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August 2, 2006
THE COMPLETE WOMEN OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. ABRIDGED.
Theatre Collide presents American premiere of one-woman show
Houston, TX—If you attend the Houston Shakespeare Festival every year for ten years, you have a good chance of seeing the Bard’s greatest female characters—Beatrice, Kate, Cleopatra, Ophelia, Gertrude, and more. If you only have 45 minutes, see them in Theatre Collide’s American premiere of Shakespeare’s Women: Gnawing at My Soul. Lyndsay Sweeney, whose innovative adaptation was featured as the finale of the 2006 Australia New Zealand Shakespeare Conference, performs them all. Shakespeare’s Women: Gnawing at My Soul plays August 18-20 at Main Street Theater. For reservations, call Theatre Collide at 713.528.5108, or log on to www.theatre-collide.com for more info.
In Shakespeare’s Women, Sweeney refracts Shakespeare’s words through the lens of one (non-Shakespearean) character, a modern bag lady who has lost the ability to speak for herself. Instead, she uses the words of women from Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado about Nothing, and others. “Ms. Sweeney has cobbled together some of the most insightful text spoken by Shakespeare’s women, and created a portrayal of deep reflection upon past glories and present sorrows, a woman that is both herself and every woman,” commented Steven Fenley, Managing Director of Texas Repertory Theatre, who provided directorial assistance on the project. “I think audiences will be astonished at how revealing Shakespeare's female characters are of the struggle of a homeless, friendless mother and wife.”
A Houstonian from the age of five, Lyndsay Sweeney received her M.F.A. from Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, where she also appeared with the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble and in the Brisbane Festival with London’s Improbable Theatre. She is a company member of Theatre Collide and has appeared locally in productions at the Texas Shakespeare Festival, Texas Repertory Theatre, Main Street Youth Theater, Theatre Collide, Unhinged Productions and Express Children’s Theatre. Shakespeare’s Women was developed under the tutelage of Mark Radvan, Artistic Director of Australia’s Out of the Box Festival.
Theatre Collide focuses on new, unknown, and neglected works, using eclectic approaches and found spaces. We produce work that directly engages current events and challenges audiences to be aware of their world. With an emphasis on collaboration across art forms, Collide combines styles, cultures and images in an attempt to create new and startling theatre.
March 2, 2006
THEATRE COLLIDE GOES FOR BAROQUE WITH FIRST FORAY INTO OPERA
Miniature production of Dido and Aeneas drops anchor at Allen’s Landing
Houston, TX—In Henry Purcell’s Baroque opera Dido and Aeneas, Aeneas begins an affair with Dido, queen of Carthage, as he is fleeing the fall of one great city (Troy) and is on his way to the founding of another (Rome). Now Theatre Collide is giving this compact opera a new staging (in miniature!) at Allen’s Landing, where yet another great city (Houston) had its beginnings. Dido and Aeneas, called “a Baroque jewel of an opera” by Theatrescene.net, features “all the tragedy and passion of a full length performance condensed into only one hour” (Britain’s The Scene). Arriving in Houston from Philadelphia and Princeton, Clara Rottsolk and Paul M. Speiser sing the title roles. Dido and Aeneas plays March 16-26, 2006, at the Sunset Coffee Building, 1019 Commerce Street at Main Street in downtown Houston, and is produced in cooperation with the Buffalo Bayou Partnership.
Avant-garde puppetry artist Yelena Zhelezov directs, and has conceptualized the piece as an Art Deco-inspired “cabinet of curiosities.” She recently completed the 2005-2006 DiverseWorks Houston Performing Artists Residency, and the resulting piece Touching Ed Sullivan: A Televisceral Puppet Show, was called “compelling” by the Houston Press. “Like the opera, the toy theatre style we’re using in this piece has British roots,” commented Zhelezov. “Dido and Aeneas is a chamber opera, not an epic, and taking this approach lets the action unfold on an intimate scale within a series of chambers.” Purcell’s 1689 work, originally written for pupils at a London girls’ school, draws its plot from an episode in Virgil’s Aeneid. The composer’s addition is a sorceress who curses the relationship between the lovers, driving Dido to take her own life even as Aeneas fulfills his destiny as the founder of a great empire.
Two guest performers join Collide for this production. Soprano Clara Rottsolk’s résumé includes several Baroque ensembles, including Brandywine Baroque, Piffaro, Fuma Sacra, Tempesta di Mare, Westminster Kantorei,, and the Rice Collegium. Awarded prizes for musical excellence by several NATS divisions, she was a semi-finalist this year for the Marian Anderson Prize for Emerging Artists, and is a grant recipient of the New Jersey Association for Advancement in the Arts. She attended Rice University and Westminster Choir College. Baritone Paul M. Speiser has appeared with the Milwaukee Symphony, the Lincoln Center Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, and the International Center for Choral Music. Currently a graduate student at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J., Speiser also attended the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music.
