For now, all productions are scheduled to take place at Atomic Elroy’s 50-seat performance venue, WATCH THIS SPACE, 218 W. Colorado.

Talk Radio
By Eric Bogosian
February 11-February 27

An intensely visceral work about Barry Champlain, a late night shock jock and the “nut jobs and psychos” who call in to his show. Champlain alternately seduces, berates and condemns them in an attempt to exorcise a self-hatred he won’t admit to.

Can’t wait to see who gets casted in this demanding, tour-de-force role.

Glengarry Glen Ross
by David Mamet
January 15, 2010-January 31, 2010

Mamet’s riveting ensemble piece about real estate agents willing to do anything to save their jobs, still timely 27 years after it was written. And yeah, they made a really good film out of it in 1992, but come on. The movie didn’t win any Pulitzer Prize.

keepingabreast
By Jackie Rosenfeld
October 7, 2010-October 23, 2010

What makes this 2006 play the edgiest of the three is that it tries to find a little humor in the very serious issue of breast cancer. When 28-year-old Mina is advised by her doctor to have a mastectomy, she interviews everyone she can find–including her friends, her parents, a stripper and a porn shop employee–to help her decide what to do.

Not only has this work never been performed in Colorado Springs, but it’s never been performed in Colorado period. SET’s Steve Emily hopes to bring Rosenfeld here for talkbacks with the audiences.

Post from: Colorado Springs Arts Blog

Rick Miller IS MacHomer (and, oh, 50 others)

“MACHOMER”

When: 7:30 p.m., Friday, Nov. 6; 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 7 through Sunday, Nov. 8

Where: Dusty Loo Bon Vivant Theatre, 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway

Tickets: $12.50-$35, 255-3232.

Grade: B+

And some people think Robin Williams needs medication…

Rick Miller brings “MacHomer”–his wildly acclaimed, one-man mashup of Shakespeare and the Simpsons–to the Bon Vivant this weekend. And before I get any further, I have to admit that I haven’t seen an episode of “The Simpsons” in my life (yeah, I know, I’ve missed one of the great sitcoms in TV history but, in my defense, I don’t watch much of the tube at all).

So I was expecting to miss a lot of the references. Fortunately, Miller does his best to bring non-Simpsonites like me into his world. During the entire 80 minutes of the show, animated clips play on a screen behind him, which serve to introduce each character as his or her voice is first heard. They also provide a constantly and humorously changing backdrop to the action.

The performance was certainly as frantic as advertised. Miller tears through over fifty voices, representing characters from the animated series (sadly, Bart himself plays only the briefest of roles), an assortment of Scots (among them Sean Connery, Shrek and the head of Mary, Queen of Scots) as well as other, unrelated Simpsons (you can probably guess who).

The story stays surprisingly close to the original play. The “MacHomer” web site claims that the work is 85% Shakespeare. Still, the gags are 85% Simpsons and if you’re not an avid follower of the show, you may wonder what everyone else is laughing at. Plus, the voices come so fast and furious it can be hard to keep up.

Still, with a show as full of gags as this one is, there are plenty to go around. And Miller delivers them all with the confidence of Bart and an energy level worthy of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.

Miller wound up the evening with a performance of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” as sung by “the twenty-five most annoying voices in music”. Sure, he’s does the easy ones like Bob Dylan and Aaron Neville. But he also throws in a ton of impersonations I’ve never heard anywhere else–including Elvis Costello, Leonard Cohen and Andrea Bocelli–and nails every one.

Miller explained to some of the fans after the show that he only performs “MacHomer” a couple months out of the year as it simply gets too exhausting. But it’s so successful that it pays for all the non-commercial stuff he does on tour, in New York and in his current hometown of Toronto–including, get this, a 9-hour monster of a play titled “Lipsynch”.

Yep, the guy definitely needs some kind of medication.

