Found at the Daily Texan on-line:

Dahl’s book re-imagined by students as stage play

(Lab Theatre, Thursday at 8 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.)

By Sarah Pressley, Daily Texan Staff

Mute characters will manipulate the world around a young woman as she falls in and out of love in “The Man With the Dancing Eyes.” She discovers love, heartbreak and, eventually, a happy ending in a beloved children’s book brought to life in a virtual new world.

“The Man With the Dancing Eyes,” a play based on a book of the same name by Sophie Dahl, depicts a modern-day fairy tale as told by a group of UT students from the Department of Theatre and Dance.

“[The show] follows Pierre, a young woman from an elite and eclectic breeding,” director Courtney Sale said. “Pierre falls in love, has her heart broken and sets off to make a new life for herself in New York.”

The play was adapted by the students from Dahl’s illustrated picture book. They originally planned to put on a different play but ended up changing their minds when they found out another group would be performing the same show a few weeks later. “The Man With the Dancing Eyes” was an old favorite of the set designer and one of the actors, so the group decided to adapt this story for the stage instead.

Read more at the Daily Texan on-line . . . .

Found on-line:

The University of Texas and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies 

present, from Veracruz, Mexico,

Operación Clown in

Cállate!  (Shut Up!)

Adriana Duch, artistic director

September 15, 2010, 7:00 pm (in Spanish)
September 16, 2010, 8:00 pm (in English)
McCullough Theatre, University of Texas
$22 -  BUY TICKETS

Texas Performing Arts presents two evenings of unique theatre from Veracruz, Mexico. Operación Clown is renowned for their innovative use of masks, puppets, and cabaret theatre based on theatrical clown technique.

This internationally celebrated theatrical group will bring the acclaimed piece Cállate to the McCullough stage. Narrated with an explosive mixture of melodrama and irreverent humor, this love story set at the time of the Mexican Revolution combines drama, comedy, wrestling and images inspired by the Golden Age of Mexican cinema to fuel a cast of characters based on stereotypes of the period.

Click to go to YouTube video by Operación Clown

Found on-line:

Shakespeare Acting Studio, October 11 - November 22

. . . or, perhaps, The Road to Salvation as imagined by Bart Simpson.

The setting is a  clichéd and unfunny take on the Day of Judgment, the plot's a mess, the characters are mostly caricatures, and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot was LONG -- close to three hours, including one intermission. 

A brilliant and moving play was hiding inside this mess, one that came clear in the concluding scenes, after the grunge and cuteness had been burned away. 

One had the impression that Stephen Adly Guirgis set out to write a stand-up comedy routine about the afterlife and just couldn't bear to discard any of the many characters that occurred to him along the way. 

From the website of

The Penfold Theatre Company | Austin, Texas


ACU alumni trio Nathan Jerkins, Sean Martin and Ryan Crowder have made a big splash in the Austin arts scene this year. As the Penfold Theatre Company, they've sold out shows, piqued the interest of the rapidly growing Austin suburb of Round Rock and swept the Austin Critics Circle Awards. This year they received awards for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and their show, Jon and Jen, captured the award for Best Musical.

The timing of Penfold Theatre could not have been better. The year before they began this company, an arts council was formed and a professional symphony came to the Round Rock area. So by the time they got there, a foundation for the arts had already been created.
Perfect timing

"It was great because there's already a stream going that way, and we've stepped into that stream," said Sean. "Round Rock is really well positioned, because it's a city in its own right, but it's also at the intersection of several other growing suburbs." The population of Round Rock combined with surrounding suburbs is nearing 400,000 people.

The city council of Round Rock came to see Penfold's second show, The Last Five Years. "Then they called us up, took us to lunch and basically sat us down and said, 'What can we do to make you in our town?' " said Ryan.

Read more at www.acu.edu . . . .

From playbill.com via ArtsJournal.com:

Lynne Nottage's Ruined and Will Eno's Middletown Named First Recipients of Horton Foote Prizes

By Andrew Gans
30 Aug 2010

Winners of the newly established Horton Foote Prizes, named in honor of the late legendary writer, were announced Aug. 30.

