Auditions/Workshops in Austin for Circle The Wagons by the Exchange Artists, December 8 and 12, 2013

The Exchange Artists are building a new show called Circle the Wagons set to run February 14th through March 3rd, 2014.

The play will allow a voyeuristic and intimate look at car-culture (broadly defined) – from the anticipation of a first license, to road trips, confessionals, private escapes, DUIs, love nests, accidents, and finally the day a license is given up or lost to old age. A large part of the performance will be five minute plays inside personal vehicles which will be presented simultaneously in a parking lot in actual cars parked in an inward facing circle around a pep band.

Rachel Wiese will be directing this play and Katherine Craft will be in charge of the script. Rohan Joseph will be composing the "car orchestra". The five minute plays in cars will be selected from the new works of many contributing playwrights who were solicited to create pieces for this project.

If you're interested in joining the cast or simply in participating in the development process you are invited to attend a workshop! These workshops will help us select the five minute plays out of those submitted for the production, and will also serve as auditions.

The workshops are: December 8 from 1 - 3 pm and December 12 from 6-9 pm. Email exchangeartists@gmail.com to reserve your spot! Locations will be confirmed via email, so rsvp.

Conspire Theatre, Austin: Interviews with Artists Working with Incarcerated Women

Discussions with the co-founders of Conspire Theatre, Austin, TX: Katherine Craft in a KLRU interview from February, 2013, and Michelle Dahlenburg speaking with www.cuedialogue.org on October 11:

Michelle Dahlenburg is the co-Artistic Director of the Austin, TX-based Conspire Theatre, a company that provides theatre programs for women during and post-incarceration. I recently talked with Michelle about her work.

So to begin, could you talk a little bit about Conspire? Your mission, your work, how you got involved.

Sure. So the mission of Conspire Theatre is “to offer incarcerated women and their allies a healing and empowering experience through theatre and creative writing. Our vision is that every woman realizes her potential as a creative, worthy being.” We’re working on shifting some of the language with our mission statement, actually. We don’t like the label of “incarcerated women,” and are trying to shift more towards “Theatre with Women During and Post-Incarceration” as our tagline, especially as our projects grow and change.

Oh interesting. So has that become part of your focus as well, working with women post-incarceration?

Yes, just recently! Before I get into that, though, I’ll give you a quick background of conspire and how I got involved, if that’s okay?

Yes, that’s perfect.

In 2009 my friend Katherine Craft had just finished her MA in Applied Theatre. She founded Conspire Theatre in Austin as a 10-week theatre/writing workshop for women incarcerated at the Travis County Correctional Complex in Del Valle, TX (near Austin). Meanwhile, in 2008, I was in Chicago preparing to go to graduate school in Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities)at UT. I found out about Still Point Theatre Collective in Chicago, who do many great projects, one of which is working with women during and post-incarceration. I saw their show “Strong Women” with released women and got really interested in working with women currently incarcerated. I met with the artistic director there and we talked about a possible internship with them. So in summer 2009 after my first year of school, I went back to Chicago and did an internship with Still Point. I got to co-teach a class at the Cook County Jail with another teaching artist. It was really hard, and intense at times, but the work was incredibly rewarding. I loved it.

So then I went back to Austin and happened to meet Kat. We both had a similar interest in using joy and play as a way of connecting with women in jail, as opposed to having the women just talk about why they were in jail/prison (also important, but sometimes tends to [. . . ]. In summer 2011, I was finishing my thesis, and Kat asked if I would be interested in teaching at the TCCC with her. I said yes, and we had a fantastic 10-week workshop. At the end of the summer we decided to take the next step and move Conspire Theatre from an occasional 10-week project to becoming an organization.

Here’s how the programming stands now: the whole project is called “The Possibilities Project.” It has two parts: “Rehearsing Possibilities” and “Performing Possibilities” RP is the in-jail program. We have two weekly classes, one in minimum security and one in max. They last about 1.5 hours each and are pretty self-contained each week because the participant turnover is so high. So it’s very difficult to do something like a play. So we structure it so there’s a small sharing of some kind at the end of each class, because we might never see some of them again. So that’s challenging. It’s taught me a lot about how to create space and connections REALLY quickly.

