Upcoming: Mud Offerings by Natalie Marlena Goodnow, Southwestern University, April 3

Southwestern University, Georgetown

presents

Mud Offerings

by Natalie Marlena Goodnow

Tuesday, April 3, 5:30 p.m.

Sarofim Fine Arts, Heather Hall

Southwestern University, Georgetown

This piece is a solo play unraveling the culturally complicated truths, lies and mythologies of women's spirituality and sexuality in contexts of violence and betrayal. Directed by Dino Foxx and kt shorb.

Natalie Marlena Goodnow is a nationally recognized teatrista, teaching artist and cultural activist from Austin, Texas. She performs, directs and writes; she's been practicing some combination of those forms for seventeen years and began teaching through and about them 8 years ago. She specializes in the creation of original work for the stage, as a solo performer and in collaboration with other performers and playwrights, both youth and adult.

Mud Offerings is the 2011 winner of the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, which recognizes excellence in feminist plays and performance texts nationwide and has been presented at conferences festivals and venues such as the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington DC) , the Women at Work Festival, Stage Left Studio (New York, New Yor4ki and El Mundo Zurdo: An International Conference on Anzaldúan Thought (San Antonio, TX). Natalie ('07) studied Theatre, Spanish and Feminist Studies at Southwestern University.

This performance is sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the Feminist Studies Program, the Theatre Department, Kappa Delta Chi sorority, and Latinos Unidos.

Upcoming: Eagle Woman Poems, Natalie Marlena Goodnow at Co-Lab Project Space, July 30

Found on-line:

Eagle Woman Poems

an installation and performance

by Natalie Marlena Goodnow

Co-Lab Project Space, 613 Allen St. (click for map)

Saturday, July 30
Installation On View 7-11PM
Performance 8PM

Eagle Woman lives in a landfill. It is her job to make sense of the mess. This is what women do. It is what words do. These are the poetics of sifting through the filth.

But is an eagle capable of such a task?

This performance art event will consist of an eagle's attempts at poetry in time and space. Based on Goodnow's collaboration with the Generic Ensemble Company in July 2010: " Eagle Woman Poems: an in-progress showing."

This project is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division.

[image: Alberto Jimenez]

Prize-Winner: Mud Offerings by Nathalie Goodnow, RAW: Austin Interactive at Venue 222, June 16

Received directly and followed up on-line:

Natalie Marlena Goodnow's Mud Offerings has just been awarded the the JANE CHAMBERS AWARD for feminist plays & performance texts created by women writers, presenting significant opportunities for female performers.

From the prize notification:

"We were struck with the feminist Chicana themes, the theatrical poetry, and the complex storytelling that you wove in this solo play. Kudos! And Thank You for sharing this work. Typically the Contest weights toward plays with more roles for female performers in them, so take it as testament to our vivid, shared excitement about your play that it won. We were compelled by this exquisite short work, so embodied and complex in its sense of character, history, sexuality, place, and religion. We are eager to share it with others (theaters and feminists)."

From the committee: Given in memory of lesbian playwright Jane Chambers, who through her plays such as My Blue Heaven, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove and Kudzu became a major feminist voice in American theater, the Jane Chambers Playwriting Contest welcomes experimentations in form as well as subject matter. Feminism is understood variously, and may cross diverse class, sex, race, national, ethnic, theatrical, and/or geographic perspectives. The Jane Chambers Contest winner receives $500 & a rehearsed reading of the winning play at ATHE’s annual mid-summer conference. First given in 1984, the award is sponsored by the Women and Theater Program (WTP) with generous support from the Association for Theater in Higher Education (ATHE), private donors, and university friends.

Mud Offerings

by Natalie Marlena Goodnow

Thursday, June 16, 2011 @ 8:00PM
Venue 222 | 222 East 6th Street | Austin, TX 78701
21+ event. Cocktail attire. Tickets are $10 via presale.

Purchase tickets here.

RAW events are multi-faceted artistic showcases. Each event features a film screening, musical performance, fashion show, art gallery, performance art and a featured hairstylist and makeup artist. These artists are all local, hand-picked talent who have been chosen to feature at RAW.

RAW events feature a cash bar for cocktails while you enjoy the night. Dress code is cocktail attire, so dress the occasion and get ready for an artistic circus of creativity!

And check out the award-winning "Mud Offerings"!

Natalie's blog: http://makinggoodnow.blogspot.com/

Upcoming: Mud Offerings by Nathalie Goodnow, Black Box Theatre, Emma S. Barrientos Mexican-American Cultural Center, April 16

Received directly:

(click for map to the Mexican-American Cultural Center, 600 River Street)

Upcoming: Mud Offerings by Nathalie Goodnow, Hyde Park FronteraFest Short Fringe, January 28

Found on-line:

Putting la frontera in Frontera Fest:


Mud Offerings
written and performed by Natalie Marlena Goodnow
directed by Dino Foxx and kt shorb

A Chicanita has it out with the Virgen de Guadalupe. This solo play interrogates the historical and present-day roles played by women who live between cultures, and their relationships with spirituality, sexuality, violence, and betrayal.

