History may be written by the victors, as the saying goes, but fundamentally history is written by the writers and the landscape of history etched into images by the cartographers, though they are perhaps paid by those victors.
If good playwrights tend to have discerning ears for the language and voices around them, then perhaps those wanting to produce a new kind of theater festival need to become the most sensitive of auditory aficionado as well. Kenn McLaughlin, artistic director of Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston, seems to subscribe to this theory because when the company began organizing their new play-reading event that would become Sin Muros: A Latina/o Theatre Festival, he knew the first act of creation was to be quiet and listen.
Girls, and boys, may just want to have fun on New Years Eve, but for many people the celebratory countdown to some second when the Earth has managed another full orbit around the Sun without getting struck by an asteroid makes for a pretty crappy holiday.
“This is the future of art, where would you see something like this in Houston? Someone needs to write about this,” said Abby Koenig, looking straight at me, after a stunning and mesmerizing performance of Engelbert Humperdinck's 1893 opera Hansel and Gretel, presented by Rec Room Arts at the Rec Room.
Last April, as the evening weekend revelries began at Fusebox, Austin’s annual cross-disciplinary arts festival, performer Joseph Keckler took the stage at Al Volta’s Midnight Bar.