Recent News

2019 Waterloo Greenway “Creek Show” will conclude with an installation created by Texas Applied Arts, built through collaboration with 25 students from across the 40 acres. The Creek Monster Habitat is an illuminated, interactive, multisensory art installation that concludes the path that winds through downtown Austin, illuminated with works of conservation-centric artistry. 

Austin 360 recently interviewed Anna Skidis Vargas, M.F.A. in Directing candidate and director of Spring Awakening, in advance of the production's run this November. A punk rock adaptation of an 1891 German modernist drama, Spring Awakening tells a story of adolescent love, the trials of puberty and the friendships built in the face of an uncomprehending world.

Alumnus Rudy Ramirez (M.A. 2012) has led the charge for more visibility of Latinx voices on the Austin stage, culminating in Futurx Festival, a multi-day showcase of forward-thinking, Latinx-penned performances, including solo shows, plays, improv and a host of avant-garde work.

Faculty member Adriana Serrano (Department of Theatre and Dance and Radio-Television-Film) served as the production designer for The Obituary of Tunde Johnson, which opened the 2019 Austin Film Festival last week. Written by Stanley Kalu and directed by Ali LeRoi, The Obituary of Tunde Johnson tells the story of a gay African American Teenager who is forced to relive, over and over again, the day he is shot and killed at the hands of the police. 

Former student Keith Machekanyanga is set to play "Little Mo," a recurring character in Showtime's limited series Your Honor. This legal thriller is based on an Israeli drama and also features Bryan Cranston, Tony Curran and Lamar Johnson. 

Though it premiered over a decade ago, [12 Ophelias (a play with broken songs)] has new resonance in a year when women worldwide are seeking a reckoning of their power via #MeToo and other movements. Under Jess Shoemaker's direction, the show is a moving, mysterious production that frees Ophelia at last from Hamlet's shadow.

Radio-Television-Film faculty Ben Bays and Deepak Chetty worked with Department of Theatre and Dance lecturers J.E. Johnson and Karen Maness to interconnect three courses. Bays taught advanced visual effects, while Chetty led a course on three-dimensional animation, both of which are seen as special effects in the subgenre of visual effects.