FronteraFest - The Short Fringe
Friday, January 28, 2011, 8:00 pm
Hyde Park Theatre, 511 West 43rd Street
(43rd Street a half-block east of Guadalupe)
Box Office: 512-479-PLAY
www.hydeparktheatre.org
www.nataliegoodnow.com

Upcoming: Conjure, kt shorb and GenEnCo, Resistencia Bookstore, March 27

Received directly:

CONJURE: Calling up the Spirit of Struggle, Resistance, & Liberation

Saturday March 27, 9 p.m.
Resistencia Bookstore, 1801-A South First St., 416-8885
$7 dollar suggested donation.

We invite you to a forum for progressive artist/activists: a series of experiments in jazz music, spoken word, and theatre. This session will feature kt shorb & the Generic Ensemble Company (GenEnCo) with black improvisational music by the 3Collective.

Rooted in the tradition of improvisation, revolution, and blues, Conjure is a sovereign site for artistic/exploratory/spiritual collaboration, expression, and rejuvenation. Each jam session will highlight the “Afrological improvised music” of the 3Collective along with a featured spoken word performer, dancer, and filmmaker inspired by the jazz aesthetic.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Stuck on GeeDot, Generic Ensemble Company, January 22 - 30

Their choice of a company name offers a hint of the deadpan drollery of their approach to art and to the audience. In a town that whelps new theatre companies as if it were a puppy mill, these young women label themselves the "generic ensemble company."

Generic as in "common" and "absolutely typical" or as in "no longer under patent" or, reaching a bit, as in "an embodiment of an abstract ideal." And generic as in "gender," for their credo states in part, ". . . we strive to promote, foster, and engage performance, writing and ideas of/with people of color, queers, gender queers, women, working class people, immigrants and youth."

There's a bit of swagger in that but no arrogance toward the audience. Unless you count the moments when the two young actresses in their bowler hats and nondescript (generic) costumes peered at me with close-up, polite curiosity from several angles and pronounced themselves puzzled. "It must be a piece of modern art."

This thoughtful and creative re-interpretation of Beckett's Waiting for Godot takes place in a frame house on a dark street in east Austin near the intersection of Pleasant Valley and Webberville Road. The company painted the house number on a banner and hung it in the front yard so we wouldn't miss them completely in the darkness.

The public space was the living/dining room area and part of the kitchen space. Walls, windows, beams and bar were draped with blank, white sheets. As the 10 or so of us gathered, a woman wearing a bowler hat was sitting slumped forward in the middle of the playing space, for all the world like a Bolivian market woman who had forgotten her traditional costume. She re-animated as another, more alert and taller young woman, also in a bowler hat, joined her. We learned quickly that the shorter of the two was "Gohgoh"; the more animated was "DeeDee." The names directly mirror the nicknames given by Beckett to their prototypes Estragon and Vladimir.

Read more and view images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Stuck on Gee Dot, Generic Ensemble Company, January 22 - 30

Received directly:

A site-specific, devised play by The Generic Ensemble Company:

Stuck on Gee-Dot

January 22 - 24, January 28 - 30
Directed by kt shorb with additional direction by Natalie Goodnow
With Saray Rosales, La'arni Ayuma and Natalie Goodnow
at the Lemon Drop Lounge, a private residence
seating 15 persons at each performance, $10 admission
Click here to make a reservation
Full map and directions

DeeDee and GohGoh’s ride needs fixin’. Who knew you could find a good mechanic at a surprise party? They just have to wait for her to show up.

An all-women-of-color adaptation of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. DeeDee and GohGoh are two queer youth in a deserted house who are waiting for Gee-Dot, She Who Fixes Things.

Goodnow, shorb and Rosales are recipients of the 2009 FronteraFest "Best of Fest" for their work in the short play, T.A.G. by Stamp Lab: A Performance Group. This is the premier work of the Generic Ensemble Company, a new theatre group that puts forward marginal bodies in performance.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Muntu by Natalie Goodnow and Teatro Vivo at Space12, April 18

Received April 9:

Muntu: Reflections in East Austin

A two-week reflection on the effects of development on the trees and people of East Austin.

April 18 to 30, 2009
Space12, 3121 12th Street

"Muntu" is a word that means both "tree" and "person."
What is happening to the muntu of East Austin amidst the city's changing cultural and geographical landscape?

This multimedia exhibit offers the entire Austin community a time and space for shared reflection on this and related
questions, for conversations of all kinds, in diverse media:
performance, poetry, storytelling, sculpture, music, essays, photography, and good old-fashioned talk.

