The MST Q&A: Matt Tramel Reduex

Last year Matt Tramel answered our Q&A while appearing in our Theater for Youth production of THE RELUCTANT DRAGON. Matt returns this year as the wacky and mysterious Willy Wonka in CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, now playing at our Chelsea Market location. Let us see how much has changed for Matt as he once again answers MST's Q&A ...


Full given name: Matthew Shane Tramel

Hometown: Mesquite, TX

Zodiac sign: Leo

Audition Monologue/Song: Still haven't settled. Open to suggestions .

Special skills: Aquatic Sports (skiing/knee-boarding/tubing), Juggling, Running, Frisbee, Horseback Riding, Vehicle Maintenance, Whip Cracking, Hiking, Singing (Tenor), Swing Dancing, Basic Harmonica

First Houston show ever saw: I really do have a horrible memory.

Current show you have been recommending to friends: I'm looking forward to ARCADIA!

Favorite show tune: "Purpose" from AVENUE Q.

MAC or PC? MAC

Must-see TV show: Lost, 24, US of Tara, Firefly

Last good movie you saw: The Hurt Locker

Favorite board game: Balderdash or Apples to Apples

Performer you would drop everything to go see: Eddie Izzard

Pop culture guilty pleasure: Facebook

First stage kiss: I think it was when I was a freshman in college and played Anthony in THE HOUSE OF YES, but like I said before... I have a horrible memory.

Favorite post-show meal: A cold beer.

Worst onstage mishap: I'd have to say it was the time I was performing WORDS, WORDS, WORDS by David Ives with John Dunn at The Country Playhouse and he sliced open his hand on our tire swing (which was part of the set) while we were in the middle of a performance. He was a trooper though and saw it through until the end... clenching his fist the entire time with smears of blood painting the papers we used in our typewriters.

Worst costume ever: I once played a frog prince with an over-sized paper-mâché head that was lined on the inside with obituaries.

Favorite cereal: Honey Bunches of Oats

Who would play you in the movie? Well, Tyson Ritter is my doppelgnger .

Worst job you ever had: I was not a big fan of mowing yards when I was growing up. Does that count?

TV or commercial gig you most enjoyed: Well, if we're sticking to only TV or commercial gigs and excluding film then I'd probably go with a Darque Tan commercial that I was featured in. No, I did not play the role of "before".

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, from the book by Roald Dahl plays our Chelsea Market location Saturdays, now through May 15th.

And that's the word on the street!

A Word from the Playwright

DRIFTWOOD, by playwright Lans Traverse, is making its world premiere now at Main Street Theater. Here are a few notes from Lans, who now lives in London with her husband, actor Ronald Pickup, and their family.

I began writing Driftwood in 2008. It is my third play, and like the two preceding it, it is loosely autobiographical. Or rather, the protagonist is based on someone in my family. In Driftwood, it is my grandfather that prompted the story.

Although I am an American, grew up in Oklahoma, I have lived almost all of my adult life in England, with the exception of a few months spent in Rome. Whilst living there I once met an Italian gentleman who travelled to London regularly on business and he told me how much he loved England. “You English people are so lucky”, he said, “your country is so new and exciting and Italy is so old”. I found that amusing, to love England for its modernity. Every day I look out on London and feel the centuries of kings and queens and age-old empires and am reminded constantly of just how new my America is. It is incredible to think that my own grandfather, age six, sat next to his father on an old buckboard and raced for one hundred and sixty acres of Oklahoma territory and that I grew up with this rich and wondrous piece of oral history handed to me on a plate.

If I were making a film, I would begin with the actual race. Alas, on stage, Orville can only tell and re-tell the story to his three children. But his passion for the land, and his relentless struggle to hold onto it, runs throughout the play. The story is just that, a fiction, for the most part. But the dust storms happened. And the soil erosion was a fact. And people survived the years of the Great Depression.

The present global financial crisis that is staring us all in the face began in 2007, and I wish that it had been my prophetic vision to see this coming and write my play as a cautionary tale. But I must admit to ignorance and cannot take credit for that. However, as greed (both personal and national) drives the plot and leads to tragedy ultimately, hopefully it might strike some as relevant at this particular moment in time. I have quoted novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren, in the frontispiece of the script: “The past is always a rebuke to the present”. History is, indeed, cyclical and here we come round again, eighty years on, to recessions and threats of depressions and man’s abuse of the land and we wonder: of what use is a rebuke if we are never able to learn from the past?

First and last though, this is a story about the family, about the foolishness of some, and the heartache caused by others, about acts of betrayal that are sometimes committed by our nearest and dearest, and about strength and loyalty and steadfastness.
--Lans Traverse

DRIFTWOOD plays at our Rice Village Location through April 24. Some performances are sold out, so don't delay when getting your tickets!

And that's the word on the street!

The Answer My Friend, is Blowing in the Wind...

Many audience members have commented on the soundtrack for Lans Traverse’s DRIFTWOOD, now having its world premiere at Main Street Theater.

Sound designer Janel Badrina sent us some of her sources for the bluegrass, country, swing and gospel music of the 1930s-1950s.

Oklahoma Hills by Jack Guthrie

Can the Circle Be Unbroken?: Country Music’s First Family by the Carter Family

Swing From Paris by Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli

The Essential Bob Wills 1935 – 1947 by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys

The Best of the Andrews Sisters by The Andrews Sisters

Blues Stay Away from Me by the Delmore Brothers

Selected Sides 1947 – 1953 by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers

Born to Lose by Ted Daffan and His Texans

Molly O'Day and the Cumberland Mountain Folks

DRIFTWOOD plays at our Rice Village Location through April 24. Some performances are sold out, so don't delay when getting your tickets!

And that's the word on the street!