Copious Notes

Studio Players brings’ Midway resident Sam Shepard’s “True West” to the Carriage House Theatre stage Jan. 21-Feb. 7. It’s the first Lexington production of a Shepard play since Phoenix Group Theatre’s 1998 rendition of “Fool for Love.” Studio’s show is directed by Eric Seale and stars Tim Hull and Bob Singleton as the polar-opposite brothers Austin and Lee.

Actor Tim Hull (left) stars as The Elf in Actors Guild of Lexington's production of David Sedaris' "The SantaLand Diaries," co-directed by Eric Ryan Seale (middle) and Leif Erickson Rigney (right). The show will be presented in the space formerly occupied by Portabella Restaurant near the intersection of Richmond Road and Man O War Boulevard. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Our latest collaboration with WEKU-FM 89.5, a preview of Actors Guild of Lexington’s production of David Sedaris’ “The SantaLand Diaries,”  was on the air during “Morning Edition” today. It was a really good chance to hear actor Tim Hull channel Sedaris’ darkly comic memoir of working as an elf in the Santa display at New York’s Macy’s department store and to hear Actors Guild associate artistic director Eric Ryan Seale talk about AGL’s plans for the future.

Click here to hear our report with WEKU.

Click here to read our story from Sunday’s paper.

And click here for some thoughts on taking theater to the suburbs.

Timothy Hull, seen here with Allie Darden in the On the Verge production of "Another Part of the Forest" in May, will star as the Elf in Actors Guild of Lexington's production of "The SantaLand Diaries." Photo by Rich Copley.

Yes, Kentucky, there will be a Christmas production by Actors Guild of Lexington.

The troubled theater’s next show will be a site-specific staging of David Sedaris’ The SantaLand Diaries at the site of the former Portabella Restaurant on Locust Hill Drive. It will run Dec. 10 to 20.

The show comes in the wake of a stormy summer and uncertain fall for the theater, whose funding from LexArts was eliminated and whose top two directors resigned. LexArts cut the funding, which had been about $70,000 in recent years, saying it had concerns about the fiscal management and overall viability of the theater, Lexington’s only semi-professional stage troupe for adults.

The SantaLand Diaries is Actors Guild’s first production since Beguiled Again, a Rodgers and Hart musical revue that had a two-weekend run at the Downtown Arts Center in early fall. The season schedule that Actors Guild announced last spring was to include David Hare’s The Vertical Hour and, for the holidays, a one-man version of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Associate artistic director Eric Seale, currently the theater’s only paid staff member, said SantaLand is a signal that AGL will continue presenting shows.

“If people are wondering, ‘Is there an AGL?,’ Yes, there’s an AGL,” Seale said. “If they are wondering, ‘Are they putting on shows?,’ Yes, we’re putting on shows.”

He said the theater is not ready to announce any productions after SantaLand.

A site-specific production is staged in a venue that relates to the subject matter. It’s not a new concept and has been popular in Lexington in the past year. On the Verge Productions presented Lillian Hellman’s family dramas The Little Foxes and Another Part of the Forest in historic homes downtown.

SantaLand, a one-person show about a man who plays an elf in the Christmas display at Macy’s, will be presented in the vacant retail space formerly occupied by Portabella, next to the Kroger at Richmond Road and Man o’ War Boulevard.

It will star Tim Hull, an emerging Lexington actor who recently was in Another Part of the Forest. Co-directors will be Seale and Leif Erickson Rigney, an actor last seen in Studio Players’ production of The Unexpected Guest.

AGL previously staged SantaLand in 2004 at the Downtown Arts Center.

Seale said the site-specific nature of this fall’s production was an aesthetic decision inspired by ideas he had heard at theater conferences. He said AGL explored several retail-space options before settling on the old Portabella location.

The play, based on Sedaris’ 1992 essay, looks at how people try to find holiday happiness in retail experiences, including visiting a department-store Santa. Seale said the Portabella site will be done up like a mall-Santa display to make the show “an experience.”

Seale said he expects tickets to go on sale early next week through Actors Guild’s Web site, www.actorsguildoflexington.org, or by calling 1-866-811-4111.

Here’s our slide show of On the Verge’s production of Another Part of the Forest. Mouse over the bottom of the slide show to get controls. Click on the little comment cloud to the left to activate captions (if you want captions on this show, it’s probably best to go to the large version of the show). If you click on a photo, it will take you to a larger version of it at Picasa, and you can click the link at the bottom left of the slide show window for a larger version of the whole show.

On the Verge opens its second site-specific production this weekend: Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest at the Hunt-Morgan House on Gratz Park. The play is the prequel to Hellman’s The Little Foxes, which was On the Verge’s debut last fall, across the park at the Bodley-Bullock House. Like that original show, the audience is extremely limited for each performance of this play, which will be acted out in various rooms of the house.

Read more about the show, directed by Ave Lawyer, later this week as we catch up with Roger Leasor, who plays Marcus Hubbard, the father of Ben Hubbard, the character he played in Foxes.