Saturday, December 26, 2009

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE makes Top 10


The Dallas Voice recently announced the Top 10 Productions of 2009 in the DFW area. Audacity's HELLO HUMAN FEMALE made the list! In celebration, we are bringing it back. That's right, back by popular demand, Matt Lyle's delightfully skewered tale of misfit love.

Check out the ATL website. Click here.


Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Performance photos of CASTRATO in NOLA

Last month, Audacity's Brad McEntire (Director/Designer) and Jeff Swearingen (Actor) took Andy Eninger's twisted little one-man show THE LAST CASTRATO down to New Orleans, to the 2nd Annual New Orleans Fringe Festival. It was very well received and everybody had a blast!

New Orleans photographer Libby Nevinger snapped a few good pics of Jeff in performance as Joseph, the main character in the piece.



Saturday, November 28, 2009

ANGEL IN THE BARN puppet play


Audacity Theatre Lab presnts this delightful and heart-warming puppet tale of a Farmer and his Wife who have fallen upon hard times. They encounter an old Man with giant wings who seems to have crash landed in their barn. Is he an Angel? Will this event bring the Farmer and his Wife prosperity? Will it bring them back together?
 
Presented in a modified Bunraku-style of table top puppetry, this production appeals to the young and old alike.

Directed by ATL's Managing Producer Ruth Ann Engel and featuring puppeteers Oscar Contreras, Cinnamon Rhoades and Jeff Hernandez.

Presented in conjunction with Project X at the Green Zone, 161 Riveredge Drive, Dallas TX 75207

Playing December 5 & 12, 2009 at 2 & 4 PM. Family audiences welcome (ages 6 and up)! FREE OF CHARGE! (donations will be welcomed)

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

More MILKY WAY pics

Jeff Swearingen as The Amazing Arnie
Angela Parsons as Travelin' Alice... going through a black hole
Tyson Rinehart as Buzz and Rhianna Mack as Charlotte

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

MILKY WAY Pics








A Spaced-Out Odyssey

Greg Romero's "The Milky Way Cabaret" floats across the universe at Audacity Theatre Lab

by Mark Lowry/
TheaterJones.com
Published Tuesday, November 17, 2009


A magician, two clowns and an Alice in Wonderland-esque girl: These are characters that should make you feel all warm inside, right?

Not so fast. In Greg Romero's time-trippin' play The Milky Way Cabaret, currently being staged by Audacity Theatre Lab at Teatro Dallas, it's no so cut-and-dry.

The magician is Arnie (the incomparable Jeff Swearingen), an alcoholic whose tricks are fading and wife Lorraine (Tristy Wyly) has filed for divorce. The sadistic clowns are Buzz (Tyson Rinehart) and Charlotte (Rhianna Mack), who have tragic pasts and are really assassins on a mission. And the magic-loving girl, named Alice (Angela Parsons), is the daughter of Arnie and Lorraine and a victim of her parents' separation. She's on her own mission, risking danger to travel through a series of cosmic wormholes from 2037 back to 2009, perhaps to change everyone's destiny.

Milky Way is the second of three plays by Louisiana-bred and onetime Texas resident Greg Romero (now based in Philadelphia) to be produced by Audacity. The first was another universe-crossing, non-linear piece, The Most Beautiful Lullaby Ever Heard, in 2008. The third will come in 2010.

This middle play, directed and designed by Brad McEntire, is an absurdist construct that might be too easily chalked up as merely "interesting" if it weren't for the sparkling banter between Buzz and Charlotte. They sit in chairs on a stage-right platform for the entire show and discuss their pasts and their interests, and develop an affinity for one another. Romero conjures up some vivid imagery in these conversations, most notably in the character of Charlotte, who was born conjoined at the heart to a twin. Both Rinehart and Mack are affecting and wryly humorous.

Speaking of funny, Swearingen is the perfect choice for a down-on-his-luck man whose passion is sleight of hand. Arnie desperately tries to keep his act going (which sometimes involves the audience, painlessly) as Mr. Boss (Jeff Hernandez) threatens to can him. There's at least one sweet scene between Arnie and Lorraine, too, carried out with lovingly deep-rooted emotion by Wyly and the devastating Swearingen. His reaction when she tells him "You used to be great" is priceless.

The play features some good ideas and memorable dialogue, and Romero and McEntire make smart use of pauses and silence. Presented in the teensy Teatro Dallas space and with an even tinier budget, Audacity's staging still feels very much like a work-in-progress—which it is.

As enjoyable as the clown thread and the magician stuff are, though, they're occasionally dragged down by something that seems thrown in for nothing more than shock value, such as the large rubber double-ended dildo with which Mr. Boss beats down Arnie. It's funny for about two seconds, then quickly devolves into the realm of irritatingly pointless.

It's needlessly smug. Surely Romero can come with a device that gets the same point across without being so cocky.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Meet Arnie

A little intro video about everyone's favorite magician (except his wife, boss and some folks at the dog races)... Amazing Arnie!

Courtesy of ATL's own Jeff "Mr. Boss" Hernandez

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

MILKY WAY CABARET: Notes on the Play


About the Play
The second project of three in a series of collaborations between ATL and Romero called 3P/3Y (three plays over three years), MILKY WAY CABARET was originally commissioned by the Cardboard Box Collaborative in Philadelphia, PA. It was composed as a sort of valentine to the city. ATL's production will be the second mounting of the production which was developed further through readings and conversations back and forth between ATL artists and Romero.

About the Playwright
Greg Romero received an MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas-Austin where he held the James A. Michener Fellowship. Originally from Louisiana, he is currently based in Philadelphia. Mr. Romero's works include THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LULLABY YOU'VE EVER HEARD, THE MILKY WAY CABARET, DANDELION MOMMA, THE MISHUMAA, and ZOMBIE HEART SANDWICH. Mr. Romero currently resides in Philadellphia, PA where he teaches and writes. 

