Author: Chris Davis

Popular Children’s Theater Stage Door Productions Announces Shut Down

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date May 10, 2019

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Justin Fox Burks

Kroc Center

UPDATE: The Kroc has responded to questions. Says understanding differs from social media accounts but does not say how. A lightly edited version of their statement is quoted at the bottom of this report.

Stage Door Productions, a 501C3 company that has hosted classes and camps and produced kid-sized Broadway musicals at the theater housed inside Memphis’ Kroc Center, announced it would end operations Monday, May 13th. The announcement arrives in the wake of public allegations related to the procedural handling of a harassment complaint.

“We want each and every one of you to know how incredibly difficult this decision is to make,” an email to the Legally Blonde cast and camp attendees read. The announcement came with a charge to the company’s young participants: “Feel every emotion freely, but only for one hour. After that let your anger go.”

“I can confirm Stage Door Productions programming will cease on Monday, following the final performance of Legally Blonde Jr. this Sunday,” Stage Door co-founder Brandon Kelly wrote in an email. Kelly said he would consider sharing more information at a later time. “Right now, we will be focusing our love, passion, and support entirely on the kids in our final show. They are the ones most affected and need our support and complete attention.”

Allegations regarding the mishandling of a harassment complaint appeared on Facebook last week. They were widely shared, generating community support and backlash. Less than a week after the original May 3rd posting, Stage Door shared a letter that appears to say there was no official knowledge of the complaint prior to the recent Facebook posting. “Since this has been brought to our attention, we have had an internal and external review done at Stage Door,” the communication stated. Stage Door’s Facebook page is now offline. The website is live but inactive.

The Kroc Center has not yet responded to The Flyer‘s request for information. Pages related to the facilities art programs and to Lindsay and Brandon Kelly are not currently live.

According to the most recent information posted at guidestar.org, Stage Door had posted regular losses of up to $10,000 in net assets since 2015 when that value was pegged at $91,425.
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Latest Update: The Kroc responds:

“For the past five years, The Salvation Army Kroc Center – Memphis has partnered with Stage Door Productions (SDP) to provide quality theatre opportunities for the youth in our area. SDP, an independent non-profit, worked to provide a meaningful arts experience for its participants. Kroc Center members valued SDP’s programming expertise and SDP valued the Kroc’s outstanding facilities.

Last week, we were made aware of a social media post with troubling accusations within SDP of sexual harassment and abuse between two underage cast members from 18 months ago. We acted immediately—launching an internal review and ensuring the incident allegation was reported to Tennessee’s Child Protective Services.”

“The Salvation Army has a zero-tolerance policy for any kind of abuse or harassment. Our staff are well trained in appropriate behavior and how to spot signs of abuse in others. Though SDP is a separate entity, we hold them to the highest standards for safety and professionalism.

Our understanding of events vary from those reported in social media. We are still conducting our review and will fully cooperate with the authorities in investigation. Because those referenced are minors and this is an ongoing investigation, we are unable to comment about specifics. Our prayers are with each one and we ask you to join us with your prayers.

Today, SDP announced it is ceasing programming effective Monday, May 13, 2019. While we are ending our work with SPD, the Arts remain a vital and vibrant pillar of the Kroc’s purpose. We are looking at ways to expand our existing arts education offerings. We know the value the Arts have on overall student achievement and want to do our part to build tomorrow’s leaders. We consistently look for ways to improve member experiences, program quality, and program offerings. Just as we strive to inspire excellence, so do we strive to be excellent.”

This post will be updated as more information becomes available.

Tags Kroc Center, Stage Door Productions

Intermission Impossible Theater

Playhouse On The Square Invites You To The Cabaret

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date May 9, 2019

The cast of Cabaret, Playhouse on the Square

“No use permitting some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away
Life is a cabaret, old chum
So come to the cabaret”
— “Cabaret”

I posted some thoughts about Cabaret‘s nearly infuriating relevance last week. It was a kind of preview for Playhouse on the Square’s opening. Only, instead of looking behind the scenes, it went behind the text to ask where all the Nazis came from. And, by extension, I wanted to know where America’s Nazis went when the U.S. entered WWII and the national narrative turned against them.

