Past Events

Playgrounds are designed to be dangerous enough for experimentation, yet safe enough to allow experiments to fail without serious injury. This play is a playground. When Arthur is asked to design a bulletproof playscape for his daughter’s old school, he confronts an unsettling reality: that the world does not operate by the same rules as playgrounds. At a time when dangers beyond the playground are overwhelmingly present, this is a story about the endurance of care. It is a play about learning, growing up, and grown-ups learning to play.

UTNT (UT New Theatre) presents newly developed works from playwrights of Texas Theatre and Dance and Michener Center for Writers. Now celebrating its 17th season, this showcase exists as an incubator for new work, with many plays continuing on to be professionally produced across the country.

It's 16th century France and everything is horrible! There's bubonic plague, major agricultural collapse and the leadership is corrupt as all hell.  When a dancing plague breaks out, a group of potato farmers cue the strobe lights and reach towards hope. These are the choreomaniacs. This is their (mostly) true story.

An ensemble-driven drama based on the Jena Six (2006); six Black students who were originally charged with attempted murder for a school fight after being provoked with nooses hanging from a tree on campus. This play examines the miscarriage of justice, racial double standards and the crisis in relations between men and women of all classes and, as a result, the shattering state of the Black family. 

In post 9/11 Newark, New Jersey, two teenagers who were brought to America as children become one another's sanctuaries from harsh circumstances. When G becomes naturalized, she and B hatch a plan to marry so that he may legally remain in the country and pursue the future he imagines for his life. But as time hurdles on and complications mount, the young friends find that this act challenges and fractures the closest relationship either has ever had. 

They’ve got a plan. Leo and Lizzy Martinez want to be the smartest kids in the world! The children of hardworking immigrants, big brother Leo has convinced his little sis that being smart is the key to helping their family escape a tough, uncertain reality. The first step in the plan—Leo will win the local TV kids’ quiz show. But when their parents refuse to let him join the quiz team, Lizzy learns there’s something deeper driving Leo—something that makes life that much more challenging and unpredictable for her brother and her family. The Smartest Girl in the World takes a look at the bonds of family and the key to facing life’s challenges together.

Join us for the first public performance of Lightless, a new concert-style musical fairy tale written by multi-hyphenate artist Natalie Smith and directed by Ph.D. candidate Whitney Mosery. The performance will be followed by a quick feedback session at 4:00 p.m. 

Bellua, a young girl, wants to be a monster. She seeks out a cave teeming with foul and frightening monsters to ask them how she might go about becoming the monster she desires to be. What might the consequences of young Bellua’s monsterization be? What does it mean to be a monster? And is it so different from being human?

One of William Shakespeare's most famous and cherished works, Hamlet tells the story of a young prince's pursuit of revenge for the murder of his father at the hands of his uncle Claudius, the new King of Denmark. After a visit from his father's ghost, Hamlet must avenge his father's death and confront the truth about what's "rotten in the state of Denmark." 

In this hilarious and outlandish story, the lives of six teenagers from a Canadian chamber choir are cut short in a freak accident aboard a roller coaster. When they awake in limbo, a mechanical fortune teller invites each to tell a story to win a prize like no other — the chance to return to life. A funny, moving look at what makes a life well-lived!