For more information on Greg Romero click here.

Monday, November 2, 2009

THE LAST CASTRATO: Notes on the play and playwright

 About the Play
THE LAST CASTRATO is the darkly comic, bittersweet tale of Joseph, who was born without a penis, and his love affair with Elena, who was born with her skin inside out. Elena, though, was blessed with a beautiful singing voice to balance her deformity, while Joseph has no talent whatsoever to make up for his missing member. "A penis," he muses, "in terms of artistic merit is worth nothing." 

THE LAST CASTRATO sprang from the mind and pen of Chicago playwright Andy Eninger after initial development as part of a solo performance workshop at The Blue Rider Theatre. Audacity Artistic Director Brad McEntire made contact with Mr. Eninger in October 2004 when they were both featured performers in Chicago's third annual Single File Solo Performance Festival. THE LAST CASTRATO recieved its world-premiere at Single File, performed by its author. The piece was then presented by Audacity Productions at the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival. It was subsequently presented exclusively by Audacity Productions throughout 2005 and 2006 at theatres in Dallas, Addison and Austin, Texas. 

The piece runs about 50-55 minutes and is performed by a single actor who portrays nearly a dozen different characters. Though this is the first time THE LAST CASTRATO will be presented by ATL ( as opposed to Audacity Productions), Jeff Swearingen returns to act in the piece and ATL Artistic Director Brad McEntire comes back aboard as Producer and Director. 

About the Playwright
Andy Eninger lives in Chicago. He is the creator of "Sybil," an improvised solo form. He has performed and taught "Sybil" across the country, in London, and in Toronto - 'Now Toronto' magazine selected his performance as one of the Top 10 Comedy Shows of 2002. Andy is a founding performer with GayCo Productions, where he has performed in a number of fabulous comedy revues, and with the Chicago Comedy Company, which focuses on corporate comedy and training. Andy teaches improvisation and comedy writing for The Second City Training Center in Chicago, including the yearly "Sybilization" solo improv program. He also teaches a Solo Performance class for both the Chicago Comedy Company, and the Metropolis center for the Performing Arts, and coaches or directs several solo performers each year. 

Mr. Eninger holds an MA in Playwriting, and studied directing and writing for film at the Hungarian Academy of Film and Theater. His writing/directing credits include BEDLAM for the Playground Theatre, TENNIS for the Bailiwick Theatre, music and direction for LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PARODY and music for BAND GEEKS: THE MUSICAL.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

MWC tickets now on sale!


Tickets for MILKY WAY CABARET are now on sale. Get 'em here. Playing Nov. 11-21, 2009 at the Teatro Dallas Space. More info here.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

MILKY WAY CABARET fast approaches


THE MILKY WAY CABARET concerns the convergence of a coterie of desperate and unlikely characters at a nightclub (of the same name) in South Philadelphia. The piece revolves around an alcoholic magician trying to win his family back by performing a disappearing act, a pair of clown-costumed assassins who put out cigarettes on each others' faces and fall in love while staked out near the nightclub, a dildo-wielding club owner who grows steadily more and more fed up, a hula-hooping ex-Homecoming Queen struggling to come to terms with the dissolution of her marriage and the grown-up version of the magician’s daughter taking a series of dangerous trips back in time, through black holes, in an attempt to save her father’s life.
 
Featuring Rhianna Mack, Angela Parsons, Trista Wyly, Tyson Rinehart, Jeff Hernandez and Jeff Swearingen

November 11-21, 2009
Playing at the Teatro Dallas Space
1331 Record Crossing Road, Dallas TX 75235

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Press qoutes from THE LAST CASTRATO


The Last Castrato: Hits High Notes
By Michael Dale/ August 24, 2005
...what I wouldn't change is the casting of Jeff Swearingen, whose exuberant energy and nice-guy likability is a treat to watch. Performing with no set -- just a folding chair, two tables, minimal props and nothing behind him but a black curtain -- director Brad McEntire puts him through a cardio workout with physically demanding staging full of pratfalls and human sound effects. His fun performance of an enjoyable... script makes The Last Castrato hit some pleasant high notes. 


From Ft. Worth Star-Telegram
Out of the Loop: Audacity Productions, The Last Castrato
by Mark Lowry/ Staff Writer/ March 6, 2006
. . .
There's some outrageously funny stuff here.... Swearingen really gets into it, too... Audacious, indeed.


From Dallas Morning News
Anatomical antics Swearingen shows off range in 'Castrato'
by Lawson Taitte/ March 6, 2006
. . .
The world has been waiting for Jeff Swearingen to find a role that could contain and exploit his explosive, hilarious and truly quirky talent. He's finally got one... Under Brad McEntire's direction, Mr. Swearingen bounced between hilarity and an almost scary intensity... More than once, the audience finds itself unable to stop laughing.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Oh, it's coming...

Congrats to, well, us!

Both the Dallas Observer's Best of Dallas 2009 and the DFW Theatre Critics Forum Awards were released recently.

Observer's BEST OF DALLAS 2009
Best Comic Actor: Jeff Swearingen from HELLO HUMAN FEMALE
Best Comic Actress: Beccas Shivers from HELLO HUMAN FEMALE
Best Place to See a Weird Play: The Ochre House, brought to the attention of the masses by ATL's HELLO HUMAN FEMALE

FW Theatre Critics Forum Awards
Best new Play/Musical: HELLO HUMAN FEMALE by Matt Lyle

So, this is nice.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

ARSENIC & ROSES wrap up...

ARSENIC & ROSES ended a month-long run at the Bath House Cultural Center yesterday. The half-hour one-act by Brad McEntire was part of the 2009 Festival of Independent Theatres. A sweet and simple comic romance, the show was largely misunderstood and/or dismissed by the local Dallas reviewers, who were looking for something more "edgy" from the festival showings.

