Art After Six @ The People's Gallery
Presented by City of Austin Cultural Arts Division

Stop by The People's Gallery at City Hall for extended gallery hours and talks by artists from the 2016 exhibition! Artist talks begin at 6:15 pm in Boards & Commissions room. The gallery will be open for self-guided tours 6:00 - 8:00 pm. Artworks are on display on the first three floors. Pick up a gallery guide on the first floor.

Featured artists: Cindy Debold, Kat Kohl, Scott Rolfe

The People's Gallery is a program of the Cultural Arts Division, Economic Development Department. Limited free parking is available in the City Hall parking garage; other parking downtown is provided at a fee on a first-come, first-served basis.

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COTFG: Benton Roark+Jeanne Stern, Jesse Beaman(My Empty Phantom), Dimmer Twins
Presented by Church of the Friendly Ghost

Friday, May 27th at SVT
10:00 Benton Roark/Arkora: Songs from the Rainshadow's Edge
10:45 Dimmer Twins

Saturday, May 28th at SVT
10:00pm Jesse Beaman of My Empty Phantom
10:45 Benton Roark/Arkora: Songs from the Rainshadow's Edge

Songs from the Rainshadow’s Edge – a song cycle in five parts by Benton Roark – is a musical journey into a “dark and interior vision” (The Georgia Straight). Scored for the unusual compliment of soprano, narrator, electric guitar, flute, viola, double bass, percussion, and sampled sounds, this 33-minute, five-part cycle takes the listener deep into a lush soundscape populated by post-impressionistic textures, sweeping vocal lines, haunting lullabies, and fleeting clouds of microtonality. A seasoned composer and songwriter, Roark has in this work pioneered a language that merges his eclectic influences from avant-garde and folk traditions, crafting a work that shows a “deep unity of music and text” (Vital Weekly). 

The live orchestral performance is accompanied with video by Jeanne Stern, commissioned for the piece. The film features lush otherworldly landscapes comprised of miniature environments, and kaleidoscopic video of Austin, Texas and northern Portugal.

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A Little Night Music
Presented by Austin Playhouse at ACC's Highland Campus

May 27 - June 26, 2016

Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 5 p.m.

Set in turn of the century Sweden, A Little Night Music explores the tangled web of affairs centered around famed and fading actress Desirée Armfeldt and the men who love her. When these men — as well as their wives — agree to join Desirée and her family for a weekend in the country, lovers reunite, simmering passions ignite, and new romances blossom. This witty and enchanting Tony award-winning musical features a beautiful, lush score by beloved composer Stephen Sondheim and writer Hugh Wheeler.

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Past, Present, and Future
Presented by Chorus Austin

May 28, 2016

Join Chorus Austin in the Finale concert of our 50th anniversary celebration. We will present Choral Masterpieces from luminaries such as Mozart, Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Beethoven, to name but a few! Then share with us as we give the world premiere of a new, multi- movement work for chorus, orchestra, and soloists by Austin’s own Donald Grantham. The work, commissioned by Chorus Austin, is sure to quickly enter the repertoire of contemporary masterpieces. Come share in the excitement of being part of this inaugural performance!

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Alt Girl Cinema PERSEPOLIS
Presented by Women's Community Center of Central Texas

May 28, 2016

Attention: Girls, film lovers, and creatives! Join us for the first animation screening of Alt Girl Cinema, an alternative pop-up film series in Austin. We’ll be showing PERSEPOLIS, about a young Iranian woman who's exiled and comes to age during the Iranian Revolution. Persepolis is the first animated feature directed by a woman to be nominated by the Academy Awards. Directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. Languages French, English, and Persian. Special guest to be announced.

Possible Triggers: Sexual harassment, torture, exile

Event Details:
Seating opens at 6:30 pm and the screening begins at 7 pm. There will be a few snacks provided, but feel free to bring your own snacks and drinks.

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Opening Gala Celebration
Presented by Austin Piano Festival

May 28, 2016

Imagine a fun filled evening of both serious and casual music making with some of the best musicians in the Austin area! Our Opening Gala is part recital, part soiree, with solo and duet appearances by festival artists and prominent pianists from around Austin. This concert is free and open to the public with an RSVP. We look forward to seeing you at this exciting and fun filled event!

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Austin Baroque Orchestra & Chorus present "Magnificent, Miraculous, Magical Mozart!"
Presented by Austin Baroque Orchestra

May 28 - May 29, 2016

We close our fifth season with a celebration of the wunderkind of Salzburg! Mozart’s music continues to astound with its sublime beauty, grace, and balance, even more than two centuries after his untimely death. We’ll present a variety of masterworks including the passionate Symphony no. 40, the youthful and ebulllient Bassoon Concerto in B-flat major with ABO bassoonist Elizabeth Hardy, and the regal Coronation Mass (Austin’s first performance of a Mozart Mass setting on period instruments!), featuring local favorite, soprano soloist Meredith Ruduski.

