Support and soft infrastructure via the shadow-emerge-mentoree process is another way we hope to grow the industry through new and different approaches. Key productions, for example, will have a call out for new directors to shadow the experienced director. This will be followed by a chance to then direct under your mentor. At first the lower cased title seems more pretentious than meaningful. But once you've watched how an ill-conceived remark that's repeated out of context detonates the relationships of reasons to be pretty's four friends, Neil LaBute's reason for that lower casing makes perfect sense. Howard Davies's production, for the Abbey Theatre and the National, comes and goes. It is indulgent in the early tedious scenes which pivot, Benny Hill-style, around a lurching man in a cap and a furious (cue for a laugh) woman in an apron. It strengthens in the later stages when women mourn their dead men and plead for an end to strife. Anyway, the play begins with a fight between a couple that’s not married and have been together for four years. The fight is about an overheard comment from the man who tells his friend that that friend’s wife is really pretty, especially compared to his girlfriend. The comment is heard by the wife, who calls the girlfriend, and the play commences.

We brought in an accent coach to ensure the cast has the same US style twang,” Lexi says, “We want to be representative of the characters’ small town origins.” The performing arts industry took a hit during the height of the pandemic,” Lexi says. “It created a collective low resilience amongst performers and made it difficult to commit to a performance even post-Covid.” There may not be a huge number of professional theatre makers in the ACT (and many keep moving out of town!) but those who are here should be celebrated and promoted. This is not about being better than any others. It is not about vertical comparisons. It is about the positive exploration of technique, and the positive promotion and horizontal growth of the industry in Canberra. There is room for all of us. Bob Crowley's design makes a palace out of dereliction, a place in which the walls give distress a good name. Plaster curls decoratively down long walls; opal windows seem to let in a grey-green light; the effect is not so much tenement as verdigris ballroom. In the early scenes the echoing elegance of the space drains away the desperation which encircles the play and makes sense of its plunges from despondency to hilarity. Space also causes gigantism in the actors. Some of that settles down.

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LaBute wrote a sequel to the play, Reasons to be Happy, which premiered in June 2013 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in an MCC Theater production. It features the same four characters several years later, and starred Jenna Fischer, Josh Hamilton, Leslie Bibb and Fred Weller. [8] Awards and nominations [ edit ] Original Broadway production [ edit ] Year Producer: Lexi Sekuless Productions by arrangement with Music Theatre International Australasia Pty Ltd, on behalf of Dramatists Play Service, Inc everything they've got into their physical being, and a main part of that — the main part — is the face. ( Beat.) I go nuts if I still break out on my chin or That prop will be central to the mechanics of the stage,” he says, pointing to an orange brutalist style chair. It’s a gift from a nearby Dairy Road business. Lexi is keen to expand:

As odd as it seems, I came upon this play through a conversation with a Goodreads friend about Herman Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund, which in part features a "beautiful" Goldmund for a time sleeping with a lot of "beautiful" women. Male predator? I don't think so, he's as much approached as approaching women, but you have to consider the source here (me: guy). Anyway, I was casting about for a play about beauty, and this one, that was nominated for and won Tony awards, is. Michael Attenborough's production cleverly transmits this exceptionally inflected play. Tragedy is perky and jagged. The delivery is twangy. Mark Henderson's lighting is unflinchingly fluorescent. The design by Soutra Gilmour is snazzy: a trailer swivels round between episodes to show different faces. The only fault is over-emphatic, explanatory music accompanying each episode; all that is needed is a searing silence and the terrible screech of the buzzer summoning people to work. Like the principles embedded in the company, Lexi and Tim have built this show around emerging and independent actors, as well as stage and sound design crew, with an aim to build and support the growth of live Canberra theatre. Every member of the production team provides ‘shadow’ opportunities to emerging industry artists, with a view to mentoring them for the next production.Director Terry Kinney, repeating his chores from the play’s previous off-Broadway production, has again elicited superb performances from his ensemble. And the playwright has done some welcoming tightening of the running time, with the biggest improvement being the deletion of the extraneous monologues in which the characters unnecessarily explained their motivations.