Vixen and assassin swoop into town
By Carolyn Elam January 2, 2009 San Miguel de Allende

Theater 
The Death of Reason
Wed–Sat, Jan 14–17, 8pm
Sun, Jan 18, 6pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
200/300 pesos

The Death of Reason raises the bar for acting on the San Miguel stage, featuring professional actors who have arrived in town from Los Angeles and New York City just for the show.

Described as a comedy of excess, the play, written by NYC playwright Stefanie Glick, is about a woman who sets out on the absurd mission of hiring a hitman to kill Reason. Jurian Hughes, leading the cast as the washed-up Hollywood actress, has performed on Broadway and abroad with Kathleen Turner and Tony Randall, as well as on television (Law and Order) and in film (The Pelican Brief).

Blake Boyd, playing the sexy and cunning hitman, has acted on numerous stages in Los Angeles, on television (ER, The Agency, Seventh Heaven) and in films (The Cable Guy, First Kid). Working with Boyd and Hughes is a superb local cast, including Chris Davis, Peter Ross, Karl Schiffman, Frank Simons and Michael Sudheer.

Hughes and Boyd, like the rest of the cast and creative team, are donating their time and effort to ensure all proceeds of the play benefit the students at IREE, the only school for deaf children in the region (which may close if enough funds are not raised). When asked about his motivation for joining this production in San Miguel, Boyd said, “It’s an honor to help out kids in need.”

In addition to stellar acting, this exceptional theatrical event features live Klezmer music by local accordion player Anita von Ballmoos and clarinetist Nathalie Braux from Guadalajara. It is being co-directed by the author and Michael Grais, who has written and produced a dozen movies (Poltergeist, Great Balls of Fire). Tickets are on sale at Teatro Santa Ana for 200 pesos; donors who buy a ticket for 300 pesos or more are invited to an opening-night reception. 

Clever, but is it art?
By Meredith Beaumont

Literary Cabaret
Wed–Sat, Jan 7–10, 8pm
Café Monet
Zacateros 83
80 pesos

But the Devil whoops as he whooped of old: It’s clever but is it art? —Rudyard Kipling

The Literary Cabaret bring their satirical and cynical sense of humor to Café Monet this January.

The eclectic and eccentric trio begins a fifteenth season in San Miguel with Artistic Licence, a show which lovingly lampoons and lambastes all things pertaining to the world of Art.

Rick Davey, Marilyn Bullivant and Reesha Browning, who all hail from the British Isles, specialize in bringing the world of English literature to the stage in an atmosphere of mirth, music and merriment. What qualifications does the trio have to support this subject so close to the hearts of sanmiguelenses? Well…Marilyn and Reesha are both art school graduates (no years mentioned!) and Rick says he once dated an art student in 1967.

Classicists, Impressionists, Surrealists and Modernists all get their 15 minutes of fame. Leonardo da Vinci’s motives will be questioned in relation to The Last Supper; in the seventeenth century, we see one man’s take on Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring (a major motion picture as I write!).

Goya’s greatest scenes will be taken apart in an anachronistic fashion by the modernist poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and W.H. Auden amuses us with the subject of what goes on in the background painting of Old Masters (have you really looked?). Come the nineteenth century, San Miguel’s own W.D. Snodgrass will take a look at Monet’s Water Lilies; and Vincent van Gogh will be seen in all his beauty and angst. As the Cabaret rollicks into the twentieth century, such exciting artists as Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, and fifties Abstract Expressionists make an appearance until, eventually, twenty-first-century “Shock Art” takes over.

The Literary Cabaret will explore peripheral aspects of art, including two pieces about the recently revived, and highly popular, art of tattooing—one a skit by British comedy writer Victoria Wood;

the other by American poet Mark Doty (who, incidentally, was here a couple of years ago for the San Miguel Poetry Week, together with his partner, Paul, who actually appears in the poem!). Additional skits feature the ubiquitous crafts shop and the omnipresent art opening. The art of home decorating (very popular here!) is spoofed in a piece inspired by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, and in a music hall song from 1909.

All sorts of other doubtful ditties will drip from the trio’s lips: heart-rending parlour songs, a quirky little “burlesque” number about an artist’s model (1904) and an illustrated history of photographers over the years, complete with sound effects! Rick will regale us with his ukulele (if we ask him nicely), as well as provide us with unusual renditions of some more contemporary pieces by the likes of David Bowie and Queen. 