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Clybourne Park
Presented by Penfold Theatre Company

May 26 - June 5, 2016

Set in the world of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Clybourne Park is a razor-sharp new satire that takes a hilarious, yet unflinching look at race and real estate in America. Its explosive combination of ferocious truth-telling and laugh out loud entertainment has not only garnered a list of supreme honors – including the Tony Award, Olivier Award and Pulitzer Prize for best new play – but has made it one of the most highly produced American plays of the 21st century.

The first act opens on a house in the fictional neighborhood of Clybourne Park. It is 1959, and community leaders are anxiously trying to block the sale of the home to what would be the area’s first African American family. In act two, fifty years have passed, and the tables have turned. It is now 2009, and Clybourne Park is predominantly black. A white family has purchased the house and neighbors are battling to keep the tide of gentrification at bay.

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Pageant The Musical
Presented by The City Theatre Company

Six Men, One Crown, Endless Night of Fun! This Austin musical favorite is a side-splitting roller coaster ride through the wildest beauty pageant you will ever see as six contestants compete for the glittering tiara and the title of Miss Glamouresse. With swimsuit, talent, and evening gown competitions – the show includes both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat for Miss Deep South, Miss West Coast, Miss Great Plains, Miss Bible Belt, Miss Industrial Northeast and Miss Texas. And, of course, unlike beauty pageants you've seen before, the female contestants are all played by MEN. AND THE WINNER IS? It’s up to you! The audience gets to select who gets the crown each night. It’s a night of sashes and sashays, queens and comedy, that you won’t soon forget. Let the beauty begin! 2015 Drama Desk Award Nominee for Best Musical Revival. "Screamingly funny!" - New York Times.

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Poor Herman
Presented by Paper Chairs

May 12 - May 28, 2016

Poor Herman unearths the life of Herman Melville, who arguably wrote America’s best and worst novels back to back in the 1850 and 1851.  The production considers what compelled Melville, struggling to salvage his declining reputation while trying to feed a growing family, to write a virtually unreadable book, Pierre or the Ambiguities, in the aftermath of Moby Dick’s initial failure with critics and readers. What is known about Melville in those years depicts a man suffering from mania and the curse of outrageous ambition. While hindsight now celebrates his achievements, paper chairs will investigate what it cost him to make history.
 

The play gives voice to the unsung people in his life, chiefly his mother, wife, sisters, and daughters who each contributed to his fame and flourishing, and endured his decline and demise. The ensemble features five women, who play every character in Melville’s life including Melville himself and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Additionally, composer Henna Chou will perform a live original score. By rendering this American icon through the female form, we see the overtly masculine Melville in a whole new light.

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The Lark - Witness the Trial of Joan of Arc
Presented by The Baron's Men

May 6 - May 28, 2016

"The making of a martyr is a dangerous business."

With The Lark, Jean Anouilh gives us a theatrical tour de force: a beautifully written history with a tragic tale at its center that is, nonetheless, infused with wry comedy. The trial of Joan of Arc was one of the best-documented events of its time, with detailed court transcripts surviving to modern day; Anouilh draws many of his scenes out of those very pages.

In keeping with The Baron's Men's artistic mission, the production will be staged in period costumes with live medieval music at the Curtain Theater. So come join us and judge for yourself if the Maid of France was a heretic, a sorceress, a political pawn, or a divinely inspired leader.

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Austin Sketch Fest
Presented by Coldtowne Theater

The seventh annual Austin Sketch Comedy Festival is happening May 23th – 29th. With over 40 acts from Austin, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and across the country, Austin Sketch Fest showcases America’s best live written comedy from acts who are on the verge of blowing up. This includes headlining shows from the amazing Brent Weinbach (Conan, Comedy Central) and Joe Wengert (Kroll Show, Comedy Central’s The Half Hour, Comedy Bang Bang!).

Festival shows are held at ColdTowne Theater, The Hideout Theater and Spider House Ballroom.

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Macbeth
Presented by Austin Shakespeare

Now in its 32nd year of Free Shakespeare in Zilker Park, Austin Shakespeare brings a professional production of a modern, military Macbeth facing unusual witches and sword fights in camouflage. Audiences are encouraged to bring blankets and picnics on any Thursday through Sunday at 8 pm for the entire month of May for the production co-sponsored by the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Dept.

