March Comes Roaring in on Area Stages and Screens

The weather may not be getting any warmer, but our entertainment options continue to heat up.

Time Stands Still continues at Heartland Theatre this weekend, with its last performance on Sunday at 2:30 pm, with J.B. and Oklahoma! also finishing at Illinois State University's Westhoff Theatre and Center for the Performing Arts and As You Like It taking its last bow at Illinois Wesleyan's McPherson Theatre. J.B., Oklahoma! and AYLI all run through March 2.

Paddy Moloney and the Chieftains are coming to the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts for a 3 pm show on Sunday, March 3, in plenty of time to boost your Irish spirits before St. Patrick's Day. This traditional Irish band has won six Grammys in an illustrious 50-year career. Their new album Voice of Ages celebrates that 50-year anniversary with contributions from Bon Iver, the Civil Wars, the Decembrists, Imelda May and Paolo Nutini, among others. You can see a teaser for that album here. For ticket information regarding the March 3 concert at the BCPA, click here.

Heartland Theatre will hold auditions on March 6, 7 and 8 from 7 to 9:30 pm for its April production of Will Eno's Middletown. Director John Kirk will be looking for an ensemble of 9-10 actors to play all 26 roles that make up the small burg called Middletown. Kirk has provided audition information here for prospective actors.

For one night only on March 7, Champaign's Art Theater will offer F.W. Murnau's classic vampire thriller Nosferatu, a silent from 1920. The Andrew Alden Ensemble will provide live musical accompaniment to Nosferatu for this screening, using piano, strings, synthesizers, percussion and electric guitars to bring a spontaneity and immediacy to Murnau's story of the creepy count. This is not the dark, elegant lord of later vampire films, but a strange and hideous pale creature with pointy teeth and ears. He's so much scarier this way!

The Art is also looking for entries into its New Art Film Festival, which takes place in April.They're looking for films by anyone in Illinois, but especially central Illinois, and they'll take features, shorts or "webisodes," preferably made within the last three years. The deadline is March 8, and you'll need to get a DVD to the Art by then. You'll find details here and updates here.

To Kill a Mockingbird is the March show for Community Players, with a preview performance on March 14 and "regular" performances continuing March 15-17 and 21-24. The play, based on the much beloved novel by Harper Lee, tells the story of a Depression-era Southern lawyer named Atticus Finch and his children, Scout and Jem, as the family is caught up in a trial involving a black man falsely accused of a crime. Finch is defending Tom Robinson on rape charges, and the injustice of that trial casts a deep shadow over the entire town, but especially on Scout, who grows up fast as events proceed around her. Marcia Weiss directs for Community Players, with a cast that includes Maggie McHale as Scout, Haani Ansari as Jem, John Bowen as Atticus, Ryan Rembert as Tom Robinson and Bruce Parrish as the mysterious Boo Radley.

Tales of the Lost Formicans, Constance Congdon's exploration of American society seen through the eyes of aliens from the future, opens at Illinois State University on March 28. Deb Alley directs this eccentric comedy for Centennial West 207, with Michelle Stine as a mother forced to move home with her own mom and dad, who will be played by Jacki Dellamano and Joseph Faifer, while her unhappy son, played by Carlos Kmet, acts out. There's also a strange neighbor who happens to be a conspiracy nut, with Hannaniah Wiggins in that role.

March 28 is also opening night for Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, directed by Henson Keys for the University of Illinois's Department of Theatre. This fiery account of the first reaction to the AIDS epidemic from within New York's gay community has the potential to break your heart. It has every time I've seen it. It will play within the cozy confines of the Studio Theatre at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

Click here for information on The Normal Heart and all the other music and dance pieces coming up at Krannert Center.

As always, I will keep you updated with more events as they appear on my radar. Stay tuned!

TIME STANDS STILL Tomorrow at Heartland Theatre

You may recall Dinner with Friends, the Donald Margulies play that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama back in 2000. In that play, Margulies took a sometimes comedic, sometimes serious look at two couples, longtime friends, and the repercussions in the lives of Couple No. 1 when Couple No. 2 split up. With a script that moved from the Humana Festival to an Off-Broadway production and then to HBO for a TV movie, Margulies showed a knack for understanding what makes relationships tick and what makes them explode.

