentaries on civilization before launching into the next alliance-snapping section. For example, there was a wonderful dramatic pause delivered by Bender, who, noticing that Annette has become alive as a character once she was inebriated, he utters with perfect timing, “Well, puking certainly perked you up!” In the theatre, there’s a saying about pauses that took so long a Mack truck could have driven through them. Well the reverse is true in this production, for it could have used more judicious pausing. It’s too good of a play to rush through it so quickly.

Despite the rush, thank goodness for Reza’s words. Whether Ortego is raging against Veronica’s vicious asides by saying “You think too much,” or Satterly is slurring “I’ve never felt more normal,” they all become indictments of the animal instincts still built into our DNA. I never thought about it too much, but when Finley was talking into the phone to her distraught daughter about the loss of the hamster, she confides that the creature must be surviving and unintentionally summarized the gut feeling of the play. “She’s like us,” she explained calmly, “she’s omnivorous.” Well these four characters feasted on each other for an evening, and they definitely proved how cannibalistic they could be.
---Vincent P. Barras

Theatre--Performance

ART's production of God of Carnage opens Thursday night at 8 pm and will run through March 31st.  Tickets are available for purchase online at www.acadianarep.carnage.eventbrite.com or by phone reservation by calling (337) 484-0172.

Theatre--Performance

The Acadiana Repertory Theatre is proud to present God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza's 2009 Tony Award winner for Best Play. God of Carnage centers around two pairs of parents holding a cordial meeting to discuss a fight between their sons at a nearby park. They set out to resolve the childhood quarrel with civility and maturity, but resort to childish antics themselves as the evening soon turns to chaos. Starring Gabe Ortego and Elizabeth Satterly as Alan and Annette Raleigh, and Bobby Bender and Lindsay Fite Finley as Michael and Veronica Novak, God of Carnage is sure to provide you with a raucous good time as you watch good intentions turn to bad behavior in this clever comedy. 

"The dynamics between these two couples are exciting," says director, Shana Ledet Qualls. "The script provides all four actors the opportunity to explore individual characters while interacting as a couple and with another couple. God of Carnage will be an evening of self-discovery, sympathy, empathy and highly charged entertainment."  

"Acadiana Repertory Theatre is proud to present our second mainstage show at Theatre 810," says Managing Artistic Director, Steven Landry. "We are so pleased to be afforded the opportunity to present this smart, intimately funny show to the Acadiana community. AUI's space provides just the right setting for this type of theater."  

Join Acadiana Repertory Theatre for God of Carnage, March 22, 23, 24, 29, 31 at7:30 pm and March 25 at 3:00 pm at AUI's Theatre 810, 810 Jefferson St., Lafayette, LA 70501. To purchase tickets, call , or visit ART's website atwww.acadianarep.org. 

Theatre--Review (ART)

In my life I have been fortunate to witness some truly great ninety minute plays, not the least of which was God of Carnage in New York City just shortly after it had garnered two Tony Awards. I was not so fortunate to see Doubt, a play by John Patrick Shanley in which Cherry Jones won a Tony Award for her piercing portrayal of Sr. Aloysius, but I have seen the play performed at the Alley Theatre in Houston and at the Bayou Bijou theatre in UL's Student Union. The play richly deserved its Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best Play, but the Acadiana Repertory Theatre's production, while it benefits from a fine cast, suffers from poor direction. It's a great play aided by gifted actors, and it could have been so much more.

The play focuses on the tensions between Sister Aloysius Beauvier, the principal of a Catholic school, and Fr. Brendan Flynn, the newly appointed priest assigned to the St. Nicholas parish. It's 1964, where uncertainty racked both the United States in the midst of its civil rights struggle and the Catholic Church in the first fruits of Vatican II. The veteran Sr. Aloysius is deeply suspicious of both the new direction the church was taking and the new progressive priest who endorses a warmer version of the faith than she has espoused. In the play's course, she discovers through one of her new teachers Sr. James that Fr. Flynn has taken an unusual interest in Donald Muller, the school's first African-American student. Armed with her certitude, she assaults Fr. Flynn, using every weapon in her arsenal to remove the priest from her school and her parish. She is successful, but the effort shakes her faith to its core, leaving her wracked with doubt.

