Notes from the Lab

OOTL flyer cover

2012-02-12T02:02:00.000-08:00

Nice...

Out of the Loop 2012 promo video

2012-01-26T00:38:00.000-08:00

EYE episode 5

2012-01-20T19:08:00.000-08:00

EYE IN THE SKY Episode 5 is online NOW! With pieces by John M. Flores, Jeff Hernandez and Ken Urban, the episode features the voices of actors Angela Parsons, Whitney Holotik, Ruth Engel, John Flores, Brad McEntire and Christie Vela. Recorded by John Flores and sound designed by Chris Humphrey.

"Punk Eye" by John Flores features two prostitutes in the city on a hot day. The giant eye is overhead and they encounter a street bum. Something is definately off about him. The scene gets tense until two garbage men come along. That is until a beam shoots out from the eye and one of the garbage men becomes "off" himself.

Jeff Hernandez presents "Okay Billy" about two parents out on a stroll with an impressionable youngster in tow.

Ken Urban submits his wonderful musical soundscape.

Check out the episode here.

Raspberry Fizz at Loop 2012

2011-12-16T15:00:00.000-08:00

Wonderful news! We have just received word that Brad McEntire's new play RASPBERRY FIZZ has been accepted into the 2012 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival at the Water Tower Theatre in Addsion, Texas. This will be the eighth appearance of an Audacity piece in that festival (if you count the old Audacity production days) and it is an excellent place to World Premiere work.

Better yet, local theatre artist Andy Baldwin has agreed to come on board to direct and ATL member Jeff Swearingen will step into one of the main acting parts.

RASPBERRY FIZZ is a thematic exploration of expectation and thepotentialities of the future tied up in a slice-of-life coming-of-age encounterbetween two young adolescents in 1949, in small town America.

Look for it in early March of 2012. More information as details develop.

EYE episode 5 & 6 have been recorded

2011-11-21T16:01:00.000-08:00

John Flores, Brad McEntire and Angela Parsons


John Flores and Brad McEntire with Suzanne Thomas as she reads Mark Rigney's IN WHICH GILLIAN AMBER COPES WITH MIRACLES

ATL artist got together and recorded the last two episodes of the mega-epic EYE IN THE SKY project last night. John Flores, Angela Parsons, Whitney Holotik, Ruth Engel, Suzanne Thomas and Brad McEntire read pieces by Jeff Hernandez, Mark Rigney, John Flores, Vicki Cheatwood and Zach Gonzales.

The raw footage will be sent off to Chris Humphrey in Austin for her to work her magic.

Check back on the website towards the end of December.

Spotlight: RHIANNA MACK

2011-10-10T18:34:00.000-07:00

In this edition of Spotlight, we wanna shine a little on ATL's newest company member, Ms. Rhianna Mack. A wonderful actress who has worked several times in Audacity productions over the last few years, Ms. Mack is keeps extremely busy and is just starting to really spread her wings as a fully rounded theatre artist.

Q: Hometown?
A:Shreveport, LA

Q: Strangest Theatre-related job?
A: Hmm.... this one is tough because I honestly can't think of anything..... Wait! Does this count....? (see the following short story)I was on a national tour for a show a couple of years ago. The weather was extremely wintry we had traveled pretty far north on the way to our next venue. The cast usually drives a 15-passenger van and a 24-foot truck hauling a massive set and cast luggage. Well this particular day- the big truck decided to break down on the side of the highway and we were miles away from a tow truck place or Budget (the place who rented us the truck). Nevertheless, calls were made to both Budget and a towing company. The snow fell steadily while we waited. After exercising much of everyone's patience, eventually, the new truck showed up! We had to walk everything (set, luggage, and all) over from one truck to the other in the freezing cold and snow- and, as you could imagine, that took quite a while.

Q: What experience(s) made you want to go into the theatre?
A: Getting cast in my first show after auditioning for the first time during my first semester of acting school made me feel like I could be successful in the theater industry.Though I still have a great interest in doing more film, performing in front of a live audience is such a uniquely rewarding experience as well as the exchange between the audience and performer(s).

Rhianna Mack as Charlotte in Greg Romero's MILKY WAY CABARET (with Tyson Rinehart as Buzz) (ATL 2009)

Q: Tragic flaw?
A: I, too, suffer from "overanalyctus procrastinactus". In other words-I am working on not being so over-analytical about how to approach or finish a project that it causes me to procrastinate somewhere in the process of beginning and/or completing the task. (...if I could just think of a way to stop over-thinking....)

Q: If you could change one thing about theatre, what would it be?
A: I think the more we push the envelope of all-around creativity and diversity the better off it'll be. Certain shows will always be staples in the theater community, but it's so refreshing to see the success of fresh ideas and the pushing of creative boundaries in story-telling, direction, and casting.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical influences?
A: I cannot name particular names, but I am always influenced when a talented actor/actress (local or otherwise) manages to "convince" me into their alternate universe so skillfully that I forget about anything and everything else.

Q: What kind of theatre really excites you?
A: Out-of-the box and extremely well-performed theater excites me. Perhaps this is a blanket answer, but it's accurate. Also, theater that doesn't rely on "black-outs" and has genuinely good direction and use of the stage/blocking is best.

Rhianna Mack with the cast of VOLUME OF SMOKE by Clay McLeod Chapman (ATL 2010)

Q: What is in the near future for you as far as your work in the theatre?
A: Currently, I am on a national tour for approximately the next 9 months to a year. Once this is complete, I look forward to producing more of my own original works. I am also planning to do a 6-month stint in New York.... just to see what's what, ya know?

More information on Rhianna at her website: www.RhiannaMack.com

A Glance: ATL 2008-2011

2011-10-09T12:03:00.001-07:00

CHOP a Producer's Pick at Houston Fringe

2011-09-04T18:33:00.000-07:00

We just got word that CHOP was selected as a "Producer's Pick" at last month's Houston Fringe Festival. This is a wonderful honor. We were chosen based on the high artistic content and quality of our work in combination with the audience survey responses that were collected after performances.

Yay! Thanks Houston Fringe!

Interview with Brad McEntire after his performance of CHOP for Frenetic Theatre’s 2011 Houston Fringe Fest

2011-08-23T02:34:00.000-07:00

McEntire performing CHOP

August 22, 2011
www.EaDoLife.com - By Alec Lasar

[Note: Spelling mistakes and some factual information have been corrected from the original version]

CHOP is the account of a character’s own surreal life experiences leading up to the moment when he first appears on stage, nervously greeting the audience – a nervousness that gradually evolves into wonder, excitement and a devilishly keen desire to share a personal gift he discovers about himself…

We briefly spoke with Brad McEntire after he performed the solo act on the stage at Super Happy Fun Land for the Houston Fringe Fest, organized by the Frenetic Theatre.

EaDo Life: How did you come up with the idea for CHOP?

Brad McEntire: Two things sort of led up to CHOP. First, I run a theatre up in Dallas, Audacity Theatre Lab, [Formerly Audacity Productions] and have for about 10 years. I worked mostly as a director and for many years as a playwright, producer and marketer, all behind the scenes. I studied acting, but then I totally drifted away from acting. I started to do a lot of non-acting projects. I love just working with a bunch of people, you know, other collaborators in the theatre. Except, with a big group of collaborators, I was never able to get onto the stage the pure, uncompromising vision of my idea for a project… I was trying to get [where I could perform] exactly the stuff I wanted to. So, I still direct and produce with many actors, but I became really interested in doing something that I could control from beginning to end. For that I turned to solo work.

You start out with the idea and it’s kind of a challenge how much of it you can keep, how much of that original idea and spark you can retain until the audience sees it. I also wanted to do something I could go on the road with, like to here in Houston. So it had to be something low tech and mobile. All I need for CHOP are a few lights, the few sound cues and the back drops – it all packs into a duffel bag.

The other part of the answer involves Asia. Ruth Engel [Brad's fiancé and technical support] and I lived in Hong Kong a few years ago and, for me at least, I found that South East Asia doesn’t really smile on loud, independent Americans. I felt really removed, at a distance. And that’s exactly the same time I started working on CHOP. A lot of the isolation I was feeling, living as a stranger in a strange land, showed up as I was working on the piece.

I created this character that’s just completely isolated from everyone, who is the protagonist – this guy that just can’t connect with anyone – and then say what happens to him. I was just toying around with the idea about this totally isolated character and wondered to myself, how would he get connected with people? And, um, I also began exploring this stage image that kept coming to me, of the axe coming down on something, like a log or block or something. I mean, it's this great percussive sound and action, kinda violent. At some point and I thought, ‘Oh yeah, let’s explore this chopping thing, find a place for it in there somehow’ and that led to the, well, chopping...