He continues that quest to understand how we connect emotionally with other people, along with some added insight on how we connect emotionally with the world, in Time Stands Still, the 2010 Tony Award nominee that opens tomorrow night at Heartland Theatre.

On Broadway, Laura Linney played Sarah, the prickly photojournalist who was injured on the job while taking pictures of some far-off conflict, now returned to New York and wondering where she belongs, with whom, and under what circumstances. First she needs to heal on the outside, but then... Can she get married and "settle down" like normal people? Or is her mission in life to observe and record, but not get involved? How can she find a way to handle a life without bombs exploding and people dying every time she looks through her camera lens?

Cristen Susong

Cristen Susong, who has brought all kinds of warmth and charm to her roles in the past, will play Sarah for Heartland Theatre. This new character -- purposefully distant, sarcastic, antisocial -- seems like a bit of a departure for someone like Susong, who is quite clearly firmly connected to her family and her community. I asked Cristen whether she thought Sarah was as different from her as I did. After saying that she "can't help but get emotionally involved" in her world, Susong describes Sarah as "so able to compartmentalize. She takes the whole experience with Tariq [a colleague she lost] and she locks it away. She won't engage with the reality around her."

I think it's that distance, that lack of engagement, that Margulies was going for, both as an examination of the traditional role of a journalist -- to record and report, but not get involved or try to solve anything or save anyone -- and whether that's a healthy way to live, as well as a critical take on defense mechanisms. If looking at the world and its terrible troubles causes us pain, should we blind ourselves? If reaching out to other people causes us heartache, should we cut off the joy along with the sadness?

Sarah faces those questions in her relationship with her longtime boyfriend, James, played for Heartland by David Krostal, her editor, played by Harold Chapman, and the editor's much younger girlfriend, Mandy, played by Colleen Longo. Mandy looks at life from an opposite perspective from Sarah -- she's young, happy, naive, optimistic -- and that, too, gives Sarah pause.

The different moods in the script add up to a challenging directing assignment, but if anyone if up to it, it's veteran director Sandra Zielinski, who most recently took on Brecht's Mother Courage at Illinois State University, Chekhov's Three Sisters as a showcase for ISU's last class of MFA actors, and Joel Drake Johnson's dysfunctional family drama The End of the Tour for Heartland. End of the Tour also featured Cristen Susong, that time playing a wife, mother and daughter at the end of her rope. It was the family connections that were plaguing her in that play, and Sarah's life with no strings and no connections might've looked pretty attractive to poor Jan in The End of the Tour.

Time Stands Still opens tomorrow night at Heartland Theatre, with performances Thursday through Sunday from February 14 till March 3. For information about the play, click here. For reservation information, click here.

Got a Fever for Live Performance in February?

 I know it's hard to get used to the fact that it's 2013, but not only are we in a new year, we're now finished with January and dipping our toes in February. No, I'm not ready for Feb. But I'm trying to pretend I am, anyway!

Community Players' production of the operatically inclined farce Lend Me a Tenor finishes up its run this weekend. You have three performances left -- 7:30 pm tonight and tomorrow night or 2:30 pm on Sunday -- with tickets available here.

Red Devils, Debbie Horsfield's play about female football fans in Manchester, England, takes the stage inside the Melba J. Kirkpatrick Lab Theatre at IWU on February 4, 5 and 6, with all performances at 8 pm. Visiting Assistant Professor Christopher Connelly directs this gritty take on "working-class characters festering from a life on the dole, a life where soccer is the only activity to stir the imagination." That quote is from an LA Times review of the play from 1993.

Eureka College's production of Myth and Bricks, a one-act by Dustin Robert Blakeman, starts February 5, with performances through the 7th. Eureka College senior Jarrod Barth directs and stars in this look at a man, a brick and the relationship between the two.

In Bloomington, New Route Theatre opens Katori Hall's The Mountaintop on February 8, with Gregory D. Hicks starring as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fania Bourn as the hotel maid he meets on the last day of his life, in a production directed by New Route Artistic Director Don Shandrow. The Mountaintop runs from February 8 to 24 at the theatre tucked inside the YWCA of McLean County. You can reserve tickets by emailing new.route.theatre@gmail.com or you can purchase them at the door on the night of performance. For more information, click here for the Facebook event page for The Mountaintop.

