Texas in New York

Tony and Drama Desk award nominations put Texas in the spotlight

Theater award season fever has struck New York, but we are feeling the effects all the way down in Texas. The nominations for the Drama Desk Awards came out yesterday, and this morning theater-turned-TV stars Sutton Foster (Bunheads) and Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family) announced who would soon be vying for a Tony Award. Shows with Texas ties showed up on both lists.

Productions from Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway are eligible for the Drama Desk Awards, which are voted on by theater critics, journalists, editors and publishers covering theater “without any vested interest in the results.” The ceremony will be held May 19 at The Town Hall (a nonprofit culture organization and performance venue) in Manhattan.

The Antoinette Perry “Tony” Awards are a joint venture by the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing and salute “excellence in Broadway theater.” The three-hour show will be broadcast live by CBS on June 9.

Below, a quick rundown of who’s in the hunt and how it relates to Texas:

Giant
Dallas Theater Center and New York’s The Public Theater co-produced the reworked musical version of Edna Ferber’s sprawling, Texas-set 1952 novel last January, and it made the jump to Off-Broadway in October. Now it leads the pack of Drama Desk contenders with nine nominations, including Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics for Michael John LaChiusa, and Outstanding Book of a Musical for Sybille Pearson.

Kate Baldwin and John Dossett, who played Leslie Benedict and Uncle Bawley, respectively, during both the Dallas and New York runs, are up for Outstanding Actress in a Musical and Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical.

Ann
Holland Taylor is getting recognized by both groups for her turn as the late Ann Richards. The one-woman show about the charismatic former Texas governor — which she also wrote — has been playing on Broadway since March, following productions mounted in Galveston, San Antonio and Austin, as well as Chicago and Washington, D.C. Taylor is up for a Tony for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play; she is a nominee for Outstanding Solo Performance at the Drama Desk Awards.

Bring It On: The Musical
Okay, so there are no Texans behind this show per se, but it did make a surprisingly well-received stop at Dallas Summer Musicals before hitting Broadway for a limited engagement in August. Dallas critics were pleasantly taken in by the show’s infectious music (by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Amanda Green and Tom Kitt) and high-flying choreography (by Andy Blankenbuehler).

The Tonys are recognizing both with nominations for Best Musical and Best Choreography. The Drama Desk Awards are doling out the love with noms for Outstanding Director of a Musical and Outstanding Choreography (both Blankenbuehler), Outstanding Lyrics for Green and Miranda, Outstanding Sound Design for Brian Ronan, and Outstanding Book of a Musical for Jeff Whitty.

Hands on a Hardbody
Even though it shuttered on the Great White Way earlier in April, the documentary-based musical about a yearly competition in Longview, Texas, where contestants see who can keep their hands on a pickup truck the longest, scored quite a few nominations. Besides one for Outstanding Musical, the Drama Desk bestowed eight others on the show, tying it with Giant for most nominations.

The rest are Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical (Keala Settle) and Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical (Keith Carradine), Outstanding Choreography for Sergio Trujillo, Outstanding Book of a Musical for Dallas native Doug Wright, Outstanding Sound Design in a Musical for Steve Canyon Kennedy, Outstanding Music for Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green, Outstanding Orchestrations for Anastasio and Don Hart, and Outstanding Lyrics for Green (who’s having a killer awards season so far).

As for Tony nominations, Hands on a Hardbody weighed in with three: Best Original Score and Best Featured Actor/Actress in a Musical for Carradine and Settle.

Death-defying cheerleaders made Bring It On: The Musical more fun than you might expect.

Cheerleaders in Bring It On: The Musical

Photo by Craig Schwartz

Death-defying cheerleaders made Bring It On: The Musical more fun than you might expect.

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RIP Albert

Colorful and iconoclastic Dallas artist Albert Scherbarth dies at 70

Courtesy

Dallas artist Albert Scherbarth

Dallas artist Albert Scherbarth, known for his jubilant creativity which he displayed in a wide range of media, died on February 18; he was 70 years old. According to friends, he suffered a heart attack.

Scherbarth's myriad "canvases" ranged from printmaking to furniture to steel and metal working. He was a colorful presence in the Dallas art scene with a shock of thick hair that stood tall, definitive horn-rimmed glasses, and an unfiltered, no-nonsense personal style.

He was also a key figure in The Cedars district: an urban pioneer who settled in the area directly south of downtown Dallas in the early '80s when the neighborhood was a mostly-deserted collection of abandoned warehouses, before it became a major art nexus.

A post by Lee Harvey's, the Cedars District bar, said that "Some people don’t just live in a neighborhood — they leave their mark on it. Albert did exactly that. Through his art, his presence, and his time at our bar, he became part of the story here. We’ll miss him more than we can say. Rest easy Bert."

He was a real character, as well — a stocky physical presence (he played football in high school) who'd fix his stare upon you as if you were a critter to be studied.

One friend said, "I always feel that Albert is going to spring some meta shit on me every time i see him and he rarely disappoints. What a cool cat."

A native of Nebraska, Scherbarth moved to Dallas in 1979 to earn a master's in fine arts at the University of Dallas, Irving. After graduating in 1981, he began teaching in the community college district, including Brookhaven College, Northlake College, University of Texas at Dallas, and the Creative Art Center, as well as at Dallas' Arts Magnet.

Sculpture by Albert Scherbarth which appeared at the State Fair of Texas in 2018.Laura Walters/Facebook

After graduating from art school, he felt the need to do "real" work like his father, and took jobs in construction and woodwork, which helped shape the very physical nature of his art.

He was one of the early and many artists who resided in the Continental Gin Building, where he worked on his designs and commissions, fabricated other artists’ ideas, and helped galleries with installations, crating, and shipping.

Through the years he made furniture, got into fused and cast glass, poured concrete countertops, and painted, including a successful era of doing giant flower paintings. In his latter years, he acquired a welding machine and worked with builders, designers, and architects constructing screens, fences, furniture, and sculptures.

His works around town include a giant wine tree for Fleming Steakhouse in Frisco, and a sculpture named, "Cecil, age 12" up on Henderson Avenue at Capital Street which was was a finalists for the Henderson Art Prize. He also worked on the famed Bowler Hat sculpture in the Cedars.

In an interview with Voyage Dallas, he said, "I’m constantly looking for more meaning and more permanence in the work that I’m doing," and acknowledged that "I’ve been very, very fortunate to get a lot of really great commissions over the years. I’ve sold a lot of work and fallen into great studio situations – large spaces, cheap rent and wonderful landlords. Today, I think my ignorance of all the pitfalls ahead allowed me to storm through life and I have a certain stubbornness, a dogged determination to succeed."

"My grandfathers died before I came of age, my father died, my favorite uncle died so there was not much in the way of male guidance or perspective on how to be a man, so I’ve just kind of made it up on my own, stumbling through, winging it and I’m still alive, amazingly enough."

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