Two of the city's most creative collectives are hitting the road again in coming months, enlivening a pair of international cultural festivals with some of their trademark Austin mischief. Next week, the visual-arts crew at Okay Mountain blasts off to Miami to show off its Corner Store, a site-specific, immersive installation, at Pulse Contemporary Art Fair. Arthouse at the Jones Center commissioned the work, which will turn Arthouse's fair booth into a bogus convenience store, with every inch covered in handcrafted art that mimics quickie-mart decor and goods: The counters, coolers, food products, posters, zines, paintings, even an ambient soundtrack and security monitor video will all be handmade by the Okay Mountaineers, and, better yet, every item will be for sale. Although the collective notes that "carrying along the convenience store theme, the prices of our goods will be inflated (due to convenience) but still very reasonably priced." You just pay the store clerk (an Okay Mountain artist, natch), just like you would at the corner icehouse!
Meanwhile, next spring, the Rude Mechanicals will be firing The Method Gun once more, this time at the 2010 Humana Festival of New American Plays produced by the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Louisville, Ky. This will be the third version of this exploration of the life and techniques of Stella Burden, actor-training guru of the Sixties and Seventies, whose technique, the Approach, was dubbed "the most dangerous acting technique in the world." But just as the restless Rudes made changes to the piece that premiered at the Long Center in 2008 when they staged it at the Off Center the following year, they'll be reworking the piece yet again for Humana. The festival will sponsor a three-week workshop for the show prior to a new world premiere showing March 16-28, 2010. To see what other shows will be premiering alongside the new Gun at this year's Humana Festival, visit www.actorstheatre.org/humana.htm.
