University Co-op Presents the 2005 David Mark Cohen New Works Festival
By Robert Faires, Fri., April 8, 2005

This year's New Works Festival runs eight days with performances beginning at 2pm each day and ending sometime around midnight. Works are being performed in a variety of spaces around the Winship Drama Building, 23rd and San Jacinto, some of them quite small and able to seat 15-50 people. The schedule has been organized with performances in the smaller venues starting on the hour and those in the larger venues starting 15 minutes after the hour, so audience members who are not able to get into a smaller venue have the chance to get to a larger venue and still see a show in that time slot.
Thanks to sponsorship of the University Co-op, all performances and events are free. For more information, visit www.coopnwf.org.
Aisle Seven
by Kendall Lynch
Camille goes to the grocery. She thinks this must be the best place in the world. Where life is just like the flickering images on the television.
Winship 1.172, Thursday, April 14, 7pm; Friday, April 15, 2pm
Boom Town, Ghost Town
by Jennifer Cameron
The tale of Apparition, Ky., a fictional Appalachian coal town whose inhabitants live trapped between a bitter past and a dying future.
B. Iden Payne Theatre, Monday, April 11, 9:15pm; Tuesday, April 12, 2:15pm
Dance Repertory Theatre: Cause and Effect
Three dances: Andee Scott's "born again," exploring the difference between what we say and what we do; a dance created collaboratively with Mexico's Delfos Contemporary Dance during a two-week UT residency; and David Justin's "Adverse Camber," a twisting journey from the urban to the rural, with a score by UT composer Rob Deemer.
Payne Theatre, Friday, April 8, 8pm; Saturday, April 9, 2pm and 8pm; Sunday, April 10, 2pm
Disposable Me
by Ann Taylor
Surreal comedy with songs in which Junebug tries to break out of a cycle of self-destruction after her grandmother's death. Drawings created live by artist Michael Arthur are projected during the reading.
Winship 2.180, Monday, April 11, 9pm; Tuesday, April 12, 9pm; Wednesday, April 13, 2pm
Fear of a Fuhrer
by Abi Basch
Collaboratively generated exploration of puppetry, movement, language, and silence to approach the impossible impulses of violence and devotion.
Brockett Theatre Trap Room, Thursday, April 14, 9:15pm; Friday, April 15, 2:15pm
Film Festival
Short films from UT students, including Tristan Becker and Andrea Mosteller's "Twins," a macabre work about two conjoined twins told in Claymation.
Winship 2.112, Saturday, April 9, 9pm; Monday, April 11, 9pm; Tuesday, April 12, 9pm
Film-Dance-Film
Showcase of student- and faculty-generated short films that explore ideas about movement/dance and the film medium.
Winship 2.112, Saturday, April 9, 7pm; Monday, April 11, 7pm; Tuesday, April 12, 7pm
Finito
by Jessica Smolins
A man and a woman want to end their relationship, but their task is complicated by their mix of English, Italian, and a strange, unidentifiable language.
Winship 1.134, Friday, April 8, 9:30pm; Saturday, April 9, 7pm; Thursday, April 14, 7pm
Flesh and the Desert
by Carson Krietzer, with music by Kristi McGarity
The story of showbiz people, troupers, and the truth that lies somewhere between sequins and feathers and cooking a meal at home in 1950s Las Vegas.
Lab Theatre, Sunday, April 10, 7:15pm; Monday, April 11, 2:15pm
Gracie and Rose
by Anastasia Coon
Solo performance melding movement, gesture, and text as Rose describes life with her lover Grace on a ranch in Wyoming in the early 1960s.
Winship 2.180, Friday, April 8, 9:30pm; Saturday, April 9, 7pm; Friday, April 15, 7pm
Guest Play Reading From Boulder, Colo.
Winship 1.134, Wednesday, April 13, 7pm
Holed
Text, music, and architecture summon a barn in the Midwest in the 1980s, where the farm crisis meets the anti-government movement and the 1960s left meets the 1990s right.
Winship 2.180, Saturday, April 9, 9pm; Sunday, April 10, 2pm and 9pm
Lacuna
by Kim Burke
The tale of Coho, a young woman getting a full body tattoo, and her relationship with her tattoo master and the sideshow love affair between Geek Girl and the Pig Faced Woman.
Brockett Theatre, Saturday, April 9, 9:15pm; Sunday, April 10, 2:15pm
Mishumaa
by Greg Romero
Through dreamlike vignettes inspired by the seven principles of Kwanzaa, a filmmaker making a movie about werewolves grieves for his murdered wife.
Winship 2.180, Thursday, April 14, 2pm and 9pm; Friday, April 15, 2pm
Momentahn
by Martha Lynn Coon, with music by Arles Estes
Film, live performance, and sound serve as vehicles for exploring and expressing the dynamic life of one man's mind and the choices he faces in a moment.
