Articulations
Playwright Dan Dietz gets his second play staged at the Humana Festival in Louisville, Johnson / Long Dance Company heads to Hamburg, and Zach shuffles its season
By Robert Faires, Fri., Jan. 23, 2004
Dietz Batting 1,000 at ATL
Dan Dietz is two for two at the Humana Festival of New American Plays. Last year, the playwright and artistic director of Austin Script Works had his play "Trash Anthem" staged at the Actors Theatre of Louisville's prestigious dramatic fest (where it was also honored with the Heideman Award, handed out annually for the top play submitted to ATL's National Ten Minute Play Contest). This year, he'll have another 10-minute play produced there, the poignant "A Bone Close to My Brain," which premiered at FronteraFest 2003. Eight other current and former Austin playwrights were Heideman finalists this year, and one of them, Dietz's predecessor as ASW artistic director, John Walch, will be represented at the festival by Fast and Loose, an ethical collaboration, a dramatic anthology he is developing with playwrights José Cruz González, Kirsten Greenidge, and Julie Marie Myatt. Congratulations to Dietz, Walch, and Amparo Garcia-Crow, whose play Cool, Still Waters will also be seen in Louisville, as part of the ATL Actor's Apprentice Showcase on March 4. The 28th Humana Festival runs Feb. 29-April 10; "A Bone Close to My Brain" will be performed April 3-4. For more information, call 502/584-1205 or visit www.actorstheatre.org.
Hamburg, Here We Come!
Europe may be the new destination of choice for Austin artists on tour. Last summer, the Rude Mechanicals took their adaptation of Lipstick Traces to Salzburg. Now, Johnson/Long Dance Company is headed to Hamburg for a two-week engagement at the Kampnagel Theater, a former factory that's now an international center for contemporary performing arts presenting such figures as Pina Bausch Tanztheater, Wim Vanderkeybus, and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. To warm up for their February gig, JLDC is performing sections of the work I Stuck My Head in the Garden this Saturday, Jan. 24, with a discussion and Q&A with dancers and choreographers to follow. This fun starts at 8pm at Cafe Dance, 3307 Hancock, and is absolutely free. For more information, call 467-0704.
Season Shifts
The Zachary Scott Theatre Center has had to shuffle its schedule for the remainder of the season. The previously announced production of Metamorphoses will not be happening after Mary Zimmerman, who adapted the tales by Ovid into an award-winning theatrical experience, withdrew the rights for Zach's production, which Artistic Director Dave Steakley was planning to set on the King Ranch. Now, It Ain't Nothing but the Blues will fill the gap in the schedule after Always ... Patsy Cline. Its new run will be March 27-May 9. Meanwhile, the Z Cabaret series returns to Zach's Whisenhunt Arena stage, opening next week with a Carole King tribute (Feb. 6-7), cabarets by Beehive diva Judy Arnold (Feb. 14-15), pop standards standardbearer Mady Kaye (Feb. 20-22), Trio Romantico (Feb. 27), Michael Clay & Georgia Middleman (Feb. 28-29), and crooner Jerry Conn (Mar. 5-7). For more information, call 476-0541 or visit www.zachscott.com.
