Copious Notes

Proposed new addition to the Living Arts & Science Center at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and East Fourth Street, designed by the Louisville-based firm De Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop. © Image from De Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop.

Lexington’s Living Arts and Science Center is the only Kentucky organization on the leaderboard for $10,000 or more in the Chase Community Giving National Challenge.

In the online competition for votes, groups that maintain a ranking of 196 or more out of 7,000 through Wednesday night will be in line to receive a $10,000 reward. Higher rankings could mean even larger prizes of $20,000 or $250,000, according to an LASC release. At this writing, the Arts and Science Center is ranked 141 with just under 1,000 votes.`

In 2009, the Lexington Children’s Theatre won $25,000 in the same competition.

The Living Arts and Science Center is an institution providing educational and artistic opportunities in the arts and sciences through classes, exhibits, performances and public events. Late last year, the LASC announced a $5 million campaign to renovate and expand its facility in the Kinkead House on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard doubling its size and programming capacity.

Voting continues in the Chase competition through 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.

All voters have two votes, but they cannot be used on the same organization. Chase Bank Customers have two more votes, and Facebook members can get additional votes through posting Chase Community Giving links on their pages and friends using the link to go vote in the competition. Those votes can be used on groups the voter previously voted for.

Late Monday afternoon, the Lexington Philharmonic sent out a release announcing it is also in the competition, though at just over 30 votes at this writing, it is well off the leaderboard where the lowest vote-getter has more than 800 votes. Click here for the Philharmonic’s competition page.

Click here to search for other organizations in the competition.

The Lexington Children’s Theatre announced its 2012-13 season this week, including its summer family musical.

Lexington Children's Theatre artistic director Vivian R. Snipes and producing director Larry Snipes.

The season features several shows written by LCT staff, including the world premiere of producing director Larry Snipes’ adaptation of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and artistic director Vivian Snipes’ The Tallest Tale Ever Told. The year also includes the couple’s adaptation of Aesop’s Fables and education director Jeremy Kisling’s Why ­Mosquitoes Buzz.

Here’s the complete lineup.

July 26-29: Seussical The Musical. Auditions are 1 to 5 p.m. May 26 and 27 with callbacks 6 to 10 p.m. May 29 and 30 at the theater, 418 W. Short St. Call (859) 254-4546, Ext. 310, to schedule auditions.

Sept. 16-23: Oz, by Patrick ­Shanahan, based on the book by L. Frank Baum.

Oct. 21-28: Wiley and the Hairy Man by Suzan Zeder.

Nov. 4-11: Tom Sawyer, based on the book by Mark Twain, adapted by Larry Snipes.

Nov. 24-Dec. 2: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, based on the book by C.S. Lewis and dramatized by Don Quinn. Performed at the Lexington Opera House.

Dec. 9-16: Aesop’s Fables, adapted by Larry and Vivian Snipes.

Jan. 27-Feb. 3: Why Mosquitoes Buzz, based on the African folktale and dramatized by Jeremy Kisling.

Feb. 24-March 3: Pinkalicious, based on the book by Elizabeth Kann and Victoria Kann, with music by John Gregor.

April 20-28: The Hundred Dresses, adapted from Eleanor Estes’ book by Kentucky native Mary Hall Surface.

May 5-12: The Tallest Tale Ever Told by Vivian Snipes.

Season subscriptions are available now for $31.50 for three plays, $50 for five plays and $85.50 for all nine shows. Single-show tickets will go on sale Sept. 1. The dates given are for public weekend and evening performances; go to the Lexington Children’s Theatre Web site, or call (859) 254-4546 for tickets and information on school day performances.

The 2011-12 season finale, Goodnight Moon, continues this weekend. Read Candace Chaney’s review.

