The Mainstream with Cory and Charlie

RADIO VCU - interview with our male actors.

Just to make it easier

Click this link and you can buy your tickets online.

Hurry before they are all sold out!!

Commonwealth Times covers Shakespeare's R&J!

Tonight is the Male Cast Opening Night!
7:30 Raymond Hodges Theatre
Singleton Building, 922 Park Ave.

Opening night R&J tomorrow!!

Dearest Theatre VCU students

Tomorrow and Friday are the days.

Shakespeare R&J opens

Thursday - female cast

Friday - male cast

Here is a reminder about how important your presence is to all of us.

Belated Kudos.

Sometimes the Bloginator can be accused at being asleep at the cyber-wheel. 

This is one of those times....

These accomplishments should of been announced from the roof of the Singleton Building....
May this Blog suffice.

We have a faculty member who deserves a trumpet ovation. (insert here)

Besides her long-standing/outstanding professional career (winner of the 2009 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Costume Design) just recently Toni-Leslie James, Head of Costume Design has:

• been awarded the National Black Theatre Festival's Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design Award for her contribution to the world of Costume Design for Black and American Theatre and the Entertainment Industry on August 1, 2010.

 

• accepted an invitation to join the National Theatre Conference. Founded in 1925, the National Theatre Conference, according to its Web site, “is a cooperative association of the most influential leaders in commercial, non-commercial and educational theatre.” Membership is by invitation only and is limited to just 120 people at a time. Will be inducted in December 2011.

• had costumes and an interview featured in the exhibition More Life! Angels in America at Twenty, which ran from November 2011-August 2012 at the Museum of Performance and Design in San Francisco.  The webpage featuring costumes.  http://www.mpdsf.org/PAGES/EXHIBITION/SHOWS/angels.html.

• AND is the Costume Designers four world premiere plays:
• LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE, CA (9/11)
PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS, NY (10/11)
Milk Like Sugar  

by Kristen Kirsten Greenidge

directed by Rebecca Taishman
(Winner of the prestigious Edgerton Foundation's New American Plays Award, Co-commissioned with Theater Masters and produced in association with Playwrights Horizons and Women’s Project Productions)
Milk Like Sugar moves to Playwrights Horizons in NY in October 2011 

• CITY CENTER ENCORES & JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER (11/11)
The Cotton Club Parade
Conceived by Jack Viertel
Featuring Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
Music Director Wynton Marsalis
Directed and Choreographed by Warren Carlyle
  Cotton Club Parade is a celebration of Duke Ellington's years at the famed Harlem nightclub in the 1920s and '30s. Cotton Club Parade is part of a new producing partnership between New York City Center and Jazz at Lincoln Center that will combine the organizations’ specialties: musical theater and jazz.

• YALE REP (2/12)

Good Goods
By Christina Anderson
Directed by Tina Landau
February 3-February 25, 2012

 

• THE LONG WHARF THEATRE (1/12)

Macbeth 1969

Adapted from William Shakespeare 
Directed & Adapted by Eric Ting

World Premiere

• CITY CENTER ENCORES - NEW REVIVAL (3/12)
Pipe Dreams
Music by Richard Rodgers
Book and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Based on the novel Sweet Thursday by John Steinbe

ck
• And Last But Not Least:  The West Coast Tour of The Scottsboro Boys

 The Scottsboro Boys scored 12 Tony Nominations for the 2011 Tony Awards. The production will play San Diego’s The Old Globe Theatre from April 22nd to June 3rd, 2012. The production will then move to San Francisco to play the American Conservatory Theatre from June 19th to July 15th, 2012. The entire original creative team will reunite to create these productions for the West Coast. in over a decade.

Also remember:

All of these productions
employed VCU students:

Josh Quinn (MFA as soon as he writes his thesis!):  Milk Like Sugar, Cotton Club Parade, Macbeth 1969
Cailin Anderson (2009):  The Scottsboro Boys (Vineyard), The Scottsboro Boys (Broadway)
Matt Armentrout (2013): The Cotton Club Parade
Adrian Boyes (2011): The Cotton Club Parade
Rebecca Willet (2010): The Cotton Club Parade
Gloria Kim (2013):  Good Goods
Elizabeth Ensminger (2012):  Pipe Dream
Michael Magaraci (2012):  Pipe Dream
Jessica Goldman (2012):  Pipe Dream

Congratulations Toni-Leslie James

Just Days Away.... R&J

Big week for theatre!

How about a bit of back talk?

Shhh... can you feel it?

That   "First Show of the Season" buzz.
We're in tech here at Theatre VCU and you can feel
the excitement.... the bzzzzzz.

You see, 

these are two beautifully contrasting shows -

Shakespeare's R & J female  is minimal, text-centric, taut, graceful while balancing on that razor-edge of passion, that delicate moment between girl-hood and woman-hood.

Shakespeare' R & J male  slams the audience in the middle of a classroom of repressed adolescent boys, champing at the bit of their over-protective surroundings, blazing with desire, devouring the words of Romeo and Juliet.

