Daily Loaf

Christopher Rutherford and Glenn Gover deserving a great audience

Why does one come to the theater if one does not want to watch the play? Case in point: The Woman in Black sold out performance last night. I directed the show and have been to just about every performance, so I tend to watch the audience as well as the play.  It is a thriller with many technical aspects that all need to be spot-on every night, so I watch how it is all played out and how it is all received by the audience.  So, Sunday night being a sold out show, I lingered on the sidelines so that those who paid for a ticket got a seat. I had the perfect view and it was the perfect audience. Almost.

Perhaps I should explain “perfect audience.”  Have you ever been an observer of art with a whole room full of strangers with whom you collectively took the journey with the artist — as one?  Ever been at a performance where you needed to see that exact thing at that exact time in your life?  Ever been inspired collectively with the person sitting next to you, without talking to each other?  It is not a type of audience, per se, but rather the right combination for the particular experience at hand.

Conversely, as a performer or fellow audience member sitting in your vicinity, if you’ve had a bad day at work and can’t shake it off, we feel it.  If you had too much to drink at happy hour before you got to the theater, we feel it.  If you are waiting for that voice mail or text message and want intermission to get here so you can check it, we feel it.  Or, in the case of last night’s performance, if you did not come to the theater to watch a play, we feel it.

Sunday’s play was 98 percent the perfect audience.  Read the rest of this entry »

Christopher Rutherford (Nicole Jeannine Smith photo)

The Woman in Black is an entertaining, unusually literary ghost drama for the Halloween season, though one that lacks much reason for existing outside its capacity to excite a degree of fear. Beautifully acted by Christopher Rutherford and Glenn Gover, the current Gorilla Theatre production is genuinely spooky — several times spectators shrieked — and pleasingly original. It won’t remind you of anything else you’ve seen.

It features wonderfully discomfiting sound effects, super-serious characters (to raise the level of terror), and a ghost of dreadful countenance with nothing the least bit friendly about her. Skillfully directed by Ami Sallee Corley, Woman has everything but substance — some perspective on reality that might remain with us after the final curtain falls.

I suppose it’s wrong to want more than chills and thrills from a Halloween play, but this drama is so consistently intelligent, a little authentic significance would hardly be out of place. Oh, well. If you’re looking for a spine-tingler more intellectual than ZooBoo, this is your poison. It’s about as nerve-wracking as these things get, and so gore-free that you can bring the (older) kids. Read the rest of this entry »

As a freelance artist I find myself in a lull of productivity sometimes.  In the springtime I tend to do a lot of administrative work for the Access Arts Scholarship program for the Patel Conservatory, so my artistic side isn’t being shopped out to other companies as much (i.e. I don’t audition for shows during that time.)

In these times I always think I am going to dust off that script of the one-woman show I’ve always wanted to work on.  Problem is, when you do a one-person project it seems like you have to do all the work for yourself; be your own motivator, be responsible to only yourself.  It’s hard to pull through on the deliverables when it is only you that you have to answer to.

Well, local actor Curtis Belz found the gumption, self-motivation, and two friends (eventually more), to pull off Danny Hoch’s (pictured) Jails, Hospitals and Hip-hop, a one-man show demanding that he play several personas, including Flip, a good ol’ boy from the Midwest who has come to identify with urban hip-hoppers; Bronx, a sidewalk vendor who gets pinched for selling without a license; and Sam, a prison guard with an anger management problem — evidenced by his beating a prisoner nearly to death. The show is playing tonight as Jobsite’s latest Job-side project. This is the second of two preview performances before its full incarnation in September at HCC Ybor. Read the rest of this entry »

Talia

Editor’s Note: Actor/director/teacher/playwright Ami Sallee Corley (right) continues her series of posts about the challenges of being a freelance artist in Tampa Bay. Today’s topic: Self-esteem (or lack thereof)

So I have had the incredible honor of being one of the cast of Pericles, Jobsite’s newest Joe Popp rock musical.  I get to play the love interest, a post-graduate hippie chick rebelling against her Cape Cod “old money” roots.  I’m in jeans and braids and half the time I am barefoot and tote around a nice chip on my shoulder for Daddy’s attempts to assimilate me into “society.” Daddy: “I thought you were going to see that Kennedy boy?”  Talia: “No.  That was your idea, and I told you I don’t want to end up at the bottom of a lake.”

So, in a very favorable review, CL’s Mark Leib refers to me as Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: Actor/director/teacher/playwright Ami Sallee Corley (right) continues her series of posts about the challenges of being a freelance artist in Tampa Bay. This week’s topic: Auditions.

One of the major factors in being a successful freelance actor is getting work, right?  Well ask any actor in the Bay area how to find out when auditions are happening and you’ll get as many answers as people you ask.

