SEX DEATH AND LIGHT SWITCHES by Brandon Potter

Brandon Potter

Hosted by Audacity Theatre Lab, Dallas actor Brandon Potter presents his one-person show SEX, DEATH AND LIGHT SWITCHES November 12-16, 2014 at the Margo Jones Theatre at the Magnolia Lounge (Margo Jones Building), Fair Park, 1121 First Ave., Dallas, TX 75210.

In SEX, DEATH AND LIGHT SWITCHES Brandon traces his own coming-of-age through a series of life changing moments starting with seeing himself as a young boy dead in a walk-in mortuary freezer. Things just get weirder from there. This will be the World Premiere of this darkly comic piece of storytelling and Mr. Potter’s debut in a solo performance of his own devising.

Brandon Potter has been heard internationally in cartoons, video games, and commercials. After graduating from Southern Methodist University with a Masters degree in Acting (also where he began developing SEX, DEATH AND LIGHT SWITCHES), he was recently named the newest member of the Diane and Hal Brierley Resident Acting Company at Dallas Theater Center. He will appear in several shows this 2014-2015 season.

SEX, DEATH AND LIGHT SWITCHES plays at the Margo Jones Theatre November 12-16, 2014. Playing November 12 at 8:00 PM, November 13 at 9:00 PM, November 14 at 8 PM, November 15 at 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM and November 16 at 3:00 PM. Tickets are $12 and will be available at the door. The Margo Jones Theatre is located within the Magnolia Lounge, Fair Park, 1121 First Ave., Dallas, TX 75210. For more information visit: www.AudacityTheatreLab.com or call (214) 888-6650.

Pics from the Audacity Solo Salon

Nice turnout of about a dozen audience members. The performers read some excerpts with real potential. Next Solo Salon on December 8, 2014.

Steven Young, Beth Bontley and Van Quattro

Steve Young reading his piece The Ratboy of Soulard

Beth Bontley reading her piece One Woman Speaks for the Women Who Carried the Word

Van Quattro reads Standing Eight Count

Dallas Observer covers Audacity Solo Salon

Audacity Solo Salon Offers Early Glimpses
at Three Solo Stage Works 
Dallas Observer | By Danielle Georgiou | August 25 2014

Van Quartto, Steven Young and Beth Bontley will present works-in-progress
at the Audacity Solo Salon

In May, Brad McEntire and Audacity Theatre Lab brought eight artists and eight solo shows to town and stacked them all together inside the Margo Jones Theatre. For the first festival of its kind here, Dallas Solo Fest went well. So well, in fact, that McEntire has devised a quarterly workshop event, the Audacity Solo Salon, to foster an environment that provides ongoing support for Dallas solo performers. 

With the Solo Salon, audiences and artists are given a chance to see solo acts present their works-in-progress, providing a front-row seat to the development of the pieces. Things could go terribly wrong, actors could fall flat on their asses or things could go terribly right and you have the chance to catch a beautiful moment in creative history. 

"This will be a way for solo artists to rehearse, experiment and develop their work in front of supportive audiences. The Audacity Solo Salon artists have the opportunity to perform and try out new work in a safe and informal setting," McEntire says. "It is my hope that it will serve as a gathering place so solo artists and their audiences can meet and inspire each other, maybe cultivating a collaborative network of solo performers, playwrights, directors and so on." 

The first performers featured are Van Quattro, Steve Young and ElizaBeth Bontley. 

Van Quattro's Standing Eight Count finds a young broken-hearted man sorting out how to salvage his life. 

Quattro was born and raised in Los Angeles, and during his time there he appeared in over 20 stage productions and television shows including Millennium, Chicago Hope, Pickett Fences and General Hospital, and films Fight Club and End of Days. But Texas has him now. He has worked at Casa Mañana, the Dallas Theater Center (as Boo in To Kill A Mockingbird), Theatre Three (as Arthur in Superior Donuts), and he was recently in Second Thought Theater's A Behanding in Spokane, Water Tower Theater's Grapes of Wrath and Theater Arlington's Of Mice and Men. 