Actually, I didn’t know that the amputation thing was a real thing, though! About a week before I opened the first show I was at a party and a friend of mine told me, ‘Oh yeah, Apotemnophilia...’ Now, as I’ve travelled with the show, occasionally I’ll have a sex therapist or a psychologist or someone come up to me and say they’ve had a patient experiencing the issue too!

EL: How important do you feel the character’s “love of his life”, Rosie, is in CHOP?

BM: I think this story does well to have a romance involved with it given the unrelentingly weirdness! with no softness to it, no tenderness, it would just be this horribly dark, bizarre story!

Early on, I leaned on the dark humor and weird factor to market the piece. Then this girl in New Orleans, at the New Orleans Fringe, stayed behind after the show and mentioned how powerful she thought the romance element was.

EL: How has the story changed since the girl pointed that out?

BM: Well, I always used to look at it as this dark, hero’s journey, which it is. I didn't emphasize the love story aspect of the piece. Now with the romantic element, well, for one thing, it has made the character Rosie – who you never see, just hear – it made her a more rounded and believable person. She's not just the catalyst.

Now on the marketing stuff, such as the postcard, it says “Romance on the outer edge!”

What’s good about that is, well… I used to stand in line for my own show, as well as other shows at the same festival, to see what people were saying about CHOP. While waiting I, ah, would ask, “What do you think about this show CHOP?” and they’d reply “I don’t know… does he amputate someone on stage? Does he amputate his own arm? Is it like a freak show, I don’t know?” and, you know, I found that it was turning people off before they had even sat down to experience the show! Their initial perception, or misunderstanding, of it was hurting ticket sales.

So, discovering and then beefing up the love story in the piece has been a delightful benefit, both for perspective audiences, but for me, the performer. The piece continues to unfold, performance by performance as I uncover hidden layers to explore.

EL: Apart from the romantic element, how have you refined the play to make it a little softer?

BM: I include a lot of exposition at the beginning of the piece, which I think is important. You get lot of initial background so you know where this guy is coming from. And back story is difficult. It is not an easy way to hook the audience. So the whole opening is sort of a soft sale. He comes out nervous. And as he grows more and more emboldened throughout the piece, the audience is drawn in more and more. By the end he’s at the front of the room, the center of the room, a place of control and power, with the axe… So, the soft opening has turned out to be a way to handle the exposition at the play's start and the gradual change, with the audience asking “what happens next,” hopefully, clicks with them and they’re really interested in the story!

Original post HERE.

Nice CHOP write-up in HoustonPress

2011-08-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

HoustonPress Blog

By Abby Koenig Mon., Aug. 15 2011 at 11:00 AM

Houston Fringe Festival Wrap-Up -- Weekend One
This past weekend was the kickoff to the Houston Fringe Festival. Art Attack wanted to cover as much of the weekend's events as we could, so I took on the personal challenge of doing my own Fringe Crawl. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to see it all (hey science, figure out that whole clone thing already, will ya), but I was able to soak up quite a few of the performances.

Saturday:
Chop

Courtesy of Houston Fringe Festival and Audacity Theatre Lab

Chop, another one-man show, written and performed by Dallas-based artist Brad McEntire, tells the story of a man forced to grow up in isolation when his parents run away to join the circus. McEntire recalls the tale of the Minotaur, the half-man, half-bull that was also forced into solitude to be taunted, mocked and perpetually on guard against unknown predators. McEntire certainly knows his bull alliterations, as they smartly popped into his stories seamlessly. As his character, McEntire describes a lonely existence as an office temp, friendless and unloved. One day he meets an exotic European beauty and finds himself in a relationship.

So, we've all been with people who were into odd "stuff," but when McEntire finds out his love is into self-amputation, things get a bit weird.

McEntire has an enjoyable, self-deprecating manner. You feel bad for him, but at the same time wish he would grow a pair, and he seems to feel the same way. It's an excellent internal conflict, which he plays very well. The story holds you the entire way, not to say there aren't a few odd turns, somewhat off topic. There is a place at the end where his clever bull imagery could have made a nice comeback, but you get the idea and very much enjoy getting there.

Thursday through Sunday, various times and venues. For information, visit www.houstonfringefestival.com or call 832-426-4624. $10 per show, packages available.

Original post here.

CYRANO A-GO-GO mentioned in D Magazine Blog

2011-06-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

McEntire performing CYRANO A-GO-GO

Audacity Offers a Companion to ‘Cyrano’

D Magazine's FrontRow Blog
Author: By Peter Simek
Post date: June 23rd, 2011 9:30am

Shakespeare Dallas kicked off its summer season with a play not by the Elizabethan playwright, but rather Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. As Kris Noteboom writes on TheaterJones, Cyrano is also the favorite play of Audacity Theatre Labs’s Brad McEntire, and in conjunction with the Shakespeare Dallas run, McEnire is presenting his Cyrano A-Go-Go at the Green Zone. From the TJ piece:

Throughout the hour-and-15-minute piece, McEntire delivers more of the history from his favorite play whilst tying it in with events from his own life in an engaging, educational experience sure to enrich the impact of Cyrano.
During the oration, McEntire recounts the nerve-wracked opening night and the subsequent two hour standing ovation, the conundrum of being the brother-like guy friend, and the impact of the play on his pursuit of theater.
The whole of the piece is well-organized, jumping from past to present, from fiction to fact, between his life and Cyrano’s with great aplomb. There’s never a dull moment, and the experience will not only augment your appreciation for Rostand’s masterpiece, but the theater and arts in general, with an interesting bit of history thrown in.

CYRANO A-GO-GO has begun!

2011-06-19T15:41:00.000-07:00

McEntire has opened his new solo show, an "oration" on Cyrano de Bergerac and how the piece has impacted his life. Info on this "free" show here.

Also, a swell essay by McEntire has recently run on TheaterJones.com about the opening night of Cyrano in 1897. Check it out here.

2011-06-19T15:02:00.000-07:00

Nice mention of CYRANO A-GO-GO on Neighborsgo.com. Check it out here.

CHOP at the Houston Fringe

2011-06-02T00:16:00.000-07:00

We at ATL are happy to announce CHOP has been accepted into the 2011 Houston Fringe Festival. Brad McEntire's one-man show about a man finding love and identity in the most unlikeliest of places has appeared at the New Orleans Fringe Festival, Phoenix Fringe, Out of the Loop Fringe in Addison, Texas, the College of Santa Fe, the Portland Mini-Fringe. Now we are pleased as punch the piece will have a chance in front of Houston audiences.

Playing August 11-13, 2011 at SuperHappyFunLand! More info coming soon!

CYRANO A-GO-GO

2011-05-31T00:04:00.000-07:00

Brad McEntire presents a new monologue coinciding with the Shakespeare Dallas production of the Rostand play this summer!

CYRANO A-GO-GO is semi-autobiographical exploration of one restless theatre artist's fascination with the play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. A chance encounter with the script at a suburban public library at the age of 15 leads to a cruel and wonderful calling. Mixing the personal, historical and literary into a journey through Rostand's play and the behind-the-scenes story of it's creation. McEntire puts a funny, warm, insightful spin on the usual coming-of-age one-man show.

Plays Saturday afternoons at 3 PM from June 18 to July 9, 2011.
At the Green Zone, 161 Riveredge Drive, Dallas, TX 75207 (map)

Admission FREE! (though suggested donation of $5-10 is appreciated)

CYRANO A-GO-GO: Study Guide up

2011-05-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

Wanna bone up on your Cyrano de Bergerac in anticipation of ATL's CYRANO A-GO-GO or maybe the Shakespeare Dallas production of Cyrano this summer?

Here's your chance! We've put up a handy dandy study guide on the Audacity website HERE.

Knowledge for all! Theatre for all!

CYRANO A-GO-GO promo

2011-05-07T04:16:00.001-07:00

Cyrano A-Go-Go Promo from FT Bonnigan on Vimeo.

CHOP in Portland - Media!

2011-03-16T17:54:00.000-07:00

CHOP is mentioned on the KBOO Out Loud Queer Culture Radio broadcast as part of the Portland Mini-Fringe. Mentioned about 14.00 minutes in.

The Interview is with Kate Mura. She works with the Fuse Theater Ensemble, and is very involved with the Portland Mini Fringe Festival. Grant Knutson joins the conversation to discuss the many theater events happening with this festival.

Listen to it here.

CHOP in Portland

2011-03-16T14:51:00.000-07:00

CHOP, the twisted, romantic solo show about a man finding his place in the world by finding himself in a subculture of amputation fetishists makes it's way to the Pacific Northwest. Invited for an exclusive one-weekend engagement at the Portland Mini Fringe Festival.

