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Playwrights Doing It For Themselves

Whether it’s the next hot band coming out of SXSW, a promising tech start-up, or the latest fusion cuisine, Austin has a love for creating and consuming the new. Less formal and more liberal than Dallas and Houston, Austin clings to the motto of “Keep Austin Weird,” so that cuisine might come out of a food trailer and get eaten at a picnic table in a parking lot. That Austin “weirdness” is evident in the theater community as well, where dozens of mid- and small-size companies create performance works of every type and there’s a 95 percent chance the venue they’re performing in will have been a warehouse of some sort in a former life. In addition, Austin was somehow virtually untouched by the regional theater movement of the 60s. While Margo Jones, Nina Vance, and Paul Baker built and professionalized theaters in Dallas and Houston, Austin remained a community theater town well into the 80s.

When I arrived here in 1990 the only new work I was aware of was Big State Theatre Company’s In The West, which went on to play the Kennedy Center and seemed to be a kind of watershed event for the creation of new work in Austin. (You can read about this phenomenon in articles by Robert Faires, Arts Editor of the Austin Chronicle in their online archives). Beyond that, I knew that the University of Texas had a MFA in playwriting, but few of those graduates stayed in Austin.

That Austin 'weirdness' is evident in the theater community as well, where dozens of mid- and small-size companies create performance works of every type and there’s a 95 percent chance the venue they’re performing in will have been a warehouse of some sort in a former life.

For me, the real turning point for new work in Austin was the creation of FronteraFest, a five-week long performance festival that occurs annually in January and February. Vicky Boone, Artistic Director of Frontera Productions from 1991-2001, started the festival with company members Annie Suite and Jason Phelps. FronteraFest was a game-changer as an open, unjuried festival. Performance slots are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis so anyone can get their work in front of an audience. I believe FronteraFest was a huge factor in creating the environment we have now, where artists don’t have to wait for permission from traditional gate-keepers to get their work on stage. The festival has grown to include four components: the Short Fringe, for pieces that are twenty-five minutes or less; the Long Fringe, for pieces forty-five to ninety minutes long; Bring Your Own Venue, for site specific work; and Mi Casa es Su Teatro, a day of performances in private homes. In 2001, Vicky dissolved Frontera Productions and Hyde Park Theatre and ScriptWorks began co-producing the festival. FronteraFest is open to anyone in any performance discipline—theater, dance, music, film, puppetry—just about anything goes. Granted there are restrictions: participants are the producers and the festival is the presenter, and there are some limitations on production elements in order to accommodate the tight schedule and large number of participants. There is still no easier or cheaper way for Austin artists to get their work on stage. And Long Fringe participants receive 100% of their box office revenue, so they just may make a little money too. Notably, there is no requirement that the work presented in FronteraFest is original work, but approximately 98% of it is.

Logo for ScriptWorks.

ScriptWorks encourages its members to “take the bull by the horns” through programming that encourages the creation, development, and production of new plays. Monthly Salon readings (quarterly in Dallas) provide the incentive of a deadline for completing first drafts and a safe environment for receiving feedback. Our Weekend Fling, FronteraFest Commissions, and 30/60/90 daily writing programs encourage the creation of new work. Seed Support funding empowers writers to develop their work, with funds for research, travel, artistic personnel, and developmental workshops. Members can also receive umbrella services for accessing grant and donor funding. Finer Point funding encourages production of member plays in Austin by providing enhancement funds to local theaters that premiere a member’s work.

Of course, not all of our one-hundred plus members go the route of self-initiated development and production. Most use the more traditional path of script submissions and residency applications to get their work out to the world, and our members have productions all over the country every year. Not of all our members live in Austin, but those who do can take advantage of the DIY arts scene and ready-made opportunities. Whether through writer-driven companies like Physical Plant and Poison Apple Initiative, the ensemble-created work of the Rude Mechs or DA! Theatre Collective, or the next Steven Dietz play premiering at Zach, new work pervades the Austin theater scene and is part of what keeps us weird.

 

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Thoughts from the curator

An overview of the theatre scene in Austin.

Austin, Texas

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