Theatre Roundup for Kids and Adults for June 2015

There’s no doubt that Austin is flush with creative, artistic individuals. Beyond the live music shows that we’re so well-known for, Austin is also home to a thriving performing arts scene. While it make take extra planning and prepping for us busy moms to get a night out at the theatre, it’s such a worthwhile and emotionally satisfying activity. So get out there in 2015! Take advantage of our city’s “culture of creativity”. Enjoy some singing, dancing, and storytelling that will move you, entertain you, and inspire you.

Children’s Theatre Roundup for June:

What’s the Story, Steve?
ColdTowne Theater
Help Steve and his cast of improvisers bring original stories to the stage! These 50 minute live performances feature Steve the improvising poodle. Each show is a unique story inspired by audience suggestion. All ages welcome. Tickets at the door. Volunteer to be a part of the show or enjoy from your seat.
Every Saturday
Special shows in Jue!
Steve Scott Solves Them All – A Small Dog Mystery – June 6th
Classic Steve – June 13
Camp Steve – June 20
Steve at the Movies – June 27
Shows at 10am, pay as you wish

The Flying Theater Machine
Hideout Theatre
Three Wishes uses suggestions from audience members to inspire the story of a group of kids who happen upon a playfully mischievous genie. Will they get what they’ve always wished for or will they discover they had what they wanted all along? Please join us for Three Wishes and see what happens when our wildest dreams come true! In these fully improvised stories, we’ll find many opportunities for the children in the audience (and sometimes their adults!) to participate and guide the story and even play on stage! And really, what more could you wish for?
Every Sunday (except Father’s Day, June 21st)
Shows at 2pm, $5

Hound of the Baskervilles
Round Rock Amphitheater
When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead on his estate with a look of terror still etched on his face and the paw prints of a gigantic hound beside his body, the great detective Sherlock Holmes is summoned from Baker Street with Dr Watson in tow to unravel the mysteries surrounding his death and investigate the ancient curse of the Hound of the Baskervilles. In this hilarious, new adaptation for three actors, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic mystery has been supercharged with playfulness and wit reminiscent of Monty Python and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). Running time is 2 hours, including one intermission. No reservations are necessary, just bring a blanket or low chairs and enjoy the outdoor play. For ages 5 and up. Select performances will feature a pre-show by a local, student performing arts group. Audiences may arrive early with their own food and drink, or purchase it from the concessions tent. The line-up of pre-show performance groups includes:

Thursday 6/4, 7:30pm, Texas Chautauqua Association, native American dance.
Friday 6/5, 7:00pm, Round Rock Christian Academy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Saturday 6/6, 7:00pm, Round Rock Christian Academy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Friday 6/19, 7:30pm, Round Rock Drums
June 4-27
Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, FREE but donations appreciated

The Wizard of Oz
Emily Ann Theatre (Wimberley)
Have you ever wanted to travel SOMEWHERE, OVER THE RAINBOW? Come skip down the yellow brick road with Dorothy, Scarecrow, Lion and Tin Man this summer at the EmilyAnn Theatre & Gardens. Following our award winning Disney’s Beauty and the Beast last summer (Winner of BroadwayWorld Austin’s Best Musical in Austin and the Surrounding Areas 2014), we are so excited to bring the magical musical,THE WIZARD OF OZ, with a cast of 50 of the area’s most talented actors, to Wimberley. Opening night will feature a party in Munchkin Land, complete with candy goody bags, an ice cream bar, and special appearances by cast members.
June 5 – July 4
Shows on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:15pm, $15 regular ticket/$10 student or group tickets, $25 for opening night (Children 5 and under are free for outdoor shows)

In My Own Backyard
Long Center’s AT&T Education Room
Mr. Sun would like to invite you to meet Squig and Lolly! These two best friends awake one morning to find ordinary objects leading them on extraordinary adventures. This premiere production of Pollyanna Theatre’s Play and Play series provides young audience members, 2-4 years old, a chance to be audience members for a ‘play’ as well as to ‘play’ alongside Pollyanna artists during this one-hour experience. Mr. Sun has lots of fun in store for Squig, Lolly and all their friends as the adventure builds up to a backyard picnic for all!
June 10-12
Shows at 9:30am & 11am, $6
This is on the June Austin Summer Fun Checklist! Check items off the list to earn FREE prizes!

