Dearly beloved, we are gathered here tonight to get through this thing called the Artsies. Preferably before midnight.
Many things happened at tonight's Richmond Theater Critics Circle awards show, many of them in glittery shoes and sparkly clothing.
I wore neither, yet the man who won "Best Actor in a Leading Role, Musical" complimented my ensemble as sexy and demure ("How are you pulling off both?") and referred to his own striking suit as looking "like a couch."
For the record, few couches are that shiny.
Naturally, things got topical. There was last year's Best Supporting Actor - a child actor, mind you - playing the Donald in a blond wig and patriotic ball cap and, when challenged on his fitness to do so given his diminutive stature, responded, " My hands are the right size!"
When the cast of "Green Day's American Idiot" did a medley, it involved a figure in a Trump mask and the entire cast finishing by giving the audience the finger. I like to think they were really giving it to Trump.
Calling a spade a spade, the Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Play called Richmond Triangle Players the "best-run theater in town," and he should know having worked for almost all the others as well.
Even her move to D.C. didn't prevent last year's Best Actress in a Play from being the butt of jokes about her frequent nude scenes, from showing up as a presenter tonight and from reminding us that we are more than a piece of ass.
Winningly, the multi-talented Best Actor nominee in both leading and supporting roles sang a song with green frog hands on.
Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" became the basis for the winner of Best Actress in a Lading Role, Musical and the winner of Best Director, Play to imagine a gospel-inspired MLK musical set to the Purple One.
One of the actors who was part of the deserving group who won the Ernie McClintock Best Acting Ensemble award - the one who's leaving us after five years for a bigger sandbox to show off in - announced, "If you're not seeing TheatreLAB's shows, you're not really paying attention."
Five awards tonight? Everybody should be paying attention by now.
Because last years's winner of Best Director, Play was unable to attend, her esteemed Shakespeare leanings became the basis for jokes involving tests, balls and cunning linguists set to iambic pentameter.
Behold a 97-year old dancer (who could have passed for 75) accepting an award for Ongoing Contribution to Richmond Area Theater who not only did a few dance movements when she walked onstage, but also said, "I'm grateful to have had a long lifetime in order to achieve so much."
The young 'uns (particularly) in the audience gasped audibly when her age was given and clapped mightily when she sashayed offstage.
Just as moving was the 87-year old actress and mezzo-soprano accepting the same award and sharing her black history in the process. When told by a restaurant server in her youth that, "We don't serve n****rs here," she had the presence of mind to answer, "We don't eat 'em."
And when she told us to hold hands with the people on either side of us, we did while she prayed for a less divisive country and better treatment of women.
One critic's reviews were mocked as too short and another as too long. Both statements were true.
The audience went nuts when nominees for Best Supporting Actress, Play and Best Actor in a Leading Role, Musical sang "Suddenly Seymour" with charm and drama to spare.
There was more Girl Power than you could shake a stick at, like last year's Best Actress winner pointing at another actor in Colonial garb a la "1776" and saying, "This is what a President looked like in the past," and then doffing her own Revolutionary costume to reveal a sexy red dress underneath.
"And this is what a President will look like in the future!" Hear, hear.
Oh, and for the record, 5th Wall does more than "plays where smart women holler at each other." Why is it "hollering" when we do it and "discussing" when men do the same?
You'd never hear the Dowager Countess say such a thing.
Showing posts with label sara heifetz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sara heifetz. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Down versus Pound
It was really too beautiful to spend the evening indoors - 77 degrees in mid-October - unless love was involved.
As it turned out, it was, but I didn't know that. I thought I was getting dinner and a play.
Given the bodacious weather, I was hardly surprised when I arrived at Magpie to find only one couple in attendance. I took a seat at the bar to await my friend's arrival and discuss my theater plans with the bartender.
Although he'd never been to Richmond Triangle Players, he used to work with their bartender, a woman I've bought wine from on many an occasion. Funny how there's never more than three degrees of separation from anyone in this town.
