SEASON 38 | November 2025
Bait & Hook
November 2, 6:00pm, 2025
The show blends powerful live performance with intentional community-building. The first part of the evening transforms The Butterfly Bar @ The VORTEX into a community cocktail hour with conversation cards, focusing on the topics in The Target Shoots Back. As we enter the theatre, guest performers open the show with poetry, drag, and music. Then Chibbi takes the stage with a live performance of their poetry album, creating an experience that was both intimate and electric.
The Target Shoots Back is a bold, unflinching spoken word live performance with music and video by poet and performer Chibbi Orduña. It weaves themes of navigating identity, resistance, reclamation, and a celebration of self and community through a powerful journey of reclaiming voice and space. Each poem confronts the systems that attempt to silence us and honors the communities that help us survive. It is available to stream on all platforms.
About Chibbi: Chibbi is a Mexican-born, Texas-raised spoken word artist, performer, and cultural agitator who doesn’t just take the stage, they reclaim it. With over 15 years in the slam and spoken word scene, Chibbi’s work blends raw vulnerability, razor-sharp wit, and an unflinching commitment to truth-telling. Their performances are equal parts poetry, protest, and prayer: a call to arms and a call home.
Founder of Gem.In.Eyes Productions and a three-time San Antonio Grand Slam Champion, Chibbi has taken their voice across the country, earning over 3 million views online and publishing two poetry collections along the way. As a queer artist in recovery, their work is rooted in resistance, survival, and joy, using storytelling to make sense of identity, ancestry, grief, and hope.
The Target Shoots Back isn’t just an album, it’s a reclamation that turns the wound into the weapon, then passes you the mic.
The Target Shoots Back is funded and supported in part by VORTEX Repertory Company.
Event Coordinators: Jasmine Games, Director of Education and Social Justice, Emma Robertson, Butterfly Bar Manager, Xander Curiel, Butterfly Bar Floor Manager.
Melissa McKnight, Managing Director, Bonnie Cullum, Producing Artistic Director