The tradition of showcasing cutting-edge new works by UT students continues in the 2021 Cohen New Works Festival, running April 12-16. Featuring performance art by Theatre and Dance students, as well as other artists across the College of Fine Arts, this year's virtual festival includes 33 experimental works.

Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, associate professor in the Performance as Public Practice area, was recently selected as one of only seven faculty members campus-wide to receive a President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award, recognizing him for exceptional undergraduate teaching.

Nicholas Kaidoo (Fall the House) and Jenny Krick (sad women being sad) shared their process of adapting centuries-old scripts into brand new plays, presented as part of UTNT (UT New Theatre).

B.A. in Theatre and Dance student Madison Sheridan was among an interdisciplinary team of students to receive an honorable mention from the Texas Student Research Showdown for their project "Art Without a Frame," which utilizes digital storytelling to investigate our relationships with borders, both psychological and geographical.

We recently sat down with Erica Patricia Saucedo, creator of del corazón nace el enjambre, along with a few of her collaborators, to discuss the third installment of an exploration of brownness, metamorphosis, self-discovery and identity through movement.

Leading up to the virtual performances of Radiance as part of UTNT (UT New Theatre), playwright Gursimrat Kaur discusses the important themes in the script, as well as how the play has been transferred to an online setting.

Faculty members Leah Cox and Erica Gionfriddo will both serve as faculty for American Dance Festival's 2021 Online Summer Dance Intensive, along with Ph.D. candidate Eliot Gray Fisher. Through their dance company ARCOS Dance, Gionfriddo and Fisher will present the methodology behind In the Ether as part of this four-week long intensive, culminating in a performance in July 2021.

An inside look at what to expect from Texas Theatre and Dance’s presentation of Year of the Tiger, a newly-developed work that explores our shared reality of the past year. Director Khristián Méndez Aguirre discusses the process of pivoting to create a new, timely piece of theatre amidst a global pandemic.

Addict Named Hal, a feature film by Lane Michael Stanley (M.F.A. 2020), will receive its world premiere in this year's Santa Barbara International Film Festival, running from March 31 to April 10, 2021. This personal and intimate film also features the design work of alumna Delena Bradley (M.F.A. 2020).

Alumnus Andrew Hinderaker (M.F.A. 2013) will adapt a pilot script for Let the Right One In, based on the Swedish vampire novel and film of the same name. Hinderaker will serve as showrunner and co-executive producer for the Showtime pilot.

Charles O. Anderson's (Re)current Unrest will be included in The Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah's upcoming exhibition Black Refractions. A screening of the performance will take place on March 25, 2021, followed by a workshop led by Anderson on March 27, 2021.

Faculty members Michelle Habeck and Nanette Acosta are among a group of artistic collaborators who have contributed to the film Citizens at Last, Texas Women Fight for the Right to Vote. Habeck's lighting design and Acosta's costume design can be seen in the film's first broadcast, taking place on March 19, 2021 at 9:00 p.m. on Austin PBS, KLRU-TV.

Alumna Courtney Sale (M.F.A. 2021), who was appointed as the first female artistic director of Merrimack Repertory Theatre, recently participated in a conversation with Actors' Theatre of Loiusville artistic director Robert Barry Fleming about the future of a more radically inclusive theatre and how diverse leadership can push it in the right direction.

A group of dance students created movement-based responses to Score for 7 Solos, an exhibition created by visual artist Madeline Hollander. Their responses to Hollander's unique artwork can be seen projected in the window overlooking the Visual Arts Center's south lawn every evening Wednesday through Saturday until March 27, 2021.

Alumnus Michael J. Love (M.F.A. 2020) was recently named on of three Princeton University Arts Fellows for 2021-2023. Selected from a pool of over 700 applicants, this prestigious honor gives Love the chance to become an active member of Princeton University's intellectual community by leading classes and choreographing work for undergraduate students. 

Faculty member Branden Jacobs-Jenkins will write co-executive produce and write the pilot for an upcoming adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's influential novel Kindred for FX. 

Faculty member Roxanne Schroeder-Arce is hosting LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections' 19th annual ¡A Viva Voz! Celebration of Latina/o Arts and Culture, featuring JoAnn and Rupert Reyes, founders of Teatro Vivo. This free, virtual event will take place on April 1, 2021 at 7:00 p.m.

In a recent article by The Austin Chronicle, choreographer and faculty member Gesel Mason shared more about the process of creating burst! with the goal of giving her students an outlet to wrestle with their current world and past experiences.

Gesel Mason discusses the process of transferring what she calls a “methodology of undoing” to a group of UT students for burst!, a piece that has grown into a process of discovery and observation; of holding space and acknowledging the messiness of our current moment.

Faculty member James Glavan and co-author Beverly Gore Norcross were selected as winners of the 2021 Oscar G. Brockett Golden Pen Award for their book Stage Makeup 11th Edition. This award, sponsored by USITT and our very own Oscar G. Brockett Center for Theatre History and Criticism, honors an outstanding publication surrounding the topics of theatrical design or production.