Right on time, my friend arrived (amuse bouche: easter egg radish slice with golden raisin chutney and carrot top) and we lost no time ordering so we could discuss theater without our mouths being full.
My only regret was that he invited me to go with him to see "Book of Mormon," a show I could never afford, and I'll be out of town that weekend. Drat the luck.
Once dinner came, we focused on that.
Not that anyone needs to eat their sweetbreads chicken-fried, but as long as they were offering, why not? These came with turnip hash, pickled relish and house hot sauce and I also shared a side of roasted brussels sprouts with my friend as he ate his huntsman's stew, which smelled divine.
Unfortunately, we had so little time left that dessert wasn't an option so we left for the theater to see 5th Wall Theater's staged reading of John Anastasi's new play, "Transition," without my sweet tooth being satisfied.
Instead, I sublimated it when the reading began with a sex scene between two women, one of whom came noisily moments after the action began. Unfortunately, her partner hadn't come (or enjoyed the strap-on she'd been using), causing her to lament, "I'd rather you went downtown instead of taking me to Pound Town."
Hmm, "Pound Town." That's a new one on me.
"Transition" was the story of a man born in a woman's body who takes 28 years to decide he needs to transition to the male he's always been. The problem is that his partner, the love of his life, is a lesbian who wants a female, not male, partner.
When he tells his mother about his planned hormone treatments and surgery, she's forced to come to terms with what she always knew but never acknowledged: her daughter is her son. "You haven't even started the male hormones and already you're acting just like your father!" Jacqueline Jones as the mother said to a big laugh.
Ditto the laughs when the subject of genital reconstruction surgery came up. "That glorious organ with the head but no brain." Ah, yes, we know the one.
But the most unexpectedly funny moment came when Melissa Johnston Price (as the doctor planning to do the surgery) explained all that was involved, right down to creation of the brain-less head. "So that's it in the nutshell," she said before turning to look at the audience with a classic WTF? look on her face. "I never saw that coming."
The audience laughed long and hard at her reaction to the line in the script.
Danya/Daniel, the woman transitioning, was played superbly by Eva DeVirgilis, who tries to convince her true love Addison (played by Sara Heifetz) that even if she has the surgery, they'll still love each other just the same, pulling out Shakespeare's "A rose by another name would smell as sweet" to prove her point.
Addison is having none of it. "Male hormones do not smell good," she retorts, miserable at the idea of having a male partner when she's madly in love with a woman.
But the bigger issue wasn't about smell or hormones or any of that. The play asks us why do we love the person we do? Is it their heart, their soul, their personality, their body?
The play was terribly poignant in parts, especially in a scene that takes place five years after surgery and the couple's split, when Daniel runs into the doctor who tries to assure him he'll get over the loss of his true love. He corrects her.
"Those who've had a real loss know that it never gets better. You just get better at living with it." I'd like to see someone put that in a fortune cookie.
The play ended ambiguously, leaving the outcome to the viewer's imagination. Some saw a happy ending and others didn't. Sort of like life.
But the biggest question remained. Could you still have real love if one of the people changes?
During the talkback with the playwright, director Carol Piersol and cast, the audience had a lot of questions and a lot of opinions on what needed to be changed and not changed in the script.
That's a major reason I look forward to this kind of reading. Part of its purpose is to provide feedback to the author and another part is to gauge audience reaction to the idea of seeing the play fully produced.
As an opinionated woman and a theater lover, I find it immensely satisfying to have a chance to provide that kind of input.
Playwright Anastasi told us he'd spent a great deal of time talking to a doctor who does this kind of surgery in order to get the finer points right. "I still take a lot of criticism as a heterosexual writing about the trans experience. But, Stephen King, did he kill all those people?"
I think not. Clearly, the man had a sense of humor.
What he did make clear was that what he had written was, more than anything else, a love story. By the end, Daniel has fully transitioned and has finally gotten what he's wanted his whole life. But in the process, he's lost the only person he ever needed. He's alone but acknowledges that that's his choice.
"He chooses not to have someone else if he can't have the love of his life, "Anastasi told us to wrap things up.