(read more at www.cuedialogue.org)

PERFORMING POSSIBILITIES, Conspire Theatre, July 14, 2013

Sunday, July 14^th at 5:00 pm

The Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St Austin, TX 78702

(click for map)

Tickets available on-line:

Since 2009, Conspire Theatre has led theatre and creative writing workshops for women incarcerated at the Travis County Correctional Complex in Del Valle. This July marks Conspire’s first project with women in the free world. On Sunday, July 14^th, Conspire Theatre will premiere its first ever public performance, Performing Possibilities.

From July 12^th through July 14^th, Conspire will lead a three-day theatre workshop with women who have been to jail or prison. This will culminate in a public performance and community dinner catered by Bridget Dunlap’s new restaurant Mettle.

Over the final quarter of the 20^th century, U.S. criminal justice policies underwent a period of intense politicization and harsh transformation. Draconian sentencing laws and get-tough correctional policies led to an unprecedented increase in jail and prison populations, driving the United States’ rate of incarceration head and shoulders above that of other developed nations[1]. The number of women serving sentences of more than a year grew by 757% between 1977 and 2004—nearly twice the 388% increase in the male prison population[2].

Women coming out of jail and prison face stigma that make finding stable housing and employment difficult, but many make huge efforts come back into their communities and make positive change. Join us as women tell their own stories of struggle and triumph, sorrows and joy set against the larger backdrop of incarceration in Texas.

About Conspire Theatre: Founded in 2009, Conspire Theatre offers incarcerated women and their allies a healing and empowering experience through theatre and creative writing. Kat Craft and Michelle Dahlenburg are the co-Artistic Directors. To learn more visit www.conspiretheatre.org or watch a short video about our work at http://www.klru.org/women-and-girls-lead/kat.php. 

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

The Man Who Planted Trees, adapted by Katherine Craft from a story by Jean Giono, The Exchange Artists at Sparky Pocket Park, October 4 - 20

by Dr. David Glen Robinson


The story of how Sparky Pocket Park on Grooms St. in central Austin came to exist is a drama all by itself, involving City departments and neighborhood voters. But that story is for another time; I went there on this chilly October evening to see the site-specific work by the Exchange Artists, The Man Who Planted Trees, based on a story by the French writer Jean Giono. I certainly was not disappointed in my expectations.

The performers seemed to use every square inch of the park as well as the inside of the maintenance building in the park’s center. Riding on the impressive talents and skill of actor Rommel Sulit, the production turned the tiny half-block pocket park into an Alpine département of France, complete with forests, rocks, waters and wastelands.

Gene Menger (photo: Erica Nix)

The play is plain and simple. A traveler in the Alps encounters an old peasant who does nothing in life but plant trees, oaks specifically. Working through the setbacks and limitations of two world wars, the planter at the end of his life leaves a forest legacy comparable perhaps to the creative accomplishments of God, but far surpassing the achievement of almost every other human being.

The work is current in its theme and emblematic of the 21^st century’s Green movement, and it gains greater currency by depicting the threats and effects of war. In so doing, the play points to our time’s continual teetering on the brink of total war. We seem incapable of learning what last century’s peasants, innocent of education, knew instinctively.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Tonight: Staged Reading of Her Little Prince by Katherine Craft, Poison Apple Initiative at the Blue Theatre

This past July marked the first ever Austin SLAM! A competition produced by Poison Apple Initiative in which local playwrights have five minutes to share their work and engage a mixed audience of theater professionals, theater lovers and generally enthusiastic people. Plus boyfriends.

Our congratulations go to Katherine Craft, who was declared winner of the first ever SLAM for her short play "Her Little Prince"! As winner, a collection of her short plays will be presented at a staged reading tonight, August 29, at the BLUE Theatre. Doors open at 7:30 and reading begins at 8 p.m..

