2023 Cohen New Works Festival Projects

Film

A hilarious mockumentary that follows one socially-nebulous, hopelessly-romantic man, a.k.a. The Aardvark. Have you ever looked at someone and thought "There is no way they are real." That is who Jamie is. Jamie has never found where he belongs. He bounces around different friend groups, can never seem to find that special someone and belongs to that mental gray area between total self-confidence and complete ego death. While he may seem like an "NPC" to some, this mockumentary follows Jamie as he figures out what is blocking him from becoming the person he wants to be.

Through failed auditions, awry kisses and pathetic attempts at casual stand-up, Jamie confronts his fears and rediscovers the boundaries that are keeping him from forming meaningful relationships. 

Project Lead: Dominic Gross

Location: WIN 2.112
Approximate runtime: 45 minutes 

PERFORMANCES
April 4 at 3:30 p.m.
April 6 at 10:30 a.m.

Contains mature content and themes including language, sexual themes and partial nudity.

Dance/Film

A visual dance film that depicts the various realities of Black women navigating the journey of adulthood. The film will touch on the struggles, resilience and persistence in finding joy in a life filled with trials and tribulations we continue to endure. We will show how to find our sense of purpose and sense of self while living in a society where we are the most unprotected. 

Project Leads: Evan Beek, Jannah Colins 

Location: WIN 2.112
Approximate runtime: 15 minutes

PERFORMANCES
April 3 at 5:30 p.m.
April 4 at 10:30 a.m.
April 6 at 3:30 p.m.
April 7 at 10:30 a.m.

Play/Musical

Why do we tell the stories of revolutionary women? Who gets to tell their stories? What power do we have over such stories? Drawing from both Mexican history and a rich folk music tradition, El Corrido de la Soldadera tells the story of Elena, a young girl living in Chihuahua at the outset of the Revolution who follows the call to arms to fight for a better Mexico, in spite of the resistance she meets from her family, faith, and even her fellow soldiers.

El Corrido de la Soldadera is performed in Spanish. English scripts are available to view digitally during the show.

Project Lead: Demian Chavez
Approximate runtime: 80 minutes

Location: B. Iden Payne Theatre

PERFORMANCES
April 3 at 1:30 p.m.
April 5 at 8:30 p.m.
April 6 at 3:30 p.m. (talkback to follow)

There will be a 20-minute talkback following the performance on April 6 at 3:30 p.m.

Contains mature content including language, death and stylized depictions of warfare including simulated gunfire.

Play

Travel into the magical world of the night sky! In this interactive play for ages 0-5, young people and their families follow two curious characters who seek to capture the moon and stars. With multi-sensory experiences and an original music score played live, this 25-minute performance will enchant even the wiggliest of audience members! Created in collaboration with Paper Boats.

Project Lead: Claire Derriennic 

Location: WIN 2.180 
Approximate runtime: 45 minutes

PERFORMANCES
April 4 at 10:30 a.m.
April 6 at 10:30 a.m. 

Best suited for ages 0-5 and their adults. Audiences of all ages welcome.

Installation

GendTent is an interactive installation exploring the presentation, perception and negotiations of one's own gender through their clothing style and fashion. The actual GendTent is a tent built from thrifted, recycled, donated clothes/garments wherein folks can enter and engage in the colorful space of the tent at any time during the festival. Inside the tent, audiences are invited to try on and play with racks and bins of clothes. Definitions of gender, gender identity, gender expression and perception are found throughout the space as well as other gender resources on campus and from the Austin community. Audiences can also engage with prompts written on mirrors throughout the space. 

The idea of the tent is borrowed from activist and protest spaces where a medical tent is usually found to offer medical assistance, water/food, mental health resources, etc. GendTent offers a space for folks to safely explore their own ideas of gender, the way they interact with gender and how/if their clothing/style play a role in that conversation. 

Project Lead: Mateo Hernandez

Location: WIN 2.121
Installation will be available for the duration of the festival April 3-7, 2023. 

Performance/Interactive Experience

Taking up the outline of Reggie Watts' 2015 piece Audio Abramovic, this piece is interested in exploring what happens when one artist revisions another artist's revisioning of one of the greatest pieces of performance art ever devised. I can't tell You is a musical performance for one - the audience member will join Daphne at an audio work station, don a pair of headphones and listen as she improvises a wholly original piece of music for them using a drum machine, a sample sequencer and a loop station. 

Project Lead: Daphne Silbiger

Location: Ticket distributions will take place in front of the F. Loren Winship Building at 5:00 p.m. on the day of the performance.*
Approximate runtime: Determined by each audience member. Audience members will receive a ticket voucher and will be notified when it is their time to view the performance.

PERFORMANCES
April 3 at 6:00 p.m.
April 4 at 6:00 p.m.
April 5 at 6:00 p.m.
April 6 at 6:00 p.m.

