Skip to main content
 

Indy Week has recognized many in our performance studies program including Professor Tony Perucci, Artist in Residence Joseph Megel & graduate student Kashif Powell!

 

 

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/the-year-in-triangle-theater-2012/Content?oid=3220356

The Year in Triangle Theater 2012

Perseverance, innovation and excellence, from companies new and old

Call 2012 the year it got real for regional theater. Without warning, long-established companies including Raleigh Ensemble Players and Ghost and Spice went dark in the summer and fall. Suddenly, the status was no longer quo, as members of a generation of stage artists that hadn’t been taught basic survival skills in economics, marketing and company management stopped surviving. That development remains an important wake-up call that challenges artists and groups to closely re-examine—or in some cases, invent—business plans that support their work on an ongoing basis.

But even against that ominous backdrop, we saw audacity and innovations this year. Companies politically mobilized their audiences in April and May, packing area theaters prior to a vote on an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriages. In midsummer, playwright Monica Byrne convinced the playwriting website Howlround.com to devote an entire week to this region, exploring the factors that have made it receptive to new works. Her work provoked some tempers, but it also raised the visibility of artists such as Mike Wiley and Chaunesti Webb in a national forum. Then the Ladies of Triangle Theater closed the week with a webcast video panel on women in local theater. This was the year that companies found new channels and methods to promote their work, and involved creative communities that were previously untapped. Audiences grew and work improved as a result.

Enough said—at least for now. Let’s open some presents! —Byron Woods


SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN THE HUMANITIES

• 8, The Play, Raleigh Ensemble Players (REP), PlayMakers Rep (PRC), Raleigh Little Theatre (RLT)

Acts of Witness: Blood Knot & Poetic Portraits of a Revolution, StreetSigns Center (SSC)

• Let Them Be Heard, Bare Theatre (BARE)

Just how far do you have to go for a special achievement in the humanities? The Poetic Portraits of a Revolution cast went to Egypt and Tunisia during 2011’s Arab Spring. The Bare Theatre contingent delved into documented local slave narratives before they went to Stagville Plantation to haunt the barns, the slave quarters and audiences there. Free public readings of a controversial play named 8 took audiences to a California courtroom for a judicial fight over marriage equality—two weeks before a divided North Carolina electorate voted on a state ban against gay marriage.

In pairing Athol Fugard’s South African drama with contemporary eyewitness testimony from the Middle East, Acts of Witness “united the canonical with the trailblazing, forcing fresh awareness of the timeless struggle of freedom against coercive power,” noted critic Kate Dobbs Ariail.


SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN ENSEMBLE

• The Brothers Size, Manbites Dog Theater (MBD): Kashif Powell, J. Alphonse Nicholson, Thaddaeus Edwards

• I Love My Hair When It’s Good: And Then Again When It Looks Defiant and Impressive, Forty/AM (40AM): Aurelia Belfield, Lakeisha Coffey, Hazel Edmond, Sherida McMullan, Yolanda Rabun

• Let Them Be Heard, BARE: Barbette Hunter, Kashif Powell, Phillip B. Smith, Kyma Lassiter, Warren Keyes, Jeremy Morris, Justin Smith

• What Every Girl Should Know, Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern (LGP): Marie Garlock, Carolyn McDaniel, Alice Rose Turner, Skylar Gudasz

In another one of our hardest awards to earn, all performers on stage must be at their top of their game. Anything less than excellence—in any role on stage—disqualifies the production.


BOLDEST UNDERTAKINGS

• Richie, LGP

• 8, The Play, REP

• New Music: August Snow, Night Dance, Better Days, Triad Stage (TRIAD)

Politheatrics 2012, Burning Coal Theatre (BC)

Critics suggested a new category for this year’s deliberations, one that honors only the most audacious initiatives of the year. Instead of waiting for club-going audiences to come to a performance of Richie, Little Green Pig took the show to them, staging scenes in parking lots, barrooms and sidewalks across a stretch of downtown Durham clubland. In Raleigh Ensemble Players’ last production, Jesse Gephart enlisted all-star help from a host of regional companies for 8. Burning Coal established a new regional festival devoted to devised theater that produced funny and thought-provoking work. And Triad Stage produced a trilogy of full-length Reynolds Price plays. Without cuts. In the same month.

That’s bold.


