Recent News

Head of dance, Charles O. Anderson's work (Re)current Unrest was recently awarded a grant from The New England Foundation for the Arts' (NEFA) National Dance Project (NDP) which supports the creation of 20 new dance works that will tour the United States. (Re)current Unrest was staged as part of Fall For Dance (Texas Theatre and Dance) and premiered at Fusebox Festival in Austin, Texas in 2018. Faculty member Rennie Harris was also awarded for his work LAZARUS (Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation).

Rudy Ramirez (M.F.A. 2012) has been recognized as one of "6 Theatre Workers You Should Know" by American Theatre magazine, which recognizes up-and-coming artists and administrators who have made an impact on theatre in the United States. 

Incoming dance faculty member, Gesel Mason, brings her experience to Austin, along with an extensive digital dance archive documenting 15 years of performing the choreography of 10 black artists relatively unknown to the general public, entitled No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers.

KJ Sanchez, associate professor and head of the directing area, was recently a recipient of the National Performance Network's (NPN) 2018 Creation and Development Fund, which supports 14 new artistic works across multiple disciplines, geographies and cultures. Her work Matanza (The Killing) was commissioned by Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX) and California Shakespeare Theater (Berkeley, CA). 

Alumnus Isaac Gomez (B.A. 2013) has been named the co-recipient of the Lanford Wilson Award along with R. Eric Thomas by the Dramatists Guild of America. This award is presented annually to early career playwrights at the Guild's national conference, which will take place July 28 in New York.  

Summer is officially underway and faculty and students of Texas Theatre and Dance have departed Winship to spread their knowledge and creativity far and wide, from Austin to Minnesota; Cincinnati to New York. In this two-part series, we take a look at what everyone is up to this summer.

Robert Schenkkan (B.A. 1975) has been named a recipient of the Texas Exes Distinguished Alumnus Awards. A Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winner, Schenkkan is the author of several prominent works including All the Way, Building the Wall  and Hacksaw Ridge. The awards ceremony will take place at the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center on Friday, November 2.

'A' (What the Black Girl Found While Searching for God) written and performed by Taji Senior, directed by alumnus Matrex Kilgore (B.A. 2015) heads to Ground Floor Theatre this July. Inspired by George Bernard Shaw's The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search For God, 'A' is the story of a person, searching inside and outside of herself to find her place in the world. That search is filtered through a lens of black girlhood. 'A' hopes to ask and answer the question: Who has the right to self-creation?