Hello. Welcome to the Live Arts Blog!
My name is Andre Eaton. I’m a pro company member here at Live Arts. You can usually find me on stage but recently, I’ve been getting my feet wet in Lighting Design and Directing.
This blog was created as another avenue to promote what’s going on at Live Arts and to promote discussion and provide articles about other creatively minded things.
If you haven’t already seen/heard, We have a spectacular season coming up that I am incredibly excited for.
Harriet Tubman: An American Moses
When a storyteller summons Harriet Tubman from the past, one of America’s greatest heroines offers to divulge the details of her extraordinary life. As the storyteller portrays the diverse characters from her past, from Frederick Douglas to plantation owners, Harriet relives her humble beginnings with her family through the end of the Civil War. Though widely known for her unimaginable feats of courage, this play also explores the finer details of Harriet’s life, evoking her more nuanced messages of hope and faith in other people. (Playscripts)
Outside Mullingar
Anthony and Rosemary are two introverted misfits straddling 40. Anthony has spent his entire life on a cattle farm in rural Ireland, a state of affairs that—due to his painful shyness—suits him well. Rosemary lives right next door, determined to have him, watching the years slip away. With Anthony’s father threatening to disinherit him and a land feud simmering between their families, Rosemary has every reason to fear romantic catastrophe. But then, in this very Irish story with a surprising depth of poetic passion, these yearning, eccentric souls fight their way towards solid ground and some kind of happiness. Their journey is heartbreaking, funny as hell, and ultimately deeply moving. OUTSIDE MULLINGAR is a compassionate, delightful work about how it’s never too late to take a chance on love. (Dramatists)
20th Century Blues
Four women meet once a year for a ritual photo shoot, chronicling their changing (and aging) selves as they navigate love, careers, children, and the complications of history. But when these private photographs threaten to go public, relationships are tested, forcing the women to confront who they are and how they’ll deal with whatever lies ahead. 20TH CENTURY BLUES is a sharply funny and evocative play by Obie Award and Susan Smith Blackburn Prize-winner Susan Miller that questions our place in the world and with one another. (Dramatists)
Titus Andronicus
This drama is one of the great tragedy themed plays by William Shakespeare. The characters in Titus Andronicus are the Romans and the important captives brought to Roman following the ten year war with the Goths including the Queen of the Goths, Tamora, and members of her family. The incredibly blood thirsty drama of Titus Andronicus is a sordid tale of revenge and political turmoil, overflowing with bloodshed and unthinkable brutality including countless murders, rape, terrible acts of mutilation and threats of human sacrifice. (bardstage)
This will be a modern take on the Bard’s bloodiest tragedy. This ambitious production will be set in Modern day Washington D.C. in the midst of a heated election campaign of two candidates for President. Several of the roles have been re-imagined to highlight and showcase our season theme of strong women.
Reading Series: Local Playwrights
This Season we get the pleasure to showcase the work and talents of our local playwrights and playwrights that are originally from Georgia.
5 Women Wearing the Same Dress
During an ostentatious wedding reception at a Knoxville, Tennessee, estate, five reluctant, identically clad bridesmaids hide out in an upstairs bedroom, each with her own reason to avoid the proceedings below. They are Frances, a painfully sweet but sheltered fundamentalist; Mindy, the cheerful, wise-cracking lesbian sister of the groom; Georgeanne, whose heartbreak over her own failed marriage triggers outrageous behavior; Meredith, the bride’s younger sister, whose precocious rebelliousness masks a dark secret; and Trisha, a jaded beauty whose die-hard cynicism about men is called into question when she meets Tripp, a charming bad-boy usher to whom there is more than meets the eye. As the afternoon wears on, these five very different women joyously discover a common bond in this wickedly funny, irreverent, and touching celebration of the women’s spirit. (Dramatists)
As you Like it: Flipped
As You Like It is one of the great comedy plays by William Shakespeare. The heroine, Rosalind, is one of his most inspiring characters and has more lines than any of Shakespeare’s female characters. Rosalind, the daughter of a banished duke falls in love with Orlando the disinherited son of one of the duke’s friends. When she is banished from the court by her usurping uncle, Duke Frederick , Rosalind takes on the appearance of a boy calling herself Ganymede. She travels with her cousin Celia and the jester Touchstone to the Forest of Arden, where her father and his friends live in exile. Themes about life and love, including aging, the natural world, and death are included in the play. New friends are made and families are reunited. By the end of the play Ganymede, once again Rosalind, marries Orlando. Orlando and Rosalind, Oliver and Celia, Silvius and Phebe, and Touchstone and Audrey all are married in the final scene. Oliver becomes a gentler, kinder young man so the Duke changes his ways and turns to religion and so that the exiled Duke, father of Rosalind, can rule once again. Act II, Scene 7 features a great soliloquy by William Shakespeare which begins:
“All the world’s a stage
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages…” (bardstage)
The Flipped show is our fundraising show for the season. It features actors swapping genders. The Men play the women in the show and the Women play the Men. These shoes have been among the funniest i have ever seen.
Venus in Fur
Thomas, a beleaguered playwright/director, is desperate to find an actress to play Vanda, the female lead in his adaptation of the classic sadomasochistic tale Venus in Fur. Into his empty audition room walks a vulgar and equally desperate actress—oddly enough, named Vanda. Though utterly wrong for the sophisticated part, Vanda exhibits a strange command of the material, piquing Thomas’ interest with her seductive talents and secretive manner. As the two work through the script, they blur the line between play and reality, entering into an increasingly serious game of submission and domination that only one of them can win. A mysterious, funny, erotic drama that represents yet another departure for the multifaceted David Ives. (Dramatists)