SATURDAY 3/13: Calling All Actors!

Creative Cauldron is holding open auditions for its Learning Theater and its upcoming production of James Thurber’s book Many Moons!  Auditions will be held Saturday, March 13 from 10:30 am – 12:30 pm at ArtSpace Falls Church, 410 South Maple Avenue.

Actors of all ages are encouraged to audition. While no prior experience is required, Creative Cauldron is looking for individuals who have a passion for acting and performing and who are interested in working alongside professional actors/mentors.

Rehearsals will begin on Saturday, March 20.  Performers must be available for rehearsals over spring break. Performances begin Friday, April 9 and run weekends through Sunday, April 25.  For more information about the auditions, call Creative Cauldron at 571-239-5288.  See www.CreativeCauldron.org for performance times and to purchase tickets.

LAST CHANCE: ‘Christmas Cabin of Carnaween’ at ArtSpace — Special 4 p.m. Sunday Showing

Creative Cauldron has added another showing of “The Christmas Cabin of Carnaween” for Sunday afternoon, December 20, at 4 p.m. at ArtSpace Falls Church. Both shows were canceled yesterday due to the weather, so this is the last chance to see this little gem of a play.

“Christmas Cabin” is presented by Creative Cauldron’s Learning Theater, an ensemble of professional actors and musicians who work alongside community and student performers.

Tickets are $10.

Adapted from a classic Irish folktale, “The Christmas Cabin of Carnaween” is set in the days of the great famine. The story follows the journey of Oona Hegarty, a tinker’s child who spends her days caring for the young, the sick and the elderly in other people’s homes, but dreams of one day having a cabin of her own.  Her wish would go unfulfilled were it not for the intervention of the fairy people who come to her aid one snowy Christmas eve. This beautiful and poignant story celebrates the resilience of the human spirit, reminding that if we hold fast to our dreams in times of hardship and need, we too will experience the magic of this holiday season.

Lauren Williams will play the role of Oona Hegarty. Williams is a gifted musical theater actress who holds a B.A. in Music from Catholic University.  She has been performing professionally since she was a young child and has appeared locally in leading roles at the Studio Theater, Signature Theater, The Rep Stage, The Kennedy Center’s Theater for Young People and with the Maryland Arts Festival. She was nominated for a 2008 Helen Hayes Award for “Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Resident Musical” for her role as Little Red in Into The Woods at Signature.  In addition to her work at Creative Cauldron, she teaches early music at Friendship Heights Pre-school and an outreach program at Martha’s Table.

Professional storyteller, educator and actress Penelope Fleming will narrate the story with live music and underscoring by the Irish band “Tir Na Nog.”  Fleming has toured the U.S. with four different acting companies and taught both music and drama to children, ages three to eighteen.  She is a member of the “Voices of in the Glen” professional storytellers organization and has performed her unique telling of folktales and myths at storytelling festivals and community events across the greater D.C. metropolitan area.  “Tir na nog” (the Land of Eternal Youth otherworld in Irish mythology) is the musical duo of Rosemary Gano and Keith Carr, who play Irish music in the “pure drop” manner, playing and singing in the style heard in pub sessions and at traditional dances and events.  They are both classically trained musicians who were drawn to Irish music, honing their skills on traditional instruments through study with Irish musical masters.  They perform regularly at O’Sullivans Irish Pub and at various community venues throughout the Washington DC metropolitan region.

In addition to the professional actors and musicians, the performing ensemble will feature children, teens and adults who are regular participants in Creative Cauldron’s learning in the arts programs.  Margie Jervis is the scenic designer and Paul Spiegelblatt the Lighting Designer.

This tribute production will honor the life and work of Cay Wiant, a writer and long time educator and community activist in the City of Falls Church. Wiant, an Agnes Meyer award-winning educator and Creative Cauldron teaching artist, passed away last year. Her life was enriched by a reverence for all things magical. Creative Cauldron Producing Director Laura Hull noted, “Cay wrote enthusiastically of the fairy world. As with other elements of the fantastical realm, fairies represented to Cay the joy to be found in wonderment and the power of belief. We are thrilled to have her spirit guiding us as we bring this enchanting Irish fairy tale to the stage.”

