By Alice T. Carter, Tribune Review
Seven weeks into the new year, this is going to sound premature: two of the most powerful performances you are likely to experience on a Pittsburgh stage this year are taking place right now at The New Hazlett Theater on the North Side.
Two dynamic Pittsburgh actors — David Whalen and Patrick Jordan — take charge of the stage and story in an edgy two-character drama about two Chicago beat cops, whose lifelong friendship unravels over crises in their personal and professional lives.
“A Steady Rain,” written by Keith Huff, is the final offering of Barebones Productions’ 10th season.
Jordan, who is Barebones’ founder and artistic director, makes a point of staging a play only when he has a script with something to say and all the other elements — cast, creative team and location — are in alignment.
So, it’s not surprising that this tense, edgy production draws you in and propels you through a dark journey to its seemingly unavoidable end.
Read the full review on Trib Live
by Steve Sucato, Pittsburgh City Paper
While life doesn’t come with an instruction manual, the wisdom of those who have come before us is supposed to offer guidance. But what if some of that wisdom — those recipes for happiness, success and fulfillment — turn out to be nothing more than clichés passed from generation to generation?
In CorningWorks’ latest Glue Factory Project,Recipes Our Mothers Gave Us, three veteran dancers with diverse cultural backgrounds question some of the common recipes for a better life they were taught as youths.
The hour-long Recipes Our Mothers Gave Us was created by and will be performed by dancer, choreographer and CorningWorks artistic director Beth Corning, actor/dancer Francoise Fournier and playwright, actor and choreographer Maria Cheng. The show has five performances, Jan. 15-19, at the New Hazlett Theater.
Read the full review on the Pittsburgh City Paper’s website.
Three of the New Hazlett’s shows made the PG’s best of lists this year, including barebones, the Festival of Firsts, and CORNINGWORKS.
Best of 2013: Theater
By Christopher Rawson
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Theater is live, in the moment. But good theater also has a half-life in reflection and memory. As we celebrate excellence in our annual retrospective of the previous 12 months, one memory rubs up against another, helping us see them in new ways.
Although we didn’t plan it this way, this year’s list features 10 theater companies, almost certainly a first in the half-century of these annual Post-Gazette retrospectives. Six other companies appear among runners-up. Note that we don’t consider repeats (“The Chief,” “Lion King”).
Read the full article
Best of 2013: Dance
By Jane Vranish
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
With dance continuing its upswing in Pittsburgh, it gets more difficult to select the Top10. This year was a squeaker, where Marie Chouinard’s brilliant choreographic expose of French composer Erik Satie both soothed and shocked, and Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre had its best effort in recent memory, inspired by all-American dancemaker Twyla Tharp.
Read the full article
heartfelt, surprising, and insightful…
Some motherf**ker who’s f**king Jackie’s girlfriend Veronica (Ruth Gamble) has left his f**king hat behind, and Jackie (Patrick Jordan) wants to know: who’s the motherf**ker with the hat? That quick summary of the play’s inciting incident tells you just about everything you need to know about the language and tone of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s sharp, engaging, and very funny play The Motherf**ker with the Hat; where the play goes from there, however, is far more heartfelt, surprising, and insightful than the jealous-hothead-boyfriend-romcom setup would ever lead you to believe. Jackie, you see, is trying to turn his life around: recently released from jail, where he spent time on drug charges, he’s in a twelve-step program and taking his sobriety one day at a time. Veronica, his girlfriend since eighth grade, is about as far from rehab as a person can get, but Jackie is as addicted to her as she is to the various substances she abuses. After discovering the hat in his apartment, Jackie seeks advice from his AA sponsor, Ralph D. (Edwin Lee Gibson), who seems to bear his own relationship cross in the form of Victoria (Daina Michelle Griffith), his bitchy harridan of a wife. Impatient with Ralph’s anodyne AA platitudes, Jackie takes desperate, parole-violating measures that lead him to seek help from his cousin Julio (Leandro Cano) to hide a gun. As the events of the play unfold, so do a series of revelations and betrayals that throw Jackie further off balance until, eventually, by the bittersweet ending, he starts to find his inner equilibrium.
[Read the full article on The Pittsburgh Tatler…]
Bill O’Driscoll from the Pittsburgh City Paper joined us last week for the beginning of the HEArt reading series:
“The reading series for this revived journal that combines art and social-justice activism got off to a nice start last night at the New Hazlett Theater.
The readers were Terrance Hayes, Pittsburgh’s resident National Book Award-winning poet, and visiting poet Saeed Jones.
Hayes focused on work he’s written since his award-winning Lighthead, including a riff on artist Jenny Holzer’s famous “Protect Me From What I Want” installations and “How to Draw An Invisible Man,” a dazzling take on author Ralph Ellison and his legacy.
Jones, of San Francisco, edits BuzzFeedLGBT. He read some explicitly political work, including one about a victim of anti-gay violence in Africa he memorialized thus: “My tongue is a kingdom; you live there.” (Jones noted that there are 76 countries where being homosexual is effectively illegal.)…”
Read the full review on the City Paper’s website
This month, Miniature Curiosa takes to the Hazlett stage as part of our CSA Performance Series. Birds of America promises to be one of Miniature Curiosa’s biggest and scariest shows ever.
