The Dallas Theater Center has announced two new members have joined its resident acting troupe: Kieran Connolly (above, left) — who’s taught at SMU and most recently appeared as the father in the Theater Center’s production of Next Fall – and recent SMU grad, Tiffany Hobbs (above, right), who’s performed in Cabaret and A Christmas Carol. Connolly, presumably, will be talking on the older male roles that might have gone to original company member Sean Hennigan — who more or less has left the company since appearing in It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman! last season.
But if the DTC has never mentioned Hennigan’s departure, it does make note of the fact that company member Abby Siegworth is leaving (her spot in the 2-year designated SMU MFA residency is being filled by Hobbs) as is Cedric Neal, currently onstage in New York in the Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess.
That makes nine current actors, and the DTC is in the midst of a national search for a Latino actor — “who will contribute to DTC’s new efforts to explore the work of Latino playwrights and increase outreach efforts in the Latino community.”
For me, the surprise in all this is the departure of Matthew Gray, who has been a talented actor at the Theater Center (Dividing the Estate) and Kitchen Dog as well as a smart director (Second Thought’s Pluck the Day). Gray has accepted a creative position with a global marketing and communications agency. After all, one purpose of the Brierley Resident Acting Company is to try to keep good actors in North Texas, keep them, you know, acting.
Oh well. Ave atque vale, as the Romans would say. Congrats to the newbies. And welcome.
Ava Pine is rehearsing Lysistrata, Mark Adamo’s opera from 2005. She plays the title character who exhorts her fellow Greek women to boycott sex – to force the blustering Greek men to stop a pointless war. The opera’s actually a bawdy comedy. But here, Pine has to pivot emotionally. Lysistrata has just learned that as the leader of the cause, she’s won the battle but lost her lover.
Pine: “She has so many layers to her and so, it’s my job to make sure that the audience sees her heart. It’s a tremendous challenge.”
Pine will probably make it look easy. She brings a freshness, a joy to her performances that’s one of her great appeals onstage. That – and, of course, her voice, a rich, warm but lively, lyric soprano. A decade ago, Darren Woods, general director of Fort Worth Opera, first heard it at the First Presbyterian Church.
HEGGIE DOES IT AGAIN: One of the operas playing this year’s Fort Worth Opera Festival is Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers. Heggie is the composer of Dead Man Walking and Moby-Dick – each of which have played in these parts in the past few years. With Three Decembers, he takes the chamber opera approach in telling the story of a veteran Broadway actress struggling in her relationship with her kids after their father has died. Olin Chism writes that the production, “is close enough to soap opera to present some challenges to a producing company, but the Fort Worth Opera’s effective new production meets those challenges well,” in his dfw.com review. Scott Cantrell was also pleased. “Both Janice Hall as Madeline and Emily Pulley as Bea have voices that often turn edgy. But, with penetrating direction by Candace Evans, they and Matthew Worth, as a clear-toned Charlie, bring their characters vividly to life,” he writes on dallasnews.com. And count Wayne Lee Gay among the show’s fans. “Typical of Heggie’s music, the score (for an orchestra of 11 musicians, stationed behind the sets in this production) is immediately engaging and constantly energetic; Heggie fears neither dissonance nor lyricism, and the frequent pungency in his writing gives way to a sheer beauty,” he writes on Front Row. The next performance of Three Decembers is Friday.
MUSIC BITS:Fort Worth Weekly reviews new locals discs from Pinkish Black, Fontanelle and The Breakfast Machine. (fwweekly.com) … Summer concert season is upon us, and DC9 at Night picks out the can’t miss festivals. (DC9 at Night)
PICTURES OF YOU: This morning, the Dallas Museum of Art is holding its press preview of “Flower of the Prairie: George Grosz in Dallas,” which opens on Sunday. The show commemorates the 60th anniversary of the painter’s “Impressions of Dallas” show, which was held at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in Fair Park in October 1952. The new DMA show will feature 20 works from that series. Over on the museum’s Uncrated blog, they’ve posted a few cool archival photos from Grosz’s initial visit.
Congratulations to Matt Harvey of Addison, the winner of the Flickr Photo of the Week contest! Matt’s a multiple winner of our contest; his last victory came in April. He follows last week’s winner, Jesse Scroggins.
If you would like to participate in the Flickr Photo of the Week contest, all you need to do is upload your photo to our Flickr group page. It’s fine to submit a photo you took earlier than the current week, but we are hoping that the contest will inspire you to go out and shoot something fantastic this week to share with Art&Seek users. If the picture you take involves a facet of the arts, even better. The contest week will run from Monday to Sunday, and the Art&Seek staff will pick a winner on Monday afternoon. We’ll notify the winner through FlickrMail (so be sure to check those inboxes) and ask you to fill out a short survey to tell us a little more about yourself and the photo you took. We’ll post the winners’ photo on Wednesday.
And now, here’s more from Matt:
Title of photo: Spanish Moss Equipment used: Canon 60D w/Sigma lens Tell us more about your photo: Recently, my wife remarked that she’d never been to Caddo Lake but wanted to visit, having heard of its primordial environment. Since my family lives in Tyler, we took advantage of a weekend trip to East Texas to visit them to take a day trip over to the lake. This was one that I particularly liked.