Transylvania University artists Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorova, shown here in a photo for their Discarded project earlier this year, received a Community Arts Grant for a project to place 1,000 dolls along Limestone. © Herald-Leader photo by Rich Copley

LexArts has announced its recipients of general operating support and community arts grants.
The general operating support funds are unrestricted grants, generally to larger organizations in Lexington.
This year’s recipients are:

■ Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras, $20,000
■ Lexington Art League, $62,000
■ Lexington Children’s Theatre, $120,000
■ Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, $165,000
■ Lexington Singers, $9,000
■ Living Arts and Science Center, $102,000

Community Arts Grants are given at two levels: Program grants to groups for operating support and specific endeavors and project grants to groups or individuals for specific projects.
Program grants go to:
■ Balagula Theatre Company, $8,600 – for its 2011-12 theater season
■ Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, $8,600 – for the Kentucky Great Writers Series, which brings 12 Kentucky authors to the center to work with writers
■ Chamber Music Festival of Lexington, $4,000 – for the 2011 festival
■ Kentucky Ballet Theatre, $8,400 – for the 2011-2012 season of performances
■ Kentucky Craft History and Education Association, $3,000 – for Stringed Instruments, The Art of the Luthier, a documentary film about stringed instrument-making in Kentucky
■ Kentucky Women Writers Conference, Inc., $7,500 – for the 2011 event
■ University of Kentucky Opera Theatre, $5,000 -for the Academy for Creative Excellence, which provides theater and music training for first through eight graders

Project grants go to:
■ The African American Forum, $1,500 – for The Smooth Jazz Fest
■ Artists Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorova, $2,500 – for 1000 Dolls, a project to create and install 1000 local-designed dolls along Limestone
■ Central Kentucky Concert Band, $1,750 – for the closing concert of the 2011-2012 season
■ Lexington Bach Choir, $1,000 – for the 2nd Annual Lexington Bach Choir Vocal Competition in which students age 30 or younger compete for cash and a solo opportunity with the Bach Choir

(Clockwise from left) Brianna Case as Cairon, Will Swisher as Atreyu, Marjorie Amon as Chancellor, Eva Cortes and Cameron Taylor as attendant in a scene from Lexington Children's Theatre's production of "The Neverending Story." Photos by Matt Goins

Talking about Lexington Children’s Theatre‘s production of The Neverending Story, associate artistic director Jeremy Kisling and general manager Lesley Farmer say, “It’s a very Vivian show.”

LCT artistic director Vivian Snipes has put her mark on otherworldly shows, including The Snow Queen and Alice in Wonderland. The shows require her and her crews of actors and designers to come up with new ways to tell stories that you might presume should be left to the movie studios and their computer-generated images.

Will Swisher as Atreyu.

The big-screen movies already have taken a crack at Michael Ende’s novel, with Wolfgang Petersen’s 1984 film, but Snipes says the film gets a universal thumbs-down from kids at the Children’s Theatre. Although technology has bounded far ahead of ’80s special effects, this stage version has the student actors learning new ways to tell stories live.

“What I love about theater is everyone brings your personal self, and your knowledge and your perceptions, and we all interpret what we see on an individual level,” Snipes says. “Hopefully, this show will allow us to do that even more so, and keep people engaged because we’re not handing it to you on a silver platter.”

A few days before the show opened, we sat down with Snipes to talk about the production, which she said was “an interesting conundrum.”

Question: What has made Neverending Story an interesting corundum?

Answer: The scope and scale of any quest story is always a massive challenge of, ‘How do you translate that to a theatrical venue?’ when you don’t have all the bells and whistles that movies can accomplish with CGI.

For me, it was analyzing the script and saying, ‘What is this thing truly about, other than that it is just a quest play?’ That broke down into three or four really strong themes, but we have boiled it down to the fact that it is vital to make connections to the world and the people around us and maintain our individual imaginations. Albert Einstein said, ‘There can be no knowledge without imagination.’ It’s that pushing us beyond who first dreams of doing what, and then making it happen.