BEST ORIGINAL SCRIPTS AND ADAPTATIONS

Monica Byrne, What Every Girl Should Know, LGP

Ian Finley, Jude the Obscure, BC

force/collision, Shape, Politheatrics 2012, BC

Neutral Ground Ensemble, Children in the Dark, Politheatrics 2012, BC

Tony Perucci, Donald, LGP

Sam Peterson, From F to M to Octopus, Solo Takes On Festival, UNC Communication Studies (UCS)

Kashif Powell, Sketches of a Man, Solo Takes On Festival, UCS

Peter Snoad, Perfect, 10 by 10 Festival, ArtsCenter Stage (ACS)

Chaunesti Webb, I Love My Hair When It’s Good: And Then Again When It Looks Defiant and Impressive, 40AM

Anita Shontel Woodley, The Men in Me

Old theater hands know: If getting a new play produced is difficult, finding a subsequent, second production is often tougher. But while Anita Woodley toured her solo shows across country, Monica Byrne’s lyrical, harrowing dream about the secret lives of institutionalized girls received a staged reading in Portland after its premiere here, and Chaunesti Webb’s warm coming-of-age memoir was welcomed at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo. UNC’s Communication Studies gave thoughtful and talented writers center stage, and Burning Coal helped us import significant new works, including New Orleans’ wildly imaginative Neutral Ground Ensemble and a lyrical, disturbing meditation on the history of racial entertainment from DC’s force/collision.


BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC

Mark Lewis, The Making of a King: Henry IV & Henry V, PRC

Adam Lindquist, Will Ridenour, Kaitlin Houlditch-Fair & Elysse Thebner, Secrets I Never Told My Mother, Leah Wilks Dance/HaaStudios

The Paperhand Band, City of Frogs & The Longest Night, Paperhand Puppet Intervention (PPI)

Teli S. Shabu, The Brothers Size, MBD

Sarah Kirkland Snider, Penelope, PRC2

Bevel Summers, Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc, Urban Garden, Politheatrics 2012

Shabu’s percussive pulsework underscored the drama of The Brothers Size, and McLaughlin gave Snider’s score full voice in the PRC2 premiere. Lewis excavated soundscapes for both Henries at PRC, and Bevel Summers provided a pointed alt.folk counterpoint to Mark Twain’s take on Joan of Arc. And somehow Adam Lindquist sewed the contributions of four composers into a seamless, Secret mental landscape.


BEST DESIGN

• Donald, LGP: Jay O’Berski, set; Alex Maness, video; Rick Young, lighting; Quran Karriem, sound; Dana Marks, costumes

• Imaginary Invalid, PRC: Rachel Hauck, set; Sonya Berlovitz, costumes; Marcus Dilliard, Jesse Cogswell, lights; Robert Dagit, sound

The Making of a King: Henry IV & Henry V, PRC: Jan Chambers, set; Jennifer Tipton, lights; Jennifer Caprio, costumes; Ryan Gastelum, sound; McKay Coble, costumes

• New Music, TRIAD: Howard Jones, set; John Wolf, lights; Bill Brewer, costumes; Patrick Calhoun, sound

• The Paper Hat Game: Torry Bend, Sarah Krainin, Tarish Pipkins, Don Tucker, puppet designs; Raquel Salvatella de Prada, video; Jeanette Yew, Rebecca Buck, lights; Colbert Davis, sound

• Ragtime, Duke Theater Studies (DTS): Torry Bend, set; Derrick Ivey, costumes; Chuck Catotti, lighting; Bart Matthews, sound

• Secrets I Never Told My Mother, Leah Wilks/HaasStudios: Nicole Bauguss, set; Jon Haas, video; Alex Maness, lights; Amelia V.B. Shull, costumes; Adam Lindquist, sound

• Titus Andronicus, Delta Boys (DB): Carolyn McDaniel, set; Lucius Robinson, lights; Chelsea Kurtzman, costumes

With resources ranging from five-figure budgets to little more than cardboard, papier-mâché and wire, the region’s designers gave compelling forms to potent political metaphors, theatrical flights of fancy, scenes from other times and vivid psychological landscapes. This overall award recognizes sustained excellence in multiple areas of design.


