Finally finished after, what…almost two years. My bad, I got distracted by theatre and growing a baby. But here are a couple songs:
Lincoln Song
as performed by Tosin Morohunfola
Teddy Roosevelt Song
as performed by Tosin Morohunfola and M. Tyler Horn
See the remount this summer at CRT!
From John Moore of The Denver Post: “Maurice LaMee has made the Creede Repertory Theatre one of Colorado’s most respected companies.”
Read all about it – and the other awards we got this year:
Our Education Director, Renee Stynchula, shared this funny and encouraging story with our Board recently:
Jessica Jackson and I were manning our booth for Creede’s annual Chocolate Fest this November. We set up in the Ruth lobby (to keep warm!) and to give folks the opportunity to tour our new space. A woman walked in and asked if we had been involved with the tour show “The Wright Stuff.” We said, “yes,” and introduced ourselves. She continued to tell us that her 5 year old son came home from Kindergarten in Alamosa excited after having just seen the play. He was holding the book that he received from one of the actors after the show, and he gave his mother a virtual “tour” of the play, flipping through the pages and reliving his favorite moments. At the end of the book we printed the blueprints for the original Wright Flyer. The little boy looked up at his mother and begged her to help him build the airplane!
This story tells me a few things about the outcomes of our Young Audience Outreach Tour program this year: 1) We are capturing the imaginations of children who may one day become theatre patrons, donors, or artists. 2) We are capturing the imaginations of parents who are discovering the magic of theatre through their children’s eyes. 3) We are helping teachers in their efforts to teach core subjects and make reading fun. 4) We are giving children tools they can use to communicate with their families and friends.
And, finally, here is a teacher’s response from our teacher evaluations:
“We can’t thank Creede enough for the experience. Your prep materials [study guide] were used early in the day and tied in beautifully with our aviation theme field day. The books were a HUGE surprise and much loved and appreciated by our students.
Your staff and actors were absolutely professional. Rarely are we able to include our students with severe and profound needs in our activities. We were so happy to be able to bring them, and your actors were so professional that it didn’t phase them to have an unusual crowd right up front.
For many of our students it was their first time seeing a live, professional play. They really enjoyed it and admired your creativity and staging.” Cris Tracy, Teacher, Mt. Garfield Middle School, Clifton, CO
Thank you so much for the work you have done and are doing to ensure that CRT is able to make such an important impact on the lives of children!
The Wright Stuff - 2011
Renee
One of the songs from our recording of the music from The Bad Man. This should be the lovely Kate Berry singing, since she’s our Bessy, but due to scheduling conflicts and last minute mishaps, she couldn’t make the recording session. So, it’s me. Thanks to Courtney La Zier for a great recording. And shout-outs to Avery Augur, Jim Van Ry, and Kate Goldstein, our Bad Man Band. I think they called themselves Kate and the Underworld. Which is a great band name.
Click here for song:
Mornin’ Bringin’ the Day
Kate Berry in The Bad Man by Steven Cole Hughes, 2011
This was already posted on Facebook, but here’s our 2012 season:
On our Mainstage
The Drowsy Chaperone
Music and Lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison
Book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar
PG
The ingenious Broadway hit for the musical-lover in all of us
Is He Dead?
A new comedy by Mark Twain, as adapted by David Ives
PG
The wildly hilarious “new” farce from the father of American wit
Harry the Great
By John DiAntonio
PG-13
A world premiere romantic comedy about magicians, their egos, and why you never, ever reveal how it’s done
The Presidents
Book and Lyrics by Steven Cole Hughes
Music by Jessica Jackson
G
Forty-four presidents in 45 minutes! For kids of all ages.
In the new Ruth Humphreys Brown Theatre
Ghost-Writer
By Michael Hollinger
PG
The novelist has died, but his secretary goes on typing. Is she channeling his spirit – or is the truth even stranger than that?
Mrs. Mannerly
By Jeffrey Hatcher
R
Irreverent and hilarious, this comedy reveals what it takes to have the best manners
Boomtown Improv Comedy
PG-13
A totally unscripted show inspired by you!
Congratulations on choosing such an ambitious season, CRT! One of the greatest things about this company is that it never backs down from a challenge. I hope it will be as great as it consistently is!
