Post by Myrtle Groggins on Apr 3, 2004 1:28:26 GMT -5
Hey Gang,
Stephanie made another visit to New Orleans last week to participate in the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival on Thursday, 25 March 2004.
Now I know you're asking, "Did Myrtle get to see Stephanie?" The answer is a very sad "No". I had called to ask if she was going to be there and was told she wasn't. I became involved in another obsession and forgot to check back to see if plans had changed.
Myrtle is not pleased.
Here are some newspaper articles:
Williams Fest Breaks Records
by David Cuthbert
Times-Picayune, New Orleans
2 April 2004
"The figures aren't all in yet," said Peggy Scott Laborde, one of the founders of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, "but we know we broke attendance records."
A theatrical highlight of the 18th fest was Stephanie Zimbalist and Joel Vig in a reading of Williams' "The Two-Character Play", a puzzle piece that's funnier and more intriguing on the stage than on the page.
Zimbalist was a spirited, forceful presence as the wildly neurotic actress Clare, projecting a kind of haunted glamour, while Vig, got up as Oscar Wilde playing Captain Hook, proved again to be theatrical
chameleon of the first rank, vanishing into the role of her brother, using a mournful cello of a voice that made you hang on every word. Bryan Batt ably and amusingly narrated, reading Williams' stage directions.
The production was staged at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre on Thursday, March 25, 2004, as part of the opening night gala.
From The Times Picayune
Williams Fest has a friend in Stephanie
Thursday March 25, 2004
By David Cuthbert
Theater writer
Besides being an excellent actress at home in any medium, a child of Hollywood who's maybe two degrees of separation from anyone in the business and something of a cult figure from her years on "Remington Steele," Stephanie Zimbalist is a good friend to have in a pinch.
Especially if you're The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival and one of your stars calls in sick a week before her reading at the fest's opening gala.
"You know, it's funny," Zimbalist, "but I actually called the festival to see if there was anything I could do this year, because I love the Williams Festival. I love attending it as a participant, but I love being a spectator, too. The last time I was down there, I got to watch Richard Thomas rehearse his Tennessee piece, 'A Distant Country Called Youth,' with Steve Lawson directing. And I loved 'Roads Not Taken,' with scenes from the earliest versions of 'Streetcar' acted out and buying books by the authors who are there . . .
"But the festival said, 'Sorry, we've got Tammy Grimes coming in to read 'The Two-Character' play with Joel Vig, who did 'Hairspray' on Broadway with my friend Linda Hart, who did 'A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot' with me at the festival.
"But then, last Friday, the festival called up saying, 'Helllllp! Tammy Grimes is sick. Can you do the reading with Joel?' "
One can imagine how many a star might react. But what Stephanie Zimbalist did was hop a plane to New York to rehearse with Vig, using the drive in from the airport to call and do some press for the show.
Zimbalist, who was a wonderful Hannah Jelkes in a fest reading of Williams' "Night of the Iguana" a few years ago, is going to repeat the role "in a full production of 'Iguana' at the Rubicon Theater in Ventura, California; a co-production with the Winnipeg Theater Center, so we'll do it there, too." Rubicon is the theater where our own Lance Nichols will be playing opposite Michael Learned in 'Driving Miss Daisy' next month.
"They attract all kinds of good actors there," Zimbalist said, "Linda Purl, Cliff DeYoung, Joe Spano. I did 'Dancing at Lughnasa' for them last spring and played Georges Sand in 'Romantique.' "
It's TV for which she's best known, but her heart is on the stage. She recently did episodes of "Crossing Judson" and "Judging Amy," but she's more excited that she got to play Phyllis to her friend Teri Ralston's Sally in "a full-out production of 'Follies' at the California Conservatory of the Arts, with an incredible cast: John Raitt, Betty Garrett, Julie Wilson and Harvey Evans, who was in the original 'Follies'! I got to sing 'Could I Leave You?' and "Lucy and Jessie' and I was in heaven."
Tonight at Le Petit, she'll be playing Clare to Vig's Felice in "The Two-Character Play," brother and sister actors whose theatrical troupe has deserted them, leaving them no choice but to perform "The Two-Character Play," which seems to contain elements of their lives. It's a fairly complex piece and when I spoke to her earlier this week, Zimbalist said she wasn't all that familiar with it.
"But we'll pull it together," she said.
