The nominations are coming! The nominations are coming!
Not the Tony nominations -- they were announced yesterday morning and should be in today's Post-Gazette. I mean the nominations for the Gene Kelly Awards for Excellence in High School Musicals, to be announced at 5 p.m. today by the CLO to a cheering throng at the Benedum Center. We know that throng will cheer, because they're the ones receiving the nominations, which means word has gone out to them in advance, to be sure they'll be there to receive their medallions and have their pictures taken. And since dozens of high school teachers and students already know about the nominations, you can bet word has seeped out here and there. (Cue the images of the gossip-spreading "Telephone Hour" song from "Bye Bye Birdie.")
I was a Kelly judge this year, but I missed Friday's marathon judges' meeting because I was at a critics' conference in Sarasota. I submitted my votes for the shows I judged, but I didn't get to participate in the long, intense discussions, so I don't have an inkling what the nominations will be. I wait with bated breath, and I'll probably find some results to disagree with -- what judge wouldn't?
I have some thoughts about the Tony nominations, too, but I'll hold them back until I've bolstered opinion with a little more knowledge. I'm in New York right now, seeing eight Broadway shows this week, after which I'll know more of what I'm talking about.
Happy Birthday, Bill and August
The end of the term at Pitt and the critics' gathering (about which, expect a full report next week) made me an even more infrequent blogger than usual, so I missed congratulating Shakespeare on his 445th birthday (a week ago Thursday, April 23), and I missed noting sadly what would have been August Wilson's 64th birthday (a week ago Monday, April 27). It's still hard to believe August isn't still with us, harvesting that creative imagination and artistry. What a loss.
The biggest celebration of August's birthday wasn't in Pittsburgh, but New York, where nine local winners from Atlanta, Pittsburgh and New York met (fittingly) at Broadway's August Wilson Theatre in the first national finals of the August Wilson Monologue Contest. I've had a brief report from August's dramaturg and friend, Todd Kreidler, who said it was such a wonderful evening as to ensure the contest will continue into the future.
Kenny Leon was emcee, talking about August while the judges scored each contestant. Ruben Santiago-Hudson also talked, and he and others, including Phylicia Rashad, read "Money Blues," a selection of excerpts from the 10 Pittsburgh Cycle plays that Todd arranged. Best of all, the occasion (which was free to the public) was a kind of reunion of Wilsonian soldiers, aka the August Wilson theatrical family.
The contestants met Todd for breakfast at the Edison Hotel Coffee Shop, August's favorite Broadway diner, and they all won boxed sets of the 10 cycle plays published by TCG. The main thing I don't know is who won the competition, for which the prizes included small amounts of cash and a major scholarship to Point Park University. I'll catch up with that and let you know.
Meanwhile, on Pittsburgh stages
A lot of theater rolled down the three rivers while I was grading term papers and convening with the critics. First was "Angels in America: Perestroika," the second part of Tony Kushner's great contemporary epic (at Pitt, ended April 11). Holly Thuma had directed Part 1; this was directed in a different, equally compelling mode by C.T. Steele. It's been said (even by Kushner) that Part 2 is "klunkier" than Part 1, because it was put together quickly, but I didn't feel that. Rather, Part 2 just feels more tentative and unresolved, as it would have to be, looking ahead of itself into the unknown. It was certainly fun to see different students take on these great roles, but with the continued stiffening of pros Doug Mertz and Elena Alexandratos as Roy Cohn and Hannah Pitt.
"Angels" supposes that God went on vacation and left mankind to its own devices on April 18, 1906, right after the San Francisco earthquake. Who can contradict that? But just how much was he on the job before that?
I caught up with Keith Reddin's "Human Error" (at City through May 10), which was reviewed by Anna Rosenstein. It's one of those seemingly-slight plays that grows on you as it shrinks in your rearview mirror. Reddin's wit is obvious right off, but you don't exactly know where it's going -- as Miranda (Tasha Lawrence) and Erik (Matt Walton), the two air crash investigators, bickered in an early scene, I made a note, "he succeeds getting under her skin, if not under her clothes," only to discover in the next scene that he does both. (But I can't believe he keeps his socks on.) The greater emotional depths reveal themselves slowly in the metaphoric connection between airplane crashes and human relationships.
Still, their investigation begins to seem like a long serial date until the play deepens with the introduction of a crash survivor, Ron (Ray Anthony Thomas). At the end, Miranda and Ron say goodbye, wishing each other safe trip -- and suddenly the emotion hit home for me. I complimented Lawrence on this a few days later, when we did an audio interview for the PG (click on podcasts on the theater page and go to April 10), and she said she remembered something had been unusual at that performance -- she hadn't been quite in control, and it struck her in an "odd" way. . . . Wow. . . . How often do we forget that theater is a live art and each performance really is different?
(By the way, our May 1 podcast is a conversation with Ray Thomas, touching on "Human Error" but also his many August Wilson roles.)
I caught up with Lorca's "Yerma" (Quantum Theatre, closed April 26), also reviewed by Anna. The excitement of Lorca, I think, is in his daring poetic yoking of opposites: earthy grit and the stars, dance and murder, social oppression and soaring flight.
I myself reviewed O'Neill's "Moon for the Misbegotten" (at the Public through May 17), which strikes me as sharing something with August Wilson's "Seven Guitars" (opened last weekend at Pittsburgh Playwrights, through May 24): besides being tragi-comedies by two of the premier American playwrights, they're both backyard plays that dramatize personal loss. "Seven Guitars" stars Homestead native, Pitt grad and Wilsonian soldier Montae Russell, whose podcast interview is due to go online later this week.
I'm looking forward to seeing "Seven Guitars" next week with some alumni of my August Wilson course at Pitt. If you're one of those alumni, please contact me at crawson@post-gazette.com.
And now to bed. I have a "meet the nominees" event to go to in NYC this morning -- Tony nominees, that is. I wonder who the Kelly nominees will be, back at the Benedum?
By the way, a whole slew of Kelly Critic reviews of high school musicals finally made it through the Chris Rawson editing machine. You can find them piled up under either of two links on the PG theater page.
Posted
May 06 2009, 02:54 AM
by
Christopher Rawson