Lighting Design by Martha Carter

Scenic Design by Leah Mazur

Costume Design by Rachel Germinario

Sound Design by Aerik Harbert

Projections Design by Ben Whitmore

Stage Manager - Whitney Carter

ASM - Kinsey Lahn

Four beautiful, badass women lose their heads in this irreverent, girl-powered comedy set during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. Playwright Olympe de Gouges, assassin Charlotte Corday, former queen (and fan of ribbons) Marie Antoinette, and Haitian rebel Marianne Angelle hang out, murder Marat, and try to beat back the extremist insanity in 1793 Paris. This grand and dream-tweaked comedy is about violence and legacy, art and activism, feminism and terrorism, compatriots and chosen sisters, and how we actually go about changing the world. It’s a true story. Or total fiction. Or a play about a play. Or a raucous resurrection…that ends in a song and a scaffold.

“Melissa Livingston directs Impressive performances and top-notch tech at the Lake Dillon Theatre Company in The Revolutionists!”

Scenic Design by Leah Mazur

Lighting Design by Martha Carter

Costume Design by Sheila Russ

Sound Design by Ben Whitmore

Stage Manager - Whitney Carter

ASM - Kinsey Lahn

Sharon, in her mid-fifties, is recently divorced and needs a roommate to share her Iowa home. Robyn, also in her mid-fifties, needs a place to hide and a chance to start over. But as Sharon begins to uncover Robyn’s secrets, they encourage her own deep-seated desire to transform her life completely. A dark comedy about what it takes to re-route your life – and what happens when the wheels come off.

“Thanks to women on and off the stage, The Roommate delivers on multiple fronts, and well deserved its standing ovation. Go see this play if you liked Thelma and Louise, The Odd Couple, or even Breaking Bad. Go see this play if you haven’t talked to your kids in a while. Go see this play if you just wanna burn it all down. Actually, just go see this play anyway, because plays are back, baby.”

Photography by Chris Alleman

Music Direction by Len Rhodes

Scenic Design by Ben Whitmore

Costume Design by Melissa Livingston

“The ensemble shined in every number, from “I Only Want to Be with You” to the finale of “Shout.” Caught between being a “Georgy Girl” and “Windy,” Abby Matsusaka plays a very funny awkward girl, while Kenya Hamilton is spectacular as she sings about, and acts the part of, a wife being cheated on. And Abigail Gardner strongly shows, and sings, her sassy, satisfied character.”

Photography by Chris Alleman

Scenic Design by Brian Malgrave

Lighting Design by Colin Riebel

Costume Design by Nikki Harrison

Sound Design by Damien Figueras

Stage Manager - Brendan Cullen

In Bekah Brunstetter's touching and topical dramatic comedy, a vivacious, conservative North Carolina baker named Della faces a crisis of conscience when Jen - whom she loves like a daughter - asks her to bake a cake for Jen's lesbian wedding.

Della makes cakes, not judgment calls – those she leaves to her husband, Tim. But when the girl she helped raise comes back home to North Carolina to get married, and the fiancé is actually a fiancée, Della’s life gets turned upside down. She can’t really make a cake for such a wedding, can she? For the first time in her life, Della has to think for herself.

Photography by Paul Kennedy

Scenic Design by Travis Deck

Lighting Design by Sarah Resch

Sound Design by Ning Guo

Stage Manager - Whitney Carter

"I have been a subscriber to the UCI School of the Arts for 30 years and Mrs. Packard is the best production I have seen on a UCI Stage.” – D. Kruger, Patron

“I took a friend to see Mrs. Packard and we were really impressed with the production in every respect. It’s a tough play to watch, but it is so honest, sincere, and so horrifying. It is visceral and intellectual. “ Daphne Lei, Head of Doctoral Studies UCI Drama

Director's Note

Women have been instrumental in building this country, but we rarely tell their stories. The Declaration of Independence, says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” All men are created equal. From the beginning of this country, women were not considered equals to men, and consequently, women have not enjoyed equal rights to men.

You may object. It’s 2017. Women have the same rights as men now. Yes, things are better for women in this country. Almost one hundred years ago, women fought for the right to vote. Since then many women continue to fight for equality. But the problem is we all still fighting. We have a voice but we are often not heard. Could this be because we do not tell the stories of the women from our past? Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” By not demanding to know the history of the women who sculpted the United States of America, are we going to be stuck in this cycle of fighting the same fights over and over again and never getting the results we desire? Are we doomed to continue to try and make all the mistakes ourselves?