And that, if you ask me, makes it a hell of a love story.
As it turned out, it was, but I didn't know that. I thought I was getting dinner and a play.
Given the bodacious weather, I was hardly surprised when I arrived at Magpie to find only one couple in attendance. I took a seat at the bar to await my friend's arrival and discuss my theater plans with the bartender.
Although he'd never been to Richmond Triangle Players, he used to work with their bartender, a woman I've bought wine from on many an occasion. Funny how there's never more than three degrees of separation from anyone in this town.
Right on time, my friend arrived (amuse bouche: easter egg radish slice with golden raisin chutney and carrot top) and we lost no time ordering so we could discuss theater without our mouths being full.
My only regret was that he invited me to go with him to see "Book of Mormon," a show I could never afford, and I'll be out of town that weekend. Drat the luck.
Once dinner came, we focused on that.
Not that anyone needs to eat their sweetbreads chicken-fried, but as long as they were offering, why not? These came with turnip hash, pickled relish and house hot sauce and I also shared a side of roasted brussels sprouts with my friend as he ate his huntsman's stew, which smelled divine.
Unfortunately, we had so little time left that dessert wasn't an option so we left for the theater to see 5th Wall Theater's staged reading of John Anastasi's new play, "Transition," without my sweet tooth being satisfied.
Instead, I sublimated it when the reading began with a sex scene between two women, one of whom came noisily moments after the action began. Unfortunately, her partner hadn't come (or enjoyed the strap-on she'd been using), causing her to lament, "I'd rather you went downtown instead of taking me to Pound Town."
Hmm, "Pound Town." That's a new one on me.
"Transition" was the story of a man born in a woman's body who takes 28 years to decide he needs to transition to the male he's always been. The problem is that his partner, the love of his life, is a lesbian who wants a female, not male, partner.
When he tells his mother about his planned hormone treatments and surgery, she's forced to come to terms with what she always knew but never acknowledged: her daughter is her son. "You haven't even started the male hormones and already you're acting just like your father!" Jacqueline Jones as the mother said to a big laugh.
Ditto the laughs when the subject of genital reconstruction surgery came up. "That glorious organ with the head but no brain." Ah, yes, we know the one.
But the most unexpectedly funny moment came when Melissa Johnston Price (as the doctor planning to do the surgery) explained all that was involved, right down to creation of the brain-less head. "So that's it in the nutshell," she said before turning to look at the audience with a classic WTF? look on her face. "I never saw that coming."
The audience laughed long and hard at her reaction to the line in the script.
Danya/Daniel, the woman transitioning, was played superbly by Eva DeVirgilis, who tries to convince her true love Addison (played by Sara Heifetz) that even if she has the surgery, they'll still love each other just the same, pulling out Shakespeare's "A rose by another name would smell as sweet" to prove her point.
Addison is having none of it. "Male hormones do not smell good," she retorts, miserable at the idea of having a male partner when she's madly in love with a woman.
But the bigger issue wasn't about smell or hormones or any of that. The play asks us why do we love the person we do? Is it their heart, their soul, their personality, their body?
The play was terribly poignant in parts, especially in a scene that takes place five years after surgery and the couple's split, when Daniel runs into the doctor who tries to assure him he'll get over the loss of his true love. He corrects her.
"Those who've had a real loss know that it never gets better. You just get better at living with it." I'd like to see someone put that in a fortune cookie.
The play ended ambiguously, leaving the outcome to the viewer's imagination. Some saw a happy ending and others didn't. Sort of like life.
But the biggest question remained. Could you still have real love if one of the people changes?
During the talkback with the playwright, director Carol Piersol and cast, the audience had a lot of questions and a lot of opinions on what needed to be changed and not changed in the script.
That's a major reason I look forward to this kind of reading. Part of its purpose is to provide feedback to the author and another part is to gauge audience reaction to the idea of seeing the play fully produced.
As an opinionated woman and a theater lover, I find it immensely satisfying to have a chance to provide that kind of input.
