Jackie Jones Explains Why the Artsies Were So Much Fun

We recently received this very gracious email from veteran Richmond actress Jackie Jones. It's filled with so much of Jackie's signature joie de vivre that we asked her if we could post it here. We think the spirit of her note captured the evening's excitement perfectly. If you were unable to attend, this is what the Artsies felt like.

To my Friends at Theatre IV,

Please accept my thanks for hosting the Richmond Theatre Critics Circle Awards 2011. Also, please pass along my appreciation to all the staff involved. I had a ball!

I was grateful that the strike after our final Cat on a Hot Tin Roof performance ended early enough for me to curl my hair. Yet all the hairspray that kept it together even with the force of Big Daddy’s hand every performance of Cat was not enough to help when a man fell into me and uncoiled my coif.

Some of my favorite RTCCA 2011 moments were:

~ The valet parking! Wow, they were expedient.

~ Being escorted to my seat by the stunning peach-satin-clad usher who only hours before had been striking at Firehouse. Annella Kaine was our Cat on a Hot Tin Roof sound tech and I forgot that she might have a life outside of a dark theatre and her crew blacks.

~ Telling the man next to me to stop texting (and he did … and then moved at intermission!).

~ Audra Honaker’s bird (see photo of Audra and Jackie at top of post). Kim Jones Clark’s golden mermaid dress. Terry Snyder’s authentic Davy Crockett scarf. Everyone’s gorgeous self.

~ Chatting with Regina Carreras before the Awards began, peeking back at her when Morrie Piersol won her necklace, and looking forward to Carol Piersol wearing that necklace to the next big soiree!

~ Bryan Harris and his amazing RTCC band. Thank you to the playbill compilers for naming Stephanie, Craig, Steve and Bryan in the playbill.

~ The script. Funny and insider and what a kick.

~ David Janeski’s imitation of John Porter!

~ Terry Snyder’s thank you song and everyone snapping with him.

~ His students’ loving tribute to Ernie McClintock and then later, J Ron Fleming’s proud proclamation that without Ernie’s inspiration, J Ron would not have become an actor.

~ Michael Gooding’s heartfelt swell and Don Warren’s fond remembrance of Jay and his laugh. During the pre-show reception, Don noted how many of us wearing purple and commented that it was Jay’s favorite color.

~ The audience response to what we thought was the end of “9 People’s Favorite Thing” (see photo of cast above and to the left) and after a forever ovation, the tag to their song--especially since [title of show] did eventually tie for Best Musical!

~ Scott Wichmann’s eloquent toast to his challenges of the past year and the new ones to come.

~ The concept of The People’s Choice Award: more Fundraising and FUN-raising.

~ 2 Men / 1 Dream - starring Jason Roop and Jack Lauterback and featuring caricatures of a few favorite Richmond directors and choreographers played by themselves. Side note: Frances Wessells was my choreographer for Youth on Stage in 1974. We toured the state; her life experience and wisdom made a profound impact on me. I realize now as I type that even then she was further along in her life than I am now in my own! Maybe I still have time to catch up.

I missed the grand promenade of the RTCC members from Artsies of old. I hope next year the powers-that-be will reinstate that segment so we can see all the critics standing together and applaud their efforts to put on this wonderful celebration of our theatre community, for bestowing nods and awards which stroke our egos, offer terrific marketing tools for the companies and individuals, most especially for supporting the Richmond Theatre Artists Fund - and of course providing a perfect “theatre prom” to don my purple sparkly dress, new rhinestone combs, and University of Richmond loan of my Big Mama necklace, courtesy of Heather Hogg.

The evening went by in a flash! My one suggestion might be to include phonetic spellings for the more unusual names to spare the presenters/hosts embarrassment. Oh, and also for the mics to be a bit louder or more well-placed--there were some presenters who were hard to hear. I mention this hint for presenters not used to hard copy scripts: perhaps they should consider either marking their cues with tabs OR carrying their scripts to follow along. (I guess that was three suggestions. Oh well, good things come in threes.)