We want our audience to enjoy BOTH these casts.

SO
If you buy tickets to see one show, you may buy another set of tickets for the other cast for  
HALF PRICE!


If you are Theatre VCU student. If you see one cast you may see the other cast
FOR FREE!


Both shows only only for 80 minutes.
Step away from your life into the  passionate performances of both casts of Shakespeare's R&J


Female Cast - Sept. 29 • Oct.1 & 7 - 7:30 pm • Oct. 8 - 7:00 pm
Male Cast - Sept. 30 & Oct. 6 - 7:30 pm • Oct. 2 - 3:00 pm • Oct. 8 - 9:30 pm


PLUS on Friday, Sept. 30 there will a ALL cast (male and female) and directors (Stephen Fried and Matt Johnson) TALK-BACK following the show as well as a FREE reception in the Singleton Lobby. Not to missed!

Diversity Theatre Interest Meeting TODAY!

No Shame featured in the Commonwealth Times this week!

Check out a great article right here

Theatre VCU's Shakespeare's R&J - beautiful and exciting...

Thank you to Olivia Luna and the Female cast of 

Joe Calarco's Shakespeare's R&J 

for producing this evocative video of their work with Matt Johnson.

Opening night September 29th.

Our Theatre VCU Season Opener

More R&J news.

Have you NO Shame??!!!

While looking at my Magic 8-Ball for predictions for the weekend - THIS little message floated to the top:
I have some info that you may be interested in posting on the blog. This Friday at No Shame, SALT will be collecting new, unused school supplies. Students who bring supplies get to jump to the front of the line, which is a major perk considering how many people we had to turn away last week. School Supplies will be donated to a program started by DoSomething.org and Staples and will be given to the Communities in Schools of Virginia Organization.

Remember: No Shame will be this Friday! Doors will open at 11pm and the show begins at 11:10pm. Get there early because we can only let in the first 150 people.
Forms are up in the Student Lounge.

If you would like to perform this week please beware that Tech will only be able to happen from 4:00pm-5:30pm.

Actors at work.

Rehearsing for Sept. 29th opening of Shakespeare's R&J

Running time - 80 minutes

Female Cast - 
Sept. 29 • Oct.1 & 7 - 7:30 pm • Oct. 8 - 7:00 pm

Male Cast - 
Sept. 30 & Oct. 6 - 7:30 pm • Oct. 2 - 3:00 pm • Oct. 8 - 9:30 pm

Shakespeare - shaken, not stirred.

First there was the Stephen Fried week-long Shakespeare workshop.

Then came the reality that our students have class during the time we were planning for the workshop. And all the enthusiasm in the world cannot change a scheduled class.
So...

Shakespeare Part II was born

Tuesday, September 20 and Thursday,
September 22 from 3:00PM-6:00PM in PAC 72
20 participants • 10 observers.

Ten students have signed up (sign-up sheet is on the red board, 2nd floor PAC) .

Take a moment and come upstairs to be included in this "once in a college performance education" opportunity.

Have you SEEN Stephen Fried's biography?

Stephen Fried’s recent classical work includes Much Ado About Nothing (Trinity Shakespeare), The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, and Coriolanus (all at Shakespeare Theatre of NJ), Henry IV, Part 1 (Milwaukee Shakespeare), and Love’s Labour’s Lost (Illinois Shakespeare Festival). From 2005 to 2008 he served as the Resident Assistant Director at Washington, DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company. He is currently on the faculty of The New School for Drama. He holds a B.A. in History and Drama from Stanford University and an M.F.A. in Directing from the Yale School of Drama.  You can also check out his blog at www.stephenfriedtheatre.blogspot.com.

Now you know why you should rush to the 2nd floor of the PAC and get your name on the list of very lucky participants.

We shook up the dates and times so you can move a little closer to the Bard - thanks to Stephen Fried!

Where's your passion, forsooth?

On the second floor of the PAC there is a workshop sign-up sheet for a FREE workshop for our students. Stephen Fried has directed Shakespeare at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ and the Trinity and Illinois Shakespeare Festivals. He holds a BA in Drama and History from Stanford University and an MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama.

This man knows his Shakespeare and has been asked to direct and teach all over the US.

As he is here at Theatre VCU directing Shakespeare's R & J, Stephen has graciously agreed to present a 5-day workshop intensive exclusively for the first 15 students who sign up.

How seriously do you take your education?

Why would any performance major miss this opportunity?

forsooth?

Here are the details:

Stephen Fried presents
A Shakespeare Workshop


Monday, September 19 through Friday, September 23
from 4:00PM-6:00PM in PAC 72.