Creative Cauldron is a not-for-profit arts organization operating in Northern Virginia since 2002 that provides opportunities for learning and participation in the performing and visual arts for children and adults.  In June of 2009, Creative Cauldron opened the doors of its new home in the ArtSpace Falls Church, a 3,000 square foot flexible arts facility located in the City of Falls Church.  Classes, workshops and performances in all disciplines are offered year round at the site. A visual art gallery is also featured with exhibits curated and managed by Falls Church Arts. Creative Cauldron’s programs are funded in part through grants from the Arts Council of Fairfax County and the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information about Creative Cauldron programs log on to: http://www.creativecauldron.org

ArtSpace Falls Church is located at 410 South Maple Avenue in the Pearson Square Building.  Free Parking is available in the garages at both the 400 and 410 S. Maple Buildings.

Weekend Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

There are lots of opportunities to get in the Christmas spirit this weekend in Falls Church:

• The Christmas Cabin of Carnaween is an Irish folktale adapted for the stage by Creative Cauldron. Presented by an ensemble of professional and student actors, this production is ideal for families, especially those with elementary age children. Weekend performances are Friday & Saturday nights at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday & Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. at ArtSpace Falls Church (410 S. Maple Avenue). Tickets are $10 and can be reserved at www.CreativeCauldron.org or by calling 571-239-5288. The play runs through Sunday, Dec. 20. Read more

OPINION: The Man Who Doesn’t Believe in Art

By SCOTT TAYLOR
Falls Church Times Staff

Our dog’s name is Daisy – a reference to Charles M. Schulz’s Daisy Hill Puppy Farm – and her weekends wouldn’t be complete without a Saturday morning walk from our house to Cherry Hill Park and the farmers’ market.  This morning, encouraged by the sunshine and towed down the sidewalk once again by a golden retriever eager for some new scents and sounds, my wife and I made our way to the vicinity of the farmers’ market where we secured Daisy in one of her favorite spots.  She has only experienced the market from a distance due to the sensible prohibition on walking dogs through the lanes between the stalls.  I am certainly no “retriever whisperer” yet I don’t believe the expression on her face is one of despondency as she looks down on the teeming marketplace. Read more

REVIEW: ‘We Won’t Pay’: ‘Honeymooners’ with a Twist

By GEORGE SOUTHERN
Falls Church Times Staff

Seems like only yesterday that on our walks around the block my wife and I would pass the rundown duckpin bowling alley on Maple Avenue, feeling like we had been transported back to the 1950s. Then we heard it was all to be converted to a swanky high-rise condo and office building with bustling shops on the ground floor. There would even be an “art space,” gifted by the developer as one of the proffers in exchange for being allowed to build residential units on the largest remaining available commercial tract in the City.

And, as the years rolled by more quickly than we could imagine, it all happened – even if not exactly as envisioned. The office building sprang up first, then the condos. When they did not sell, they became apartments. And the bustling ground-floor shops? Still empty storefronts. That leaves the subsidized “art space.” From the grit and determination of a few extremely dedicated supporters, an arts venue has emerged right here in River City under the auspices of a group called Creative Cauldron.

I wondered how they could possibly pull it off. As supplied by the developer, the space was bare walls and a concrete floor. I stopped by last summer to hear local performers Andrew Acosta, Pete Behr, and others jam with guitars and banjo. It was stark – some paintings exhibited for sale and a few folding chairs, nothing more.

So on Friday night, the day before Halloween, I was pretty impressed to see how much has been done with so little money. Most important are the stage lights – a donation from Virginia Power. Comfortable chairs for maybe 50 people were set out in VERY close proximity to the stage set – all on the cement floor. When the play began (“We Won’t Pay, We Won’t Pay,” by Dario Fo) soon I was no longer in the barebones ground floor of Pearson Square, I was in Italy – or perhaps Little Italy in Brooklyn or East Boston.

Friday night was historic because it was ArtSpace’s first professional stage production for adults. The very first production, “The King of Pizza” in September, was very well received. Both that play and this one have professional troupes, which distinguish them from the Little Theater performances one can enjoy right down Annandale Road at the fully equipped James Lee Theater in Fairfax County.

I’ve always liked Little Theater, and feel that a community with residents that can work by day and act by night is much the richer for it. Our little City has no such animal, although I’m sure we have a number of talented actors who participate in nearby productions.