Playwright Anastasi told us he'd spent a great deal of time talking to a doctor who does this kind of surgery in order to get the finer points right. "I still take a lot of criticism as a heterosexual writing about the trans experience. But, Stephen King, did he kill all those people?"
I think not. Clearly, the man had a sense of humor.
What he did make clear was that what he had written was, more than anything else, a love story. By the end, Daniel has fully transitioned and has finally gotten what he's wanted his whole life. But in the process, he's lost the only person he ever needed. He's alone but acknowledges that that's his choice.
"He chooses not to have someone else if he can't have the love of his life, "Anastasi told us to wrap things up.
And that, if you ask me, makes it a hell of a love story.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Don't Stop Believing
Theater is my temple and my religion and my act of faith. Strangers sit in a room together and believe together~ Harvey Fierstein
And sometimes that believing gives you a sense of history retold...or foreshadowed.
The Jewish Community Center was the venue for guest director Carol Piersol's production of Israel Horovitz' "Lebensraum," an incredibly powerful piece that had three strong actors plating 50+ roles using a wooden wall of props over 90 minutes.
The premise was both simple and far-fetched: what if a future German chancellor invited six million Jews to come to Germany with the promise of citizenship and full benefits as a way to assuage their sea of guilt for the Jews killed during the Holocaust?
The actors - Stephen Ryan, Matt Shofner, Sara Heifetz- were mesmerizing, shape-shifting from character to character to narrator and back again, sometimes in the course of two sentences.
Simple props, voice inflections and accents helped define characters as the story unfolded.
The chancellor's "project homecoming" is shown eliciting very different reactions. A concentration camp survivor wants to go back for revenge. An out of work Massachusetts dockworker wants to move his wife and son to Germany. Israelis fear for the safety of their people.
In one brilliant scene, Stephen portrayed two men having a conversation, putting on different hats, voices and demeanors to convey the decidedly different essence of each.
There weren't a lot of lighter scenes, but one involved the arrival of a Jewish, married, gay French couple (played to limp-wristed perfection by Matt and Stephen in berets) who want to claim their citizenship. Needless to say, they are not what the Germans had been expecting.
Sara managed to play both the non-Jewish wife of the dockworker as well as the teen-aged Jewish girl with whom her 15-year old son soon falls for and made both believable.
Their blossoming romance was the sweetest part of the film as the two learned that great loves are made not of similarities but of differences.
Him: You think I'm funny?
Her: You are funny!
Him: Then we most definitely need to kiss if you laugh at my jokes.
Piersol's direction was fast-paced so something was happening every moment, from the Boston couple becoming local celebrities to the German workers organizing to protest the jobs being taken from them for the new Jewish arrivals to Israeli activists arriving to become citizens in hopes of protecting their people.
Always someone was speaking, either in character or as narrator explaining the action. After a while, it felt eerily like a live action newsreel unfolding upsetting events even while intellectually, we knew we were watching fiction.
Hands down, it was some of the most powerful theater I've seen due in equal measures to Horovitz's story and completely compelling performances by the trio bringing it to life.
With the added weight of so much of tonight's audience being Jewish, it felt like we were watching something visceral and unforgettable.
My only regret was that I went alone so I didn't have anyone to discuss it with afterwards.
I was meeting a friend for a late dinner and conversation, though, just not about the play. I got to the Roosevelt just as the dinner rush was winding down and ordered a glass of Pollack Rose while bartender T. made sure I'd be at the next DJ night.
A DJ from my neighborhood record store playing late night tunes? Hell, yes.
With soul music uncharacteristically playing, the vibe tonight was slow and mellow, a terrific backdrop to meet up with my friend and find out what she'd been up to.
When the subject of my upcoming birthday arose, she posed a question. "How much technology can you stand?"
I think we all know the answer to that. I use a computer daily and won't own a cell phone until they pry the land line from my cold, dead hands.
"Have you heard of pagers?" she joked because she's so hilarious.