In The Rat Boy of Soulard by Steven Young, we are taken back to the 1960s as 6-year-old, sun burnt, bald headed, short-trousered, Mickey-Mouse-ear-wearing Stevie Verbal and his mother struggle to handle her alcoholism. ("Soulard" is the French word for a drunkard). 

Young is a playwright, actor, director and theatre educator, who has worked all over the United States and England, and was an alternate for the New York Drama League director's fellowship. He has appeared in over 40 Shakespearian roles and won the Shakespeare Quarterly's Justin Shaltz Award for best supporting actor for his portrayal of Falstaff in Henry IV part 2 at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. Locally, he recently appeared in the one-man show The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs at Amphibian. He is a drama faculty member at Texas Woman's University. 

One Woman Speaks for the Women Who Carried the Word, finds ElizaBeth Bontley taking on Charlotte Delbo's Who Will Carry the Word. Delbo was a member of the French Resistance who survived a concentration camp in WWII. The women with her chose to help each other survive as long as they could, so that one of them could return and carry the words and stories of all of them imprisoned there. Who Will Carry the Word is the result of those efforts, and Bontley's take puts those words into action. 

Bontley is an actress, director, and coach. She has produced and staged many of her original works, and in 2013, her work Acet-o-philous or Vinegar Love was part of New York's United Solo Festival. She has taught at Texas Christian University, Tarrant County Community College, Kids Who Dare and Dallas Children's Theater. Currently, she teaches at S.T.A.G.E. and with the Dallas Summer Musicals Academy. 

"If the need is there, my aim is to present these salons throughout the year, perhaps on a quarterly basis, as a fun way to create a community, share work, promote future shows, learn from one another and make new friends," McEntire says. 

The salon takes place at 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Margo Jones Theatre, 1121 First Ave. It's free (though a pay-what-you-can donation is suggested). The Margo Jones Theatre is inside the Magnolia Lounge at Fair Park.

Original article... HERE

Teaser... NIGHT OF THE TARANTU-BEARS

Oh, it is coming...

From the twisted minds of writers Brad McEntire and Jeff Hernandez comes a comedy horror World Premiere...
NIGHT OF THE TARANTU-BEARS
Directed by ATL Artistic Director Brad McEntire

A long-forgotten Nazi experiement resurfaces as a seemingly harmless viral internet sensation. Then things go horribly horribly wrong. Five survivors hole up in an abandoned theatre, attacked by genetic monstrocities. Who will survive the night?

Tickets go on sale October 14, 2014... check back for details...

Playing November 5 - 16, 2014
at the Margo Jones Theatre in historic Fair Park
1121 First Ave., Dallas, TX 75210  [map here]

More information coming soon!

Goodbye Veronic Russell

Veronica Russell performing her show A DIFFERENT WOMAN
at the 2014 Dallas Solo Fest.

Veronica Russell (1970-2014)

This breaks our heart. Solo performer and costumer Veronica Russell passed on this week after a short illness. She was 44.

Veronica performed at the Dallas Solo Fest last May. She was part of the tribe. She will be remembered with thoughts of love and respect.

For a wonderful write-up about her vist... HERE.

Audacity Solo Salon - August 25th

Audacity Theatre Lab is pleased to present what we hope will be a quarterly workshop event... the Audacity Solo Salon.

In an effort to make the Dallas Solo Fest an ongoing resource of support for the Dallas solo performance community, the ASS is a chance to see solo performers present works-in-progress as they go about developing a new piece.

This first one featuring Van Quattro, Steve Young and Beth Bontley.

Margo Jones Theatre in Fair Park, 1121 First Avenue, Dallas TX.
Monday, August 25th. Starting at 7:30 pm
Free! (suggested donation encouraged)