Press & Reviews
Planning, artistic vision guide Filigree Theatre through first season
April 26, 2018
By Andrew J. Friedenthal Special to the American-Statesman
By Andrew J. Friedenthal Special to the American-Statesman
https://www.mystatesman.com/entertainment/arts--theater/planning-artistic-vision-guide-filigree-theatre-through-first-season/sfabf6tQKCAM8Htwmgz5ZI/amp.html
Elizabeth V. Newman says Filigree looks for thematic links between classic works and new plays in an effort to appeal to both traditional audiences and younger viewers. Contributed by Filigree
Photo: Special to the American-Statesman |
Careful planning was an important part of Filigree’s first season. Stephanie Moore says she once had a professor who “drilled it into us that even if you’re not a business major, you always have a business plan.” Contributed by Filigree Photo: Special to the American-Statesman
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The world premiere of “Trio” is the final production in Filigree Theatre’s inaugural season, which was built around the theme of love triangles. Filigree artistic director Elizabeth V. Newman discovered “Trio” on the National New Play Network’s New Play Exchange website. ContributedIt’s difficult to succeed as a new theater company in Austin. With performance and rehearsal space at a premium, funding often nonexistent and a panoply of long-established companies claiming much of the limelight, it can be a major challenge to get a company off the ground. Many an Austin theater group has had a first production; far fewer have made it to a second.
Filigree Theatre, however, is now mounting its third production at the conclusion of an ambitious first season that, by design, featured a fall production from the theater canon, a winter production from a playwright living and working today and a spring production that is a world premiere, all tied together by a shared theme.
“The concept for starting a company with a sense of past, present and future plays connected by a theme as an organizing principle had been kicking around in my head for a little while,” said Elizabeth V. Newman, the company’s co-founder, co-managing director and artistic director who directed all three productions of this first season.
That union of classic and new plays speaks directly to what Newman says is “the anxiety of the past few years about losing audiences. Younger people don’t go to theater, and the people who do go are baby boomers who are aging out and prefer to see things they’re familiar with rather than newer work.”
Elizabeth V. Newman says Filigree looks for thematic links between classic works and new plays in an effort to appeal to both traditional audiences and younger viewers. Contributed by Filigree Photo: Special to the American-StatesmanTo try and appeal to both that traditional audience as well as younger viewers, she wanted to “find connections between plays that are part of our collective theater history and new works and new writers that tie back to each other. For audiences that are more familiar with established works and writers, maybe if they understand that there’s a through-line, a thread between what they’re familiar with and people who are working today and things that they’ve never seen yet, then that adds a sense of familiarity. And for audiences who are more accustomed to new works and experimental theater, it can link backward to our shared history of theater.”
Newman and producer Stephanie Moore, co-founder and managing director of the company, worked together to produce a pre-season show, Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn’s “Any Night,” which they premiered in Los Angeles. When “Any Night” proved a success, they moved on to create the initial season of productions in Austin, which included last fall’s “Betrayal” by Harold Pinter and February’s “A Delicate Ship” by Anna Ziegler.
“Most of our demographics so far have been either in the 36- to 45-year-old range, or college students,” Moore says. “That age range is really nice because that’s sort of the ‘lost generation’ of art, and it’s good to see them coming back to the theater.”
REVIEW: ‘A Delicate Ship’ looks at love in the shape of a triangle
Careful planning was an important part of Filigree’s first season. Stephanie Moore says she once had a professor who “drilled it into us that even if you’re not a business major, you always have a business plan.” Contributed by Filigree Photo: Special to the American-StatesmanPart of Filigree’s success is due to Moore’s behind-the-scenes work, inspired by a “terrifying professor” from Texas State University who, she says, “drilled it into us that even if you’re not a business major, you always have a business plan.” For Moore and Newman, this meant starting out with an advisory board, a public relations plan, careful risk analysis and a close partnership based on shared recognition that parenting needs come before professional needs.
