Articulations

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New York Stories

One first-year graduate playwright at UT received an early present this holiday season: a New York reading of his latest work. On Tuesday, Dec. 5, Aaron Mack Schloff got to hear his new play, In Galicia, read at Makor, a Jewish cultural center on the Upper West Side. The reading was held for the off-Broadway theatre company Clubbed Thumb, which commissioned the script with funds from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Schloff, who developed the play here at UT, in the workshop class of visiting playwright Lee Blessing (Cobb, A Walk in the Woods), reports that the reading went very well. The play, which he adapted from The Destruction of Galicia, by Russian Jewish cultural activist S. Ansky, who wrote the Yiddish supernatural romance The Dybbuk, was well received, especially by Joachim Neugroschel, who translated Ansky's book (and also translated The Dybbuk for Tony Kushner). Neugroschel hadn't been sure that Schloff could "find a play" in the highly episodic chronicle of the secret relief mission that Ansky undertook to war-torn Jewish communities in Central Europe during World War I, but the translator was "happily surprised." The folks from Clubbed Thumb also expressed pleasure with the script, and Schloff will return to New York City in January for further discussions with them about it. But while he was reassured by the comments, Schloff measured the success of the reading in another way. "I say, the strongest sign is: Did the people stay afterward and drink with me?" he writes. "They did." In Galicia will be mounted locally in April as part of the UT Department of Theatre & Dance's New Works Festival.

For a while now, local actor-artist Michael A. Arthur has been living in New York and building a singular career for himself: creating drawings inspired by theatre and dance rehearsals and performances. He sits in the theatre or onstage and records his impressions, not in the naturalistic manner of a court artist, but in light, fanciful line drawings. It's something that Arthur started purely for personal fulfillment, but once the work was seen it turned quickly into a professional career, with Arthur being hired by some very prominent New York arts companies. He recently sent this update on his activities since a visit to Austin last spring. "Soon after I returned to New York," he writes, "my work was seen by a powerful member of the board of the American Ballet Theatre. A few days later, I found myself on stage at the Metropolitan Opera drawing ballet. That was back in June. Since then, I've sat in on almost every day of rehearsals. I also accompanied ABT when they went to Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. All told, I've done about 200 or so drawings of the company in the last several months, and I may accompany them when they travel to the Kennedy Center with Nutcracker. The plan is to have a show of the work sometime in the spring or summer. Needless to say, it's been pretty exciting hanging out with all these immensely talented dancers and choreographers. If anyone had ever told me I would be working with a major ballet company in any capacity other than janitorial, I would have hurt myself laughing. " Arthur adds that he got to show the drawings to "Mr. Hirschfeld" -- yes, that Mr. Hirschfeld -- who liked them. (Through his art, Arthur has become acquainted with the artist and his wife.) If you'd like to see Arthur's work for yourself, be sure to visit the Wally Workman Gallery, 1202-B W. Sixth, next month. A show of Arthur's work will open there on January 6. Call 472-7428 for more information.