The above clip is from the closing night performance. Judging from the laughter in the audience's response, they seems to differ in opinion from most of the reviewers.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

EYE IN THE SKY Episode 2


EYE IN THE SKY Episode 2 in now online.

Great work by Erin Courtney, Greg Romero and Daniel Talbott.

Also, shout outs to the performances of Megan Woodall, Jeff Schmidt, Lydia Mackay and Jeff Swearingen.

As always, the direction is by Brad McEntire, audio recording and reading of the intro by Mr. John Flores and Ms. Chris Humphrey is on original music and audio engineering.

SPECIAL NOTE about this episode: In 2008 Audacity instigated a collaboration with playwright Greg Romero called 3P/3Y. In a nutshell, ATL agreed to produce three of Mr. Romero's pieces, be they large or small, over a three year period. We are happy to say, the piece enclosed within this episode, GOODB(EYE), written specifically for Audacity's Eye In The Sky project completes this collaboration.

Friday, July 24, 2009

ARSENIC AND ROSES: Notes on the Play


About the Play
ARSENIC & ROSES was revamped for this production - its Dallas Premiere - at the 2009 Festival of Independent Theatres. Since its first production in 1996 on the campus of the College of Santa Fe, the piece has shown at the following places:

ARSENIC & ROSES received its world-premiere on the campus of the College of Santa Fe at the Weckesser Studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, December 4-6, 1996. Directed by Brad McEntire. Staged Managed by Christina Rivas. Featuring Josh Jacobson as Charles and Amanda Putman as Katherine. 

ARSENIC & ROSES received a Staged Reading with Audacity Productions, Lewisville, Texas, at Borders Bookstore Café, Saturday, April 15, 2000. Directed by Brad McEntire. Featuring Jason Stuart as Charles and Brynne Shipman as Katherine. 

ARSENIC & ROSES received a regional-premiere in north Texas as part of the Flower Mound Performing Arts Theatre's First Annual New Works Festival at the Barn Door Theatre, Flower Mound, Texas, May 3 and 10, 2003. Directed by Ryan Pointer. Stage Managed by B.J. Evans. Featuring Jeff Swearingen as Charles and Leslie Patrick as Katherine. 

ARSENIC & ROSES received its international premiere in Hong Kong at the Flying Pan, as part of DEER Theatre's "Chew On This!" Short Play Festival. April 18 - 21, 2007. Directed by Ruth Engel. Featuring Eric Ng as Charles and Bhavini Raval as Katherine.

The piece was included for publication in 2008 in the collection TWO PLAYS BY BRAD McENTIRE.
 
About the Playwright
Playwright Brad McEntire is the Founding Artistic Director of Audacity Theatre Lab. For more information visit his website.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

ATL in Design Exhibit!


Audacity is in the Festival of Independent Theatres in more than one way.

Currently, an exhibit of the work of Dallas area designers is on display at the Bath House Cultural Center. It is called ART BEYOND THE STAGE and opened July 11 and runs until August 8.

ART BEYOND THE STAGE is an art exhibition featuring a collection of renderings, costumes, art, and other theater objects created in recent years by regional designers.

Some of the designers featured in this exhibition include: Jacob Climer, Bruce Coleman, Barbara Cox, Christina Dickson, Clare Floyd DeVries, Rodney G. Dobbs, Wade Giampa, Brad McEntire, Bob McVay, Jennifer Owen, Andy Redmon, Claudia Stephens, Giva Taylor, Aaron Patrick Turner, and Randel Wright, among others.

You can see the puppets and process notes of Audacity's one-act entry into last year's Teatro Caliente in Phoenix, Arizona. We took a lesbian/death/love triangle puppet piece called ROSELITA'S DEAD MAN.

We are pleased to display our designs alongside some of the best designers in DFW.

More info about the ehibit here.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

ARSENIC press

Teresa Valenza and Jeff Swearingen in ARSENIC AND ROSES
From The Dallas Morning News:
Festival of Independent Theatres Gets Off to a Strong Start
Monday July 20, 2009
By Lawson Taitte / Dallas Morning News
 
The first two weekends of this year's Festival of Indepependent Theatres share a similiar lineup of openings: One of the two founding companies still participating anchors with a show by a famous woman playwright, while three newer companies contibute a new play, most world premieres. The first week's entires, reviewed Sunday, all looked strong.
. . .
The two completely original scripts both deal with odd couples. The more successful, Audacity Theatre Lab's Arsenic and Roses is a trifle, but a really pleasant one. Jeff Hernandez directed Brad McEntire's comedy about a man down on his luck who (Jeff Swearingen) who seeks refuge in a bar where the sole waitress is a girl he snubbed in high school (Teresa Valenza). Swearingen's knack for leavening hilarious schtick with deadeye emotional accuracy works its usual wonders, and Valenza builds sympathy for a character who in the wrong hands would simply be annoying.

Fantasy and Romance
That's what the first round of openings at the Festival of Independent Theatres delivered. Who's up for more?
by Mark Lowry
Published Sunday, July 19, 2009
. . .
Audacity Theatre Lab goes for something much more traditional with Brad McEntire's Arsenic & Roses, directed by Jeff Hernandez.
Jeff Swearingen plays Charles, a man who's down on his relationship luck and was just dumped by his girlfriend of two months (the reason behind this is one of the play's funnier revelations). He wanders into a diner on a rainy night, where he meets waitress Katherine (Teresa Valenza).
Turns out, they've met before. They dated in high school, and Katherine still harbors resentment. They talk, fight and play "remember when," and if things seem familiar to them, it's even more so for the audience. McEntire has a talent for the one-liners ("he thought a Persian rug was made of cat fur," Katherine says about a former boyfriend), but this play feels like a work-in-progress. But, honestly, that's another valid reason for producing in FIT—it's a fine testing ground. 
Before this show goes any further, though, Valenza has work to do. Her anger is not believable and she talks too fast. Even in the small confines of the Bath House, she needs to project. 

