March 9, 2023
For immediate release:
Media Contact:
Megan Bommarito; 512.232.5328; megan.bommarito@austin.utexas.edu
Images available at:
Password: media
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE AND DANCE
PRESENTS
The Cohen New Works Festival
A CELEBRATION OF NEW AND INNOVATIVE ART CREATED BY STUDENTS AT
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
APRIL 3-7, 2023
AT THE F. LOREN WINSHIP DRAMA BUILDING
The Cohen New Works Festival, presented by the Department of Theatre and Dance at The University of Texas at Austin, returns as a five-day in person festival for the first time in four years. This festival celebrates new, student-created work April 3-7, 2023. The largest collegiate festival of its kind, the 2023 Cohen New Works Festival presents over 40 all-new works, including dance and movement performances, works of theatre, installations, films and site-specific programming. This biennial festival continues to foster the next generation of artists by providing the space and support for the development of innovative ideas, open discussion and interdisciplinary collaboration with the support of faculty co-producers, guest artists and scholars. The Cohen New Works Festival continues to empower students to further their creative growth by encouraging new artistic partnerships, invigorating new ideas, and amplifying unique and diverse voices.
“After an innovative digital Cohen New Works Festival in 2021 due to the global pandemic, The 2023 Cohen New Works Festival is back in full force!” share the festival's producers Kirk Lynn, Patrick Shaw, Dorothy O'Shea Overbey, Erica "eg" Gionfriddo, Corey Allen and Rusty Cloyes. “This year’s festival will feature both in-person and digital performance projects that are refreshing, exciting, inventive and entertaining. These projects explore themes of race, environmental justice, dis/ability, queerness, belonging, growing up, revolution, liberation and more. Through established and experimental mediums including dance, stop-motion film, podcasts, interactive installation, staged plays, musicals, personal concerts, art galleries and theatre for the very young, this festival is a creative feast and we can't wait for all audiences to take a bite!”
The Cohen New Works Festival was named in honor of the late David Mark Cohen, former head of playwriting for The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance, who was killed in a car crash on December 23, 1997. Throughout his life, Cohen was an adamant supporter of new work. In his honor, The Cohen New Works Festival continues to celebrate the ongoing process of creation, exploring the endless possibilities of devised and collaborative new work.
A selection of The Cohen New Works Festival projects include:
SPOONS
Project Lead: Ezra Rose
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.
FISHING FOR STARS
Project Lead: Claire Derriennic
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!
ZAZ: THE BIG EASY
Project Lead: Ryan K Johnson
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.
PETRIFICATIONOLOGY
Project Lead: Emma Watkins
Petrificationology is a site-specific immersive performance staged in the Texas Memorial Museum. Nestled between the disciplines of Geology and Biology is the small and perpetually underfunded subfield of Petrificationology: the study of those who have been turned to stone. In a moment in which the Texas Memorial Museum is closed to the public due to a lack of funding, we are welcoming audiences behind the scenes into our study of stillness, cycles, and stone.
For more information about the events of The Cohen New Works Festival, please visit utnewworksfestival.org
CALENDAR LISTING
April 3-7, 2023 – The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance presents The Cohen New Works Festival at the F. Loren Winship Drama Building (300 E. 23rd St.), located in the F. Loren Winship Drama Building. A map of the campus: theatredance.utexas.edu/about/location-directions-parking
Performance times vary daily. All events are free and open to the public. For more information about the festival projects, please visit https://theatredance.utexas.edu/2023-cohen-new-works-festival-projects
ABOUT TEXAS THEATRE AND DANCE
The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance is a world-class educational environment that serves as the ultimate creative incubator for the next generation of artists, thinkers and leaders in theatre and performance.
###