I can hardly wait for next year.

Warmly,

Jackie Jones

Of Fall, Hot Tin, and Names Above the Title

Posted by Bruce Miller
Fall is really here. The calendar says we have to wait till Sept 23, but I'm not buyin'. The 2011-12 theatre season is well underway, marked by the openings of Central VA's first comedy of the year (Lend Me a Tenor), drama (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), and musical (Keep on the Sunny Side).

As Lucian Restivo from Stage B posted Friday on Facebook, "it's cardigan and scarf weather," and he couldn't be happier. After the dog days of summer, I'm right there with him.

I made my reservations for Hot Tin and I'm really looking forward to it. It's definitely one of the new season's highlights for me. I loved Who's Afraid last season from the same Rusty Wilson / Firehouse directing / producing team. Hot Tin is a great play--a masterwork--and Rusty's assembled an unbeatable cast: Alan Sader, Laine Satterfield, Adrian Rieder, Jackie Jones, Larry Cook, Dean Knight, Andy Boothby, Laura Rikard, Stephanie M. Hill, and three talented no-neck-monsters.

Susie Haubenstock wrote a great review, and I've heard nothing but glowing word-of-mouth. If you don't have your tickets yet, I encourage you to get them. I suspect they'll start selling out most performances pretty soon.

I'm excited that Rusty will be directing In the Next Room or the vibrator play with Cadence in Barksdale's Theatre Gym next summer.

This coming Friday, we'll open Becky's New Car, a very clever and contemporary new comedy from Steven Dietz, at Hanover Tavern. We're trying something new, and if you have a reaction, I'd love to hear it.

Bouncing off my desire to celebrate and promote Richmond's "stars" with a little more fanfare, Billy Christopher Maupin, who is not only directing Becky's but marketing it as well, decided to place Melissa Johnston Price's name above the title in our promotional materials--not our standard practice.

At first, I buzzed B C and asked him not to do that again without checking with me first. I was worried about setting precedents and all that. But then I decided that this will be a good experiment.

Melissa Johnston Price is certainly a local star, holding a prominent place in the pantheon of Virginia's most revered actors. And the character of "Becky" certainly is the leading role in the play. Why the heck not let the ticket-buying public know that this is a special opportunity to see an exceptional artist in a terrific part?

Sometimes I think we Richmond producers need to set aside all timidity and begin to blow the horn a little louder about Central Virginia's brightest and best. If we don't, aren't we failing to create the public excitement we need to create in order to grow the overall Richmond audience?

What do you think? When we're lucky enough to have a star in a major role, should we put his or her name above the title? You can communicate with me publicly as a comment to this post, or privately as an email.

I can't type my email directly cause little robots that do nothing but surf blog posts 24/7 pick it up and start sending me even more spam. Or so I'm told by our IT gurus. So here's today's puzzler. My address is: b.miller@ the name of either of our theatres followed by the word Richmond.org.

Thanks.

--Bruce Miller

"Theater Talk" Talks Back with Barksdale

Posted by Bruce Miller
Theater Talk is an acclaimed PBS television series devoted to the world of the stage. To the best of my knowledge, it provides the nation’s preeminent in-depth, theatre-focused TV coverage. The show began on New York television in 1993, and continues to be co-hosted today by Michael Riedel (Broadway columnist for the New York Post) and the series producer Susan Haskins, pictured above and to the left.

Theater Talk is one of the few independent productions on PBS and now airs weekly on Thirteen/WNET in New York and WGBH in Boston. CUNY TV also rebroadcasts the show each week, offering NYC viewers additional opportunities to catch each new interview.

Thirty-five other PBS affiliate stations around the country pick up the program, including WHTJ in Charlottesville, WUNC in Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, WUNE in Charlotte, and WHUT and WETA in Washington D. C. Alas, the show is not currently being aired on WCVE in Richmond, but that gives us (and John Porter?) something we can work on in 2009. If enough of us in the community begin to promote the same idea, our Community Ideas Station may respond positively by broadcasting the show.