*Tickets for each performance will be distributed in front of the F. Loren Winship Drama Building at 5:00 p.m. on the day of the performance. They will be distributed on a first-come first-served basis.

All individual performances will take place between 6:00-10:00 p.m. at a specific time scheduled when you pick up your ticket. At your designated appointment time, you must return to the ticket distribution location in front of Winship to be escorted to your appointment. 

Please note: Tickets are extremely limited. If you are present at the ticket distribution but do not receive a ticket, you can be placed on a wait list in case an appointment slot opens up.

Play

In this project, we take a "Latinx" spin on the variety show that today takes different forms in Latin American and United States television. With the pretense of doing "entertainment," we use the show as a platform for International Students to talk about relevant issues related to their countries of origin in Latin America and the practices that bring them joy and help them thrive. The multimedia piece combines a live host and a video component. The host invites their collaborators to take the screen while cheering the audience and asking some people on stage to rehearse practices of joy. Because many of us did not use the words "Latino/a/x/e" until we migrated to the States, an underline conversation will be around our opinions on the label.

Project Lead: siri gurudev

Location: WIN 2.180
Approximate runtime: 45 minutes

PERFORMANCES
April 5 at 6:30 p.m.
April 7 at 2:00 p.m.

Contains mature content including partial nudity, erotic movement, profanity, mention of racial violence and forced disapperances in Latin America. 

Play

More Blackberries, Please is a restaging of Crystal Wilkinson’s novel Blackberries, Blackberries through a Black Feminist lens. Infused with humor, sadness and honesty, this collection of performance vignettes features stories reminiscent of blackberries-–-small, succulent morsels of Black Appalachian life that are inviting and sweet, yet sometimes bitter. More Blackberries, Please offers a voyeuristic glimpse into the richness that abounds in Appalachia and in Black family life, including the gift of girlhood, the complexity of community belonging, the fluid dichotomy between rural and urban Appalachian experiences and strong awareness of spirituality linked to environment. There are many Black country folks who have lived and are living in small towns, up hollers and across knobs. They are all over America, in the South, in Appalachia, even in Texas. This adaptation will demonstrate Black community life over a course of 30-40 years in Appalachia, Kentucky. In line with the legacies of Affrilachian Artistry, Jazz Aesthetics and Black Feminist Performance, this process of staging Dr. Rita Abell's stage adaptation of Blackberries, Blackberries as a chore poem alongside a radio drama explores the joys and pain of the women of "Affrilachia," a group whose identity is located at the intersections of race, place, class and gender.

Project Lead: Yunina Barbour-Payne

Location: Oscar G. Brockett Theatre
Approximate runtime: Two hours with one 10-minute intermission 

PERFORMANCES
April 3 at 5:30 p.m.
April 5 at 4:30 p.m.
April 6 at 8:00 p.m.

Contains mature content and themes including language and themes of sexual/familial violence.

Film

A short, stop-motion film that endeavors collaboration between the Department of Theatre and Dance and Radio-Television-Film, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The film will be followed by a short behind-the-scenes documentary that aims to highlight the skills and talents of the designers, technicians, fabricators and filmmakers it takes to bring stop-motion to life. 

Project Lead: California Thorson

Location: WIN 2.112
Approximate runtime: 45 minutes

PERFORMANCES
April 3 at 9:00 p.m.
April 4 at 12:00 p.m.
April 6 at 5:00 p.m. (talkback to follow)

There will be a 20-minute talkback following the showing on April 6 at 5:00 p.m.

Contains mature content including dark/crude humor. 

Dance/Film

This dance film will utilize the power of filmmaking and movement composition in order to tell the artist’s story and the story of many other first- generation Asian Americans growing up in predominantly white communities. This film touches on the internal conflict of wanting to honor ones heritage and the people who came before but also longing to fit in and feeling like an outsider. It explores the struggle with internalized racism as an adolescent and how it heavily influences the development of one’s character as well as how the model minority myth can influence how one experiences theirself.

Project Lead: Ava Tran 

Location: WIN 2.112
Approximate runtime: 10 minutes

PERFORMANCES
April 3 at 6:30 p.m.
April 4 at 2:30 p.m.
April 6 at 8:30 p.m.

Dance

ReSourced: Portals of Possibility is a durational dance experience that explores the pulls between oppression and liberation and the tensions that fall between the two. It is a journey of acknowledgement confrontation, shedding and expansion through the body. This experience uses dance performance, embodied facilitation, projection and sound to take the performer and audience on a journey to reconnect to their physical body and expand the possibilities of our future world. ReSourced: Portals of Possibility asks: what are we holding that is not ours to carry? What does it feel like to be in a liberated body? What practices can we create to make a liberated body sustainable? 

