Review: Red Light Winter Horse Head Theatre Co.

Amy Burn and Troy Schulze in Adam Rapp's Red Light Winter
Photo by by Anthony Rathbun

Horse Head Theatre Company is launching its first-ever season with Adam Rapp’s grim drama Red Light Winter, not exactly an out-of-the-gate play. But Horse Head has little interest in doing anything aligned with the status quo.

Rapp’s play roughly follows two old college chums, Davis and Matt, first in Amsterdam, where Matt is suffering from a combination of a loss of a will to live, a woman and a successful play. He’s terminally emerging only to submerge. Davis, a cocky but rising book editor, brings home Christina, a prostitute, to cheer up his sad sack of a buddy. What a chum. She falls for the creepy one. Matt, the word nerd, falls for her, and the rest doesn’t turn out well for anyone.

Rapp’s deliciously rich banter drives much of the play. Dialogue, both hurtful and playful, establishes the strained but dependent relationship between these two. Matt may be a walking stereotype and Davis, a feral savage, but these are over-educated men of letters, so when the words fly, they are hilarious.

The second act takes place in the East Village in Matt’s drafty garret. Christina returns looking for Davis, finds Matt still pining for her, and more trouble follows. (A sick girl knocking on the door of a starving artist seems like an odd nod to Rent. Rapp is Rent star Anthony Rapp’s brother after all.)

Troy Schulze (Matt), Drake Simpson (Davis) and Amy Burn (Christina) are perfectly cast in their respective roles. Schulze’s depressed playwright just tears us apart. He’s damaged, broken, yet incredibly endearing as the poster child for tortured poets. Simpson gives Davis a sexual charge that is both repulsive and seductive, stomping on his pit bull character with a manic glee. We hate him but laugh at his jokes anyway. Burn’s gentle performance contains a wide-eyed innocence. She’s positively luminous when she sings for the smitten duo. The potency of this motley triangle carries the play.

Kevin Holden’s close-to-the-nerve-center direction hones in on Rapp’s brand of despair. The claustrophobia is palpable—tension, difficult pauses, jagged edges, all intact and adding to the closed-in hotel room stuffiness. In addition to Holden, Anthony Contello, Frank J. Vela, Elisabeth Meindl, Matthew Schlief, Andrew Harper and Robert Thoth contributed to the set and lighting design, which proved mostly effective. It’s bleak, intimate, in your face, too close for comfort and full of garish lighting effects. How Amsterdam-y.

As for the Horse Head approach, that’s another story. Theater goers are greeted by a party atmosphere found in a holding pen, where they can drink, visit, and listen to Holden’s audience re-education lecture. Tight quarters, in an airless room, prepare us for Rapp’s shut-in world. Next, the audience is led through a narrow hallway complete with Amsterdam ladies of the red light district, and finally into the space where we were encouraged to mingle about the denizens of Amsterdam.

Habit doesn’t change that quickly and most just grabbed a seat. There was no intermission for this two-plus hour play, which meant the audience suffered through a rather clunky scene change. (Rapp’s play could have benefited from a breather.) Actors and designers are listed as “collaborators” and there’s not a bio to be found, which goes against the collective manifesto. Horse Head aims “to create the same amount of ecstasy as the artists that create it,” a noble goal for certain. (The beer menu needs to expand before that happens.) It was all kind of strange, and strangely exciting. Change doesn’t come easy, so bravo to these bold folks who dare to rethink and repackage the way we experience theater.

All in all, Rapp’s play under the house of Horse Head goes down much like the Tom Waits songs that serenade us intermittently, with a bittersweet pathos, a ragged lullaby equally designed to soothe and unsettle.

Horse Head Theatre Co. presents Red Light Winter by Adam Rapp through October 10, at Frenetic Theater, 5102 Navigation Blvd. Visit www.horseheadtheatre.org

Reprinted from Houston ArtsWeek.