There is no one-stop shopping spot where people list auditions.  If there is, it has got to be Tampa’s best-kept secret.  Raise your hand if you knew that Jobsite just held their 2009-2010 season auditions last week and that American Stage held their auditions over a month ago?  Most other theaters are participating in the Tampa Area Unified Auditions next weekend, hosted by HCC Ybor. Read the rest of this entry »

Watch out everybody, Bridget’s unleashed for the summer!

Well, you know, that really is an overstatement ‘cos I’m not much of a late night gal, but the Gorilla Theatre is dark for the summer (which means we don’t have any shows going on and I’m working “normal” hours) so it’s time for me to get out more and …. to see theatre in other places.  This week I went to an All Out Rep show at the Ritz, I visited Arts on 9th, and went to the 5th Annual Night of Alternative Theatre at American Stage in St. Pete.

Oh, and I welcome all your comments on this blog (like “stop writing about yourself already” or “what’s with the strange European punctuation?”) so please chip in, loveys! Read the rest of this entry »

As a freelance artist, continuing every day is hard.  Really frickin’ hard sometimes.  I have to wake up ready to be my own personal secretary, accountant, publicist, dreamer and doer.  The plus side is that I am my own proverbial boss.  I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty good and fair boss.  I’m now also my own subordinate.  I always thought of myself as a good and hard worker, too.  So this should be cake, right?

Here’s how I make it as a freelance artist.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gorilla's Aubrey Hampton with four of this year's Young Dramatists.

The Tampa Bay area needs more playwrights. In the region of West Central Florida there are only 41 members of the Dramatists Guild — the national playwrights’ professional association — and of those 41, fewer than ten were sufficiently interested to come to Guild meetings in St. Pete last March, April and May. Where are the playwrights? Biding their time?

Maybe Gorilla Theatre can help. For the ninth year, this organization is hosting the Young Dramatists’ Project, a festival devoted to the best writing of local high school and middle school students. I attended last Sunday not to review the show, but to discover what our youngest playwrights might have to offer the area. Is there imaginative, innovative work coming from these teens? Might they eventually infuse the region with new talent?

Yes and yes. The first of the five plays that made it to the Gorilla stage this year uses instant messaging to tell us the story of a doomed love affair. Amanda Buck’s Sweet Nothings is about XXX2593 (Jamaica Reddick) and YYY4168 (Adom McRae), schoolmates who become sweethearts after she shows up as new girl at his high school. Buck has us watching on a large screen as the two lovers write each other over a period of months, and intersperses their writing with glimpses of their daily lives. Directed by David O’Hara, the play graphically demonstrates that even the most digital behavior can ingeniously be made theatrical. And even in the era of IM, love is still maddening.

Next on the lineup is Sam French’s This One Night in the Warehouse, a Pinteresque mindgame which sees two men (Chris Jackson and Curtis Belz) thrown into a locked room containing a gun with one bullet. Read the rest of this entry »

Bechir Sylvain, the picture says it all.

Last fall I had the incredible opportunity to work intimately on stage with Bechir Sylvain in Six Degrees of Separation.  I post his head shot because not only does it paint him as this irresistible yet down-to-earth-and-all-around-lovable, sincere guy.  It is also an accurate depiction of the actor who has claimed Tampa as his temporary home since the beginning of November.

When Bechir was offered the role of Mister at American Stage’s King Hedley II it seemed as though he might be our neighbor indefinitely. But, alas, his time in Tampa ends this weekend, and I wanted the Daily Loaf readers to know about this gem of an artist who has graced our stages and our local establishments for the last four months. Read the rest of this entry »

Marion Baldeon and Casey Hicks in The Agreeable Husband (Photo: Alex Catalano)

One of my goals when I took the leap last February and became a freelance artist was not only to have more time to commit to Jobsite, but also to collaborate with the artists I’ve met in the Tampa Bay area on original projects.  This not only ensures more work for artists in our community, but it raises a consciousness for Tampa-grown art.  The first to come to a fully realized production is The Agreeable Husband, a dance-theater piece based on Amy Vanderbilt’s “Complete Book of Etiquette”, a how-to book for husbands and wives published in 1952.  We need the community to help us with the next layer of the project, set to open this April.

I am conducting interviews with mothers, fathers and children who grew up with this book and its ideals.  If you or someone you know fits this description, we’d love to have your perspective in this project.  Please e-mail AgreeableHusband@gmail.com.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Editor's Note: Ami Sallee Corley is an actor, a teacher and now a blogger for CL. (That's Ami in the photo with Drew DeCaro, Bechir Sylvain and Petrus
Antonius, fellow members of the cast of Gorilla Theatre's recent Six Degrees of Separation.) I'm pleased to have her join the conversation, which she begins with a particularly cogent question for area artists.]

In a city where an artist’s choice is to   survive on crumbs or leave, why would anyone want to stay and starve as an artist in Tampa?

I believe there are some pretty fantastic reasons out there.

If we are to build a thriving, sustainable arts and culture scene here in Tampa, we should at first focus on what makes it tempting to stay.  Here goes. Read the rest of this entry »