As musical theater rollouts go, it was a pretty bleak exercise. But even a week ago, I don’t think I could have anticipated the kinds of headlines I’d wake up to on the morning I sat down to write the review. Twitter was full of news about racism, misogyny, drunkenness, sexual exhibitionism and drug use inside Tennessee’s GOP leadership — rot in the head of an organization so grotesque it wouldn’t hear, let alone approve, a 2018 proposal to condemn Nazis and white supremacy. But the headline that really got my attention was this: “Man Patrolling With Border Militia Suggested Going ‘Back To Hitler Days.”
“Why are we just apprehending them and not lining them up and shooting them?” Armando Gonzalez was quoted as saying. “We have to go back to Hitler days and put them all in a gas chamber.”

That’s a lot to deal with at the top of a review, but hard to ignore given Cabaret’s subject matter and Playhouse on the Square’s sometimes very brave and sometimes ragged interpretation of material that stubbornly refuses to become nostalgia.

As taught in schools, history is the story of great men, noble ideas, and the march of progress. But history is a horror show that we live inside and can’t escape. It’s a theme we see even in mainstream entertainments these days, and in that vein, Cabaret director Dave Landis effectively takes us “back to the Hitler days.” His Cabaret bends the all the weirdness and decadence of Berlin’s club scene toward hallucinogenic nightmare.

Inspired by I Am A Camera, I’ve previously written how Cabaret, shows three snapshots of Germany during Hitler’s rise to power: a sentimental Berlin, a decadent Berlin, and the Berlin where Nazis multiply and metastasize. The first pictures win out hearts and other parts before the last one comes into focus.

We experience these pictures through the eyes of Cliff (Donald Sutton), a writer visiting Weimar Germany, looking for inspiration. The young American gets more than he bargained for when he comes into the orbit of British expatriate and club singer Sally Bowles. With lighting that lands on the audience like a cutting remark and action that breaks the fourth walls at will, this interpretation of the book borrows ideas from expressionist theater, vintage German agitprop and probably Babylon Berlin, but with a considerably smaller budget.

As Bowles, Whitney Branan is more Lotte Lenya than Liza Minnelli. She lets her voice go ugly, and I mean it in the best way possible. She slings sound like a hammer or a razor. It’s the perfect tool for a character who flourishes in the midst of disaster because she’s more Mother Courage than meets the eye.

Though sometimes incomprehensible as he spits out too many words too fast in a thick German accent, Nathan McHenry’s intentions are never unclear. As the emcee he welcomes the audience like a good horror host, and ushers them back and forth across Cabaret‘s intersecting storylines, on journey all the way to hell. It’s an impressive, athletic performance, but it’s Playhouse stalwart Kim Sanders who emerges from the chorus to deliver Cabaret’s crushing blow. She leads the cast through “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” an infections, inspirational number that begins so sweetly, and ends with the earth shifting hard on its axis. From nowhere so many Nazis emerge. Only they don’t really come from nowhere; they were there all along.

Playhouse On The Square Invites You To The Cabaret

The film version of Cabaret achieves a special kind of clarity. Berlin’s Nazis aren’t hidden at the beginning, they’re just pushed to the margins and not taken seriously. Then suddenly they’re everywhere. They’re everybody. It’s a strong blueprint for negotiating any narrative vagaries in the stage musical’s book.

What it lacks in this level of subtlety, Playhouse on the Square’s production counters with the somnambulant urgency recently described by the Twitter parody/tribute account Werner Twertzog: “Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.”

I sat in a box seat far house left, and so many of this Cabaret’s more intimate moments took place far stage right. That means there’s a lot about this show I really can’t discuss with any authority, because my view was so badly obscured. This won’t be a problem for most audience members, but for me it was enough of an issue to cut the review short. What I saw was thoughtful and provocative. What I couldn’t see at least sounded like a close match.

It’s so easy to fall for Sally Bowles – to buy into her spiel about the short distance from cradle to tomb, and carpe diem, and all that. “Come to the Cabaret,” she belts like a carnival barker, pitching all the attractions. Only Elsie, the former Chelsea flatmate Bowles valorizes in the musical’s title song, didn’t win a prize by dying blissfully ignorant. Nobody won anything by ignoring their prophets of doom, certainly not the people Elsie’s happy corpse left behind in the soup.

I don’t always know why we go to the theater anymore. I don’t think it’s to serve any of the old civic functions, but maybe it is sometimes. It’s certainly not for any kind of meaningful moral instruction or else all those money-printing productions of A Christmas Carol would have fixed us up pretty good by now.

