Jealousy and survival have a cage match co-hosted by 24-hour cable news and post-modern art. more ›

Home to historical psychedelic luminaries the 13th Floor Elevators and Shiva's Headband among others, the New Year's weekend will see Austin playing host to an entirely different axis of psych and progressive music. German percussionist, improviser, and theatrical force Mani Neumeier - late of the seminal Krautrock ensemble Guru Guru - will be performing the kickoff show for the 2012 Church of the Friendly Ghost concert season. Neumeier will be featured in the duo Guru Mania with guitarist Jürgen Engler (Die Krupps), as well as directing a large ensemble improvisation and sitting in with local lysergic warhorses ST37. Multi-instrumentalist and composer Jacob Green (Gary Wilson, New Music Coop) will also be performing with members of Pataphysics and Brekekekex koax koax. more ›

They Gotta Be Secret Agents were once part of Boston's rubbery troupe Snappy Dance Theater, and that their current work combines acrobatics, puppetry, and dance. Poste Restante somehow involves a mysterious package, a winged bicycle, a cardboard box bikini, and a cocoa puff. more ›

Amidst all the stage combat, mugging, and music in Guest by Courtesy, the writing steals the show. Often in pieces born of movement and stage pictures, words take a back seat, but Hannah Kenah's script is polished and nuanced, with a Wildean attention to style amidst so much wild stage action. The zingers are precise, the lines have rhythm, and Jason Hays delivers a monologue about ponies that is both political and hilarious. more ›

Connor Hopkins and his crew of deft puppeteer-actors have developed a dark, singular aesthetic, and they use the medium of puppetry to start a conversation. That conversation looks at humans and manipulation: by science (Frankenstein), by big business (The Jungle), and in every scenario, by each other. Riddley Walker continues this conversation, with clever use of a sense of metatheatricality to look at how old traditions of storytelling might continue in a postapocalyptic world. If that sounds too heady for you, there's also puppet sex. more ›

69 Love Scenes, which opened last week at Salvage Vanguard Theater, is to a Magnetic Fields fanatic as X-Men: Generation X is to a die-hard Marvel fan. Written by Monique Daviau and Avimaan Syam (who also directs), with additional writing contributions by other members of Gnap! Theater Projects, the piece embodies perfectly the ideas, concept, and emotion of the album, while also bringing a new, clever interpretation. more ›

f you have never seen a nine-year old girl ace an improv set or watched a one-woman show performed by a former madam from Detroit, you're missing out. If you are one of those people who thinks that ‘women aren’t funny’, then you definitely are, and you probably weren't at last week's Ladies Are Funny Festival here in Austin. more ›

We're a literate city that loves music, but we're understandably skittish about combining the two. Over the years, a natural divide has yawned open between spoken word and live music - the two don't seem to need one another the way they did in the '50s. However...that doesn't mean they've stopped wanting one another. Billed as "A Night of Instrumental Expression and Poetic Thought," the "Lyr·i·cism" show at the Salvage Vanguard - presented by The Church of the Friendly Ghost and its members Bradford Kinney and Derek Rogers - is a four-hour program which fuses visuals, poetry, prose, and music. more ›

We're all meat. Or, puppets, as it were. That's essentially the message of Upton Sinclair's brilliant, wrenching 1906 novel, The Jungle. The book, a stark depiction of poverty, corruption, and brutality in America's turn-of-the-last-century meatpacking industry, is an indictment of an unjust system that affects everybody in the food chain. Heavy subject matter for a puppet show, and yet, Trouble Puppet have made magic in their theatrical adaptation, now playing at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre. more ›

Here is the magic of Salvage Vanguard Theater's Heddatron: After over an hour in which the vast majority of the characters -- eleven, counting the robots -- display nothing that resembles a real human emotion, the play's resolution sneaks around for an unexpectedly deep and affecting conclusion that validates all of the silliness (and there certainly is silliness) that came before. It's the theatrical equivalent of Ali's rope-a-dope, wearing audiences out by bobbing and weaving, laying back, and then delivering the emotional knock-out punch that no one saw coming. In short, it's a unique experience made all the more powerful by the fact that everything that happens for the majority of the play is robots and precocious pre-adolescent narrators and karaoke and Strawberry Shortcake costumes and crazy shit like that. more ›

