Past Events

Do you, or have you ever: Carried a carabiner? Worn flannel? Gifted or been given a bouquet of violets? Had an undercut? Driven a U-haul?

If you said yes to any of the above, meet us at 11:00 a.m. on March 8, 2026. Bring a "friend." Combat boots optional.

The Performance as Public Practice Fridays@2 speaker series facilitates discussions about the creation and study of performance. PPP welcomes artists from within and beyond the Winship Drama Building, including current students, distinguished alumni and arts leaders from across the country, to share their research and methodology. Up next is a pedagogy roundtable and workshop led by Dr. Rachel Merrill Moss, featuring Lara Dossett (Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities/Theatre Education faculty) and Aysha Upchurch (Performance as Public Practice Ph.D. candidate).

We’re on an island far from America, where complicated realities take root and uproot one another: An immortal rabbit speaks from the past. A girl digs beneath a mulberry tree. A returning American brings a gift that unsettles the ground. Through myth, memory and migration, the island remembers—and refuses to forget. We ask: What does it mean to call a place “home”? And when those who once lived here remember it differently—whose version becomes the story we carry forward?

Gentlemen. This Emergency Session of The United States Congress has begun. FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS: WE HAVE TO pass a budget for the next fiscal year by midnight tonight. We currently have a 487 quadrillion dollar deficit. Everyone in this room tonight needs to look inside their hearts and collectively find or raise 487 quadrillion dollars by midnight, which AGAIN is within the next… 82 minutes or we’ll all be executed gangland style in the back alley. Ok? (A play about why we’re the greatest country in the world.)

When a member of their community disappears, an order of Benedictine monks is forced to reckon with their conceptions of loyalty, identity, justice and Godliness. Ordinary Time is a durational, experiential performance that asks us to weigh the costs and benefits of silence.

UTNT (UT New Theatre) presents newly developed works from playwrights of Texas Theatre and Dance and Michener Center for Writers. Now celebrating its 19th season, this festival exists as an incubator for new work, with many plays continuing on to be professionally produced across the country. UTNT (UT New Theatre) 2026 will feature four new works by graduate playwrights.

When a prickly Old man demands a sky burial – an ancient ritual in which vultures consume the dead – his estranged son Small Fry accompanies him to a faraway land to see it through. But when they discover that only two vultures remain on Earth, the funeral arrangements spiral into a visceral, personal, diabolical reckoning with extinction. Vulturine is a father-son Home Depot trip from hell, dripping with entrails, climate guilt and dark comedy.

Sovereign Shoulders presents an evening of two M.F.A. in Dance Thesis performances: 

Trazando Taíno, choreographed by Annie-Laura Irizarry Peréz, is a choreographic exploration rooted in the ancestral practices of the Indigenous Taíno peoples of the Caribbean.

Weight of Faith, choreographed by Iyalochá Nadia Milad Issa, is a series of dance eulogies that reify and re-humanize all lives lost due to the threat of religious intolerance, the threat of disembodied mourning, collective protest and healing. 

Dance Repertory Theatre, the award-winning student resident dance company at The University of Texas at Austin, returns in the fall with genre-bending choreography that pushes the boundaries of dance performance. An exploration of connection and community, this dance concert will showcase original works that pull from a variety of aesthetic influences and movement traditions, including West African, European folk dance and contemporary dance forms. 

Yes or No... is a nonverbal, highly physical, 25-minute performance that explores curiosity within the framework of Theatre for the Very Young, designed specifically for audiences aged 2–6. The characters, "Yes" and "No," navigate a world of curiosity, using imagery, movement and memory to construct a space where Yes might become No, and No might become Yes.