8 WHO CREATE

Paul Hope, the musical impresario behind this month's A Little Night Music, and seven more Houstonians make the arts come to life

Theater folk are notoriously superstitious, but I'm so confident of the following that I will risk the jinx of praising a show before it opens. I don't do this blindly, of course. Paul Hope's track record is indisputable.

I'm referring to the annual concert musical produced by Hope to benefit the Center for AIDS and starring the crème de la crème of Houston musical theater performers. This year's production is Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, based on Ingmar Bergman's radiant 1955 film masterpiece, Smiles of a Summer Night. Hope co-directs with Michael Tapley, the associate artistic director of Theatre Under The Stars.

The musical collaboration led by Hope hasn't disappointed yet. If you saw the team's first effort in 2000, an incandescent Follies, or the second, equally impressive show, a deeply affecting Falsettos, then you know what quality, intelligence, and good old theatrical talent and flair these impresarios and interpreters bring to the stage.

A multiple Tony Award-winner in 1973, Night Music is Sondheim's most blissful score, all in waltz time. His patented astringency and caustic outlook on life is tempered here by Bergman's original overlay of bittersweet forgiveness and remembrances of summer gazebos and fireflies. If the costumes look vaguely familiar, they are, having been borrowed from the overstuffed 1999 Houston Grand Opera production. And the performers are, well, the best available.

Now in its third year, the organization has an official title, Bayou City Concert Musicals (BCCM). The mission statement has not changed: present professional-level concert stagings of under-performed or neglected works from the musical theater repertoire and showcase local talent, both veteran and rising, with all proceeds benefiting the Center for AIDS Hope and Remembrance Project.

Hope, of the Barrymore profile and sonorous baritone, is a veteran member of the Alley Theatre, but in a parallel universe he is the show-queen deluxe. Hope is a font of Great White Way trivia and gossip, and his love of show biz is infectious, infusing his work with masterful craft and theatrical savvy.

"My aim is not for this to be Paul Hope vanity productions," he says with a smile, "even though it sort of started out that way because I always wanted to do Follies, and I had time on my hands. But now that I'm making my living predominantly doing straight plays, I'm like looking at my watch going, 'If I don't do these shows for myself, I'm never going to get to do them.' And I stumbled on this way to do these. Next year, we're doing She Loves Me. Well, I don't want to play George. I want to do the supporting role. I'm the Jack Cassidy part."

As those who have seen Follies and Falsettos know, "It ain't about doing an 'evening of songs from,' it's doing the book, or as much of the book as we can stand," Hope says. His model for BCCM was the fabled 1995 Encores! revival of Chicago, which was a complete musical, with a minimal set that included some chairs and props, costuming, and a dynamite cast.

Hope's love of neglected musicals is rivaled only by his admiration for veteran performers, who have few outlets to display their talent. Night Music's A-list includes Hillary Fields (Desiree Armfeldt), Hope (Fredrik Egerman), Deborah Hope (Charlotte), Alex Stutler (Magnus), Heather Scheffler (Anne), Tye Blue (Henrik), and Sylvia Froman (Madame Armfeldt).

"It's a way to keep us all from atrophying, before we all need walkers," Hope says with a laugh. "From my end of things, which is the show, there are so many gifted musical theater veterans in town, particularly the Equity people. We're limited to what our performance opportunities are, so this is a way for us to have a yearly workshop and get to do material we've always wanted to do. And not be limited to being guested into a smaller theater, where there may be a certain unevenness to the casting. When you have a cast full of talented individuals, it's amazing what kind of work people do. Everybody rises to a certain level. They all have as much fun as I have."

As Hope stresses, all the hard work involved in putting these shows together is for the best of causes: All entertainment dollars go to the center. The other good news is that the list of underwriters is slowly but surely growing. "We're starting to be a grown-up," Hope says proudly.

"Who would have thunk it? I was always thinking, What can I do for the AIDS cause? I can do musicals! Hey, let's do a show. It's so Mickey and Judy." -D.L. Groover

A Little Night Music

Bayou City Concert Musicals

September 12-14; 7:30 p.m.

Ovations (2536-B Times Blvd.)

713/880-1935

January 27; 7:30 p.m.

Zilkha Hall, Hobby Center (800 Bagby)

2. CHELSEA BEAUCHAMP

"Moody sensual alternative folk pop" is the label Chealsea Beauchamp gives to her music. "It's definitely passionate. I rip my guts out and put them on the table."

Music fans can check that description by listening to Beauchamp's self-titled EP, scheduled for a September 22 release. "My music is my way of making it in the world," says the singer/songwriter. To promote the EP, Beauchamp anticipates a possible tour with Raj Pickens, a musician with whom she has frequently performed.

In addition to her music career, Beauchamp has created The Dream Tree, a traveling metal sculpture on which individuals can hang leaves inscribed with their wishes and a phone number. Other people can take a wish and help make it come true. "So far about 12 dreams have been fulfilled," Beauchamp says. She and her girlfriend, the artist Celeste Tammariello, work with 25 volunteers to maintain The Dream Tree, most recently installed at Unity Church.

Beauchamp is also working at an out-of-this-world level. She is one of the musicians contributing to the Interplanetary Collaborative Music Project, a tuneful component of the simulated mission to the red planet organized by The Mars Society with the cooperation of NASA and the European Space Agency. On this Earth, the resulting CD will be available over the Internet. -Tim Brookover

Photographed at the musician's home by Yvonne Feece

3. ALAN HURWITZ

Considering the introspective tone of his canvases, Alan Hurwitz's background in psychiatry should not surprise. Born and raised in Houston, Hurwitz majored in painting and art history at Brandeis before detouring to medicine. After completing his psychiatric training and residency at the University of Texas San Antonio, he both practiced and taught at that school and the UT medical school in Houston. Hurwitz had his own practice until 1994, when he left medicine as a full-time career to concentrate on art.

