Articulations

If you still harbored doubts about those much-ballyhooed upgrades of the city's performing arts scene, the flurry of activity the past few weeks ought to have you convinced that these changes are more than hot air from a bunch of culture vultures. The makeover for the Big Green Turtle of the Southern Shore got a substantial boost week before last when Norwest Bank pledged a sweet quarter of a million dollars to the renovation of Palmer Auditorium into a major performing arts center. The gift represents less than half of one percent of the estimated cost of the retrofit (currently pegged at $55 million), but it still marks a major commitment from the corporate community to this cultural enhancement.

Then, this past Monday, another Southern Shore project, the Austin Lyric Opera headquarters and community music school, actually made the transition from the talking stage to the building phase. An elaborate -- and theatrical -- groundbreaking ceremony was held on the site of the facility, with architects, mayor, and an ALO chorus in vintage voice helping get the project off the ground, so to speak (for more info, see sidebar following this issue's "Arts" feature story).

And this Saturday, one of the city's longest-awaited cultural improvements is realized as the State Theater Company debuts its new mainstage, with stadium seating in the auditorium and state-of-the-art technical support ringing the stage. The former Live Oak Theatre company still has additional renovation of the facility to complete -- in the classrooms and office space above the lobby and part of the auditorium, the proposed second stage on the adjacent property also owned by the company, and in the dressing rooms and set and costume facilities in the basement -- but company artistic director Don Toner is eager to show off the space (on which he did more than his share of the construction) and see how a show looks in it. To that end, Toner and company will present their production of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's beloved musical My Fair Lady, with a musical-scale gala to commemorate the occasion. On hand will be legend of the stage Horton Foote, for whom the State is naming its second stage. For more info, see the "Arts Listings" or call 472-5143.

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Getting Seen

It was a better-than-average week for Austin artists in the national press. In the Thursday, April 1 New York Times, the "Arts in America" feature by Bruce Weber focused on the current Cleveland Play House production of Love, Janis, which features the local belter who starred in the version staged by the Zachary Scott Theatre Center, Andra Mitrovich. Not only is Mitrovich quoted in the piece, her lovely face adorns it in a photo of her, mid-belt.

Austin also gets a turn or two in the new issue of American Theatre magazine. For the rag's 15th anniversary issue, it chose to spotlight up-and-coming artists under 30, and making the cut is Salvage Vanguard Theater artistic director Jason Neulander, who takes the opportunity once again to flog poor old theatre. ("The bottom line is that ... [it] is really boring. It's a dead form," he says.) Also profiled is Frontera company member and former Austin resident Daniel Alexander Jones. And don't miss the byline on those pieces: Both are by former Chronicle scribe Adrienne Martini.