Tongue And Groove Theater proved itself, with The Red Balloon, to be one of Austin's more interesting theatrical stylists. Omnivorous in its approach, the company seemed determined to just create a brilliant, beautiful live experience, unconcerned with being Theater-with-capital-letters and instead mostly interested in giving audiences what they want, not what they expect. more ›

John Boulanger knows American absurdism. His precedent-setting House of Several Stories, which garnered the ACTF National Student Playwrighting Award in 2008, presented a refreshing reminder of the genre's ability to stun and strike a deep, resonating cord. Viewers expecting something like a repeat of this stylistic acrobatics show be forewarned: despite typical elements like negligent mothers, incompetent therapists, and general confusion about reality, this show is only absurdist-ish. It's straight-up zany. This show simply won't allow you to take it seriously. Don't bother trying. more ›

The FronteraFest Long Fringe finally kicks off tonight, and we couldn't be more excited. This looks to be one of the festival's strongest lineups in years, with ascending Austin companies like City On A Hill, Capital T Theater, and Tongue and Groove all participating, as well as a number of newcomers, out-of-towners, and theatermakers just one great show away from finding themselves one of 2011's most talked-about companies. With all of that happening over the next two weeks, Austinist polled our theater writers to see what they were most excited about. Keep reading to see what everyone's most psyched for. more ›

Just Like the Rodeo, Gnap! Theater Project's "month-long series of one-night only experiments in performance and comedy" at Salvage Vanguard Theater, just wound down. Performances this year included a staged reading of , an interactive improv show based on the famous board game. more ›

The 80's, birthtime of Crimes of the Heart, 'Night, Mother, The Heidi Chronicles (all of which won the Pulitzer), Extremities, Early Girl, etc., should be renamed the Era of Theatre About Broads Sitting Around Talking About Deep Shit. Early Girl, Caroline Kava's 1986 chronicle of the life and times of brothel inhabitants is, despite its convention of abstracted time occurring outside of the playing space, a jaunt through the "slice-of-life" realism that was all the rage. This sort of piece is a conversation, and each of the characters represent a different and identifiable voice in the discussion of a particular social issue. If the director doesn't make a concerted effort to veer clear of tropes and dive into character, the play fails to achieve its main possible success, which is to spur consideration and empathy. In a play that attempts to make human those who are often reduced to caricature, nuance, subtext, and connection history are of the utmost concern. Even if if the piece isn't really "pungent" (according to the New York Times review of the original production) or provocative any more (Pretty Woman has made the same basic points to a wider audience since its debut), it still has the capacity to be evocative and interesting, when the person at the helm knows how to crash characters together and take advantage of a well-written script. more ›

As 2010 begins its second half (already! Can you believe it?), there've been a number of spectacular performances, productions, and scripts to grace the Austin stage this year. And, as we start to look ahead to what the next six months have in store, we first want to take one last look back. Austinist polled its theater and comedy writers and asked each of them to offer two moments that stood out in the first half of 2010. more ›

For the second year in a row, the Out Of Bounds Improv Festival has doubled in size—from a little over a hundred performers in 2008 to 500 this year, including The Kids In The Hall's Kevin McDonald and NPR's Will Durst. And if you've been wondering where and when you were going to be able to see all of them, we've got the full schedule available now. Venues include improv mainstay theaters The Hideout, The Salvage Vanguard Theater, and Coldtowne Theater, as well as The Velveeta Room and ND at 501 Studios. The festival runs the week of August 31st, through September 6th. The full schedule is available on the festival's website. more ›

The Magnetic Fields' ambitious triple album, 69 Love Songs, was released in 1999 to critical acclaim. Nick Mirov in a Pitchfork review wrote that "[t]here's only one question that really needs to be asked of 69 Love Songs: is it a brilliant masterpiece or merely very, very good?" More than ten years later, Gnap! Theater Projects brings Austin the workshop version of a theatrical representation of the album, with the full show scheduled to appear in a 2011 run. more ›