"Austin - East of I35," a photography show by Rama Tiru

A community arts project: Sculptures of trees by Theatre Action Project's afterschool students,
and audience responses to Natalie Marlena Goodnow's one-woman play "Muntu"

Opening Reception
A satellite event of Austin Earth Day
Saturday, April 18, 2009
7:00 pm to 10:00 pm
7:30 pm - a performance of "Muntu," (the last one!), sponsored by Teatro Vivo
8:15 pm - artist talk by Rama Tiru
9:00 pm - DJing by Evan Wilson

Read More and Access Natalie's "Muntu" Video at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: In 2 the West, Molière, & Muntu, Austin Community College, April 3 - 4

As part of its spring festival Carnival ah!, Austin Community College offers several dramatic pieces on April 3 and 4 at its Rio Grande campus. From ACC announcements:

Theater – Run through an actor's warm-up, or try your skill in an improvisation workshop. Or just sit back and enjoy two plays, including special performances of the Austin classic "In 2 the West" and "Moliere 2009: A French Classic Reloaded." Natalie Marlena Goodnow will present her one-woman show "Muntu."


Read More. . . .

Voces de Vivo, Teatro Vivo

The sense of community at Austin’s Teatro Vivo is tangible and reinforces the appeal of the consort. One has a warm, expectant feeling, much like the anticipation of attending a school production where one knows many of the actors. At a high school or college play, one is additionally disposed to forgive occasional slips or stumbles because one likes the participants so much. Teatro Vivo’s familiar participants don’t require that indulgence. They are credible, creative and thoroughly at home on the stage.

The change of venue from the Long Center to the humble 200-seat theatre at the nearby Dougherty Arts Center reinforced that sense of community.

With my June review of Petra’s Sueño by Rubert Reyes I expressed some apprehension about the “new approach” announced for this evening of four one-act plays, each written by principal company members – in the order framed below, Michael Mendoza, Natalie Marlena Goodnow, Celeste Guzman Mendoza, and founder Rupert Reyes.

Their new approach is the gentlest possible change of course. The four one-act plays were generally crafted to appeal to all, including those who are not bilingual, and the four authors produced stories and meditations that focused on inclusiveness. Their reading of the Latino community in Austin and in Texas was a positive one.

The turnout was good for the Thursday “pay-what-you want” audience, which filled about half of the seats. Both Latinos and “Anglos” (gringos?) attended, with a good mix of ages.

The pieces were very different from one another. In order:

“Munti” means both “tree” and “human being” in a southern African language, a fact that Natalie Goodnow cheerfully footnoted as coming from Barbara Kingsolver’s book (“as all of you Oprah fans know!”). Natalie offered us a solo piece of reflections and personal anecdote, a sort of biography/confessional tied to trees - - both real ones and trees as allegories for human experience. She lifted lightly into describing the progression of her own feelings about her bicultural origins, about rootedness and the appeal of relocation, travel, and finding one’s rightful place. This was a light, eloquent flight of fancy, artfully and delicately accompanied on cello and percussion by musicians Tavis Jeffords and Josh Casiano. Her stage persona seemed very close to her own – after all, in the program she calls herself “a teatrista and educator who believes in the power of performance as sacred, as healing, and as transformative.” She must be a great motivator for young persons participating in the workshops she mentioned. In closing, Natalie invited audience members to use the pencils and paper distributed before the performance to communicate thoughts about these themes, to be left on a table in the lobby with similar contributions from earlier spectators.

Celeste Mendoza structured Adela's Altar very much along the lines of the Petra plays – the aged semi-lunatic Adela is in the church sanctuary for hours every day, cleaning ineffectually and carrying on a continual dialogue with God. As portrayed by Yesenia García, Adela is a cartoon -–a very funny and lively one, to be sure, with a bright red wig, thick glasses, and a continual stream of observations both in Spanish and in English. Adela reveals herself as something of a “sacred fool,” frustrating her stiff supervisor Martiza (Vanessa Alvarado), distracting her own thoroughly acculturated daughter, ragging Ipod-wearing custodian Chuy (Rob Rowland), and offering God’s advice to an “illegal” mother seeking asylum with her U.S. citizen child (Karen Alvarado and Alma Ixhchel Flores-Pérez). This last generous-hearted response earns her an overnight stay in jail and gets her fired from her volunteer job at the church. Adela’s garrulous relationship with God prompts her supervisor to speak with Him, too, in a private moment, so that we share in the pain, loss and confusion of her repeated miscarriages. The piece ends with unexpected abruptness, as Adela’s daughter in matter-of-fact fashion thanks her supervisor for barring the church to her; we were caught up a bit short, feeling that perhaps a coda was required, to deal with the feelings either of the banished Adela or with the deep despair of her supervisor. Though we all enjoyed the characterisation of Adela, I wonder whether we might have benefited from a less farcical approach to her; placing her closer to our own experience of the distracted elderly might have deepened our feelings for her, making the final scene a sharper commentary on family and frustration.