Theatre Collide focuses on new, unknown, and neglected works, using eclectic approaches and found spaces. We produce work that directly engages current events and challenges audiences to be aware of their world. With an emphasis on collaboration across art forms, Collide combines styles, cultures and images in an attempt to create new and startling theatre.
April 11, 2005
COLLIDE CELEBRATES FIRST BIRTHDAY WITH RARE PRODUCTION OF LIFE IS A DREAM
17th-century Spanish gem a 'distant mirror' of modern times
Houston, Texas--Rounding out its "Red Season," Theatre Collide presents Life is a Dream, a 17th-century Spanish verse drama by the "Shakespeare of Spain," Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Of this little-known gem, in a recent translation by John Clifford, one CurtainUp review raved, "one simply cannot get enough of this masterwork." An arresting mix of fable, tragedy and comedy, Life is a Dream is set in a mythical Polish kingdom on the verge of civil war. Directed by Collide Artistic Director Troy Scheid, the piece will play at Winter Street Studios, 2101 Winter Street off Sawyer, from April 21-May 8. Tickets are $5 opening weekend; otherwise they are $10 general admission and $5 for students. A speical pay-what-you-can performance will be held on Monday, May 2, at 8 p.m.
"Life is a Dream contains all the elements of Collide's Red Season--love, murder, revenge, and war--in a n enchanting, surprisingly humorous mixture," commented Scheid. "Audiences expect Collide shows to give insight into our life today and our current political circumstances from the vantage point of 'a distant mirror'--a work from long ago in which we can see our own reflection." Written when Spain was still fascinated by the infamous Inquisition, in which non-Catholics and political undesirables faced torture and execution for beliefs that contradicted the state or its religion, the play dares to question whether reality might be a mere flight of imagination that can turn to ashes at any moment. The themes of this complex play, questioning the place of right and responsibility in a meaningless universe, inspired new work well into the 20th century, including Luigi Pirandello's existentialist Enrico IV.
Imprisoned and abused for crimes he has not yet committed, Poland's crown prince Segismundo has grown to manhood a violent beast, denied human contact. His father, King Basilio, thinks Segismundo might yet be able to overcome what the stars have foretold. When, as an experiment, the king attempts to let his son rule, the results are disaster and death. Returned again to prison and to misery, Segismundo is told the whole blissful experience was but a dream. But the machinations of the other characters do not let him stay in prison long: a cast-off mistress who returns as a warrior, determined to take revenge on the man who ruined her; cousins ready to go to war over the crown despite mutual lust; and a clown who wants nothing more than to make it through the play alive, preferably after a good night's sleep on a full belly. When Segismundo does reclaim his throne for a second time, the ensuing war makes all the king's dire predictions come
For this production, deesigner Art Ornelas transforms a starkly beautiful warehouse space on the ground floor of Winter Street Studios into the wastelands, prisons and palaces of the play's setting. Originally constructed as a furniture warehouse, the Winter Street building was first converted to artist studios by owner Harvey Seigel over three decades, beginning in the 1970s. In 2001 it was purchased by Silver Eagle Distributors and destined, like so much of Houston's historical architecture, to be razed for a parking lot. Real estate developer Jon Deal of the Deal Company now owns the building, and after a recent renovation, is putting it to use once again as studios for artists.
January 14, 2005
COLLIDE'S FAUSTFEST CONJURES BANQUET OF WORLD PREMIERES FROM HOUSTON WRITERS IN COLLABORATION WITH HOUSTON FOUNDRY
Proceeds from Valentine's Day performance will benefit Theatreport.com
Houston, Texas--Collide's groundbreaking festival of new work, FaustFest, is an event bursting with plays and performance pieces never before seen, and it is a monumental undertaking for a new theatre. FaustFest is a collection of six site-specific performances, all by writers who are Houston natives or Houston residents, which play in galleries, alleys, and studios in the Houston Foundry, 1712 Burnett, from February 11-27, 2005. All performances are at 8:00 p.m., and audience members are invited to explore the art galleries at the Houston Foundry beginning at 7:00 p.m. before each performance.
"FaustFest is a very ambitious project," commented Collide's artistic director Troy Scheid, who will make her Collide performing debut in the production. "One of the things Collide's mission insists on is developing new work, and for us to be able to showcase so many new pieces in our first season is beyond what I had hoped for. It's like a banquet--all these tantalizing opportunities of art and performance will be spread out before the audience, but they can't possibly take it all in at once." Most plays are performed each evening, but Scheid encourages audeences to return at least once to be able to see everything, including the work of the Houston Foundry's resident visual artists.
