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 home in Austin, Texas. We enliven humanity with a magical green new theatre at our Butterfly Bar and Sanctuary. 

The Vortex core values

In January 2019, The VORTEX Company gathered to assemble words and concepts that are essential to our Core Values. The VORTEX Board of Directors distilled these words into a Pentacle of Integrity.

• 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 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.

The VORTEX acknowledges the first people of this land where we create art and magic.

We honor the Lipan Apache, Comanche, Tonkawa, Coahuiltecan, Jumano, and many others whose names may not be known, as well as the living descendants and future ancestors who reside on and care for this land. We pledge ourselves to do the work of decolonization, restoration, and reconciliation as guided by their vision and experience as we move forward to a more just future.

We uphold that every person has a right to bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom. All people must have access to privacy and complete health care, including abortion and birth control services. We will continue to stand up for reproductive freedom and justice for all people. We uphold that every person has a right to express their gender as they wish. We uphold same sex marriage and the rights of every person to love whomever they wish.

The Vortex ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT

The VORTEX believes in equity, diversity, and inclusion, and is committed to providing a barrier-free environment that allows all people to maintain their independence and dignity.

VORTEX Patrons and Employees:

• Should have equal access to employment, productions, and programs

• Should be diverse and represent our entire community in all aspects

We are continuing our work on methods to better serve patrons with all manner of disabilities and special needs.

Our budgetary limits make some of this work slow going, especially on the archival sections of our website, but we are committed to working towards accessibility for all.

As an organization, we respect and uphold the requirements set forth under The Americans with Disabilities Act, Title III, and its associated amendments and strive to meet the needs of individuals with disabilities in a timely and effective manner.

WHAT WE DO

As leaders in the growth and stability of the arts in Austin, The VORTEX thrives as a unique regional theatre, providing an essential community destination with significant, professional theatrical productions, community gathering space, our nationally-certified butterfly sanctuary, and our lively Butterfly Bar. The VORTEX serves as a catalyst for change, providing theatrical art characterized by direct impact. We engage in radical transformation through edge-walking artistic creations, women-led projects, tuition-free Summer Youth Theatre, and innovative collaborations featuring artists of diverse ages, genders, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Original work encompasses plays, operas, musicals, ritual theatre, devised collaborations, spoken word, and immersive experiences. 

As a fearless, woman-run, theatre exchange for a shifting age, The VORTEX stimulates inquiry and challenges white supremacy. Our anti-racist lens reflects the diversity of people and voices of the BIPOC global majority. As change-makers and truth-tellers for more than 37 years, The VORTEX challenges destructive cycles by striving for equitable, life-sustaining civilization. 

Audiences include people of all ages, genders, and backgrounds; engaged African American neighbors; LGBTQ+; people with disabilities; at-risk youth; Latine artists and populations, University of Texas students and faculty, dozens of other University populations. Austin’s unique environment favors independent thinking, environmental justice, activism, feminism, history, and art.University of Texas students and faculty; students from dozens of other nearby colleges. Live-streaming of most productions reaches a global market and  broadens access. VORTEX tickets are economically accessible with discounted and free Radical Rush pricing. 

For 35 years, The VORTEX has offered training and opportunities for young professionals with our tuition-free Summer Youth Theatre, and we have expanding educational offerings with VORTEX Voices teen playwriting and poetry programming. Over the last two decades, The VORTEX has offered regular ASL-interpreted performances for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences. We are cultivating relationships with blind audiences with audio-described performances last season. Ongoing food drives support SAFE Austin. Internships and work study jobs directly engage university students. The VORTEX supports numerous theatre companies, artists, musicians, dancers, and community organizations by sharing our venue and resources.

The VORTEX contributes to the vitality of Austin’s economy, creating dozens of full-time jobs and paying artists. We are a leader in the Austin New Works Community and the Austin theatre community and have been recognized as a Platinum Level Green Business leader. We have always recycled are now composting.

OUR ROOTS

Widely-recognized as the pioneering leader in Austin’s alternative theatre scene, VORTEX Repertory Company was founded in 1988 by University of Texas at Austin graduate students Bonnie Cullum, Steve Bacher, Lurana Donnels O’Malley, and Sean T.C. O’Malley. Forged to create relevant theatrical work and push boundaries of form and content, The VORTEX helped change the palate of what was possible in Austin’s theatre scene.

In 1989, The VORTEX produced its first season at Mexic-Arte Museum in downtown Austin. After several devised, political plays, and performance art works, we had tremendous success with our adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and Václav Havel’s Temptation, and we decided to continue our experiments. In January 1990, we opened our own venue in an enormous movie triplex on East Ben White Blvd. We became an official 501(c)(3) non-profit, tax-exempt theater in 1991. The VORTEX operated a thriving compound with three theaters and spacious lobby until 1994, when the property was torn down for redevelopment.