“From the get-go we’ve asked ourselves really tough questions,” Newman says. “Who, exactly, are we? Who are our audience? What is our mission? What are our one-year, three-year, five-year goals? We realized that for season one a lot of it was going to be that the proof is in the pudding, and we had to focus on working our tails off to make the best theater that we could make and holding ourselves to standards of accountability.”
Filigree’s current production, the final work in a season based around the theme of love triangles, is Sheila Cowley’s play “Trio,” which Newman discovered on the National New Play Network’s New Play Exchange website, where theater companies can read playwrights’ work to find pieces that fit their needs and limitations as a company.
“Trio” is described on the site as “a play that inspires adventurous theatremakers. The play wrestles with the cycles we all struggle through, as parents die and children have to take their place.”
REVIEW: Secrets, lies and revelations in new theater company’s first production
Cowley herself expands on this, noting, “The play is about changing roles in families, and how your position in the family changes as people die. And this is the endless age-old process that we all wind up going through at a certain point, which is never an easy process, and you’re often thrust into a new role in the family that you weren’t looking for as people pass away.”
This exploration takes the form of three speaking actors and three silent performers telling the story of “a three-way romantic triangle (that) takes shape through swords and masks and monsters,” as two friends, Tim and Leslie, work to create a monster play for children as a way to distract Leslie from her mom’s hospitalization. When “an old college love” intrudes upon their world, Tim and Leslie are forced to “forge a way to face the real world, even if you’re only armed with a wooden sword.”
Newman says the moments of performative creation in “Trio” mirror the themes of love and memory that have been at the heart of the entire season. For instance, there’s a moment where Tim creates for Leslie “an experiential memory to remind her of something beautiful and happy” during a time of sorrow. Indeed, the entire text features “moments where characters just being in each other’s presence causes an intrusion of memories and nostalgia.”
This production is also the next step in what Newman calls a “learning curve” of facing new, unique challenges with each new work. “Whatever the crisis is,” she says, knocking on wood, “we will rise to meet it.”
As for what’s driving the co-founders of Filigree to meet those challenges, Moore says, “Part of it is that somebody told us we can’t, so we’re going to prove them wrong.”
“Don’t mess with Texas women, right?” Newman says.
Moore counters with what might be the secret motto underlying the duo’s successful collaboration: “Nah, just don’t mess with women.”
Filigree Theatre, however, is now mounting its third production at the conclusion of an ambitious first season that, by design, featured a fall production from the theater canon, a winter production from a playwright living and working today and a spring production that is a world premiere, all tied together by a shared theme.
“The concept for starting a company with a sense of past, present and future plays connected by a theme as an organizing principle had been kicking around in my head for a little while,” said Elizabeth V. Newman, the company’s co-founder, co-managing director and artistic director who directed all three productions of this first season.
That union of classic and new plays speaks directly to what Newman says is “the anxiety of the past few years about losing audiences. Younger people don’t go to theater, and the people who do go are baby boomers who are aging out and prefer to see things they’re familiar with rather than newer work.”
Elizabeth V. Newman says Filigree looks for thematic links between classic works and new plays in an effort to appeal to both traditional audiences and younger viewers. Contributed by Filigree Photo: Special to the American-StatesmanTo try and appeal to both that traditional audience as well as younger viewers, she wanted to “find connections between plays that are part of our collective theater history and new works and new writers that tie back to each other. For audiences that are more familiar with established works and writers, maybe if they understand that there’s a through-line, a thread between what they’re familiar with and people who are working today and things that they’ve never seen yet, then that adds a sense of familiarity. And for audiences who are more accustomed to new works and experimental theater, it can link backward to our shared history of theater.”
Newman and producer Stephanie Moore, co-founder and managing director of the company, worked together to produce a pre-season show, Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn’s “Any Night,” which they premiered in Los Angeles. When “Any Night” proved a success, they moved on to create the initial season of productions in Austin, which included last fall’s “Betrayal” by Harold Pinter and February’s “A Delicate Ship” by Anna Ziegler.