All based on the idea behind Goethe's epic Faust--losing your soul, or trading it for earthly advantage--the six plays of FaustFest reexamine the soul in a modern light. The plays focus on the role of human choice in the shaping of the soul; choices can be made in situations extreme (war and famine) or mundane (marriage and divorce). The FaustFest plays include:
One Two (World Premiere), written and performed by Troy Scheid
A writer revisits the apartment she abandoned in this one-woman memory play, unleashing living echoes of the choices she made as a journalist during World War II.
A Work in Granite, by Jere Pfister (Professional Premiere), directed by Troy Scheid
Compromise and sacrifice have shaped Sugar's life--she is the lady of the house, a wife to her husband, and a mother to her daughter. But who is she for herself? In this Southern Gothic piece, a woman looks back over her life and turns to stone.
Shatterings, by David Myers (World Premiere), directed by Stephanie Wittels
Katherine is twelve years old when the breakup of her parents' marriage causes her to split in two.
The Edge of Space!! Living Rooms and the Perils of Ambition, written and performed by Jenny Campbell and Yelena Zhelezov
A tabletop puppet piece examines the relationship of humans, hubris, and the stars.
Baba Dietrich (House on Chicken Legs), written and performed by Jenny Campbell and Yelena Zhelezov
This unsettling piece of object theatre is an adaptation of the legend of the "house on chicken feet" in which a sinister house slowly consumes everything around it.
A Bird and a Fish Can Marry...But Where Will They Build Their Nest? by Stephanie Wittels (World Premiere Reading), directed by Larry Smiglewski
The reading of this new work, about a return home after the end of the world, plays Feb. 11-13 only.
Not only does Collide's festival focus on Houston writers, all the proceeds from the pay-what-you-can performance on Monday, February 14, will benefit Houston's unique Theatreport.com. Theatreport is an online theatre forum and a beloved haunt of many local artists, as well as a valuable resource for up-and-coming performing groups. "Collide has benefited immensely from the opportunities Theatreport offers," said Scheid. "It gives theatres adn theatre artists all over town free exposure and free education, as it's a place for peers to examine and discuss theatre theory, local productions, and the state of American theatre today."
November 26, 2004
RIVETING "BASH" BY NEIL LABUTE CONTINUES COLLIDE'S RED SEASON
A haunting series of soliloquies sure to add a chill to your winter
Continuing its "Red Season" with Neil LaBute's unsettling work Bash: Latterday Plays, Theatre Collide explores the everyday appearance of evil. Called "darkly engrossing" and "transfixing" by the New York Times, Bash is a combination of three lyrical stories which go violently awry, each swith the inexorability and fascination of a natural catastrophe. This is a world in which the best among us--the successful, the saintly, the beautiful, and the young--take dagger in hand to do bad things, and in which a search for answers yields nothing. This world, after all, is ours. Directed by Randy Symank, Bash plays December 3-19 at the Houston School for Film and Theatre.
In these portraits of the lives of a few people, LaBute manages to paint a picture of an epidemic of modern society--an epidemic he calles "adakia," after the Greek word for a world out of balance. In a triptych of soliloquies, Bash: Latterday Plays visits the lives of four ordinary people who, through extraordinary circumstances, have experienced a fall from grace comparable to those played out in Greek tragedy. Theres' the hard-edged businessman who offers up his daughter to his career; the sunny, all-American young couple who commit a shocking, spontaneous act of violence; and the eerily composed young lady whose love for her son is sacrificed to an even greater passion. LaBute is the author of such plays as In the Company of Men and The Shape of Things, which also do not shrink from exploring the darkest drives within us.
Collide's mission is to perform new, unknow, and neglected works, using eclectic approaches and founds paces. A key part of the mission is providing continuing education activities to Houston artists, which the theatre accomplishes through its free Crash Courses in the summer and its ongoing meeting of writers' group Pack of Writers (POW!). Collide focuses on theatre productions that directly engage current events, and challenges audiences to be aware of their world. Collide combines styles, cultures and images to create new and startling theatre.
Collide is pleased to acknowledge the assistance fo the Houston School for Film and Theatre in this endeavor.
24 October 2004
DISSENT IS PATRIOTIC IN RARE PRODUCTION OF "DANTON'S DEATH"
New theatre group Collide tackles French Revolution play rife with gallows humor
Houston, TX—As the first performance of its "Red Season," new Houston theatre Collide tackles Danton’s Death, Georg B¸chner’s proto-existential drama that uses the backdrop of the French Revolution to confront issues of patriotism, terror, and justice. This challenging classic, in a new translation by Collide founding director Troy Scheid, has been conceived as an ensemble piece in which 11 actors play the 50-plus speaking roles of the original script. Collide’s production, also directed by Ms. Scheid, plays Nov. 5-21 at Helios, located at 411 Westheimer near Taft.
