Past Events

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!

Through a multi-college collaboration, The University of Texas at Austin will host leaders from the Center for Theater of the Oppressed (CTO) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Join us at the Symposium where the artists, who also work with Black aesthetics, will facilitate workshops, perform original theater pieces and introduce the new methodology Teatre de las Oprimidas, systematized by Bárbara Santos. 

Four trees in the north Maine woods communicate through an underground network of roots and fungi. Four women, each struggling to come into her own in a nearby rural logging town, pass each other gifts by way of the town’s one-car postal service. By blurring the boundary between human and tree, elizabeth is going into the ground contemplates the communities of our forests, weaving a tale of love, resilience and old growth.

Exploring the Arts, Exploring the Self is a week-long day camp at the Department of Theatre and Dance at The University of Texas at Austin where youth going into grades 4-6 (approximately nine to 12-year-olds) will explore the self through art, music dance and theatre. 

The Cohen New Works Festival is a biennial celebration of new, bold, risk-taking, future-thinking, cutting-edge, no-holds-barred, adjective-filled, original performance! The festival welcomes and encourages artists from any discipline to join us in a week-long celebration of student-led performance.

Harold follows a college improv team that is disqualified from a national competition because of foul play. When a new member joins the team, she offers an unconventional opportunity to compete. As the team rehearses, they struggle to agree on the same base reality. Harold is a play about long-form improv, consent, saying yes-and, and the thorny complications of saying no.