Grammy-Award winning a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock sings in celebration of the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana on February 9. This all-female vocal group shares "the legacy of African American music through jazz, hip hop, the blues, spirituals, rap, reggae, and gospel hymns." For the complete schedule of events devoted to that sesquicentennial celebration at the University of Illinois, click here.

Although Donald Margulies' Tony-nominated play Time Stands Still looks at love, marriage and commitment, it really isn't what you'd call romantic. Instead, photojournalist Sarah is wondering whether a safe, secure life with her longtime partner James can possibly mean as much as the time she's spent recording war and strife in the world's hot spots. Love? Career? Safety? Danger? Connection? Detachment? Which of these is the most important? Sandra Zielinski directs Time Stands Still for Heartland Theatre, with Cristen Susong as Sarah and David Krostal as James, in performance beginning February 14. Click here for ticket information and here for performance dates and times.

Illinois State University's spring theatre season begins February 21 with J.B., the allegorical verse play by Archibald MacLeish that tells the Biblical story of Job, but set in a circus. Yes, that's right. Job under the Big Top, with a balloon vendor and a popcorn guy standing in for God and the Devil. MFA director Matthew Scott Campbell is at the helm of this ISU production of J.B., with a cast that includes Tommy Malouf in the Job role, Andrew Rogalny, Jr., as the godly balloon man, and Matt Hallahan as the evil popcorn seller. J.B. runs through March 2 in ISU's Westhoff Theatre. Click here for event details.

As the battle between good and evil rages inside Westhoff, ISU's Center for the Performing Arts will host Oklahoma!, the Rodgers and Hammerstein cowboys vs. farmers musical with corn as high as an elephant's eye, a surrey with fringe on top, a girl who cain't say no, and all the attendant box lunches, square dances and souvenirs from Kansas City. Will Oklahoma become a state right before your eyes? Is there any doubt? For ISU, Richard Corley directs Christie Duffer and Robbie Holden as Laurey and Curley, the couple who might just be in love, in this Oklahoma! The show opens February 22 and closes March 2. To see a list of performance dates and ticket information, click here.
Oklahoma? OK!

Over in Urbana, the Station Theatre warms up with Stephen Karam's provocative Sons of the Prophet from February 21 to March 9. The play, which explores a hard-luck family who may be descended from Kahlil GIbran, author of The Prophet, was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. Longtime Celebration Company member Gary Ambler will direct Sons of the Prophet in the Station's cozy confines.

Liz (left) and Ann Hampton Callaway

On the 22nd, the University of Illinois' Krannert Center for the Performing Arts hosts sisters Liz and Ann Hampton Callaway and Boom!, their musical revue for Baby Boomers and everyone else who enjoys the song stylings of Carole King, Stevie Wonder, the Beatles and Joni Mitchell. Click here for more information.

Illinois Wesleyan is offering a little Shakespeare to brighten your February days, with As You Like It, the romantic comedy set in the Forest of Arden, playing February 26-28 and March 1-3 at McPherson Theatre. Assistant Professor Thomas Quinn directs.

And closing out the month, the Opera Program Series from U of I's School of Music presents a semi-staged concert version of My Fair Lady, featuring all the music and the dialogue from the Lerner and Loewe musical. You can see this concert, featuring the work of Eduardo Diazmunoz, Artistic Director and Conductor (as well as chair of the Opera program at U of I), director Ricardo Herrera, and choreographer Rebecca Nettl-Fiol on February 28 and March 1, 2 and 3. For more information about this My Fair Lady, click here.

More Casting News: TIME STANDS STILL at Heartland

Heartland Theatre and director Sandi Zielinski have announced casting for their February production of Donald Margulies' Time Stands Still, a Tony nominee for Best Play in 2010.

Cristen Susong will lead the cast as Sarah, a photojournalist injured while taking pictures in a Mideast hot spot. She has come home to New York to try to patch herself together, physically and emotionally, while grappling with the realities of everyday life. Now that she is in less danger, she has more time to reflect on who she is and what she wants. Her longtime boyfriend, James, who will be played for Heartland by David Krostal, is also a journalist and he, too, made his living reporting on strife and violence in other lands. But he is ready to kick back and relax, while Sarah isn't. Margulies' script raises issues of personal responsibility -- Is reporting enough? How can witnesses not intercede, even if they are carrying cameras? -- as well as what makes life worthwhile and what makes life for a woman worthwhile, contrasting Sarah's life of work and adrenaline against the more traditional world of marriage and motherhood.