Playing March 17-19, 2011 at 8 PM. At the FUSE Theatre, 3430 SE Belmont Ave., Portland OR 97202.

CHOP promo trailer from FT Bonnigan on Vimeo.

One critic's opinion of GREAT GOD

2011-03-09T14:45:00.000-08:00

Loopy lite 2011: Audacity Theatre Lab’s I Have Angered A Great God

Alexandra Bonifield - Mar. 8, 2011 - CriticalRant.com

Audacity Theatre Lab produces some outstanding work regionally, so I was curious to see their show. According to the program notes, this is company founding artistic director Brad McEntire’s sixth presentation at Out of the Loop. Although it had a modicum of artistic continuity with respectable acting performances, the short work was less than compelling to watch.The rap-style prologue went on too long (don’t tell me what you’re going to show me, just show me) and its cardboard cutout puppets failed to amuse me or hold my interest. The female puppet lost a leg early in the show, inspiring polite tittering and causing improvised script adjustments. I expected more creative depth from Audacity, felt disappointed by what appeared to be very hastily thrown together. Pay to see this? Really? Acting ensemble: Oscar Contreras, Angela Parsons, Jeff Hernandez, Jeremy Whiteker and Brad McEntire ~AB

GREAT GOD off to a good start

2011-03-08T03:27:00.000-08:00

Loop Review: I Have Angered a Great God
Audacity Theatre Lab gets Tiki with it at Out of the Loop.
by Kris Noteboom
published Monday, March 7, 2011

If there’s one thing theater sometimes needs, it’s a lighter side. In a landscape strewn with weighty dramas, the occasional quirky comedy is an oasis for the laughter-famished gut.

And in I Have Angered a Great God, Audacity Theatre Lab gives the audience that healthy dose of comedic nourishment they so desperately need.

The brainchild of Audacity founder Brad McEntire, I Have Angered a Great God takes the audience on the flashback-laden tale of Robert von Ritchie Ritchie (Oscar Contreras), as he tries to figure out just what he did to spark the wrath of an ancient Tiki god (Jeff Hernandez).

Much of this introspection is accomplished in the office of his therapist (Jeremy Whiteker), who coincidentally also happens to treat Robert’s now ex-girlfriend, Martha (Angela Parsons), and the Great God itself. Due to a crippling selfishness, Robert is oblivious to how his actions affect those around him, particularly the Great God. Naturally, he comes to realize his mistake and make amends, but not until after most of his friends and family have paid the price in his stead.

Opening with a rapped prologue complete with cardboard cut-out Tiki gods, McEntire quickly establishes the expectations for the performance. It’s gonna get a little weird…but, in a good way.

Jokes pepper the non-sequential, sometimes hard to follow, script, and while they don’t always fully land with the appropriate oomph, McEntire’s offbeat sense of humor still manages to shine through.

Parsons and Whiteker bring substantial comedy chops with them to the production, and it shows. With all apologies to Hernandez, whose lines under his giant, cardboard Tiki head consisted of a series of grunts and barely decipherable words, Parsons and Whiteker stood apart from the bunch when it came to communicating McEntire’s unique comic voice.

McEntire himself, who delivers the opening rap and plays several other minor characters, channels Graham Chapman with his deadpan delivery. The purest measure of a truly gifted comedic performer is their ability to make any character funny. McEntire does that with his turns as a barista and a MENSA rep.

I Have Angered a Great God is a quirky romp through the human psyche, externalized in the visage of a blue-clad Easter Island escapee. The comedy is sometimes bungled in the delivery, but enough of it connects that this remarkably peculiar, yet boldly inventive, story comes out all smiles.

◊ I Have Angered a Great God plays at the Addison Theatre Centre's Stone Cottage. View a full Out of the Loop Fringe Festival schedule here.

I HAVE ANGERED A GREAT GOD at Addison Water Tower Theatre's 2011 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival

2011-02-13T19:10:00.000-08:00

ATL Artistic Director Brad McEntire presents the World-Premiere of his hilarious new satire.

I HAVE ANGERED A GREAT GOD follows mover and shaker Robert von Ritchie Ritchie. He has somehow upset a Great Tiki God with anger-control issues. Robert retraces his steps over the past few days to discover where things went so wrong. It might be easier if he weren't constantly on his cell phone talking with his now ex-girlfriend Martha, who barely made it into MENSA. A comedy of modern public etiquette, therapy and childhood mishaps. With music!

Featuring Jeremy Whiteker, Oscar Contreras, Angela Parsons, Jeff Hernandez and Brad McEntire.

Playing at the Addison Water Tower Theatre, Studio Theatre, 15650 Addison Road, Addison TX 75001

Performances: Sunday March 6 at 5 PM, Wednesday March 9 at 7:30 PM and Saturday March 12 at 2 PM. Info and tix: click here or call 972-450-6232

Eye IN THE SKY Ep. 4

2010-12-29T17:21:00.000-08:00

In the winter of 2008 Audacity Theatre Lab commissioned playwrights from around the country to respond to a simple phrase:

"For one week in the middle of the summer a giant eye appears in the sky over the city. At the end of seven days it disappears as suddenly as it had originally materialized..."

We recieved submissions from members of 13P, New Dramatists, Austin Script Works, as well as from a host of local writers.

Episode 4 includes pieces by playwrights Gary Winter, Jeff Swearingen and Chris Alonzo. It features vocal performances by Oscar Contreras, Kelly Renee, Ruth Engel, John Flores, Brad McEntire and Chris Alonzo.

Listen HERE.

Congrats to Arianna for HELLO HUMAN FEMALE: The Remount!

2010-12-29T16:45:00.000-08:00

Arianna Movassagh was named one of the "Outstanding Female Performers of 2010" by Alexandra Bonifield on TheaterJones.com for her work in Audacity's HELLO HUMAN FEMALE: The Remount last January.
Mucho thanks to Arianna and the rest of the cast (Becca Shivers, Jeff Swearingen, Jeremy Whiteker, Tyson Rinehart and Johnny Sequenzia) as well as playwright Matt Lyle, lighting designer Jaymes Gregory and director/designer Brad McEntire.
Read about it here.

VOLUME OF SMOKE makes TOP 10 of Dallas Observer

2010-12-29T16:17:00.000-08:00

Audacity's production of VOLUME OF SMOKE also makes the Dallas Observer's list of TOP 10 PRODUCTIONS OF 2010. Many thanks to Clay for a kick-ass script, the audiences, theatre writers and friends!
Elaine Liner called the show "Simply one of the most moving evenings of theater of the year."
Read about it here.

Top 20 of 2010!

2010-12-29T15:54:00.000-08:00

The ensemble of ATL's VOLUME OF SMOKE (March 2010)

TheaterJones.com named Audacity's production of VOLUME OF SMOKE by Clay McLeod Chapman one of their Top 20 Productions of 2010. Congrats to Director Ruth Engel, Lighting Designer Jaymes Gregory, Set Designer Brad McEntire, Sound Designer Paul Lisle and actors Rhianna Mack, Angela Parsons, Elizabeth Evans, Chris Piper, Oscar Contreras and Tyson Rinehart. See the rest of the list here.

Nouveau 47 Reading

2010-12-14T13:15:00.000-08:00

On December 13, 2010 Audacity teamed up with Nouveau 47 Theatre to present two staged reading of works-in-progress by Brad McEntire. The evening was a success with a good turn out and great feedback.

Tasia Munoz, Jeff Hernandez, Angela Parsons and Oscar Contreras

Nouveau 47's Lacy Lynch facilitates the Talkback

Oscar Contreras and Angela Parsons backstage at the historic Magnolia Lounge

Goofing around before reading I HAVE ANGERED A GREAT GOD

Ruth Engel performs in Oklahoma

2010-12-12T13:02:00.000-08:00

ATL Artist Ruth Engel was invited to present an original monologue at the Feastival of Lights on December 11, 2010 in Claremore, Oklahoma. She wrote and performed a short stroy called THE SERVANT, about a servant of one of the Magi.

Ruth Engel rehearsing THE SERVANT

And in performance.

CHOP at the New Orleans Fringe - Part 2

2010-12-07T13:38:00.000-08:00

CHOP at the New Orleans Fringe Part 2 from Christopher Taylor on Vimeo.

Spotlight On: RUTH ENGEL

2010-12-05T17:07:00.000-08:00

Ms. Ruth Engel

Continuing our series of profiles of the great artists associated with Audacity, we now present... Ms. Ruth Engel

Q: Hometown?
A: Keene, Texas

Q: Strangest Theatre-related job?
A: This is not exactly the strangest job, but a theatre job is an odd reason to fly to South Korea. I traveled to South Korea for a week to be the equivalent of a stagehand in a religious production at a University.
Then, some might consider this strange; I have and do take great pride in making clothes/costumes for puppets.

