The Media Archive has been updated with some really fun photos from promotional shoots (for Michael’s latest showing of “My Well Schooled Heart”), to headshots, to even a relaxing day at the park with a very special friend!  We hope to have Michael’s latest YouTube videos up on the Media Archives soon… but for now, please check out his YouTube channel. 

If you missed one of Michael’s shows in July, you can find a few videos from “Pyscho Cabaret” and “My Well Schooled Heart” filmed and uploaded by the wonderfully talented Jill Leger on her YouTube channel … here’s a preview of one of her videos… It’s Michael’s opening number from “My Well Schooled Heart” at Signature’s Sizzlin’ Summer Series…

Check back often and please let Michael or I know
if you would like to see anything on the site that isn’t already…or just to say hi!

Thanks and Happy Browsing!

Performers:  Terri Allen, Chris Cochran, Emily Leatha Everson, Arlene Hill,
Michael Vitaly Sazonov, Judy Simmons and Lonny Smith

Director:  Judy Simmons
Musical Director:  George Fulginiti-Shakar

Join the insanity!     6 Performances!
Thurs. July 10, 7:45 PM
Sat., July 12, 7:30 PM
Thurs.,  July 17,  6:00 PM
Wed., July 23, 7:45 PM
Thurs., July 24, 6:00 PM
Friday, July 25, 5:30 PM

]]> http://www.michaelsazonov.com/blog/2008/07/10/opening-night-psycho-cabaret/feed/ http://www.michaelsazonov.com/blog/2008/06/25/my-well-schooled-heart-2/ http://www.michaelsazonov.com/blog/2008/06/25/my-well-schooled-heart-2/#comments Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:43:50 +0000 Michael Sazonov http://www.michaelsazonov.com/blog/?p=36

MY WELL SCHOOLED HEART

I’ve been re-working my one man show, adding songs, subrtacting songs, developing a new ending even!  So I’m really looking forward to performing it as part of Signature Theatre’s summer cabaret seriesThe performance is ONE NIGHT ONLY!

JULY 31st at 8:30 pm

Please click here for tickets

and more information

Also I’ll be performing in a half hour set
after the very talented Natascia Diaz on July 30th at 8:30pm…
I saw her in Carnival!  at The Kennedy Center last year and My parents and I saw her in the National Tour of West Side Story – she was the standout of the show!
I’m looking forward to sharing the set with her…

Click here if the embeded image doesn’t come up… Hope you enjoy it! Rate it kindly :O)

I had a great time delving deep into the clinical mind and scientific heart of Albert Camus’s Dr. Bernard Rieux.  He was a lot of fun to play — as much fun as one can have on stage dealing with things like the plague… the blind brutality of incurable diseases, the frustration of a crippling bureaucracy, the Absurdity of tragedies that present itself when people, surrounded by death, quarantine themselves from the rest of the world to contain the pestillence that’s killing them all.  Life and Death.  Faith and Fate.  And “Man.”  The show really started cooking as the run progressed, so I’m sorry to see it end so quickly.  I want to heartily thank Robert and Elle and the whole cast and crew at Scena Theatre.

Now as I read the stories about cyclones, earthquakes, fires, and floods taking lives by the thousands, I can only hope that Camus (through his cast of complex characters and arguments) is both wrong and right.  As much as I hope that there will not “always be victims, because that is the order of things,” I too hope that tragedies like these can “help men to rise above themselves” because after all, I hope there are always “those who, while unable to be saints, refuse to bow down to the plague…”  Those who, in the time of true testing, strive not for lofty answers or reasons, but work for cures.  “Their actions and desires are limited to ‘Man’ and his humble, yet awe-inspiring love, and they shall have their reward.  It’s only right.”

And from the relative comfort of my computer, I can sit here and type this as (a hope for) truth.  Yet amidst these recent tragedies, I can only think through the paradigm of Camus’s characters…  Is it out of my hands to help everyone?  Maybe.  After all, Dr. Rieux sent his own wife away to die alone in a sanatarium because he knew he was incapable of curing her.  Is it always out of our hands?  Maybe not.  Is tragedy always so far away and so well reported on?  Never.  As a former professor of mine once said, “the whole world needs the whole world.”  So I pray for those dealing with these tragedies every day just as I hope others pray for me.  Because, as the town of Oran finds out in the midst of the Plague, “it can’t do any harm.”

Check out my rendition of “If I Ever Say I’m Over You” by John Bucchino… I recorded as part of my cabaret and debut cd back almost 6 months ago.  Click here to view it… and rate it kindly :O)

El toro y el cóndor (The Bull and the Condor), 1957
Oil on burlap (jute)
72″ x 51-1/4″

Art Exhibit not to be missed! Oswaldo Guayasamín!

One of my favorite artists, Oswaldo Guayasamín, is being presented at the Art Museum of the America’s at the Organization of American States. I had the pleasure of seeing his work at his former home-turned museum in Quito, Ecuador this summer and his paintings are viciously potent and wonderfully touching…

El grito I–III (The Cry I–III), 1983
Oil on canvas
Triptych, 51-1/4″ x 35-7/16″;41-5/16″ x 68-7/8″;51-1/4″ x 35-7/16″

April 5-May 29, 2008

art museum of the americas

201 18th street, nw
(just south of the Corcoran Gallery of Art)
washington, dc 20006
tuesday-sunday 10am-5pm

Sir Derek Jacobi and Michael Vitaly Sazonov
(many thanks to Antoinette for this picture!)

I had the honor of chatting with Sir Derek Jacobi at the 2008 Helen Hayes Awards, where he graciously received this year’s Helen Hayes Tribute in recognition of his illustrious career on stage and screen. He spoke beautifully and earnestly about his love of theatre and at the end of his speech he smiled and said, “I hope this lifetime achievement award isn’t…the end, but a new beginning.” Hear, Hear!