Join us in celebrating the work of this talented local artist, and enjoy a romping good time with six short works which will have you pondering, chuckling and thoroughly creeped-the-fuck-out.

Featured in the works are local actors: Sam Mercer, Rachel Weise, Zac Carr, Elizabeth Bigger, Michael Kranes, Cassadie Petersen, Jessica Hughes, Spencer Driggers

Bring your friends. Bring your grandmother. Bring your love for new works on the Austin stage! $5 suggested donation; no one turned away.

Conspire Theatre fundraiser at IndieGoGO

Please support Conspire Theatre’s life-changing workshops for women inside the Travis County Correctional Complex. 

Conspire Theatre, a sponsored project of the Austin Creative Alliance, offers incarcerated women and their allies a healing and empowering experience through theatre and creative writing. For three years, we’ve been running Rehearsing Possibilities, a successful theatre and creative writing program for women in minimum and maximum security at the Travis County Correctional Complex (TCCC) near Austin, Texas.

Thanks to last year's campaign, this year we served more women than ever before.

Click to go to the IndieGoGo page where Conspire Theatre seeks to raise $6000.

Reviews from Elsewhere: Don't Go in the Hourse, FronteraFest Long Fringe, reviewed by Katherine Craft

Found on-line at

FRONTERAFEST

Dark waters: Dan Dietz's Lobster Boy creates theatrical magic at Frontera Fest

By Katherine Craft 02.02.12

Don’t Go In The House, now playing at FronteraFest, presents four one-person plays. One of them is the 2010 Heideman Award winning short by Dan Dietz, Lobster Boy, and the other three, Fear Itself, Dawn of the Drowsy and They're Coming to Get You! are by Lowell Bartholomee of the Rude Mechs. On the surface, the quartet of shows appear to be similar — all have a single white actor on stage, all are monologues, all project images onto an upstage screen and all use the same set piece — a wooden chest strapped to a dolly — in evocative ways.

Of the four, however, Dietz’s Lobster Boy is the only piece that takes the audience into darker, more introspective waters. A man, played by Robert Faires, stands onstage behind a podium, cradling a small stack of note cards as he begins a speech that soon shows itself to be a tragedy.

Read more at austin.culturemap.com . . . .

Reviews from Elsewhere: Drawing A Paycheck by Annie La Ganga

Found on-line at

ORGANIC THEATER

Drawing a Paycheck might not pay the artist's bills but does ask questions common to Austin's creative scene

By Katherine Craft

01.30.12

Dr. Scott Walters, an associate drama professor at the University of North Carolina, recently put forth the idea of an “organic theater.” In his words, this theater would be “a small community of people who sometimes perform, sometimes listen — a sort of ensemble who share their talents with each other in informal spaces... [it] wouldn't create a 'product' to be sold, but rather members would come together to share gifts, alternately giving an receiving.”

Solo performer Annie La Ganga's latest improvised show, Drawing a Paycheck, felt very close to Walters' vision. Two kitchen chairs, which we soon learned were from her kitchen, rested on stage with some drawing tools and a large pad of paper. The lights were basic and the stage was empty, even in comparison to other Frontera shows. There was no fanfare, music or dimming of the stage lights to welcome Annie; she just popped her head around the corner and said, “Hello!”

“Hi!” audience members enthusiastically called back. When La Ganga asked how people were doing, she genuinely meant it, peering past the stage lights to name friends and smile at those she hadn't yet met. The crowd was small but enthusiastic. Many knew each other and La Ganga. From the start, the experience felt more like an informal gathering than Theater with a capital T.

Read more at www.austin.culturemap.com . . . .