"I didn't know the play before I did a reading of it eight months ago," Vig said. "It's wildly theatrical, sort of Noel Coward crossed with Samuel Beckett, it has a very peculiar, dark undercurrent.
"There's a desperation to the characters as this mystery unfolds before the audience's eyes, all of us trying to piece together what's true and what's part of the play. It has humor, but it's the psychotic, black humor of people in absolutely desperate situations, so desperate it becomes funny to them.
"It's also about fear. For instance, right now I'm in 'Hairspray,' the longest run of my career -- two years, so far. But there comes a point where you start thinking that theaters are, in the end, prisons for actors. To which Tennessee might have added, 'And playwrights, too.' "
Vig has been working with a group called Food for Thought, which stages readings of plays at lunchtime at the National Arts Club in New York City.
"You can have lunch and see a reading with well-known actors," he said. "Susan Charlotte, who's the director of Food for Thought, and a playwright, too, will also be at the festival, teaching a master class."
Vig, who's done readings at the festival twice with his good friend Patricia Neal, is one of the busiest guys on Broadway. He understudies both Harvey Fierstein and Harve's stage husband, Dick Latessa in "Hairspray" and also plays six roles in the show. Recently, he played Latessa's role for a week.
Is it hard adjusting from a huge theater like the 1,400-seat Neil Simon Theatre, to the 400-seat Le Petit?
"No, I love Le Petit," Vig said. "It may be small, but it's a real theater. It looks like a theater, sounds like a theater, it even smells like a theater!"
. . . . . . .
Intoxicating options
Drink in Williams' words at Tennessee Fest Stage Tavern
Wednesday March 24, 2004
By David Cuthbert
Theater writer
** The festival's opening night gala will be a reading of the seldom staged "The Two-Character Play," endlesly rewritten by Williams (another version
exists called "Outcry") and a very personal statement about life, reality and art. Two actors, Felice and Clare, abandoned by their theater company and apparently trapped in an old theater, are playing brother and sister
-- or are they actually brother and sister? Or two halves of a divided self? -- in a play-within-a-play as Williams examines themes that appear throughout his work. Stephanie Zimbalist and "Hairspray" star Joel Vig are Clare and Felice, while New Orleans' own Broadway star Bryan Batt reads Williams' stage directions.
Stephanie made another visit to New Orleans last week to participate in the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival on Thursday, 25 March 2004.
Now I know you're asking, "Did Myrtle get to see Stephanie?" The answer is a very sad "No". I had called to ask if she was going to be there and was told she wasn't. I became involved in another obsession and forgot to check back to see if plans had changed.
Myrtle is not pleased.Here are some newspaper articles:
Williams Fest Breaks Records
by David Cuthbert
Times-Picayune, New Orleans
2 April 2004
"The figures aren't all in yet," said Peggy Scott Laborde, one of the founders of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, "but we know we broke attendance records."
A theatrical highlight of the 18th fest was Stephanie Zimbalist and Joel Vig in a reading of Williams' "The Two-Character Play", a puzzle piece that's funnier and more intriguing on the stage than on the page.
Zimbalist was a spirited, forceful presence as the wildly neurotic actress Clare, projecting a kind of haunted glamour, while Vig, got up as Oscar Wilde playing Captain Hook, proved again to be theatrical
chameleon of the first rank, vanishing into the role of her brother, using a mournful cello of a voice that made you hang on every word. Bryan Batt ably and amusingly narrated, reading Williams' stage directions.
The production was staged at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre on Thursday, March 25, 2004, as part of the opening night gala.
From The Times Picayune
Williams Fest has a friend in Stephanie
Thursday March 25, 2004
By David Cuthbert
Theater writer
Besides being an excellent actress at home in any medium, a child of Hollywood who's maybe two degrees of separation from anyone in the business and something of a cult figure from her years on "Remington Steele," Stephanie Zimbalist is a good friend to have in a pinch.
Especially if you're The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival and one of your stars calls in sick a week before her reading at the fest's opening gala.
"You know, it's funny," Zimbalist, "but I actually called the festival to see if there was anything I could do this year, because I love the Williams Festival. I love attending it as a participant, but I love being a spectator, too. The last time I was down there, I got to watch Richard Thomas rehearse his Tennessee piece, 'A Distant Country Called Youth,' with Steve Lawson directing. And I loved 'Roads Not Taken,' with scenes from the earliest versions of 'Streetcar' acted out and buying books by the authors who are there . . .
