Shermia Love in LEO!

Catclaw's very own Shermia Love has a great writeup in this week's special Arts & Entertainment issue of LEO Magazine, by theatre critic Sherry Deatrick! An excerpt:

A member of the Catclaw Theatre Company, she just finished performing in "Toulouse-inations". Playing Marie, one of the ladies of the night, was her favorite role so far, she says, because it showcased all her talents. Yes, she’s one of those triple-threats: dancer/actor/singer.

We're thrilled to be working with Shermia, and note proudly that her stunning rendition of Jeffrey Scott Holland's song "Nothing Is Ever Really What It Seems" was the centerpiece of Toulouse-inations and was the most highly praised aspect of the show by audience members.

Karissa Singleton

We salute Karissa Singleton, Catclaw's resident Stage Manager, who literally was the backbone of Toulouse-inations!

From day one, Karissa immersed herself into the play and ran rings around the rest of us with her "get the job done" can-do attitude. With Catclaw, "Stage Manager" tends to have the broadest possible definition, and Karissa was doing everything from helping Terry with costumes to helping Vanessa run lights (she did it completely solo on closing night) to bringing me McDonald's fries when I was hung over. She also ran the entire prop department herself, and even handled some Assistant Director duties.

Karissa will be in the Director's chair herself when the JSH DC offices bring Catclaw and Toulouse-inations to our nation's capitol, Washington, D.C., in a few months.

- - JSH

Backstage photos

Some photos taken backstage during Toulouse-inations:




1. Erik DiCicco (Tumblety), Jennifer Thompson (The Green Fairy), costume designer Terry, and Justin Rich (Clown #3) having a handheld device party in the Green Room.
2. The disturbingly Gacy-esque Clown #1 (George Bailey) conferring with Carolyn Purcell (The Fortune Teller).
3. Ashley Rose Stallings, Andrena Senola Johnson, Shermia Love and Erin Mann primping to get that Catclaw look just right.

Cheeseburger and Fries : The Musical

Jeffrey Scott Holland, author of Toulouse-inations, is now working on a new play entitled Cheeseburger and Fries, concerning a pair of minimal-talent street-busking musicians struggling to ply their trade on the sidewalks of Kentucky.

In fact, the play is a true story of sorts, since it's based on an actual busking duo called Cheeseburger and Fries (JSH was "Cheeseburger", and J.T. Dockery was "Fries") that frightened tourists and pedestrians for years on the streets of Lexington and in surrounding counties.

Says JSH: "Together, they learn to face the opaque amorphous horror that is modern humanity, via confrontationally atonal bluesmanship. Along the way we also meet their mysterious friend Ed, who has a penchant for making surreal and oracular pronouncements, often at the most socially inopportune times".

Cheeseburger and Fries is expected to have a Louisville opening, probably in Spring 2009.

(Photo: Cheeseburger and Fries before a performance in Georgetown, KY, circa 1997.)

Last chance for Toulouse-inations

The final show in this production of Toulouse-inations comes today, in the form of a 2pm matinee. Don't miss this last historic chance to see the show in its earliest embryonic form!

We'd like to thank everyone who turned out to see the play so far, and the overwhelmingly positive response we've received. If you saw the show and would like to be added to our mailing list, just drop us a line!

Extra special thanks goes out to Noelle Shotwell at the MEX Theatre for making our Kentucky Center experience a very warm and pleasant one at the end of the day!

Toulouse-inations opens tonight!

And so, dear readers, the time has come in which the juggernaut that is Toulouse-inations shall be unleashed, like Frankenstein's monster, out into the world. It's too late to stop it now and the world will, quite literally in a quantum sense, never be the same.

We apologize in advance for nightmares, behavioral changes, paranormal manifestations, existential anxiety, sexual arousal, confusion, past-life regression, spiritual transcendence, intrinsic aesthetic alterations, awakened kundalini, retrocognition, midlife crises, migraine headaches or poltergeists that occur due to viewing women in anachronistic underwear discussing things like the smell of Vincent Van Gogh's beard.

See you at the Kentucky Center at 8pm.