Denver critic John Moore (and some CRT, too!) in TCG
http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/nov11/critical_juncture.cfm
ROAD TO MECCA certainly earns John Moore’s positive review, and John Moore certainly deserves the accolade. But I have to correct Mr. Moore about his claim that Mandy Patinkin started Creede Repertory Theatre. He was not in a CRT season until 1971. I directed him in “Sunday in New York” that summer. I was also one of the twelve students who started the Creede Theatre in 1966. I think Mandy would have been 11 years old that year.
Inaccuracies and all, it’s still a nice mention. Maybe we should practice some revisionist history and claim that an 11 year old Mandy founded our theatre. It’s not fair to you, Gary, but it would be a cool elevator story.
“And then before White Buffalo sent Bessy on her journey he said one final thing to her. He said, remember, this is not a white-man journey; this is an Indian journey. Bessy asked, what does that mean? And White Buffalo replied…It means it probably will not end well.”
-from The Bad Man by Steven Cole Hughes
Steven Cole Hughes had no idea when he wrote 2005’s Slabtown that his love story about a gunslinger and a whore would spawn two more plays. “I don’t know when I first started to think of this thing as a trilogy. I know that when I first started writing Slabtown (ten years ago!) I felt like I had finally found my voice as a writer. After finishing Slabtown, and especially after seeing it produced, I knew I wanted to write another Western, and I liked Billy and Bessy so much as characters, that it seemed obvious to just write another play about them. Somewhere in the middle of writing Billy Hell I knew it had to be a trilogy. You can’t just have two – like PringlesTM.”
Considering that producing a new play is a highly risky venture for any theatre, and that the Western genre, defined on film by its sweeping vistas and wide open plains, is hardly easy to depict live on stage – it was encouraging that Slabtown and Billy Hell played to sold-out houses. Artistic Director (and director of all three plays in the trilogy), Maurice LaMee, explains: “This is an unusual occurrence for a new play, and even more unusual for two new plays. The trilogy has thus far struck a resonant chord, and audiences have been both entertained and moved by the love story of Bessy and Billy. I hope The Bad Man is a satisfying culmination of their mythic journey, and if it is, I hope we might one day produce the trilogy so it could be seen in one day.”
If someday, CRT audiences are treated to the entire trilogy in one day, they would be watching ten years of work in the span of about six hours. The trilogy, forged through a long and fruitful collaboration between Hughes, LaMee, and a posse of CRT artists, has an almost epic quality. “The arc of the story is important to me,” Hughes explains, “How do we get from Slabtown to Billy Hell to The Bad Man, or more importantly, why? The first two plays take place in 1877, which is the height of what we think of as the Wild West. The final play is set in 1890, which is the closing of the frontier, the last of the Indian wars, and the dawn of a new era. Billy and Bessy grow and change in each play – not always together, and not always at the same time, like a marriage.”
Just as the vaudevillian and dream-like Billy Hell was a stylistic departure from the more straightforward Slabtown, The Bad Man is also unique. For Hughes, each play in the trilogy should be able to stand on its own. “I started writing The Bad Man as Billy Hell was performing,” explains the author, “The story and the premise have always remained the same, but the plot and characters have changed more than any play I’ve ever written. It has been a long process, primarily I think, because of the character of The Indian. I’ve read so many books about the Plains Indians, I’ve watched every Western that has real Indians playing Indians, and I’ve been fortunate to talk with some Native Americans in South Dakota (thank you Emerson Elk of the Minneconjou), but it took me a long time to get comfortable(ish) writing dialogue for a Native American character.”
Challenges aside, Hughes revels in the language of the 19th century American West: “Newspaper articles are preposterous and racist and un-objective and hyperbolic about anything and everything. Any time the word ‘true!’ appears in the title of a book or an article or an advertisement in the Old West, you can be assured that what follows is most likely a lie.” It’s these idiosyncrasies that fuel his imagination. “I’m interested in the dichotomies of the Old West,” Hughes explains, “Gunfighters embody the clash of the Victorian Era and the Pioneer Era: they were essentially forging a new way of life out in the wild, while also being bound to Victorian mores like chivalry and fancy dress. In the case of the Plains Indians vs. the US Army, you have the Industrial Age clashing with the Stone Age.”
