OFF CENTER TEENS is Rude Mechs’ theatre summer camp for teens. Named “Best Club for Teen Performers” and “Best evolution of teen empowerment” by The Austin Chronicle’s Readers’ Poll, Off Center Teens is a 2-week, full-day camp where teens collaboratively create an original theatre performance from scratch and perform that work in a public presentation.

Teens who participate in Off Center Teens are given space, materials, skills, and guidance as they work individually and as a group to write poems, stories, songs, collages, dances, and drawings from their life experiences. They then craft this material into a live performance and a published anthology which is available to the audience, free of charge, before and after the public performances.

Off Center Teens is directed by Patrick Shaw, along with Rude Mechs Co-Producing Artistic Director Madge Darlington and Rude Mechs Company Member Jodi Jinks. Each has won awards of merit and critical acclaim for artistic work in the community and have experience teaching acting, performance and writing at all levels. They each hold MFA’s in theatre.

During the first week and a half of the program, teens learn how to speak their stories and find their voices then turn to crafting those stories into dynamic artistic performances. Throughout the program, several workshops are led by guest artist–professionals from the local community who have made careers in the arts. Guest artists have included Terry Galloway, Florinda Bryant, Dr. Joni Jones, sharon bridgforth, Dr. Lisa Moore, Paul Soileau, Aron Taylor, Jenny Arffman, Vincent Tomasino, Liz Doss, Carrie Fountain and Carra Martinez.

Freshman/Transfer Orientation is required for students admitted to the fall semester. I will be working the shows called: Opening Session, Campus Safety and Social Justice in Hogg Memorial Auditorium and the Union Building Theatre as the Production Stage Manager. 

THIS ISN'T NEW poses the question “what does it mean to be ‘American’ in 2017”? We are attempting to understand and articulate the ambiguities and anxieties that affect our civic and social standing as millennial artists in the US. The show, This Isn’t New, questions, “What does it mean to be notWhite, notStraight, notGay, notMale, notFemale, notBlack ...” Our pieces are rooted in the capitalization of our “otherness” and how it simultaneously works for and against us. By going through a process of elimination of what America isn’t, we aim to use dance as a vehicle of communication, constructing an inclusive narrative for the audience so they may begin to question their own ideas to potentially challenge, or reinforce, belief systems. 

The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance presents PANORAMA, an exciting exhibition celebrating the work of emerging artists in costume design, lighting design, scenery, media and technology. This annual showcase offers behind-the-scenes access as attendees see imagination manifest itself in works for the stage and film. 

Description: A Nervous Breakdown examines healing in the context of serious illness. Framed as a ritual around the Hebrew concept of Tikkun Olam, or “world repair,” Breakdown blends documentary theatre with dance, exploring the human aspects of the physician-patient relationship in modern medical practice, and Americans’ relationship with mortality.

Description: Enter an alternate digital reality and make choices to bring a being from that world into ours. Then attend a class to meet this being in person and help it learn its place in our realm. Intro to Being Here is a transmedia experience integrating a video game with immersive performance. Intro to Being Here is presented as part of the Cohen New Works Festival. The Festival, produced by The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance and sponsored by Broadway Bank, premieres 38 new student-made projects April 10-14, 2017. 

Description: Not Every Mountain,” an hour-long performance designed by Thomas Graves, with text written by Kirk Lynn. As Kirk speaks the text, eight performers use pulleys, cranks, magnets and technology inspired by pop-up books to gradually build a mountain range together with cardboard, string, cloth, wax and other simple, cheap packaging materials. As we watch, parts of the earth’s crust shift, collide, and mountains form. As the mountain range grows and grows, the seasons change, the sun rises and sets. Eventually the range stretches from one end of the playing space to the other and the audience, seated in the round, are cut off from one another. No one person knows what the mountain looks like, only the face they can see. The piece is a meditation on change and permanence, perspective, and the unintended ways we separate ourselves from one another, even in our best efforts to build something beautiful together. It is an introduction of the themes of the bigger project. It is an invocation of geological time. It is a prayer for our home.