Shakespeare at Ramsey Park: Henry the Fourth Part One
Ramsey Park Picnic Pavilion
Shake out your picnic blankets for a night of Shakespeare under the stars! Something for Nothing Theater (S4N) returns to Ramsey Park with William Shakespeare’s Henry the Fourth Part One. Marking the company’s fourth annual production of a community-friendly Shakespearean play at Ramsey Park, Henry the Fourth will be performed with minimal props, costumes, and lighting, focusing on storytelling and the rich language of Shakespeare. Performed by a cast of 12 actors, most portraying multiple roles, Henry the Fourth concludes at a brisk two hours. Henry the Fourth Part One is Shakespeare’s most beloved history, featuring the unforgettable character of Falstaff, the heavy, humorous, and hedonistic knight. The story centers on the young prince Hal’s journey from an irresponsible party boy to a brave hero. Rebellion is tearing England apart, with the devious Worcester plotting against King Henry, and Hal must become the man who can defeat the valiant and headstrong Hotspur. This lively play features family drama, romance, sword fighting, and rollicking pub antics.
Thursdays – Saturdays, June 11-13, 18-20, and 25-27 at 8pm, FREE

Chuggington Live! The Great Rescue Adventure
Long Center
In this musical production, the trainees have started their Advanced Training, and are now eager to impress their mentors by mastering new roles that test their courage, speed, and determination. When Koko finds herself in trouble at Rocky Ridge Mine, it’s up to her friends to help her. Do the trainees have what it takes to put their newly learned skills into practice? Can Wilson come to Koko’s rescue and fulfill his dream of becoming Chug Patrol hero? This production features beautifully designed, large-scale yet lightweight, easy to maneuver Chuggington train carriages live on stage. The TV series favorites will come to life with working mouths, eyes and plenty of traintastic action to thrill train lovers new and old across North America. The backdrop for the live show is a 32 ft wide LED video wall featuring animated locations from the TV series as interactive backgrounds to the live action.
June 14
Shows at 2pm & 5pm, $19+
This is on the June Austin Summer Fun Checklist! Check items off the list to earn FREE prizes!

The Sorcerer
Worley Barton Theater at Brentwood Christian School
The Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin presents its summer 2015 Grand Production of “The Sorcerer.” This popular classic was W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s third comic opera of their fourteen. The Sorcerer is a charming story with characteristic hilarious Gilbert & Sullivan topsy-turvydom. It tells a tale of young love, magic potions, and comic mix-ups that only W. S. Gilbert could devise, along with magnificent music composed by Arthur Sullivan. Special children’s activities precede the performance on June 21 at 1pm. All performances will have supertitles for dialogue and lyrics. A complementary buffet with the cast follows the Friday, June 19 Gala Performance.
June 18 – 28
Shows on Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm, 2pm shows on the 21st, 27th and 28th, $25/adult advance ($30 at the door), $15/student 18+ advance with ID ($20/door), $7 for 18 & under ($10 at the door)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Curtain Theatre
For its 7th season, Young Shakespeare, Austin Shakespeare’s teen company will transform Richard Garriott de Cayeux’s Curtain Theatre for a production of the romantic comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Featuring auditioned actors performing Shakespeare’s most beautiful poetry, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the story of four young lovers who flee the adult world to the forest where they are enchanted by the King and Queen of the Fairies. A group of comic workmen are also beset by fairies in this fantastical forest.
June 18 – 28, Thursdays through Sundays at 8pm
$17/adult, $13.50/youth (under 12); early bird tickets available through June 11th