Artists over the years have had their fair share of knocks; contemporary art always needs a few decades to be accepted into the mainstream, but even then, it is not safe from the Literary Cabaret’s barbs and beratings. Mexico’s Frida Kahlo will be subjected to the trio’s own tongue-in-cheek tribute.

Daniel Packard: The doctor is in and he’s hilarious
By Susan Page

Theater
Live Group Sex Therapy
Sat, Jan 3, 8pm
Sun, Jan 4, 7pm
Shelter Theater
Vicente Guerrero 4
Colonia San Rafael
154-7524, 107-0168
200 pesos

What would you like to change about your relationship? What bothers you most about the opposite sex? How do you get the spark back? Daniel Packard’s Live Group Sex Therapy Show discusses all these questions with surprising insights and keeps you laughing the entire time.

“It’s Dr. Phil meets Robin Williams,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. To see more, visit Daniel’s website at www.danielpackard.com.

I knew Daniel long before he came to San Miguel, and he was born a comic. But he realized early that there could be a great deal more to comedy than making people laugh. I interviewed him recently to find out more about his non-conventional journey to his present-day mix of comedy and meaning, all to glowing reviews. 

Susan Page: What are you trying to accomplish with your Live Group Sex Therapy Show? Is it really about sex?

Daniel Packard: The show is more about sexual politics than sex. While the show is sex related, it is not dirty or vulgar. It's a clean show about a dirty topic. My goal is to create a fun, funny environment where women can learn things they didn’t realize about men. I use humor as a tool to get people to laugh and open up.

SP: What kinds of topics might we expect to hear discussed?

DP: For singles, we discuss where all the good men are hiding. For married folks, questions like, “How do you get the spark back? How do you get more foreplay? How do you give less?” We cover a lot of topics in the whole show, and I encourage the audience to bring questions with them!

SP: When and how did you realize you did not want to be a conventional “stand-up” comedian?

DP: I was doing fine as a comedian. Then one evening, I fell off the script and I found myself just being the old, funny me. I did an eyebrow raise and got a bigger laugh than from anything I'd said the whole evening. That was an epiphany. I realized what mattered was being in the moment. The next week, I gave away all the jokes I’d spent five years creating. I started over. I felt compelled to explore being in the moment as thoroughly as I could. 

SP: Was going off in this new direction scary for you?

DP: Extremely scary. I was trying to create interaction. Learning how to do this was gut wrenching. Comedy is already hard, and now I was tying to be funny, be myself, and get people to interact with me. So it was triple scary.

SP: Did you try this in a lot of different clubs? 

DP: I was extremely fortunate to find a venue where I could push this direction, week after week. The owner of a club was an ex-punk rocker. He didn’t want slick performances, he wanted virtuoso performers to go up and break what they did wide open. He wanted you to fail. I’d go on stage each Sunday with a new hour of material. The goal was not to get laughs, but to crack open my soul in front of people. People started to come each week and see what I would do next. Without the usual pressure to be funny, I could just focus on being myself. It was beautiful and awful, but with a space to fail over and over I finally broke through and found my voice. It was a bizarre voice, but a voice nonetheless. And with the voice down, then comedy just came flowing out like water.

Then I had a breakthrough. I was getting pretty good at talking from my heart, but I was having trouble allowing myself to commit fully to talking with a crowd. Three days before a major theater festival, a woman I was very close to dumped me in a very confusing way. I was an emotional shipwreck. I simply turned to the audience and said, “I have nothing. I’m devastated. Can you help me get through this?” The audience said yes, and they did. That breakup was the best thing that ever happened to me.

SP: Do you have a positive feeling about relationships? Are you hopeful?

DP: Yes! I want to put people in a better position to find the person they truly love and then to reap all the benefits of that love. Love is God’s way of saying, “Sorry about all the other crap.” I want us all to love more freely.

SP: Which is more important to you, your “message” or laughs?

DP: I most want people to have a great time, to laugh, to feel wonderful. It's all about having a lot of fun. Maybe we'll all learn something along the way, but the main thing is to have fun in a way you never have before! Laughter is inner jogging! It’s good for us all!

Susan Page, author of Why Talking Is Not Enough and founder of the San Miguel Authors’ Sala, is Daniel Packard’s cousin.