“Don’t mind the woman in the photos. That’s merely Margaret, Dr. Douglas Irene’s wife. Douglas and Margaret used to live in a house at the top of a lonely cliff against the soundtrack of a raging sea. Despite their distance from the rest of the world, Margaret never could escape the watchful eye of those birds of America. Poor Margaret.”
Birds of America is a multi-media exploration into scale and suspense. Cameras soar through miniature scenery, dollhouses, and frightful dreamscapes to create a Hitchcockian nightmare of Rosemary’s Baby proportions.
When working together, Zach Dorn and Murphi Cook operate under the title Miniature Curiosa. Miniature Curiosa explores the underbelly of childhood nostalgia with the disappointed eyes of adulthood. Through low-fi technology, puppetry, and non-linear storytelling, Miniature Curiosa presents fast-moving, fast-talking (sometimes malfunctioning) live action comic books. Their most recent spectacle, Tonight A Clown Will Travel Time premiered at FE Gallery in Pittsburgh and toured across America this summer for five weeks.
Last year at Salon 6, you knew him as DBR; this year, Daniel Roumain returns to the New Hazlett Theater to perform again for Salon 7.
Roumain’s work includes three separate commissions for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (his latest: Symphony for the Dance Floor), and a new work for the Atlanta Ballet (Home in 7) in collaboration with the choreographer Amy Seiwert and the poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph. Roumain comes to us after having recently performed at The Macau International Music Festival, Ten Days in Tasmania, Central Park SummerStage, 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, and the Sydney Opera House.
We could go on and on about Daniel Roumain, like about how he’s collaborated with everyone from Philip Glass to Lady Gaga, but we’ll let his music speak for itself.
Check out the rest of his music on YouTube.
Tickets are on sale now for Salon 7
Recently, we had the opportunity to interview Connor Bahr, the assistant director of Carnivale Theatrics’ production of In the Heights.
The show was nominated for thirteen Tonys, including Best Musical, so the decision seems like it would be simple. However, the musical takes place within a very specific demographic. So why this show, for this audience?
Connor told us that the company’s choice to do In the Heights was one that surprised quite a few people, but he believes that the show’s beauty is in its freedom. “It’s free from the author’s hand.”, Connor said. “It takes place in the present, which brings room for the actors to interpret their craft. Plus, it’s just great music.”
When asked about Carrnivale’s particular approach to the show, Connor’s description echoed the messages of the show itself: “We’re a fresh, professional theater company, and we’re getting to the next level. We’ve gone from an obscure student production company to having people from the original Broadway cast audition and be a part of our shows. We’ve worked very hard in the past 5 years.” He spoke about giving freedom to the actors in the show, and being able to trust the production team as a whole.
The show has many universal themes. “It’s universality is something we all can relate to. Letting people down, just getting by, etc. Then, the blackout comes and it strips away all societal trappings, making it even more relatable.”, said Connor, describing the arch of the show. “Pittsburgh’s community tends to be very accepting. We all can understand uncertainty- whether financially, generationally, or through relationships.”
CSA Artist Miniature Curiosa is seeking two performers for Dr. Douglas Irene’s Birds of America.
Birds of America is a multi-media exploration into scale and suspense. Cameras soar through miniature scenery, dollhouses, and frightful dreamscapes to create a Hitchcockian nightmare of Rosemary’s Baby proportions.
SEEKING:
Dr. Douglas Irene – (male, late 30s-50) A middle-aged lecturer. A long-winded fellow. The sort of bumbling man you feel sorry for upon first glance; but first glances are often deceiving, and once you get to talking to him you realize there’s a real darkness seething through his veins. His interest in birds is more peculiar than
scientific, though he believes it is terribly well-informed.
Margaret – (female, mid 20s-40) His wife. She is younger than he is, and looks even younger than her age would suggest. She is contrary, sometimes even to the point of being childish, but she does desperately want to be happy.
TO AUDITION:
The audition will be held August 24th 10-12:30 at the New Hazlett Theater. Please
email murphi.cook@gmail.com to schedule a time to meet. The audition will consist
of cold readings and playing with puppets.
Kelli Stevens Kane sat down with her own director, Mark David Staley, to talk about the their upcoming performance: Big George.
A one-woman show about the connections between families and communities, Kelli’s play is an intimate, living portrait of her grandmother, Georgetta Holmes Stevens. Known as “Big George” to her friends, she was a singular woman who always spoke her mind. Even when she was attending the funerals of complete strangers.
Kelli: I’m curious about how you see this show. What is it? A play?
Mark: Well, typically a play has some central conflict but that’s sort of pigeonholing the idea of a play.
Plays are at the heart a story, and this is a beautiful story. It’s a story about the art of being human.
Plato wrote ‘Love is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.’ Your exploration of these stories is motivated by that same pursuit and desire. Kelli, what do you hope the audience takes away from this experience?
Kelli: At its heart, this is a show about connections–to family, community, our authentic selves, connections across generations, and connections between the dead and the living.
I hope “Big George” sparks each of us to experience these connections as deeply as we can. I also hope audience members will connect with me after the show.
I love feedback and will write back within the week: hello@kellistevenskane.com. Thanks!