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast JR.
TexARTS Kam and James Morris Theater (Lakeway)
Be Our Guest at TexARTS Annual Youth Summer Musical as the Musical Theatre Academy students bring this Academy Award-winning film and beloved classic fairytale to life. Step into the enchanted world of Disney’s Beauty and The Beast JR. Featuring songs from the Academy Award-winning animated feature, this stage version includes music by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman, along with new songs by Mr. Menken and Tim Rice. The classic story tells of Belle, a young woman in a provincial town, and the Beast, who is really a young prince trapped under the spell of an enchantress. If the Beast can learn to love and be loved, the curse will end and he will be transformed to his former self. But time is running out. If the Beast does not learn his lesson soon, he and his household will be doomed for all eternity.
June 19 – 22
Shows at 6pm, 1pm shows on the 20th & 21st, $15+

Theatre Roundup for the Older Kids and Grown-Ups for June:

The Free Fringe
Hideout Theatre
There are hundreds of performers, and every single one of them is prone to saying things like “Wouldn’t it be crazy if…?” or “I just had the most insane idea.” This is where those dreams go, not to die, but to live gloriously on the stage for one night only. Every week will be dramatically different. There could be shows with improvisers tied up in rope, 50 performers onstage, blindfolded actors, improvising dogs, or 1000 other things. THE FREE FRINGE IS FREE. FOREVER. Reserve your tickets in advance to guarantee yourself a spot.
Every Thursday
Shows start at 10pm
Movie Riot
ColdTowne Theater
Prepare for MOVIE RIOT— a live improvised comedy double header event. Two teams of comedy juggernauts take the ColdTowne Theater stage to create brand new never-before-seen movies live on stage. From a title or song lyric, the performers will lovingly craft complete improvised films, all made up on the spot. But the fun doesn’t end there. Add in free popcorn and movie candies (and for a limited time FREE MAGARITAS), you’ll get a recipe for a killer cinema-inspired live comedy event.
Every Friday
Show starts at 7pm, $5

Maestro
Hideout Theatre
The Hideout presents twelve of Austin’s virtuoso improv comedians for a night of games and scenes based on audience suggestions — but only one of them will make it to the end of the show and be crowned MAESTRO for the week and awarded the coveted Canadian five-dollar bill. Also, all Maestro shows are now wheelchair accessible as they are performed in the Downstairs Theater. To guarantee a space ahead of time e-mail Artistic Director Roy Janik at roy@hideouttheatre.com.
Every Saturday
Shows at 10pm, $12

All Ages Improv Night
ColdTowne Theater
Each week, we welcome one or two troupes of young performers and an established adult troupe to improvise original shows. In addition to family friendly performances, each show features an Improv Jam. Audience members are invited to join performers on stage for low pressure, supportive and occasionally very silly improv. Children 6 and under might prefer the Saturday morning show, What’s the Story Steve, but they are welcome at this show.
Sundays (except on June 7th)
5-6:15pm, pay as you wish (Suggested donation: $3-$5)

Second Sunday Comedy Showcase
ZACH Theatre
Watch the improv all-stars of Austin, The Known Wizards, headline this improv comedy showcase with spontaneous scenes, hilarious games, surprisingly good songs, and fantastic stories all made up on the spot based on audience input. You say it, we play it–like magic! The March show features Merlin Works Improv 301 & Singing 301 students and Improv 601 graduating students.
Second Sundays (June 14, July 12, August 9, September 13, October 11, November 8, December 22), $9