Swearingen is great in a role that's less physical than we're used to seeing from him, proving that he doesn't need to be outrageous to maintain his status as one of—if not the—funniest actor in North Texas. Acting-wise, this production is off-balance.

Monday, July 20, 2009

The 2009 Festival of Independent Theatres as Dallas' Bath House Cultural Center opened this past weekend. ATL's entry was ARSENIC & ROSES by Artistic Director Brad McEntire.

Early press from Lawson Taitte at the Dallas Morning News:

Festival of Independent Theatres Gets Off to a Strong Start
Monday July 20, 2009
By Lawson Taitte / Dallas Morning News

The first two weekends of this year's Festival of Indepependent Theatres share a similiar lineup of openings: One of the two founding companies still participating anchors with a show by a famous woman playwright, while three newer companies contibute a new play, most world premieres.

The first week's entires, reviewed Sunday, all looked strong.

. . .

The two completely original scripts both deal with odd couples. The more successful, Audacity Theatre Lab's Arsenic and Roses is a trifle, but a pleasant one. Jeff Hernandez directed Brad McEntire's comedy about a man down on his luck who (Jeff Swearingen) who seeks refuge in a bar where the sole waitress is a girl he snubbed in high school (Teresa Valenza). Swearingen's knack for leavening hilarious schtick with deadeye emotional accuracy works its usual wonders, and Valenza builds sympathy for a character who in the wrong hands would simply be annoying.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

ARSENIC pics




ARSENIC AND ROSES approaches

 

Greeting card writer Charles is having one of the worst nights of his life. He has been rejected by his would-be fiancé, his career is going nowhere and it is raining cats and dogs outside. Drenched from head to toe, he ducks into a late-night bistro at closing time. To take matters from bad to worse he runs smack into a certain someone from his past... someone with quite a grudge! An early work from Dallas playwright and Audacity Artistic Director Brad McEntire, ARSENIC & ROSES is a darkly comic tale of a parakeet-murderer and the passive-aggressive woman who saves herself by saving him. 
 
Directed by Jeff Hernandez and featuring Teresa Valenza as Katherine and Jeff Swearingen as Charles. 

Playing at the Bath House Cultural Center, 512 East Lawther Drive Dallas, TX 75218, 214-670-8749 

July 18 at 8 PM, July 19 at 5 PM, July 23 at 8 PM, July 25 at 5 PM, August 1 at 8 PM and August 8 at 5 PM.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Update from the Lab

Teresa Valenza and Jeff Swearingen in ARSENIC & ROSES
Let's see...

~ 1) Tickets for THE LAST CASTRATO are availble online. Seats are going fast so get yours today. Click here to handle it right now.
~ 2) ARSENIC & ROSES, Brad McEntire's darkly comic romance has been cast by director Jeff Hernandez. The cast includes ATL regular Jeff Swearingen and talented newcomer Teresa Valenza. Rehearsals start soon.
~3) Episode 2 of EYE IN THE SKY was recorded this past weekend. Pieces by Erin Courtney, Greg Romero and Daniel Talbott were read by actors Lydia Mackay, Megan Woodall, Jeff Schmidt and Jeff Swearingen. Should be posted on the ATL website in the next few weeks.
~4) ATL Artistic Director Brad McEntire recently became a contributor to TheatreJones.com with his travelogue of visiting Edwin Booth's Players Club in NYC last March. Read it here.
~5) OPERATION: TEN * LOUSY * BUCKS is 10% complete. Thanks to these folks who have contributed so far: James Venhaus, Carolyn Wickwire, Wes Copeland, Laurel Hoitsma, Danielle Pickard, Deborah Dobozy, Hilary Couch, Kim Lyle, Suzanne Thomas and Angela Parsons. 90 people to go. Be one of those folks. Contribute now, click here.

ATL Artistic Director Brad McEntire took a trip to NYC last March. He made a pilgrimage to Edwin Booth's Players Club and the travelogue is posted on TheatreJones.com.


Pictures and the low down. Dig it here

Sunday, May 3, 2009


We at Audacity really HATE asking people for money...it's just not in our nature. We're pretty independent. But we hate the idea of not being able to pay our artists even more than we hate the idea of asking for money. And we need YOUR HELP to raise $1,000 for our late summer 2009 production of Greg Romero's MILKY WAY CABARET! ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS, people!!!

So, we were sittin' around, between dreaming up exciting theatre projects, questioning the effectiveness - for a company our size - of those contribution solicitation letters that everyone gets this time of year. We're fairly certain that most of them end up in the trash, and a campaign like that can get pretty pricey between the printing, the envelopes, the postage, etc. Not to mention, it kills trees. And that's not good.

At Audacity we like trees.

Plus, we wanna spread the net wide instead of deep. So, we're asking for TEN * LOUSY * BUCKS... from 100 people.

Yep, in this economy, every little bit helps, so we're asking for a little bit. TEN * LOUSY * BUCKS. If you have $10 right now, why not donate it to us. By this time next week, you probably won't even miss it or even notice that its gone. Don't send $83 or $178, like many people do. We're asking for TEN * LOUSY * BUCKS.

TEN * LOUSY * BUCKS from 100 individuals. You'll be listed on this website and considered a friend and VIP.

If you could make this quick and easy donation of just TEN * LOUSY * BUCKS, we would really, really appreciate it. It's simple.You can send us a check, or cash or donate online with our TicketsToTheCity page via credit card at the link below. We're 501(c)3, so you can write the donation off as tax deductible.

Mail contributions via check, cash or money order to: Audacity Theatre Lab, 1717 Mayflower Drive, Carrollton, TX 75007

Do it for the trees...