John Harvey on Night of the Giant

John Harvey, Houston's reigning dark prince of indie theater, has unleashed his unruly imagination again in Night of the Giant, a Mildred's Umbrella Theater Company production. Most known for his hilarious horror romp, Rot, co-produced by Bobbindoctrin and Mildred's, Harvey has crafted yet another creepy tale. This one features two scary sisters who tend to their tied-up dad, known as just it, an original score by Elliot Cole and his chamber orchestra playing live on stage and plenty of Harvey's deliciously weird prose. By day, Harvey teaches at Houston Community College and is an artist-in-residence at the University of Houston's Honors College. Since 2001, he has also served as Mildred's Umbrella resident playwright. Harvey helps us navigate his tangled web of a play below.

29-95: How is this play different from your last dark, twisted and highly poetic play, Rot?

John Harvey: I've upped the darkness, poetry, and it's even more twisted. Yet, there's a joy in the darkness.

29-95: We all have strange families, but this one takes the cake. What instigated this story?

JH: The impulse to both project and destroy the child, which comes from being a parent myself. There's a long history of great plays that link to this subject matter from Eugene O'Neill to Sam Shepard.

29-95: Sounds epic, mythic really.

JH: Oh yeah, Oedipal elements echo throughout the play.

29-95: From the very first passages of the play it's clear that there's a formality present: in the sisters' speech rhythms, the stylized movement, and even in the way the music fills in the space. The formality creates a bit of distance with the difficulty of the material.

JH: Yes, I wanted the sisters to maintain formal movement, attempting to hold in the violence and abuse that their stories and interactions indicate, or let's say a formality created through a painstaking attention to word and gesture. The words, sentences are created to form jagged edges and holes through which Joe (the father) crawls through and the sisters smile through. I want the audience in the same place, experiencing a work of art (which is a certain formality) that also implicates the work of art. I want the audience to look for what shatters or refuses to shatter, a type of crucible that will walk home with the audience.

29-95: As a melancholic myself who refuses to be cured, I love the somber tone of Elliot Cole's score. It soothes the jagged edges. Cole understands something about us dark-craving people. Do you agree?

JH: I had Elliot in mind as the composer from the beginning of the project. The orchestra functions as a kind of Greek chorus. Elliot's music finds those notes for the play, a screech, a sweet melody.

29-95: Families are their own kind of prisons for certain, but this one is particularly grim. Yet, visually there's a lot of open space in Barnevelder, so the drama is both contained and not contained. The openness makes the play even more unsettling, these are folks you want to find in a gated community with jumbo-sized locks. Wayne Barnhill's set of a home gone feral feels very exposed. Is this intentional or is it just too expensive to build walls?

JH: I didn't want walls in order to take advantage of just what you noticed with Barnevelder. I talked to Wayne about lightly shaping a space, a room, a house. It's a claustrophobic play in an open space. Kevin Taylor's use of the lights had this intention as well. That which should be behind walls leaks out into the performing space.

29-95: Walt Zipprian, last seen as Ann Coulter in The Tamarie Cooper Show, spends the entire play as the father bound by ropes and with a burlap bag over his head.

JH: Ann Coulter is bound in her own way too. I had Walt in mind from the beginning.

29-95: Talk about the shift from poet to playwright?

JH: There's a long tradition of poets writing plays. I wanted a more collaborate experience, more three dimensional.

29-95: Your plays are funny but it's an odd kind of laugh. We catch ourselves laughing.

JH: Exactly, it's an implicating laugh.

29-95: Let's talk about the actors. An overly natural actor could wreck your work. It seems to me that there needs to be an element of recitation, that is in keeping with the piece's formal style. Jennifer Decker understands this well, which is why she was so great in Rot too. Any thoughts on this?

JH: Yes, actors who feel energy from the style of illusion, from being in step with the creation of illusion and what it opens, those are the actors for me.

29-95: Where do you stand on the disturb to entertain continuum?

JH: Let's say I'd be honored to share the space with Maria Fornes, Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Aeschlyus. Oh, yes, and I love Sweeney Todd. Let me also say that I think putting together "disturb" and "entertain" is a philosophic position. I think it begins questions of how we put together the world, and why we let illusions make us. Why do I go to the theater? Why to be put together in such a way that I'm always awake, that's the effect of "disturb" and "entertain" together. Well, there may also be a bittersweet lullaby effect as well.