Elizabeth Packard was a woman who refused to be silenced and insisted on being heard. In a time when she had no legal rights, she demanded liberty. The world almost silenced her voice but she prevailed. There is so much we can learn about how to fight the battles we face today by looking at Elizabeth’s story. If we start telling the stories of American women, like Elizabeth, now, can we break the cycle of repeating history? By peering into the window of our past, perhaps we can see a reflection of our present that will lead us to true equality in our future.

Photos by Chris Alleman

Lighting by David Wagar

Costumes by Maelia Kalua

AN ILIAD is a modern-day retelling of Homer’s classic. Poetry and humor, the ancient tale of the Trojan War and the modern world collide in this captivating theatrical experience. The setting is simple: the empty theater. The time is now: the present moment. The lone figure onstage is a storyteller—possibly Homer, possibly one of the many bards who followed in his footsteps. He is fated to tell this story throughout history.

Photography by Isaiah Walk

“Is There Life After Birth asks the viewer to recognize the shame and blame these girls, and many like them, experience, challenging the common perception of teenage mothers. Mary’s Shelter is changing lives two at a time and “Is There Life After Birth?” is changing lives one audience at a time.”

Delia Cruz Kelly, The New University

Director's Note

I was 16 and pregnant. I remember being scared and angry and ashamed. I felt I had disappointed my parents, my teachers, and the leaders of my church. People at school started gossiping about me and when I was 2 months pregnant, I walked up on a group of girls, that I thought were my friends, just in time to over hear them talking about what a slut I was and wondering how I could have been so stupid. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

I was lucky to have supportive and loving parents and they supported whatever decision I made about my pregnancy. I could have the baby and keep it, have the baby and give it up for adoption, or have an abortion. The choice was mine and it was a huge choice to make at 16. In the first couple of months when I was deciding what to do, a question kept ringing inside my head. Is there life after birth? In other words, what would my life be like if I became a mother at 16?

I did choose to have my son and raise him myself. It wasn’t easy. I graduated high school a year early and started college at 17. My son was four months old on my first day of college. Rather than juggling class and work and homework with what party to go to on the weekend, I juggled work and class and homework with pumping breast milk and 2am feedings and bath time and diaper changes and all the other things that come with being a single mother to an infant.

Most of the time when people hear about my life, the reaction I get is surprised. Surprised that I finished high school. Surprised that I went to college. Surprised that I raised my child on my own. Surprised that I am not the disaster story that the media often shows us about teen mothers.

I’ve often wondered what life has been like for other teen mothers and that is what lead me on the path to finding Mary’s Shelter and creating this piece of theatre.

What I found was a group of young mothers who had walked a very different path than me in life before becoming pregnant. But even though our lives before giving birth were very different, I found that we shared many of the same fears, questions, and prejudices from society in our walks as young mothers.

With the national conversation about women’s rights heating up and with so much debate in our society about when life begins, does anyone think about the life of the mother? What if the mother is not only a teenager but is also in the foster care system? For these young women, Is There Life After Birth?

Site Specific, One Hour, 8 Actors

Photography by Cristian Robert Cortez

Director's Note

In Shakespeare’s 12th Night, when Viola finds herself alone in an unknown world, she chooses to present herself as a man rather than a woman to society. As a woman who grew up in rural East Texas, I can understand this choice. Where I come from, society puts many expectations and limitations on both men and women based on our gender. Girls are supposed to be soft, gentle, and weak, while boys are expected to be hard, rough, and strong. Boys should have opinions and speak their minds, while girls should be agreeable and hold their tongues. My whole life, I have not fit into the gender role that society wanted me to play based on the fact that my sex is female. As a child, I wanted to climb trees and play in the dirt more than I wanted to wear dresses and have tea parties. I played sports and have always been more comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt than I ever could be in a dress. When I was 10, I cut my hair short and one night after a baseball game a group of kids from school walked up to me and asked, “Are you a boy or a girl?” When I said I was a girl, they responded, “Then why don’t you act and dress like one?” and they all walked away laughing. I went home in tears. I sometimes found myself thinking that life would be so much easier if I were a boy. So, I understand why Viola would look at an unknown world and think she would have an easier go of it as a man. But then there is the reality. Sometimes I can be very girlie. I love sappy romantic comedies, getting mani/pedis, long bubble baths and as a child I loved my Barbie dolls. If I was a boy, I would have to hide these parts of me or be ridiculed for the feminine traits I display. What I have come to accept is that I have many traits that are very “masculine” and others that are super “feminine”.  And like Viola, if I present myself as just one or the other, I would be denying life to half of my soul. As a woman, Viola fears she will not be safe and will have no voice or personal power, but as a man, she must deny her heart it’s desires. She is stuck in society’s expectations and limitations of what men and women “should” be. Why do we set up these expectations in our society? I don’t believe I have ever met anyone who is 100% “feminine” or “masculine”. Aren’t we all just people looking to be loved and accepted for the whole of who we are?