HHF: Somewhere out there...

Thursday, April 9, 2009


Audacity is pleased to announce that Brad McEntire's play ARSENIC & ROSES has been accepted as an official selection for the 2009 Festival of Independent Theatres at Dallas' Bath House Cultural Center.

This early one-act from McEntire about a hard luck parakeet-muderer who is confronted by a passive-aggressive woman from his past will be directed by ATL Associate Jeff Hernandez.

The FIT plays mid-July thru early August this coming summer. Check back for more updates.

AUDACITY HITS THE ROAD with the play about a man born with no penis!


DALLAS – The folks behind Matt Lyle’s recent comedy HELLO HUMAN FEMALE return from Arizona and the re-mount THE LAST CASTRATO at the Phoenix Fringe Festival.

Audacity Theatre Lab was previously known as Audacity Productions (1999-2006). The company participated many times in local festivals such as the FIT and Out of the Loop, represented north Texas at the New York International Fringe Festival multiple times, produced works for Austin’s FronteraFest and mounted over 50 plays - large and small - in the Dallas area. The leaders of this little theatre absorbed a lot, often learning by doing, from this earlier garage-band-sized Audacity. Audacity Productions filed articles of dissolution in the summer of 2006, when Artistic Director Brad McEntire headed off for more than a year abroad. Now, Audacity is back, with a brand new mission, focus and name. Last May ATL presented the Regional Premiere of Greg Romero’s touching theatrical meditation THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LULLABY YOU’VE EVER HEARD. This was followed up by participation in theatre festivals in Phoenix, Austin and New Orleans and then a World Premiere of a new Matt “Bootstraps“ Lyle play.

THE LAST CASTRATO is the bittersweet tale of Joseph, who was born without a penis, his search for his own unique talent and his love affair with Elena, who was born with her skin inside out. Elena, however, was blessed with a beautiful singing voice to balance her deformity, while Joseph had no discernible talent to make up for his missing member. “A penis,” he muses, “in terms of artistic merit is worth nothing.”

THE LAST CASTRATO sprung from the mind and pen of Chicago playwright Andy Eninger after initial development as part of a solo performance workshop at The Blue Rider Theatre. Audacity Artistic Director Brad McEntire made contact with Mr. Eninger in October of 2004 when they were both featured performers in Chicago’s Single File Solo Performance Festival.

THE LAST CASTRATO is a return of sorts. A return to Arizona… ATL was last in Phoenix for an experimental performance festival called Teatro Caliente last November. And a return to THE LAST CASTRATO… ATL presented THE LAST CASTRATO last fall at the New Orleans Fringe Festival. Before that, this production of CASTRATO by Audacity was shown at the New York International Fringe Festival (2005), Dallas’ Pocket Sandwich Theatre (2006), the 2006 Out of the Loop Festival and Austin’s Blue Theatre (2007).

The show features Dallas actor Jeff Swearingen, fresh off his performance as Blork in ATL’s production of Matt Lyle’s HELLO HUMAN FEMALE. Directed and designed by Brad McEntire. THE LAST CASTRATO: Played at the Phoenix Fringe Festival at the Soul Invictus Performance Space, 1022 NW Grand Avenue, Phoenix AZ 85007. April 2-5. More info at http://www.phxfringe.org/ and http://www.audacitytheatrelab.com/

McEntire and Swearingen report having a good time sharing CASTRATO in Phoenix. Hospitable folks out in Arizona. Small audiences, but grateful. Word of mouth was our best marketing strength, but was not greatly effective over such a short run.

# # #

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

CHOP in NYC


Last week ATL Artistic Director Brad McEntire returned from New York, where he was developing his new one-man theatre piece CHOP (tentatively to be produced by Audacity in 2010).

Last summer McEntire approached old friend and hard-scrabble actor Will Harper (currently acting off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club in Lynn Nottage's RUINED). Over beers at the McManus Pub in NYC, McEntire presented the proposal of collaborating on a solo piece that he had been developing since 2007, when he was living in Hong Kong. The piece was a one-man show called CHOP.

Harper, who is a company member with the New York-based development company Cry Havoc, offered up one of their Monday Night Labs as an opportunity to work on the piece.

Throughout the fall of 2008, McEntire continued to work on the piece, sending it off to various theatres around the country. The Outsider's Inn Collective in Seattle staged a reading as part of the 2008 Live Theatre Week in that city. There was positive feedback.

A date was set for the Cry Havoc reading and the ever-funky Andy Merkel was brought in to direct the workshop reading of the piece. He arranged for rehearsal space at the Stella Adler Studios in NYC for the few days prior to the March 16th reading.

The round-table style reading went over really well. Merkel, Harper and McEntire explored and expanded the piece over two days of work. Cry Havoc was hospitable and gave some constructive feedback. The play itself seems about 95% ready to be fully mounted.

Special thanks to actor Jake Blagburn at the Stella Adler Studios for agreeing to read the play aloud, so we could hear one more perspective of the piece while developing it.

Friday, February 27, 2009

HHF reviews keep rolling in

Stage Frankenshtick
By Arnold Wayne Jones
Staff Writer - DallasVoice.com
Feb 26, 2009

Monsters! Virgins! Men in dresses! ‘Hello Human Female’ goes camping

When you open the door to Ochre House — the Fair Park-adjacent performance space (it hardly qualifies as a theater even in the most generous of moods) where Audacity Theatre Lab is presenting its new show, “Hello Human Female” — you step directly into the action: 50 seats scattered in front of a unraked “stage” barely six feet deep. The set: Two cruddy folding chairs and a few painted panels hiding the actors and some props. If you use the bathroom during the show, the curtain speech warns, be sure to turn off the light before you exit to avoid disrupting the performance.

This is guerrilla theater in its most charmingly downscale incarnation.It’s also a great example of how, in live theater, you really don’t need a huge fly-space or perfectly tailored costumes and state-of-the-art sound if you have heart and a point of view that connects with the audience.