30 Trips in 60 Minutes!
Salvage Vanguard Theater
It’s back! Fast-paced, audience interactive, funny and poignant, 30 mini-plays performed in 60 minutes about the ups and downs of going places and the word “TRIP.” After the sold-out and popular runs of 30 Dates in 60 Minutes (2013) and 30 Loves in 60 Minutes (2014), we are thrilled to bring you brand new mini-plays (and some audience favorites from last year) about the subject and the word, “TRIP.”  From a trip down memory lane, to tripping and ‘trippin,’ to the road less travelled, it will be another 60 minutes of high-energy, fast-paced fun with moments of reflection and poignancy. The skits were collaboratively created by ensemble of mostly minority performers based on personal stories.  The ensemble will attempt to perform all 30 plays in 60 minutes.   To determine which skit will be presented, the audience calls out a number from 1-30 and a timer is set at the beginning to keep us honest!
May 1, 2, 7, 8, 9 and June 4, 5, 6 (8pm), $10

Waiting for Godot
The City Theatre
The New York Times named Waiting for Godot “the most important play of the 20th Century.” Since it was first staged over sixty years ago, theatre artists, critics, scholars and audiences have come to embrace Samuel Beckett’s seminal tragicomedy as a masterpiece. A funny, harrowing, and deeply human story, the play centers on two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon.
On a country road, these two wanderers wait for an enigmatic figure to arrive, a road where time, place, and memory are obscure and meaning is where you find it. With the arrival of other eccentric travelers, their comical efforts to pass the time parody the human condition and the simple lives and language of these men take on extraordinary and universal
significance. Poetic and provocative, hopeless and hopeful, the play is a haunting and uncompromising master work from one of the greatest writers in modern drama.
May 15-June 7 (Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 5:30pm), $15 general admission

You Can’t Stay Here
The Institution Theater
Two in the morning. Closing time. You and your friends might want the night to go on forever, but be warned: it’s different this late. The familiar becomes unfamiliar, the everyday becomes alien. The city you know becomes a different animal entirely. YOU CAN’T STAY HERE is an improvised play that shows you the misadventures of a group of friends caught out way too late. They will face challenges unknown in waking hours and face obstacles unknown in the light of the sun. Friendships will crack and fray, courage will be tested, and danger will follow our heroes as they battle the night. Best get moving. Who knows what lays ahead? Come for the pre-show when doors open at 9pm for TOM’S PLACE, the Institution’s own “neighborhood bar” where you can hang out with the locals and test your brain with a good old-fashioned trivia quiz!
May 15-June 20 (Fridays at 10pm), $10

Mothers and Sons
ZACH’s Topfer Theatre
A provocative, beautiful new play about who we are and who we love…today. At turns funny and powerful, MOTHERS AND SONS portrays a woman who pays an unexpected visit to the New York apartment of her late son’s partner, who is now married to another man and has a young son. Challenged to face how society has changed around her, generations collide as she revisits the past and begins to see the life her son might have led.
May 27-June 21 (Wednesdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 2:30pm), $25+

The New Electric Ballroom
The Vortex
Breda smears her lipstick, Clara waits for tea and cake, and Ada cans fish in the local cannery. Three sisters trapped in time endlessly relive their past in a crumbling Irish seaside town. Their raison d’être is to rehearse and tell the story of their glory days. But just how glorious were those days? What happened that made the sisters imprison themselves in their own house? One day the local fishmonger steps into the house for the very first time. That was the day everything changed. Was the fishmonger really a fishmonger at all? Maybe he was Jesus in disguise. Then again, maybe he wasn’t. Find out at The New Electric Ballroom.
May 22-June 6 (Thursdays-Sundays at 8pm), $20 general admission

Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
Pan Am Recreation Center
Oh Dragon Theatre Company presents a hilarious, fast-paced romp through the Bard’s extensive playbook. Three (yeah that’s right, only three) madcap individuals weave their wacky way through ALL of Shakespeare’s comedies, histories and tragedies in one wild evening that will leave you rolling with laughter! Children slightly younger than 13 will still have fun, but the older they are the more references/innuendos they’ll understand. Bring a blanket or lawn chairs, pack a picnic, and enjoy the show!
May 28, 29, 30, June 4, 5, 6 at 8pm, Seating will start at 7:30pm and is first come, first serve. FREE event, but donations are suggested and appreciated (funds raised from this show will go to fund the Company’s 4th season). RSVP here.