Las Amandas is the most difficult and most rewarding piece of this set. Michael Mendoza has authored a text that is directly in the tradition of the Latin American “cuento.” Mario Ramírez delivers his lengthy, lyrical account of two Amandas, mother and daughter, who were abandoned by the guitar-playing dandy “Jucho” (for Jesús). In contrast to other Teatro Vivo pieces, this narrative is really bilingual – in order to appreciate it fully, one needs both languages. The narrative line is certainly available to monolingual English-speakers, but the full effect of this cross-generational, cross-border story, bound deeply with loss and longing, arrives when one can traverse the mental and linguistic boundaries.

The young-looking Ramírez initiates the story with a book in hand, as if he were reading or remembering passages from the text. Director J.T. Bundick chose to have him walk onstage in a place of memory, where the uncredited actress playing both Amandas is the mother, dreamily cleaning house and carrying for her cages and cages of songbirds. At stage left, throughout the piece, the neatly dressed“Jucho” strums his guitar. At times during the recital of the story, Ramírez becomes the momentary avatar of young Juncho, dancing with Amanda. At times striking black-and-white family photos appear on the back wall and Ramírez comments upon them. The older Amanda loses “Jucho” as he first seduces her younger sister and then disappears, supposedly to the Great North. The younger Amanda, living in the United States, later returns to search for her roots and sees, briefly, a courtly figure who might be her father. There is no crisis or dramatic unraveling of plot; the story is unrolled as a skein of memory with no hint of future. It is profoundly moving.

The scenic presentation of the place of memory is effective but eventually becomes distracting. My imagining of the presentation would have lowered the general lighting most of the time and left the Amandas immobile or offstage more; and I would have reduced “Jucho”’s quiet crooning to his guitar by about half. Because the real feat was that of Ramírez as narrator, delivering to us a vividly written and intimate text. His mastery of image and narrative was impressive, and he delivered it as if there were no periods but only semi-colons, a rushing remembrance that would have profited from occasional pauses for recollection or emphasis.

With 2 Souls and A Promise, veteran Rupert Reyes offers us a meditation that starts in whimsy and finishes with reflections on social equality. Young lovers Joe (Mateo Barrera) and Lisa (Audrey Rose Pérez) cuddle at night on a mountaintop beneath the stars and exchange romantic promises for their souls to search out one another, should they ever be separated. Uh-oh! And yes, when Lisa immediately insists on going alone to get the car, she hits the wrong gear and precipitates it over a cliff, leaving Joe alone in life. We see Lisa as a departing soul, cross-shaped in a choir robe, confused and then really angry at this turn of events before she whisks away into the darkness. In the distance, one hears the birth of a child.

So far, so good, and in line with Reyes’ most recent Petra frolic on the comic machinations of the supernatural. Two scenes follow, echoing dialogue and some movement. In the first, Joe, aged and infirm, is surprised when his son Pablo brings home a new classmate, Lily (Pérez), with an uncanny resemblance to Joe’s young love Lisa. The comedy arises as son Pablo seeks Dad’s advice on wooing the young lady, who is feeling eerily attracted to the older man.

The second modulation of the idea delivers us the aged Joe with Pérez this time as his daughter. Again, the offspring unexpectedly brings home a classmate for dinner, and Joe and the visitor feel a strange affinity. Visitor Albert is handsome, deferential and enthusiastic about their shared class in Chicano lit. Only hitch: he is black. Reyes has fun playing Joe’s ill-concealed hostility with the growing awareness of supernatural bonds between them. With this second skit Reyes deepens the piece considerably, moving from a comedy of identities to one of social reconciliation. His premise recalls that of influential American 20th century philospher John Rawls, who elaborated a theory of social justice from the concept of the “original position” and the “veil of ignorance.” In briefest summary, Rawls argued that those not knowing conditions and attributes awaiting them after birth would prefer a society that maximizes liberty, cooperation and mutual respect.

As Joe the teenager Mateo Barrera is a bit stiff, but as the two versions of the older Joe, he provides a full portrait of the staid, conservative and lonely father. His timing is perfect. Audrey Rose Pérez is appealing in each of her triple roles, which are close variants of the same fresh-faced young lady. Daniel Antonio Cardoza serves well as the lanky, bashful son Pablo in skit 1; and Aaron D. Alexander as the unexpected dinner guest Albert gives us the picture of a bright young man who is unthreatened and engaged even in the face of suspicion. He is the embodiment of Reyes’ idea of Latino social solidarity across classes, races and even cultures.

Click for Robert Fairles' review from the Austin Chronicle