About that last part: I’m not sure I have the slightest idea what the playwright, Matt Lyle, had in mind in writing “Hello Human Female.” Point-of-view? Maybe in a psych ward. Lyle’s last play, “The Boxer,” was a sentimental paean to silent films. This one sort of takes on the sci-fi genre, but does so with more camp. A coda at the end of “deleted scenes” seems to pay homage to the DVD era, but I’m not quite sure why.

Actually I am sure: Because Lyle wants to make you laugh, whether with references to a 1970s-era Riunite ad, a gag about how many shoes an octopus would need to steal or a hoard or marauding cats. All is fair game.

A pastiche of bits from “Young Frankenstein,” “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog,” “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and “The Rocky Horror Show,” “Hello Human Female” is self-mocking and intentionally clunky in parts, unintentionally in others. All I know is, I laughed out loud. A lot.

Jeff Swearingen, Dallas’ preeminent comic genius at the moment, plays Blork, the Igor to Dr. Gorn’s Frankenstein. The creepy, Dr. Evil-like Gorn (Jeremy Whiteker) starts online dating in order to find a woman to spawn his intended army of yak-bee-human hybrids. He lures Tamela (Arianna Movassagh), a 37-year-old virgin who has spent her life under the oppressive thumb of her mother (Whiteker again), to his lair but she falls for Blork instead.

Mother disapproves (“He’s a patchwork of corpses!” she chides Tamela; “If his hands worked, they’d be all over you!”), so she sends Blork on a quest until he can prove his worth. During his travels, Blork meets a small boy (Becca Shivers) and a dotty old man (Scott Milligan) who mistake him for a dog.

In some ways, that’s the least weird of the many weirdnesses in this play … and I mean that in the best possible way. There’s nothing subtle about any of this, unless you count some of the slippery allusions to such diverse pop culture topics as “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Of Mice and Men,” “Lassie,” Abbott & Costello, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Top Gun,” “Mommie Dearest” and “South Park.” Indeed, “South Park’s” balls-to-the-wall absurdity seems to have been the inspiration for this commedia dell’arte picaresque.

The cast is fearless with giddy brilliance. As the mother, Whiteker looks and sounds like Garth Brooks in drag: Southern trailer-trash with a cheap wig and inappropriate sexual energy. Shivers channels an enraged, spoiled tween given to tantrum with eerie intensity (and later creates wonderfully goofy “dialogue” while costumed as a yakbeesapien). Movassagh, North Texas’ reigning comedic soprano, get to sing “Somewhere Out There” while playing air guitar.

It’s Swearingen, though, who commands the audience’s focus. His lower lip perpetually askew, his shoulders held in a Chaplinesque slump, Swearingen is the most physical of actors, clowning and capering around recklessly while maintaining a sweet smirk on his empty face.

Swearingen’s endearing audaciousness is reminiscent of what made Adam Sandler stand out before he got so smug about his success. And it’s 10 feet away from you in a storefront on Exposition. Can’t beat that.

Ochre House, 825 Exposition Ave. Through March 7. Wednesdays–Saturdays at 8:15 p.m. $10–$15. 469-236-2726.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition February 27, 2009.© Copyright by DallasVoice.com

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Franken- Sense & Sensibility
"Hello Human Female" creates a monster you can't help but love
by Mark Lowry
2-24-2009 – TheatreJones.com


There aren't many mortals who would dare integrate the cheese-tastic 1986 song Somewhere Out There into a wacky, off-color narrative about a pop culture-savvy creature who falls for a 37-year-old virgin. Well, maybe if Roger Corman or the Troma pranksters remade An American Tail with a psychotic but still lovable Fievel.

But when talking about local theater, playwright Matt Lyle is the man for this job. Even when he is reveling in off-color humor and minor gore, he always reveals a sweet, romantic side.Lyle and his wife Kim moved to Chicago last year, but the writer who gave us 2007's brilliant The Boxer continues to have his work produced here. Audacity Theatre Lab opened the world premiere of his Hello Human Female at the Ochre House in Exposition Park last week. The space is teensy (and not a thrill for anyone wanting easy parking), but it's also perfect for low-budget performance. In this case, that's not a dig at Audacity's lack of funds. It's in praise of the ingenious ways Lyle and director Brad McEntire use simplistic costumes, set pieces and props—plush toy cats that might have been pulled from a Goodwill drop box!—to achieve stylishly cheap B-movie effects.

Hello Human Female sets up its story with evil Dr. Gorn (Jeremy Whiteker) looking for love on Match.com. In truth, he's searching for a virgin in which to sow the seeds for a race of yak-bee-human thingies. He e-matches with the lovely Tamela (Arianna Movassagh, whose Kewpie doll adorableness makes her perfect for the role). When she arrives at his pad for the face-to-face, she becomes smitten with Blork (Jeff Swearingen), an Igor type who was stitched together from the remains of 35 people. Despite the fact that his brain is in the jar (but not the empty jar that just happens to be in his head), Blork is an oddly charming creature who speaks in Facebook status update-style, but iffier on agreement and tense."Blork have mish-mashed legs," he might say. Or, in one of the show's more hilarious of many funny pop culture references, "kiss Blork's grits" at the mention of the TV show Alice.Sounds like an amusing enough premise for a comedy sketch. But Lyle stretches it into a longer thread, and amazingly sustains it. Tamela brings Blork home, where her tyrannical mother (Whiteker, in a funny drag performance) attempts to break up the two by sending Blork on a solo adventure. On that journey, he befriends the philosophical Homeless Harry (Scott Milligan), an ignored boy named Timmy (Becca Shivers, in another comic triumph for her and the show) and Timmy's grandfather (Milligan). Each of these satellite characters has stories, but instead of baldly laying these out, Lyle drops their psychological profiles into casual dialogue or the occasional short monologue, such as when Gramps speaks of his deceased wife while whittling a log into a toothpick.