Mildreds Umbrella Theater Company presents Night of the Giant by John Harvey on September 23-26, 8 p.m., at Barnevelder Movement Arts Complex; October 2-3, 8 p.m. at Ovations Night Club; and October 8, 7 p.m. at Houston Center for Photography, as part of the national Free Night of Theater event. $13; $7 for students/seniors. The October 8 performance will be free.

Reprinted from 29-95.c0m.

Review: Southern Rapture

_{Photo: Bruce Bennett}

Stories about the culture wars usually make we weep. No single event in
Unites States history has affected my generation of art makers. Eric Coble's
Southern Rapture, now playing at Stages Repertory Theatre, is first and
foremost a comedy. Face it, theater people who will go down for their
convictions and a bunch of uptight southern church people in the same room
can be funny.



Southern Rapture is based on the saga of the Charlotte Repertory
Theatre's 1996 production of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer price-winning
epic, Angels in America. A seven second full frontal nude scene, crucial to the play's core, set off a firestorm of controversy that put their funding and future
in peril. A snarky local critic fueled the flames, inciting even more
trouble. The themes of Coble's play are also especially timely in light of
recent southern-born silliness in the headlines.


The cast has a blast with this material. Sally Edmundson, as artisic
director Marjorie Winthrop, is spot-on. If ever there was an archetype of a
stubborn theater maven, Edmundson is it. Rutherford Cravens is terrific as
Mayor Winston Paxton, the guy that just wants all the fuss to just go away.
Unfortunately, the Mayor has an election coming up, so he needs to cave into
his base. Sounds oddly familiar. Cravens captures the man on an ideological
edge with a robust performance. Pamela Vogel inhabits each of her four
characters with equal gusto. She lends Allissa, the conflicted board member,
a subtle turn. Vogel pulls out her comedic chops as Laverne, the churchy
lady who objects to just about everything. Jon L. Egging gets to play on
both sides of the aisle as the Rev. Dubree and Mickey, the actor with the
scene in question. Egging steals the scene when he explains exactly why the
nude scene needs to be included as written. David Wald gives Donald Sherman, Winthrop's assistant director, an edgy quality. Wald lets us feel the edge of your seat vibe of the brouhaha. Jovan Jackson is a hoot as the southern-metaphor talking lawyer and a clueless actor.


Stages artistic director Kenn McLaughlin directs with an ear for the
comedy, in an unfussy production that stays focused on the characters and
their compelling narrative. (McLaughlin has weathered through a controversy
or two on his own stomping ground. I am still recovering from the talk back
trauma after Mr. Marmalade.)



Kirk Markley's set consists of several interlocking platforms that produce
a wretched sound when yanked apart, which happens in the opening moments of the play. Although the raised platforms create a bit of a hazard for the actors, it's an effective visual metaphor for the divisions of territory and thought that play out during the course of Coble's story. Chris Bakos' sound design works well in conjunction with Markley's puzzle set. Listen up
people, if you ever wondered what an ideological divide sounds like, this is it.


Back to weeping, there's that too. In the play's final moments, each
character sums up the experience. And we finally get to see the scene that
set the town on fire. In a low light, it's played out with utmost dignity. I
had a little fantasy of some hard core religious Charlotte folk coming to
see this play and becoming transformed by the power of theater. Coble lets
us dwell in dreaming that such a thing is possible.

Reprinted from Culturevulture.net.

Stanton Welch on Elements

Christopher Coomer in Stanton Welch's Elements
photo by Pam Francis

September 18, 2009

Stanton Welch unveils his fifteenth work for Houston Ballet with Elements, set to Paul Hindemith’s symphony Mathis der Maler, as part of the mixed rep program, “Without Boundaries.” The piece features Connor Walsh as fire, Joseph Walsh as air, Christopher Coomer as earth, Ian Casady as water and Mireille Hassenboehler as the mother of the universe. Welch brings us into Elements.

Dance Source Houston: Which came first, the music or the idea?

Stanton Welch: They came simultaneously about 20 years ago. Sometimes you hear a piece of music and you know what you need to do. There were four sections and they sounded like the elements.

DSH: You let the idea cook for twenty years?

SW: Choreography was my hobby back when I was dancing. I'm revising some of my old ideas. Coming off of Marie, The Core, and The Four Seasons, I was ready to go in the opposite direction by creating a more minimalistic ballet.