BEST SET DESIGN

Chris Bernier, August: Osage County, Theatre Raleigh/Hot Summer Nights (TR/HSN)

Dorrie Casey, Vita and Virginia, Going Through a Stage (GTS)

Jan Chambers, Red, PRC

McKay Coble, Noises Off, PRC

Mimi Lien, Penelope, PRC 2

Thomas Mauney, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, RLT

Jayme Mellema, The Sunshine Boys & The Arabian Nights, NCSU University Theatre (NCSU)

G. Warren Stiles, Jude the Obscure, BC


BEST LIGHTING DESIGN

Matthew Adelson, Shining City, BC

Hillary Rosen, In On It, MBD


BEST SOUND DESIGN

Todd Houseknecht, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Actors Comedy Lab (ACL), RLT

Quran Karriem, In On It, MBD

Michael Keck, The Brothers Size, MBD

Bob Kulow, How To Succeed In Business (Without Really Trying), Cary Players (CP)

Chip Rodgers, Hungry, Stillwater Theatre (ST)

We want to hear more from Rodgers and Karriem, who engineered striking soundscapes. Houseknecht kept a bubbly, urbane vibe for Sarah Ruhl, and Kulow made a small band sound like a million in Cary’s H2$.


BEST COSTUME/HAIR DESIGN

Dorrie Casey, Vita and Virginia, GTS

Jordan Jaked, Rebecca Larkin, A Streetcar Named Desire, Theater of the American South (TAS)

Jenny Mitchell, The Rocky Horror Show, RLT

Laura Parker, The Arabian Nights, NCSU

Em Rossi, Laura Parker, Maggie Briggs, John McIlwee (costumes); Nhi Vu, Shelby Carson, Jasmine Morere (makeup); Yamila Monge (hair), Alice in Wonderland, NCSU

David Serxner, How to Succeed in Business (Without Really Trying), CP

Kala Wolfe, Cady Childs, Andrea Iacobucci, Buffy Maske, River Takada-Capel, Belinda Blakley, Katharine Whalen (costumes); Emma Frink, William McBroom (hair), Richie, LGP

Parker took audiences to Arabia before joining a brace of talented colleagues on a psychedelic romp through Wonderland. Serxner’s textile-based jokes were more amusing than some of the scripted ones in H2$. In the company of Kala Wolfe (who convened a clique of the region’s hottest new fashion designers), we thought we were in Cannes for Richie. And the flashbacks still haven’t faded from that ludicrous last-act fantasia Mitchell dreamed up in Rocky Horror.


BEST VIDEO DESIGN

Shannon Clark, Hungry, ST

Rod Rich, John Maruca, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, RLT

Meredith Sause, A Taste of Honey, Ghost and Spice (G&S)

Francesca Talenti, Penelope, PRC2

For a tale of a high-school bulemic, Clark placed live video cameras in windowpanes, lockers—and in a toilet on stage. Jagged, prerecorded montages showed the memories of the high-school heroine in Honey, and Talenti’s atmospheric work complemented Penelope.


BEST OTHER DESIGN

Tori Ralston, Em Rossi, Laura Parker (puppets), Alice in Wonderland, NCSU

A (cute-as-a-) Dormouse, fatuous Humpty Dumpty, jazzy Cheshire Cat—and a fearsome Jabberwock—were just some of the creatures Tori Ralston whipped up with design colleagues at N.C. State.


BEST MUSIC DIRECTION

Julie Bradley, Dames at Sea, TR/HSN

Anthony Kelley, Ragtime, DTS

Sue Klausmeyer, All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914, ACS

Scott McKenzie, The Rocky Horror Show, RLT

Matthew Smedal, Catch Me If You Can, NC Theatre/Broadway Series South (NCT/BSS)

Nancy Whelan, Next to Normal, Theater in the Park (TIP)

Jay Wright, Avenue Q, TR/HSN; Cabaret, Peace University (PEACE)

Bradley sent those Broadway crooner send-ups high in Dames, and Kelley marshaled a small army to make Ragtime dance at Duke. McKenzie rocked Rocky, and Smedal made Catch Me a jumping jive revival. Whelan brought soul to the meticulous score in Normal, and Wright commuted with convincing takes at Peace and Theatre Raleigh.


BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCES

John Allore, As You Like It , BC

Dee Dee Batteast, Michael Winter, The Making of a King: Henry V, PRC

Lisa Brescia, August: Osage County, TR/HSN

Kit FitzSimons, The Baltimore Waltz, DD

Brandon Garegnani, Noises Off; It’s a Wonderful Life, PRC

Tony Hefner, Del Flack, The 39 Steps, RLT

Jessica Ann Heironimus, Christine Rogers, Creeds, Playground

Katja Hill, Henceforward… (DD); It’s a Wonderful Life, PRC

Tamara Kissane, Jane Holding, Flynt Burton, Amanda Hahn, Hope Hynes Love, Richie, LGP

Nan Mulleneaux, PJ Maske, Titus Andronicus, Delta Boys

Lilly Nelson, Mike Raab, Boeing-Boeing, TR/HSN

Gayton Scott, Bill Raulerson, New Music: August Snow, Night Dance, Better Days, TRIAD

Philip B. Smith, Radio Golf, DD

Sara Spadacene, Dames at Sea, TR/HSN


BEST LEAD PERFORMANCES

Rebecca Bossen, As You Like It, BC

Ray Dooley, An Iliad, PRC2

Matthew Hager, Gregor McElvogue, In On It, MBD

Derrick Ivey, Cabaret, PEACE

Dorothy Lyman, August: Osage County, TR/HSN

Tom Marriott, Titus Andronicus, DB

Christine Morris, Mark Mozingo, Ginny Myers Lee, New Music: August Snow, Night Dance, Better Days, TRIAD

J. Alphonse Nicholson, Lucius Robinson, Acts of Witness: Blood Knot, SSC

Jay O’Berski, Donald, LGP

Kashif Powell, Sketches of a Man, UCS

Randolph Curtis Rand, Man of La Mancha, BC

Mike Wiley, Nilan Johnson, Radio Golf, Deep Dish Theatre (DD)

Michael Winters, The Making of a King: Henry IV, PRC

The bench of top-flight regional talent grows deeper. Given the stage to himself, Dooley explored the world of an ancient, doomed storyteller, and Marriott’s resonant career-best performance as Titus suggested the astute lyricism of Yo-Yo Ma. Lyman’s Violet proved a terrible Texas twister to all who tangled with her, after Hager and McElvogue explored quieter passages in their tragic duet. Morris, Mozingo and Lee scaled two heartbreaking generations of an eastern N.C. family in New Music. O’Berski channeled Rumsfeld and Powell did the same for Ellison’s Invisible Man in two breathtaking performances.


BEST DIRECTION

Tea Alagić, Man of La Mancha, BC

Vivienne Benesch, Red, PRC

G. Todd Buker, Let Them Be Heard, Bare

Kathryn Hunter-Williams, Radio Golf, DD

Preston Lane, New Music: August Snow, Night Dance, Better Days, TRIAD

Carolyn McDaniel, Titus Andronicus, LGP

Joseph Megel, The Brothers Size, Acts of Witness: Blood Knot, MBD

Jay O’Berski, Richie, LGP

Tony Perucci, Donald, LGP

Lucius Robinson, What Every Girl Should Know, LGP

Dana Marks, In On It, MBD

Chaunesti Webb, I Love My Hair When It’s Good: And Then Again When It Looks Defiant and Impressive, 40AM

Stage veterans know: The best productions are vision quests, pilgrimages through process and weeks of hard work to arrive at a shared understanding, a shared vision of a mutually created world. These are the ones who took us, as audiences as well as artists, with them on their journeys this year.


BEST PRODUCTIONS

• Acts of Witness: Blood Knot, SSC

• The Brothers Size, MBD

• Donald, LGP

• I Love My Hair When It’s Good: And Then Again When It Looks Defiant and Impressive, 40AM

• Let Them Be Heard, BARE

• New Music: August Snow, Night Dance, Better Days, TRIAD

• The Paper Hat Game

• Penelope, PRC2

• Radio Golf, DD

• Red, PRC

• Richie, LGP

• What Every Girl Should Know, LGP

Our community put its best efforts into new works by local playwrights, historic scripts from under-represented masters, and classics seen through modern eyes. Through these productions the recent and ancient past spoke again, directly, to a number of our culture’s most pressing dilemmas. New groups and old alike achieved excellence, in conventional and unconventional venues. Even though some groups left early, the community persevered, innovated—and continued.

Comments are closed.