Copious Notes

It’s only November, but Balagula Theatre can already lay claim to an award-winning season. The company, based at Natasha’s Bistro and Bar, took its productions of Samuel Beckett’s Play and Not I to Morehead State University for the community theater festival at the Kentucky Theatre Association’s annual conference, and it came home with several of the top prizes.

They included:

Ryan Case shown in Samuel Beckett's "Play." He won best actor at the Kentucky Theatre Association's community theatre festival for the performance and best director for "Not I." Photo by Rich Copley.

Best performance: “Selected Plays of Samuel Beckett,” performed by the Balagula Theatre Company

Outstanding director: Ryan Case and Natasha Williams, “Selected Plays of Samuel Beckett,” Balagula Theatre

Outstanding actor: Ryan Case, “Selected Plays of Samuel Beckett,” Balagula Theatre

Excellence in lighting design: Gareth Evans, “Selected Plays of Samuel Beckett,” Balagula Theatre

Excellence in scenic design: Gareth Evans, “Selected Plays of Samuel Beckett,” Balagula Theatre

The remainder of the community theater festival award winners were:

1st Runner Up for best performance: “Overtones,” performed by Shelby County Community Theatre

Outstanding actress: Lynn McReynolds Chenault, “Overtones,” Shelby County Community Theatre

Outstanding supporting actor: Cody Anderson, “Little Women,” Artists Collaborative Theatre, Elkhorn City

Outstanding supporting actress: Teresa Myers, “One Freaky Afternoon in the Office Lunchroom,” Village Players, Fort Thomas

Outstanding ensemble: “Overtones,” Shelby County Community Theatre

Excellence in costume design: “Little Women,” Artists Collaborative Theatre

Outstanding technical crew: “Little Women,” Artists Collaborative Theatre

Excellence in stage management: Peggy Kenney, “One Freaky Afternoon in the Office Lunchroom,” Village Players

Spirit award: “Little Women,” performed by Artists Collaborative Theatre

The Lexington area was also distinguished in KTA’s inaugural Roots of the Bluegrass New Play Competition, where Danville’s Elizabeth Orndorff  won the top prize for “Aidan’s Gift” and Lexington’s Walter May was second runner up with “Gone Astray.” First runner up was “Bernice Sizemore’s 70th Birthday” by Nancy Gall-Clayton of Louisville.

In the High School festival, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s production of William Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” was first runner up. The winner was Owensboro High School’s “Almost, Maine” and the second runner up was Bardstown High School’s “Zoo Story.”

For their wins, Balagula Theatre, Shelby County Community Theatre, Owensboro High School and Dunbar High will participate in the Southeastern Theatre Conference’s play competitions when the annual regional theater event comes to Lexington March 3-7.

Lesley Beatty at home in Lexington. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Click the play button to hear part of our conversation with Leslie Beatty:

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Click here for a slide show from Bad Dates.

Leslie Beatty always wanted to be an actor, and few things got in her way, except bacon.

“I took a theater class at UK when I was in college,” Beatty says. “I went in the class, and they told me to lay on the floor and be bacon. … I said, ‘I don’t know what you mean. I can’t be bacon.’ And I left and I never came back.”

The early experience with Method acting did little to derail Beatty’s career, which started modestly. When she was cast in her first play, Breaking the Code at Actors Guild of Lexington in 1990, her résumé read, “Shows auditioned for, 4. Times cast: none.”

That play launched a career that took Beatty all over the country, including stints in the prestigious American Repertory Theatre’s Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University and at David Mamet’s Atlantic Theatre Company.

Leslie Beatty in"Bad Dates."

This weekend, Beatty is back at Actors Guild in a sort of homecoming performance, starring in Bad Dates, Theresa Rebeck’s one-woman show with a self-explanatory title.

“As someone who’s experienced lots of dates, 50-50 good and bad, I can relate to a lot of it,” Beatty says over lunch at The Julep Cup restaurant. “I’m reading this one part of it, and when you get to a certain age, issues come up that didn’t come up when you were younger, health being one of them. Older people like to talk about their health.

“There’s this scene where she’s talking about a date where the guy started talking about his cholesterol, and I started laughing. And Walter May was just sitting there looking at me like, ‘What the heck?’ and tears were flowing down my face. He said, ‘This gives me hope.’”

Beatty says May, the play’s director, didn’t think the scene was that funny, until she read it and explained it.

“I said, ‘Imagine having to listen to this on a date. This is not what you want to talk about,’” Beatty says. “And I have been in this situation where people start talking about their health and their doctors, and I’m like, ‘You know, more information than I need.’”

Bad Dates is a 90-minute chronicle of the romantic travails of Hayley, a single mother and restaurant manager in New York who has no luck breaking back into the dating scene. It takes place in the bedroom of her apartment as she tries on shoes and dresses for her nights out with everyone from total non-starters to hot prospects that fizzle.

“If you were just looking around town for who to cast in this play, Leslie would be the one,” May says.

The actor and play actually came together by accident. Actors Guild’s original season included a March production of The Waiting Room, but that show was shelved as the theater tried to trim costs because of the economic downturn. Beatty was cast in the show that replaced The Waiting Room — Robert Hewitt’s one-woman play The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead. But rights issues emerged with that show. The theater finally turned to Rebeck’s Bad Dates, which has been a hit at theaters around the country.

The road from and back to Lexington

For Actors Guild, Bad Dates was a chance to present a distinguished alum.

“It’s been five years since I’ve done anything,” Beatty says. “So I equate it to an athlete who hasn’t run in five years suddenly deciding to do a marathon. It’s kind of crazy.”

Beatty’s initial foray out of Lexington was in 1992, when she joined the apprentice program at Actors Theatre of Louisville, where among others she got to share the stage with Tony and Oscar winner Mercedes Ruehl in Antony and Cleopatra.

That was a precursor to the Henry Clay High School grad’s career acting alongside a slew of marquee names. For instance, Beatty appeared in the second-ever production of actor and playwright Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile at American Repertory Theatre, or A.R.T., in Cambridge, Mass.

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Actors Guild of Lexington’s production this month appears to need a little clearing up.

The March production was originally announced as The Waiting Room, which would have opened next week for a four week run. Then, the economy happened, and the show was changed to a three-week run of Robert Hewitt’s one-woman show, The Blonde, The Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead, starring Leslie Beatty and directed by Walter May.

Then some rights issues happened.

So now, we will still have a one-woman show starring Leslie Beatty and directed by Walter May, but it will be Teresa Rebeck’s Bad Dates. In the end, this may be the best of the three options for the company, as Rebeck’s name and this show have been fairly prominent in theater circles in recent years. Rebeck has had two recent successes at the Humana Festival of New American Plays: the post-9/11 drama Omnium Gatherum, co-written with Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros, in 2003 and The Scene in 2006. Rebeck also writes for film and television, including episodes of Third Watch, L.A. Law and the feature film Harriet the Spy.

Bad Dates is about a single mother trying to get back into the dating scene while running a restaurant. It runs March 19 through April 5 at the Downtown Arts Center.