Photography by Alex Jenison

“Patricia and I were very impressed with the Madwomen performance last weekend! You created such a polished production! It was a wonderful pleasure to watch our words come to life!” Marian Partee, Book

Director's Note

During the summer of 2016, I had the fantastic opportunity to drive our country coast to coast by myself. I visited 23 states on my journey. Along the way I stopped at art museums, history museums, battle fields, theatres, National Monuments. I hiked in National Forests and dipped my toes in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. I learned about and experienced this country in a wonderful and new way. However, as I visited these museums, battlefields, and historical sites form our past, I was struck with how few stories there were being told about the women of our country’s history. I spent hours wandering museums and reading about the men that built The United States of America.
What about the women?
There is a saying in this country, “Behind every great man, there is a great woman.” We as a society tell the stories of the great men who have sculpted our country. We learn of their successes and we learn of their failures, but we learn very little about the successes and failures of the women who stood behind, beside, and up to them.
Then, I found myself thinking about the battles women in this country are fighting today. It seems for more than a century we have been fighting for equal pay and opportunity in the workplace, reproductive rights, and the end of sexual assault and violence against women. Aren’t these the same battles my mother, grandmother, and great grandmother fought?
Almost one hundred years ago, the women in this country stood up and fought for and won the right to vote. We learn in school that there was a women’s suffrage movement, but what are the specifics? How did they fight? What mistakes did they make along the way? How did they win? What did they think? I really do not know because our society does not really teach us about these women. Winston Churchill said, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Is that what we are doing? By not demanding to know the history of the women who sculpted the United States of America and always putting the stories of men first, are we doomed to be in this cycle of fighting the same fights over and over again and never getting the results we desire?
What if the suffragettes could speak to us today? Could they give us the knowledge and wisdom to effect real change for women in this country? If we start telling the stories of American women now, can we break the cycle of repeating history? If we start learning from our past, can we change our future?

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart

Photography by Nat Boggs

Scenic Design by Brandon PT Davis

Lighting Design by Kenrick Fischer

Costume Design by Rachel Germinario

Choreographer - Rachel Dolan

Music Director - Len Rhodes

Stage Manager - Ray Montoya

ASM - Heather Ervin

“I commend the Lake Dillon Theatre for tackling this Broadway farce, which clearly hasn’t aged well. Nonetheless, with its high-paced, entertaining witty irreverence, directed expertly by Livingston, the musical left me laughing out loud and silently singing along to some of the hit songs. I’m a sucker for anything that involves singing and dancing— and the cast delivered on this front and then some.”

Photography by Isaiah Walk

“A Separate Peace was very eye-opening and really made me think about society and the way we judge or outcast people when they choose to do something that is against the "social norm". My friends and I enjoyed it very much. It was beautifully done.”

Reginald Sellote, patron

Director's Note

What is peace? There are multiple definitions of the word. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says peace is a state of tranquility or quiet; or freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions. For me, peace is feeling happy, content, and free. There are many things I enjoy that make me feel peaceful; a hike in the mountains, a day at the beach, a good book in a bubble bath. These are all actions that society accepts as “normal”ways to find personal peace, but what happens to those of us who have experienced traumatic events and the simple pleasures in life are not enough to quiet oppressive thoughts and emotions? How do veterans of war, find peace in everyday life? Many of them do not. Many young men and women returning from war struggle to reenter our society as a civilian. According to United States Department of Veterans Affairs roughly 22 veterans commit suicide per day. That is one every 65 minutes. The unemployment rate of veterans in the US who have served overseas in the last 15 years is over one percent higher than the national average. Are these men and women struggling to find peace? What does peace look like for them? Perhaps the path to finding peace after being surround by violence is a very different path than it is for those of us who have never lived through such traumatic events. In this play we see a man who is searching for his own personal peace in an unconventional way and those around him cannot accept it. He is not harming anyone and yet he is told what he is doing is not good for him. His response is, “You mean it wouldn't be good for you. How do you know what's good for me?” So the questions I leave you with are, how do we as a society know what is good for anyone but ourselves and should we as a society be more open to more unconventional paths to finding individual peace?

