|
|
| >>>Click here to return to the NEWSLETTER |
 NEW COMPANY members: The TACT Art Board is pleased to welcome Jeffrey C. Hawkins and Mackenzie Meehan to the TACT Acting Company. TACT audiences will remember Jeffrey from his several Salon appearances, most recently The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse, and for his chilling portrayal of the racial "Professor" in TACT’s production of Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy in 2009. This summer, Jeffrey is off at the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival performing 4,000 roles in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). Well, it seems like 4,000. Mackenzie comes to TACT out of the Graduate Acting program at NYU and has been a steady feature in our Salons this past year. This summer she traipsed off with us to Central PA for our performance of Candle-Light at Bucknell University and is then heading off to DC, where she will be appearing in Circle, Mirror, Transformation at the Studio Theatre through October. John Plumpis spent early March at the Papermill Playhouse in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers. Late April and early May found him in New Orleans in a new musical called Soul Doctor. At present, John lounging in lovely Saugatuck, on the shores of Lake Michigan, where he and his wife Celia Smith are appearing together in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at the Mason Street Warehouse. John says he loves seeing his wife onstage – she was Miss Barraway in TACT’s production of The Cocktail Party – but loves working with her even more. After this run, they will pay a visit to the Stratford Festival, Canada and spend time with family in the Midwest and western NY before returning to NYC. Barry Satchwell Smith has been spending a lot of time with newTACTics, and is thrilled at the success of its premiere play reading of TorC, by Vincent Delaney. It was a great start of this new initiative within TACT and bodes well for the addition and extension of the TACT calendar season next year, with the introduction of newTACTics Summer Play Reading Festival next June: A new week, a new play throughout the month. Speaking of newTACTics, Lynn Wright was honoured to play Jane in the newTACTics salon of TorC, directed by Mr. Smith. Lynn is also looking forward to working on The Memorandum in the Fall! Greg McFadden can be seen in the movie Solitary Man in theaters now! That’s Greg, along with Michael Douglas and Richard Schiff in the restaurant. He said he almost forgot to mention it in his news because, "I did it so damn long ago." Darrie Lawrence has been happily exploring the world of "story theatre" in a really excellent theatrical version of Babette’s Feast, adapted for the stage by Rose Courtney. Somewhat like a TACT Salon except "we rehearsed a lot, threw away the scripts, and looked at each other. Guess it’s not like our Salons at all!" She also did a reading of a new play, Withitness by Ian Mairs in July, and now is enjoying the rest of the summer. Cynthia Darlow continues to be joyfully engaged with Billy Elliot in the Chicago production. Her darling Richard (TACT company member Richard Ferrone) spent several weeks with her out in Chicago. "Chicago is a great city and we urge you all to visit. I miss my fellow TACTors and TACTresses and TACTlovers!" Simon Jones celebrated a curious milestone on July 18th. It was the seventh anniversary of the arrival of the first of what now amounts to 540 anonymous postcards, sent mainly from Brooklyn, at an average rate of four or five a month. He still has no idea as to who is sending them, or whether the sender knows what pleasure he or she is giving the family, who eagerly pounce on each one in the vain search for a clue. He finally "came clean" to Leo Carey who wrote it up for the Talk of the Town section of the New Yorker dated May 10th. The postcards continue to arrive, about 13 since the item appeared, and show no sign of abating. Long may they continue. Simon is capping his summer with a trip to his native England. He'll return in time to start rehearsals for TACT's Fall production of The Memorandum. Greg Salata once again directed the Siegfried Geyer, P.G. Wodehouse play, Candle-Light in July for our Lewisburg constituency. The performance was on July 17th at Bucknell Uuniversity. Many of the original cast reprieved their roles and fun was had by all! This Fall, Greg will be working hard trying to learn "Ptydepe" for The Memorandum. After directing the TACT production of The Cocktail Party in the spring, Scott Alan Evans went off to direct the NYU Graduate Acting program’s graduating class in