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Stage: hot ticket
By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published July 18, 2002
Dixie students to perform in Scotland
Next month, when Pinellas launches an early start to the school year, a group of theater students from Dixie Hollins High School will be absent for a very good reason: They'll be performing at the world-famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
About a year ago, when the Dixie program was picked to go to Scotland as part of the American High School Theatre Festival, as many as 40 students were planning to participate in the trip, which includes time in London. Then, because of post-Sept. 11 travel fears, the project was almost called off, but with support from the School Board, the school decided to go ahead, ending up with a contingent of nine students and three teacher-chaperones. They're still raising money for the trip, which costs $5,000 apiece.
"We decided to do a variety show, because it shows off the students, and if somebody dropped out, we could still do the show," said Debra Barnum, the school's longtime theater director.
The show, pictured here in rehearsal, is called Shenanigans, and it includes numbers from Cinderella, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and other favorites. There are performances at 7:30 tonight and Friday in the Dixie Hollins auditorium, 4940 62nd St. N, St. Petersburg. Tickets: $5. (727) 547-7876, ext. 212.
Celebrating surrealism
The Alley Cat Players are not surrealists, according to co-founder Jo Ann Brigid Averill-Snell, above, but the company does have a penchant for plays in the style of the artistic movement that dominated the 20th century. Last year, it held a staged reading of the surrealist curiosity and Pablo Picasso's only play, Desire Caught by the Tail. This weekend, the company opens a production of Tom Stoppard's surrealist farce, After Magritte, as well as an original piece, After After Magritte: A Surrealist Montage.
"It's sort of an explanation of surrealism," says Averill-Snell of the piece, which she describes as a verbal collage of excerpts of writing by 28 prominent surrealists, such as Rene Magritte, Andre Breton and Salvador Dali. "There are only a couple of sentences apiece, arranged in an almost musical structure. It is both an introduction and celebration of surrealism."
The Alley Cats double bill opens Friday and continues through July 28 at the Silver Meteor Gallery, 2213 Sixth Ave., Ybor City. Show times are 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Monday and 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $5 and $7. (813) 231-8478; www.alleycatplayers.org.
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