They Gotta Be Secret Agents were once part of Boston's rubbery troupe Snappy Dance Theater, and that their current work combines acrobatics, puppetry, and dance. Poste Restante somehow involves a mysterious package, a winged bicycle, a cardboard box bikini, and a cocoa puff. more ›

Street Corner Arts' local premiere of Jason Wells' Men of Tortuga is a lightning-fast series of scenes about the worst possible outcomes of politics: ninety minutes of rapid-fire jokes, scheming, philosophizing, and a James Bond-style briefcase rigged for homicide. more ›

In Look Back in Anger's script, these four distinct voices, plus that of Alison's imperialist father , form a steely English chord. But in this production, all the actors except Bayne speak in a confident American Standard. This makes it difficult to hear the subtle changes in Osborne's dialogue, like when Alison cranks up the snoot to gab with her girlfriend, or when Jimmy gets so angry that he drops his educated lexicon for a working class invective. And the action gets really clunky when an actor attempts a Britishism, like "pop round" or "she's got no digs," while sounding straight outta Akron. more ›

Well is less a play, and more of a staging of well-shaken brain. A shabby living room has been transplanted to the Vortex into a void where Ann Kron, the playwright's mother, will watch as her daughter attempts to dramatically stage their lives (sort of like filming a documentary to show your Grandfather at his birthday). All the while, she steps in and out of the void as a way of conversing with Mom without having to actually talk to Mom. It's a perfect play for the holiday season, and the tension of too much family time. more ›

Amidst all the stage combat, mugging, and music in Guest by Courtesy, the writing steals the show. Often in pieces born of movement and stage pictures, words take a back seat, but Hannah Kenah's script is polished and nuanced, with a Wildean attention to style amidst so much wild stage action. The zingers are precise, the lines have rhythm, and Jason Hays delivers a monologue about ponies that is both political and hilarious. more ›

An adult version of childhood magic is at work in The B. Beaver Animation, the second of the Rude Mechs' shot-for-shot re-imaginings of seminal performance works. Originally a 1974 Mabou Mines production, B. Beaver is, on one hand, a playful and obtuse poem, the ballad of a stuttering aquatic rodent toiling to save his family from disaster. But it is also an hour of ramshackle spectacle, a celebration of how shrewd theater artists can MacGyver a world out of a few key production values. more ›

John Malkovich, accompanied by two lovely sopranos (Louise Fribo and Martene Grimson) and backed by the Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra, is in full scenery-chewing glory in his portrayal of the real-life Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. Indeed, the entire ensemble of this production - part one-man show, part opera - is on point, and utterly worth seeing. The trouble here is that the show's concept is a mean-spirited mess. more ›

In...an opera? Sort of. is a stage play, but Malkovich is the only actor. Joining him are two sopranos and the Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra, in a story about Jack Unterweger, who you've probably never heard of. Unterweger was, yes, a serial killer - who reported on on his own murders as a journalist. And this was after his first prison term, when he was given a life sentence for strangling a prostitute and won readers' hearts (and clemency) with an autobiography written from a cell. He committed suicide after receiving his second life sentence for a series of at least nine murders in Europe and the US. more ›

Connor Hopkins and his crew of deft puppeteer-actors have developed a dark, singular aesthetic, and they use the medium of puppetry to start a conversation. That conversation looks at humans and manipulation: by science (Frankenstein), by big business (The Jungle), and in every scenario, by each other. Riddley Walker continues this conversation, with clever use of a sense of metatheatricality to look at how old traditions of storytelling might continue in a postapocalyptic world. If that sounds too heady for you, there's also puppet sex. more ›

A woman has just stepped out of a cupboard, filled with delight. She didn't just come back from Narnia, though this moment is an unexpected metaphor. This woman is an inmate at Travis County Jail out on the edge of Austin, participating in an exercise with Conspire Theatre. When encouraged to explore the room in which Conspire's four week program of community-building, storytelling, and movement exercises takes place, this multiple felon went straight for a cupboard that stood along one wall of the room. “I've been wanting to get inside that cupboard since the first time I saw it,” she said afterward.  more ›

Hillcountry Underbelly: A Pilgrimage on the Outskirts, a new musical by Elizabeth Doss, presented by Paper Chairs, might be initially perceived as your classic, charming and whimsical country bumpkin tale. Complete with references to Ma and Pa and beautiful ballads (composed by Mark Stewart) about big old red dogs and scorpions. However, as the title implies, the Underbelly is anything but light-hearted. After scratching the surface, there lies a dark comedy of desperation, death, illness, and a struggle between allegiance to a patriarch and individual desire that eventually rip the family apart. more ›

69 Love Scenes, which opened last week at Salvage Vanguard Theater, is to a Magnetic Fields fanatic as X-Men: Generation X is to a die-hard Marvel fan. Written by Monique Daviau and Avimaan Syam (who also directs), with additional writing contributions by other members of Gnap! Theater Projects, the piece embodies perfectly the ideas, concept, and emotion of the album, while also bringing a new, clever interpretation. more ›

