Mondays are Dark #5

Nothing as juicy as a new theatre district in the Everglades this week, but lots of stuff to read.

Tis the season...

Christine Dolen blogs about some of the upcoming seasons at two small theatres at opposite ends of our region: New Theatre, New Season obviously deals with New Theatre -

At this year's Carbonell Awards, the theater scored four of five nominations for best new work, and though William Mastrosimone's Dirty Business at Florida Stage won the award, New Theatre's dominance of the category, under the artistic direction of Ricky J. Martinez, certainly makes a statement.

- and DramaWorks builds a thought-provoking season is an ungainly title for her piece on Palm Beach Dramaworks.

Theaters are rolling out their...season announcements, trying to entice new subscribers and , in these hard times for the arts and for everyone, keep the ones they have. Palm Beach Dramaworks ...is lifting the curtain on the four shows of its upcoming season.

Behind the Scenes...

It's hard to forget the violence and gore of GableStage's The Lieutenant of Inishmore; but that's an extreme example. You've seen more of it than you might suspect. Miami Artzine interviews Fight Choreographer Paul Homza:

Personally, I believe any physicality, be it a fight, a faint, a twirling hug, or a jovial slap on the back should be approached from a stage combat point if view, primarily for safety reasons.

Speaking of Choreography...

Miami Artzine's Andi Arthur talks to the Playground Theatre's Stephanie Ansin about their latest original work, Inanna and the Huluppu Tree:

“Four actors learned how to fly for this show,” said Ansin.

And you thought dialect work was hard!

Burt, on Dom..

Most of us don't associate Dom DeLuise with South Florida. But he was definitely connected to the theatre scene, according to the TCPalm News:

DeLuise and Charles Nelson Reilly, along with other major stars, were regular guests at Reynolds’ dinner theater in the 1980s, where DeLuise acted in and directed several blockbuster shows. He taught acting classes at the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training, BRITT, attracting drama school graduates from all over the country.

DeLuise and his wife, the former actress Carol Arthur, purchased a condo across the street from the theater, bringing their young sons — Peter, Michael and David — with them for many extended visits.

Click through for quotes from Burt Reynolds, John D'Aquino, and several South Floridians who worked with DeLuise.

On Havana Bourgeois:

Christine Dolen interviews Danny Pino, who's appearing in Havana Bourgeois at Actors' Playhouse:

Though most TV viewers know Danny Pino as Scotty Valens, the intense detective on the CBS crime series Cold Case, the Miami-born actor and Florida International University theater grad is also an artist who treasures and thinks deeply about his Cuban roots.

Pino, who graduated from Miami Coral Park High School and FIU, says there were several reasons he said yes to playing Alberto Varela, an aspiring art director who is the play's central character, even though it meant temporarily uprooting his wife Lilly and their two young sons from their home in Los Angeles.

He came back because he misses his parents, Juan Pino and Consuelo DeArmas, and the rest of his extended Miami family. He loves the challenge of doing theater, with the unique give-and-take of each performance. And the play, he says, speaks to him on many levels.

She also spoke with Carlos Lacámara, who wrote the play:

''I wrote it for non-Cuban Americans,'' he says. ``I wanted to look at a geopolitical event and go inside it as much as possible. I purposefully made English the language of the play. . . . But a prerequisite for me was that Cubans had to approve of it and say that's how it was.''

Who needs the Post?

While the Palm Beach Post seems to be out of the South Florida theatre news business for all practical purposes, the Post's former theater reviewer, Hap Erstein, still finds time to scoop them from Stuart, Florida:

Assembling a stage show of “The Wizard of Oz,” specifically one based on the beloved 1939 movie that starred Judy Garland as tornado-swept Dorothy Gale, can be a tricky proposition. Just ask Nigel West, the British director whose production arrives at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach on Tuesday for a one-week stay.

The Kravis Center is less than a mile from the Palm Beach Post. Stuart is about 60 miles. Pretty pathetic, huh?

Meanwhile, In Palm Beach...

...the Royal Poinciana Playhouse is still closed. The Palm Beach Daily News reports that an independent task force will give its report to the Palm Beach Village Council on Monday, May 11.

The acrimony engendered by any discussion of a theater at the Royal Poinciana Plaza has been so distracting that Vicki Halmos and Bill Metzger decided they had to step in. The Palm Beach residents volunteered a couple of months ago to form an independent citizens' task force to assess what kind of a theater might be viable and desirable at the plaza.

"We take no position on whether the Playhouse should be restored or a new theater built," Metzger said. "We are trying to assemble the best information on what a contemporary performing art center ought to be for Palm Beach."

This group is doing what neither the developer nor the Palm Beach Theatre Guild has done: talked to all the potential users to see what their needs are, and then created a specification based on the actual needs, with no regard for the current desires of either side.