Post from: Colorado Springs Arts Blog

In the course of the blog, he mentions Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain as well as a surprisingly long list of one-man pieces at TheatreWorks. Of course, his commentary was triggered by  “MacHomer,” a touring production which was created and performed by Rick Miller. It runs through Sunday at TheatreWorks. Click here for a downloadable trailer for “MacHomer.”

“Some of the bravest and most peculiar theatre artists in the world these days belong to genre of the one person  show,” he starts. Check out the rest of Ross’ thoughts on the one-man circus that is the solo performance as well as his accessment of a solo piece of former Colorado Springs resident Thaddeus Phillips.

Post from: Colorado Springs Arts Blog

Post from: Colorado Springs Arts Blog

Bill Reed did a preview of a guy playing at the Studio Bee Showcase on Thursday, and his interview will dissuade you from ever considering a career in music.

Lauren Arnest (yes, wife of that guy who used to set next to me) wrote brief previews of a show at Smokebrush and a Chamber Orchestra concert.

Noel Black does our cover story, an overview of the Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival, which is more than stereotypical chick flicks.

R. Scott Rappold does enviable research for his story about the All Colorado Beer Festival.

Nathaniel Glen waxes poetic about La Casita.

And Brandon tells you why you should tolerate Jim Carrey this season.

Post from: Colorado Springs Arts Blog

A detail from Lance Green's "Out of Egypt"

“ENTITIES: REFLECTIONS OF A BYSTANDER PAINTER”

When: 5:17 p.m. to 12:17 a.m. Friday, Nov. 13

Where: Rubbish Gallery, 17 b Bijou St.

Admission: Free

Contact: 440-5638, 388-3623, rubbishgallery.com

You’ve probably seen Lance Green’s work around. A little painting at the BAC maybe or at a restaurant in town. The work, I think, is typically pretty interesting, a figure usually that vague and often menacing. The kind of thing you might glimpse in the background of a really cool ghost film.

Check it out at ”Entities: Reflections of a BystanderPainter” opens Friday at Rubbish Gallery. Musician Jeff Sampson will perform. Also this month at Rubbish:

• 7:30 - 10:30 p.m. Nov. 20 — Poetry and music by DragonsWing
• Dec. 5 — J9 Glass Presents MAGNIFY

Post from: Colorado Springs Arts Blog

“COLIN MOCHERIE & BRAD SHERWOOD: THE THIRD FAREWELL TOUR”

 What: Improv by two stars of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

When: 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: Pikes Peak Center for the Performing Arts, 190 S. Cascade Ave.

Tickets: $29.50-$44.50; 520-7469, 1-866-464-2626, ticketswest.com and TicketsWest outlets.

It’s painful to watch, really. Two men on a stage with more than 100 primed rodent traps. Did I mention they’re blindfolded, barefoot and wearing tuxedoes?

“Rat traps,” Brad Sherwood informs the audience. Then he removes a large zucchini from his pants and demonstrates how it neatly slices the vegetable in half.

The audience “ooohs” trepidatiously. Sherwood nods, completely deadpan.

Sherwood and Colin Mochrie (”From ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’” their touring posters say) call it the mousetrap game, and they’ll be doing a version of it  when they play the Pikes Peak Center on Sunday. 

“Of our games, it’s probably the least improv game, Sherwood says from his home in Los Angeles. He and Mochrie reserve touring for the weekends. They’ve been performing together for about 19 years now, six as a touring team. “The audience just loves it. They love seeing the pain. There’s an innate cruelty to comedy, from the early days of slapstick, and that’s where this comes from.”

Like all improv, they work with no script, only a set list of games and audience suggestions.

“The difference between improv and stand-up, for the audience, is they are there for the moment of creation,” he says. “They weren’t there for the stand-up comedian, when he wrote his act and took it to clubs and perfected it word by word, beat by beat. We’re making them laugh and doing a magic act at the same time.”

Question: You’ve been working together for a long time. Tell me how touring with Colin came about.