There's a huge fence dividing the border between the United States and Mexico. It's full of gaps. In some places, it's 21 feet tall, and in others, it's virtual - a series of sensors and cameras. Much the same for Suzan-Lori Parks' latest play, The Book of Grace, an erratically structured drama whose violence and painful secrets are hidden away in locked boxes and under the floor. After opening last year in New York, the playwright herself has directed this production at ZACH. The most noticeable change? The original cast included a white father and stepmother, and a black son. Here, Parks has selected an all African-American cast whose considerable talent keep the stuttering momentum of the play (full of interjections made literal in projected titles) moving towards its bleak conclusion. more ›

Summertime in Austin seems a good season to waste with late breakfasts, midday naps, and other heat avoidance tactics. In Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, a stifling hot month spent in idleness is cause for complaint, and even violence, and the gentle pace of Breaking String's elegant production at the Off Center belies the sadness tucked away in each character's heart.
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A press release from the Texas Performing Arts hub has announced not only the featured performers for the 2011-2012 season, but has named this coming Friday as the day to take advantage of what they're referring to as a "HUGE" sale. No small caps here, people. more ›

It's 6,000 miles from Austin to Moscow (the one in Russia, not Texas), but one local theater company is striving to close that gap, bringing contemporary and classic Russian plays to life here. Breaking String, named after a much discussed stage direction in Anton Chekhov's , is led by a quartet: Liz Fisher, Robert Matney, Matt Radford, and Graham Schmidt. They call themselves Co-Producing Artistic Directors (a nod to the structure adopted by Austin's Rude Mechs). In conversation during a break in rehearsal for their latest production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, it's clear that Breaking String's creative partnership is strengthened by a mix of passion and intellect. more ›

It's a meditation on competing visions of the Wild West. It's a love story to Austin. It's about two dachshunds, a mountain lion, and the people they're tied to (sometimes literally). The Rude Mechs have managed to pack all of those things into I've Never Been So Happy, a video-enhanced, dance-spattered musical that lives up to the promise of its title. The Rude Mechs have made their name with original, collectively created theater, and their latest offering is no different. From the seed of an idea sparked five years ago, Kirk Lynn and Peter Stopschinski have built a bouncy, sweet, utterly delightful love story that's family friendly, save a few curse words more ›

Beverly Weston, the elderly poet patriarch of a white collar Oklahoma family, hires a young Cheyenne woman, Johnna, as a live-in caretaker for the home he shares with his cancer-sick wife, Violet. His subsequent disappearance brings his three daughters, Barbara, Ivy, and Karen, back under their mother's hot, tomblike roof. Toss in their helmet-haired aunt Mattie Fae and the rest of the extended family and the house is a tinderbox by the time of the inevitable funeral. more ›

The Brecht-Weill collaboration is based on John Gay's 18th century piece, The Beggar's Opera, and centers around Macheath, a murderous criminal known as Mack the Knife. Mack marries Polly, the daughter of Mr. Peachum, who controls London's beggars. Polly's parents try to have Mack arrested, and the audience gets a tour of the city's underbelly, with prostitutes and Peachum's well-organized beggars enterprise threatening to interrupt Queen Victoria's coronation parade in order to force the corrupt police chief Tiger Brown to seize his friend Macheath. more ›

We don't get many shows as good as Black Watch in Austin. That's not a dig on our local talent. They don't get many shows as good as Black Watch in London or Chicago, either. If the challenge of theater -- or any art form, really, but particularly one whose continued relevance can be called into question the way that theater's can -- is to powerfully assert why it exists, and why the work being done in the medium can only be done on stage, in the form in which it appears, then Black Watch stands among a handful of contemporary performances -- like Nick Stafford's War Horse or the Rude Mechs' Method Gun -- as proof that theater's continued existence is vital, because without it, we couldn't get stories like this. more ›

Here is the magic of Salvage Vanguard Theater's Heddatron: After over an hour in which the vast majority of the characters -- eleven, counting the robots -- display nothing that resembles a real human emotion, the play's resolution sneaks around for an unexpectedly deep and affecting conclusion that validates all of the silliness (and there certainly is silliness) that came before. It's the theatrical equivalent of Ali's rope-a-dope, wearing audiences out by bobbing and weaving, laying back, and then delivering the emotional knock-out punch that no one saw coming. In short, it's a unique experience made all the more powerful by the fact that everything that happens for the majority of the play is robots and precocious pre-adolescent narrators and karaoke and Strawberry Shortcake costumes and crazy shit like that. more ›

One of the neat quirks about humans is that, whatever the topical or sub-level differences, there's usually a bedrock ability to empathize with others. You may not be wealthy or attractive or well-heeled and popular, but you know what it feels like to be bred to be a certain thing, and to have the repercussions of that bite you in the ass. That's the basic reason Breaking String Theater's North American premiere of Russian playwright Olga Mukhina's Flying works: despite some (possibly) untranslatable Russian-ness, and its focus upon the drug-and-sex-fueled exploits of a largely foreign economic class, the sensation of what it's like to have pieces of you selected and others discarded is one that's largely relatable. more ›

