Pondering Live Performance | Review | Tucson Weekly

Pondering Live Performance | Review | Tucson Weekly:

Pondering Live Performance 

Beowulf Alley Theatre mounts four summer shows as part of its new effort, The Next Theatre

by Sherilyn Forrester

What will the theater look like in the future? Will it continue to tell stories in the way it has for centuries? Or will it find new ways? And if so, what exactly might what's next look like?

Michael Fenlason, the new artistic director of Beowulf Alley Theatre Company, is pondering these questions, and in response, he has established The Next Theatre as the Beowulf Alley's avenue to explore and experiment with new ways of theatrical storytelling.

The subgroup of Beowulf Alley is actually a new version of what used to be its Late Night Theatre, which also operated with an experimental spirit. Fenlason was associated with Late Night, but now as artistic director of the entire organization, he has an opportunity to help develop The Next Theatre. This summer, the group is slated to present four shows.

"The idea is to look at how live performance is going to change, and to try to reinvigorate the form by finding new ways of presenting and new ways of telling a story," Fenlason says.

The first show is a multimedia, company-developed piece, Joan Is Burning.

Kristen Islas in Joan Is Burning.

"I created the story, and some of the scenes, and then let the actors breathe through them," Fenlason says. "They have been free to make changes to make it work."

Crucial to the development process has been the work and input of filmmaker Josh Parra. "He's a fantastic creative mind and brings a nice satirical edge."

Fenlason says the piece looks at "how we have an almost-erotic attraction to our technology. The film supplied by Parra is shown on a big screen that represents Joan's phone, her computer screen, etc., with which she constantly interacts. We're often more attached to our technology than to real people."

The story takes place in the near future, and Joan (played by four actresses) is a marketing whiz who can sell anybody anything—a "terrible power," according to Fenlason—and she has issues with her boyfriend, her aging father and her boss. She also has to decide whether she should answer a call by a women's protest group to support issues that she feels do not really affect her.

Read the entire article here:

Pondering Live Performance | Review | Tucson Weekly:

Second Audition notice, Jem Street's new play "Hope"

BEOWULF ALLEY THEATRE

SECOND AUDITIONS

 

Jem Street’s play

Hope

 

Beowulf Alley Theatre will hold auditions for Jem Street’s new play, a dramatic comedy about politics, history and what makes a person become a politician.  June 25^th at 6:30 PM. Resume and headshot are preferred. Show dates are Friday and Saturday, July 20^th, 21^st , 27^th and 28^th at 7:30 PM and Sunday, July 23^rd at 2:30 PM .

 

Needed:

 

One African-American woman 20-30

One man 30-40’s

 

Please contact the theatre at theatre@beowulfalley.org or 520 882 0555.

 

Hope tells the story of Joe Chandler and his one night in a hotel room where he must face the skeletons in his closet before he runs for public office.

An evening of musical and "sketch" comedy with Dave Fitzsimmons and Tom Potter

Beowulf Alley Theatre presents

Dave Fitzsimmons and

Tom Potter

In an evening of musical and “sketch” comedy

 

Beowulf Alley Theatre presents Dave Fitzsimmons and Tom Potter in an evening of musical and “sketch” comedy at

7:30 PM Friday, June 15^th at Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11 S. 6^th Avenue in downtown Tucson. Tickets are $12, $10 for seniors, military and teachers. Our student price is only $8.

 

Dave Fitzsimmons, the editorial columnist for The Arizona Daily Star, and blues-playing humorist Tom Potter give Tucson an evening of laughter, music and some sketchy business.

 

For more information, call 520 882 0555 or email at theatre@beowulfalley.org.

 

Beowulf Alley Theatre presents Joan is Burning

Beowulf Alley Theatre presents

Joan is Burning

A new play devised by The Next Theatre at Beowulf Alley

 

Beowulf Alley Theatre presents Joan is Burning at 7:30 PM Friday and Saturday, June 22^nd, 23^rd, and 29^th at Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11 S. 6^th Avenue in downtown Tucson. Tickets are $18. $15 for seniors, military and teachers. Our student price is only $8.

 

Joan is Burning is a satirical comedy of the near future. In 2018 New Orleans, Joan works for a public relations firm and has created a program that can sell anyone anything.  Her love life in shambles, her only healthy relationship is with her phone/computer, her employer an avaricious, unprincipled executive, Joan must decide what she ought to do with such a newfound power. All the while an anonymous protest for the rights of women shadows her. Will Joan join the fight?

 

A multi-cultural, multi-media presentation that includes extensive use of film, created by Josh Parra, and original music by Skads Muskie and Tristyn Tucci, Joan is Burning is part of The Next Theatre at Beowulf Alley’s mission to effect relevant, entertaining themes with new models of narrative presentation. Portions of the proceeds to this production will go to benefit Disappeared Women, a women’s health advocacy group.

 

For more information, contact Michael Fenlason at Beowulf Alley Theatre, theatre@beowulfalley.org, 520 882 0555.

 

 

Auditions for two new plays

Beowulf Alley Theatre announces

Auditions

For two new plays

 

Beowulf Alley Theatre will be holding auditions for Eugene O’Neill’s “new” play Exorcism and a new play by Jem Street, Hope, Monday, June 4^th at 7:00 PM to 8:30PM at Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11 S. 6^th Avenue, in downtown Tucson. Auditions will consist of readings from the scripts.

 

Needed:

 

Exorcism:

Two men (20’s)

Three men (30-60)

 

Hope

Two women (30-45)

One African-American woman (20’s)

One woman (20’s)

Two men (35-50’s)

 

Exorcism is a one-act play about a troubled young man and his difficult relationship with his family. It is something of a palimpsest for Long Days Journey Into Night, as the main character Ned is reminiscent to Jamie Tyrone. The play was performed by the Provincetown Players in 1920 and then quickly withdrawn. It is speculated that O’Neill was too uncomfortable with such an honest portrait of himself and his father. Recently rediscovered, this production will run Friday and Saturday, July 6^th, 7^th, 13^th, 14^th at 7:30PM and Sunday July 8^th at 2:30PM.

 

Hope by Jem Street is a new play and part of her graces trilogy that includes Faith and Love. Street’s work meditates on American life in the first part of the new millennium with humor, candor and a sense of history. Hope is the story of Joe Chandler, a Tennessee businessman being courted to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. Chandler must look back over his life and determine if he has “been a good enough man to be a politician.” In flashback his history with romantic relationships, a stormy relationship with his racist father, and all that he has been must be seen through this ironic prism. This is a full-length play and the performance dates are Friday and Saturday July 20^th, 21^st, 27^th, and 28^th at 7:30 PM and Sunday July 22^nd at 2:30 PM.

 

For more information contact Michael Fenlason at 520 882 0555 or at theatre@beowulfalley.org.

 

Audition for Wimsey at Beowulf Alley Theatre

Call for Actors

When: Mon., May 21st at 6:00-7:30 PM

 

Auditions are being held at 6:00 p.m., Monday, May. 21st, for  Joan O'Dwyer's adaptation of the first Peter Wimsey book by Dorothy Sayers. This production runs in August at Beowulf Alley Theatre and will be directed by Esther Almanzan, If available, please bring a headshot and resume (If you auditioned at the Beowulf season auditions, it will not be necessary to bring a resume). Prepared monologues are welcome. Auditions from the script is also available. All are welcome. 

 

Beowulf Alley Theatre

11 S. Sixth Ave.

 theatre@beowulfalley.org

882-0555

www.beowulfalley.org

 

Very different families: A drinking comedy and a druggie tragedy | Live Theatre Workshop / Beowulf Alley Theatre Company

Very different families: A drinking comedy and a druggie tragedy | Live Theatre Workshop / Beowulf Alley Theatre Company:

Very different families: A drinking comedy and a druggie tragedy

'The Cocktail Hour' is acerbic and amusing; 'Sins of the Mother' is dark and engaging

Posted May 10, 2012

Dave Irwin, TucsonSentinel.com

At Beowulf Alley Theatre Company, surprising drama emerges from “Sins of the Mother.”  …

Hal Melfi seemed suitably damaged as Bobbie, the none-to-bright elder of the band, shattered in Vietnam…

Anthony Saccocio is surprisingly effective through the twists and turns of young Dougie, especially given that this is his first full-length stage appearance. He is able to project both innocence and menace over his character’s significant arc...

Ken Beider plays both weak, sleazy Frankie and then his more complex, nuanced twin, Phillie. Beider claims an eight year absence from the stage, which is in no way apparent from his luscious embrace of two very different characters.

Jim Ambrosek is also effective as Dubbah, providing emotional context for the unspeakable sins, past and present. Director Vince Flynn starts the gritty story slow, punctuated by sudden outbursts during the discovery phase. He builds on that with a smoldering tone during Acts II and III to heighten the sense of malevolence, so that the subsequent retributions are a plausible extension of the first act’s violence.

Ken Beider, Anthony Saccocio, Hal Melfi and Jim Ambrosek in 'Sins of the Mother.'

Tristyn Tucci/Beowulf Alley

READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW HERE: http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/arts/report/051012_comedy_and_tragedy_review/very-different-families-drinking-comedy-and-druggie-tragedy/

Working-Class Heroes | Review | Tucson Weekly

Working-Class Heroes | Review | Tucson Weekly:

Working-Class Heroes 

Actor Ken Beider redeems Beowulf Alley's dark tale about dockworkers

by Laura C.J. Owen
Horovitz has a sharp ear for a certain kind of fast-paced, working-class banter...

Beider also handles the role of Philly, and it's a treat to watch him create a new character halfway through the evening. An eccentric businessman, Philly wears his hair slicked back and insists on keeping his sunglasses on when inside. ("Light-sensitive," he claims.) Costumer David Swisher puts him in a suit with a few garish touches: a yellow shirt and purple socks. The outfit works, reflecting Philly's odd mixture of savvy, sensitivity and cruelty. Philly hates his father, yet takes advice from Oprah on forgiveness; he's manipulative, with deep-running loyalties and hatreds...

 

Ken Beider, Anthony Saccocio, Hal Melfi and Jim Ambrosek in Sins of the Mother.

Ambrosek as Dubbah has the least to do. He manages, however, to pull off a difficult task for an actor, which is to listen and react. During Philly's long monologue, Ambrosek's reactions add a painful realism to the scene...But Beider's performance is a great match between actor and script, bringing out the dark humor and pathos of the play. For nurturing this performance, director Flynn and Beowulf Alley deserve praise. READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW HERE: http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/working-class-heroes/Content?oid=3349690

Sins of the Mother

GRITTY "SINS OF THE MOTHER"

by Chuck Graham, "Let The Show Begin"

If you believe the sins of the parents are visited upon their children, you will find common ground in the riveting Beowulf Alley Theatre production of "Sins of the Mother" by Israel Horovitz.

This ensemble performance by a quartet of men bursting with erratic testosterone motivations continues the much-welcomed comeback of the downtown theater company.

Horovitz loves the gritty side of domestic conflict, told through dialogue so tightly woven you couldn't slip another thought in sideways. Such compact writing might be considered an acquired taste, but "Sins of the Mother" provides exactly what the title implies.

Douggie Shimmatarro (Anthony Saccocio), a guy in his 20s, comes back to his hometown of Gloucester, Mass., looking for work in a dying town of closed-up fish packing plants and grizzled stevedores who can't find employment. It's the Japanese, we are told, who sucked out all the jobs that closed the plants.

Bobby (Hal Melfi), Dubbah (Jim Ambrosek) and twins Frankie Verga and Philly Verga (both played by Ken Beider) are from older generations who feel their lives slipping away.

There is no place for them in this digitized world and they are damn angry about it. Filled with Luddite pride, one brags about never watching TV and refuses to buy a cell phone.

Long on canny intelligence and short on diplomacy, these are men who settle arguments with brawn. Simple and direct. The guys for whom those cable television documentaries are made that describe in detail the most dangerous jobs in the world.

Life-threatening jobs that they could do, too, if someone would just give them a chance.

Innocently Douggie steps into this den of tattered and short-tempered warriors with raw nerves, hoping to find out some history about his mom. They are only too happy to tell Douggie that his mom was rather….promiscuous. Only, the language these older men used wasn't nearly so polite.

From there the whole conversation spirals straight down in a series of festering conflicts over long-contested disputes stretching back for decades. More violence erupts, and it isn't even intermission.

Act Two begins with a casket in the middle of the stage. Nobody's happy about that, either.

This production is also a showcase for some commanding new talent. Melfi, the local veteran, is back after a long absence to set the pace and hold everything together.

But Beider and Ambrosek, after lengthy theater careers in other cities, have chosen this play to make conspicuous returns to acting. The same can be said of the director, Vince Flynn.

Beider fills his character of Philly Verga with a deadly gangster charisma that no other Baked Apple actor could do. Ambrosek with a less showy role is equally convincing.

Saccocio in his 20s has little theater experience. What he has in spades is an easy charm that promises a bright future in our own theater community.

"Sins of the Mother" continues through May 27 with performances at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays, at Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11 S. Sixth Ave.

Tickets are $20 general admission; $18 for seniors, teachers and military; $8 for students with current ID. For tickets and reservations, 520 -882-0555, or visit www.beowulfalley.org

Link: Sins of the Mother:

2nd Annual Charity Golf Tournament!

Come out for a day of fun in the sun AND support your favorite community theatre, Beowulf Alley!

 

 

2nd Annual Charity Golf Tournament

WHEN:MAY 4, 2012 (Friday)

WHERE: El Conquistador Country Club
10555 North La Canada, Tucson, AZ 85737

(520) 544-1900

REGISTRATION

Check-in begins 10:30 a.m.; Lunch–11 a.m.- 12:15 p.m.; Texas Scramble (Shotgun) Starts 12:30 p.m.; Mulligans Available @ $5.00 each or 3 for $10.00

 

Reserve your spot today at http://beowulfalley.org/html/2012_golf_tournament.html

PLAYERS

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

$95.00 Per Player ($36.00 Tax Deductible) before April 25, 2012.

Green Fees, Golf Cart, Range Balls, Practice Range, Luncheon, and Prizes Galore!!

HOLE SPONSORS

$50.00

MAIN PRIZES

Divisions: (1) All Men / (2) All Women / (3) Men & Women / (4) Total Combined Ages Over 260

SKILL PRIZES

Divisions: Men / Women - Longest Drive - Closest To the Pin

MORE DETAILS:

Call: Roger Rikkola (520-882-0555); roger@beowulfalley.org

 

 

About Us

Beowulf Alley Theatre is a non-profit 501(c)(3) theatre committed to community outreach for all ages. On Friday, May 4th, we will be holding our 2nd annual golf tournament to raise funds in support and would like to invite you to participate by registering as a golfer, an event sponsor, or a gift donor.

Founded in 2001, the intimate, 95-seat theatre provides a facility that meets professional standards where performing artists, educators and technicians can present their skills. Our mission is to create captivating experiences for our patrons, students, and the Tucson Community through the highest artistic, technical and educational productions. Beowulf Alley has received critical acclaim, including five MAC awards and eleven nominations. Our last season brought productions that were thought provoking, hilariously funny, classic and heartwarming.

Our patrons tell us that we have the smartest theatre in Tucson. Tucson needs Beowulf Alley Theatre and Beowulf Alley Theatre needs the community to support its survival to continue. We wouldn't be here without YOU because Beowulf Alley Theatre is YOU.

Please consider participating in our 2nd Annual Golf Tournament by sponsoring a hole, providing a gift for our drawings, or by participating as a player.

Thank you,

Beowulf Alley Theatre

 

 

Tucson: Beowulf Alley Theatre presents Belle Dame Sans Merci

 

Beowulf Alley Theatre
presents

Belle Dame Sans Merci

Beowulf Alley Theatre Company presents Townshend Fisher’s metaphysical noir mystery Belle Dame Sans Merci, Friday nod Saturday at 7:30 PM, April 13th, 14th, 20th and 21st, at Beowulf Alley Theatre Company, 11 S 6th Avenue in downtown Tucson (on 6th Ave, south of Congress). Tickets are $15, $13 for teachers, seniors and military personnel, and $8 for students. Tickets are available at our website: www.beowulfalley.org and at the door. This show is appropriate for ages 17 and up. For more information call 520-882-0555 or email us at theatre@beowulfalley.org.

Belles Dame Sans Merci is a nourish thriller with detectives, dangerous dames, murder, mystery, sex, and mayhem, with perhaps the most problematic of all, Death herself. Hard-boiled Detective Dan Lovelace must solve the murder of a colleague in a corrupt city. His only clues are a beautiful femme fatale and the unusual sighting of a ghostly woman at the scene of the crime. This show contains adult language and situations, as well as poetry by John Keats. Original music composed by Skads Muskie.

The cast features Evan Engle, Ben Hoffman, Tristyn Tucci, Michael "Miko" Gifford, Natasha Klemek, Nick Salyer, Larissa Gosla , Samantha Cormier and David Swisher.

For more information, email us at theatre@beowulfalley.org or call 520-882-0555.

 

 

Tucson Theatre Announcements List

For subscription information go to TucsonStage.com

 

 

 

Tucson: Active Imagination Theatre presents RABBIT HOOD

Active Imagination Theatre

 

presents

 

RABBIT HOOD

Active Imagination Theatre at Beowulf Alley presents Rabbit Hood, at noon (12:00PM) Saturday April 7th, at Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11 S 6th Avenue in downtown Tucson. Tickets prices are $5 for children and adults. For more information call 520-882-0555, email theatre@beowulfalley.org or visit our website www.beowulfalley.org.

In this retelling of Robin Hood for Easter, Rabbit Hood steals eggs from the snooty chickens to decorate them and hide them for kids on Easter. The chickens used to willingly give up their eggs, but this year Farmer John hires Cluck, a mean chicken bounty hunter, to catch Rabbit Hood. We have Friar Duck, Little Juan, and many familiar characters, and our young audience is invited onstage to participate in the play, which ends with an Easter Egg Hunt.

For more information visit www.beowulfalley.org or call us at 520-882-0555.

 

Beowulf Alley Theatre

11 S. 6^th Ave (between Broadway and Congress)

Downtown Tucson

 

Tucson Theatre Announcements List

For subscription information go to TucsonStage.com

 

 

 

 

Beowulf's man for all seasons

Beowulf's man for all seasons:
Michael Fenlason takes helm as theater company's multitasking artistic director
Tayler Wancour For The Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Thursday, March 29, 2012

Michael Fenlason is no stranger to theater: He has written, directed and even started his own company.

Clearly, he knows his way around a stage. So he was a logical choice when Beowulf Alley Theatre looked for an artistic director.

Beowulf's board of directors named Fenlason the artistic director in late December, a new position for the company.

The artistic side was handled by committee, and Beth Dell, who stepped down late last year, handled the administrative side.

Fenlason will take on both jobs as artistic director.

He wasn't a newcomer to Beowulf; he's acted there, directed, and had his original scripts staged.

"I've been pretty excited about this place since I got here," said Fenlason, who first stepped into the Beowulf theater as a volunteer in 2009.

 
MAMTA POPAT / ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Michael Fenlason, who has written and directed, is Beowulf Alley Theatre's artistic director, a new position for the company. He leads the administrative side, too

Read more: http://azstarnet.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/beowulf-s-man-for-all-seasons/article_346fd378-1e19-5e0e-bc98-3d2325df8147.html#ixzz1qhnBar2w

Faith in Science | Review | Tucson Weekly

Faith in Science | Review | Tucson Weekly:

Faith in Science 
Beowulf Alley illuminates a historical tragedy in a solid production of 'Radium Girls'
by Laura C.J. Owen @lauracjowen"

The plot of Radium Girls would make anyone nervous. It's a dramatization of the real-life case of workers in a radium factory in New Jersey who fell ill after painting watch dials with a glowing radium solution. The women licked their paintbrushes after each application, blissfully ignorant that the radium would eventually cause necrosis (rotting) of the bone, starting in the jaw.

... the ensemble cast does solid work, with Scott, Cormier and Boyd-Martin as stand-outs.


... Composer Alex Greengaard has provided a creepy, subtle soundtrack that creates just the right atmosphere.


... Radium Girls is a strong production and a smart choice for Beowulf Alley, now headed by recently appointed artistic director Michael Fenlason. The play, which premiered at the Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey in 2000, has been produced all over the country—and I'm glad Beowulf has brought it to Tucson. It's a darkly entertaining piece, and it carries an extra punch because it's a true story. 

• Samantha Cormier, Bree Boyd-Martin and Nicole Scott in Radium Girls.
• 
  

Read the entire review here: Faith in Science | Review | Tucson Weekly

'Radium Girls' recounts early battle for worker safety | Beowulf Alley Theatre Company

'Radium Girls' recounts early battle for worker safety | Beowulf Alley Theatre Company:

'Radium Girls' recounts early battle for worker safety

Just because you don’t know if something is harmful doesn’t make it safe

Posted Mar 21, 2012, 2:23 pm

Dave Irwin

TucsonSentinel.com

Beowulf Alley Theatre’s “Radium Girls,” set in the 1920s and based on factual events, is about ignorance and corporate responsibility. It provides a cautionary tale for our own time: Simply because the science doesn’t exist yet to prove that something is harmful, does not necessarily make it is safe. Think lead paint, thalidomide, even cigarette smoke.

The jam-packed drama, with nine actors portraying 30 roles in more than 25 scenes, is a reminder that under the rule of law, authority requires responsibility.

 

Samantha Cormier, Bree Boyd-Martin and Nicole M. Scott in Radium Girls.

Read the entire review here: 'Radium Girls' recounts early battle for worker safety | Beowulf Alley Theatre Company:

"RADIUM GIRLS" review

"RADIUM GIRLS" A DISTURBING LEGACY

By Chuck Graham

TucsonStage.com

 

 

Look at your wristwatch. Does it have any luminous paint on it? Is the watchcase make of lead? Maybe it should be.

 

The fact is, even today, nobody knows what the “safe limit” is for radiation exposure. In truth, there probably is no such thing as a safe limit, since all radium poisoning keeps building up in every body for one’s entire lifetime.

 

But because the fatal effects of radium poisoning can take decades to become known, people generally shrug off the danger. There are, after all, so many more things that can kill you so much quicker.

 

Which brings us to the knuckle-grinding “Radium Girls” political play written by Washington DC playwright D.W. Gregory. 

 

Going where no Tucson stage company has gone before, Beowulf Alley Theatre Company brings out the shameful truth about corporate America’s history for creating a safe place for uranium workers.

 

Sheldon Metz has directed a cast of nine, most playing multiple roles, to recount the history of the Radium Girls, a New Jersey group of young factory workers in the early 1920s whose lives had no value to their employer, the U.S. Radium Corporation. The company’s business was painting watch dials and other instruments with radium paint. It was the Radium Girls who did the painting.

 

Basically, U. S. Radium knew its watch-dial painting operation wasn’t safe, but always downplayed the danger. 

 

The play’s relevance for today is that this business strategy hasn’t changed. A string of documentary films keep telling us how giant corporations continue pumping processed food full of chemicals with complicated names that some scientists have declared to be safe.

 

There were scientists in the 1920s happy to declare radium was safe to work with, too, if certain procedures were applied. Of course that was completely false.

 

The sad saga of these Radium Girls is fully documented. They have their own Wikipedia page, too. Actually, a little online research before seeing “Radium Girls” is highly recommended.

 

Much of the dialogue is based on direct testimony that is a matter of public record.

 

Gregory the playwright has structured her play more like a documentary film, as a string of scenes that generate talking points to move the story along. This makes it difficult to personally identify with any of the innocent victims, but Metz does what he can to dramatize each of the conflicts.

 

Nicole M. Scott plays Grace Fryer, the radium worker who suffered terribly from radium poisoning and led the lawsuit for safer working conditions.

 

Bree Boyd-Martin plays Katherine Wiley, the lawyer whose determination kept the suit from being buried under legal technicalities raised by U.S. Radium.

 

To be reminded of this pivotal piece of workplace history will make us all better citizens. To see how little has changed in the business world’s eagerness to value profits more than the welfare of its workers will make us all better citizens, too.

 

“Radium Girls” continues in performances through April 8 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays, at Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11 S. Sixth Ave. All tickets are $20, with discounts for online purchases. For details and reservations, 882-0555, or visit www.beowulfalley.org

 

 

Active Imagination Theatre presents Rabbit Hood

Tucson Weekly:

Active Imagination Theatre

When: Starts March 17. Saturdays, Sundays. Continues through April 7

Rabbit Hood, an imaginative reinterpretation of Robin Hood as the Easter Bunny, opens Saturday, March 17, an continues through Saturday, April 7. Shows are at noon; $5 child or adult. Call or email theatre@beowulfalley.org for reservations or more information.

• Best Of

  Beowulf Alley Theatre Company

  • 11 S. Sixth Ave. CENTRAL
  • 882-0555
  • www.beowulfalley.org/

The play's the thing at avant-garde Fringe fest

The play's the thing at avant-garde Fringe fest

The play's the thing at avant-garde Fringe fest

Stories by Kathleen Allen Kallen@azstarnet.com | Posted: Thursday, February 23

A comedy about cancer support groups. A rock opera with instructions on how to stop thinking and become a "good American." A musical rant about Arizona's politics, the treatment of immigrants, and the separation of Southern Arizona from the rest of the state.

These themes and more are in store for the second annual Tucson Fringe Theater Festival, a weekend packed with new plays, most by new playwrights.

Fringe fests happen around the world - there are about 16 in this country - and Tucson's operates the way most do: Playwrights submit new works, and plays are picked at random. That aspect of the festivals is a point of pride for most organizers.

"We wanted to bring the Fringe experience to Tucson, unjuried and uncensored," said Sara Habib, who, along with Yasmine Jahanmir, her lifelong friend and fellow theater lover, launched Tucson's first Fringe last year.

"It's art-centric," the 29-year-old Habib explained. "It's a community event. It provides space for people without the money to rent a theater. It's more avant-garde - it's like fresh theater."

The inaugural festival drew about 400 people. A dozen plays were submitted and six were performed.

Six were submitted this year, and the five selected - all from Tucson - will spread their performances over two venues, Solar Culture and Beowulf Alley Theatre.

Beowulf Alley hosted Fringe plays last year, but the event is new to Solar Culture.

PHOTOS BY RON MEDVESCEK / ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Kevin Henderson, left, and Terry Owen - better known as Fish Karma - are co-playwrights of "Lethal Fairytales," a rock opera that addresses the plight of those unfortunates who are encumbered by unwanted intelligence.

Read more: http://azstarnet.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/the-play-s-the-thing-at-avant-garde-fringe-fest/article_fb6a6cca-a671-51f9-9638-00dee3a4584a.html#ixzz1nPFa1yeY
Read more: http://azstarnet.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/the-play-s-the-thing-at-avant-garde-fringe-fest/article_fb6a6cca-a671-51f9-9638-00dee3a4584a.html#ixzz1nPFPytSh