Though most theatres shy away from Westerns, for CRT, they’re essential. Maurice LaMee explains: “CRT is in a unique position, given its long history, its reputation and its professional artists, to produce plays that are responsive to this unique region of the country. In the coming years, we intend to play an even bigger role in incubating artists and plays that reflect the stories and culture of the Southwest through our new play development program called Headwaters.” It is his hope that the plays of The Billy Trilogy are just one (well, three) in a long line of new works that begin here, in what used to be the Old West. And that these plays continue onward, telling the stories of the West-to-come.
The Bad Man opens Friday, August 12 at 7:30pm, purchase tickets here!
Check out the newest edition of CRsTories – Follow Along the Road to Mecca. Watch interviews with actress Christy Brandt, director, Nagle Jackson and sneak a peek at rehearsal footage! Many thanks to videographer, Bev Chapman.
The Road to Mecca is playing now in the Ruth Humphreys Brown Theatre. Order tickets here!
I saw Road to Mecca yesterday afternoon. Thinking about it gives me goose bumps…. It’s a must see! And the new Ruth Humphreys Brown is a perfect venue for the production. The intimate environment made me feel as though I was in the room with the characters. ….and it’s a bit more comfortable than the black box. All around, two thumbs up (if I had 3 hands, I’d give it 3 thumbs up….really).
– Gigot Hudspeth – July 18, 2011
Master watercolorist, Stephen Quiller has worked tirelessly to create a 360 degree panoramic mural of historic Bachelor Loop to be housed permenantly in CRT’s Ruth Humphreys Brown Theatre. Steve kept a journal through his painting process and has generously allowed CRT to re -produce sections of it here.
THE MAKING OF A MURAL
Last winter while at the Bachelor crest skiing most late afternoons, I became very interested in doing a 360 degree view and painting. This would be one moment in time and viewed from one spot. Anyway I did five charcoal drawings moving from one segment of the landscape to the next until the last drawing came around to the start. The idea was to do one long painting that would encompass the work. However I did not take the idea further at that point.
Late last summer (2010) I was shown the skeleton structure of the inside of the new Creede Repertory Theatre that is due to open in July of 2011. Earlier I had been asked by the theatre board to do a mural on the exterior south wall. After thinking about it I turned it down or at least delayed the decision mainly because the south light would be too harsh on the paint. But when I entered the building I was struck by this incredible blank wall in the lobby and knew that is where the mural should be. The wall is protected from too much direct light and is the perfect space and dream space to do a work. I felt like Gully Jimpson in “The Horses Mouth,” finding a wall to do his painting. And although the artist circumstance was different I am sure the feeling I had was similar to his when finding the wall. Not only was this a great space but I became immediately aware that this is why I had been doing those drawings at Bachelor hill the previous winter. What I realize now is that I have been painting this mural for many years- I just did not know it. The shapes, the color, the paint application all are set in place and I just need to fill in the blanks. It seems that I am always a few days ahead of myself and seeing what needs to be done and where the mural should go.
My next thought is, “how was I going to claim two months or more to do this project uninterrupted and still create some income to keep us going?” While in my hotel room late one night in Myrtle Beach, SC it came to me. I had been there for a week teaching a workshop and in a still and meditative moment that night the idea came to me. Why not select a few dedicated patrons that are closely connected with my work but also with Creede and the CRT. Ask each one to contribute $2500 and honor them with a plaque by the mural. I did not want a lot of income but enough to pay for the panels, paints and supplies, mounting on the wall and the final framing.
So I set to work on the project. And at a fortuitous time I found myself in New York to help jury the AWS 2011 exhibition. I say it was perfect timing as things come when you ask or when you need them if you are open. While there a few friends and I went to the American Hispanic Museum to view the Sorolla paintings and mural. The mural is 144 ft. and surrounds the room. It had recently been cleaned and the room renovated for perfect viewing. The mural is incredible and really got me charged up. What I did notice is how he sifted the shape of the mural when it was over a door and then how he brought it down on the right side. It seemed to be a great idea for my mural as the landscape rhythm moves from the valley floor to the Bachelor crest and back! So that got me thinking. I had been in the CRT building and measured the wall space. The height that I had to work with was 7 1/2 feet and the length was 32 feet. This was the perfect space for this idea. I began sketching out shapes for the space and decided to use Ampersand’s aquabord panels for the support. I found the largest they make the panels is 4’ X 8’ so the composition needed to fit within this boundary.
