Virchis to receive award Border Angels, celebrating 30 years of commitment to saving lives, announces that William Alejandro Virchis, founding artistic director of Teatro Máscara Mágica (former theatre professor, Southwestern College, and one of the founders, along with the late Craig Noel and then UCSD professor Jorge Huerta of the Old Globe’s bilingual Teatro Meta) will receive the prestigious Robert Martinez Spirit Award for his lifetime of devotion to and work with his communities. The award will be presented at the Border Angels fundraising dinner at 6 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 5, at the Jacobs Center in San Diego. Information at www.borderangels.org. Fireworks in the Gaslamp Quarter
As you may know, Lamb’s Players has filled the 350-seat Horton Grand Theatre in the Gaslamp Quarter with music and mirth for eight years. In a post-Independence Day fireworks display, Lambs, Intrepid Theatre Company, and San Diego Musical Theatre (SDMT) made individual, multilateral announcements: Lamb’s is vacating the Horton Grand, and Intrepid and SDMT will share the great little bandbox theatre, individually producing plays and musicals. No worries, though: Lamb’s continues producing in Coronado, SDMT continues its well-established series at the Spreckels Theatre and Intrepid, badly in need of a home for several years, now has one. As the Lamb’s/Horton Grand theatre-in-residence, they had already found a temporary venue there, over the past year producing “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf” starring Deborah Gilmour Smyth and Robert Smyth, co-artistic leaders of Lamb’s, and more recently presenting the musical revue, “Woodie Guthrie’s American Song.” Intrepid has already announced a four-play, seventh season beginning with Yazmina Reza’s “Art” Sept. 29-Nov. 6), then continuing with Ayad Akhtar’s “The Invisible Hand” (Feb 2-March 19. 2017), the musical, “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story” (May 25-July 2) and Suzan Lori-Parks’s “Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1,2, & 3 (Sept. 21-Nov. 5, 2017). SDMT’s announcement of off-Broadway size musicals is forthcoming. Looks like it will be win-win for all. Hollingsworth dynasty
Ed and Marian Hollingsworth’s La Mesa theatrical dynasty (their talented offspring, Blair, Morgan, Trevor and Devin are veterans of Starlight musicals, Cygnet Theatre, Cygnet Theatre, San Diego Rep, etc. etc.) has catapulted another, Morgan, to New York City. Through July 31, Morgan sang and played guitar in the 13th annual New York Musical Theatre Festival production of Andrew Palermo and Shannon Stoeke’s [sic] “Nickel Mines,” a musical based on a true event of 2006 in which a lone gunman shot 10 Amish girls, four of them fatally. It concerns how violence, faith, forgiveness and justice speak to and interact with one another. D.C. area director in the Wings Washington, D.C. area director and educator Jennifer L. Nelson was in town July 15 for Cygnet Theatre’s final callback auditions for the next “Rep,” two August Wilson plays, “Seven Guitars” and “King Hedley II,” that open Sept. 28 and play alternately through Nov. 6 at the theatre in Old Town. Neither play has been fully produced professionally in the San Diego area. Nelson has directed six of Wilson’s plays, two of them twice, and as of November she will have directed all but two. Casting was not complete at press time, but I can tell you that Ro Boddie, who made such a stunning debut in Cygnet’s “Stupid F**cking Bird” this season, plays major roles in both Wilson plays, which are related by blood and deceit. Boddie was in the La Jolla Playhouse production “Blueprints to Freedom.”