Just like the patchwork quilt of humanity called Blork (and the 35 people who died, ahem, so that he could be born at an evil scientist convention), Hello Human Female gives us a touching look at the human condition. It's somehow poignant, even in the midst of the kind of wonderfully silly comedy that can be traced from the Marx Brothers to Mel Brooks to the Zucker Brothers and beyond. Some of the gags are recycled from famous comedy routines, but are still fresh and hysterical. No need to spoil them here.

At the heart of all this is Swearingen, who has time and again proven his prowess with physical comedy and spot-on line delivery. He goes above and beyond here, morphing a monster into a character that even the most cynical human would want to take home and feed a bowl of soup.
There's bound to be a Blork for everyone. Somewhere out there.
When Scary Met Sally
By Elaine Liner - Dallas Observer
Published on February 25, 2009

Goodbye, winter blues. Hello Human Female, springing from the wildly funny imagination of Texas playwright Matt Lyle, arrives as a late Valentine to the willy-nilly silliness of love among lovable misfits. In its world premiere by Audacity Theatre Lab at the tiny Ochre House Theatre next to Fair Park, Lyle's two-act comedy comes to life in a bright production that's lowest-of-low-budgeted but lavishly acted and ingeniously staged.

Take every B-movie about a mad scientist and whisk it into the plot of The Princess Bride. Add a hunchback, a giant man in drag, three stuffed cats, a trunk full of Cabbage Patch dolls, Timmy and Lassie on the edge of a crumbling cliff, some riffs on Nietzsche and the best of KISS—and you're only spooning up the first layer of hundreds of pop culture references Lyle stirs into his script. His gags are inspired by old Jack Benny and Sid Caesar routines, by Woody Allen, Mel Brooks (especially Young Frankenstein), Mike Myers (in Dr. Evil mode), The Wizard of Oz, Mommie Dearest, Of Mice and Men, the board game Clue and the feel-good rhythms of Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers.

Here's a 31-year-old writer with a jillion episodes of Beverly Hillbillies and Davey &; Goliath stored on his cranial hard drive. Little bits of retro TV shows, commercials and cartoons are sprinkled through this play like fairy-tale breadcrumbs leading into a magical forest of theatrical fiction. How Lyle uses all this without dialogue and characters becoming hokey, cliché or bogged down in cuteness is what sets him apart from so many young playwrights who throw failed sitcom and movie scripts on small stages and try to call them plays.

Lyle may someday write for television—he left Dallas for Chicago last year to join Second City's comedy writing program—but he's already shown great promise with his theater work. Before Hello Human Female, there was the one-act The Boxer, which debuted at the Festival of Independent Theatres in 2007 and transferred to a successful run at Dallas Children's Theater. That one paid homage to the silent films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, which also are Lyle obsessions. Acted without words, The Boxer told the sweet story of an unemployed Depression-era girl (played by Matt Lyle's wife, Kim) who masquerades as a man to train a scrawny pugilist for his big bout. That they fall in love is cause for much confusion, until, of course, the girl reveals her true identity. Lyle's plays usually lead to the happiest ending possible.

The Boxer was written with the title role in mind for Dallas actor Jeff Swearingen, one of those uniquely gifted physical comedians with a Chaplinesque flair for gesture and timing. Lyle also wrote a starring part for him in Hello Human Female: Blork, the Igor-like assistant to the play's unhinged scientist, Dr. Gorn (Jeremy Whiteker). Blork is a "patchwork human" made of bits of 35 corpses. In the sloppy construction job, Gorn forgot to give Blork a brain, but burdened him with three scrota and only one testicle.

From his entrance in the first act, Swearingen takes Blork to places even Lyle probably didn't imagine. The character would be funny enough as written, but this actor delivers a value-added version. Since Blork is made of recycled parts, Swearingen moves his limbs like a marionette with uneven strings. He keeps his eyes unfocused. His top lip seems to have come from a different stiff than his lower one. He scuttles unevenly across the little stage, like a crab with a hernia. But even when he's doing the goofiest business, like playing "Camptown Races" on the spoons, we know that inside Blork's little hunched-over bod throbs a giant-sized heart that's yearning to beat in unison with the leading lady's. Blork's a romantic, a Prince Charming in disguise.

The lady love is Tamela, a dorky 37-year-old virgin played by the compact, curly-haired Arianna Movassagh, who's terrific at ditzifying. Lured to Dr. Gorn's lab by an online dating service, Tamela falls in love at first sight with Blork. They are separated in true fairy fable fashion—Becca Shivers and Scott Milligan play several supporting characters who get in the couple's way—but they wind up back in each other's arms. Or in Blork's case, several other people's arms whipstitched onto his droopy shoulders.

Hello Human Female brings the funny in big and small ways. There's a close laugh-to-line ratio, but that stretches the performance past the two-hour mark. A little trimming and tightening wouldn't hurt. And though the "deleted scenes" after the curtain call are amusing, they're really unnecessary. Comedy should always leave 'em wanting more. We definitely want more plays by Matt Lyle. If they keep starring Jeff Swearingen, even better.

Hello Human Female

Sunday, February 22, 2009


Matt Lyle, the playwright of HELLO HUMAN FEMALE, currently presented by Audacity Theatre Lab (until March 7th) was recently interviewed on TheatreJones.com


Friday, February 20, 2009

Audacity Theatre Lab:
Dishing it up and Out

20 February 2009 at 7:45 am
Alexandra Bonifield for the DallasExaminer.com

If attending live theatre is like sitting down to a prix-fixed meal of the imagination, then Audacity Theatre Lab’s Hello Human Female is gourmet grilled potluck, peppered plumb full enough of implausible characters and wacky situations to sate the humor-seeking palate. It’s kind of like watching Joaquin Phoenix on David Letterman, except these folks mean to be funny and are aware of their audience. Soap opera plot meets Lost in Space meets Young Frankenstein meets Lassie, Come Home and Wizard of Oz, with homage to the faked orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally. Whew. In retrospect, the chaotic concatenation somehow channels Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with its over-riding theme of amor omnia vincit (LUV conquers all). In this case, LUV certainly does. Clean your plate and go back for seconds.

