April 2019
Next Iteration Ensemble’s 4th Annual Intercultural Play Reading Series
Dynamic and Diverse Emerging Playwrights are Showcased in the 4th Annual NIE Intercultural Play Reading Series Next Iteration Ensemble presents playwrights Sofia Alvarez, Madhuri Shekar, and Susan Soon He Stanton at the MATCH on April 4-6, 2018 in a series of staged readings directed by Dianne K. Webb. Next Iteration Ensemble (NIE) announces its roster of three plays for the 4th Annual Intercultural Play Reading Series (IPRS). This April, NIE brings to Houston works that investigate the possibilities of the…
Find out more »CurrentConversations, organized by Carrie Marie Schneider
Current Conversations are a series of public discussions across disciplines and along parallel lines of inquiry. CounterCurrent festival artists and University of Houston faculty experts engage in lively discussion about themes and concepts connected to this year’s festival programming. Each one-hour, lunchtime talk kicks off with a set of rapid-fire presentations followed by questions and answers among panelists and the audience. Light fare and coffee will be provided. Carrie Marie Schneider (Houston, TX) is an artist interested in reimagining the…
Find out more »CounterCurrent19: Jennif(f)er Tamayo: LA QUEERADORA
Jennif(f)er Tamayo’s LA QUEERADORA installation sits at the intersection of digital cultural production and embodied cultural performance. It asks: How do material bodies, whose lives hold an archive of cultural knowledge and experience, compete with a manufactured and digitally porous production of identity? In Tamayo’s work, the racial project of U.S. Latinidad, as an often capitalist and anti-Black enterprise, becomes an optic through which these questions can be approached. The “Latin-Explosion” of the artist’s childhood and its subsequent productions are,…
Find out more »Toast
TOAST takes audiences on a raucous and mind-bending journey through Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell! This original, collectively-realized work brings together eight members of Catastrophic’s acting company with groundbreaking director Brian Jucha, a key collaborator of Catastrophic’s predecessor company, Infernal Bridegroom Productions. TOAST completes a trilogy that started with 1997’s LAST RITES and 2002’s WE HAVE SOME PLANES, two legendary Infernal Bridegroom productions, the latter of which landed Jucha and the company on the cover of American Theatre magazine.
Find out more »CounterCurrent19 – Awilda Rodríguez Lora: SUSTENTO: from La Performera to La Mujer Maravilla
SUSTENTO: from La Performera to La Mujer Maravilla is a lecture-performance by the transdisciplinary artist, Awilda Rodríguez Lora also known as La Performera. Stories, movements, and songs are strategies used by La Performera to invite the audience to reflect on the concept of sustento (sustenance) as a complex and vital idea for survival in creative and everyday practices. As a performance choreographer, Rodríguez Lora challenges traditional notions of womanhood, sexuality, and autonomy, examining relationships between the economy of living, corporeality,…
Find out more »CounterCurrent19 – Stacy Garrop: How Does a Composer Compose?
In this lecture-demonstration, Garrop takes the audience through a step-by-step process of how she composes instrumental music, demystifying a process that for many remains challenging to understand. For CounterCurrent19, Garrop will focus on the compositional process she utilized for her woodwind arrangement, Bohemian Café. The presentation features videos of Prague street performers from whom she drew inspiration, photos of her early pencil sketches for the work, and examples (both audio and visual) of how the piece took shape within a…
Find out more »June 2019
Speeding Motorcycle
An all-time Catastrophic favorite returns! The original rock opera, based entirely on the songs of legendary outsider musician and artist Daniel Johnston, was originally performed to rave reviews in 2006 and received glowing coverage in the New York Times. SPEEDING MOTORCYCLE takes audiences deep into the astounding, hilarious, and heartbreaking world of one of America’s most compelling cult musicians. Pay-What-You-Can.
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