Presented biennially "to award excellence in American Theater," the first winners include Lynne Nottage's Ruined for Outstanding New American Play and Will Eno's Middletown for Promising New American Play.

Nottage and Eno will be honored at a private reception Sept. 20 at The Players in New York City. Each playwright will be presented with $15,000 and a limited edition of Keith Carter's photograph of Horton Foote.

As contenders for Outstanding New American Play and Promising New American Play, Nottage and Eno were nominated by Manhattan Theatre Club and Vineyard Theatre, respectively.

Read more at playbill.com . . . .

Link to HortonFootePrize.com . . . . (as of September 1, announcement has not yet been posted)

Found on-line:

The Greater Austin Creative Alliance (GACA) has established a website for the B. Iden Payne Awards, the competitive nominating and selection process for stage productions for the September - August annual season.  Members of the Creative Alliance vote in September on a nomination list established by the committee, and results are celebrated in October.

Committee members are volunteers, GACA members from various branches of the arts.  The Committee invites applications for vacancies that may occur at the opening of the stage season.  Click on the image to go to the new website for further information.

A note:  for their production of The Fantasticks, UT alumni Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones reportedly were thinking of B. Iden Payne with their affectionate portrayal of  Henry the old stage actor, an itinerant comic figure valiantly stiff in the joints and occasionally bewildered in his Shakespearian memories.  UT celebrates the 50th anniversary of the play's first Off Broadway staging in October of this year.

Click for a biography of Ben Iden Payne and a history of the awards.

Found on-line:

The Creativity of Acting for Film & Stage

presented by State Theatre School of Acting

in association with Austin Community College at The State Theatre

Wednesdays, September 15-October 20, 7 - 10 p.m.

Intuitive acting. What does it mean? Where does it come from? How do you get there consistently?

Living in the moment, in a highly intuitive state is the method explored, (learned from Charles Conrad, now retired, but well known Los Angeles acting teacher of 40 years). Improvisation and cold reading scenes will be the bulk of the class work. Both film and stage scripts will be used, with some work filmed for playback and critique.

Beginning- Advanced Beginning. Led by Babs George Sept. 15-Oct. 20 (6 weeks) Wednesdays 1-3:30pm $165 DRAM 3003 100

Received directly:

Community Theater Auditions for

The Amazing, Unforgettable, Mixed-up Adventures of Hansel and Gretel

Seeking several children (at least 8 years in age), adults, and backstage crew members for this welcoming community theater production.  Auditions are 9/1 from 7-9 PM at First Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 6800 Woodrow Avenue at Justin Lane, 78756.  

Rehearsals will start on Wednesday, 9/8 and will be at the same time and location.  Performances are the first three weekends in November.  All talent and background levels welcome.  For more information contact Nancy at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 914-2917.

Charlie Stites is a big guy with a big heart whose most recent stage outings have been as braggarts and sexual boasters.  He counters that image somewhat with his intent to right the acting balance between the sexes by staging this drama by actress Carolyn Kava, done to respectful New York reviews in the mid-1980s. 

Stites writes in the program that he was struck "by the dearth of interesting parts available for [women]," making "the ladies of Austin theatre. . . an underused resource."

Without judging that declaration, I can confirm that he and his Paladin Theatre did recruit a houseful of sensitive and impressive female actors for Early Girl.  Some I had seen before -- Wendy Zavaleta in striking roles in musical theatre, Molly Karrasch at the Austin Playhouse in several roles, including a superb turn as Rita in Educating Rita, and Karen Alvarado in well defined, deft portrayals with Teatro Vivo.  Lindsley Howard is new to me but will become much more familiar to our Austin audiences next month when she plays Miranda, the romantic lead in Austin Shakespeare's The Tempest.  Keylee Paige Koop, Ashley Rae Spillers (with that striking red flower in her hair) and Rose Fredson also absorbed their characters and interpreted them decisively.  Maybe Charlie has a point; with wealth of femininity such as this, we may be missing something on the feminine side in Austin theatre.