“Most of our demographics so far have been either in the 36- to 45-year-old range, or college students,” Moore says. “That age range is really nice because that’s sort of the ‘lost generation’ of art, and it’s good to see them coming back to the theater.”
REVIEW: ‘A Delicate Ship’ looks at love in the shape of a triangle
Careful planning was an important part of Filigree’s first season. Stephanie Moore says she once had a professor who “drilled it into us that even if you’re not a business major, you always have a business plan.” Contributed by Filigree Photo: Special to the American-StatesmanPart of Filigree’s success is due to Moore’s behind-the-scenes work, inspired by a “terrifying professor” from Texas State University who, she says, “drilled it into us that even if you’re not a business major, you always have a business plan.” For Moore and Newman, this meant starting out with an advisory board, a public relations plan, careful risk analysis and a close partnership based on shared recognition that parenting needs come before professional needs.
“From the get-go we’ve asked ourselves really tough questions,” Newman says. “Who, exactly, are we? Who are our audience? What is our mission? What are our one-year, three-year, five-year goals? We realized that for season one a lot of it was going to be that the proof is in the pudding, and we had to focus on working our tails off to make the best theater that we could make and holding ourselves to standards of accountability.”
Filigree’s current production, the final work in a season based around the theme of love triangles, is Sheila Cowley’s play “Trio,” which Newman discovered on the National New Play Network’s New Play Exchange website, where theater companies can read playwrights’ work to find pieces that fit their needs and limitations as a company.
“Trio” is described on the site as “a play that inspires adventurous theatremakers. The play wrestles with the cycles we all struggle through, as parents die and children have to take their place.”
REVIEW: Secrets, lies and revelations in new theater company’s first production
Cowley herself expands on this, noting, “The play is about changing roles in families, and how your position in the family changes as people die. And this is the endless age-old process that we all wind up going through at a certain point, which is never an easy process, and you’re often thrust into a new role in the family that you weren’t looking for as people pass away.”
This exploration takes the form of three speaking actors and three silent performers telling the story of “a three-way romantic triangle (that) takes shape through swords and masks and monsters,” as two friends, Tim and Leslie, work to create a monster play for children as a way to distract Leslie from her mom’s hospitalization. When “an old college love” intrudes upon their world, Tim and Leslie are forced to “forge a way to face the real world, even if you’re only armed with a wooden sword.”
Newman says the moments of performative creation in “Trio” mirror the themes of love and memory that have been at the heart of the entire season. For instance, there’s a moment where Tim creates for Leslie “an experiential memory to remind her of something beautiful and happy” during a time of sorrow. Indeed, the entire text features “moments where characters just being in each other’s presence causes an intrusion of memories and nostalgia.”
This production is also the next step in what Newman calls a “learning curve” of facing new, unique challenges with each new work. “Whatever the crisis is,” she says, knocking on wood, “we will rise to meet it.”
As for what’s driving the co-founders of Filigree to meet those challenges, Moore says, “Part of it is that somebody told us we can’t, so we’re going to prove them wrong.”
“Don’t mess with Texas women, right?” Newman says.
Moore counters with what might be the secret motto underlying the duo’s successful collaboration: “Nah, just don’t mess with women.”
Any Night
Filigree's Pre-Season Summer Production
Los Angeles Premiere
Los Angeles Premiere
Review ‘Any Night's’ riveting performances and Hitchcockian thrills could soar on the big screen
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-cm-any-night-theater-review-20170724-story.html
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-cm-any-night-theater-review-20170724-story.html
“Thomas and Fahlgren strike no false notes in Newman’s sterling production…” "riveting performances by Zac Thomas and Marie Fahlgren…” |
“Elizabeth V. Newman’s authoritative staging incorporates the bizarre and the quotidian into a seamless dreamscape..." |
"Choreographer Erica Gionfriddo contributes masterly dance sequences, enacted with lissome skill by the agile actors..." |
"Eliot Gray Fisher’s virtuosic sound design keeps the mood appropriately fraught.” |
Quotes from the Los Angeles Press...