Answer: We both came from a live comedy background - Second City, Theatresports and lots of live improv. During the show, we’d gone out with some of the cast member done big cast show. We wanted to go out more. When you’re onstage with 10 people, you sort of end up sitting around waiting until it’s your turn.

Q: What’s it like to work with Colin at this point? Easy?

A: As much as I like to make fun of Colin, we travel well together and I think our styles are very complimentary. It’s very lucky that we work well together. Quite honestly, we have not had an argument in the last six years. He’s completely low maintenance and I’m high functioning: I handle all the hassles while we’re on the road, and he kind of rolls with it.

Q: About performing without a script: Do you feel fearless at this point, or were you always that way?

A: I think we’ve always felt fearless. It’s a giggle to go out there and you don’t know what to do. It’s the action sport of performing to only go out there with what games you’re going to play but no idea what the content is going to be.

Q: Improv always seems like a small-venue thing to me, but you’ve played some pretty big halls. Does it work differently there?

A: I think every audience is a big audience. Seriously. In a room with 50 people and only 50 seats, it feels like the same energy as 300 in 300 seats - or 1,000. There’s something about a packed room. You work off it, and the audience feeds off your own excitement.

And we bring people out of the audience for most of the games, so there’s usually a live human being on stage trying to mess with us for most of the show.

Q: Are there any new situations for you anymore?

A: No, that’s the thing. We’re always changing the way we ask for things. We’re getting suggestions in different ways. We constantly want to push ourself as improv purists to be out of the rut and do it differently.

That’s the thing with playing in a band or being in a play or doing stand-up. They do the exact same act every single night. We may be playing the same games, but the context and the joke is never done the same way twice.

Q: So I have to ask the flip side of that question: Are there places that you have to stop yourself from going?

A: I don’t think you ever stop yourself from going somewhere. You make a mental note that you’re on a familiar path and you veer off and drive through the woods. We’re always in control - in an out-of-control way. We control the destiny of where the scene is going. If it feels too familiar, we change it up.

That’s the coolest part of our job. It doesn’t get mundane. We can’t rest on our laurels and say ‘oh, it’s another show.’ We’re always in survival mode when we’re on stage.

Q: “Whose Line” made improv a pretty mainstream notion. Does that make it easier or harder for you?

A: I think it makes it easier on the level that people tend to have a greater awareness of it and people come to the show. A crowd makes it easier. Although there are people who think we must be taking a short cut and there are tricks that we have. People are always looking for the trap door. In some ways, that’s a great compliment. On the other hand, they think we’re liars. We’re either frauds or big geniuses.

Q: What are some of strangest things that audience members has thrown at you.

A: It’s hard to remember anything terribly strange. Technically, we’re looking the strange; we’re looking for the bizarre; we’re wanting to hear the thing that haven’t heard before. We’re constantly trying to think of ways to solicit things we have never heard of before. Not a joke, but, say, an occupation we’ve never heard of.

Really, everything we do is strange to a certain extent. In improv you’re literally launching yourself into the unknown. Every moment is about the discovery of what do I do with this and what’s about to happen?

Q: Any good stories about times it just didn’t work?

A: No, we’re pretty lucky. We’ve done a few corporate gigs, playing some banquet room on a riser. That’s the journeyman path. We’re like the comedy “MacGyver:” We take what they give us or don’t give us. 

-

Contact the writer at 476-1602.

Post from: Colorado Springs Arts Blog

“THE WEDDING SINGER”

When: 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 4

Where: Pikes Peak Center, 190 S. Cascade Ave.

Tickets: $30-$50, 520-7469, 1-866-464-2626, ticketswest.com and TicketsWest outlets.

Grade: C+

Screen-to-stage adaptations are all the rage on Broadway these days. It takes a lot of money to mount a production and producers, of course, want to limit their risk by offering the theatergoing public stories they’re already familiar with.

Still, the translation of the 1998 Adam Sandler vehicle “The Wedding Singer” to a Broadway musical remains a bit of a head scratcher. It wasn’t a hugely successful film. And it already had plenty of music in its bouncy, best of the 80’s soundtrack. Scrap that and you’ve cut much of the heart out of the film.