So when we first came into design meetings, I said ‘I do not want to rely on visual images. I want the audience to rely on their imagination to engage within the play, to understand that two chairs stacked on top of each other can be an ironing board or a door frame.

Michael Overstreet as Falkor the Luck Dragon with Marjorie Amon, Brianna Case, Hallie Hargus and Amahlia Perry-Farr as Ygramul the Spider.

Q: What attracted you to Neverending Story?

A: The challenge of accomplishing it. I enjoy the quest aspect of the play, the episodic nature. I like to find material that has the same things: strong characters, a great sense of change, an importance for telling the story and sharing the story. … Material like this, where it is so open to interpretation, and which path of the journey do you want to take in order to get there, that’s one of the reasons I was especially interested in doing this show.

Patrick Lines as Bastian the bookkeeper.

Q: In addition to the imagination, what else have you worked on to tell this story?

A: Well, I have worked diligently with our ensemble. I have 27 in the cast and only four — Atreyu, Falkor, Artax and Gmork — play dedicated characters, meaning they do nothing else during the play. Everybody else is part of a Greek chorus ensemble. We use their bodies, their voices, their movement to help transport us in time, place and rhythm. That’s been a wonderful challenge pooling them and working on our physicality … In many ways, it’s a dance production.

Will Swisher as Atreyu the warrior and Terrence Thomas as Artax the horse.

Q: Thinking about the entire mission of the children’s theatre, having this as a Discover Series show, how important is that to stretching the kids?

A: I have heard some of the kids say they never thought it would be so taxing to be part of the ensemble of a show, because they have to be in such control of their bodies. I feel as if they are constantly being pushed to step beyond the norm. I have several who I set a challenge of, ‘I need you to use your bodies to build a bookstore,’ and they look at me and go, ‘do what?’ But then you see them figure, ‘Yes, why can’t your back be a table?’ ‘Why can’t a row of hands be a series of books?’ ‘Why can’t those books open and close?’ Find as many ways as you can for your body to accomplish those things.’ When they begin thinking, they come back and say, ‘I didn’t know we could do that.’

For many of them, it’s a stretch into a new form of theater. I hope they understand that it’s not just about staging the words of the script, but seeing through the script to the things beyond.

Lexington Children’s Theatre, 416 West Short Street, has announced a slate of nine shows, including classics and contemporary hits along with two world premiers, and its summer family musical.

I Dedicate This Ride – The world premier of Frank X Walker’s play about Isaac Murphy opens LCT’s 72nd season. 2 p.m. Sept. 26 and Oct. 3, 2 and 7 p.m. Oct. 2.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie – The return of Laura Numeroff’s voracious mouse. 2 p.m. Oct. 10 and 17, 2 and 7 p.m. Oct. 16.

River Rat and Cat - The unlikely friendship of River Rat and Cat is put to the test in this show. 2 and 7 p.m. Oct. 23, 2 p.m. Oct. 24.

Junie B. Jones: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells – Would Junie B. Jones have it any other way? This is the big holiday show across the street from LCT, at the Lexington Opera House. 2 p.m. Nov. 27 and Dec. 5, 2 and 7 p.m. Dec. 4.

The Neverending Story – Many moms and dads, and maybe their kids, know the 1984 movie or the Michael Ende book. Here’s the stage version by David S. Craig. 2 p.m. Dec. 12 and 19, 2 and 7 p.m. Dec. 18.

Cows Don’t Fly and other known facts - Kentucky native Paul Brett Johnson’s stories come to life on the LCT stage. 2 p.m. Jan. 23 and 30, 2 and 7 p.m. Jan. 29.

Anne Frank and Me - A girl travels in time back to Nazi-occupied France, seeing a completely different life. 2 and 7 p.m. March 5, 2 p.m. March 6.

The Princess Who Lost Her Hair – The season’s second world premier is LCT education director Jeremy Kisling’s story set in deep Africa where a selfish and prideful princess loses her hair and must learn humility to get it back. 2 p.m. March 13 and 20, 2 and 7 p.m. March 19.

Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type – The season closer is a visit to Farmer Brown and his mischievous animals. 2 p.m. May 1 and 15, 2 and 7 p.m. May 14.

Season tickets range from a three-show series for $9.50 a seat to all nine school-year shows for $8.50 a seat. Single show tickets go on sale Sept. 1. Tickets to Willy Wonka are a separate price at $16 adults, $13 children. To order tickets, call (859) 254-4546, ext. 247 or visit www.lctonstage.org.

With two plays about dogs coming up, it seemed like a good time to talk to some local actors about how you play a canine. So we went to Lexington Children’s Theatre for Go, Dog. Go! and Danville’s West T. Hill Community Theatre for Sylvia. You can read about it at LexGo or click play above to hear some of the comments (and barks and howls).

State Sen. Kathy Stein and her husband, Lexington Legends founder Alan Stein, were a hit at last year's Lexington Children's Theatre Celebrity Showcase as Becky and Tom from "Tom Sawyer." They'll be back this year. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

New University of Kentucky football coach Joker Phillips headlines the performers in the Lexington Children’s Theatre’s second annual local notable event, Celebrity Showcase Goes Wicked.

Joker Phillips. Photo by Pablo Alcala | Herald-Leader.

The theater launched the fund-raising event last spring with well known Lexingtonians such as Lexington Legends founder Alan Stein and WVLK radio host Jack Pattie playing parts from some of the theater’s best-loved shows. This year puts a sinister twist on the theme, with the celebs playing favorite villains from LCT shows.

In addition to Phillips, the lineup will include WVLK’s Sue Wylie, Lexington Center President and CEO Bill Owen, Miss Kentucky Mallory Ervin, and Lexington Fayette Urban-County Council persons Kevin Stinnett and Doug Martin. Stein and his wife, State Sen. Kathy Stein, who were a big hit as Tom Sawyer and Becky last year, will be back as the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood.

Here’s the rest of the cast list:

Androcles
Deidre Ransdell – Androcles
Kathy Plomin – Isabella
Doug Martin – Captain

Hansel & Gretel
Melissa Bacon – Witch
Renee Jackson – Gretel
Dr. Zwischenberger – Hansel

Rapunzel
Amanda Ferguson – Helga
Janet Holloway – Mother Gothal
Tim Soulis – Theo

Red Riding Hood
Sen. Kathy Stein – Red
Alan Stein – Wolf

Tomato Plant Girl

Sue Wiley – Bossy Best Friend
Kelly Anne Beile – Little Girl

Wicked
Pam Perlman – Elphaba
Karyn Czar – Glenda

Wicked John
Bill Owen – John
Jack Cunningham – John- Devil

Joker Phillips – Little Devil 1
Tucker Richardson – Little Devil 2
Kevin Stinnett – St. Peter
Lindy Karns – Wife

Jim Richardson will again be the emcee and Miss Kentucky Mallory Ervin will sing.

Missy Johnsston, Chris Rose and Robbie Morgan are members of a love triangle in Samuel Beckett's "Not I," which will be presented in the Community Theater Festival at the Southeastern Theatre Conference in Lexington, March 4-6. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Usually, as February turns into March, many Lexington theater practitioners are packing their bags to head south to the Southeastern Theatre Conference‘s annual convention.

But this year, they’re keeping their clothes in their closets, preparing to play gracious hosts as 4,000 theater folk descend on Lexington.

“Most years I spend all my days in auditions and callbacks,” says Larry Snipes, producing director of the Lexington Children’s Theatre. “This year, we’ll be busy managing a festival site.”

The Children’s Theatre will be in the heart of the action for the four-day event, which runs Wednesday through Saturday.

Roseanne Mingo, destination sales account executive with the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau says taking up six hotels and numerous venues, SETC is one of the larger conventions to come to town. She says she conservatively estimates its economic impact at $1.2 million.