"Brilliant writing, directing and acting make Any Night the success it is."
- TotalTheatre.com
"Playwrights Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn launch a psychological thriller that is gripping to the very end." "Elizabeth V. Newman's stage direction makes this stage work as fiery, leading up to its climatic conclusions." "Under the keen direction of Elizabeth Newman, Any Night is utterly absorbing to the very end..." "Playwrights Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn launch a psychological thriller that is gripping to the very end." |
"Fahlgren and Thomas perform with skill and verve..." "Thomas and Fahlgren work beautifully together, capturing the many sides of their strange, tortured characters with an assurance that is quite remarkable." |
"There is something dangerous and tense about Any Night from the moment the play commences; it is to Newman's credit that she is able to maintain the tension right up until the final, shattering moments."
- Total Theatre.com
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"Suffice it to say that the dark, subconscious vision of Any Night never falters or weakens. It is scary as hell from beginning to end."
- Total Theatre.com
"The director, Elizabeth V. Newman, accurately describes the play as a 'fever dream or a nightmare," one that unfolds on a soundscape filled with "stifled screams pierced with echoes of songs half-remembered."
-TotalTheatre.com
"The choreography by Erica Gionfriddo is fluid and athletic, with writhing lifts and twining movements that convey subconscious states and dangerous passions. This is daring physical theatre." |
"Strong production work adds to the sinister goings-on, with a disordered, tangled set suggesting the fragmented world of sleep. Lighting and sound enhance the feelings of otherworldliness and foreboding, with costumes playing into the feelings of duplicity." |
Included in Baker's Dozen Best of 2017
https://zahirblue.blogspot.com/2017/12/bakers-dozen-best-of-2017.html
Any Night gobsmacked me. It totally put me on the edge of my seat, remained compelling every single moment, yet never stopped surprising me over and over and over again. This makes for no small feat! Essentially framed as one of those thrillers where deciding who to trust becomes the focal point of everything, it adds to the problem by taking away our knowledge of what we might view as real. Like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, we end up questioning everything, and until the very end the pieces never quite fit perfectly into place. But when they do, it proves heart-breaking.
https://zahirblue.blogspot.com/2017/12/bakers-dozen-best-of-2017.html
Any Night gobsmacked me. It totally put me on the edge of my seat, remained compelling every single moment, yet never stopped surprising me over and over and over again. This makes for no small feat! Essentially framed as one of those thrillers where deciding who to trust becomes the focal point of everything, it adds to the problem by taking away our knowledge of what we might view as real. Like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, we end up questioning everything, and until the very end the pieces never quite fit perfectly into place. But when they do, it proves heart-breaking.
Betrayal
Fall Production
Included in the Austin American Statesman's
Austin’s 10 most memorable theater productions of 2017
By Andrew J. Friedenthal - Special to the American-Statesman
“Betrayal”
There’s something delightful about a classic play presented in a straightforward manner, and that’s exactly what “Betrayal” was. The Harold Pinter work, famous for its presentation of scenes in backward order (as parodied in the final season of “Seinfeld”), is full of barely repressed lust and rage, as well as heartbreaking secrets. This was the first production of a new theater company, Filigree Theatre, and director Elizabeth V. Newman and producer Stephanie Moore found the perfect cast with which to launch their work. David Moxham, Emily Rankin and J. Kevin Smith simmered with sensuality, stolen glances and mysteries kept even from the audience. At the end of the show, I was left with the feeling of provocative textual undercurrents and hidden possibilities that can be found in the best productions of Pinter, which makes me eager to see what Filigree Theatre does next.
https://www.mystatesman.com/entertainment/arts--theater/austin-most-memorable-theater-productions-2017/ps90FqVT0EvY6Vxl8MmE3M/
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“The secret to the success of this production of “Betrayal” is its three main cast members — David Moxham, Emily Rankin and J. Kevin Smith (Felix Alonzo rounds out the cast in a charmingly comedic bit part).”
