April 2012 Q Rental Subsidy Grant Award Winning Artists
Through the amazing response from artists and the Austin community, The Creative Fund’s Q Rental Subsidy Program awarded a total of $8,750 in it’s first round to 10 local performing arts groups with upcoming productions – all funds raised within the first year. Award winners include: Forklift Dance, Fusebox, Generic Ensemble Company, Glass Half Full, The Hidden Room Theatre, Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Co., Palindrome, Poison Apple Initiative, Tapestry Dance Company and Teatro Vivo. More information below on the performing artists’ productions that were awarded.
Twenty-four applications ranging from theater, dance, music and comedy were reviewed by a panel of six judges who were selected based on their experience in the field and the types of applications received. This review panel was comprised of:
- Elizabeth Fisher – Program Coordinator for Shakespeare at Winedale, University of Texas
- Megan Crigger – Acting Cultural Arts Division Manager, City of Austin
- Gail Romney – Director of Operations and Finance, Ballet Austin
- Arif Panju – Attorney; and Creative Fund Program Committee Member
- Katie Osborn – Owner, Full Moon Design Group; and Creative Fund Board Member
- Ihor Gowda – Creative Fund Member-at- large; and avid participant in Austin’s music and art scene
The Creative Fund will publicly recognize the Q Rental Subsidy Grant Award winners at the upcoming fundraiser Through the Looking Glass. The purpose of the Q Rental Subsidy Grant Program is to put money back into the Austin performing arts community by providing artists with a location to showcase their work. The Q Rental Subsidy Grant awards are funded by money raised through events, membership dues and generous donations.
Q Rental Subsidy Grant Award Winners:
A Solo Symphony – A Dance for Conductor Peter Bay
At the Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center for the Performing Arts
July 12 – 14, 2012
Inspired by the virtuosic movement of symphonic conducting, Allison Orr will premier a new solo dance for Maestro Peter Bay. Accompanied by 13 live musicians and an original score by Graham Reynolds, the dance will at times feature Bay conducting in a true to life way, while at other times performing more abstracted movements based on his conducting gestures. Orr’s intention is to create a work that shows Bay’s highly skilled and unique conducting style, his passion and deep love for music, and the artistry and grace with which he performs his job.
An Evening with William Shatner Asterisk
At the Salvage Vanguard Theater
April 22 – May 6, 2012
William Shatner’s image from the original Star Trek series speaks on the subject of art in the 21st Century and then proceeds to engage with a live audience. Phil Soltanoff (director), Rob Ramirez (systems designer), and Joe Diebes (writer) have meticulously cataloguing everything William Shatner ever said on Star Trek. Together, the artists attempt to bravely make Captain James T. Kirk expand our universe.
The Experiment
At the Blue Theatre
April 29 – May 13, 2012
The Experiment is an evening-length play that asks the question, “What does it mean to be human?” The Experiment draws its structure from world fairs and vaudeville, creating a speculative future reminiscent of the turn of the 20th century. It incorporates theatrical dialogue between a cyborg and an immortal mutant; singing by a perverse scientist/lab attendant; and a silent dancing chorus. The Experiment showcases performances by (queer) women of color investigating the relationship between modern human subjects experiments, turn-of-the century freak shows, and anecdotal narratives of masculine/butch women.
FupDuck
At the Salvage Vanguard Theater
August 9 – 25, 2012
Glass Half Full Theatre will produce an original theatrical performance entitled FupDuck, featuring a storyteller, tabletop puppetry and a live band. The story is adapted with permission from the novella Fup by Jim Dodge, and will be told by local actor Chris Gibson as the Storyteller, enacted by puppets and puppeteers from our company, and accompanied by original live music from The White Ghost Shivers Band. The show has contracted performance dates in the Mainstage Theater at Salvage Vanguard Theater, running August 9th – 25th, 2012. FupDuck is one of six productions in the U.S. to be awarded a Jim Henson Foundation Family Grant for 2012.
Rose Rage
At the York Rite Masonic Temple
July 26 – August 11, 2012
Rose Rage is Edward Hall’s (Propeller) masterful cutting of Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy into an epic two-evening event. The Hidden Room is very proud to be the first company not directly working with Hall to be granted the rights to perform it. Rose Rage will also introduce our Foreign Actor Exchange Program. We will be hiring several actors from lauded London theatre companies, rehearsing them via Skype, and then bringing them to Austin the week before the show to incorporate them in person into the team.
Scenes Flamboyant (and intimate)
At the AustinVentures Studio Theatre
April 27 – 28, 2012
This April, Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company will present Scenes Flamboyant (and intimate), a modern dance concert that includes two premieres by the company and a guest appearance by the Houston dance company, NobleMotion Dance. Kathy Hamrick’s new work , Scenes Flamboyant (and intimate), is a dance for all eight KDH company members. Her vision is to combine interactive costumes (imagine a giant papier-mâché head, trailing balloons, old photographs projected onto bodies, a balsa-spiked skirt that flairs up when others get too close) with brief, yet significant histories of people and their pursuits of intimate relationships. This work features collaborations with local artists and designers Stephen Pruitt, Caroline Reck and Kakii Keenan.
Accidental Death of an Anarchist
At Up Collective, The Vortex, Huston-Tillotson University, Republic Square Park
May 13 – June 3, 2012
Accidental Death of an Anarchist is Palindrome Theatre’s first production of our 2012 season. The play, by Italian playwright Dario Fo, relates the investigation following the death of a purported anarchist during an interrogation by two police officers. Presented as a farce, the play uses a humorous tone to distill the gravity of the tragedy and examine, without bias, why events such as this occur. This dark political comedy, originally written in 1970, quickly became the most important Italian play of the later half of the twentieth century.
Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom
October
In a suburban subdivision with cookie-cutter houses, parents are unnerved to find their teenagers fixated on an online horror video game. That takes place in a subdivision with cookie-cutter houses. What is the goal of the game? Eradicate hoards of zombies and escape the neighborhood. As the line blurs between the virtual and the real, both parents and players realize that fear has a life of its own.
12th Annual Soul to Sole Festival Concerts
At the Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center for the Performing Arts
May 30 – June 2, 2012
Tapestry Dance Company presents its festival of rhythm with the Annual Soul to Sole Festival bringing dancers from around the country to the home of the International Tap Association – Austin, TX.
Austin’s Latino Experience
At the Dougherty Arts Theatre
July 30 – August 11, 2012
Austin’s Latino experience is diverse, enriching, and now, hilarious. This summer, Austin audiences will enjoy an original sketch comedy addressing the truth-is-funnier-than-fiction reality of our cultural landscape, as Teatro Vivo presents a new Live Sketch Comedy troupe, “Todo Sketchy.” Todo Sketchy is an effort by Teatro Vivo to achieve its mission of offering audiences a “window to the world” of Latino culture. We’ve assembled a team of award-winning performers, writers, and technical artists to create a theater experience that is at once timeless and undeniably in the moment.