Project Lead: Love Muwwakkil

Location: WIN 2.180
Approximate runtime: 40 minutes

PERFORMANCES
April 5 at 2:00 p.m.
April 6 at 8:00 p.m.

Contains mature content and themes including partial nudity.

Installation

An installation - at the center is a baptismal font with a speaker underneath the water. It reflects back. On the outskirts are invitations. Pick up an iPad. Choose a projection. Record your voice. Will it play out loud? Decide alone. Decide with a friend. Do nothing. These are all choices we make. You can turn back. Can you forget? Radiating inward are translucent fabrics, on which different projections are played at different times. On which poetry is digitally written. 

See them and see through them. Walk through them if you like. Through audience participation and multimedia; through live music and spoken word; through archival home video footage ands elf portraiture, this project explores cycles of consent, shame and silence that young people face in community theatre spaces. 

Project Lead: Lily Odekirk

Location: B. Iden Payne Lobby
Installation will be available from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. April 3-6, 2023.

Play

A representation of belonging and found community based on queer experiences, a love for fashion and slaying. We explore the feeling of being in a new space and finding your true self through kindness of your chosen community. We define "slay" as someone who is confident in their style, energy and place in the world; they are not afraid to have fun, be silly, be seen and be friendly. 

Project Lead: Joylin Wei and Mia Castillo

Location: WIN 2.180
Approximate runtime: 10 minutes

PERFORMANCES
April 3 at 9:30 p.m.
April 4 at 2:30 p.m.
April 6 at 6:00 p.m.

Contains strobe effects.

Theatrical Art Exhibition

SPOONS is an interactive installation exploring the concept of “The Spoon Theory” and its relation to invisible illness. The terminology surrounding SPOONS expresses the daily struggles of energy budgeting necessary for disabled, chronically, physically, or mentally ill people. Every day, you wake up with a randomized amount of energy, or spoons, and are faced with the choice of how you will spend them, knowing that it will never be enough. Spoon budgeting forces us to monitor our choices very carefully, because when our spoons are spent, so are we.

SPOONS is a multi-day, varying experience challenging participants to complete required and elective tasks all while managing their spoon (energy) budgets for each day throughout the whole week.

Project Lead: Ezra Rose

Location: WIN 1.108
Performances occur daily April 3-7, 2023.

Contains mature content including discussions of mental illness.

Play

Penny and Polly are best friends and gymnastics rivals. They like to make up stories and eat donuts in the car. They get in a big fight, grow up, join a cult. They’re lonely and in love and still competing over something neither of them can name. Penny gets sad and Polly gets sick. So does a king living elsewhere. Have you read Uncle Vanya? This isn't like that. This is a play about getting lost at sea and seduced by power; about two friends and how each informs the other; and about beauty, grief, love, and ambition.

Project Leads: Caley Chase, Eliya Smith 

Location: Oscar G. Brockett Theatre
Approximate runtime: One hour and 30 minutes

PERFORMANCES
April 3 at 1:30 p.m.
April 4 at 8:30 p.m.
April 7 at 10:00 a.m.

Contains mature language and themes.

Performance

The perfect attendant. The perfect assistant. The perfect usher. This robot servant will answer your questions and guide you to your destination. It will help you find your seat, as well as entertain you as you wait for shows to begin. After all, that's its job.

A performance art piece that merges reality and the digital in an improvisational, audience interaction based experience, this work questions how reliant we have become on technology to aid us in and distract us from our monotonous daily lives.

Find The Usher ready to help all around the New Works Festival! Whether it likes it or not.

Project Leads: Fedor Aglyamov

Location: F. Loren Winship Building (moves throughout the building during the course of the festival)

Contains mature language and strobe effects.

Play

Zaz: The Big Easy is a kinetic and sonic synthesis of African Diasporic Percussive Dance and Music exploring the realities of Hurricane Katrina as a physical storm and metaphor of storms humans experience when silenced, marginalized, and oppressed, yet still preserver through community, spirit, and traditions. This work focuses on bringing awareness to the realities of the worst natural disaster to hit North America, serves as a living archive of Black history through embodied storytelling and celebrates the resilience of those Ryan has spent the past ten+ years of his life knowing. This black cultural experience utilizes tap dance, stepping, body percussion, original music, audience participation, vocal arrangements, and digital media to create an immersive sensory performance shifting traditional audience viewing practices.

Project Lead: Ryan K. Johnson

Location: Oscar G. Brockett Theatre
Approximate runtime: 60 minutes

PERFORMANCES
April 4 at 4:00 p.m. (talkback to follow)
April 5 at 8:00 p.m.
April 7 at 1:00 p.m.

There will be a 20-minute talkback following the performance on April 4 at 4:00 p.m.

Contains strong historic visual imagery and strobe effects.

Showtimes, titles and project information subject to change.