Q: What experience(s) made you want to go into the theatre?
A: My entire journey towards theatre is a long one, but the shorter version begins with my dissatisfaction on continuing work for a PhD in English Literature. You see, I went directly on to Master’s work in English after I graduated college so I never felt a scholastic completion with my college graduation like many of my friends did. But once I completed my Master’s degree in Literature I started to feel some of that completion. So I taught for a bit but if did not take me long to start to get restless so, while still teaching, I started taking Literature PhD classes. It was after a year that I knew that I craved another direction in my education. It was at that point that my brother suggested Drama. Now, I had always loved theatre and drama and had dabbled with it since elementary school, but I had never thought of it as a career. But I did some research, applied to the graduate program at Texas Woman’s University (I had some unusual circumstances since none of my undergraduate work nor my graduate work had anything to do with theatre), and was accepted. I told myself that I would try it for one semester and if I was not happy, then I would move on and find something else. After about two weeks of classes I was hooked and have never looked back.

Q: Tragic flaw?
A: I over think and question everything far too much.

Q: If you could change one thing about theatre, what would it be?
A: Its perception – the way many people view it. Theatre is magic but only because life is magic. So often in our society we do not stop to see the magic of life and therefore, we do not recognize the magic in theatre.
Also, if I could I would eliminate “bad” theatre (occasionally, including a few of my own production as well).

Q: Who are or were your theatrical influences?
A: This is a slightly difficult question for me to answer because many of my influences in the theatre are not solely restricted to theatre. Due to my background in British literature, the lives of many of the early women writers (such as the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen, for example) inspire me. The fact that they loved writing so much that they wrote under pseudonyms just to get their work out to the public inspires me. I have also been influenced by the great Greek and Roman philosophers. I see life and the philosophical questions of life present in theatre. As someone who loves to dwell on those fundamental and yet complex questions, theatre has given me a canvas to playfully examine what the greatest minds have wrestled with for ages (however, still not coming up with any answer). And lastly, I would also have to say that I have been influenced by Margo Jones and Paul Baker (especially since I have grown up in the Dallas area), and Peter Brook.

Q: What kind of theatre really excites you?
A: Making theatre. I know all theatre has to be made, but the very act of making it: building puppets, creating characters, building a set, telling a story that has never been told (at least in that way), and touching someone’s life - that thrills me to the core.

Q: What is in the near future for you as far as your work in the theatre?
A: Well, currently I am working on creating three one-woman historical pieces about three extraordinary women in the early 20th century. The first one that I am working on is about the life of Sara Murphy, then, next up will be a piece on Violet Jessop, and lastly the life of Ruth Draper. All three amazing women were quite humble, but left a tremendous impact on those around them.

For more information on Ruth Engel visit her website at: http://www.ruthengel.net/

Staged Readings at the Magnolia Lounge

2010-11-26T00:14:00.000-08:00

Projects-in-Progress by Brad McEntire

On December 13 at 7:30 PM, Audacity Theatre Lab will present Staged Readings of two works-in-progress by Brad McEntire.

I HAVE ANGERED A GREAT GOD

Robert von Ritchie Ritchie has somehow upset a Great Tiki God with anger-control issues. Robert retraces his steps over the past few days to discover where he ran afoul. It might be easier if he weren't constantly on his cell phone talking with his now ex-girlfriend Martha, who barely made it into Mensa. A brief satire of modern public etiquette. Newly expanded to feature a kick-ass hip hop opening number.

THE DOLPHINS OF MARS

Roy has been dumped by his girlfriend. She snuck back to Earth on one of the last shuttles and Roy finds himself stuck on Mars. Now, the colonists are rioting and he has just enough time to send one last broadcast home before the bio-dome cracks wide open.

WHEN: Monday, December 13, 2010 at 7:30 PM

WHERE: At Nouveau 47 Theatre in the historic Magnolia Lounge (Margo Jones Building), Fair Park, 1121 First Ave., Dallas, TX 75210.

COST: $5 suggested donation (includes FTP Comedy Troupe performance after the reading), BYOB.

.

Five Things I Like About Sara Murphy

2010-11-25T12:35:00.000-08:00

Sara Murphy, with her legendary pearls draped over her back for sunbathing, and Ada MacLeish (under umbrella), La Garoupe beach, Antibes, 1924.

ATL artist Ruth Engel is currently developing a series of biographical pieces for the stage. Each will feature a historcal "strong" female from the early 1900s. The first in the line of "historical portraits" will involve maven of the Jazz Age: Sara Murphy.

Sara Murphy, along with her husband Gerald Murphy, were wealthy, expatriate Americans who moved to the French Riviera in the early 20th century and who, with their generous hospitality and flair for parties, created a vibrant social circle, particularly in the 1920s, that included a great number of artists and writers of the Lost Generation.

Engel lists out below a few of the things that she has learned so far and come to love about Sar Murphy:

1. She was a consummate hostess

2. She was classy in a way that she wore a string of pearls when she sunbathed on the beach.

3. She had such a magnetic personality that everyone loved her.

4. She was compulsive neat freak (I can identify) to the point that when she and Gerald traveled with their three kids on trains she would always take their own linens for her kids to sleep on.

5. She had a big heart.

Look for workshops of Engel's Sara Murphy project in the spring of 2011.

CHOP at the New Orleans Fringe - Pt. 1

2010-11-23T01:01:00.000-08:00

CHOP at the New Orleans Fringe from Christopher Taylor on Vimeo.

EYE IN THE SKY: Episode 3 in online!

2010-10-16T03:43:00.000-07:00

In the winter of 2008 Audacity Theatre Lab commissioned playwrights from around the country to respond to a simple phrase:

"For one week in the middle of the summer a giant eye appears in the sky over the city. At the end of seven days it disappears as suddenly as it had originally materialized..."

We recieved submissions from members of 13P, New Dramatists, Austin Script Works, as well as from a host of local writers.

Episode 3 includes pieces by playwrights Jason Tremblay, Crystal Skillman and Ben Walker Sampson. It features Dallas actors Oscar Contreras, Kelly Renee, Bryan Pitts, John Flores and Brad McEntire.

Click on the image above to listen. NOTE: Strong Language. NOT for the workplace.

The "Why" behind CHOP

2010-10-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

CHOP written and performed by Brad McEntire. Directed by Andy Merkel.

I'm writing this post because I feel it is important, as an artist, to be clear about the purpose behind any work put out into the world. In this instant, I'm gearing up to present CHOP again (in Dallas for a benefit show to raise awareness and a few donations, and then at the 3rd Annual New Orleans Fringe Festival in November).

In the past I've written on the from "where" I got the idea to put together CHOP. I've written that the piece grew out of two seperate incidents in my life. One, it is the growth out of an aborted play I wrote in Grad school to fulfill my graduation requirements. That play was written to get a grade, and therefore, not the best artistic expression I could produce. But one of the characters out of the play provided the platform for CHOP. And for that I am grateful to have spent many hours creating that Grad school play in the first place. Secondly, I spent some time in Hong Kong in 2006-2007. It was major culture shock. I felt isolated and distanced not just from a basic understanding of the Chinese and their culture there in Hong Kong, but distanced from my own ability to reconcile this misunderstanding. As hard as I tried, I could not create a context for the misconnect I felt. This fed into CHOP, which I, in fact, started to write just before leaving Hong Kong.

One of the things I have been struggling with over the past year is the "why" behind my art and the art created under the banner of ATL. Everything must spring from the why. Why is it we do what we do? Dig just a little and I find all roads lead to love. Glory? Money? Recognition? Intellectual curiousity? Appreciation? Everything eventually boils down to our need for receiving, and giving, Love. I do theatre because I love it and because it is a vehicle for connecting us (the artists, the audience, all of us), first to a common event, then to ourselves, and then to those around us. And when the vehicle works like it should, we develop deeper human connection, and that makes us happier and the world goes around much smoother. From this basis of joy and love comes the domino effect of understanding, education, illumination. I love what I do and the sharing of it is an act of love. That love magnifies in the world through connection. What else is there?

Before I get too far off on an new-age rant, let me ground this line of thinking with this: the "how" is the meat and bones practical part of this vehicle, Theatre. CHOP is presented as one man (and by one man onstage) trying to figure out his place in a world he feels very distant from. He floats along the surface of it, observing, but not participating. He lacks connection.

Therefore, the play is the story of him finding connection (Love... of himself, for another and for a greater group outside of himself). In the story he finds his own unique vehicle for making connections happen. As I begin to work on the piece once again in preparation for the November performances, I hold close the "why" behind CHOP. I do it out of love.