The great Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes died yesterday. The author of The Old Gringo and The Death of Artemio Cruz, among many other novels and stories, is being remembered around the internet today. To those memories, we thought we’d add this 1992 interview Fuentes sat for with Lee Cullum for KERA’s Conversations series.
Vigorous and animated, Fuentes talks about growing up in Washington D.C., connecting with his Mexican roots in a movie theater, realizing how that identity alienated him from his classmates in the U.S., and falling for the Spanish language. He also touches on Mexico’s culture of Catholicism and obsession with death, and the role of myth and dreams in his work. Enjoy!
Afternoon Delight is a daily diversion for when you’re just back from lunch, but not quite ready to get back to work. Check back weekdays at 1 p.m. for another one.
As a tribute to Adam Yauch, a trio of tykes remakes the best music video ever made.
In a rare concert appearance, Kristin Chenoweth will perform songs from her latest album Some Lessons Learned, as well as an array of her most memorable songs and Broadway show tunes, including music from Wicked, Promises, Promises, and Glee. Maybe she’ll even have something to say about her recently canceled TV show set in Dallas, GCB.
ONE lucky winner of this week’s Big Deal will receive a pair of tickets to see Kristin Chenoweth perform at the Winspear Opera House on May 24. Only Art&Seek e-newsletter subscribers are eligible. To sign up, just click here.
Don’t forget to enter our other Big Deals this week: Click here for a chance to see Lysistrata at the Bass Performance Hall, and click here for chance to win tickets to our very own KXT’s Summer Cut Happy Funtime Fest!
Enter below for tickets to see Kristin Chenoweth.
UPDATE: Times up. Thanks for playing. Hope you hear from us soon!
Presented by Fort Worth Opera, a reinvented version of Lysistrata, composed by Mark Adamo,takes the stage at the Bass Performance Hall.
Here’s how the Opera describes the plot: Something old is new again in Mark Adamo’s racy, light-hearted take on a classic Greek comedy. The men of Sparta and Athens have been at war for ages, and the women have had enough. Lysia, sung by DFW favorite Ava Pine, can’t convince her lover Nico to leave the Athenian army. In fact, he interrupts their romantic evening to heed the battle call. So she rallies the women of both cities in a “make love, not war” campaign that means no “love” until the men put down their arms. Of course, the truce can’t last—and Ares and Aphrodite themselves must intervene.
Four lucky winners of this week’s Big Deal will receive a pair of tickets to see the 2 p.m. performance of Lysistrata on June 3. You must be an Art&Seek e-newsletter subscriber to win. Sign up right here.
And make sure to look at our other Big Deals for the week: Click here for a chance to see Kristen Chenoweth at AT&T Performing Arts Center, and click here to win tickets to our very own KXT’s Summer Cut Happy Funtime Fest!
Enter below for Lysistrata.
UPDATE: Times up. Thanks for playing. Hope you hear from us soon!
Also, check out our other Big Deals for the week: Click here for tickets to see Lysistrata at the Bass Performance Hall, and click here for a chance to see Kristen Chenoweth at AT&T PAC.
Enter below for Summer Cut:
UPDATE: Times up. Thanks for playing. Hope you hear from us soon!
A D.O. COMMISSION: The Dallas Opera announced late Tuesday that it has commissioned British composer Joby Talbot to write a one-act opera about a 1996 expedition to scale Mt. Evererst. “Everest will blend documented facts and contemporary recollections of the transformative journey experienced by Everest survivors, with flights of the imagination designed to keep audience members transfixed in this harshly beautiful place at the top of the world,” the opera said in a news release. Everest marks the fifth world premiere for the Dallas Opera; look for it in February 2015.
IT’S GETTING DRAFTY UP HERE: Late Monday night, the Richardson City Council unanimously approved plans to build an Alamo Drafthouse at Belt Line and Central Expressway. That’s big news for movie fans as the Austin-based Drafthouse is known for expertly curated repertory programming in addition to the usual first-run films. And Tuesday, Bill DiGaetano, who owns the franchise writes for North Texas, told dallasnews.com, “We think we’re going to be able to open four to six in the Metroplex.”
LAS COLINAS COMPLEX UPDATE: Over the weekend, Irving voters elected two members to the city council who oppose the proposed Las Colinas Entertainment complex. And after a June runoff, the council could shift to a majority of members who oppose the deal. But that doesn’t mean the deal is dead. Las Colinas Group, who is developing the project, now says it can raise more money to pay for its part, lessening the burden on the city. All the details are over at dallasnews.com.
The Dallas Theater Center has announced two new members have joined its resident acting troupe: Kieran Connolly (above, left) — who’s taught at SMU and most recently appeared as the father in the Theater Center’s production of Next Fall – and recent SMU grad, Tiffany Hobbs (above, right), who’s performed in Cabaret and A Christmas Carol. Connolly, presumably, will be talking on the older male roles that might have gone to original company member Sean Hennigan — who more or less has left the company since appearing in It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman! last season.
