Something From Nothing

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The Cincinnati Shakespeare Company gets existential for this year’s Studio Series.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit” takes place in the afterlife when three recently-deceased strangers expect to find red-hot pokers and torture devices, but instead find themselves in something very much like a well-appointed hotel room.

As they share their stories of murder, infidelity and cowardice, however, they learn they are each other’s torturers because “hell is other people.”  

“This masterpiece of existential drama portrays humanity at its most vulnerable and deliciously wicked,” said director Brian Isaac Phillips. “This play examines a raw honesty about mankind because in hell there are no masks to hide behind; all of the cards are laid out on the table.”

“No Exit” was first produced in the spring of 1944 during the Nazi occupation of France.  French writer Jean-Paul Sartre popularized existentialism, the 20th century philosophical movement founded on the belief that individuals create the meaning of their own lives.  

Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame” blends the vaudeville rhythms of “Waiting for Godot” with gallows humor as master and servant struggle for power in what may be the last corner of the world.

Irish novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett was one of founders of what has become known as the theatre of the absurd.

Company members Giles Davies and Jeremy Dubin return to work on a Beckett masterpiece after previously performing together in CSC’s 1999 production of “Waiting for Godot.”

“I am filled with excitement and trepidation,” said Davies, “‘Waiting for Godot’ was one of my fondest theatrical memories; in rehearsal, one of my greatest challenges.”  

Joining the cast of Endgame are guest artists and real life husband and wife team Bill Hartnet and Ellie Shepherd as Nagg and Nell.  

During their lives, both authors won the Nobel Peace Prize for literature, Sartre in 1964 and Beckett in 1969.

• WHAT: “Endgame” by Samuel Beckett and “No Exit” by Jean-Paul Satre
• WHERE: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, 719 Race St., Cincinnati
• WHEN: through Feb. 10
• COST: $20-$26
• MORE INFO: (513) 381-2273; www.cincyshakes.com

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Fairfield Township resident and filmmaker Jim Justice will debut his first full length film, “A Good Life: The Joe Grushecky Story,” next week.

Justice, 38, a Ross High School graduate and resident of Fairfield Township in Butler County and partner Steve Caniff, 39, of Columbus are directors, producers and editors of the film released by their company, Flat Broke Productions.  

The film won the “Best Documentary” category at the 2007 Colony Film Festival in Marietta, Ohio.  

 The documentary chronicles the life of musician and special education teacher Joe Grushecky and the trials and tribulations of a life in rock and roll.  Grushecky, a Pittsburgh native, has released over 14 albums since 1979 and performed and co-written songs with musician Bruce Springsteen including the Grammy-winning “Code of Silence.”  

The film includes interviews with Springsteen as well as legendary songwriter/guitarist/producer Steve Cropper, professional skateboarder/musician Mike Vallely, Cleveland International Records producer Steve Popovich and many more.

 Justice and Caniff started Flat Broke Productions in 2005 and produced the film while maintaining their full time jobs, Justice as a structural detailer in the metal building business and Caniff as the manager of an electronics store.

Justice and Caniff spent three years talking about doing a documentary film before Caniff saw a news story about Grushecky, who in spite of being a good friend of Springsteen and very popular in Europe, is virtually unknown outside his circle of devotees.

The film will also debut in Pittsburgh at the Southside Works Cinema on Feb. 21, with a full week of activities planned including radio and television interviews, and culminating with a live performance from Grushecky and the Houserockers at the Hard Rock Café.

• WHAT: “A Good Life: the Joe Grushecky Story”
• WHERE: Rick’s Tavern, 5955 Boymel Dr., Fairfield
• WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 31
• COST: No charge
• MORE INFO: (513) 874-1992; www.flatbrokeproductions.com

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Know Theatre Company puts the work of two leading contemporary playwrights on the boards in repertory for “2X2.”