After many compositional sketches considering the wall space and the panel relationships and numerous calls and emails to the Ampersand company, I decided on this shape: The center panel would be 4’ X 11’. This would be actually two panels placed together and connected on a back frame held together with wood glue and counter sunk finish nails that would be covered up. Connected to each side of the center panel are two 3’ X 5’ panels that are flush with the middle panel at the top but go 1’ further down on the bottom side. Then connected to the outer sides of these panels are two 3 1/2’ X 7’ panels. All of these will eventually be connected with a 1” X 4” frame underneath. The segments of these frames need to be in place before I begin so Duane Lewis, my building guy that is now constructing our garage, will do this as soon as the panels arrive.
The panels arrive and Dwayne and his daughter Alicia constructed the frames that the panels were mounted on. The were glued and nailed with a finish nail gun and the frames and the panels fit perfectly. Dwayne did one other thing that it seems was masterful. He placed “biscuits” to connect each panel to the next and lined them up perfectly. When I began painting I could lock the following panel to the one I was working on and then have a perfect transition.
I set up my studio in the space above the gallery. There is plenty of room and good light and I can still use my studio out at the house for other works and projects. The added benefit of working in town is this is a public project. As opposed to working in isolation in my main studio so that I do not have interruptions, I welcome people from the community to view this work in progress. I want people talking about the mural and checking it out.
So I have begun this project. At this time I am two and one half panels of the six fairly far along. So far it is a dream. The surface of the clay board is like magic. The paint melts like butter on the panel and it lifts easily while still damp. The temperature is cool in the space, even with two heaters going full blast and on a cloudy day it does not warm up. But most days the sun burns through and warms the space. I think there is an advantage of keeping it cool. If the paint and panels are at a low temperature the water does not evaporate as quickly giving me more time to work.
The first panel is a horizontal 3 1/2’ X 7” shape representing the meadow of Bachelor. Moving to the left down slope the “upriver valley” is represented while to the right the tree patterns have a syncopated beat that move to the vertical panel. The sun is setting and burns edges of the ridge in yellow-orange to red-orange. All else is in shadow.
The second panel (7’ X 3’) connects to the first but is heavily wooded with aspen and spruce. This also is in shadow and is the path that I use to enter the woods when cross-country skiing. Some tracks are faintly represented. Hints of sunset light touch a few branches and aspen trunks- hints of warm against predominant cool. The fun of the cool is the warm and cool cool. I am playing with a true neutral gray mixed with phthalo blue and pyrrole orange and then use strong ultramarine (warm blues) against phthalo (cool blues) throughout the snow patterns. The paint application is very juicy and Impressionistic. I must say that so far the mural seems to be painting itself. I am just there to obey and fill in the blanks. Every step seems to lead me and tell me where to go and how to go about it. Each evening after painting I go to ski at Bachelor and usually do some sketching and photographing to prepare for the next session. I am usually two to three days ahead.
The third panel is 4’ X 3’ and is part of the next panel that is 4’ X 8’. Thus it is truly a 4’ X 11’ shape that is the center of the composition. It transitions from the previous panel of aspen and spruce patterns in shadow to the ridge of alpenglow moving to the La Garitas. I have been working on this panel for the last two days and so far it goes well. Tomorrow I hope to complete and begin the transition to the largest shape. I spent the evening skiing and from 5:15 PM to 5:45 I sketched the mountains and witnessed the alpenglow. I am ready!
Steve’s mural is now up in The Ruth, but totally hidden from public view. Visit CRsTories to see Steve discussing his painting with CRT Director, Mo LaMee.
AND, don’t forget to take part in the Quiller Mural Unveiling at 1PM on July 16 at The Ruth Humphreys Brown Theatre. The Creede Arts Council is hosting a delightful reception with special guests including Mr. Quiller and many more!
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Gary Mitchell is discussing. 
Gary Mitchell 7:21 pm on December 25, 2011 Permalink |
I can’t think of a more deserving honor than selecting Maurice LaMee as Theatre Person of the Year! Congratulations! Here’s to years and years of continued success!