Whether they’re airily dodging swinging theatrical lights or brawling in the melted cheese of an overflowing gold-plated queso fountain, Austin’s Rude Mechs have some serious (and seriously funny) moves.
Before they head to Lincoln Center in New York in January, the Rude Mechs delivered the drunken punch to the face that is Fixing King John, at the Off Center.
Leave it to Austin’s maverick troupe, the Rude Mechs, to tackle Shakespeare’s “problem plays.” Even the Bard’s esteemed canon contains a few duds, and in the new bi-annual series, Fixing Shakespeare, the Rude Mechs attempt to slice and dice these plays into more contemporary, and perhaps more palatable, shows.
We are back for our epic annual public chit chat, a tiny snapshot of the thousand dishy emails that fly across the inter tubes discussing what we just saw, missed, didn’t understand or flat out loved.
Now as spring blooms, we find Austin’s Fusebox, the state’s largest multidisciplinary arts festival, carrying the trend into 2023 with five days (April 12-16) filled with its usual innovative and experimental work, but also a particularly playful and fun lineup.
Artists grappling with the political has been the norm for thousands of years, but when art and social-political questioning merge at an interdisciplinary performance festival like Austin’s Fusebox Festival 2020 (April 15-19), the results can sometimes expand artistic boundaries.
Houston-based artists Stephan Hillerbrand and Mary Magsamen, known collectively as Hillerbrand+Magsamen, address topics of family, communication, and consumerism, most recently through their ongoing body of artworks called The Devices Project.
Nancy Wozny: Pack a lunch, Lady T, we have a year and a decade to discuss. Let’s not be so top ten-ish, but think categorically. I always find what we are still talking about is the most revealing.