Suzan-Lori Parks’ 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winner “Topdog/Underdog” kicks off the mini-festival on Jan. 31, directed by Richard Hess chair of the drama department at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

“It’s the story of two brothers down on their luck,” Hess said. “One has become a card hustler, playing three-card monte in the street; the other dresses up like Abraham Lincoln and pretends to be shot eight hours a day at an arcade.

“One is named Lincoln and the other named Booth, so if you know your history, you’ll have a bad feeling about where this is going to go.”

The play is about their relationship and how they take different paths to make their lives better.

“Topdog/Underdog” features Todd Patterson and Derek Snow, their second time playing brothers on the Know stage, having previously starred in “The Pillowman” in October.

On Feb. 8, Adam Rapp’s “Red Light Winter” makes its premiere, directed by Eric Vosmeier, Know Theatre’s new associate artistic director in his first stint at the helm.

Two college friends — one using life to the fullest, the other on the verge of suicide — travel to Amsterdam together and inadvertently hook up with the same prostitute.

“The characters are definitely a little quirky, but drawn naturalistically,” Vosmeier said. “You feel a sense of history between them by the way they talk.

“It’s an incredibly well-crafted story, with powerful dialogue and the complete lack of communication btweent people while they are reaching out to each other.”

Resident actors Anne Marie Carroll and Vandit Bhatt will join Cincinnati favorite Anthony Darnell in the cast.

• WHAT: 2X2: “Topdog/Underdog” by Suzan-Lori Parks and “Red Light Winter” by Adam Rapp
• WHERE: Know Theatre of Cincinnati,
• WHEN: In repertory Jan. 31-March 2
• COST: $18-$22
• MORE INFO: (513) 300-5669; www.knowtheatre.com

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“Menopause: The Musical” is a show by and about women of a certain age (and for the men who love them).

The gist of it is this: Four women of varied backgrounds meet over a lingerie sale table at Bloomingdale’s department store, and in their struggle over underwear come to find out that they all have something in common: Menopause.

“They can see it in each other’s faces,” said Cynthia Jones, who plays Power Woman.

“They are all coming to terms with big changes in their lives, coping with their mothers and their families and finding their strengths as women,” said Katie Anne Harper, who plays Iowa Housewife.

They share their ups and downs through a collection  baby boomer songs from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, but with new lyrics to match their time of life.  Disco hit “Stayin’ Alive” becomes “Stayin’ Awake.” Motown favorite “My Girl” is transformed into “My Thighs.” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” switches to “In the Guest Room or on the Sofa, My Husband Sleeps at Night,” and “Puff The Magic Dragon” becomes the anthem to exercise, “Puff, My God I’m Draggin’.”

“It’s a wonderful vehicle to laugh at mood swings and everything else that comes with the change,” said Harper, who has not yet actually reached that point in her life yet. “The show turns this passage into a musical to make it more palatable and understandable. Now I know what to look for.”

“It strikes at the truth in fun way,” Jones said. “I see it in the faces of the women in the audience every night. They know ‘It’s not just me.’ We don’t realize that it’s all a part of our natural process and our life’s journey. I know when I first saw it, I cried.”

Both Jones and Harper said that the characters are both realistically presented and broadly drawn so that women will recognize themselves in all of them.

In addition to the Oprah-esque Power Woman and the naive Iowa Housewife, there’s Aging Soap Star who’s lost her job as the eternal ingenue on “One Life to Lose” and Hippie Earth Mother who is dealing with her changes in a naturalistic way through yoga and herbs.  

• WHAT: “Menopause: The Musical” by Jeanie Linders
• WHERE: Taft Theatre, 317 E. Fifth St., Cincinnati
• WHEN: Jan. 30-Feb.
• COST: $44.50
• MORE INFO: (513) 562-4949; www.ticketmaster.com

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According to the program notes for “The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead,” playwright Robert Hewett was inspired to write the one-woman show for an un-named (but apparently well-known and struggling for money) actress that she could “produce and perform, then tuck away in her bag, ready to be pulled out whenever the coffers were getting a bit low.”

His friend never performed the show, but it’s become something of an international hit and now on the boards for one of its first American productions at the Playhouse in the Park.