Arts Reporting: Katherine Craft Profiles New Work Austin's Use of a $90,000 Carnegie Mellon Foundation Grant, Culturemap.com, January 6

The grant ends in March and New Work Austin expects by May to have a strategic plan about sharing resources for theatrical new work:

Taking local theater to the next level:

Carnegie Mellon Foundation partners with New Work Austin

by Katherine Craft - January 6, 2012

Make friends with a theater person here in Austin and your Facebook inbox will overflow with invitations. Almost every night of the week plays, fundraisers for plays, solo performance pieces, production parties, script readings and development workshops are happening all over the city in theater venues, clubs, bars and private homes. The same could be said for most major cities in the U.S. with one notable exception: in Austin, a huge number of these events will be new works. Instead of the eightieth revival of Hamlet or another well-worn classic, theater companies here are producing large numbers of plays that they created and wrote themselves.

Caroline Reck, Community Liaison for New Work Austin, explains: “We sometimes have three shows that are all new works opening on the same night instead of three a year... and that's not true most places. It might feel normal here but it's really special.”

Read more at www.austin.culturemap.com . . . .

The Uses of Joy: Conspire Theatre, by Katherine Catmull, Austin Chronicle

Found in this week's edition of

The Uses of Joy

When Conspire Theatre helps incarcerated women, it's all in the game

by Katherine Catmull

"In a very serious world, we must not forget the importance of play." – Conspire Theatre's mission statement

I used to work in an office with a rule about when we could take lunch, which was a constant source of annoyance to me. What if I get busy and don't notice the time till 2 p.m.? Get your laws off my ham sandwich, oppressor!

I would not do so well in prison. In the women's minimum security unit of the Travis County Correctional Complex in Del Valle, razor wire loops-the-loop along chain-link fences, keeping you in, keeping everything you love out. When prisoners walk between buildings, they must keep their hands behind their backs and stay just outside of one of the long red stripes painted on the sidewalk. And of course, that's the least of the structures and strictures of life for incarcerated women.

That's what makes what Conspire Theatre brings to the prison so odd.

It looks like a classroom, any classroom: cinder block walls, fluorescent lights, a whiteboard. (As we suspected in junior high: Classrooms and prisons have a lot in common.) Ten women enter, some in their 30s or 40s, most younger, all wearing prison uniforms of wide gray and khaki stripes. Prisoners still wear stripes – who knew.

Read full text by Katherine Catmull at the Austin Chronicle . . .

Video Appeal from Conspire Theatre for Support via Indiegogo

Received directly: a video appeal for support for Conspire Theatre, a program supporting incarcerated women

Conspire Theatre from Katherine Craft on Vimeo.

[Apple readers: can't see the video? Click here to go to Vimeo]

Since 2009, Conspire Theatre has been conducting theatre and creative writing workshops with incarcerated women at the Travis County Correctional Complex. Our class gives these women a space in which to try on new possibilities for making different choices, and for exploring what holds them back in their lives. For many women, our class is "the only place where no one tells us to shut up and sit down." Both the Travis County Sheriff's Office and the women themselves welcome our presence, and now we want to do more.

There's a new program at the jail for women in Maximum Security, and the social services coordinator has invited us to start a brand new class for them. Conspire Theatre seeks to raise $3,000 by September 1st to enable us to expand our long-running program for incarcerated women into Maximum Security at the Travis County Jail. You can help us by making a gift today!

• Here is a link to the fundraising campaign we're running on IndieGogo now - there's a fabulous video on the page that explains what we do. Click here to see it.


• CultureMap Austin also wrote an article about Conspire that went live today. Click here to read.


• You can also read more about us on our website at www.conspiretheatre.org

The Story Seekers by Katherine Craft, Exchange Artists at the Elizabeth Ney Museum, March 25 - April 10

The Elizabeth Ney museum on E. 44th Street in Hyde Park is already haunted. A crowd of stark white plaster figures and busts stand in the shabby shaddows of the odd small Austin-stone castle that was Ney's final residence in studio from 1902 to 1907. Among them is a bust of German writer and philologist Jacob Grimm that she sculpted of the old man in Berlin in the 1850's.

