Backstroking in Salsa: The Almost Blasphemy Tour meets Austin, TX

When the Almost Blasphemy Tour rolled into the wonderfully-weird mecca of Austin, TX, I was granted the rare opportunity to bring my work to my hometown. To be fair, I was actually born and raised in San Antonio, TX and lived there for eighteen years. But in the two years I spent in Austin, past college, I identified so much with this city that I feel I must call it home.

Texas is thought to be a very conservative place, and postcards conjure images of cowboys rolling thru cactus patches. As we drove through the pan-handle, we did indeed encounter teenagers roping up their horses as they walked into the convenience mart. We saw enough cattle to keep Arby’s in business for another century. But Austin is the artsy independent liberal oasis in Texas, whose culture is not much like the rest of the state. The city slogan is actually “Keep Austin Weird”. (If you live in Austin, you get a little tired of seeing it, but as a tourist, I actually bought a bumper sticker…)

Highlights of the three-day, packed adventure include: troughs of breakfast tacos and Tex-Mex cuisine, Texas dry smoked BBQ brisket, BYOB mini-golf, dunking our feet in Barton Springs (I do not jest, February swimming is usually fair game in Texas), a wacky meander through the infamous ‘dirty sixth street’ (not for the faint of heart, it is like Times Square on tequila), trips to the Dog n Duck, shopping in South Congress, seeing Cambiare’s original production of Messenger No.4 at the BLUE theatre and catching up with dear friends and family. Oh right, and we did two plays.

The University of Texas at Austin English Department crowds are VERY well educated in classical literature and especially in Shakespeare. The Shakespeare at Winedale summer program has a long-standing relationship with the ASC, and their program culminates in a performance at the Blackfriars Playhouse. Many students that performed this year attended our Renaissance Run of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, and it was awesome to be able to perform our fully-realized production for them, so they could witness the evolution of our process.

Both plays went over very well, and it was especially great to do ‘Tis Pity because we had not done a production of it in over a month. While I was rocking out in the pre-show I noticed many familiar faces in the audience, but I was most surprised to see my high school drama teacher sitting stage left. Dean Whitus is the reason I ventured into the world of theatre, and I could not have been more happy to show off my first big boy long-term acting gig to the man that inspired me to do this for a living.

I had high-school flashbacks of working waiting shifts at Joe’s Crab Shack, reeking of shrimp with strange cats following me in the parking lot. I used to day-dream for a more fulfilling life, and I remembered, “Wow. I am really doing this.”

-Michael Amendola (Dola)
(Puck, Starveling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Antigonus, 3rd Lord, Shepherd in The Winter’s Tale; Grimaldi, Banditti in ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore.)