Photography by David Sorensen

Director's Note

What would you do if you knew you were dying? Make a bucket list? Plan to do everything you dreamed of before you die?  Or, would you look around and appreciate and savor the life you have? In today’s world, we get wrapped up in the day to day rat race of life. Finish school. Get a good job. Get married. Have a family. Make more money. Get ahead. Get ahead. Get ahead. But what is the point? What is the why? Will all of these things make us happy and fulfilled? It often seems as if we are all always trying to get more and do more.  We don’t stop and see what is right in front of us. This story is a wonderful reminder that what is the most important part of life might just be the simplest thing of all. Love. We have the ability to love and the chance to truly love another person might just be the greatest experience of a lifetime. The world is full of beauty and grand adventures that can bring us great joy, but this play helps us remember that love is what makes life worth living.

.Photography by Jon Lonnerr

FROM DIRECTOR"S NOTE:

... We all wear masks that say to the world, "This is who I am." What mask do you wear?

- Are you an artist?

-A business person?

- Middle class?

-Conservative? Liberal?

However, if you look beyond the mask presented to the world, everyone has another side.

Photography by Anita Abdinezhad

Director's Note

Am I Blue is the story of two young people finding acceptance for themselves and each other through a chance encounter one evening at that crazy time in life when you are navigating the switch from youth into adulthood. I believe that in today’s world that time in life is more complicated than ever. Texting and social media have taken bullying and excluding someone for being different to a whole new level. Young people today say often hateful things, to one another while hiding behind a screen. I do not believe they would say most of these hateful things while looking someone in the eye. This story is a reminder that we are all just trying to find our way and that actual, face-to-face communication, contact with another human being, can change our lives for the better if we stop, look, offer a kind word and really listen to the people around us every day.

Photography by Jason Amato

“Directed by Melissa Livingston, this Texas premier of the award-winning play The Whale is one of the finest pieces of drama I’ve seen this season." - Cate Blouke, The Austin - American Statesman

“The thing that's so impressive about a chick & a dude's production of Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale is the craft behind it, with the keen eye of director Melissa Livingston evident throughout this tightly realized whale of a tale.”

Adam Roberts, The Austin Chronicle

2014 Austin Critics Table nominee for Best Production of a Drama

Photography by Dan Price

These photos show the journey of this new play, starting with the 2003 workshop production in Austin, then in 2005 to the NYC Fringe Festival, and finally after several staged readings and workshops, the fully realized production of HIT. in 2013 at Hyde Park Theatre in Austin.

About the 2013 production

“Melissa Livingston’s direction highlights the emotional overtones of the piece and puts the relationships between the fathers and their adopted son under a microscope. She utilizes Michael B. Raiford's dirty, graffiti covered set and Jason Amato's dusty, shadowy lighting to create a claustrophobic environment in which these men must confront their relationships with one another, and the result is absolutely intoxicating and fascinating.”

Jeff Davis, Broadway World Austin

2003 B. Iden Payne Award Winner for Outstanding Direction of a Drama

2005 NYC Fringe Excellence Award Winner for Best Cast Performance

Photography by Jason Amato

“The actors and their director Melissa Livingston establish a fierce rhythm, beautifully modulated and controlled according to the events of the story. It's not an emotional roller coaster; it's more of a wild and unpredictable squad car chase through threatening streets under the maddening splash of a steady rain of accident, intimidation and revenge.” Michael Meigs Austin Live Theatre.com

“A Steady Rain, under the direction of Melissa Livingston, is challenging and engaging from start to finish.”

Elizabeth Cobbe, The Austin Chronicle

2013 Austin Lifestyle Magazine Pick for Best Production of the Year

Photography by Dan Price

“Under Melissa Livingston's skillful direction Paradise Key is never boring! It's a tough show to watch at times but one that most audiences will find worthwhile.”

Elizabeth Cobbe, The Austin Chronicle

2011 B. Iden Payne Nominee for Best Direction of a Drama

Photography by Dan Price

"When producing one of the most iconic American plays of the past thirty years, David Mamet's Glenngarry Glen Ross, it's not about doing it differently; it's about doing it justice. Director Melissa Livingston accomplishes this feat on all fronts. It is an honest interpretation built on both courage and integrity."

Kristen Verrill, The Austinist.com

Photography by Dan Price

This original high-spirited children’s play celebrates three winter holidays: Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanzaa. This production was seen by over 1600 elementary aged students. The original production at Hyde Park Theatre was invited to perform at the Texas School for the Deaf with the addition of ASL interpreters.

"Winterland was fabulous fun! Kids of all ages will love it! "

Renee Schuh, Hyde Park Neighborhood Newsletter