John Patrick Shanley's lean play uses words in the same manner as James Goldman did in The Lion in Winter: they serve as story and as a rich testament to what finely-honed words can do. The two protagonists battle with words, struggling with the great moral issues of the 1960s, so it's all the more disappointing that the actors were placed strangely on the stage. In the principal's office, many actors became trapped in their chairs, creating an awkwardness when more dynamic action was needed. It did not help that the Bayou Bijou lacks the proper depth for a full set, but nearly every actor upstaged each other in a manner that undermined the intense material. On so many occasions, the audience missed crucial facial reactions as the performers turned to face an upstage actor. A simple relocation of chairs would have fixed nearly all the problems and some more active blocking could have made this production a stellar one. It also baffles me why the principal's office was elevated on a platform; it was unnecessary and caused no end of problems as the actors stumbled around it during scene changes. On two occasions, I feared for the safety of the cast as they teetered near the edge of the stage trying to walk around the platform.

The director Garland J. Theriot assembled a fine cast, and my congratulations go to the actors who managed to create such vibrant characters. Shana Ledet Qualls dominated the stage from the very beginning, and her Sr. Aloysius was a steely mixture of tarnished experiences and, in the end, fragile bravado. Though she only had one scene, Kristina Marshall made Mrs. Muller the most complicated and rich person on the stage. Her sympathetic portrayal of a harried mother was a tour-de-force in a small time period. As the naïve Sr. James, Etienna R. Wright gives a nice portrait, but she needed to wait for laughter to die down as important lines were said. Steven R. Landry gave a nuanced, even underplayed performance as Fr. Flynn, but in the crucial moment when he must call to Sr. Aloysius with a single word, “Wait,” it wasn't strong enough to signal the victory Sr. Aloysius finally achieved. During Steven's monologue addressing students at St. Nicholas, he stood behind the light, casting himself in shadow, an unusual positioning that served little purpose. These four actors deserve great credit for keeping the play fluid in the face of stolid blocking.

When I discovered that Doubt had been made into a movie with the incredible Meryl Streep in the lead, I was elated, only to notice that the movie completely erased the one thing that made the play so powerful: the doubt. The play's great strength is that nothing is ever proven, and the audience members are left to decide on their own what really happened. Every person who left that theatre was haunted by Sr. Aloysius's final words: “I have doubts. I have such doubts.” I wished I had left haunted as well.

---Vincent P. Barras

Theatre--Performance

The Acadiana Repertory Theatre is proud to announce its premier production: Doubt, A Parable by John Patrick Shanley. 

Performances will take place at 7:30 pm on September 9th and 10th at the Bayou Bijou theatre in the Student Union on the campus of U. L. Lafayette. Ticket prices are $12 and are available at the door or via our website at www.acadianarep.org

Reservations can also be made by calling 337.385.3921 or by emailing info@acadianarep.org

Directed by Garland J. Theriot, Doubt stars Shana Ledet Qualls, Steven R. Landry, Etienna R. Wright, and Kristina Marshall.

Theatre--Review

Ray Blum's review of ART's premiere production, NightFears, appears in the Friday, September 17th edition of the Daily Advertiser.

Theatre--Performance

Rehearsals are underway at the Eunice Players' Theatre for The Subject Was Roses, the second production of the 41^st season.  Gabe Ortego, director of the two-act play by Frank D. Gilroy, is proud to announce an outstanding cast composed of theater veterans and an exceptional newcomer.