She had skirt steak for dinner while I chose pork belly, little neck clams and potatoes in kimchee broth, a spicy and satisfying bowlful that carried me through our discussion of mothers and daughters, double dragon and conspiracy theories.
Meanwhile I heard my name - first and last- called and there sat a recording engineer I know from the neighborhood, enjoying a cocktail with friends and are clearly surprised to see me somewhere other than Jackson Ward.
Which just goes to prove that he doesn't get out much or he'd know better.
And sometimes that believing gives you a sense of history retold...or foreshadowed.
The Jewish Community Center was the venue for guest director Carol Piersol's production of Israel Horovitz' "Lebensraum," an incredibly powerful piece that had three strong actors plating 50+ roles using a wooden wall of props over 90 minutes.
The premise was both simple and far-fetched: what if a future German chancellor invited six million Jews to come to Germany with the promise of citizenship and full benefits as a way to assuage their sea of guilt for the Jews killed during the Holocaust?
The actors - Stephen Ryan, Matt Shofner, Sara Heifetz- were mesmerizing, shape-shifting from character to character to narrator and back again, sometimes in the course of two sentences.
Simple props, voice inflections and accents helped define characters as the story unfolded.
The chancellor's "project homecoming" is shown eliciting very different reactions. A concentration camp survivor wants to go back for revenge. An out of work Massachusetts dockworker wants to move his wife and son to Germany. Israelis fear for the safety of their people.
In one brilliant scene, Stephen portrayed two men having a conversation, putting on different hats, voices and demeanors to convey the decidedly different essence of each.
There weren't a lot of lighter scenes, but one involved the arrival of a Jewish, married, gay French couple (played to limp-wristed perfection by Matt and Stephen in berets) who want to claim their citizenship. Needless to say, they are not what the Germans had been expecting.
Sara managed to play both the non-Jewish wife of the dockworker as well as the teen-aged Jewish girl with whom her 15-year old son soon falls for and made both believable.
Their blossoming romance was the sweetest part of the film as the two learned that great loves are made not of similarities but of differences.
Him: You think I'm funny?
Her: You are funny!
Him: Then we most definitely need to kiss if you laugh at my jokes.
Piersol's direction was fast-paced so something was happening every moment, from the Boston couple becoming local celebrities to the German workers organizing to protest the jobs being taken from them for the new Jewish arrivals to Israeli activists arriving to become citizens in hopes of protecting their people.
Always someone was speaking, either in character or as narrator explaining the action. After a while, it felt eerily like a live action newsreel unfolding upsetting events even while intellectually, we knew we were watching fiction.
Hands down, it was some of the most powerful theater I've seen due in equal measures to Horovitz's story and completely compelling performances by the trio bringing it to life.
With the added weight of so much of tonight's audience being Jewish, it felt like we were watching something visceral and unforgettable.
My only regret was that I went alone so I didn't have anyone to discuss it with afterwards.
I was meeting a friend for a late dinner and conversation, though, just not about the play. I got to the Roosevelt just as the dinner rush was winding down and ordered a glass of Pollack Rose while bartender T. made sure I'd be at the next DJ night.
A DJ from my neighborhood record store playing late night tunes? Hell, yes.
With soul music uncharacteristically playing, the vibe tonight was slow and mellow, a terrific backdrop to meet up with my friend and find out what she'd been up to.
When the subject of my upcoming birthday arose, she posed a question. "How much technology can you stand?"
I think we all know the answer to that. I use a computer daily and won't own a cell phone until they pry the land line from my cold, dead hands.
"Have you heard of pagers?" she joked because she's so hilarious.
She had skirt steak for dinner while I chose pork belly, little neck clams and potatoes in kimchee broth, a spicy and satisfying bowlful that carried me through our discussion of mothers and daughters, double dragon and conspiracy theories.
Meanwhile I heard my name - first and last- called and there sat a recording engineer I know from the neighborhood, enjoying a cocktail with friends and are clearly surprised to see me somewhere other than Jackson Ward.
Which just goes to prove that he doesn't get out much or he'd know better.
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