Grimm would have approved of Kattherine Craft's Story Seekers. He and his brother Wilhelm were Germany's most famous folklorists, seeking out and transcribing the vivid and often nightmarish imaginings of simple folk in the forests and farms. Tales those folks told to their children and to one another weren't the Disneyfied lore of Cinderella or sweet Hansel and Gretel. The stories spoke of abuse, menace, dark woods, shape changers and really really wicked stepmothers. An essential message was that the world was full of dangers, so children had really better watch out.

Director Rachel Wiese from the Exchange Artists has assembled some of Austin's most attractive and dedicated young adult theatre artists for this piece. With a pass of her director's magic wand and a consensus of the cast, she has transformed them into children, aged probably from eight to twelve.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Story Seekers, Exchange Artists at the Elizabeth Ney Museum, March 25 - April 10

Found on-line:

present

[image: Kelly Bland, by Kimberley Mead]

The Story Seekers

by Katherine Craft

March 25 - April 10

Thursdays - Sundays at 7 p.m.

A new play on the grounds of The Elisabet Ney Museum

304 E. 44th Street, Hyde Park neighborhood, Austin

Tickets are a suggested $15 donation and can be reserved by emailing exchangeartists@gmail.com or calling (979) 255-8292.

A band of children live as prisoners in an alternate world, never changing as long as the storyteller who trapped them holds the endings to their stories in her book. Some of these characters are familiar – Lupe, who escapes La Lorona; Abini, the Yoruban miracle child; and Hans, who followed the Pied Piper out of Hamlin – but there are other children caught in the forest as well. Only when a young princess, Bet, flees her comfortable castle after catching a glimpse of the future through a magic window and finds herself trapped in the storyteller’s world do the children find hope of escape. Hope in the form of a gardener’s son: Bet’s best friend Gil.

THE STORY SEEKERS, a new play by Katherine Craft, developed in collaboration with Exchange Artists actors, transforms the grounds of Hyde Park’s landmark castle into the setting of a fantastical drama. The performance is participatory in nature with actors leading the audience throughout the grounds as the stories and the mysteries of the space unfold.

THE STORY SEEKERS cast includes Karen Alvarado, Isaac Arrieta, Kelli Bland, Jen Brown, Bastion Carboni, Bridget Farr, Emily Kennedy, Sidharth Khanejar, Steffanie Ngo-Hatchie, Mindy Rast, Michael Slefinger, Karina Dominguez Smith, and Frederic Winkler. Set and lighting design is by Spencer Pharr, Costume design by Katherine Craft, with Props and Crafts by Katie Richter. Choreography and direction by Rachel Wiese.

In the event of any rain cancellations, makeup performances will be held April 15, 16, and 17. Please bring a flashlight and wear shoes for walking on the museum grounds.

Auditions: The Story Seekers, Exchange Artists at the Elizabeth Ney Museum

Received directly from Rachel Martsolf of the Exchange Artists:

The Exchange Artists are seeking actors for The Story Seekers: A Site Specific Production on the Grounds of The Elisabet Ney Museum by Katherine Craft, directed by Rachel Wiese. The performance will transform the grounds of Hyde Park’s landmark castle into the setting of a fantastical, participatory drama, with actors leading the audience throughout the grounds as the story and the mysteries of the space unfold.

Synopsis A band of children live as prisoners in an alternate, unchanging world, trapped for as long as a domineering storyteller holds the endings to their tales in his book. Some of these characters are familiar: Lupe, who escapes La Llorona; Abini, the Yoruban miracle child; and Hans, who followed the Pied Piper out of Hamlin. But there are other children, from forgotten or untold stories, caught in the forest as well.

When a young girl, Bet, flees her comfortable castle-home after catching a glimpse of the future through a magic window, she finds herself ensnared in the storyteller’s world. And only then do the children find hope of escape – hope in the form of a gardener’s son, Bet’s best friend Gil.