Lab Theatre, Friday, April 8, 9:30pm; Saturday, April 9, 9:15pm
MUDD Studio
Playwrights Martha Lynn Coon, Ann Taylor, Jason Tremblay, and J.G. Goggin present excerpts of their works created through the MUDD playwriting studio.
Winship 2.112, Thursday, April 14, 9pm
Negligible Association
With just a scrim, a few lights, and a chair, teams of students let their creativity run wild for five minutes in the trap room below the Brockett Theatre.
Brockett Theatre Trap Room, Monday, April 11, 2:15pm and 9:15pm; Tuesday, April 12, 9:15pm
Ophelia
by Dustin Wills
Five women, all of whom represent some part of the character of Ophelia from Shakespeare's
Hamlet, explore the boundaries of love, existence, their bodies, and words.
Brockett Theatre, Sunday, April 10, 9:15pm; Monday, April 11, 7:15pm
People Who Fail
by Steve Moore
A family's grown daughter begins to move backward through time, a signal that tragedy will befall the family within 24 hours.
Winship 1.134, Sunday, April 10, 2pm and 9pm; Monday, April 11, 9pm
Permeable Boundary
by Ledia Carroll and Leah Davis
Interactive installation featuring a series of large-scale skins for people to move through will be set up for the duration of the festival.
Ongoing, Winship Bus Circle
Project Aurora: Incandescence
by Shelley Hardin and Charlotte Craff
A solo dance titled "ShadowPuppets" and a duet called "Fire and Ice" incorporate real-time interaction between the dancer and a visual projection.
Lab Theatre, Tuesday, April 12, 9:15pm; Wednesday, April 13, 7:15pm
Radical Chautaqua
by Rebecca Hewitt, Claire Canavan, Sarah Myers, Amber Feldman, Liz Jones, Michelle Lee, Sarah Rinner, J. Richard Smith, and Julia Brainin
Nine solo performance pieces exploring figures as diverse as Audre Lorde, Dorothy Parker, Jack Kerouac, and Frank O'Hara.
Winship 1.134, Tuesday, April 12, 2pm; Wednesday, April 13, 9pm
The Realm
by Sarah Myers
Science-fiction play that follows two teenagers as they escape from a plastic-coated, slogan-filled underground dystopia of the future. Developed in conjunction with the Theatre Focus Program at St. Stephen's Episcopal School.
Brockett Theatre, Thursday, April 14, 7:15pm; Friday, April 15, 7:15pm
The Rich and Strange Cabaret
Theatre students Larry Pontius and Kendra Treichler coordinate this year's open stage.
Lab Theatre, Thursday, April 14, 10pm
The Same Story
by Ryan Campbell
Play examining the breakdown of male friendships through the lives of a young drug dealer and his best friend and two aging hit men.
Winship 1.134, Wednesday, April 13, 2pm; Thursday, April 14, 2pm; Friday, April 15, 7pm
SEED
Students Exhibiting Experimental Dance presents three- to 10-minute collaborative efforts among musicians, visual artists, actors, and dancers.
Lab Theatre, Thursday, April 14, 7:15pm; Friday, April 15, 2:15pm
Static
by Ryan Pavelchik, with film by Lucas Millard and music by Nano Whitman
Live performances by a CD alarm clock, a hotel room, a telephone, a television, and an actor tell the story of how a man who has shut himself up in a hotel room deals with his failures and fears.
Payne Theatre, Thursday, April 14, 7:15pm; Friday, April 15, 7:15pm
Umbrella
by Larry Pontius
Thirtysomethings Frank and Helen are desperate to connect with other people, but they find themselves confronted by steel, glass, and concrete.
Payne Theatre, Wednesday, April 13, 2:15pm and 9:15pm
We're Here, We're (some of us) Queer
Guest artists Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver join faculty member Jill Dolan and her class to explore the concept of queer performance. What is it? Does it require queer performers and queer spectators?
Winship 1.134, Monday, April 11, 2pm; Tuesday, April 12, 7pm
Wonderment of Light as It Dances
An exploration of lighting as a stand-alone energy that can entertain, relax, and captivate an audience.
Robotics Lab, Saturday, April 9, 2pm; Sunday, April 10, 7pm; Monday, April 11, 7pm
Wrapped/The Transportation Project
In Wrapped, choreographer Meg Sullivan and designer Yvonne Boudreaux present improvisational modern dance performed on, around, and through an architectural sculpture on which visual images are projected. The Transportation Project features scenes by playwright Genevieve Wiley set on a bus circling campus. But depending on the time and space (such as on a real bus), the audience may or may not know that the scenes are performances, altering our perception of what goes on around us.
Brockett Theatre, Tuesday, April 12, 7:15pm; Wednesday, April 13, 2:15pm
Stories of the Festival
Guest playwright Sherry Kramer and festival artists offer stories of hard work, hardships, and success to describe what the festival meant for them.
Brockett Theatre, Friday, April 15, 9:15pm