After a long search of Austin’s available properties, The VORTEX moved to an abandoned warehouse on Manor Road and began a heroic transformation of the dilapidated space into a theatre. We opened in October 1994 as Planet Theatre, a grand vision of the multi-use artistic harbor that we desired for the space. We rented scaffolding and installed insulation. We battled with the challenges of the old mid 20th-century tin building. We began with no air conditioning or heat and porta-potties for restrooms, as we built The VORTEX one small step at a time. In 1999, after five years of progress and improvements to the venue, a family LLC purchased the property, and we changed the venue’s name to The VORTEX.

The VORTEX was the first theatre to establish a home on Austin’s historically-underserved Eastside, laying the foundations for a blossoming arts and entertainment district. In 2011, The VORTEX’s Café was transformed into The Butterfly Bar. In 2013, we obtained a full mixed beverage license, and Patrizi’s Italian food truck joined our compound. In 2016, Sno.Co began serving shaved ice in our parking lot. Open seven nights a week in East Austin, The VORTEX continues to anchor a cultural hub, a butterfly sanctuary, dynamic theatrical productions, and a comfortable environment for deepening our conversations.

OUR AUDIENCE

The VORTEX serves a broad audience in Central Texas, with a three-county population of more than two million. Live Streaming of productions on Howlround.com/tv reaches a global market of those who are physically unable to come to the theatre. Our diverse audience includes people of all ages and genders, LatinX and African-American patrons, The VORTEX’s ethnically diverse Eastside neighborhood, 50,000 University of Texas students, faculty, and staff, students from dozens of other colleges, LGBTQ patrons, persons with disabilities, and at-risk youth. Austin’s unique environment favors independent thinking, political activism, feminism, history, and art.

The VORTEX generates new audiences through outreach to special constituencies. We provide American Sign Language Interpreted performances and keep our performances economically accessible to all audiences with sliding scale tickets and Free Radical Rush Tickets as part of the gift economy. The VORTEX has an ongoing food drive for SafePlace (a shelter for women and children) as another way for our patrons to give back to the community.

ABOUT THE VORTEX COMPANY

The VORTEX ensemble is a family of multi-talented artists that includes actors, designers, directors, composers, playwrights, choreographers, dancers, aerialists, musicians, and technicians. Our company has been creating, devising, and crafting theatre together for 5, 15, and more than 25 years! Our ensemble’s diversity of skills, ethnicity, gender identity, and life experience enriches our work. Our cultural heritages are broad and inclusive: LatinX, Asian-American, African-American, Kurdish, Lebanese, French Canadian, Scottish, Sicilian, Irish, Mexican, African, Filipino, Polynesian, mixed race, and 5th generation Texan. Some of us work full-time as artists. Some of us are teachers. Some of us are activists. We are queer and straight, Pagan and Christian, vegan and omnivore. We range in age from 20-70. We are united in our commitment to the creation of work that helps change the world.

ABOUT THE VORTEX PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Bonnie Cullum co-founded The VORTEX in Austin in 1988. At the heart of The VORTEX organization throughout its entire history, she has moved the company and venue forward with her vision and perseverance. As Producing Artistic Director, she has collaborated with the ensemble of VORTEX artists to create and present 29 seasons of new work—more than 350 innovative and distinct productions. In 2009, Cullum was honored by the Austin Critics’ Table and inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame. She received an MFA in Directing from University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Theatre from the University of Kansas. She has devised dozens of new pieces from concept to performance. She writes, directs, shapes, and produces interactive performance events, ritual theatre, original musicals, CyberOperas, and performance art. While she has directed many new plays, her current work has evolved to devised large-scale projects by the ensemble and ritual theatre with sacred elements. Thrice honored as Austin’s Best Director by the Austin Chronicle, Cullum has been nominated for dozens of outstanding directing awards and received B. Iden Payne Awards for Best Director for Sarah Silver Hands (2011, NEA-funded opera), Troades: The Legend of the Women of Troy (2008, original play with music), Moby Dick (2002, original play adapted from Melville), and Despair's Book of Dreams and the Sometimes Radio (2000, original musical). She founded The VORTEX's award-winning Summer Youth Theatre in 1991 to provide free theatre opportunities for youth, nurturing several generations of young artists. She teaches theatre, acting, directing, and ritual workshops and classes in Germany, British Columbia, Northern California, Minneapolis, and Texas. Cullum is internationally recognized for her experimental productions and her advocacy of cutting-edge artists.

THE VORTEX IS A MEMBER OF:

• Austin New Works Community

• Upper Boggy Creek Planning Team

• Founder of East Austin Live

• Founding Members of the Austin Climate Leaders Initiative

• City of Austin Platinum Green Business Leader