Reviews for Austin Community College Performances
Review: The Men from Mars AND Clever as Mice by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 28, 2009
But seriously, folks, as the stand-up comedians used to say in vaudeville. . . Manning has an idea here, but his script is too slow, too long, and too unexplained. We in the audience were ready to play along, if only we could have understood the motivation.
Ryan Manning provided a lot of the energy for the Austin Community College Experimental Student Performance Lab. This summer 2009 enterprise put on four pieces, all student-written and student-directed, all performed by ACC students. Manning wrote three of them and performed in three. Whatever ESPL show was up there, Manning was an important part of it.Bravo for that energy and engagement. Austin Live Theatre published a review of Manning's "Beckett" piece An Empty Stage on July 25. The Manning …
Review: Love Me AND An Empty Stage by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 25, 2009
A Twitter resumé might read, "Crippled and haunted by war, great suffering artist Oskar is jilted by Alma Mahler; falls for life-size surrogate doll, destroys it at orgy."
Austin Community College's summer 2009 Experimental Student Performance Lab got off to a good start for me with Philip Kreyche's expressionistic two-act work Love Me, preceded by Ryan Manning's whimsical curtain-raiser The Empty Stage. Manning's short piece gives us Dani Miller as "Pye, the Man with No Memory," and Manning himself as "Que, The Man Who Reminds Him." Imagine Estragon and Vladimir, respectively, except that instead of waiting for Godot, they're trying to construct a story for …
Review: Flu Season by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 12, 2009
It took a while, but I finally found the word that describes Will Eno's Flu Season, produced February 27- March 8 by Austin Community College. That word is "aggravating."
It took a while, but I finally found the word that describes Will Eno's Flu Season, produced February 27- March 8 by Austin Community College.That word is "aggravating."Maybe y'all don't use it here in Texas, but I heard it regularly from my mother, who came from a small town in Georgia. "Aggravating" describes behavior that is egotistical, rudely mischievous and intentionally provocative. Since she raised six sons, my Mom had occasion to use that word fairly …
Review of Proof, by Austin Community College
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 11, 2008
Tuck softens Catherine, giving her at times the self-absorbed lassitude of the truly lost. We never share her expressed apprehension that she might be tipping over into madness, as her father did.
This is a beautifully engineered production with a high level of acting, and it deserves to be seen beyond the purely internal circuit of Austin Community College.It plays this weekend and next at the tiny third-floor Gallery Theatre at ACC’s Rio Grande campus, in the building that once upon a time was Stephen F. Austin High School.It occurred to me as I watched the play unfold on opening night that I was probably the only …