by Frederick Mead

I work for the foundation that produces the Big Easy Entertainment Awards, which include separate award events for Theatre, Popular Music, and Classical Arts (opera, dance, and Classical music). I also serve on the nominating committee for theatre awards. Here’s an insider’s low-down on the theatre awards process.

WHAT IS THE BIG EASY AWARD FOUNDATION?
Yes, there really is a foundation. It was founded 20 years ago by Gambit Weekly publisher, Margo DuBos, as a 501c3 non-profit. The purpose of the foundation is to promote education in the performing arts in the Greater New Orleans area. The Foundation awards several grants each year, about $2000-3500 each, to projects that teach performance skills or nurture young talent. Our full official name is The Foundation for Entertainment Development and Education, but we are best known as The Big Easy Awards Foundation. Read the rest of this entry »

I shook hands with director Wilbert L. Williams after A Soldier’s Play to congratulate him on such a fine casting job. Lately, I’ve come to appreciate more how critical casting is to the success a production.

For example, veteran actor and Big Easy Theatre Award winner, Harold X. Evans, gives a disquieting performance in the play’s most difficult role, as a black man prejudiced against other black people, especially the “Yah suh, Massah, step-n-fetchit type” (his words). Evans, an army sergeant, is hated by his all-black soldiers, and his murder causes little shock or remorse. Yet, his murder and its investigation are the crux of A Soldier’s Play. Read the rest of this entry »

A trailerpark is an unlikely setting for a Musical. But for director Sean Patterson, a trailerpark is an all-too familiar setting, having spent the last 2 years with his now-wife, Cammie West, in a FEMA trailer. With toxic trailers currently in the headlines, The Great American Trailer Park Musical is both timely and wildly high-larious. The Jefferson Performing Arts Society presents The Great American Trailer Park Musical at their Westwego Performing Arts Theatre, a surprisingly nice venue that underwent a facelift just prior to Katrina. Thankfully, the same contractor returned to fix it after the storm. Read the rest of this entry »

If you missed last year’s underground theatre event: The Palanquin Diaries, Confessions of a Mardi Gras Queen, you have one more weekend to catch the encore. Assuming of course that you like nudity, snakes, rock music, and can find the venue. But where the heck is the Backyard Ballroom?

Like most things bohemian, the Backyard Ballroom is located in the Bywater. On St Claude and Gallier, next to an empty lot, the large, strately house and its backyard are owned by the playwright, Otter, who co-produced Palanquin Diaries with her partner, Chris Rudge, owner of the Bywater’s Bacchanal wine store. He personally ran back and forth between the backyard and his wine store to “deliver beer”, since he is only licensed to sell alcohol out of the one location.

I brought blankets, assuming the backyard would be cold. Turns out, there’s an indoor theatre space back there. The Bywater is host to a number of new gallery/performance venues these days, such as SideArm Gallery, Barrister’s Gallery, Hi Ho Lounge, and Bacchanal. The Backyard Ballroom offers a narrow stage, curtains, lights and lightboard, sound. And the electrical looked up to code. Even the exits were visibly marked. New Orleans needs more low-cost theatre options, and Backyard Ballroom is one of the better ones, if you can attract an audience that “far” into the Bywater. Read the rest of this entry »

Each semester, after my students and I have written some rap songs (myspace.com/mrmichaelsclass), the second half of my ‘Music Writing’ class entails teaching them to write album reviews. Their writing is generally hilarious and mean — the kids mostly dismiss anything not fed to them via Clear Channel — but the reviews also boast some perfect snappy, laconic insights, descriptions and assertions that only kids could conjure. In a batch of reviews published by Gambit magazine in September of 2006, the kids critiqued a demo album by The BadOff, a modern yet almost imperceptibly retro, heavy guitar-rock band from New Orleans:

“They sound a hot mess to me. Their instrumentation sounds like biker boys driving down the road. I like the beat. Why? Because you can use it to make other songs. I don’t like that the beat is louder than the singer. Why? Because I would like to hear the singer’s words. The singer sounds like someone in a graveyard singing about a dead loved one. He sings like he knows how to sing, and he sings songs that you can dance to a lot. He sings like he’s been a singer for a while.”