"Vice must be punished, and virtue must rule through terror." Robespierre, a man of unbending morality, coerces the once lofty ideals of the French Revolution into serving him—and keeping him in power. Those merely suspected of challenging his authority finds themselves facing a charge of high treason and certain death by guillotine. The latest great man to fall, Georges Danton, was once an ardent revolutionary; but he has grown weary of the endless parade of corpses from the Place de la RÈvolution and tries to forget himself in debauched escapades. His ensuing trial and execution, grounded as much on his moral as his political crimes, are a circus orchestrated by Robespierre’s henchmen; they cast a sickly light on the actions of people who claim their only motivation is patriotism. The Revolution is dead—long live the Revolution!
In 1835, when he penned Danton’s Death, Georg B¸chner was a 21-year-old political dissident in exile from his German province. Though his script was not produced until the 20th century (B¸chner died just two years after completing it), the influence of its style and subject matter was felt by modern writers like Samuel Beckett and Georg Kaiser. No production of this play has been seen in Houston since the Alley Theatre produced Robert Wilson’s version in 1993. "The play has a complex history," comments director Scheid. "But B¸chner’s writing at its best rivals Shakespeare, and, as Shakespeare often does, B¸chner seems to write with a clear grasp of our time as well as his own."
Collide’s mission is to perform new, unknown, and neglected works, using eclectic approaches and found spaces. A key part of the mission is providing continuing education activities to Houston artists, which the theatre accomplishes through its free Crash Courses in the summer and its ongoing meetings of writers’ group Pack of Writers (POW!). Collide focuses on theatre productions that directly engage current events, and challenges audiences to be aware of their world. Collide combines styles, cultures and images to create new and startling theatre.
1 June 2004
As far as we know, no Houston theatre has ever opened its doors to the theatre community with the intent of encouraging everyone to learn from one another. With its nine weeks of summer Crash Courses, free theatre workshops open to everyone, Collide is now doing exactly that. They are a chance to learn and to teach--the chance to take if theatre as art is your interest. (Oh...and did we mention they are FREE?)
These workshops are for actors, directors, designers, amateurs, tinkerers, professionals, and aficionados. So many classes for actors focus on "breaking in"--how to get commercials or write the perfect resume. Our workshops focus on how to live better as an artist; through them we'll get our feet wet in a number of disciplines, and hope to integrate new ideas into our rehearsals, warm-ups, and daily routines. Topics include movement, voice work, script analysis, dance, improv, props, and puppetry. The workshop leaders are established Houston artists: Brian Byrnes (fight director and movement expert), Jim Johnson (voice and dialect coach), Ann James (actor, director, teacher and founder of dAdA Productions), Trish Rigdon (director, designer, and head of the Rice Players), Rebecca French (dancer, choreographer, and founder of Freneticore Dance Company), Jodi Bobrovsky (designer and resident properties master at Stages Repertory Theatre), Yelena Zhelezov and Jenny Cambell (designers, artists, and company members of Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre), and Chip Aucoin of Vagabondage Improv Comedy Troupe. The full schedule is available at www.theatre-collide.com.
The Crash Courses will be held from 2-5 p.m. each Saturday from June 19-August 21. (There will be no class on July 3.) They will take place at City Dance Studio, 2423 Dunstan in the Rice Village. For more information, please contact info@theatre-collide.com. No reservations or registration necessary. And they're free, so why think twice?
28 April 2004
To get at treasure, it has always been necessary to slay the dragons that guard it. Obsessed with oil, a cowboy prospector persuades the president of a meaningless company to stop at nothing to obtain it--it will make them wealthy, and with it they'll make war. And only one minor obstacle keeps them from it--the city of Paris.
To seize the oil, they would destroy the last free people of the earth, a dwindling group of street performers and honest peddlers. These vagabonds turn for help to the Countess Aurelia, an elderly oddity who is, despite her quick mind, quite insane. The Madwoman of Chaillot, written by Jean Giraudoux in Nazi-occupied France, has been dramatically reconceived for our time.
The Madwoman of Chaillot is directed by Collide founding member Troy Scheid. Yelena Zhelezov, known for her work with Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre, is designing costumes and masks.
This is the first production from Collide, a new theatre troupe interested in questioning the constructs of conventional and experimental theatre and bent on entertaining and confounding audiences along the way. Founded by Scheid, Zhelezov, and Jenny Campbell, Collide's mission is to perform works that are new, unknown, or neglected, using eclectic approaches and found spaces; to produce theatre that directly addresses current events; and to challenge audiences to be aware of their world. Collide combines styles, eras, cultures, and images to create new and startling theatre.
The Madwoman of Chaillot by Jean Giarudoux, adapted by Maurice Valency. Performances are May 7, 9, 13-15, and 20-22, all at 8 p.m. $5 opening weekend, otherwise $5 for students and $10 general admission. All performances are at Commerce Street Artists' Warehouse, 2315 Commerce Street, Houston 77002.
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