      

The play centers on John and Nettie Cleary, and their son, Timmy, a young man returning home from World War II.  As the family drama unfolds, marital strains between John and Nettie become apparent, and Timmy provides the tension-relieving humor in his attempts to smooth the waters over his parents' turbulent relationship.  The Broadway play and subsequent movie had outstanding success with critics and the public alike and they won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for drama, Academy Awards for the actors, and the Tony Award for Best Play.  The Subject Was Roses was previously presented by Eunice Player’s Theatre in 1970 in the second season.

Playing the role of John is Dr. Kevin Miller.  An EPT board member and winner of several Irving Awards, Kevin has shown his penchant for comedic and dramatic acting in roles in Greater Tuna, All the Great Books (abridged), Misery, and Never Get Smart With an Angel.  He’s eager to show audiences that even though John Cleary has a rough exterior, the man has an interior struggle to repair relationships he’s neglected over the years.  Kevin is a member of Acadiana Repertory Theatre (ART), a professional theatre company in Lafayette.

Also a member of ART and an EPT board member, Jody L. Powell portrays Nettie, a woman who is overprotective of her son and hurt by her husband’s misdeeds, yet still manages to achieve emotional growth.  Powell is no stranger to the EPT stage, having most recently been seen in The Last Night of Ballyhoo for which she won the Best Actress Irving Award.  Other acting roles include Myra in Deathtrap and Dr. Livingston in Agnes of God.  She is also known for directing To Kill a Mockingbird, Always…Patsy Cline, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and this season’s opener, What the Bellhop Saw.

Joining the cast as Timmy is Christian M. Richard.  A home school graduate, Christian is a freshman at LSU-E studying architecture.  Although this is his first play on stage he did run the light board for EPT’s summer show, Humpty Dumpty is Missing.  Christian is an artist with talent in drawing, painting, and playing the bass guitar and the ukulele.  Christian has also done sketch work at religious retreats.

The show will open with a matinee on Sunday, October 3 at 2:00 p.m.  Dinner theatre is scheduled for Tuesday, October 5 at 6:00 p.m. at Nick's on Second St., with the performance immediately following.   Remaining performances dates include October 6-10, with evening performances at 7:00 p.m. and the Sunday performance at 2:00 p.m.  Season ticket holders should call 866-856-3653 to make reservations.  Those without season tickets can purchase tickets by going to David Ltd. Hair Salon at 204 S. Second St., Eunice, or by calling 337-546-0163 or 337-457-2156 where Visa and Mastercard are accepted.  Season ticket packages are still available.  Tickets are $10; dinner (steak, sides, dessert) plus ticket is $25.  The theatre is located at 121 S. Second St. in Eunice.  Check out www.euniceplayers.blogspot.com for photos and more information about EPT.

Theatre--Performance

Acadiana Repertory Theatre is pleased to announce its first production in its ART after Dark series, which features edgy and sometimes offbeat theatre, art and music as a complement to its mainstage series. A mixed media play world premiere by Keith Dorwick and John Patrick Bray, NightFears has been developed through 21 interviews with people here in the Acadiana region. Asked to talk about their fears, the interviews have become the source (in part) for the material that appears on three large video screens that appear at the back of the set. A cast of four (Lexie Carroll, Michael Cato, Casey Harmon and Josey Toups) will present material from the interviews in ways that underscore the pervasive fear that we all face as we attempt to cope with such realities as disease, death, war and various kinds of financial insecurity as well as the childhood fears we never really outgrow. Note: NightFears uses mature content and language

NightFears opens Saturday, Sept. 11, 2010 at 8 pm and then runs Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 pm from Sept. 15 through 25, 2010. Full Admission is $12.00 and students and seniors pay just $7.00 (Wednesdays are "Pay What You Can" Nights). NightFears will run at the Acadiana Outreach Center Brick Warehouse, 125 South Buchanan Street Lafayette, LA and is supported by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council as administered by the Acadiana Center for the Arts.

