Audition Sign-Up Form:
Summer Youth Theatre 2025
Summer Youth Theatre 2025:
Jinkies! or The (currently) Untitled Dog Play
by Josiah Thomas Turner.
Directed by Jacqui Calloway
When: Audition/Interviews MAY 19, 21, 31, 2025—by appointment only
Contact vortex@vortexrep.org to schedule an appointment.
Application Form at the bottom of this page
Where: The Eloise Stage @ The VORTEX
2307 Manor Rd. Austin, TX 78722. Free Parking. Bus Route.
www.vortexrep.org 512-478-5282
Rehearsals and Performances: Evenings and weekends, June 1-July 26, 2025
The VORTEX seeks courageous, creative students ages 13-17 to participate in Summer Youth Theatre (SYT) 2025, an award-winning, intensive program that offers tuition-free training and experience for aspiring young theatre professionals. Students of any ethnicity, gender, ability/disability, economic background, and experience are invited to audition for the diverse youth ensemble, who will train together and rehearse who will train together as they rehearse and perform the world premiere of Jinkies! or The (currently) Untitled Dog Play by Josiah Thomas Turner and directed by Jacqui Calloway.
Summer Youth Theatre cultivates tools of theatre: teamwork, focus, discipline, precision, communication, and artistry. Now in its 33rd year, SYT rehearses and performs evenings and weekends June 1-July 26, 2025. In addition to participating in a rigorous rehearsal process, students create the full production (sets, props, costumes, lights, publicity) during hands-on workdays. Students also receive specialty workshops from professionals in various aspects of theatre.
AUDITION / INTERVIEWS: By appointment MAY 19, 21, 31, 2025 at The VORTEX.
Please submit an application online (below).
Prepare a memorized, one-minute monologue from a play, poem, or song.
If you need support or help in preparing your audition, please let us know.
A parent/guardian is required to attend the initial interview.
Contact jasmine@vortexrep.org or vortex@vortexrep.org.
We are also accepting application/interviews for students interested in design and technical theatre.
AUDITION/INTERVIEWS: By appointment at vortex@vortexrep.org.
ABOUT THE PLAY: Jinkies! or The (currently) Untitled Dog Play
When a gang of meddling mystery solvers is reunited after a botched case, can they overcome their differences for one last hurrah? Jinkies! takes a beloved cultural juggernaut and re-envisions it with modern themes and characters that reflect our diverse society. This campy, Scooby Doo-style whodunnit about a spree of local kidnappings is infused with political commentary on gentrification and corruption; race, class, and power; intersectional feminism; justice reform; and environmentalism. Alongside a healthy dose of nostalgia, this play asks: What does community healing look like? How much do our actions (or inactions) define us? How do you move forward after making a tragic mistake? At its heart, Jinkies! is a story about growing up, confronting hard truths, and accepting the uncertainties that life throws our way.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR: Jacqui Calloway is a performer, educator, and theatremaker. She is a company member at The VORTEX who has won four B. Iden Payne Awards for her performances. You may have recently seen her as Chris in Jarrott Productions’ POTUS. Last summer, Jacqui assistant directed Thrive, or What You Will (The VORTEX) and served as an artist mentor for Ground Floor Theatre’s inaugural Queer Camp. Jacqui works at Creative Action as director of the Changing Lives Youth Theatre Ensemble, where she guides teenage artists through a devising and playwriting process that culminates in the annual tour of a play to prevent interpersonal violence. She is also an instructor at The Actor’s School, a teaching artist for the Paramount Story Wranglers, and a guest lecturer at Texas State University. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College and has studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Anthony Meindl’s Actor Workshop, and the Relativity School.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT: Josiah Thomas Turner is a queer, Black artist, musician, and theater-maker born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He earned his MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin. Josiah’s work has been developed with and seen at Fade To Black Theatre Fest, Wild Winds Texas, the constructivists, Breaking & Entering, The Fled, and The Kennedy Center. Turner was a finalist for Magic in Rough Spaces at Rorschach Theatre, winner of the Kennedy Center’s Planet Earth Prize, Ken Ludwig Playwriting Scholarship, and National Undergraduate Theatre award as well as being a Semi-Finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, The O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Playwright’s Conference, and the Playwright’s Realm’s Scratchpad Series. He is currently a 2023-2025 Many Voices Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center.
ABOUT THE VORTEX’S SUMMER YOUTH THEATRE: Since 1991, SYT has provided high-caliber theatrical productions created by Central Texas teens as a jewel of The VORTEX’s educational and community programming. The SYT program teaches students ages 13-17, spanning middle and high school. Summer Youth Theatre students receive instruction in theatre arts, equivalent to 3 credits under the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Fine Arts, Theatre Levels 117.64, 65, 66, 67. By TEKS standards, this program is equivalent to or higher than High School Theatre Arts II, Technical Theatre I, and Theatre Production II. The VORTEX has developed this curriculum over more than thirty years. The Austin Chronicle has named SYT “Best Theatre for Kids That Treats Kids Like Grownups.”
Every year, students work with adult artists who are among Austin’s most celebrated theatre professionals. Recent B. Iden Payne Awards include Outstanding Young Performer, Sharky Meehan in The Memo (2023), and Jessica Cohen’s Outstanding Original Song in Pandemdem Edition: Another Great Depression (2021). SYT has previously received Payne Awards for productions of Youth Theatre for The Commedia of Errors and Machinal; Direction of Youth Theatre for The Commedia of Errors, The Physicists, Moby Dick, and The Frogs; Acting in Youth Theatre for The Physicists and Moby Dick; and Sound Design for Machinal. VORTEX Producing Artistic Director Bonnie Cullum founded SYT in 1991; she was inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame in 2009.
Summer Youth Theatre 2025 is funded and supported in part by VORTEX Repertory Company; Six Square-Austin’s Black Cultural District; a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts; and by the City of Austin Economic Development Department.
The VORTEX Mission:
We conjure urgent, unashamed art to create action in a shifting age. We embrace diverse communities, break down barriers, and elevate inclusive discourse from our cultural harbor in Austin, Texas. We enliven humanity with magical green new theatre at our Butterfly Bar and Sanctuary.
The VORTEX Core Values:
Our core values are encompassed by the Pentacle of Integrity: Transformation, Magic, Community, Diversity, and Earth. Integrity lives at our core. We engage in radical transformation through edge-walking artistic creations and innovations. Magic emanates from our cultural harbor, engaging Spirit. Our space and our culture support expanding circles of inclusive community. Our art reflects diversity of people and voices from the global majority. Sustainability and environmentalism center Earth at our foundation.