Escapism’s high quality these days, relatively cheap, and almost always at our fingertips. But if Hamlet’s right and plays really are conscience catchers, many playgoers will see themselves inside the Kit Kat Club when the show’s grimy, accusatory lights come up over audience. That’s the kind of Cabaret this is. But if it doesn’t move them to do more than renew their season subscriptions, we’d might as well start celebrating. Right this way, your table’s waiting.

Tags Cabaret, Playhouse on the Square, Review

We Recommend We Recommend

Beale Street Blues Music Festival

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date May 9, 2019

CREDIT: F11photo | Dreamstime.com

It only makes sense. If you’ve got a ton of top musicians descending on Memphis for a weekend, why not have a festival? On Friday, May 10th, the Blues Foundation’s Blues Music Awards celebrates 40 years of calling its finest artists home to Beale Street, to honor the pickers, players, and belters who keep the party going through the best and worst of times.

“So blues musicians from around the world are coming here for this event,” festival promoter Jim LoSapio says. Now in its fourth year, the Beale Street Blues Festival brings some of the most exciting nominees to Beale’s stages for solo sets and jams with local favorites. On Friday, May 10th, a $10 wristband gets festival goers into 14 venues. Blues music award nominees will appear on nine, with local acts holding down the rest.

F11photo | Dreamstime.com

Festival highlights include appearances by Ben Rice, who’s nominated for three awards, including best emerging artist, best acoustic artist, and acoustic album of the year. At Silky’s, Memphis’ own Barbara Blue hosts a jam showcasing soul blues nominee Johnny Rawls and drummer Bernard Purdie.

Fans of Bobby Blue Bland’s gospel-fueled R&B will want to catch Rawls when he guests with Rod Bland, who’ll be hosting a Bobby Blue Bland tribute and jam at B.B. King’s

“We’ve partnered with the Blues Foundation to pull this off,” LoSapio says.

“All the festival stages are inside,” LoSapio says, acknowledging a fact the blues artists and May festival goers know all too well. “Sometimes it rains.”

News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1577

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date May 9, 2019

Hats Off

Nobody not named Trump, Mueller, or Barr got more media attention last week than Memphis’ own U.S. Congressman Steve Cohen, who brought a small, plastic chicken to work.

He also brought a bucket of KFC to flavor Attorney General William Barr’s failure to appear before Congress with 11 herbs and spices. The screwball stunt — perfect social media bait and late-night fodder — remains fairly ubiquitous and will no doubt be mentioned elsewhere in the pages of the Flyer as well.

But comedy matters here at Fly on the Wall. Even in Congressman Cohen’s moment of glory, Sarah Silverman’s professional advice can’t be overstated.

“The plastic chicken is funny,” Silverman tweeted. “But the plastic chicken AND bucket of chicken isn’t — it’s what we call in comedy a hat on a hat.”

Game of Elvis

If this column has illustrated anything over the years, it’s this: Sooner or later, Elvis eats everything.

This week, King culture collided with Game of Thrones. Sophie Turner (aka Westerosi badass, Sansa Stark) married Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers in an Elvis impersonator-officiated ceremony in Las Vegas on the 57th wedding anniversary of Elvis and Priscilla Presley.

But wait, there’s more. Cosmo reports that trash from the ceremony has become collectable, and a discarded Ring Pop wrapper is currently going on eBay for $1,325. The saga continues.

Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Fantasy Island: Watch 1990’s Great American Pyramid Investor Video

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date May 8, 2019

Stop whatever you’re doing right now, Memphis, and watch this video from 1990 pitching “The Great American Pyramid,” to potential investment partners. It’s a bombastic, adjective-laden journey to the Memphis of imagination where a sprawling theme park on the Mississippi fabricated crumbling communities in rich detail, transforming the region’s crushing poverty into an exciting ride for tourists! Yeah, that totally almost happened. And the language used to sell the boondoggle wasn’t subtle:

“5000 years ago the world trembled before the might of Cheops Pyramid. Soon there will be another occasion for awe. Soon mankind will be dazzled by a new wonder of the world. From the banks of the Mississippi, across the oceans and continents, and up to the heavens, a vibrant message will ring out: Feel the power of The Great American Pyramid!”