But with the uneven performance of Annalee Jefferies, making her Playhouse debut, one has to wonder what it might have been like in the hands of Hewett’s anonymous actress friend.

What Jefferies does well is create very distinctive characters, seven of them altogether, in a series of monologues that tells the story of how one woman, Rhonda the redhead, gets herself into a world of trouble when she tries to confront her estranged husband’s lover. That in itself is no small feat, as the characters not only have divergent hair color, but range in age from 4 to very elderly, and include Rhonda’s errant husband, Graham.

The transformations between characters take place semi-transparently behind a scrim that allows the audience to watch as Jefferies changes her look while clever overhead projections provide some ambient music and visual imagery.

In that regard, “The Blonde...” is an enjoyable tour de force and it’s interesting to get a glimpse of the process, like watching a chef at one of those restaurants where they cook at the table.

What’s not so interesting is to get a glimpse of the actress’ inner process as she struggles to remember her lines. It may be that on opening night Jefferies was just a few run-throughs shy of getting it nailed, but her performance was at times smooth and polished but there were significant sections when the pace slowed and she seemed to take halting pauses as if digging deep for the next word or sentence.

Such a distraction only makes the problems in the script itself more noticeable, and I’m not sure that even a perfect performance would have justified the presence of two of the peripheral characters, whose monologues don’t contribute to the story, but may have been included to play to the actress’ strengths.

• WHAT: “The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead” by Robert Hewett
• WHERE: Marx Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park
• WHEN: through Feb. 15
• COST: $39-$52
• MORE INFO: (513) 421-3888; www.cincyplay.com

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In 1965, Bernie Kleina, a conscientious young Catholic priest in Chicago, read about the aborted civil-rights march from Selma, Ala., that was cut short by an attack by state troopers and the local county sheriff, a day now referred to as “bloody Sunday.”

So when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made a national plea for people from all over the nation to join them for a second attempt the following Tuesday, March 9, Kleina went, joining some 2,500 other protesters.

“I saw marchers beaten up and turned back,” he said. “We’d march to City Hall every day, and on Friday we were sent out into the community to demonstrate in a most subtle way. We didn’t carry any signs, but we were a racially mixed group of people walking through the neighborhood.”

That was enough to get Kleina arrested, and he spent some time in the local jail, but there were so many arrested that authorities didn’t know what to do with them all. Kleina was shortly released, but his picture was on the front page of the Selma newspaper.

“Selma was an awakening for me,” he said. “I thought discrimination was something that just happened in the South, but going down there opened my eyes.

“It’s embarrassing to think about now, but I grew up in a white neighborhood, a white school and was sadly oblivious to racial issues.”

When Kleina returned home, he got involved in the civil-rights movement, especially in the area of open housing.

“This was a more difficult hurdle than opening up lunch counters,” he said. “Housing free of discrimination was hard to find, and everything else depends upon it.

“Housing determines what kind of education the kids will have, the dangers they’re exposed to and what opportunities for a better life they will have.”

When King came to Chicago later in 1965, Kleina decided to take his camera to a march in Marquette Park to document the event, in part to dispel the notion that it was the demonstrators that were causing the violence during the marches and protests.

“Prior to that, I never really took any photographs, except for family photos,” he said.

“I did my best,” he said. “Now, I don’t think I’d go to these things with just one or two rolls of film, but maybe because of that I was more careful about what I shot. If I’d known what I was doing, I also would have shot in black and white because the film was faster and you could do a lot more with it.”

At Marquette Park, the Chicago police formed a ring around the marchers, separating them from the mob there to counter-protest.

“The white mob would throw things over the heads of the policemen to hit the marchers,” Kleina said. “In the South, in many or most instances it was the police that reacted violently to the marchers. In the North, the police were generally complacent, and it was the white mob who were the violent ones. At least, I didn’t see the Chicago police beat up any marchers, but they apparently left it up to the mob.”