Characters This production demands flexible, creative and collaborative actors who may also be able to sing, dance, fight, climb trees, play an instrument, and feel comfortable working on film. For auditions, please come warm and dressed to move. We will do cold reads from the script and some group work. Be prepared to stay for 30 minutes.

Dates Auditions are January 6 & 7 in the evening, and January 9 during the day. Rehearsals begin in February, Performances March 25 – April 10, 2011. An intense script development workshop is scheduled for January 22 and 23. Some filming will occur in January as well.

To schedule an audition email resume, headshot and desired audition day to exchangeartists@gmail.com. Auditions will take place in Austin, TX.

No One Else Will Ever Love You by Katherine Craft, private residences, August 28 - September 12

Offering a play in someone's house or apartment breaks down some of the conventions of theatre. There's more of a sense of risk for all concerned -- players, audience and host.

In most theatrical events the audience is anonymous, a collection of shapes outside the brightly lit playing space. And most of them like it that way. The front row never fills up first. Maybe there's a latent worry about sitting within grasp of the actors.

No One Else Will Ever Love You is theatre up close, in the living room instead of in the reassurance of a formal theatre setting. The cast uses a different living space each weekend.

I was wandering around condominiums on East 33rd street last Friday evening with an address on a slip of paper. I must have been pretty obvious when I walked behind the building into the parking lot. "Looking for the play?" asked a neighbor as he was pulling out of his parking slot. "It's over there, behind that wall."

I walked back around to the front. No sign. It was dark outside the ground floor apartment. But through the window I could see a few persons standing in the living room. I knocked, asked, and was admitted.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: No One Else Will Ever Love You by Katherine Craft, private location, August 28 - September 12

UPDATE: ALT review of September 8

UPDATE: Actor Bastion Carboni interviews director Dan Solomon on Austinist.com, 8/28

Received directly and explored on-line:

No One Else Will Ever Love You

by Katherine Craft
Directed by Dan Solomon
Starring JennyMarie Jemison, Spencer Driggers, Karina Dominguez, and Bastion Carboni.

Rick and Jen are back in the country after their honeymoon, and they've invited Rick's best friend Nora, along with her boyfriend Charlie, over for dinner. As they open their fifth bottle of wine, Rick and Charlie both struggle with their desire to dominate the room - and more importantly, Nora. Staged in the living rooms of local volunteers, this one-act play about the chess matches that some men play for power over the women in their lives, and the subsequent effort to be no one's pawn, presents a visceral and immediate theatrical experience.

August 28 and 29,September 4 and 5,September 11 and 12
All performances are at 8pm.

All tickets are $10 and available online at www.nooneelsewilleverloveyou.com. Venue addresses will be given after ticket purchase. All venues are centrally located in Austin.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Oceana, A Musical, Vortex Repertory, May 9 - June 3

There is, indeed, an oceanic feel to the staging of this production. Arriving spectators are welcomed by undulant costumed young persons bathed in blue and green lights designed by Jason Amato. The actors are welcoming, slithery, playful and exotically costumed. Director/author Bonnie Cullum extends the compact playing space of the Vortex vertically, transforming it at times into the visual equivalent of an aquarium. She stations her three singing sirens on a high shelf across the back, with the band mostly out of sight in the grotto below them.

Steel gym rings hang just out of reach of the front rows on either side of that V-thrust stage, and the sleekly muscular merpeople regularly hoist themselves fluidly up and around those swaying fixtures. Anyone with scuba diving experience recognizes at once the promise of liquid flight and freedom from gravity that they evoke. As well as the surprise and satisfaction of coming face to face with schools of fishy creatures -- the cast numbers 14, and most of them are somewhere on that compact stage throughout the presentation.

Cheerful mischief marks these goings-on. For example, I had placed myself in the front row; one of those swinging mer-guys reached down, and with a flick, untied my shoelace. While the characters spoke with mythic seriousness, they often moved in poses, prances, and postures, emphasizing their otherworldliness.

Click to read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .