PRESS

SEASON 36 PRESS

9.13.21 Review: SUNNY DAYS at The VORTEX Theatre
”In form, Hardy's SUNNY DAYS is a sophisticated dramatic triptych that juxtaposes the ostensibly “sunny” and optimistic veneer of children's television with the stark and sobering realities of global and local crises.” - Victoria Schwarz for Broadway World

9.3.24 Sunny Days
”It takes a special work to make the puppets an essential part of the theme, but with Sunny Days, Reina Hardy moves past novelty and toward intense introspection.” - Cat McCarrey for Austin Chronicle

4.25.24 Theatre Review: The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body
"Thompson’s script is deep, memory-based poetry. Raw and rooted from the secret spots of the soul.” - Austin Chronicle

4.12.24 KUT News Now
Playwright and scholar Lisa B. Thompson calls her choreopoem “a theatrical love letter to Black women and girls”

3.12.24 UNDARK at Trouble Puppet Theater Company
”It's a visually stunning production that is presented with spectacular puppet movement and shadow puppetry projected on a screen behind the puppeteers.” - Lynn Beaver for Broadway World

3.2024 14th Annual Garden Party
”You, however, don’t need to be royalty to cavort through the VORTEX grounds at this upcoming fête champêtre. To enjoy the various activities – live music! Tiny Tails animal petting! Excerpts from upcoming VORTEX theatre shows! – all you must be is pure of spirit and character.” - James Scott for Austin Chronicle

2.10.2024 Building a Global Network: The Fusebox Universe at 20
”The fourth Presents/Festival project will be playwright and UT professor Lisa B. Thompson’s The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body, a performance piece that explores her research into Black women’s health disparities.” - Tarra Gaines for ACTX

12.5.2023 Texas Performing Arts Artist-in-Residence Works on The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body
Thompson has been selected to be Texas Performing Arts (TPA) resident artist for the 2023-24 season. TPA will support her as she finishes her current work, The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body, which will premiere in April.

11.2023 All the World’s a Stage
The VORTEX, a longtime East Austin theater, is currently in its 36th season

Season 35 press

10.3.2022 Theater Review: Jarrott Productions’ The Pact
Jarrott Production’s “The Pact” is a new dark comedy from Austin playwright Max Langert, directed by Will Gibson Douglas at the Vortex through Oct. 15.

10.14.2022 Review: Jarrott Productions' The Pact
This new, locally sourced play cleverly covers its dark comedy center with a thick sitcom coating.

11.25.2022 Review: Different Stages Theatre's Water by the Spoonful
A teaspoon of gravitas, tablespoon of heart is the perfect recipe for this Pulitzer winner.

12.27.2022 Photos: Mutt-Cracker Brings Laughs, Dogs and Circus Tricks to The VORTEX Stage

1.28.2023 Review: VORTEX Repertory Co.’s Ride the Wave
Brandi Alexander’s clever lighting design, Johann Solo’s sound design, and some surreal, luminescent sea creatures created by Lilly Percifield add so much to the staging.

1.28.2023 Theater Review: Ride the Wave at The VORTEX
Ride the Wave is a new play by Mattie Barber-Bockelman now getting its Austin premiere at The VORTEX.

04.2023 Review: The Dragonfly Princess
Recognition of the design fields is an immediate need, and they all deserve design awards.

05.2023 Austin American-Statesman Preview of 2023-2024 Performing Arts Highlights
"Once again, Texas Performing Arts and Fusebox will provide a residency for an Austin-based artist of national renown: playwright Lisa B. Thompson will develop ‘The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body,’ which will premiere in the 2024 Fusebox Festival at The VORTEX Theater.”

06.30.23 Review: Different Stages’ The Art of Martyrdom (A Comedy)
For one of the season’s best comedies, get thee to a nunnery

Season 34 PRESS

1.2022 Tales of a Blerd Ballerina
A choreopoem of stories told with humor, dance, and music, Tales of a Blerd Ballerina centers the Black Nerd (Blerd) experience in a piece about cultural pride and yearning in a world that often limits Black identity.

2.1.2022 “Pivoting halfway back”: OUTSider Festival Prepares for Their First In-Person Gathering in Two Years
Austin’s OUTSider Festival was born in 2013, and since then, it’s been a yearly celebration of LGBTQ+ art and culture.

4.11.2022 Review: SELFIE! THE MUSICAL at The VORTEX
The Vortex Theatre in Austin is currently the host of a world premiere musical.

5.31.2022 Review: Trouble Puppet Theater Co.’s Undark: A Radioactive Puppet Play
Henson-backed world premiere recounts a workers' rights fight.

6.29.2022 “Pieces of my life”: Valoneecia Tolbert's Tales of a Blerd Ballerina Is Personal But Universal
Tolbert describes the autobiographical solo show as a choreopoem; it uses humor, dance, and music to explore her childhood growing up as a Blerd, or Black Nerd.

7.7.2022 I Howled: OUTsider Fest 2022
“My eyes filled up with tears, and my heart wanted to leave my body. I stood up and clapped as if I was willing to sacrifice my hands to them.”

7.12.2022 Tales of a Blerd Ballerina Seamlessly Integrates Dance, Humor
“Tales of a Blerd Ballerina,” Valoneecia Tolbert’s choreopoem at the Vortex, is a story of growing up while hemmed in by expectations of conformity.

