Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Poetry-Time Cafe with red shoes on a thuuursday

BREAK OF DAY

© red shoes on a thuuursday
Tuesday, 22 January 2008 8.49a

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Thank you "III" for letting me read it to you over the phone.

poem taken down: Saturday, 26 January 2008
by: red shoes on a thuuursday

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Inspired by one of my favorite co-workers

Adelle was one of the people that I met at work whom I really took a liking to. She's got a great energy. Anywho...the other day she told me it was her last day which I did not think was cool. I asked for her email and number so that we could keep in touch with each other.

I sent her an email and she wrote back and also sent me a link to her artwork. I'd like to share her work with y'all.

http://www.adellemarcero.blogspot.com/

I was left inspired after looking at her pieces. Too bad I can't do anything with that inspiration. I'm just feeling--okay, I won't say, "dry" (even though, that's how it REALLY feels)...but--as if this period of adjustment and transition is disguising itself as a time for refueling, refocusing, regaining focus and reflection & prioritizing. *bleah*

Monday, January 14, 2008

More Dysfunction! August Gets Five Added Weeks on Broadway

Oh.My.Gooshnick!!! Say, WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How EXTREMELY Joyous does this news make me feel? Wow. So, all you out there have MORE time to see this whoop-ass show. For my friends in the area of California that is southern =P, I suggest that you make some plans before 13 April to head over to NY. Not only to see moi But to See This Show. Even if you DON'T see me and see the show instead...that would be SO fine with this gal!!! That's how much I Love-Love-LOVE this show.

This is probably the wrong word for the show but, it is sublime. Intensely sublime. Dark. It's an actor's utopia. I'm gonna stop now because I think you'd need to be sitting with me inside a NY French cafe =P, and listening to my description, my experience of the show. I'm not focused on writing about it!

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is The Show that I have been recommending to anyone since first seeing it in November. Everyone: GO.


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By Kenneth Jones
14 Jan 2008

The Broadway engagement of Tracy Letts' August: Osage County, critically embraced and an audience favorite, has been extended to April 13 at the Imperial Theatre.

The producers announced the added weeks on Jan. 14. The play was to be seen in a strictly limited 16-week run to March 9, but the dysfunctional-family drama is like a house on fire. The Steppenwolf Theater Company production is doing big business in the 1,400-seat theatre usually known as a home for musicals. In addition to enthusiastic reviews, the staging has prompted good word of mouth, fueling the box office.

The play tells of "the Weston clan after the disappearance of their patriarch. The family returns to their three-story home in rural Oklahoma to get to the heart of the matter."

The cast includes Ian Barford, Deanna Dunagan, Kimberly Guerrero, Francis Guinan, Brian Kerwin, Dennis Letts, Madeleine Martin, Mariann Mayberry, Amy Morton, Sally Murphy, Jeff Perry, Rondi Reed, Troy West, Munson Hicks, Susanne Marley, Jay Patterson, Dee Pelletier, Molly Ranson, Aaron Serotsky and Kristina Valada-Viars.

The cast does not change with this extension — the Chicago-based actors who created the central roles in the humor-spiked drama will still bite into their parts. Mutiple Tony Award nominations are assured.

Anna D. Shapiro (The Pain and the Itch, Iron) directs the production. The design team includes Todd Rosenthal (sets), Ana Kuzmanic (costumes), Ann Wrightson (lights), Richard Woodbury (sound) and David Singer (original music).

The Imperial Theatre is located at 245 West 45th Street. The performance schedule is as follows: Tuesday-Friday at 7:30 PM, Saturday at 8 PM, Wednesday & Saturady at 2 PM and Sunday at 3 PM.

Note some early curtain times, which take into account the show's three acts and three-and-a-half-hour running time.

Tickets are available at Telecharge.com and at (212) 239-6200. Prices range from $99.50 to $26.50.

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The Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of August: Osage County is produced on Broadway by Jeffrey Richards, Jean Doumanian, Steve Traxler, Jerry Frankel, Ostar Productions, Jennifer Manocherian, The Weinstein Company, Debra Black/Daryl Roth, Ronald & Marc Frankel/Barbara Freitag, and Rick Steiner/Staton Bell Group.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY








SO glad that the original cast from Chicago transferred to NY. Thank you!!! I would change no one in the cast. No.One. And it has found an audience, I believe. It's been packed both times I went. When we tried to get tickets for this past Friday night, they were sold out! So, we were lucky to get tickets for Saturday night=)

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Broadway.com's FRESH FACE Interview with Deanna Dunagan

Where's the meat?! Where's the meat?!! Where's the meat?!!!
Shame on you! It's not cowboys and Indians! It's cowboys and Native Americans!