Spotlight On: OSCAR CONTRERAS

2010-10-05T00:41:00.000-07:00

Mr. Oscar Contreras

This is the first of a five part series of profiles with the artists that make up Audacity Theatre Lab. First up... Mr. Oscar Contreras.

Q: Hometown?

A: Born in Rio Verde, San Luis Potosi, Mexico and grew up in Fort Worth, Texas (Diamond Hill)

Q: Strangest Theatre-related job?

A: Dressing in drag for a company training seminar on diversity "It's what makes us special!" To this very day I get shivers down my spine and wonder what the hell made me say "Yes, I'll do it"

Q: What experience(s) made you want to go into the theatre?

A: I needed one more credit to graduate from High School and my options were P.E. or drama and there was no way I was going to go into the boys locker room, so I decided I would go into Drama.
I was pretty guarded and shy most of my youth and I remember my first couple of drama classes, I was told to express myself in any way I wanted... I was told to act up and it would be ok... I was told that I was allowed to not be myself and everything would be fine and for a gay boy growing up in a pretty rough area in Fort Worth I always had to hide who I really wanted to be... so this theatre thing was LIBERATING. My first role was in the play Everyman and I played the role of Death, it was fascinating I got to play such a dark, sinister role, announce the death and take the main character to hell... and then go home and drink chocolate milk and watch cartoons... it was great and I was hooked.

Q: Tragic flaw?

A: Over thinking... needing for everything to make scence in my head before I take the next step.... it makes writing a play just the worst experience.

Q: If you could change one thing about Theatre, what would it be?

A: I'd like more embracing of the talent that surrounds us here in Dallas... Really, I'd love a more open attitude to taking a risk and giving a chance to Dallas actors, playwrights, and artists. The artist you are looking for in New York is right here... It's just going to take a bit of work and a bit of getting to know who you're surrounded by... We are our own Big Apple, it's just battered and deep fried!!

Q: Who are or were your theatrical influences?

A: Only a few people come to mind... an acting coach I had named Elizabeth Rothan, the way she devoured the stage with her presence and the way she made sure everyone in the audience was getting the very best from her performance was amazing... Another is Julie Taymor and her way of showcasing women as the powerful being they are is really fantastic.

Q: What kind of theatre really excites you?

A: I love theatre that pisses me off... theatre that takes a chance on with something new... new works are just fantastic, not pretensious theatre, just theatre thats going to keep you accountable for being an audience member. That kind of theatre is a gold nugget.

Q: What are you working on next?

A: I will be producing next and working on some writing projects... but really you should see the "Tragic Flaw" question.

McEntire talks about ATL on video and podcast at StageDirectionsBlog.com

2010-09-09T16:09:00.000-07:00

Interview with Brad McEntire of Audacity Theatre Lab from Christopher Taylor on Vimeo.

There is also an extended audio podcast at StageDirectionsBlog.com

Thanks to Chris and Dan for the good talk and good beer at the Amsterdam Bar

Ruth Engel tackles early 20th Century

2010-09-09T11:08:00.000-07:00

Gerald and Sara Murphy

Titanic survivor Violet Jessop

Monologuist Ruth Draper

ATL Managing Director Ruth Engel has announced plans to create a theatre piece about several early 20th Century historical personalities, including Gerald and Sara Murphy, Violet Jessop and Ruth Draper.

These historical persons may be a presented as a series or interwoven together as a single piece.

"It is a long term project," Engel reports. She is in the research stage at this time.

New CHOP trailer!

2010-09-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

CHOP trailer from FT Bonnigan on Vimeo.

Recording Episode 3

2010-08-31T10:29:00.000-07:00

From L: Oscar Contreras, Renee Kelly, Brad McEntire, John Flores, Bryan Pitts

Busy weekend here at the Lab. We got a great group of actors together to record Episode 3 of the EYE IN THE SKY PROJECT.

Ace audio guy John Flores even did double duty, both recording and acting in a few pieces.

Episode 3 will include pieces by Jason Tremblay (Austin), Crystal Skillman (New York) and Benjamin Walker Sampson (Brooklyn). Should be up in a few weeks.

For more info on what the EYE IN THE SKY PROJECT is, visit the ATL website here.

Super special thanks to the Undermain Theatre for providing us a place to record.

Stage Directions Interview with ATL A.D. Brad McEntire

2010-08-27T14:44:00.000-07:00

... and Ruth Engel makes a cameo appearance, too. Chris Taylor and Dan Purcul of the STAGE DIRECTIONS blog interviewed McEntire recently on the patio of the Amsterdam Bar in Dallas' Exposition Park for a video/podcast about the new directions Audacity is heading and the EYE IN THE SKY PROJECT. Interview should be up soon. Check back for more details.

CHOP going to New Orleans!

2010-08-17T18:35:00.000-07:00

We just got news that Brad McEntire's solo piece CHOP has been accepted for the 2010 New Orleans Fringe Festival. We are thrilled to be one of the 30 shows chosen out of over 120 that applied. We are super-pysched to return to New Orleans! We had a ball there in 2008 at the first ever New Orleans Fringe Fest, with THE LAST CASTRATO.

More details as they come in. For now, we know where we'll be November 17-21, 2010.

We're on break

2010-08-07T17:15:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't noticed, we at ATL are on a summer break. In fact, we have gone back to the "lab" and are putting some pretty hard questions to pretty much every assumption we have about how we do theatre. As you can imagine this takes some brain-time.

A.D. Brad has some thoughts on a few things over on his blog, such as:

Does Theatre Have to Be of Service?

Do Tickets Always Have to be Cheap?

We'll be back later in the year, better than ever. In the meantime, the website has all the fun you'll need to tide you over.

Tracking Peter Brook

2010-06-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

Artistic Director Brad McEntire and Managing Director Ruth Engel recently travelled to Sydney, Australia to see one of the last productions directed by Peter Brook.

They also petted koalas and stuff.

You can read McEntire's article on Peter Brook's production ELEVEN & TWELVE here.

You can see the photostream of pics from the trip here.

Jeff Swearingen: Ultimate Best Actor in DFW!

2010-06-21T16:58:00.000-07:00

Congrats to Jeff Swearingen, Associate Actor for ATL. He recently won (co-won) Best Actor in DFW from the Pegasus News' 2010 Ultimate Best Awards.

Apparently, Pegasus News made up a new awards competition (Dallas likes competitions) compiled from a number of other awards competitions in town. In fact, to be nominated for an "Ultimate Best" you have to have won some other award from some other media outlet in DFW.

Congrats to Jeff for being Ultimate Best!

Blork in a Jar!

2010-05-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

Candice at the blog non*sense really liked Blork in the Audacity Theatre Lab production of HELLO HUMAN FEMALE. In fact, she even made her very own adorable Blork dolls. These are awesome!

Give some CHOP feedback...

2010-05-01T01:29:00.000-07:00

So, hopefully you've had a chance to see CHOP, either in Addison or Santa Fe or in Phoenix. The piece continues to evolve and is very much a work-in-progress. I continue to whittle away on it and I'd very much like your feedback.

Feel free to put your thoughts, impressions, likes/dislikes, criticisms and more in the comments section below. You, the audience, are the last ingredient of and the ultimate destination for the piece, so join in the dialogue of the process.

For more info on the backstory and the history of the process of CHOP visit here.

Thanks. ~Brad

CHOP feedback from a fellow solo performer

2010-04-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

I recieved this really generous quote about CHOP from Martin Dockery today in my e-mail. Martin and I both had one-man shows at the Phoenix Fringe Festival earlier this month.

"For anyone who's ever felt themselves to be lost in the modern day Labyrinth of office cubicles, sinking ever deeper into a life of irrelevance, CHOP proves that meaning can come from the most unexpected places. The same can be said of Brad McEntire's engaging performance, turning a story about a loner's introduction into the world of amputation fetishists into a universal tale about finding one's own place in life."

~ Martin Dockery, Storyteller and Solo Performer,

Creator of THE BIKE TRIP

Audacity at PLAN of North Texas Benefit Art Show

2010-04-23T23:02:00.000-07:00

Oscar as The Reverend

Angela as The Actress as The Reverend looks on.

ATL actors Oscar Contreras and Angela Parsons donated a bit of their time, last night, to perform a scene or two from our recent show VOLUME OF SMOKE by Clay McCleod Chapman.

The wine and cheese reception benefitting PLAN of North Texas was held at the Creative South Gallery at the Continental Lofts, 3401 Commerce Street, Suite 100 Dallas, TX 75226 (West of 1st in Deep Ellum).

