Tag: Theater

June 23rd Serenity Screening @ Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, Drafthouse closing that week

The link for the event:
http://austin.cantstoptheserenity.com/

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown
Time and Special Guests TBA
Schedule of Events TBA

Can’t Stop the Serenity 2006 raised over $65,000 for Equality Now, and we are looking to raise $100,000 in 2007!

For more information about the screening, visit our Theatre page (coming soon). We are in need of volunteers. See our Get Involved! page, as well as our News section below to keep apprised of our volunteer opportunties and descriptions. We are also looking for individuals and businesses to donate items to be used for our raffle and silent auctions. Based on donations and sponsorships, we will try to offer door prizes. More information about that will be available in our News and Theatre section.

Long on talk, very short on pertinent information (such as availability of tickets)

The calendar for the theatre holding the event:
http://www.originalalamo.com/Calendar.aspx?l=2

Which does not (at this writing) have any events for the month of June at the Drafthouse Downtown.

As a side note, This event will occur 4 days prior to the closing of the Downtown Alamo Drafthouse, the “Original Alamo”. It will be reopening on 6th street in the newly remodeled Ritz theatre. http://originalalamo.blogspot.com/2007/04/its-official-final-day-at-alamo-is-june.html

I’ve never been fond of the downtown location for the Drafthouse, and I think the Ritz will be a nice step up for them. On the other hand, the Drafthouse has been at it’s current location for 10 years now, so it’s closing will be a bit of an event. One that I’m also hoping to attend.

It’s at this point in the post that I’d like to mention that Tim League completely stole this whole “restaurant in a theatre” idea from me, and the move to the Ritz proves it. It was at an office party held in the building that was/will be the Ritz, about 17 years ago, that I first conceived of the idea.

Three beers down, playing pool with a few co-workers, I look up and notice that the ‘screenwall’ of the former theatre dominates the room, screaming for something to be shown on it. And it suddenly hit me, why not? Why not serve food and drinks, maybe even play pool, while watching a film?

The difference between Tim and I is, I just talked about it, he went out and did it.
Congrats on 10 years Tim. Here’s hoping for 10 more that are just as successful.

Still not much information on the Can’t Stop the Serenity page; however, the event is now up at Alamo Drafthouse downtown (if you look closely at the date on the calendar, you’ll notice it’s only one of three tributes to Joss on that day. Seems it’s his birthday or something…) The Last Night at the Alamo event is also posted.

Free Night of Theater – It Runs in the Family

I’m putting in a plug for this site http://www.freenightoftheater.net and this specific performance; It Runs in the Family as presented by the Oracle Theatre Company at Dougherty Arts Center.

I was quite impressed with both the performance, and the fact that I was able to get tickets to the event simply by reserving them online, for free. If your city is one of the lucky few listed, you too might be able to experience some culture without a major investment of capitol.

The play It Runs in the Family was quite funny, and the cast was excellent. I laughed my way through most of it. Catch it if you get a chance.

Postscript

It’s funny the way events circle around and run into each other when you start writing things down and then running across the recorded events again years later. I was just in a conversation with someone on Facebook about his hypothesis about the evolution of camp arts in the theater and movies.

He was talking about the live performance experience that you get in a theater, about how there can be a conspiracy between the actors and the audience concerning what the play is really about aside from the text that is written into the scripts of the plays. As I was reading that I flashed on this experience at Dougherty Arts. How I was nearly overcome with the unreality of watching someone playacting directly in front of me. I nearly burst out laughing at what would have been a completely inappropriate time in the play because of the unreality of it all, catching a side-eye from one of the players in the midst of what was a serious bit of business during the play.

This was one of my first theater experiences, something that has been regrettably rare in the years since and even rarer since the pandemic. Most of the times that I would watch a live performance, what I was seeing was the work of people I knew well and was there for them specifically (Space Trek: Lost on Gilligan’s Planet springs immediately to mind) plays with brothers or sisters in them or even the few times I was on stage in a choir or part of a scene put on in my elementary school. In those instances the intimacy of watching people perform a role doesn’t seem out of place.

This viewing at Dougherty Arts was just the play that I could go to for free, I really didn’t know anyone on stage or even the author of the play. Not knowing who these people were made the act of watching them so closely seem almost like unwanted attention. An intrusion. Yet we were all there specifically to engage in this weird activity of going through the motions of social arrangement on stage, the audience having a real social experience watching it. it just struck me as so odd at the time.

Could this be related to my topophobia? I honestly have no idea.