“Filigree’s production, thanks to its talented cast, cuts to the heart of these secrets with an intriguing, close-vested, nuanced version of the play…”
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“With such an accomplished first production under its belt, we can only hope to see continued work of such quality and excitement as Filigree Theatre continues to make itself known throughout Austin.” |
“To play these deliciously layered levels of text and subtext requires extremely nuanced performances, and all three actors are more than up to the task. The subtle gestures, facial tics and posture changes of the characters speak volumes amid the famous “Pinter pauses” that litter the text, revealing as much through what remains unsaid as is told in the dialogue.” |
"To play these deliciously layered levels of text and subtext requires extremely nuanced performances, and all three actors are more than up to the task. The subtle gestures, facial tics and posture changes of the characters speak volumes amid the famous “Pinter pauses” that litter the text, revealing as much through what remains unsaid as is told in the dialogue...The simmering sexuality of the scenes between Jerry and Emma is matched by the quiet resentments of Emma’s relationship with Robert, and Robert’s dual jealousy and deep love of Jerry."
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Filigree Theatre’s Betrayal
The studied, steady cast make bold choices with Pinter's familiar script and show us a side of adultery not often considered REVIEWED BY SHANON WEAVER, FRI., OCT. 6, 2017 |
"Perfected "Pinter pauses" and all, Newman and her cast take a well-known script, often derided for its problematic misogyny and cavalier attitude toward spousal abuse (a particular line is addressed in the program), and show us a side of adultery we may not often consider. Are we in control of who we love, and are we even conscious of it? And in the end, toward for whom is the betrayal most bitter: our partners or ourselves?"
"Moxham brings a nervous energy to the character – Jerry's neediness is downplayed in favor of an unearned smugness at the cuckolding to which he is party. It's a bold choice, and Newman is right to have her actor explore it, as it changes the landscape of the play in a compelling way. As Emma, gallery owner and other half of the longtime tryst, Emily Rankin is quiet but pointed; an aura of crisp dignity surrounds her as she negotiates her feelings in a refined manner. There's an agency to this Emma not often found." "Director Elizabeth V. Newman's studied and steady cast delivers a solid performance, exploring the toll on the human psyche born of illicit choices." |
"The set and props were designed by Newman and producer Stephanie Moore, to mostly wonderful effect. The set is wide and open, making great use of space, with nearly every scene pre-set at once, frenetically shifting with lighting changes to create self-contained moments onstage, clearly defined as their own worlds." "The dialect work is near flawless, and it speaks volumes to coach Bernadette Nason's work that, although I'd skimmed the program and read that one of the two main male actors was a genuine Brit, I couldn't remember which it was." |
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BWW Review: Filigree Theatre Delivers Icy BETRAYAL
by Joni Lorraine Oct. 5, 2017 |
"There is an impressive surgical precision behind The Filigree Theatre's current production of Harold Pinter's autobiographical play, BETRAYAL."
BETRAYAL is not light-hearted fare. This is a juicy topic to consider, and a play written by an iconic modern playright. It may not be for the casual theatre goer, nor is the play for your average theatre company. Filigree is certainly not that, and has done an impressive job of producing this version of BETRAYAL. |
"It's J. Kevin Smith who really nails the underlying passion in the text though, effectively portraying Robert with the underlying rage that the entire situation deserves. His portrayal allows for us to laugh in all the right places, too, and in much needed relief, without ever betraying (pun intended) the seriousness of the script." |
"this production is executed with impressive precision, and remains professionally faithful to Pinter's style..."