Susong was last at Heartland in The End of the Tour, the dysfunctional family drama from Joel Drake Johnson, while Krostal played the fantasy husband in Woman in Mind and half the town of Tuna, Texas, in A Tuna Christmas.

Also in Time Stands Still will be Harold Chapman as Sarah's editor Richard, and Colleen Longo as Mandy, Richard's much-younger romantic interest. Chapman's name is new to me, but Longo's is familiar from her recent terrific work in These Shining Lives at Heartland as well as her days at ISU, where she was a lovely Rosemary in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Heartland Theatre's production of Time Stands Still opens with a special Pay What You Can preview on February 14 and continues through March 3, 2013.

Audition Reminder: LEND ME A TENOR and TIME STANDS STILL

Almost time for auditions for two popular shows. If you;re looking for a winter acting gig, if your audition monologue is up to date or you do a heck of a cold reading from a script, and you are somewhere between 20 and 80, there may just be a role for you.

First up, Community Players and director Cris Embree will hold auditions on December 10 and 11 for their January production of Ken Ludwig's opera-inspired farce Lend Me a Tenor.

Embree will be looking for four men and four women to play the following roles:

MAX, 25-35. Assistant to Saunders who fancies himself a tenor.
MAGGIE, 25-30. Max's girlfriend and Saunders' daughter. She has a major thing for Merelli.
SAUNDERS, 50s-60s. Maggie's father, General Manager of the Cleveland Grand Opera     Company. 
TITO MERELLI, 40s-50s. A world-famous Italian tenor, known as Il Stupendo to his fans. 
MARIA, 40s-50s. Tito's wife. She's fiery and passionate, and none too pleased with her husband's womanizing ways. 
DIANA, 35-45. A sexy soprano who will do what it takes to get ahead. 
JULIA, 55-65. Chairman of the Opera Guild. A grande dame. 
BELLHOP, 20-35. He, too, is obsessed with Merelli, opera and getting into that hotel room.

Lend Me a Tenor is scheduled for performances from January 25 to February 3 at Community Players Theatre at 201 Robinhood Lane in Bloomington. For more about Community Players' production, you can visit the CP website here or for more about Lend Me a Tenor, check out my longer piece about the play here.

Time Stands Still, from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies, is a very different kind of play, delving deep into issues of personal responsibility and happiness, what it means to be a journalist, and what it means to grow up. Veteran director Sandra Zielinski, who was at the helm of Mauritius and Three Sisters last winter, will be holding auditions December 16, 17 and 18 at Heartland Theatre for a February production of Time Stands Still.

Roles to be cast include:

SARAH, late 30s to early 40s. An international photojournalist. She thinks of herself as fierce and fiercely independent. She is home recuperating after a serious injury from a roadside bomb.
JAMES, late 30s to early 40s. A freelance journalist and Sarah's significant other. He, too, came home after an injury. Unlike Sarah, he would like to stay.
RICHARD, 55. Sarah's editor.
MANDY, 25. An event planner and Richard's much younger girlfriend.

The play is provocative and thought-provoking about the world of onlookers who see and record big events, but don't actually participate. And what about the people who stay at home, build relationships, have families and lead more peaceful lives? Whose work is important?

For more information about Time Stands Still, click here. For audition info, click here.

Auditions Announced for TIME STANDS STILL at Heartland

Time Stands Still, the Donald Margulies play about journalists, ethics and how covering international conflict affects one's personal life is scheduled to play at Heartland Theatre next Feburary. In the meantime, director Sandra Zielinski will be assembling her team of actors and getting the play's gritty issues up on their feet. To that end, Zielinski will be holding auditions December 16, 17 and 18 at Heartland Theatre.

There are two women and two men in Time Stands Still, with photojournalist Sarah front and center. When the play begins, Sarah is attempting to mend after suffering injuries in a bombing somewhere in the Mideast. She's used to recording events as they unfold, right there on the front line, and this recuperation period safe at home makes her uneasy. Does no excitement and no danger also mean no purpose?

Her long-time boyfriend, James, himself a journalist, is already there, waiting at home. He was injured, too, and that has made him think it's time to settle down and stop traveling halfway around the world, putting himself in the middle of other people's messes. He wants to get married, have kids, and act like normal people for a change.