Writer, director and producer Jason Neulander has one of Austin's most impressive resumes; from 1994 to 2008, Neulander was the founder and Artistic Director of Salvage Vanguard Theater, where he directed and produced more than fifty world premiere plays, musicals, and operas - earning him the Austin Chronicle's coveted "Best Theater Director" title not once, but three times (2004, 2005 and 2007). Neulander's work has been staged at national venues including The Playwrights' Center and The Guthrie in Minneapolis and Oregon's Portland Center Stage, but it's his long-running radio play, The Intergalactic Nemesis, which began in 2006, that's been touring to sold-out audiences coast to coast. more ›

Tongue And Groove Theater proved itself, with The Red Balloon, to be one of Austin's more interesting theatrical stylists. Omnivorous in its approach, the company seemed determined to just create a brilliant, beautiful live experience, unconcerned with being Theater-with-capital-letters and instead mostly interested in giving audiences what they want, not what they expect. more ›

On Tuesday we brought you Part One of our interview with Larry Miller, in which he waxed eloquent on Christopher Guest, the fine city of Austin...and wife-killing. Today we bring you part two with the instantly recognizable character actor, who has played memorable roles in everything from films like Pretty Womanand Best in Show to television shows like Seinfeld and Law & Order. In his spare time, he’s written a book, performed on Broadway, started a weekly podcast, and had recurring stand-up appearances on Letterman. For our benefit, he’ll be doing the madman’s work of a one-man show entitled Cocktails with Larry Miller: Little League, Adultery, and Other Bad Ideas, tonight at Paramount. On Tuesday we left off by asking Larry about "bizarre" performances, which led, of course, to asking this: Not even working with Hulk Hogan [was bizarre]? [Ed. Note: Suburban Commando, 1991] more ›

Interviewing Larry Miller is like being on a rollercoaster ride. Without a lap bar or a shoulder harness. The instantly recognizable character actor, whose IMDB filmography seems about two hundred pages long, has played memorable roles in everything from films like Pretty Woman and Best in Show to television shows like Seinfeld and Law & Order. In his spare time, he’s written a book, performed on Broadway, started a weekly podcast, and had recurring stand-up appearances on Letterman. For our benefit, he’ll be doing the crazy person’s work of a one-man show entitled Cocktails with Larry Miller: Little League, Adultery, and Other Bad Ideas, this Thursday night at Paramount. Whereas most interviews here on Austinist are edited down for only the key pieces, the rapidfire mania of Larry Miller deserves nothing less than nearly an entire transcript. We’ll have it for you today and Thursday, in two parts. more ›

A dozen superheroes sit at a bank of telephones in their submarine headquarters. Sounds like the beginning of a really strange joke, right? That's the premise of Mickle Maher's Spirits to Enforce, Capital T Theatre's New Directions production for this year's installment of FronteraFest. It gets weirder, though: the heroes (in street casual dress) are dialing for dollars for their upcoming production of The Tempest. Yeah, that Tempest. more ›

Five strangers have come to town, each with his or her own purpose, each removing belongings from a backpack, a suitcase. They explore, interact, form alliances, become rivals. Their behavior, their manner of speaking, even their very words may seem familiar to the audience. This is Portmanteau, created by Applied Mechanics, at the Vortex Cafe for FronteraFest 2011. The ensemble hails from Philadelphia, and frankly, the 1,600 mile trip was worth it. This “invasion play” strikes a rare balance in unconventional, interactive-ish theater: by using a relatively small space, and sticking to a pretty straightforward narrative built on familiar found texts, this hour-ish piece allows the audience member to get into the action without being forced to get too close (hear that, Ben Brantley?) more ›

The FronteraFest Long Fringe finally kicks off tonight, and we couldn't be more excited. This looks to be one of the festival's strongest lineups in years, with ascending Austin companies like City On A Hill, Capital T Theater, and Tongue and Groove all participating, as well as a number of newcomers, out-of-towners, and theatermakers just one great show away from finding themselves one of 2011's most talked-about companies. With all of that happening over the next two weeks, Austinist polled our theater writers to see what they were most excited about. Keep reading to see what everyone's most psyched for. more ›

The title character, portrayed with a soft-toned nastiness by Paper Chairs regular Gabriel Luna, is vicious, insatiable, anti-social, and selfish. He steals women from his compatriots, including Jacob Trussell's trusting Johannes, who at first seems as charmed by Baal as every woman seems to be. Baal's allure seems to be in the boldness and beauty of his words - for though this play is full of ugly imagery, of human waste, murder, and decay, the nature of Brecht's writing is also imbued with an elegance and lyricism that is hard to ignore. more ›