SEASON 33 | 2020
Threshold
2020-2021 Season
The VORTEX’s 33rd Season of Fearless Theatre
“During a global pandemic, The VORTEX perseveres with our mission by creating essential, urgent theatre for
in-person and online consumption. While we have all been floating in limbo and liminal space for many months of 2020, we are now poised at the Threshold of a changing tide. As we find ourselves still adrift, The VORTEX offers us a message in a bottle— a lifeline on turbulent seas. We will move through this Threshold with you as we all find new ways forward.
Through this shifting age, while the world has limited access to live artistic work, we will blend hybrid forms of theatre and film. At the Threshold, we shape the future with a combination of small in-person performances and stimulating virtual content. We will reach out to communities around Austin to offer them extraordinary cultural opportunities for those who have been stuck at home together. Thank you all for your ongoing support.
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Please note all dates and events are subject to change based on the state of the pandemic and our ability to produce legal, low-risk, in-person events. We will continue to require masks, sign-in, and temperature checks to enter The VORTEX.
Our Threshold Season began with a non-conventional fundraiser: The VORTEX Odyssey, a drive-thru performance installation. This extraordinary once-in-a-lifetime event guided audiences in their vehicles to islands of performance in the Manor Road IBIZ District. The VORTEX Odyssey: Underworld offered a virtual companion piece, forging new ground with exhilarating blends of live and pre-recorded content that viewers could choose.
November 6-21, 2020, The VORTEX joins forces with Avante Theatre Project, Teatro Vivo, and Proyecto Teatro to present the 3rd Annual FuturX Festival of new and avant-garde Latinix performances. Entra al Laberinto offers a dynamic virtual festival for 2020 with live and recorded content over 3 weekends.
From January-April 2021 The VORTEX will continue VORTEX Virtual with live-streamed content on our YouTube channel while we also begin presenting intimate shows on The Eloise Brooks Cullum Stage to limited, masked audiences. These Tapas will offer tastes of new work as we engage in the creative process with the artists and make our way back toward live performance. Our Tapas will also be live-streamed for broad access from the safety of home.
On March 13, 2021 our 11th Annual Garden Party welcomes us back to the Butterfly Garden with artistic offerings and the replanting of the Butterfly Sanctuary. This glorious springtime event celebrates a long-awaited rebirth after a dark winter. Funded in part by the Texas Commission on the Arts.
May 1-8, 2021, Ethos will debut Plagues Within Plagues, a virtual ballet composed by Chad Salvata, Choreographed and starring Sandie Donzica, with Cinematography by Jose Lozano.
May 27-June 27, 2021, we present the long-awaited National NNPN Rolling World Premiere of Annie Jump and the Library of Heaven by Reina Hardy, directed by Rudy Ramirez. This remarkable play engages young adults and audiences of all ages, bringing science and imagination into the storytelling. Other theatres partnering on the Rolling World Premiere are Renaissance Theaterworks (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), Rorschach Theatre (Washington, DC), and Thrown Stone Theatre Company (Ridgefield, Connecticut). The VORTEX is now a Core Member of the National New Play Network. For more information please visit nnpn.org. The VORTEX is in Six Square Austin’s Black Cultural Arts District. This project is funded in part by Cultural District funding from the Texas Commission on the Arts.
Summer Youth Theatre presents Mr. Burns, a post-electric play, by Anne Washburn, the perfect play for a pandemic, July 23-31, 2021. Directed by Jennifer Jennings. This timely post-apocalyptic production features an ensemble of teenagers and utilizes masking, technology, and other modifications to create low-risk theatre.
August 12-September 12, 2021,The VORTEX presents a new production of Rap Unzel by Jeremy Rashad Brown. This new “back-to-school” production about Black Boy Joy and Rap’s amazing hair extends outreach for children and their families.
Since our venue shuttered in March 2020, The VORTEX has created abundant virtual programming from past live productions, readings of new work, and new virtual creations made for the screen, curated by Managing Director, Melissa Vogt. As we make our way forward with hybrid live/on-line productions, we hope you will join us, either masked in the theatre or online from your home. Please join us at the Threshold as we offer you our best theatrical work in whatever form you wish to partake.
The VORTEX is funded and supported in part by VORTEX Repertory Company, a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, and by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department.