Recent News

An accomplished playwright and screenwriter, Tremblay received the Access to Artistic Excellence Award from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the Best New Play for Young Audiences from the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. A celebration of his life will be held at the Paramount Theatre (Austin, Texas) on April 30.

Theatre and Dance alumnus J. Quinton Johnson is currently playing "Hercules Mulligan/James Madison" in the smash-hit Hamilton on Broadway. The Austin Chronicle sat down with Johnson to discuss his role in Hamilton and his Austin roots. 

Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities graduate Talleri McRae (M.F.A. 2010) has been recognized in American Theatre's Roll Call. She is currently a teaching artists, access/inclusion consultant whose work focuses on fostering the creativity and passion of the disability rights movement and developing meaningful theatre for young audiences. 

A Singularity, created by by Carleigh Newland, Kelsey Linberg and Tess Jackson will be staged as part of The Cohen New Works Festival and follows the story of a Syrian refugee trying to find her home and her identity as a woman, a refugee and an individual after losing everything to war.

The experience of watching a play serves helps us to experience the world around us in a multitude of ways. We walk away from a theatrical experience with a different perspective than what we had before. By experiencing Luna on tour, elementary and middle school-aged students across Austin are being treated to an experience unlike anything many of them have had before.

Faculty member Dr. Paul Bonin-Rodriguez examines the value of a Bachelor of Arts degree as a response to Secretary Betsey DeVos's commentary on higher education and the "noble pursuit" of vocational schools and/or community colleges for bachelor programs. 

Every two years, The Cohen New Works Festival presents over 30 new works of theatre, dance, art and performance to over 7,000 attendees in five days. This festival, named after former playwriting faculty member David Mark Cohen, who our community lost too soon, is a celebration of creative disciplines spanning across the university to showcase the new work of students.. The 2017 Festival runs April 10 through 14.

Dr. Charlotte Canning and Dr. Paul Bonin-Rodriguez explore the damage cutting funding to the National Endowment for the Arts would do, asking the question "what would life be like without the NEA?" 

Faculty member KJ Sanchez is staging the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's mainstage production, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre which uses music, movement and choreography to creatively tell the Victorian story of love on the moors of Northern England. 

For one week, every other year, the Department of Theatre and Dance pauses, as the Cohen New Works Festival transforms nearly every imaginable space in the Winship Drama Building to host exhibitions of art. Enjoy a sneak peek of a sampling of projects to debut at the Festival, April 10 through 14.