The secret to the hyperkinetic, no-holds-barred romp? Matt Lyle, the playwright, currently resides in Chicago, where he’s studying comedy writing at The Second City and screenwriting with Chicago Dramatists. Director of the play and artistic director of the company, Brad McEntire, mounted and produced over fifty plays here in Big D then toured successfully to New York and Austin Fringe Festivals, before sallying forth in 2006 on an artistic sojourn to Hong Kong and other exotic, inspirational locales. There’s a brazen confidence herein, born of endless dribbling of ink on paper and much time spent clamoring to earn and keep the attention of maddeningly fickle audiences. These boys got it down to a science.

On stage, in the kick-ass dual role of codependent overbearing Mother in drag and equally overbearing, smarmy Mad Scientist in gaiters is Jeremy Whiteker, with as much meritorious experience in performing in quirky, absurdist one-act originals as he has in straight ahead musical comedy. S/he is a hoot and a holler, a medium rare sight to behold and savor. Becca Shivers steams into her debut with Audacity Theatre Lab like a locomotive in overdrive in the gender-bending role of pre-teen boy “Timmy”, returns in Act II as the Mad Scientist’s humanoid sweetheart, a real honey-bee of a waspish creation. The star-crossed lovers, Jeff Swearingen as hump-backed humanoid Blork and Arianna Movassagh as perpetual virgin in search of true love or unreasonable facsimile, play off each other effortlessly with a fine balance of physical humor, crisp verbal repartee and droll song. Their duet version of “Somewhere Out There” ought to be filmed and posted on YouTube. Worth a reprise at play’s end, wish it had happened. Stirring in a classical whiff of Ionesco, Beckett and Shakespeare to the madcap hilarity, venerable regional actor Scott Milligan plays Homeless Harry (shades of Everyman) and Timmy’s aw-shucks Gramps. He lends a sober grounding to the enterprise, in a bizarre but comforting way. Narrating the production and guiding the audience in docile compliance to its seats with dulcet-toned instruction of what to do in case of ‘inevitable fire” is professional voice over artist and ex-pat Brit Emily Gray. She adds a zesty dollop of whipped cream ephemera to the absurdist reality sur la table. Jolly bon appetit.

Audacity Theatre Lab’s Hello Human Female runs Wednesdays through Saturdays through March 7 at the Ochre House intimate space, 825 Exposition Avenue. Street parking is ample, close to the venue and well lit. House staff is super-friendly. Reservations and tickets: 469-236-2726 http://www.audacitytheatrelab.com/

Thursday, February 19, 2009

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE has opened !!!

Theater review: Audacity Theatre Lab pushes the wacky button with 'Hello Human Female'

12:45 AM CST on Thursday, February 19, 2009
By LAWSON TAITTE / The Dallas Morning News

Matt Lyle has reinvented romantic comedy for the 21st century in plays where the romance is as whacked out as the comedy.

Sadly, Lyle moved his Bootstraps Comedy Theater from Dallas to Chicago last year, but Dallas still got the world premiere of his newest tasty weirdness on Wednesday. Audacity Theatre Lab opened Hello Human Female at the Ochre House in Exposition Park with the playwright and his wife and frequent leading lady, Kim Lyle, back in town for the occasion.

Lyle directed his previous two triumphs, Sunny and Eddie Sitting in a Tree and The Boxer, as well as writing them. So it was an open question whether Audacity founder Brad McEntire could whip the new script up to the same sort of post-Valentine, post-modern mushy madness.

Suffice it to say, he could and did. With a few of the old Bootstraps hands in tow and some other formidable talent on hand, as well, Hello Human Female is just as charmingly sappy, just as tartly silly, as its predecessors.

In the new piece, evil scientist Dr. Gorn (Jeremy Whiteker) uses an online dating site to lure Tamela (Arianna Movassagh), a 37-year-old virgin, to his bunker so he can work his vile experiments on her. When Tamela arrives, however, she is more taken with Dr. Gorn's subhuman creation, Blork (Jeff Swearingen). Gorn lets Blork and Tamela depart in the first flush of their mutual infatuation.

Alas, Tamela's over-protective mother (Whiteker again, this time in drag and an even worse wig) interferes and parts the new couple. The two incipient (but never, or hardly ever, insipid) lovers search high and low for each other. Blork encounters a young boy, Timmy (Becca Shivers), who has the mistaken impression that Blork is a dog. But Billy's Gramps (Scott Milligan) won't let his grandson keep his newfound pet. (Neither seems to notice that Blork can talk, albeit in harsh bleats.)

Lyle and McEntire load this tale with all kinds of sight jokes, sound jokes, song jokes and every other kind of joke you can imagine. Even the longest and strangest unfailingly get their laughs, although the outtakes after the curtain call do go on a little too long. All the performers do their silly bits brilliantly, but special credit goes to Movassagh and Swearingen for letting us believe in this weird pair's chemistry even as we yuck it up.

Hello Human Female runs through March 7 at Ochre House, 825 Exposition Ave. Runs 130 mins. $12 to $15. 469-236-2726, www.audacitytheatrelab.com.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

EYE IN THE SKY episode 1


Eye In The Sky is an original radio project being developed by Audacity Theatre Lab over the course of the next year or two. The first episode is up and ready to be listened to.

Pieces by playwrights James Comtois, Andy Eninger and Chris Humphrey.