Sarah has never considered herself the marrying kind, and the example of her editor, Richard, and his new bride, Mandy, who's half his age, isn't exactly endearing Sarah to the institution. To Sarah, Mandy seems like a cheerfully brainless twit. The fact that she's perfectly happy that way is is even more infuriating.

Who's right? Who's wrong? What is the point of a well-lived life, anyway? Is it ever possible to be an objective observer and not get involved when the world is exploding around you?

In the Broadway production of Time Stands Still directed by the legendary Daniel Sullivan, Laura Linney played Sarah, with Brian d'Arcy James as James, Eric Bogosian as Richard the editor, and Alicia Silverstone as Mandy. Earlier this year, Austin Pendleton directed it for Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, with Sally Murphy as Sarah, Randall Newsome as James, ISU alum Frances Guinan as Richard and Kristina Valada-Viars as Mandy.

If the play's issues of responsibility, ethics and personal choices appeal to you and you feel like you fit one of those roles, you'll want to pencil December 16, 17 and 18 in on your calendar. Auditions will be held from 2 to 4:30 pm on Sunday the 16th, 7 to 10 on Monday the 17th, and 7 to 9 pm on Tuesday the 18th. For more information, you can visit Heartland's Auditions page here, or the current season page here.

And if you'd like a copy of the script to study up, email me, 'cause I have one!

Heartland Theatre Announces What's Up for 2012-13

Heartland Theatre Company has announced its 2012-13 season, beginning with the very popular 10-Minute Play Festival, running from June 7 to July 1.

This year, the 10-Minute Play Festival's theme is "Playing Games," with each of the eight winning plays involving a game of some sort. The plays range from John D. Poling's "Destiny's Tug-of-War," about a divorced couple and the wife's new partner, all three worried about the dog caught between them, to Austin Steinmetz's "Word Play," about a world Scrabble champ scrambling to stay on top, and Erin Moughon's "In Memory of Calvinball," about a game whose only rule is that rules constantly change. For more information about all the plays and the "Playing Games" festival, click here. You are advised to make your reservations early, as it is always an audience favorite.

Coming in July is New Plays from the Heartland, which features three one-acts written by Midwestern playwrights just for Heartland. The New Plays' theme is "Summer in the Heartland," with the three winning plays performed July 13 and 14 in conjunction with a master class and forum conducted by Douglas Post ("Bloodshot," "Drowning Sorrows"), this year's guest playwright in residence.

The fall kicks off with "These Shining Lives," Melanie Marnich's sad and beautiful look at the women who made radium-dial watches in Ottawa, Illinois, in the 1920s. "These Shining Lives," directed by Illinois State University Professor Don LaCasse, opens on September 6 and runs till September 23, 2012. (The poster image at right is from a Chicago workshop production of the play in 2011. A previous production at Chicago's Rivendell Theatre received Jeff Award nominations for the play, director and leading actress. ISU alum Kathy Logelin played the lead role when Rivendell revived the play later.)

Next up is the blazing art drama "Red," by John Logan, which began its life at London's Donmar Warehouse in 2009, before moving to Broadway and winning the 2010 Tony Award for Best Play. The play involves artist Mark Rothko and his assistant as they prepare canvases for New York's Four Seasons restaurant, with issues of artistic integrity played against monetary success and accolades. Illinois Wesleyan's Christopher Connelly will direct "Red," with performances from November 1 to 18, 2012.

Opening on Valentine's Day, Donald Margulies' "Time Stands Still" is the first show in 2013 for Heartland. "Time Stands Still" involves a photojournalist who must decide whether she will return to a dangerous, exciting life spent on the front lines or stay where she is, in a more peaceful, comfortable place on the home front. ISU Professor Sandra Zielinski returns to Heartland to direct "Time Stands Still," which runs from February 14 to March 3, 2013.

And the last show on the schedule is Will Eno's "Middletown," which looks at extraordinary lives in Small Town, USA, over the course of a few very ordinary days. It's been compared to "Our Town," but I'd say "Middletown" is quirkier, more poetic, and a whole lot more surprising. "Middletown" received the Horton Foote Prize for Promising New American Play in 2010. ISU Professor Emeritus John Kirk will direct "Middletown" in performance from April 18 to May 5, 2013.

For more information on Heartland Theatre, you can visit the website here, with new information being added all the time.