"But the festival said, 'Sorry, we've got Tammy Grimes coming in to read 'The Two-Character' play with Joel Vig, who did 'Hairspray' on Broadway with my friend Linda Hart, who did 'A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot' with me at the festival.
"But then, last Friday, the festival called up saying, 'Helllllp! Tammy Grimes is sick. Can you do the reading with Joel?' "
One can imagine how many a star might react. But what Stephanie Zimbalist did was hop a plane to New York to rehearse with Vig, using the drive in from the airport to call and do some press for the show.
Zimbalist, who was a wonderful Hannah Jelkes in a fest reading of Williams' "Night of the Iguana" a few years ago, is going to repeat the role "in a full production of 'Iguana' at the Rubicon Theater in Ventura, California; a co-production with the Winnipeg Theater Center, so we'll do it there, too." Rubicon is the theater where our own Lance Nichols will be playing opposite Michael Learned in 'Driving Miss Daisy' next month.
"They attract all kinds of good actors there," Zimbalist said, "Linda Purl, Cliff DeYoung, Joe Spano. I did 'Dancing at Lughnasa' for them last spring and played Georges Sand in 'Romantique.' "
It's TV for which she's best known, but her heart is on the stage. She recently did episodes of "Crossing Judson" and "Judging Amy," but she's more excited that she got to play Phyllis to her friend Teri Ralston's Sally in "a full-out production of 'Follies' at the California Conservatory of the Arts, with an incredible cast: John Raitt, Betty Garrett, Julie Wilson and Harvey Evans, who was in the original 'Follies'! I got to sing 'Could I Leave You?' and "Lucy and Jessie' and I was in heaven."
Tonight at Le Petit, she'll be playing Clare to Vig's Felice in "The Two-Character Play," brother and sister actors whose theatrical troupe has deserted them, leaving them no choice but to perform "The Two-Character Play," which seems to contain elements of their lives. It's a fairly complex piece and when I spoke to her earlier this week, Zimbalist said she wasn't all that familiar with it.
"But we'll pull it together," she said.
"I didn't know the play before I did a reading of it eight months ago," Vig said. "It's wildly theatrical, sort of Noel Coward crossed with Samuel Beckett, it has a very peculiar, dark undercurrent.
"There's a desperation to the characters as this mystery unfolds before the audience's eyes, all of us trying to piece together what's true and what's part of the play. It has humor, but it's the psychotic, black humor of people in absolutely desperate situations, so desperate it becomes funny to them.
"It's also about fear. For instance, right now I'm in 'Hairspray,' the longest run of my career -- two years, so far. But there comes a point where you start thinking that theaters are, in the end, prisons for actors. To which Tennessee might have added, 'And playwrights, too.' "
Vig has been working with a group called Food for Thought, which stages readings of plays at lunchtime at the National Arts Club in New York City.
"You can have lunch and see a reading with well-known actors," he said. "Susan Charlotte, who's the director of Food for Thought, and a playwright, too, will also be at the festival, teaching a master class."
Vig, who's done readings at the festival twice with his good friend Patricia Neal, is one of the busiest guys on Broadway. He understudies both Harvey Fierstein and Harve's stage husband, Dick Latessa in "Hairspray" and also plays six roles in the show. Recently, he played Latessa's role for a week.
Is it hard adjusting from a huge theater like the 1,400-seat Neil Simon Theatre, to the 400-seat Le Petit?
"No, I love Le Petit," Vig said. "It may be small, but it's a real theater. It looks like a theater, sounds like a theater, it even smells like a theater!"
. . . . . . .
Intoxicating options
Drink in Williams' words at Tennessee Fest Stage Tavern
Wednesday March 24, 2004
By David Cuthbert
Theater writer
** The festival's opening night gala will be a reading of the seldom staged "The Two-Character Play," endlesly rewritten by Williams (another version
exists called "Outcry") and a very personal statement about life, reality and art. Two actors, Felice and Clare, abandoned by their theater company and apparently trapped in an old theater, are playing brother and sister
-- or are they actually brother and sister? Or two halves of a divided self? -- in a play-within-a-play as Williams examines themes that appear throughout his work. Stephanie Zimbalist and "Hairspray" star Joel Vig are Clare and Felice, while New Orleans' own Broadway star Bryan Batt reads Williams' stage directions.
