AUSTIN: VORTEX Repertory Company has announced its 2017-18 season, featuring full productions, one-night events, and a play festival.
The season will start with Gabrielle Reisman’s Storm Still (Sept. 8-24), about a staging of King Lear in a backyard by three sisters saying goodbye to their father. The cast will include Andreá Smith, Jennifer Coy Jennings, and Amelia Turner. Rudy Ramirez will direct.
Next up will be Vampyress (Sept. 22-Oct. 21), by Chad Salvata, a Gothic opera about Elizabeth Báthory, a noblewoman and serial killer in Hungary. Bonnie Cullum will direct.
The season will continue with P3M5 Plays (Nov. 2-5), a series of five-minute plays about privacy in the digital age. The project will be curated by Dr. Heather Barfield, and the Goethe-Institut of Washington, D.C., will facilitate and translate.
Following will be INTERACTIONARAMA: Viewer Discretion Advised (Nov. 10-11), by Linda Mary Montano and Austin-based artists, which will explore the theme of death.
The season will continue with Allison Gregory’s Wild Horses (Nov. 16-Dec. 9), a National New Play Network Rolling World premiere, about a woman looking back at a transformative summer from her adolescence. Rudy Ramirez will direct.
Next will be The Member of the Wedding (Nov. 17-Dec. 9), by Carson McCullers, an exploration of mid-century attitudes on racial and sexual identity. Karen Jambon will direct.
Following will be Rob Nash’s Holy Cross Sucks! (Dec. 14-17), by Rob Nash, a taping of a concert film of Nash’s comedy. Jeff Calhoun will direct.
For the holidays will be The Muttcracker (Sweet!) (Dec. 21-Jan. 7, 2018) by Melissa Vogt, Tyler Mabry, and Darren Peterson, featuring live music, juggling, five rescue dogs, and a talking macaw.
Next will be Isaac Gomez’s The Way She Spoke: A Doc-Mythologia (Jan. 11-20, 2018), about the systemic abduction, rape, and murder of women in Juarez, Mexico, over the course of several decades. Karen Rodriguez will star, and Ramirez will direct.
Following will be 893/Ya-ku-za (Jan. 26-Feb. 10, 2018), by Daria Miyako Marinelli, about a woman’s bid to become the first female member of the infamous Japanese mafia. The show will be directed by kt shorb.
The programming will continue with OUTsider Fest (Feb. 14-18, 2018), an annual festival celebrating the LGBTQ+ community with film, dance, thetare, performance art, music, writing, and visual art.
Next will be Madison Young’s Reveal All Fear Nothing: A Journey in Sex, Love, Porn, and Feminism (Feb. 22-25, 2018), developed with Annie Sprinkle as an adaptation of her book Post Porn Modernism, a multimedia performance about the underground worlds of pornography. Young will perform and Sophia LaPaglia will direct.
Following will be Performance Park (March 23-May 12, 2018), conceived by Cullum and devised by the VORTEX artistic ensemble, an immersive theatrical scavenger hunt. Cullum will direct.
Next will be Diverse Space Dance Theatre’s Home (May 17-19, 2018), a presentation of the company’s newest dance, choreographed by Toni Bravo.
The season will continue with Polly Mermaid (May 25-June 9, 2018), by Caroline Reck, Indigo Rael, and Gricelda Silva, about the plastic and radioactive pollution in the ocean’s North Pacific Vortex that has brought to life Polly Mermaid, the Princess of Plastic. Reck will direct.
Following will be The Afterparty (June 15-30, 2018), by Reina Hardy, about a party at the center of the universe where all you need to get in is a kiss. Ramirez will direct.
The summer continues with Rona Munro’s The Last Witch (July 6-21, 2018), about Janet Horne, the last woman executed for witchraft in the British Isles in the year 1727. Jamie Goodman will direct.
Next will be Atlantis: A Puppet Opera (Sept. 1-29, 2018), by Chad Salvata, a cautionary environmental tale with mystical mermaids and sharkmen. Cullum will direct.
The programming will also include Jade Esteban Estrada’s ICONS: The Lesbian and Gay History of the World, Vol. 1 (Oct. 4), a Halloween fundraiser (Oct. 14), a world premiere Dada film (March 2, 2018), a West African dancing and drumming event (March 3, 2018), and the Summer Youth Program (July 27-Aug. 4, 2018).
VORTEX Repertory Company, founded in 1988, creates and presents new and innovative performances of operas, musicals, devised collaborations, and ritual theatre.