Chicago
Austin Playhouse
This multiple award-winning musical tells a universal tale of fame, fortune, murder, and all that jazz with one show-stopping number after another. Set in prohibition-era Chicago and based on actual crimes from the era, Chicago is a satire packed with glamour and glitz and a host of unforgettable characters including murdering chorus girl, Roxie Hart who attempts to make the most of her sudden fame, vaudevillian Velma Kelly and the Merry Murderesses of Murders’ Row trying to keep the limelight focused on themselves, and their sweet-talking, fast-dealing lawyer, Billy Flynn.
May 29- June 28 (Thursdays-Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 5pm), $40 adult, $37 senior, $20 student

Good Weather for Bundt Cakes
Cinnamon Path Theater
An original play by Max Langert about what goes into a cake, what comes out of a family and what we all conceal and deny to make life a bit more bearable. Featuring award-winning actors Lana Dieterich, Roxy Becker and Suzanne Balling in an intimate at-home performance directed by award-winning director Christina J. Moore. Tickets for this world-premiere are limited, and all ticket sales go directly to the actors.
June 4-13 at 8pm, $5/online and $8/at the door

El Nogalar
Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center
This modern bilingual adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard takes place on the beautiful but fading estate, Hacienda Los Nogales, now a hostage of the explosive drug wars prevalent in Northern Mexico. El Nogalar is the story of the Galvan family’s struggle to hold on to their homestead and their precarious social status before it slips away. The play shadows the family’s housekeeper, Dunia, as she watches the family matriarch Maite and her daughters squander their money and risk losing everything to a local drug cartel, La Maña. Despite the repeated warningsfrom the once humble but loyal worker in the estate’s pecan orchard, Guillermo Lopez, Maite ignores her dwindling fortune as stubbornly as she ignores La Maña. This poignant and moving story from playwright Tanya Saracho explores social class, family, identity and the choice between adapting to the changing world or getting left behind. Mature topics. Recommended for ages 13 yrs and older. Parental discretion advised.
June 4-20, Thursdays-Saturdays at 8pm and June 7 & 14 at 2pm, $14-$20 (All Thursdays are “pay as you wish” only at the box office 30 minutes before show time)

Wrong Window
Building 4 of the 2243 Business Park, 11880 West FM 2243 (Leander)
A crazy, farcical whodunit that is a tribute (via spoof) to the Master of Horror, Alfred Hitchcock, Off-and-on New York couple Marnie and Jeff enter an even more complicated phase of their relationship when they think they spy their cross-courtyard neighbor do away with his wife. After they draw their torn curtain, the lady vanishes, and suspicion places murder beyond a shadow of a doubt. The bumbling witnesses sneak into their neighbor’s apartment – 39 steps away – and the fun begins. Among multiple door-slammings, body-snatchings, and a frantic flashlight chase scene, two questions remain: Who killed Lila Larswald? And if she’s not dead, then who is?
June 5 – 27 at 8pm (13th at 3pm), $20/adults

The Beach Boys Solve a Mystery
ColdTowne Theatre
The Beach Boys borrow a page from the Hardy Boys as they fight crime in the secret underbelly of the seediest beach town you know (think Galveston, but prettier and with more crack cocaine). This improvised comedy features a live surf rock band, improvised performances by the Beach Boys and giveaways from Half-Price Books! Can “America’s Band” defend their beloved hometown from the degenerates of Surf City while resisting the urge to experiment in 1960’s counterculture?
June 6 – 27 at 8:30pm, $12

[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]http://www.livemom.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Nicole-Basham-Sara-Marzani-Photography-livemom.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]A native Austinite and soccer-playing mom, Nicole uses her 9-year-old son as an excuse to rediscover her hometown through his eyes. In Thoreau’s words, her mission is to “suck out all the marrow of life”, or in her son’s words, to cultivate in him a love of “advenchers”.[/author_info] [/author]
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