Only now have The Bad Off finished the recordings my students mildly dogged. Their album Lady Day will be available for the first time this Sunday night, at One Eyed Jacks. Read the rest of this entry »

Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency, or LOPA, are the brave souls who approach a grieving family within 24 hours after a loved-one’s death to ask for organ donation. Can you imagine that job? I can, because for 3 afternoons last week I reacted to the awful news of a loved-one’s death, over and over again. As an actor, I dramatized scenes that simulate real-world scenarios, so that the LOPA grief counselors could practice their craft in a safe environment.

The scenes were specifically designed to be difficult for the counselors; and thus, as an actor, difficult for me. My wife and I could not have children, and our adopted daughter was struck by a drunk driver on her way home from the school. It just so happened that the grief counselor who approached us was 6 months pregnant. DANG. I was a Fundamentalist Baptist who could not accept the death of my teenage son because Pastor RJ promised that my boy, Steve-O, would rise up at 10am. And then at 10am, the grief counselor had to approach me for organ donation. SHITE. I was a teenage son who’s mother died, and at 18, am legal next-of-kin; but if I consent to organ donation, my step-father will kick me out. FRAK. Read the rest of this entry »

Every Christmas season, Papa Noel, the Cajun/Creole version of Santa Claus, magically transports famous personalities from New Orleans history to the present day. Some personalities are generally known today, locally and outside New Orleans, such as Andrew Jackson, Captain Jean Lafitte, and the Widow Paris (aka Marie Laveau). But other persons are less known although equally important to Louisiana cultural history, such as C. C. Antoine, Free Man of Color and 2-term Lt Governor. The company even includes a strolling accordionist, Count Guido, a Vaudevillian who popularized the accordion in North America.

The Living History characters stroll the French Quarter Thursday through Christmas Day, yes, Christmas Day, 11am to 4pm (3pm 12/24-25), often along Royal street, visiting hotel lobbies, restaurants, and places like the Cabildo and Historic New Orleans Collection. They are immediately noticeable, not only for their painstakingly accurate 19th century attire designed by Veronica Russell, but also for the slow pace they walk. The world was slower back in the day. Read the rest of this entry »

Actor Michael Martin performs as the charming Bachelor in New Orleans, a one-man show developed from an idiosyncratic 1950s tour guide of the French Quarter. In eloquent and picaresque language, the Bachelor expounds on topics of interest to playboy or playgirl visitors, such as, the signature cocktails of the city and Antoines, his favorite restaurant. The Bachelor offers Read the rest of this entry »

Grants are available for performing arts organizations who offer educational programs in the greater New Orleans area. The Foundation for Entertainment Development and Education, the folks who bring us the Big Easy Awards for music and theatre for the past 20 years, also offer grants for projects that focus on education in the performing arts. Past recipients include NOCCA, All Kinds of Theatre, and the Fred J. Palmisano Memorial Scholarship Fund at UNO Dept of Drama.

Application deadline is December 14. Email a description of your project and the amount you are requesting to Gloria Powers, Executive Director of the Foundation.

The New Orleans Opera has been getting creative to appeal to new audiences. It’s adopted the ideas of a New York group to present Opera on Tap, a gathering of opera fans in barrooms with previews of upcoming shows. Last Wednesday, the group toasted Puccini at the Rusty Nail (Formerly the Mermaid Lounge). The group is presenting Il Trittico, a trio of one-act operas (recast in New Orleans settings) by Puccini, next weekend (Nov. 16-18) at Tulane’s McAlister Auditorium. As a special offer, the opera is offering first-time opera goers $20 tickets. Opera virgins need only call the opera ticket line (529-3000) to reserve a seat and get the special price. Any seat in the house is available at the special rate, so call early.