DSH: What boundaries are you going without?

SW: All three pieces are minimalist, Jirí Kylián uses Steve Reich's “Drumming,” Twyla Tharp, the queen of that style, uses Phillip Glass. So we have three different choreographers all working in the same genre.

DSH: Talk about the lone female figure danced by Hassenboehler.

SW: She's the beginning of everything, the birth of the universe, who bears four sons, earth, air, fire and water.

DSH: Is there an environmental message?

SW: Not necessarily. I see it as a broader message. Only when these four work together will the world survive.

DSH: You are often inspired by the dancers in front of you. Was Connor Walsh looking fiery one day and it seemed time to do the piece?

SW: I knew I had a collection of dancers who would suit this ballet. I wanted people who are very different, but could work well in unison. Each of the sons/elements has their own personality.

DSH: Hassenboehler mentioned that the Earth needed help.

SW: Earth is the sad one, the earth's power is slower at revealing itself, it takes millions of years to get a Mount Everest.

DSH: Are you a mythology wonk?

SW: I was when I was young.

DSH: Thoughts on Houston Ballet's first go at Tharp?

SW: Here we go..... It's a big complex, dynamic and exhausting dance. Tharp is huge and it would be wrong of us as a major American arts institution if we didn't do her work. Once I saw the piece, I knew we needed to do it. The audience always goes bananas.



Houston Ballet presents “Without Boundaries” on September 24, 26 and October 2, 3, 2009 at 7:30 PM, and September 27 and October 4, 2009 at 2:00 PM Call 713-227-2787 or visit www.houstonballet.org.

Reprinted from Dance Source Houston.

Review: Dance Houston City Wide Festival

NobleMotion Dance Company

Photography by Dionne Noble

Wortham Theatre

August 30, 2009

Houston is becoming a dance festival city, with The Power of Movement last spring and the the upcoming Weekend of Contemporary Dance, Dance Houston's City Wide Dance Festival did its part in keeping the momentum going. Andrea Cody, executive director of Dance Houston, moved here to start festivals and that she did. The 7^th annual City-Wide festival lived up to its name delivering an all over the map tour of Houston's dance scene including contemporary, hip-hop, ballet, ballroom and world dance. The people on the stage represented a diverse group as well, from students to internationally known professionals. As with most festivals, the fun was abundant, the audience enthusiastic, and the quality mixed.

On the contemporary front NobleMotion Dance made a strong statement in an excerpt from Barrier. Set to Argentinean tango master Astor Piazzolla's sultry music, the piece drops us directly down into the world of a steamy romance. Choreographer Andy Noble cleverly enlists the help of a steel gray wall as a container and foil for their passion. The couple, danced by Jesus Acosta and Melissa Needler, shove, push, walk and smash up against the wall in some all out thrilling partnering. Acosta and Needler's fierce abandon bolstered Barrier's strength, leaving even more curiosity about the rest of the piece. Noble, currently an assistant professor of Dance at Sam Houston State University, is relatively new to the Houston scene. After this show, and his recent showing at Big Range, NobleMotion is the new troupe to watch.

Dominic Walsh Dance Theater offered an excerpt of Amadeus for Anita, part of Walsh's Mozart Trilogy to be danced later this month at Miller Outdoor Theatre. Walsh's weighty work, precisely danced by his sleek troupe, anchored the evening with its solid and captivating performance. Houston Ballet II upstart choreographer Garrett Smith got to show off what he's been up to during his time in the company in Den III, a sexy dance set to music by Tielman Susato. Harper Waters' clean attack fit Smith's oddly angled shapes well. Smith is currently an apprentice with Houston Ballet. Harrison Guy's Truth be Told, still in the incubator stage, showed some promising ideas on feminist history and was confidently danced by Urban Souls Dance Company. Although Revolve Dance Company demonstrated their usual flare, yet there wasn't much that challenged them in Wes Veldink's too-mellow piece, Now. Beth Gulledge-Brown's Dancing Days, set to Led Zeppelin's iconic tunes had trouble sustaining the intensity of the music, yet was capably danced by Uptown Dance Company. Ray Dones' robust dancing stood out.