12 participants, 13 observers - 25  total •  first-come first-served.
If you sign up, you must be able to participate in all 5 days!
Each of the participants should choose a monologue from Shakespeare
to work on over the course of the week. 
A few rules about the monologues:

1) It must be verse (for the sake of this workshop, prose speeches are a lot less useful)
2) It should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 lines of verse.
3) Please make it an actual monologue, speech or soliloquy -- i.e., please don’t try to cobble something together by cutting out another character or splicing things together.
4) Please make it a speech spoken by an actual character, and not a chorus.
5) It should be a role that the student could reasonably be cast in within the next 5 years
(and for the purposes of this workshop, pick a role that’s your same gender).
6) Be willing to change if someone else has chosen the same monologue.
7) Pick a truly great speech -- well-known speeches are fine with me -- so don’t feel like you have to go to ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ to find a speech that nobody’s heard.  It will be more useful for us to be working on something that’s a sample of Shakespeare at his best (even if it’s ‘To be or not to be’) than spending our time digging through the Jailor’s Daughter’s speech or something from Henry VIII.
8) Do choose a speech that challenges you in some way -- in which the language might be just a bit beyond your ability to grasp instantly.
9) this is probably obvious from all the other stuff about the selection of pieces, but students should not use Sonnets as their pieces.
10) while I would love to have members of the male R&J cast in the room as observers, they should probably not be allowed to sign up as participants, as they’re getting a good deal of this material in R&J.


These speeches should be chosen NO LATER THAN MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, and submitted to Bonnie McCoy at bsmccoy@vcu.edu.  Each participant should have his or her speech SOLIDLY memorized prior to the start of the workshop.

The basic thematic structure of the workshop will be as follows:
MONDAY: Meaning and Argument
TUESDAY: Imagery
WEDNESDAY: Scansion and Rhythm
THURSDAY: Sound and Musicality
FRIDAY: Putting it all together

Participants won’t be ‘up’ every day -- but rather, on each day, we’ll look at a few of the pieces people are working on that make especially good examples for that day’s theme.

Come upstairs in the PAC and sign-up today! 

Do not pass up this opportunity to hone your skills.

Brush up your Shakespeare Dudes!!!

The excitement is building for Shakespeare's R & J

Tickets are already selling for Theatre VCU's first mainstage production of the 2011/12 season.

here's the lowdown:

Shakespeare’s R&J
Adapted by Joe Calarco
Female Cast Directed by Matt Johnson 
Male Cast Directed by Stephen Fried
Performed at the Raymond Hodges Theatre, VCU

Running time -  (only) 80 minutes
Female Cast - Sept. 29 • Oct.1 & 7 - 7:30 pm • Oct. 8 - 7:00 pm
Male Cast - Sept. 30 & Oct. 6 - 7:30 pm • Oct. 2 - 3:00 pm • Oct. 8 - 9:30 pm

Tickets: General Admission - $25.00 • Seniors, VCU Faculty & Staff - $20.00
VCU Students with Valid ID - $10.00 • Other Students with Valid ID – $15.00
MasterCard & Visa Accepted
High School Matinees - Oct. 4 Female cast - 10:00 am 
Oct. 5 Male cast - 10:00 am • All HS matinee tickets - $10

Six prep school students in a restrictive Catholic school discover a forbidden copy of Romeo & Juliet and are compelled by their curiosity to read the “sinful” play. In this refreshing production we experience them slip deeper into self-expression as they go from adolescent mocking to soulful re-enactment as the magic of Shakespeare takes hold. The rigidity of their lives begins to parallel the characters in the play as perceptions forever change, the fun of acting turns serious, and the words and meanings begin to hit home. Delving into Romeo & Juliet leads to the students’ exploration of gender roles, questions of sexual identity, and issues brought on by religious repression. Performed on alternate nights with two completely different casts, one male, one female. Running 80 minutes with no intermission.

The male cast director Stephen Fried’s recent work includes productions at Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, Trinity and Illinois Shakespeare Festivals. Matt Johnson, the female cast director, recently moved from the Cincinnati area where he served as the Associate Artistic Director for Cincinnati Shakespeare Company for the past 11 years.

Final Night!
October 8 - Buy one ticket and see second show for FREE!
Female cast  - 7:00 pm • Male cast - 9:00 pm
with one brief intermission between shows

Theatre VCU Box Office: 804-828-6026 • theatretix@vcu.edu • vcutheatre.showclix.com
Theatre VCU • Raymond Hodges Theatre
W.E. Singleton Performing Arts Center
922 Park Avenue, Richmond, VA 23284
David S. Leong, Theatre Department Chairman Website: www.vcu.edu/arts/theatre/dept              

Are you ready for this??

TONIGHT is the first night of NO SHAME at the Shafer Street Playhouse's Newdick theatre and the Bloginator has heard rumors of Salsa, and poetry, moving monologues, silly spoofs and a massive send-up of the entire theatre dept. (the Blogster will be sorely injured if the Blog is not featured in this... just remember who controls the chocolate). YOU should be there. First years especially need to witness that is NO SHAME. Tonight. 11:00. Too. Much. Fun.

ps... Please. Please. come get R&J posters - let's get the word out!!