The Acadiana Repertory Theatre is a professional theatre company serving the culturally rich area in southern Louisiana, known as Acadiana. Consisting of a core team of actors, directors, and visual artists, the Acadiana Repertory Theatre is the newest addition to the cultural reawakening in this area. Using local playwrights, directors, designers, actors and crew, ART strongly believes in the need to showcase local talent in professionally produced productions since it also believes in that local talent. Most of the company members are Louisiana natives who grew up right here in the Acadiana region, but all of the company members are dedicated to the idea that theatre, music and the other arts can flourish here in southwestern Louisiana.

Playwright, director and videographer Keith Dorwick is an associate professor in the English Department of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. As a member of the steering committee of the Acadiana Repertory Theatre, he is, with playwright John Patrick Bray, the co-author of two plays built out of the experiences of people affected by HIV in the Deep South. As a visual artist, he was one of two winners of a $600 Juror's prize for his short direct animation, Ganymede, which ran for two months at the juried Southern Open. His Icarus will run for two weeks in mid October at the Acadiana Center for Film and Media. John Patrick Bray is an off Broadway playwright with several recent productions; his Hound (an adaptation which premiered at Lafayette's own Cite' Des Arts) has just been published by Next Stage Press. Duncan Thistlewaite is set designer and builder; Rick Manuel will design lights and choreography is by Stacy Broussard.

For more information and reservations, email info@acadianarep.org or (337) 366-2277. 

Theatre--Auditions

The Acadiana Repertory Theatre is holding another round of company auditions on June 26th and 27th.  Call 
(337) 366-2277 or email info@acadianarep.org to schedule an audition time. You will need a contemporary and a classical monologue as well as 15 to 20 measures of a song.

Theatre--Auditions

The newly formed Acadiana Repertory Theatre is holding a second round of auditions for its core company on Saturday, June 27th at the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra building. Auditioners need 2 monologues, one classical and one contemporary, each about a minute to a minute and a half long. They also need a song, to be sung acapella, 16 to 30 measures long. . To reserve your audition spot, or for more information, please call one of the managing artistic directors (Blaine Peltier at 337-212-4471 or Steven Landry at 337-849-0687).

Theatre--Auditions

The Acadiana Repertory Theatre is seeking 10 individuals of various ages to be a part of our founding company. Those cast will be up for various roles throughout the year (including the Rocky Horror Show), in addition to helping out with various other projects. Auditioners need a classical AND a contemporary monologue, each about a minute to a minute and a half long, as well as a song, which will be sung acapella, 16 to 30 measures long. To reserve your audition spot, or for more information, please call one of the Managing Artistic Directors (Blaine Peltier at 337-212-4471 or Steven Landry at 337-849-0687.)

Date: Saturday, June 27, 2009
Time: 9:00am - 3:00pm
Location: Acadiana Symphony Orchestra Building
Street: 412 Travis St., in the Oil Center
City/Town: Lafayette, LA

Theatre--Auditions

The Acadiana Repertory Theatre is seeking 10-20 individuals of various ages to be a part of our founding company. Those cast will be up for various roles throughout the year, in addition to helping out with various other projects. The company feels that they have the opportunity to do something that Lafayette and Acadiana deserve and need! Those wishing to audition need to prepare a classical and a contemporary monologue, about a minute to a minute and a half long. Auditioners also need a song, which will be sung acapella, 16 to 30 measures long. It is not necessary to be a singer to be in the Company; the purpose is to see what the auditioner can do for the musical roles offered.) To reserve an audition spot, or for more information, please call one of the Managing Artistic Directors (Blaine Peltier at 337-212-4471 or Steven Landry at 337-849-0687.) Also, for those who are not actors/singers with something else to offer (designer, technician, etc.), please contact the company to inform them of your talents/services.

Date: Saturday, May 16, 2009
Time: 9:00 am - 3:00 pm
Location: Acadiana Symphony Orchestra Building in the Oil Center
Street: 412 Travis St.
City/Town: Lafayette, LA