Top 10 Performing Arts Moments That Linger in the Memory
(In no particular order):
1. Rinat Shaham in Carmen (Austin Lyric Opera) As the dark, outrageously sexy, intensely commanding gypsy girl and smoldering title character, Shaham fanned the flames with dancing and singing that were equally hot.
2. Palestrina and Pärt (New Texas Music Works) Three singers of the phenomenal Conspirare Choir put voice to Arvo Pärt’s “And One of the Pharisees” with haunting effect in the ethereal Carillon.
3. The End of Wit (State Theater Company) Megan Cole’s defiant but cancer-doomed Dr. Vivian Bearing punctuated a striking production with a final, transcendent image of a body free and soaring in David Nancarrow’s heavenly light.
4. Gray Haddock as Septimus Hodge in Arcadia (Austin Playhouse) Comic timing, intelligence, a commanding presence, that voice: what a welcome return to the Austin stage by this fine actor.
5. The Production Work for The Deluge (Vortex Repertory Company) Ann Marie Gordon’s set and Jason Amato’s lighting transformed the Vortex into a raw, wet, and intensely moody world for Kirk Smith’s intimate, musical tale.
6. The Tap Duel in Jelly’s Last Jam (Zachary Scott Theatre Center) Ronn K. Smith and Bryan Pacheco, playing a mature Jelly Roll Morton and his younger self, respectively, performed a tap-dance duel that turned up the heat.
7. The Shakespeare Bit in The Tempest (State Theater Company) A standout moment in an excellent production: Corey Gagne’s drunken Stephano asking to wonderful comic effect, “Do you put tricks upon us?” of a giant likeness of William Shakespeare.
8. Volpone (The Bedlam Faction) This new collective’s smart, funny, and self-deprecating work in this Ben Jonson comedy turned the sublime — and the ridiculous — into the accessible and immediate — and ridiculous.
9. The Sword Fight at the Climax of King Lear (The Public Domain) Sometimes those climactic fights in Shakespearean dramas come up a bit, er, short, but this two-style (broadswords and rapiers) effort, choreographed by Travis Dean and Dan Bisbee, and fought by Scott Daigle and Greg Gondek, had brute force and panache. And, yes, I directed the play. But that had no detrimental effect on the fight. Really.
10. The Kafka Museum for The Metamorphosis (The Public Domain/ Refraction Arts Project) Created and curated by Katherine Catmull, Sam Webber, and friends, this multidisciplinary interactive exhibition offered insight into the (strange) life and (trying) times of Franz K., including items such as the Kafka Las Vegas lounge act (with canned laughter) and the sliced-Kafka, tortured artist “submit your most grisly death competition.” And, yes, that is the same Public Domain that I used to run — you want me to feed ya a bug?
Honorable Mention
Karen Kuykendall’s Tomato Scene in Big Love (Rude Mechanicals)This article appears in 2001.