"Some of my paintings in years back were based on psychiatry and neurology," Hurwitz says. Now he is working on a series of paintings inspired by his responses to HIV. One of these recently appeared in the annual Big Show at Lawndale, and more will make up his first one-man show in January at the Jung Center.

"It's been hard for me to find a visual way to express what long-term survivors feel. That's my current challenge-to express this in painting" he says of this work, which incorporates veils of color, numbers, and names of friends he has lost. "Some are more whimsical. There are a few I call the cocktail series"-referring, he adds with a rueful chuckle, not to any evening highball but to the multiple-drug regimen known to people living with the virus. -TB

Photographed at the artist's studio by BJ Smith

4. MICHAEL LOCKE

After graduating from Westminster College in Missouri, Michael Locke entered a monastery. He stayed for a year before deciding to leave. "But it was a good experience. I loved it," says Locke. After moving to Houston in 1984, the Kansas City, Missouri, native followed careers as a certified financial planner and restaurateur. Many people know Locke as a poet, through his two books, Sun Primed and The Water Will Rise, and his performances across the city, including an evening last month at Kilworth Manor of new poems married with blues songs performed by Dianna Greenleaf and Blue Mercy.

This month, Locke, who is the father of a 13-year-old girl, adds another entry to his diverse vitae. He is the owner and publisher of Consortium, an arts and literary journal, complimented by the websit. The debut issue of the new quarterly features an interview with Locke's favorite singer, the great Nancy Wilson.

Locke is also working with minister and activist Bonita Kirk on the editing of her upcoming Battered Christian Syndrome, plans future performances of his work, and is discussing a collaborative effort with the Houston Symphony to take a poetry-and-music program into the schools. He attests to embrace so much activity in his life: "Once you are having cappuccino with St. Peter, it's too late." -TB

Photographed at Kilworth Manor by Yvonne Feece

5. TORIE MCMILLAN

An artist and an organizer, Torie McMillan spearheads The Art Group, a new coalition of individuals in a range of creative fields. "Our group is for all aspects of art-painting, drawing, sculpture, poetry, photography, and more," she says. "Eventually, I wanted to have every kind of artist involved." McMillan's girlfriend, Rebecca Keaton, who is an accomplished cook, even represents the culinary arts. On September 20, McMillen and The Art Group will host An Evening of Art & Music, which will combine an exhibition of work by several member artists with a performance by folk singer Teresa Kolo. Proceeds from the 7:30 p.m. event, including donations at the door and art sales, will benefit the Houston Lesbian & Gay Community Center, where The Art Group meets. The art will remain on display at the center for a month.

"I like all aspects of entertainment, but I focus now mainly on painting and photography," the Pasadena-born McMillen says. "I feel I can say something new with painting."

Her current work centers on striking portraits. McMillan, who frequently paints from photographs, eschews the images portrayed in much of the media ("white girls, totally skinny"). In her pictures, she says she seeks to show a diversity of sizes, ethnicities, and ages: "I think people are beautiful-all people." -TB

Self-portrait

6. & 7. DIANNA RAY AND MARGARET ZIGMAN

Dianna Ray (right) and Margaret Zigman met at Houston Community College in an audio production class. Their first project as a filmmaking team was Written on the Body (1999), a documentary on body modification. The duo is now completing a project on ritual suspension. They are preparing for post-production and a 2003 premiere. A three-minute segment of this latest Ray/Zigman work previewed last month in an evening of films by local women organized by Andrea Grover, curator of Aurora Picture Show.

Ray and Zigman received national recognition earlier this year when they were invited to create work for RAW, a collection screened during the New York Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. For this project, 20 directors were each given one day to film and two days to edit a three-minute piece illustrating the title. Zigman traveled to New York to see their work included with other film-world names like Bruce LaBruce. "Our work was well received in New York," reports Zigman, who with Ray helps guide the Houston Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.

Technology has made filmmaking both easier and more possible for creative types like themselves, the pair agrees. "Digital video has opened up the genre to so many people," Ray says. Zigman adds: "We just pack up the car with a couple of cameras and go." -TB

Photographed at Aurora Picture Show by Tim Brookover

8. DOMINIC WALSH

Houston has a new dance company, a dream project of Houston Ballet principal dancer/choreographer Dominic Walsh. Influenced by the stylistic fusion of classical ballet and modern dance exemplified by contemporary masters Jiri Kylian, Christopher Bruce, and Nacho Duato, his Dominic Walsh Dance Theater aspires to fill a gap in the Houston dance scene.

"I've always been inspired by the limitless possibilities of dance when you combine styles, which I've been fortunate to have learned at HB," Walsh says. "I want to provide a mid-size company that focuses on the newest voices in dance today, to create an environment where any artist can comfortably tap into his/her technical, creative, and artistic potential."

The first public presentation of Walsh's company will be Illumination Project on World AIDS Day, December 1, at DiverseWorks Art Space. DWDT and Jane Weiner's Hope Stone Dance Company are co-presenters for this memorial, which will benefit the Pediatric AIDS Initiative of Baylor College of Medicine and A Caring Safe Place. The troupe's official premiere will take place on February 14 and 15 at Hobby Center's Zilkha Hall with works by Walsh and his Australian contemporary, Natalie Weir.

"This is my philosophy of dance," Walsh says, "opening the mind and preparing the body so that as artists we are all ready for the moment of inspiration." -D. L. Groover

Dominic Walsh (top) and Lucas Priolo photograph by Bill Woodford