Friday, April 23, 2010. Benefit ran 6-9:30 PM (Audacity went on around 7:30 PM)

Audacity was invited out by Carlton Odom, the curator of the event, who had seen VOS at the Bath House last month. We were glad to help the Planned Living Assistance Network (PLAN). PLAN is a care model originated by parents to provide long-term support for their loved ones with mental illness or other physical or mental disabilities. The mission of PLAN of North Texas, is to provide future care planning services to parents and their adult children with a disability.

More info on VOLUME OF SMOKE at the ATL Website

CHOP at the Phoenix Fringe Festival

2010-04-13T23:59:00.000-07:00

McEntire performing CHOP at the PHX:fringe

Engel and McEntire with Brooklyn-based solo artist Martin Dockery

McEntire outside the venue The Chocolate Factory

McEntire and Engel have recently arrived back from the Phoenix Fringe Festival. They were out there representing north texas with the Audacity show CHOP. They ate well and met some swell fellow artists from around the country.

To read ATL Artistic Director Brad McEntire's journal of the severasl day event visit:
http://ftbonnigan.livejournal.com/116345.html
and
http://ftbonnigan.livejournal.com/116542.html

CHOP goes to Santa Fe & Phoenix

2010-04-03T02:31:00.000-07:00

Playwright and performer Brad McEntire World Premiered his twisted little one-man show at Addison Water Tower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival. CHOP is now off to represent North Texas at Arizona's 2nd Annual Phoenix Fringe Festival. Along the way he'll also stop in New Mexico to present the show at the College of Santa Fe and chat with theatre students there.

CHOP concerns a man at a loss about what to do with himself, plagued with a profound sense of isolation from the busy, happy, productive people in the city around him. A chance encounter with a mysterious tattooed woman introduces him to a unique subculture of amputation fetishists and what might turn out to be his true calling. Details on the play here.

ATL's McEntire chats with Transcendence

2010-04-01T17:27:00.000-07:00

ATL Artistic Director Brad McEntire recently met the artists involved with Transcendence Theatre Company. He also recently submitted an article on the work Transcendence is doing (including an interview with Artistic Director Amy Miller) to TheaterJones.com.

Click here to read the article.

VOLUME OF SMOKE opens

2010-03-19T15:00:00.001-07:00

VOLUME OF SMOKE by Clay McLeod Chapman has opened to good reviews here in Dallas.

Here on TheaterJones

Here on the Dallas Observer

Here on the Dallas Morning News

On December 26th, 1811, the Richmond Theatre burned to the ground. Over 70 people perished, many trampled to death in the chaos. The incident made headlines as far away as Germany and gave rise to the Second Great Awakening.
From one of America's most unique emerging playwrights comes this historical account of grim humor, heart-breaking tragedy and profound heroism.

Plays March 11-27 at the Bath House Cultural Centre.

More info here.

HHF at the Columns

2010-03-09T02:27:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, March 8th was the DFW Column Awards, celebrating local theatre here in Dallas. Audacity's HELLO HUMAN FEMALE was up for six 2010 Column Awards and took home two. Jeff Swearingen won Best Actor in Dallas (Non-Equity) for his portrayal of Blork and Arianna Movassagh won Best Actress in Dallas (Non-equity) for playing Tamela.

We also put on the "Somewhere Out There" number at the Awards ceremony. We were delighted, too, that HHF was the only "straight" play represented in the evening's entertainment.

CHOP opens

2010-03-05T02:34:00.000-08:00

CHOP opened last night for the world to see. It World premiered at Addison Water Tower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival. Out of the 10 or 12 folks in the audience on this Thursday opening, two were critics.

Mark Lowry at TheatreJones.com enjoyed it... kinda.

He pegs it pretty dead-on that it is a solid festival piece. Which is true, I think.

A fellow I've never heard of named David Novinski came out to cover it for D Magazine's new FrontRow reviews/arts coverage section online. He did not really get into the spirit of the piece, but did offer one observation that will prove helpful.

The piece is smart, littered with mythological and scientific references. I had a line or two in before that explained that the character in the show was a temp and had lots of time to fill, so he turned to reading ("I had plenty of time to read. I'm a reader."), but I cut that line last week. It might be a good idea to put it back in for those folks, like Mr. Novinski, who get caught up in overly logical detail points in the story.

I also admire Mr. Novinski's review in that he both embodies and illustrates a very typical attitude among lots of my audience members in Dallas. Some are really adventurous and open, but some bring into the space a stuffy, uptight closedness. Their tastes run very fickle. This isn't malicious or purposeful on their parts, but it happens. They can't really let go and have fun and engage fully. I'm not sure why this is, but maybe it has to do with the wider culture becoming more isolated through personal technology.

Anyway, now that the very first showing ever for an audience has taken place, i can get down to the real work on CHOP. I can learn about the piece through the audiences eyes.Here's to the continuing adventure...

Mark Lowry's TheatreJones.com review here.

David Novinski's FrontRow review here.

~ Brad

The story of CHOP

2010-03-03T14:18:00.000-08:00

The Out of the Loop Fringe Festival will be the setting for the World Premiere of CHOP, my twisted little one-man show. This production is important to me for several reasons...

As a local playwright, it is important to me to try to premiere my plays in Texas if at all possible. The piece received a staged reading by Outsider's Inn Collective in Seattle in October of 2008. It was workshopped by NYC's Cry Havoc in March of 2009. This workshop was directed by New York director Andy Merkel and performed by William Jackson Harper (ex-Dallasite, friend, and actor in the Lynne Nottage's Pulitzer Prize winning RUINED). Will was slated to be in this Loop version until he got cast in a production there in NYC at Off-Broadway's Playwright's Horizons.

I agreed to step up and perform the show myself, which will give me the opportunity to develop the piece from the inside out. I do not act in traditional theatre productions very often any more and I very rarely act in my own work. The whole endeavor has been like walking back into a room you remember from many years ago, trying to put together exactly where you stored away things in that space. Old muscles are creaking back into use. So now it is quite an adventure.

I flew to NYC and worked with a really generous, diligent director, Mr. Andy Merkel. He was working with Will and he agreed to help me do the piece myself. I ventured through the snow to his apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn everyday for a week of 8-hour rehearsals. He really is responsible for putting the foundation of the staging together and I can't thank him enough. So, little old me comes out of acting retirement, the playwright Brad McEntire, is venturing into the Out of the Loop Fringe Festival.

The piece grew out of two aspects of my life. First, the character and story are partly pulled from a previous abandoned play (my Thesis play for grad school at Texas Woman's University). Second, in 2006-2007 I lived and worked in Hong Kong. The experience of being a stranger in a strange land led me back to the piece and my feelings of isolation, distance and seperateness during my overseas travels show up thematically in the work. The first draft was completed in Hong Kong in summer of 2007, shortly before I came back to the States.

So, the piece has been on my mind for over two years. Along the way, as it came together, I brought up what I was doing to a variety of people and they often offered suggestions, ideas and the like. For instance, my friend Paul was who introduced me to apotemnophilia. Up until then, I didn't know it was even a real thing. My hope is that by running it in front of audiences, I'll find even more and more in the piece.

CHOP has been accepted into the 2010 Phoenix Fringe Festival in Arizona in April, 2010. That's its next stop after Out of the Loop.

~BDM

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE is gay friendly and vice versa...

2010-01-22T15:19:00.000-08:00

From Gay List Daily
Dallas 01.19.2010

Hello Muddah, Hello Human Female
Jeremy Whiteker wears his falsies well

There’s nothing quite like an elaborate Broadway production with exotic costumes, intricate sets and a live orchestra.

Yet sometimes, a memorable theatre experience can be found at a hidden venue with modest costumes, a mostly naked set and a CD player on stage providing the soundtrack and necessary effects.

It’s what many affectionately call “fringe.” We like to think of it as “theatre in the raw.”

And there’s nothing more raw than Audacity Theatre Lab’s production of Hello Human Female at Teatro Dallas, one of the tiniest venues you’re likely to ever visit in Dallas.

The story follows an evil scientist (Jeremy Whiteker) looking for love on the Internet. When a 37-year-old virgin (Arianna Movassagh) shows up from his ad, she falls for his Igor-like assistant, Blork (Jeff Swearingen) instead. But it’s not until she takes him home to meet dear-old Ma (Whiteker) that the stage comes alive with an uproarious creative spark.

Whiteker in a wig and velour track suit is comedy gold. He’s a man channeling Barbra Streisand channeling Mike Myer’s Linda Richman with a dash of uptight televangelist Jan Crouch thrown in for good measure. We’d be happy to come back next year for a one-“woman” show, Hello Human Shemale, starring Whiteker. We’re thinking roller-skating musical, and possibly puppets and monkeys.

Movassagh has long been one of our favorite actresses and her wide-eyed blank slate of an expression is the perfect foil to Whiteker’s zesty, over-the-top creation. She can garner laughs with simply a stare.