For the most part, the convention will take place in the blocks along Broadway between High and Short streets. The University of Kentucky’s Guignol Theatre will also be a venue for the SETC high school theater festival, which will include Lexington’s Paul Laurence Dunbar High School as a participant.

A quartet of theater festivals – children’s, high school, college and community – is one of the major facets of the festival, which also includes massive auditions where theater companies from across the country hire actors, and more than 300 seminars and workshops.

“It is a busy, busy, busy three days,” Lexington Children’s Theatre education director Jeremy Kissling says.

SETC director Betsy Baun says Snipes and the LCT crew were keys to attracting the convention back to Lexington for the first time since 1978.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lexington Children’s Theatre is heading into the final stretch of its pursuit of a $1 million grant from Chase Bank.

In December, the theater became the only Kentucky finalist in Chase’s Community Giving Competition on Facebook. For that honor, the theater will receive $25,000, and it was entered in the next round of the competition, contending with 99 other groups around the country for a grand prize of $1 million. There are also prizes of $100,000 and a few other possible awards in the competition.

The winners will be determined by an online vote. Click here to go to the voting page. Voting closes at midnight Friday.

Heather Parrish led the most successful show of the year for Studio Players, the summertime production of "Always, Patsy Cline." Photo by Mark Cornelison | Herald-Leader staff.

New Year’s Day 2009, I assumed by New Year’s Eve I would have written about at least one Lexington arts group closing its doors. The economy was buried nose-first in the ground and theaters and other arts organizations were closing their doors around the county. While Actors Guild of Lexington did give us plenty of offstage drama, there actually were no fatalities here as far as arts groups go, and some even thrived despite the nation’s foundering fortunes.

The poster child for doing quite well, thank you very much, was Studio Players. In the depths of our national despair, Studio put up a winter show about Mary Todd Lincoln it thought would probably have limited appeal. And “The Last of Mrs. Lincoln” was a sold out hit that had to add performances to accommodate the audiences.

And that’s pretty much how 2009 went for Studio, the pinnacle of the year being the summer production of “Always, Patsy Cline” that added numerous performances including unprecedented, for Studio, Wednesday shows.

Studio was not alone in bucking trends. The Lexington Ballet went out and hired a new company of professional dancers, the ballet’s first pro troupe since the early part of this decade. Paragon Music Theatre presented its first two productions directed by new artistic director Robyn Peterman Zahn at the Lexington Opera House.

Now Lexington and Central Kentucky were not immune to economic challenges. Donations to campaigns cooled a bit and the Kentucky Arts Council has had to endure several cuts due to state cuts. But, everyone came out alive.

Of course, there were other big arts stories this year:

Scott Terrell conducts his first Masterclassics concert as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic in September. Photo by Matt Goins.

A new maestro: After two years of searching, the Lexington Philharmonic named Scott Terrell its new music director. He succeeded George Zack, who held the Philharmonic’s baton for more than three decades, and so far, it seems the change has done the orchestra good.

“This orchestra is coming alive,” Herald-Leader critic Loren Tice wrote, reviewing November’s MasterClassics concert. “There is a sense of cohesion, of belief that there is first-rate music being made here.”

The new face has given the Philharmonic a chance to rebrand itself with a more youthful profile, helped by a group of hip, young soloists to start Terrell’s debut season. In all, it has been a profound change for Lexington’s flagship arts group.

Now-departed Actors Guild of Lexington artistic director Richard St. Peter and managing director Kim Shaw. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Actors Guild melts down: Lexington’s one-time flagship theater had a very different year. Actors Guild of Lexington has long been angling to become the area’s fully-professional theater for adult audiences — Lexington Children’s Theatre has been a professional house for years. In May, it announced plans to make that move, but less than a month later, the bottom fell out. LexArts, exasperated after years of AGL’s financial roller coaster, withdrew annual general-operating funding from the theater. That nearly-$70,000 hit sent the theater into a tailspin, with both artistic director Richard St. Peter and managing director Kimberly Shaw eventually leaving to pursue other opportunities.

