In my earlier letter, I invited your support for Camp Shakespeare ’16 and also for chair-back name plates for the new (and very comfortable) cushioned chairs in the Theater Barn. Two things. When actually they are one. By purchasing a plaque—at $300 each--you have your choice of supporting Camp Shakespeare, Shakespeare at Winedale, or Shakespeare Outreach. The plaques cost only about $ 20.00 or so. The balance goes to the program of your choice. By my figuring—240 chairs—we have the potential of raising $72,000. What part of that comes to Camp Shakespeare is up to donors. But whatever does, will go into the endowment in my name initiated by Jayne and Rick Suhler, for Camp Shakespeare.
In one week after announcing this, I already have pledges for 33 chairs for Camp Shakespeare! That’s $9.900 already! And James students and the friends have pledged 15 or so more chairs for Shakespeare at Winedale. So things are moving along! Thanks for considering this. When the list grows to 100, I will send everyone the list of donors and honorees. That is, if the donors approve.
Have a very happy Spring Break.
Doc
Jim (Doc) Ayres
Professor Emeritus, The University of Texas
Founding Director, Shakespeare at Winedale
Director, Camp Shakespeare
Hey Guys!
I know there is always a lot going on during the summer but I'm hoping you'll find time to come see this new show I'm working on with Susan Todd. -ShakesParody After Dark.
Some of you know that my wife Donna Marie and I co-founded The Mickee Faust Club in Tallahassee Florida.
We operate out of an old Warehouse in an Art Park called Railroad Square. We train people in the community how to write and perform.
Every year -- for 30 years now-- we produce three cabarets of material written by the people we've been training. There are a lot of people with disabilities in the company-- all of them Crips with Attitude.
Every other summer we've put together a show called ShakesParody After Dark. The title pretty much says it all. It's parodies of Shakespeare with a raunchy, irreverent twist (not that Shakespeare doesn't have enough of those as it is, but--).
This summer Faust joined forces with Susan Gayle Todd at the Scottish Rite Theater to bring some of the ShakesParody material here for her Austin based actors to perform.
Donna Marie and our Faust Company Manager, Jimmers McCallef and I are directing it.
In addition, we got some of the guys I know from Actual Lives Austin, the writing and performance workshop for people with disabilities I co-founded 15 years ago.
It's a motley crew. And truthfully I wasn't sure how it was all going to translate.
But these last few nights of rehearsals have settled my queasy stomach.
After watching Bob Jones, Robert Deike and David Sharpe (Winedale alumn Ernie Sharpe's brother) rehearsing Redneck Shylock and bringing to (what could have been) short, comic fluff some of the actual Shakespearean ambiguity and chill --I thought well hot damn.
The same when I watch Hollie, Susan Gayle Todd's daughter, rip into Ophelia's Blues wailing, "I'm gonna drown my sorrows in sex."
Same watching Kristin Johnson, Taylor Flanagan and Kathy Blackbird shred the rap License to Quill as Ophelia, Juliet and Lady McB.
There's more. And yeah, some of it is plain silly-- Shakespeare's Death Pit, Green Eggs and Hamlet that kind of stuff.
But the material is always what you make it.
And it is going to be an amazing show.
The reason I'm telling you this?
The Mickee Faust Club owes its essence to Winedale.
When I moved to Tallahassee I was so damn bored and hated the kind of community theater being done there which was like community theater being done everywhere-- more business than fun, caught up in doing Broadway re-treads and too often just plain dismal.
Faust became Winedale in proxy -- a collaborative, frolicking approach to play and language and making friends and all those things we love about Winedale. Including the love of imperfection. Or at least, that was the idea.
This ShakesParody has that same kind of unbridled energy.
Come see it if you are around. There is a big handful of Winedale ex's in this mix.
The show is bawdy, sometimes downright dirty and the opening number features kind of group strip tease -- but nothing Shakespeare wouldn't have laughed at.
Love to you all!
Terry