As for Blork, we think we have a crush on him, too. As portrayed by Swearingen, we sense a sultry hotness beneath that hunched back. But we’re kinky that way.
The play itself is consistently funny, but this is one you go to see simply to feel connected to the actors’ energy in a way that’s completely impossible in an overly produced show on a giant stage. Here, you’re close enough to smell Mother’s White Diamonds.

And that’s just the way we like it.

Blork: The Interview

2010-01-17T21:35:00.000-08:00

Read the article and see the original post on TheatreJones.com

CHOP to World Premiere

2010-01-09T02:40:00.000-08:00

I will finally be performing my one-man show CHOP. CHOP began as an exploration of one character's thread from a play I wrote in Grad School called SEVEN PIECES OF THE TANGRAM (made up of 7 direct-address monologues that intertwined around one another culminating in a shared event). It was my Thesis play and did not turn out very good. Anyway, in Hong Kong in 2007, I took one character and spun that tale out into a one-man show. It eventually turned into CHOP. It will now world premiere at the Water Tower Theatre's 2009 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival.

Figured I oughta start getting the word out.

CHOP concerns a man devoid of ambition, with a profound sense of isolation from the busy, happy, productive people around him. Through a chance encounter with a mysterious tattooed woman he is introduced to what may be his true calling - a subculture of unique fetishists who enjoy getting their limbs lopped off. As the guy willing to wield the axe and make the chops, he may finally develop a sense of belonging.

Directed by Mr. Andy Merkel. Written and performed by yours truly for Audacity Theatre Lab.
Playing at the Stone Cottage at Water Tower Theatre, 15650 Addison Road, Addison, TX 75001, 972-450-6232

March 4th at 7:30 PM, 7th at 5 PM, 11th at 7:30 PM & 13th at 5 PM. For tickets click here.

~ Brad

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE makes Top 10

2009-12-26T21:25:00.000-08:00

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.

Travelin' Alice

2009-11-19T00:37:00.001-08:00

A Spaced-Out Odyssey

2009-11-17T11:59:00.000-08:00

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.

Meet Buzz and Charlotte

2009-11-16T09:01:00.001-08:00

Meet Arnie

2009-11-09T06:16:00.000-08:00

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

MWC tickets now on sale!

2009-10-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

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.

Oh, it's coming...

2009-09-29T23:25:00.000-07:00

Congrats to, well, us!

2009-09-29T00:14:00.000-07:00

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.

ARSENIC & ROSES wrap up...

2009-08-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

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.

EYE IN THE SKY Episode 2

2009-08-05T22:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a preview of the EYE IN THE SKY project Episode 2 that will be posted soon on the ATL website. 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.

For more information visit the ATL website.

ATL in Design Exhibit!

2009-07-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-20T15:39:00.001-07:00

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.

Update from the Lab

2009-06-01T21:17:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-01T02:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-03T22:37:00.000-07:00

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.

DONATE ONLINE NOW

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

Do it for the trees...

2009-04-09T14:35:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-04-09T14:25:00.000-07:00

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.

# # #

CHOP in NYC

2009-03-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-02-27T22:06:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-26T16:01:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-02-26T15:52:00.000-08:00

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

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE: new trailer by Jeff Hernandez

2009-02-23T12:35:00.000-08:00

2009-02-22T00:14:00.000-08:00

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

Dig it...

2009-02-20T08:15:00.000-08:00

Audacity Theatre Lab:

Dishing it up and Out

20 February 2009 at 7:45 am

Alexandra Bonifield for the DallasExaminer.com

( Critical Rant and Rave Blog )

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/

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE has opened !!!

2009-02-19T10:13:00.000-08:00

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.

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE in rehearsal

2009-02-11T21:28:00.000-08:00

EYE In THE SKY episode 1 is online!

2009-02-08T21:01:00.000-08:00

Eye In The Sky is an original radio project being developed by Audacity Theatre Lab over the course of the entire first part of 2009. The first episode is up and ready to be listened to.

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

Check it out here.

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE tickets are for sale online!

2009-02-04T13:40:00.001-08:00

Tickets now on sale for Matt Lyle's HELLO HUMAN FEMALE...

Buy yours today!

PENS & STRINGS premieres in Austin

2009-01-29T13:37:00.000-08:00

For playwrights and childhood buddies Jeff Hernandez and Brad McEntire PENS & STRINGS marks their first collaboration together on a written piece for the stage. Drawing on an original idea by Hernandez and a smattering of the life experiences of both writers, the one-act became a funny, inimate exploration of one character's real and imagined relationships with two immediate women in his life... the ex-girlfriend of his recent past and the attractive waitress right in front of him.

Director Ruth Engel, a veteran of staging the works of McEntire and a friend of both playwrights assembled a small cast of talented actors - including Rasa Hollender, Angela Parsons and Oscar Contreras - to tackle the meta-theatrical piece. It was presented on January 16th at Austin's Hyde Park Theatre as part of the 2009 FronteraFest.

Despite some last minute worry that the piece would be under-rehearsed, it went over very well and the audience response was great.

To see a video of the performance click here...

Swearingen warms up in HAMLET before taking on Blork in HELLO HUMAN FEMALE

2009-01-22T14:25:00.000-08:00

Actor tackles Hamlet in concurrent Hub Theater shows

Thursday, January 22, 2009
By LAWSON TAITTE / The Dallas Morning News
ltaitte@dallasnews.com

Clowns, they say, always yearn to play Hamlet. Jeff Swearingen says he never did – yet he's playing the Prince of Denmark in not just one play but two. Simultaneously.

Actor Jeff Swearingen is tackling two Hamlet roles simultaneously for Dallas Hub Theater in Deep Ellum. Tonight, Dallas Hub Theater in Deep Ellum opens Shakespeare's Hamlet and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in adjoining spaces. Stoppard's philosophical comedy speculates on what happens to the bit players in Hamlet when they're not onstage. As far as anyone at Hub can tell, this is the first time a theater has tried mounting both plays at the same time – with a single cast.

Thus Swearingen plays Hamlet in both shows. Although he's done Shakespearean parodies and played Malcolm in a locally filmed movie of Macbeth, he has never been in a stage production of the Bard before. Talk about starting at the top: The title role in Hamlet is generally considered the longest and most challenging ever written for an actor.

And, remember, he has to go onstage in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern during the brief moments he leaves the stage in Hamlet.

"If you get me on a positive day, I'll say it's barely possible," he says of the challenge. "It's hair-trigger. When I kill Polonius, I lug his body offstage and go right into the action of Rosencrantz talking about it. There are times I really want a stage manager to tell me I'm in the right show."

Swearingen, 30, made his reputation in comedy. His 2007 dual best actor award from the Dallas Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum was for two shows in which he never spoke a word but got plenty of laughs: The Boxer at Bootstraps Comedy Theater and The Gnadiges Fraulein at WingSpan Theatre Company. Swearingen has done comedy improv in spots as far-flung as Hong Kong, and he has performed the brilliant one-man play The Last Castrato in seven venues stretching from New York's Fringe Festival to Phoenix.

In North Texas, Swearingen's home companies have been Plano Children's Theatre (recently reorganized as Plano Community Theatre) and Audacity Theatre Lab, though he has performed on many area stages. For Shane-Arts, the organization that runs Hub, he has done everything from mystery dinner theater to singing telegrams.

"My telegram character is so weird that the directions he can go are endless. I can make some kid's birthday, or rock out a sorority party at SMU," Swearingen says. "A lot of people think they're better than that, but I don't."

Swearingen got interested in acting when he finally realized that "Han Solo and Indiana Jones are the same guy. I thought, 'Hey, that's a job or something.' "

But he got no family encouragement to do theater. Only 5-foot-6, though he looks larger onstage, he instead took up martial arts when he was 12. The athletic grace and manic energy of his athletic past certainly transfer to his acting career.

"Kung fu is good training for comedy," Swearingen says. "It's all about timing and improvisation."

Tim Shane, one of the co-directors of the Hub double bill, notes how useful those qualities are for playing Hamlet.

"His ability to connect with an audience makes these plays immediately accessible," Shane says.

When Swearingen heard about the impending Hub project, he thought it was a great idea but doubted he was the right man for the lead part. It was only in a fall Labyrinth Theatre production of I Hate Hamlet, ironically, that he caught the Hamlet bug.

He doesn't want his performance of the great role to be remembered for some singular quality, to be the angry Hamlet or the poetic Hamlet or the graceful Hamlet.

"The violence the character expresses is ferocious, and depression and despair have their place. He's funny, he's intelligent, he's sensitive, he's charming. He's everything. Some people anchor themselves in one of these, but you should be seeing all these aspects of a noble prince," Swearingen says. "I was never one of those Hamlet guys, but now I understand how genius it really is."Plan your life.