This fall, AGL has presented an abbreviated and altered schedule from what was announced in the spring. The December production of “The SantaLand Diaries” was reportedly sold out, and Actors Guild says it is making plans for 2010. But none have been announced.

It should be noted that at the same time this story has played out, other area theaters including the ones mentioned above plus The Woodford Theatre, Balagula Theatre and Children’s Theatre have thrived.

Abraham Lincoln played by Jim Sayre of Lawrenceburg, left, and Henry Clay played by George MGee of Georgetown put the finishing touches on their costumes outside the entrance to the Kennedy Center. Photo by Jonathan Palmer.

“Our Lincoln” in Washington: Many Lexington artists and groups go to perform in other areas on celebrated stages such as Carnegie Hall and even Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. But taking 375 performers from a diverse ensemble of groups to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington was a whole new level of ambition.

The Kentucky Humanities Council pulled it off, traveling – despite the epic ice storm that befell Central Kentucky – on the first days of February to put on a show for 1,463 people. The performance, narrated by Bob Edwards and including the Lexington Singers and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, is now available on DVD from the Humanities Council Web site.

Film incentives pass: In June, the state General Assembly passed a bill providing financial incentives to filmmakers who shoot in Central Kentucky. The incentives – a 20 percent refundable tax credit for production and post-production expenses for feature filmmakers who spend at least $500,000 in Kentucky – are seen as essential to attract filmmakers. An immediate result was Disney’s “Secretariat” chose to come to Kentucky for filming in October.

New works: It’s always important to remember new performing arts works, because they help keep the disciplines vital and relevant.

This year started with the Lexington Ballet’s production of artistic director Luis Dominguez’s “The Magical Tales of Beatrix Potter” in March and concluded with The Woodford Theatre’s original holiday show, “The Christmas Presence.” In between, Actors Guild launched Silas House’s second work for the stage, “Long Time Travelling;” Pioneer Playhouse director Holly Henson presented “The Infamous Ephraim,” about Danville physician Ephraim McDowell’s historic abdominal surgery; the UK Opera Theatre premiered composer Joseph Baber and librettist James W. Rodgers’ opera “River of Time,” about young Abraham Lincoln; the Lexington Singers premiered “A Bluegrass Tapestry,” which was 11 songs accompanying the photography of Scott County’s James Archambeault; the Lexington Ballet presented “The Koln Concert,” set to Keith Jarrett’s iconic jazz concert album and the UK Symphony premiered Lorne Dechtenberg’s “Token of Affection.”

Other headlines

Kayoko Dan addresses the CKYO audience at her first concert, Nov. 15. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Lexington’s Michael Shannon was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for “Revolutionary Road.” … Lexington musical theater artist Christopher Tolliver was fatally shot at Lexington Green. … The New York Philharmonic played a sold-out show at Danville’s Norton Center for the Arts. … Lexington Children’s Theatre celebrated its 70th anniversary. … The Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras named Kayoko Dan its new music director. … Former UK Opera star Reshma Shetty landed role on the USA TV network’s series “Royal Pains.” … LexArts announced Horse Mania will return in 2010. … UK’s Cliff Jackson was named “coach of the year” by Classical Singer magazine. … Winchester’s Jason Epperson, runner-up on Fox’s “On the Lot” film-director reality series, shot his feature film debut, “Unrequited,” in Central Kentucky. … Norton Center completed a $3 million rennovation. … The Men of Note big band played its last gig. … Former Kentucky State University drama teacher and area director Jack Parrish died. … Norton Center director George Foreman announced he is leaving for a University of Georgia job. … The Radio City Music Hall Rockettes came to Rupp Arena for the first time with the “Radio City Christmas Spectacular.”