Did you know The Great American Pyramid AKA “the Pyramid,” AKA Bass Pro, was intended to be a “21st-century treasure trove of multiple attractions,” connected to the Music Island theme park? There were going to be rides like “Hot Rod Lincoln,” and novelties like the worlds greatest jukebox, and music events and sports. This “thrilling montage of entertainment” was also to include a “breathtaking attraction known as, The Rapper: An exciting ride along the river of music.” Instead of a crystal skull, the very top of the Pyramid was to house a short wave radio station that, according to the pitch, would reach 500,000,000 short wave radios around the world. Planners projected more than 697,800,000 visitors annually

“Rarely has a sponsor had the opportunity to pioneer a venture of this magnitude from day one,” a voice that sounds a lot like Casey Kasem says. “An opportunity to add a trademark to its company’s assets with an international landmark that will be known by people around the globe as The Great American Pyramid.”

Like I said up top. Just watch the whole thing. All things considered, Bass Pro may be the less embarrassing outcome.

Fantasy Island: Watch 1990’s Great American Pyramid Investor Video

Tags pyramid

Intermission Impossible Theater

Steven McMahon Named Artistic Director Of Ballet Memphis

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date May 7, 2019

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue

Steven McMahon and Dorothy Gunther Pugh at grand opening of new Ballet Memphis headquarters.

“I long ago recognized that I needed to groom the right person to guard what we have built and what we value at Ballet Memphis,” Ballet Memphis’s founding CEO Dorothy Gunther Pugh was quoted as saying in a prepared statement about the dancer and choreographer who will succeed her as artistic director. The person in question is Ballet Memphis’s 34-year-old Associate Artistic Director Steven McMahon.

“Steven has come up through this organization and grown as a dancer and dance-maker; he’s the best choice as well as the right choice,” Pugh concluded.

McMahon, who has choreographed more than 30 works for Ballet Memphis including, favorites like The Wizard of Oz, and Peter Pan, officially assumes his new position July 1st. Pugh will continue her work at Ballet Memphis as CEO.

Video: McMahon discussed choreographing a past production of Romeo & Juliet for Ballet Memphis:

Steven McMahon Named Artistic Director Of Ballet Memphis

Tags Ballet Memphis, Dorothy Gunther Pugh, Steven McMahon

Intermission Impossible Theater

Tomorrow Belongs to Nazis — “Cabaret” Remains Stubbornly Relevant

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date May 2, 2019

“We are Americans, and the future belongs to us.” — POTUS.

Inspired by Christopher Isherwood’s story “Goodbye to Berlin” and the subsequent play I Am a Camera, the Kander & Ebb musical, Cabaret, shows three distinct snapshots of Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. First, there’s a sentimental Berlin, where a little old German landlady and a little old Jewish grocer might laugh and make loving, bawdy metaphors over a bowl of fruit. There’s also a decadent, enticing Berlin, where transvestites and taxi dancers guzzle gin and dance in a sleepless celebration of flesh. And then there’s the Berlin where Nazis multiply and metastasize like cancer cells. It’s the last snapshot I want to focus on.

Where did all those Nazis come from? Hitler took inspiration from many places, but was a particular fan of American Industrialist Henry Ford, who acquired a weekly periodical called The Dearborn Independent, transforming it into a vehicle for his virulent brand of anti-semitism. Indeed, the ceaseless, almost century-long campaign against “liberalism” in media — a complaint whose ubiquity has made it conventional wisdom, undermining virtually all trust in American information workers — is essentially a politically refined twin of Ford’s fear-mongering against, “the international Jew,” who controls the news and entertainment industry.

Tomorrow Belongs to Nazis — ‘Cabaret’ Remains Stubbornly Relevant

Ford’s anti-semitism wasn’t unique for the time but, as the man who created America’s automobile industry, he was uniquely credible and the power and influence he wielded was extraordinary. Before The Independent was shuttered amid lawsuits stemming from the paper’s relentless defamation, it had become the second-largest circulation periodical in America. Ford’s message about the threat of Jewish influence was carried forward by America’s own Nazis, the German American Bund who, in spite of having been highly active and organized in the run up to WWII, have been virtually wiped from the public memory. The Bund protested for pro-Nazi media and their rally at Madison Square Garden filled the house. In short, while few images define how America sees itself like Jack Kirby’s cartoon of Captain America punching Hitler in the face, the real story’s more like a comic book plot than the big cultural myth. Our Nazis went underground, and stayed undefeated. They didn’t have to reintegrate into the American fabric, because they were already part the American fabric. At some point it became impolite to make even the most appropriate Nazi comparisons, because the horror of the Holocaust was incomparable, a fact lending cover to the movement’s provenance and evolution.