2009-01-20T01:53:00.000-08:00

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE playwright Matt Lyle and his lovely wife Kim do a little spot for the new online theatreblog TheatreJones.com

2009-01-06T19:52:00.001-08:00

PENS & STRINGS is in rehearsals. If you're in the Austin area, don't forget to come out and see the show. Plays 7 PM January 16th at the Hyde Park Theatre (43rd at Guadalupe) as part of the 16th Annual FronteraFest.

The creative team has been hard at work at ATL's luxurious rehearsal studios (i.e. Ruth's apartment) and can't wait to present this short one-act about a writer with ideas... who have ideas of their own.

From the Arts Blog at Guidelive.com

2009-01-05T16:22:00.000-08:00

Jeff Swearingen as Blork in the upcoming HELLO HUMAN FEMALE

Audacity to produce new Matt Lyle comedy
5:06 PM Fri, Jan 02, 2009 Permalink
Lawson Taitte

Audacity Theatre Lab announced that it is producing a new script by Matt Lyle (the former Dallasite who founded Bootstraps Comedy Theater), Hello Human Female. It will go up at the new Exposition Park space Ochre House on Feb. 18.

Audacity also plans to mount a different original script (written in-house) at Austin's Frontera Fest in the spring and has a lot of other irons in the fire.

To view the Arts Blog at Guidelive.com click here.

Jeff Swearingen on a 2008 Top Ten List

2009-01-02T17:13:00.000-08:00

Jeff Swearingen in LULLABY with Tyson Rinehart and Paula Wood

...

"5) Jeff Swearingen’s multiple performances. For a while it seemed that every other show I went to review he was acting in and, yes, he also appeared in I Hate Hamlet. If I had to pick out his best work it would be in the play The Most Beautiful Lullaby You’ve Ever Heard at Audacity Theatre Lab. ...His performance kept me riveted."

~ From MBS Productions’ top moments of

DFW theater, opera and dance in 2008

by Mark-Brian Sonna on PegasusNews.com

(Saturday, December 27, 2008)

Word Is Spreading...

2008-12-27T16:52:00.000-08:00

From the Dallas Observer (Dec. 24, 2008)

"Shortly after winning critical raves and winning over sell-out crowds at Dallas Children's Theater for their silent comedy The Boxer, playwright Matt Lyle and actress-wife Kim moved from Dallas to Chicago to pursue improv training with the star-spawning Second City. Lyle recently starred in a short Off-Broadway run of Tom Sime's play My Favorite Animal but then returned to Chicago. His words will be back in Dallas in February with the premiere of his play Hello Human Female by the Audacity Theatre Lab at Ochre House on Exposition Avenue."

CASTRATO to go to Phoenix!

2008-12-10T15:38:00.000-08:00

ATL is proud to announce that Andy Eninger's THE LAST CASTRATO, the little show that could, has been accepted into the 2009 Phoenix Fringe Festival.

We at Audacity are very excited after the great response we recieved at the 2008 New Orleans Fringe in November.

More details as they come in. For more info on the PHX:Fringe click here.

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE Cast Announced

2008-11-29T19:16:00.000-08:00

In February 2009, ATL will present the World-freakin'-Premiere of Matt Lyle's twisted romantic comedy HELLO HUMAN FEMALE.

Here's who's in it...

Jeff Swearingen… Blork
Arianna Movassagh… Tamela
Jeremy Whiteker… Dr. Gorn/ Mother
Becca Shivers… Timmy/ Mandy
Scott Milligan… Homeless Harry/ Gramps

With Naration by Emily Gray

The adventure begins...

2008-11-23T21:40:00.000-08:00

Here's a pic of Ruth Engel doing some shadow puppetry this past weekend in Phoenix, Arizona at the Phix Gallery. She's one of the puppeteers in ROSELITA'S DEAD MAN by Audacity Artistic Director Brad McEntire. ROSELITA was a one-act puppet piece presented by ATL as part of Theatre In My Basement's 6th Annual Teatro Caliente Experimental Performance Festival.

Ruth and Brad had a great time in Phoenix and special thanks go out to dear friend and colleague Greg Romero, for recommending Matt's Big Breakfast (the griddlecakes get the highest marks!) and to Chris Danowski, the festival founder/coordinator for both putting Brad and Ruth up for the weekend in his spare room and for inviting them out to play to begin with.

EYE IN THE SKY is coming...

2008-11-15T14:50:00.000-08:00

We are excited to announce Chris Humphrey will be creating an original sound scape for the EYE IN THE SKY project, and we here at ATL are pleased as punch to have her...

Wait! Wait. What is the EYE IN THE SKY Project, you ask?

EYE In THE SKY is a specially comissioned experimental epistolary radio drama.

ATL's Brad McEntire and Ruth Engel hand-selected writers from around the counrty. Each writer was to use the blurb below as a springboard for a 1-3 page contribution.

"For one week in the middle of the summer a giant eye appears in the sky over the city. At the end of seven days it disappears as suddenly as it had originally materialized..."

This contribution could take the form of... well... anything. Nearly anything. We are doing the project as a radio drama, so spoken or sound related texts were encouraged. We were open to scenes, monologues, letters, news broadcasts, newpaper clippings, diary entries, e-mail correspondence, lecture notes, etc.

These pieces will be put together to form a series of impressions and reactions to The Eye In The Sky.

A public reading by professional actors, supported by several rehearsals with an ATL director, will probably be held in early Spring 2009 here in Dallas. The pieces will also be recorded and the resulting recording will be placed as a podcast on the ATL website.

Some of the contributors include:

Chris Alonzo (Brooklyn)

Vicki Cheatwood (Dallas)
James Comtois (New York)

Erin Courtney (Brooklyn)

Andy Eninger (Chicago)

John Flores (Dallas)

Jeff Hernandez (Dallas)

Chris Humphrey (Austin)

Mark Rigney (Evansville, Indiana)

Greg Romero (Philadelphia)

Ben Walker Sampson (New York)

Crystal Skillman (New York)

Jeff Swearingen (Dallas)

Daniel Talbott (New York)

Jason Tremblay (Austin)

Ken Urban (New York)

Gary Winter (New York)

CASTRATO in NOLA

2008-11-12T17:40:00.000-08:00

Brad here. I'm posting from a coffee shop on St. Charles in New Orleans. Swearingen and I have arrived to present Andy Eninger's twisted little play THE LAST CASTRATO at the 2008 New Orleans Fringe Festival.

After the success of Greg Romero's THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LULLABY YOU'VE EVER HEARD back in May and then both Swearingen and I visiting NOLA last month (as the comedy duo FUN GRIP for the 2008 New Orleans Improv Festival), we are thrilled to have come back to New Orleans to make some new friends, watch some good theatre and remount this strange, wonderful little 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 (me) 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, Jeff Swearingen returns to act in the piece and I've come back aboard as Producer, Designer and Director.

I love this play so much. It fulfills the bottom-line credo of what I look for in my theatre projects - which is to say, I strive to create the kind theatre I like to see. This is a fast, dynamic, imaginative, phyisical, full-blooded show that runs the gamut from disturbing bizarreness to piss-your-pants funny to tender and heart-breaking. I've loved directing it.

And Jeff Swearingen does an excellent job. He's played the role a number of times now and really "owns" it. And since we mature as artisits, it has deepened since we originally mounted it in 2005. Each time we re-mount it, baby-steps of intensity, clarity, percision and variety layer into an already powerful piece.

If you're in new Orleans, come see us. We're playing at...

The Side Arm Gallery and Theatre,
1122 St. Roch Ave., New Orleans, LA 70117

November 13 and 15 at 8:30 PM
and November 16 at 2:30 PM

For more info and tickets visit: http://www.nofringe.org/shows_last_castrato.html

ATL takes puppet play to Phoenix

2008-11-03T14:29:00.000-08:00

Audacity Theatre Lab is hard at work creating ROSELITA'S DEAD MAN, a lesbian/ Death/ Love Triangle puppet story about revenge. This piece that will combine shadow puppetry, table top puppets, an original electronic soundscape and is part of a larger puppet/mask piece being developed by ATL Artistic Director Brad McEntire called THE LUNATIST [AND RELATED TALES OF WOE].

ROSELITA'S DEAD MAN is written, designed and Directed by ATL's Artistic Director Brad McEntire and featuring the puppeteering of Ruth Ann Engel and Brad McEntire.

Presented as an official part of Theatre in My Basement's annual experimental theatre festival 'Teatro Caliente', Phix Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona. November 21 & 22, 2008.

We'll post pics after we get back from Arizona. Check back.