Greetings, all,
 
I have just gotten off the phone with Kim Midkiff (our education and outreach coordinator) and this is the status of Thursday morning’s show:
 
Because over 100 of our Thursday morning audience is to come from Pigeon Forge, and because the Smokey Mountains are anticipating up to eight inches of snow tonight, the decision was made to reschedule those students for next Wednesday.  As a result, this Thursday morning’s Season for Youth performance has been CANCELLED.
 
This does not affect the rest of the schedule.
 
To the cast:  Also, as a reminder, tonight following the performance we have a talkback with the audience, which is a great way to meet some of the people who come to our productions.  It usually lasts no more than 45 minutes, takes place right on the stage, and starts after you have changed out of costumes.
 
Best,
 
Joe Millett

Reminder:

Love’s Embers   will be presented this week in the CBT Lab Theatre.

Love’s Embers  is an evening of short contemporary plays based on Shakespearian sonnets.  Several of the leading American playwrights, such as Tony Kushner, John Guare, Marsha Norman, and Eric Bogosian, were each sent one or two sonnets and asked to write short plays inspired by them.

The result is a group of unique and fascinating plays that convey the essence of the sonnets in a manner more relatable to our contemporary concepts of love.  The show illuminates many of the broad and varied aspects of love through a stylistic edge that is all-at-once comical, tragic, and insightful.

Admission is free.

Performance times:

• Thursday, February 1  8 p.m.
• Friday, February 2      8 p.m.
• Saturday, February 3  2 p.m.
• Saturday, February 3  8 p.m.
• Sunday, February 4    2 p.m.

We have onlne a few shots of Fences   taken during the Final Dress Rehearsal.

We’ve also added a little viewer so you can just scroll along and highlight the image you to see, and it should automatically show larger in the frame to the right.  You can find the pictures at http://www.uttheatre.org/fencesfeature.htm.

Enjoy!

Roger

From the trade journal Variety  comes an article interesting regarding use of the web to market a show:

The producers of “The Pirate Queen,” the new musical from “Les Miserables” creative duo Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg, are ramping up the show’s Castcom, a video diary of the tuner’s development that was updated daily on the Web during the show’s fall tryout in Chicago.

Castcom, which logged 350,000 hits between September and December, reps an unprecedented use of online content in the marketing of a Broadway show. Set to relaunch Tuesday, the redesigned site will incorporate podcasts of the Castcom segments that can be downloaded and viewed on iTunes and iPods.

Read the whole article.

Go to the Pirate Queen website.

It’s always nice to see public acknowledgement of the work done here at the Clarence Brown Theatre.  Those who have seen our production of Fences are raving about it.

Knoxville News-Sentinel drama critic Doug Mason attended our Preview perfomance and his review was published in Saturday (Jan. 27, 2007) edition.  After a lengthy summary of the play, he provides his assessment of our production:

The ensemble cast is first rate. Chicago actor A.C. Smith lives Troy Maxson. Never let ‘em catch you acting is advice actors get a lot. Smith’s Maxson is as fully realized a character as I’ve ever seen on stage. Every action, from rage to good humor to self-pity, rises organically from inside the man, and not from a prompt in the script.

The cast, the set, the costumes - they’re all wonderful. And guest director Ron Himes has assembled all these elements into something even finer than their individual parts.

You might have noticed that Doug’s reviews have been rather positive this season.  He seems to like what we’re doing:

“Fences” represents another high mark for the UT theater department, which is undergoing a renaissance under the direction of department head Cal MacLean.

Read Doug Mason’s review here.

We’ll have a very wide variety of things covered here, but today I just wanted to note what a few of the people here (or who have been here) are up to.  Please add your notes about those we’ve missed…

Tony Award-winning UT Theatre alumnus John Cullum continues to be busy. He just concluded a holiday run of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! on Broadway and will be appearing in a Roundabout Theatre Company revival of 110 in the Shade at Studio 54, scheduled to open in April.

You can see current Knoxville resident David Keith on network television — at least for now.  He’s a cast member of the CBS comedy The Class (WVLT TV-8, Mondays at 8:30 p.m.).  David plays Yonk Allen, a retired football player. Notice the UT football helmet in his house… David also appeared in five motion pictures released in 2006, the last being Bottom’s Up  (with Paris Hilton)!

Also appearing on your screen on a recurring basis is Dale Dickey, who plays Patty the Daytime Hooker on NBC’s My Name is Earl (WBIR TV-10, Wednesdays at 8 p.m.).  Other TV appearances last year included Justice, The Closer, Cold Case, and Gilmore Girls.  Dale has been busy with film work as well; Take and The Yellow Wallpaper are in post-production; Southern Baptist Sissies is in development.

Another former UT Theatre student on the silver screen is Russell Sams.  He appeared in Driftwood, released in 2006, and will appear in The Flock (soon to be released), and Pox, now in post-production.

UT Theatre graduate Logan Marshall-Green has been doing a lot of television (The O.C., 24, Law and Order, etc.) and some movies (The Great Raid, Alchemy), but he remains close to the stage: he received a Drama Desk award for his Off-Broadway performances in The Distance From Here in 2004.  Other Off-Broadway credits include Dog Sees God, Swimming in the Shallows, and Bo Decker in Bus Stop at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.  Logan’s now working on the Public Theatre production of King Lear, with Kevin Kline in the lead.  James Lapine directs; Stephen Sondheim is co-composer.  Logan will play Edmund.

CBT company member  David Alley will be spending some time away from here — reprising his role as Charlie in Stones in His Pockets at Playmakers Repertory Theatre in North Carolina (January 17 - February 11). 

John Feltch directs Stones – as he also did in our production last year in the Carousel.  He also performed in our production of Anna Karenina.

We’ll have more later, but that’s all from me for now — now it’s your turn.  You can add your comments — or, for your own blogs, just ask Roger…

Hello everyone!
 
In the name of clearer and more open communication, we have scheduled a Theatre Department Meeting this Friday from 2:30 - 3:30.  The faculty/staff aren’t required to come, but if you have information or announcements that should go to a bunch of our majors all at once, this would be the forum for you!
 
Alternatively, if you have announcements/issues/questions that you would like me to present for you at this meeting, you can let me know. 
 
This meeting will be in the Lab, and will not go past 3:30. 
 
Casey Sams
Theatre Department
University of Tennessee