The photos he took that day have subsequently been exhibited across the country and will be a major feature of the African Culture Fest this weekend at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

“In some of the photos you can see the anger in the faces of the people who opposed the marchers and in the marchers you can see a certain amount of discipline,” he said. “Marchers weren’t allowed to have cameras and couldn’t even carry a banner or a placard. Most of the marchers would dress in suits. It was taken very seriously because they wanted the attention to be on the issues, not the marchers.”

That experience was equally as influential on Kleina’s life. He eventually gave up the priesthood, but continues to work for equal rights today as the director of the Hope Fair Housing in Wheaton, Ill.

BERNIE KLEINA, who joined with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others during marches in the 1960s, captured these photos of King. Kleina’s photographs are part of the African Culture Fest’s “Martin Luther King Comes North: A Fight for Fair Housing” exhibit, which will remain on view through March 9 at the Cincinnati Museum Center.
 

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Singer/songwriter Kate Voegele gets to add another line to her growing resume as she makes a seven-episode guest appearance on the CW series “One Tree Hill.”

“I heard about the audition from my manager and he encouraged me to do it, though I thought it was a long shot,” said the 21-year old during a phone interview from Los Angeles. “I was totally floored to find out that I got it.”

Voegele plays Mia, a (what else) singer/songwriter, who gets signed to the label of one of the show’s regular characters.

“She was really fun to play,” said Voegele, who studied at Miami University for two years. “In some ways she’s a lot like me, but she starts out very quiet and timid and I’m a really outgoing person, so it was really cool to be able to do something so different.

“As the story goes on, she gets to come out of her shell a little bit.”

Except for a couple of high school plays, Voegele said she’s not done any acting at all and was surprised by the feedback.

“When I was auditioning, the creator of the show said, ‘I know that music is your gig, but you could really do this, too,’” she said.

Voegele hopes that being on the show, however, will boost her recording career. Six of her songs will be featured in her story arc and her debut album, “Don’t Look Away,” will be re-released on Jan. 22, the date of her “One Tree Hill” debut, with a new cover that will reflect her role on the show.“‘One Tree Hill’ has been a great vehicle for new artists that have hit the spotlight yet,” she said.

AlThough it was a great experience, she said she’s not rushing out to every audition.she can just yet

“Right now, I’m focused on the record, but it’s definitely something I enjoyed doing and would love to do more in the future,” she said.

Voegele, 21, is from the Cleveland area and spent two years at Miami University in Oxford before taking what she thought would be a one-year hiatus this school year to focus on her musical career, but now, she said, her education may be on hold indefinitely.

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When Screaming Mimes first got together in 2002, they made sure that the music came first and foremost, above any dream of hitting the big time.

Since then, the Mimes have encountered some modest success: Good reviews and local radio play for the debut full-length CD “Live My Life” in 2002 and a serious of prestigious gigs, including four MidPoint Music Festivals, two Earth Day concerts, and two Redsfests, where the band performed in front of crowds as large as 38,000 people.

The downside is that with a concern for quality production and juggling the demands of day jobs and families, it takes a long time to get the music out there.

But the time has arrived, and Screaming Mimes will celebrate the release of their second CD, “Tragedy Comic,” Jan. 18 at the Southgate House.

“We went into it with all intents and purposes of getting it out in 2006,” said guitarist Randy Campbell, a graduate of Ross High School, who also co-produced the effort with singer/songwriter David Storm. “It’s been a long process, but I think the final product is a giant step up from our first CD.”

Of course, such a long production time means that the shape and focus of the project evolved, but Campbell said there was no overall plan except to present the new songs as a cohesive unit.

“We had changed drummers just before the last record, so this is the record that presents us as we are now,” he said. “All of the songs were hand-picked for the album and we wanted something that flowed a little nicer.”

The band is making sure that the next set doesn’t take quite so long, admittedly putting together a grab-bag of songs for release later in 2008.

“This will be a hodge-podge of stuff that we’re pulling from the vault,” he said.

In the meantime, “Tragedy Comic” will be available at area record stores and online (with samples) at www.CDBaby.com. Tracks from both albums can also be heard at www.myspace.com/screamingmimes.

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