Tonight the Ladies Are Funny Festival (LAFF), which is in its fourth year of production, takes over Salvage Vanguard Theater. LAFF, running through Saturday night, has expanded over the last few years to include more nights of shows featuring a bigger line up of female comedians and performers from all over the map, including Austin, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York and Toronto. Over the next four nights sketch comedy, improv, stand-up and one-woman-shows will be tickling audience's funny bones. more ›

In August 2009 I had the good fortune to be cast in the show and later this month I get to travel to Chicago to perform at the Second City Skybox stage with some of the Dusk cast. As a relatively new contributor to Austinist, I wanted to share some insight into my experience with Dusk last year and getting ready to go perform in Chicago. In August 2009 I had the good fortune to be cast in the show and later this month I get to travel to Chicago to perform at the Second City Skybox stage with some of the Dusk cast. As a relatively new contributor to Austinist, I wanted to share some insight into my experience with Dusk last year and getting ready to go perform in Chicago. more ›

A parody ideally strikes a nice balance between poking fun of its subject matter and holding true to the tenets of the genre it's deconstructing. Apocalypse!, Gnap! Theater Project's current main stage show, does a good job of striking that balance. Apocalypse! is a completely improvised play in the style of the post-apocalyptic genre. What exactly is that? It's the story of a world which has experienced a complete catastrophic destruction of society, exemplified by such diverse films and novels as The Road Warrior, The Road, and 28 Days Later. Austinist got a chance to take in the show on Saturday April 3. Overall, the show was impressive and a whole lot of fun. Despite a few small complaints from that night, Apocalypse! is highly recommended. more ›

Gnap! Theater Project's newest work, the improvised show Apocalypse!, opens this Friday night. Apocalypse! is billed as "an improvised play about the end of the world." The concept brings to mind films like The Road Warrior or 28 Days Later. Because the show is improvised, each night the rotating cast will create a new world at it's end. The Armageddon on any given night may be the result of zombies, mutants, something entirely different or all of the above. One can expect drama, action and, of course, comedy. 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 ›

In This House (Everything Is You) is collaborative creation, not a ghost story, but in fact a memory story ranging across the years, a touching narrative in non-linear time. Mind you, there is a ghost - Jamie Rhodes as that silent young woman in black who follows the action around. But except for the wild stories of the young brother and sister, we never really get around to her story. more ›

Faster Than the Speed of Light is a triumph on so many levels that it's more or less fair to dismiss the fact that the show's plot is almost indiscernible. more ›

This Sunday at the Salvage Vanguard Theater, The Church of the Friendly Ghost is kicking off their inaugural "Lady Friends" concert, the first of four events to showcase dynamic and fresh female voices in the Austin music scene. more ›

Who are The Visitations, and why might you care? If you've got any stock in the southern pop renaissance of Elephant Six, you probably will. more ›

Iphigenia is a twisted tale, so we'll let the press release do the talking: "...Greek tragedy spun into a sleek netherworld of sex, drugs, and trance music. Iphigenia is the daughter of a political celebrity. She embraces sensuous excess with a transgendered glam rock star named Achilles in a desperate attempt to flee her seemingly inevitable fate." more ›

Tonight at the Salvage Vanguard, the Church of the Friendly Ghost is hosting Eugene Chadbourne, an artist whose thirty-plus years of making music have swooped across blues, jazz, rock, and especially jazz. more ›

With the ravaging of our coasts by hurricanes and the continued downturn of world markets, it’s not uncommon to momentarily forget that we’re also in big trouble overseas, especially in regard to the un-winnable quagmire we call the War in Iraq. Local jazz musician Alex Coke first put aired his thoughts on the war and the act of terrorism that supposedly provoked it back in 2005, and called it Iraqnophobia. Some three years later we’re still as entrenched as ever, and Coke is joining with the Creative Opportunity Orchestra to perform this piece today at the Salvage Vanguard Theater as part of the Church of the Friendly Ghost’s ongoing concert series. more ›