For the time being, theatre aficionados in Greater Richmond can keep up with the show on line, by visiting the program’s website at http://www.theatertalk.org/. You can watch streaming videos of current and/or archived programs, and subscribe to their podcast.

I bring all this up because I was delighted to receive a comment to our blog, on New Year’s Day no less, from Susan Haskins, producer and co-host of Theater Talk. She had recently read Billy Christopher Maupin’s article of Monday March 10, 2008 announcing an upcoming episode of Theater Talk during which Haskins and Riedel planned to interview the all black Broadway cast of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Apparently that show never took place, and she wrote in to the Barksdale Buzz to explain why.

She didn't have to write. The post was nearly nine months old, and her responsibilities to explain her program to theatre lovers in Richmond VA are minimal, seeing as how the show isn't even broadcast in this market. But write she did. I was mightily impressed.

More and more the national theatre scene is noticing what’s going on here at Barksdale and in Richmond, and this is all to the good. The more our theatre community connects with national institutions and artists, the stronger we become.

We appreciate Ms Haskins taking notice and corresponding with us. We hope to begin a friendly grassroots campaign to bring Theater Talk to WCVE on a regular basis.

--Bruce Miller

Update: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Debate

Posted by Billy Christopher Maupin

Last week, I wrote about an episode of Theater Talk with Elizabeth Ashley and John Lahr debating the relevance of the Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof featuring an all African-American cast.

In response to an email I sent, Theater Talk replied:

We are scheduled to have several of the cast members a couple of weeks from now who we'll ask about this, but I didn't want to "jinx" that by putting it in the press release. The show was supposed to be about the BACKGROUND of the play, but then Lahr started talking about how the play was really about people tainted by the legacy of being slaveholders (I trivialize his point), so a Black cast didn't make sense ("like an all-white August Wilson wouldn't make sense"). Ashley strongly disagreed, so it turned into this interesting debate. [sic]

--Billy Christopher Maupin

Panel to Debate Relevance of the All African-American Cast of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Posted by Billy Christopher Maupin
There has been quite a bit of buzz surrounding the revival of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Tin Roof, which opens tonight at the Broadhurst Theatre. Why? It's been seen on Broadway in four different productions before:

1955- Director Elia Kazaan, Starring Burl Ives and Ben Gazzara

1974- Director Michael Kahn, Starring Elizabeth Ashley

1990- Director Howard Davies, Starring Polly Holliday, Charles Durning, and Kathleen Turner

2003- Director Anthony Page, Starring Ashley Judd

This is the first of these five productions to feature an all African-American cast. However, in many of the articles about the show, TheatreVirginia is mentioned as having produced what is considered to be the ONLY all African-American production prior to this revival.

The revival boasts a spectacularly talented cast with three Tony Award winners (Phylicia Rashad for A Raisin in the Sun, James Earl Jones for The Great White Hope and Fences, and Anika Noni Rose for Caroline, or Change, also recently seen in the motion picture adaptation of Dreamgirls), as well as the Oscar-nominated Terrence Howard. But the buzz doesn't center on all that prestige.

Today on Playbill.com a headline caught my eye: Ashley and Lahr Will Debate Cat Revival on March 8 "Theater Talk". They are to "debate the relevance and implications of doing Tennessee Williams' fifties Southern family drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with an all-Black cast."

There are four panelists in this discussion.

Elizabeth Ashley, star of the 1974 revival. (You may also remember her from Evening Shade or perhaps as the original Corrie in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park.)

John Lahr, critic for The New Yorker

Susan Haskins, Executive Producer of Theatre Talk.

Michael Riedel, a writer for the New York Post.




These four people will be debating the relevance of an all African-American cast of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

What are your thoughts? The floor is open for comments!

(Oh, and if you would like to contact Theater Talk, you can click here. Their email address is theatertlk@aol.com.)

--Billy Christopher Maupin