Oh, my! This woman. Last night, I watched AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY for the 2nd time with 2 of my good friends. To me, there is no weak link in the ensemble. It's so strong and down to the guts and marrow. One of the great things about the play is that there is HUMOR and IRONY. It's definitely an intense family-drama and THANK GOD (!) for the humor. *whew*

Deanna is...you know, there really aren't any words that would suffice so I will just stay silent, BUT will say THIS (atleast): If you are in NY, I beg you to please, please, PLEASE see this show. (I shouldn't have to beg) And even if you aren't in NY, you really Should make EVERY EFFORT to come to the Big Apple just to see this show. It closes on March 9th, I believe. I'm hoping to catch it atleast one more time before it closes.


Deanna Dunagan
by Kathy Henderson

Age:
"I don't tell. And the reason I don't is that nobody can divorce that [number] from who you are. It starts getting that way in your 40s."
Currently: Playing Violet Weston, the pill-popping, meaner-than-a-snake matriarch in Tracy Letts' acclaimed family epic August: Osage County.


Hometown: Monahans, Texas. "It's 36 miles west of Odessa, where Friday Night Lights was set, and 60 miles west of Midland, where George Bush is from."

Lone Star Lady: "My heritage is a long line of Southern Baptist and Methodist preachers—who were all just frustrated actors," Dunagan begins, when asked about her background. "My dad was a Coca-Cola bottler and president of the Texas Historical Association. He wrote history as his avocation." Like a good southern girl, Deanna got a degree in music education and married young, but the union didn't last, and her parents agreed to fund graduate studies at the Dallas Theater Center after her divorce. Dunagan breezes through the next section of her resume—"I lived in Mexico while I was writing my thesis and was engaged to a bullfighter"—and goes on to explain that she honed her skills at regional theaters such as the Asolo in Florida and the Actors Theatre of Louisville before trying her luck in New York. (The bullfighter moved to Spain.)

Please Stand By: A star of the Chicago stage for more than two decades, Dunagan is quick to point out that August: Osage County is not her Broadway debut. "In 1979, I was an understudy at Circle in the Square in Shaw's Man and Superman," she says. "George Grizzard, Philip Bosco, Richard Woods and Mark Lamos were in it. One night I got to the theater three minutes late for half hour, and they said, 'You're going on.' Ann Sachs was sick. I was terrified! But I said to myself, 'Just go out and say the words. These are fabulous actors; just feed them their lines.' And it was one of the best performances I ever gave. The head of ICM, Milton Goldman, was in the audience and signed me the next day. They wrote a story about it in Back Stage."

Wonderful Windy City: Arriving in Chicago just before Christmas on a national tour of Children of a Lesser God, Dunagan felt at home immediately. She decided to put down roots and soon became a stalwart of the city's thriving theater scene. "I've worked at more than 30 theaters in the Chicago area, so it's always fresh," she says. "I'm a Gemini—we're communicators, but we have a short attention span. I enjoy being able to work on a show for three months and then go on to the next project. I get to do twice, if not three or four times, the number of plays I could do in New York. I love my career in Chicago."

The Parent Trap: For much of the three-plus hours of August: Osage County, Dunagan's drug-addicted character spews venom (often hilariously) at her three grown daughters, sister, various in-laws and a Native American maid. After an initial reading of the play left her "devastated," the actress repeatedly turned down the role of Violet. "I have knee problems and back problems and didn't think I could do it physically," she says of walking up and down the three-story house set. "And Violet is so vicious. The pills release her inhibitions, and she just lashes out. I played Mary Tyrone [in Long Day's Journey Into Night] when I was younger, but Mary is a piece of cake compared with Violet Weston." The overall strength of Letts' play made her reconsider, and Dunagan's performance won a Jeff Award in August's premiere production last summer at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre.

Big Apple Return: When Dunagan heard that August would transfer to Broadway, her initial response wasn't exactly what one would expect from an actress playing one of the season's juiciest parts. "I went into such a depression," she confesses. "For the last few weeks of the show [in Chicago] I was in physical pain, so I spent all my time after we closed seeing doctors, physical therapists and voice coaches, trying to get in shape to do this Broadway run." She missed a nephew's wedding during previews, but managed to fly to Cincinnati to see her grandson in a school play during the stagehands strike. And—happily—she's enjoying presenting the evil Violet to Broadway audiences. "It's a brilliant play—that's what makes it worth it. We want to share this wonderful work with more people. That's why we all came to New York."