But when I caught the national tour last night at the Pikes Peak Center, I was happy to find that the pop score composed by Matthew Sklar with lyrics by Chad Beguelin was actually quite strong. Amy Marie McCleary’s choreography may have been uncreative and lazy, but the songs themselves were a lot of fun and for the most part tuneful. I especially enjoyed the charming “Come Out of the Dumpster” and the hard-driving ode to the decade’s materialistic excesses, “All About the Green” (one of the only two songs carried over from the film was the amusingly bipolar Sandler composition, “Somebody Kill Me Please”).

Unfortunately, the story didn’t fare as well. In stripping down the plot to make room for the songs, Beguelin and Tim Herlihy made the characters even more two-dimensional than they are in the movie. There’s the gay best friend. The skanky ex-girlfriend. The foul-mouthed grandma. And, of course, the money-grubbing jerk of a fiance. You could almost see the writers checking off their list of Obligatory Romantic Comedy Characters.

And the gags, for the most part, lacked any wit or originality. For example, when Julia’s mother tries to convince her daughter that the pompous ass she’s about to marry is Mr. Right, she runs through that well-worn litany of praise: “He’s rich. He’s handsome. He’s charming. And he’s rich!”.

Instead, what laughs there are come from the eye-winking references to the 80’s, including the usual jokes about big hair and even bigger cell phones. One of the few truly funny bits–and completely new to the musical–is a scene at a Las Vegas wedding chapel, where the witnesses include an assortment of 80’s-era celebrity impersonators, including a faux-Tina Turner, Mr. T and Imelda Marcos, all of which was presided over by a minister who bore a striking resemblance to the Great Communicator (or Teflon President, take your pick) himself.

The two leads have plenty of chemistry, which is a good thing for them as J. Michael Zygo and Jillian Zygo (as you might guess) are married in real life, playing their characters  much sweeter and a whole lot less goofy than Sandler and Drew Barrymore did in the film. The seconds are good as well–surprisingly so, considering what they’re given to work with.

People who love the movie will find some things to like in this unambitious but comfortably familiar musical version. If you don’t love the movie, there’s nothing here that’ll change your mind.

And if you weren’t lucky enough to live through the fabulous 80’s, you’re not going to find a whole to laugh at.

Order tickets here.

You can watch a montage of musical numbers from the tour here (featuring, apparently, none of the people you’ll actually see at the Pikes Peak Center).

Post from: Colorado Springs Arts Blog

A scene from Britten's "Paul Bunyan" performed by students of the Central City Opera's 2004 Bonfils-Station Foundation Artists Training Program. / Photo credit Mark Kiryluk

“OPERA ROCKS THE ROCKIES”

When:  7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6

Where: Colorado Springs Conservatory, 1600 N. Union Boulevard

Admission: Free; 577-4556, centralcityopera.org

So you missed the summer season at Central City Opera.

On Nov. 6, the company is coming to the Colorado Springs Conservatory as part of ”Opera Rocks the Rockies,” a week-plus tour of the state. In its 13th year, they perform for more than 100 communities and about 100,000 people.

The award-winning program features Bonfils-Station Foundation Artists Training Program students Claire Kuttler, Amanda Russo, James Baumgardner and Jonathan Cole as well as graduate and doctoral level students in Colorado State University’s opera theatre program, including Margaret Higginson, Wei Wu and accompaniest Beth Nielsen.

They will perform the “Flower Duet” from Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” as well as vignettes from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld,” Ned Rorem’s “Our Town” and other works.

Post from: Colorado Springs Arts Blog

Rhonda Van Pelt

Rhonda Van Pelt is now writing about the Colorado Springs art scene for examiner.com. She’s a former Gazette reporter and until recently, represented Nirvana, a gallery on West Colorado. Van Pelt’s aim is to create in-depth visual art reporting for the area. Check out her blog.

Post from: Colorado Springs Arts Blog