But much as I like amateur productions, I would admit that some kinds of theater can exceed the capabilities of the actors. One of the more demanding genre perhaps is farce. Let it drag, and it’s dead. “We Won’t Pay” is farce through and through, and as directed by Patrick Torres, the professional actors from the Hub Theater in Reston are adept at keeping the pace fast, as it has to be. If you enjoy the old TV series “The Honeymooners,” – or even “The Flintstones,” you’ll split your sides laughing at “We Won’t Pay.” Michael Kramer plays Giovanni, an Italian version of Ralph Kramden/Fred Flintstone, with sidekick James Gagne as Luigi (Norton/Barney). Helen Pafumi is Antonia (a lot of Alice/Wilma, but stronger, more like Lucy), while Kristen Egermeier as Margherita is a ringer for Ethel, with suggestions of Thelma Norton/Betty Rubble. Providing the foil is police sergeant/state trooper/undertaker/elderly father John Slone, who most reminds of a bumbling cop in a Laurel and Hardy short.

But don’t go to “We Won’t Pay” expecting only fun and games. That’s just the package Italian playwright and Nobel laureate Dario Fo employed in this 1974 brutal take on modern society, where the working class get mired ever deeper in debt until they find their utilities disconnected and, ultimately, their furniture out on the street. Thirty-five years later the theme endures.

Why spend an evening in the little makeshift theater at Pearson Square rather than go to the District, or even James Lee? In a word: intimacy. You are right there, on stage with the actors. Several times they interact with the audience, and “Giovanni” even handed me a sack of stolen groceries to hide under my chair. Forget the promises of future 3-D holographic television – you can experience the same thing, now, at ArtSpace. Why make yet another commute to D.C. when ArtSpace is practically at your doorstep, and with plenty of free parking? (So they say – we walked.)

Can ArtSpace pull this off? Too soon to say, of course. On opening night there was a respectable crowd, but I was surprised not to recognize a single person. Many seemed to be friends and supporters of The Hub Theater, out of Reston. The production continues through Nov. 22, with performances on Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets are $15/20 – or  just say “We Won’t Pay, We Won’t Pay.”

ArtSpace Falls Church — 410 South Maple Ave. Free parking in the adjacent parking lot as well as the parking garage at 400 South Maple.

Hub Theatre Plans Nobel Winner’s Satire for ArtSpace

Read more

The King of Pizza, Appearing at a Theater VERY Near You

Creative Cauldron opens its fall season at ArtSpace Falls Church with Martin: The King of Pizza, an original musical composed by Matt Conner, with book by A.K. Brink and Ryan Dean Halbrook.  This new musical is a “pourquoi tale” (a folktale explaining why something is the way it is) for all ages about the origin of pizza.  The production features a seasoned professional cast and premiered September 18. 

The King of Pizza production is a feature of the official opening of ArtSpace Falls Church, the new flexible performance and arts venue located at 410 South Maple Avenue in the Pearson Square complex.

Martin: King of Pizza will be held in the 95-seat theater in ArtSpace the following dates: Saturdays, September 19 & 26 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, September 20 & 27 at 2 p.m.; and Friday, September 25, at 7:30 p.m.  There will be pizza served at every performance. Tickets are $10. Reserve tickets online at www.creativecauldron.org or by calling 571-239-5288.

Matt Conner is a musical theater performer and composer who is a regularly commissioned artist at Signature Theater.  The idea for the King of Pizza came to Conner while teaching a Creative Cauldron workshop at Baileys Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences.  Seeing so many socio-economic and culturally diverse children come together through the universal language of dramatic and artistic play bringing different “ingredients” to their participation inspired Conner to create this positive tale of inclusion, acceptance and celebration.

FRIDAY 9/25: Sunset Cinema in the Park — ‘E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial’

The Friday, Sept. 25, showing at Cherry Hill Park of “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” concludes this year’s Sunset Cinema in the Park. This 1982 Spielberg classic was in its time the highest grossing film to date.

Presented by the City of Falls Church Recreation & Parks Division, the 6th Annual Sunset Cinema in the Park begins at 8 p.m. and is free to the public. Moviegoers are invited to bring blankets, bug spray and picnics. Popcorn, drinks and candy will be available for purchase.

Cherry Hill Park is located at 312 Park Ave. In the case of inclement weather, screenings will be moved inside the Falls Church Community Center Gymnasium.

The film series will conclude on Sept. 25 with “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.”

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