Compania Folklorica Alegria Mexicana brought a festive and thoroughly entertaining energy to the stage in Sones Y Gustos de Guerro. Although under rehearsed, Prem-dance of love of the Sreepadam School of Arts mixed Bollywood flash and Classical Indian vocabulary. Sparkling clear formations characterized Dance of Asian America's polished performance in Peacocks in Flight.

Luckily, the Barbara King Dance Company kept the theatrics to a minimum and allowed their capable dancers to take center stage in The Mystery of Dance. Luna Tango Productions offered a mild mannered tango in Mala Junta. There was no shortage of inventive moves coming from the two hip-hop troupes Wyld Styl and 8^th Edition. Both could benefit from tighter unison and more rehearsal.

A few quibbles: Festivals are all about introducing groups to the city. The show would have benefited from more thorough program notes like music credits, websites, and a calendar of their upcoming shows. You have a captive audience, why not clue them in on the context of each of these works?

reprinted from Dance Source Houston.

Rachel Cook Explains "Now that I'm by Myself," she says, "I'n not by myself, which is good."

Artist, curator and writer Rachel Cook returns to her old stomping ground at DiverseWorks with her first show in the main gallery, quite cryptically titled "Now that I'm by myself,” she says, “I'm not by myself, which is good, which features video, photography, sculptural cutouts and drawings in works by Brian Bress, Wynne Greenwood, Laurel Nakadate and Yuki Okumura. Cook reveals a bit about the title and more below.

29-95: How did the show come together?

Rachel Cook: It started with the work I was making myself. I have been using video and self portraiture in my work for quite some time, and all of these artists use themselves in their work. So this show is more personal and closer to home artistically.

29-95: What does the title, Now that I'm by myself,” she says, “I'm not by myself, which is good,” mean?

RC: I had the title before I knew who was going to be in the show. It's a long winded story. It's a quote from a musician in an interview talking about going out on your own. When you do go out on your own you find other people. So you are alone and not alone. I have always been in that space working with people and working alone, a lot of artists deal with that situation of being isolated in their studios.

29-95: You have a long history with DiverseWorks, right?

RC: I used to work there, and I curated two other projects for the smaller gallery which doesn't exist any more, and one 12 minutes Max.

29-95: Is this the largest scale show you have curated?

RC: No, but its my first in the main gallery, and the first with two site-specific commissions. I wanted to be able to have first-hand contact with the artists. It's like making a dinner party.

29-95: Lets talk about Wynne Greenwood's work since its right in front of us. What are we looking at?

RC: It's a single projection on a monitor and a sculptural cardboard cutout. Even though she is not performing in this particular show, there is a performative quality in her installation. For years she dealt with a pain in her lower back, so she is speaking to that pain and thinking about what's underneath that anxious gut. We also commissioned a new piece for the show called Warfare Over Forever.

29-95: What drew you to her work?

RC: There's this innocence, but at the same time, a really straightforward quality. She really started out as a musician and just fell into making work. I like that she is aware and unaware at the same. She doesn't get super bogged down in making work.

29-95: How did Brian Bress come on your radar?

RC: He has a youtube channel so his work was circulating for quite a while. He grew up working at his family's thrift store surrounded by all these props. His work collapses painting, sculpture and video in that he has made everything you see in his videos. So his work can exist as sculptures and backdrops of his videos.

29-95: Yuki Okumura is the one international artist in the show. How does he fit in?

RC: He has a sense of humor with his body and the way in which he references pop culture. He will be making a site specific video in the gallery, which is very exciting.

29-95: Laurel Nakadate, the only Texas native in the flock, is most known for her films where she asks lonely older men to come home with her and then films them. Sounds confrontive.

RC: Yes, definitely. But her subjects are not forced into the experience, but invited into it. She is totally interested in the border between discomfort and awkwardness. There's something in those moments that we love and make us cringe at the same time.

29-95: Is there something about that feeling in each of these artist's work?

RC: Yes, but they all do it differently.

DiverseWorks presents “Now that I'm by myself,” she says,“I'm not by myself, which is good,” curated by Rachel Cook. It runs through October 24.

Reprinted from 29-95.c0m.