Bloody “Macbeth” will be played by Marc Pouhé, who created the role for Austin Shakespeare at the Long Center’s Rollins Theater in 2008. His provocative wife will be portrayed by Helen Merino, who has played the title role in Hamlet in Zilker Park as well as at the Long Center.

Artistic Director Ann Ciccolella is drawn to the heroic aspect of the tragic hero. “We see Macbeth as a contemporary tale. War, trauma and power-lust still has been riddling the world, especially in recent decades in Bosnia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Macbeth himself is drawn to bring the violence of battle from the field into his own home,” she says.

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Look Inside: New Photography Acquisitions
Presented by Harry Ransom Center

February 9 - May 29, 2016

The Harry Ransom Center’s photography collection is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive, and it is continually growing. Look Inside introduces nearly 200 of the Center’s newest acquisitions, tracing photography from its unprecedented post-war expansion to its central position in contemporary art. Look Inside features groundbreaking photographs by Thomas F. Barrow, Lee Friedlander, Betty Hahn, and Robert F. Heinecken, contemporary investigations into the medium by Marco Breuer, John Chiara, Alison Rossiter, and Penelope Umbrico, and extended documentary projects by Alejandro Cartagena, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Louie Palu, and Alec Soth.

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Subject to Control: A New Play
Presented by American Berserk Theatre

May 19 - June 4, 2016

These are some facts of the world: The bad times began when we had a serious problem with the sun. That was when we came to the facility. Soon after, the animals died; then the plants died; then the oceans burnt and microbes took over. (When we say “bad times,” we are not kidding.)

But the Research gives us a way forward. Perhaps human will, properly cultivated, can change the Facts we don’t like. It’s worth a shot, anyway. The Work is slow. The Research is evolving. This is all we have. But we try to keep a good attitude!! :)

Certain individuals, when paired, have a special aptitude for the Work: Conduits and Conductors. 

You will now observe a Conduit and Conductor at Work.

A darkly comic take on cultish pseudoscience, self-improvement, and life after the end of the world, Subject to Control shows a pair of individuals striving toward the next level of human consciousness but scraping against the daily reality of hunger, bowel movements, sexual arousal, and grueling repetition.

Devised over the course of six months and featuring elements of improvisation, dance, and demented horseplay, Subject to Control will make you laugh, then choke on that laugh, then wonder what exactly it is to laugh in the first place, then cry, then laugh again, then have a drink of water, and then leave the theater (because the play will be over at that point, you see).

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Chasing Color, Finding Light
Presented by Davis Gallery

April 23 - June 4, 2016
 

Opening Reception:  
Saturday, April 23rd 7-9pm
 
Laurel Daniel uses spontaneous, fresh marks to capture fleeting moments in time. She is drawn to elements of nature and is ever challenged by the mysterious behavior of color and light. Daniel's close observations reveal that truly grasping color depends on understanding light. Her careful explorations consider the subtleties of our everyday.... How is a bright sunny morning distinguished from a misty evening? How does the white of a hydrangea blossom differ from that of a well-lit house or a floating cloud? How does the yellow of a pear change in the shadows?
 
In this new body of work, Laurel Daniel focuses on familiar subjects - landscapes, interiors and still lifes - giving special attention to how they are clarified, sculpted and "colored" by light. Her work carries with it a purposefulness that allows the viewer to see her subjects the way she sees them. As always, a certain wistfulness and serenity are discovered in the complexities of her painterly expression.

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Thresholds and Shadow Maps
Presented by Link & Pin

May 21 - June 19, 2016
 

Miriam Conner and Sania Tamimi present Thresholds and Shadow Maps

The synchronicity of their having been friends from childhood in Austin, journeying for their respective professional studies, and returning to Austin at nearly the same time encourages Connor and Tamimi  to seek to bring the Austin art scene to a higher homegrown level.  The artists are bringing together shows that they have presented separately, Conner at the California Institute of Arts and Tamimi at the Parsons School of Design in Paris. This show combines sculpture and photography exploring dark and light.

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famiLIES, a new play
Presented by Coldtowne Theater

May 14 - June 25, 2016
 

ColdTowne Theater presents the world premiere of famiLIES, an original play developed entirely through improvisation in collaboration with the notable iO West L.A. based improv troupe, Dasariski. Directed by The Second City and Boom Chicago alumnus Dave Buckman, this marks the world premiere of this comedic play.

famiLIES follows three, deadbeat brothers as they examine the mistakes of their past and attempt to confront their future. The show toggles rapidly between the past and present, through a series of sordid events, introducing a band of colorful, quirky characters along the way. The experience can best be described as a whirlwind, laugh riot. 

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