As a side note, the famous image of Captain America punching Hitler came out a year before America entered into WWII. Not only was America not at war with Germany when Kirby drew the image, 75 percent of the the US opposed war with the Nazis.

Germans were devastated by WWI. Crippled by debt and a deadlocked parliament, the country was ripe for a despot like Hitler. In much the same way economic anxieties in the U.S. have been channeled into racial tension, creating a permanent American underclass, Germany was looking for somebody to blame for its struggles and disgrace. Decadent Weimar culture made an easy target, and Henry Ford’s international Jew made an easy scapegoat. While focusing on Berlin’s Kit Kat Club, and those inside the orbit of British singer and bon vivant Sally Bowles, Cabaret seeks to answer what have long been regarded as unanswerable questions: How could it happen? And where did the monsters come from?

Tomorrow Belongs to Nazis — ‘Cabaret’ Remains Stubbornly Relevant (3)

They didn’t come from anywhere, of course. They were already there, waiting for representation. They were waiting for a leader to say out loud the kinds of things they were already whispering to their children. America always had Nazis — lots of them! They didn’t come from anywhere, and they didn’t vanish when conscription made certain views seditious. They just went back to being good folks, if a little more conservative than most. All they’ve ever needed to activate was a little representation.

I haven’t seen Playhouse on the Square’s Cabaret revival yet, but plan to be in the audience opening night. Broadway’s book is different than Bob Fosse’s nearly perfect film, and how the material is interpreted and contextualized matters. Thematically, it couldn’t have arrived at a more appropriate time. Again.

Here’s a video preview created by Playhouse on the Square. Have a look.

Tomorrow Belongs to Nazis — ‘Cabaret’ Remains Stubbornly Relevant (2)

Tags Cabaret, Captain America, Nazis, Playhouse on the Square

We Recommend We Recommend

Hamilton tickets on sale Friday

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date May 2, 2019

CREDIT: Courtesy of the Orpheum

It’s like clockwork. Every few weeks since The Orpheum announced that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical Hamilton was coming to Memphis in 2019, some shocked theater fan contacts the Flyer, scandalized by exorbitant ticket costs. Thing is, until this week, no tickets to Hamilton in Memphis have actually been on sale. None will be available till May 3rd, and the Orpheum warns against using third-party websites other than Ticketmaster.

“These sites are charging what they think they can get when tickets are in short supply,” Orpheum President and CEO Brett Batterson explains. “They hope they can get tickets and fill the orders, but people who sent money six months ago could be told they don’t have a ticket. Or worse, they might be sold a counterfeit ticket.”

Courtesy of the Orpheum

“I am not throwing away my shot” … at scoring tickets to Hamilton.

Scalping and third party sales aren’t uncommon, but the enormous success of Hamilton makes it a unique problem for theaters.

“Hamilton has been a phenomenon like I’ve never seen in my career,” Batterson says. “We’ve had big shows like Wicked, Book of Mormon, and Phantom of the Opera, but Hamilton has taken off like nothing before it. So we’re doing more to protect the consumer than we’ve ever done. We’re requiring people to go online and become ‘verified fans,’ which proves you’re not a robot or a scalper. We’re not doing that to make it difficult to get tickets. We’re doing that to make sure tickets get into the hands of consumers.”

Tickets will also be available at The Orpheum May 3rd, but can only be purchased in person. To make the process fair and make camping out unnecessary, The Orpheum will give out numbered wristbands and then hold a lottery. “If you’re in line by 8 o’clock you’ll get a wristband,” says Batterson, who’s expecting the musical to sell out in three to four hours.

Those who don’t get tickets on day one may not be out of luck. “There will be other tickets released between the on sale date and the actual show,” Batterson assures. “So people should keep looking at Ticketmaster, even if they don’t get tickets on that day.”

Batterson also warns ticket buyers to cover their codes if they take selfies. Counterfitters love ticket selfies.