their end of year League Showcase. The Showcase is presented each year for casting directors, agents and industry leaders here in NYC and in LA. So, Scott got to tool off to LA for a few days as well. Dude! Nora Chester spent June & July at the Monomoy Theatre in Chatham, MA (where she has performed for the past 19 summers) as "Golde" in Fiddler on the Roof (June 22 – July 3) and Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit (July 20-24). She also managed to spend as much time as possible in various boats, covered in sunblock and sand. In September-October she will be appearing in Equus at the new theatre Playhouse on Park in Hartford, CT and teaching/coaching in the Actor Training Program at the Hartt School Theatre Division at University of Hartford. James Murtaugh graced the EST stage in Lenin’s Embalmers by Vern Thiessen this past Spring and then graced the TACT Salon Stage in The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse in May. Coming up for Jim? He and his wife, Alice, are planning a trip to deepest darkest Africa in the fall. In the meantime, he says he’s trying to improve his golf game..."Hey, I can dream can’t I?" Keep dreaming, Jimmy! The most important production in Jenn Thompson’s household came this past spring with the arrival of Naomi, their beautiful adopted daughter from Ethiopia. This summer, Jenn and her Tony Award nominated husband, Stephen Kunken, have been doting and loving parents. This fall, Jenn will be directing TACT Mainstage production of The Memorandum. Delphi Harrington played Bette Davis in Interviewing Miss Daisy by Laura Maria Censabella, in Series B of the Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon of new one-act plays. "The cast, the director and play are wonderful and it’s been a real challenge," Delphi reports. Tickets were scarce, with most evenings sold out. And what has Mary Bacon been doing? "I’m doing Beth in Dinner With Friends at Westport Country Playhouse till end of June, and am doing Theresa Rebeck’s new play premiere The Novelist with Michael Cristofer directed by Jeremy Cohen at the Dorset Theatre Festival in August." So there you go! Jack Koenig has been Mr. Busy…standing by for Boyd Gaines (in the role of Guthrie McClintic) in the new A.R. Gurney play The Grand Manner. "It’s a play about the young Pete Gurney meeting the First Lady of the American Stage, Katharine Cornell, backstage at the Martin Beck after a performance of Antony and Cleopatra in 1948." The show runs at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center through Aug. 1st. In September, after a few weeks of leisure travel, "I will be standing by again, this time for Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway production of The Pitmen Painters. It’s an import from London with the original British cast (except for the standbys) that tells the true story of a group of coal miners in the 1930s who started painting for an art appreciation course and unexpectedly became the celebrated darlings of the art establishment, for a time at least. That will run until the new year." David Staller continues into his fifth year as artistic director and founder of Ginold Theatrical Group, which presents the juggernaut reading series Project Shaw (www.projectshaw.com). He will be addressing the Shaw Symposium at the Shaw Festival in Canada on July 24th. He’s also busy creating what will be this country’s first version of the Shaw Festival, to be centered in NYC. This will include two fully mounted Shaw plays, one of the new plays commissioned by GTG and several other programs city-wide. He also runs the GTG educational programs with inner-city teens, record voice-overs, and enjoys traveling when possible. Todd Gearhart had a great summer, working on an independent film called Dogs Lie. "The highlight of the experience was getting to drive a Maserati." He was then off to star in Sunset Boulevard with Stephanie Powers at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine. Later, Todd heads to D.C. to play the lead in Sabrina Fair at the Ford’s Theatre in D.C. "Or as I like to call it, The Bogie part." Scott Schafer is off to the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis in August for their fall production for You Can’t Take It With You. The production then heads out to the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Scott will be playing the role of Mr. De Pinna, the iceman who arrives one day at the Sycamore’s home and never leaves. Interestingly, it’s the role he played in the TACT production of the play in 1998! The more things change the more they stay the same… |
| >>>Click here to return to the NEWSLETTER |