Wahoo for Rubber Rep! more ›

At Fusebox 2010, Austin's fearless theatermakers Rubber Repertory interviewed dozens of people for a new show based on a random person's life. Asking questions and taking "something that smells like you" from each interviewee, they selected Jamie Damon as their subject. After more conversations and sifting through the cache of belongings she offered up, Biography of Physical Sensation opened at Salvage Vanguard last fall. (Austinist's original review is here.) The show is back - this time at the Off Center's secondary space, the Off Shoot for Fusebox, with the final performances running from tonight through Saturday. Choose a small, medium, or large chair (the bigger the seat the more intense the experience) to be exposed to bits and pieces of one woman's life - purely through sensory inputs. There's no narrative, and every chair gets a different experience. more ›

When audience members are seated for Rubber Rep's Biography of Physical Sensation, they're asked to choose a big, medium, or small chair. The bigger the chair, the more directly involved the person sitting in it will be in the situations that occur as part of the performance, which is designed to re-create dozens of the life experiences of a woman the company selected from a number of applicants: Her name is Jamie Damon, and all that the audience experiences are the sensory inputs - sights, smells, sounds, and touches - removed of their context. more ›

The "what we perceive is what we bring about/become" angle is better left, in real life, stuffed in the mouths of those assholes who forgo bathing in order to finish reading The Secret. It weakens what was an otherwise credible, engaging conversation and spurs one to consider the speaker's planet of origin and dedication to crystal collection. In a theatrical context, it's both more accessible and acceptable as it can be symbolically literalized; we see the effects and the proof of the theories in action, making the ideas more plausible. It also, in the case of A Brief Narrative, can make for quite the spectacle. more ›

The Casket of Passing Fancy is not a play, and it’s not, in any conventional sense, improv. It’s a hyper-participatory extravaganza of perpetual surprise, culminating in a theatrical experience that, like a psychedelic Choose Your Own Adventure story, tailors to each individual audience member’s taste, curiosity, or hunger. more ›

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A couple of shows with big phatty hype open this week. So ph-ph-phatty, that we’re bringing back the word phat (with a p.h. homeslice!) just to emphasize how phatty it really is. PHAT. PH. AT. Ok. Our Austinist Pick of the Week is a toss-up. Red Cans is the show the press just can’t get enough of. Josh Meyer and Matt Hislope, the delightful duo behind Rubber Repertory – the company producing the project... more ›

(Photo by Matt Wright) As children, we were a car trip family. Five of us would pack into a Subaru and set sail from Cleveland for other, even more Midwestern destinations. Places like Lawrence, Kansas, where great grandmother lived until her death in 2004. In high school, we'd stand in the alley behind Grandma's house, sneaking cigarettes where the family couldn't see. Back there we saw the sordid underbelly of Lawrence -- kids up... more ›

Along with our interview with "Egypt Egypt" author Sam Ramos, we offered you, our readers, a chance to win a signed copy of his latest book, "Total Happiness." Using our special triple-redundant contest entry selection strategy (which included liberal readings of tea leaves, random.org, and a sampling of the mint-years of the pennies in our change drawer), we're happy to announce the following winners: more ›