Season 33 press

9.22.2020 The VORTEX Takes Austin on a Socially Distanced Odyssey
Rather than bringing audiences into their Manor Road performance space, which remains closed, this production will send them out into the surrounding neighborhood for a drive-thru experience.

9.22.2020 “We're Not Going Back”: The VORTEX Creates an Online and Drive-Thru Odyssey
As audience members drive through the Odyssey, they’ll be listening – via their phones – to original music and audio content while watching short performances through their car windows.

9.24.2020 VORTEX vs. Coronavirus: The Shows Really Do Go On
Melissa Vogt explains the how and why.

9.25.2020 All the Neighborhood’s a Stage in the Drive-Through VORTEX Odyssey
The Vortex keeps things safe, sacred, and mythically provocative in their newest stage spectacle.

10.02.2020 The VORTEX Odyssey is Imperfect but Impactful
There may be obstacles getting to each location along the journey, but when everything works, it's riveting.

7.16.2021 How Austin’s Performing Artists Are Reopening Their Spaces
The VORTEX opened its first indoor show, a workshop of Valoneecia Tolbert's Tales of a Blerd Ballerina, April 8.

SEASON 31 PRESS

05.10.2019 Diverse Space Dance Theatre's Memoirs and Armours
The company's season closer showed the young dancers' commitment to a shared vision and their potential as artists.

04.12.2019 Vortex Repertory Company's Last: An Extinction Comedy
The magic cast by the company of this devised shows pulls laughs from the impending demise of the planet.

04.07.2019 BWW Review: LAST: AN EXTINCTION COMEDY slays at The VORTEX
A truly unique show about how a troupe of comedic actors copes with the apocalypse.

04.03.2019 ‘Last: An Extinction Comedy’ at the Vortex is a fun romp with a message
The Vortex is, without a doubt, one of Austin’s most eclectic performance venues, with productions ranging from avant-garde operas and political agitprop to world premieres of new dramas. The company’s latest offering is a devised work sitting somewhere at the midpoint of all three.

03.08.2019 BWW Review: LOCUS OF CONTROL Shares A Life's Story in Austin, TX.
A DJ table, projector screen and one performer, sets the stage to reflect on the life of writer/poet Jason Bayani… Bayani does not perform characters, he will always be himself reflecting on his life and past experiences.

02.23.2019 OUTsider Fest Review: Nia & Ness' Home.
Splitting the world open, one performance at a time

02.08.2019 The Vortex Repertory Company's Heartland
Gabriel Jason Dean's new drama makes a sensitive study of three people in two different countries and where they belong

1.28.2019 Review #2 of 2: Heartland by Vortex Repertory Theatre
An important new play by Gabriel Jason Dean, is now up at the Vortex.

1.28.2019 Review #1 of 2: Heartland by Vortex Repertory Theatre
A small miracle of a play.

01.24.2019 Gabriel Jason Dean’s new play “Heartland” demands a reckoning — and models healing
The playwright, an alumnus of University of Texas’ Michener Center for Writers, returns to the Austin venue with this heart-rending feature of the National New Play Network’s Rolling World Premiere circuit.

01.22.2019 BWW Review: HEARTLAND at The Vortex Theatre
Unfolding before us in flashback mode, HEARTLAND delves into a "West meets East meets West" tale that explores the differences and similarities between two very different cultures that fuse into one coherent story.

01.21.2019 In new ‘Heartland,’ love, death and grief cross borders
Gabriel Jason Dean adds to this impressive body with a smart, funny, moving drama that is as emotionally textured as it is intellectually nuanced.

11.12.2018 Review: Until The Flood by Theatre en Bloc
The Saint Louis Repertory commissioned the playwright to create a work connected with the August 19, 2014 shooting of 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown, Jr. by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson.

11.09.2018 BWW Review: Theatre en Bloc's UNTIL THE FLOOD: A rich and intense 90 minutes of what theatre does best.
It's important and beautiful and simultaneously intimate and big.

11.04.2018 Channeling the Voices of Ferguson in “Until the Flood”
Rather than using Ferguson to emblematize a host of nationally divisive topics, “Until the Flood” peers into the community itself.

SEASON 30 PRESS

09.13.2018 BWW Review: ATLANTIS: A PUPPET OPERA is a Mesmerizing Experience
The electronic opera serves as a dynamic cautionary tale that draws eerie parallels to our own cultural climate.

9.11.2018 Review: Atlantis, a puppet opera by Vortex Repertory Theatre
The Ethos-created show was premiered at The Vortex in 2016, and its return has been eagerly awaited. As before, the show is directed to perfection by Bonnie Cullum.

06.30.2018 Review: The Afterparty by Shrewd Productions
Reina Hardy doesn’t merely flirt with magical realism this time, she dives into it.

06.29.2018 Shrewd Productions' The Afterparty
We’re invited to hobnob with history’s great minds up on the astral plane

06.25.2018 What is love? ‘The Afterparty’ looks at how art and science influence our deepest questions
How do science, poetry and the cosmos interweave meaningfully in human lives?

06.19.2018 BWW Review: THE AFTERPARTY Moves Through The Metaphor in East Austin, TX
Written by Reina Hardy in its world premiere, THE AFTERPARTY moves through a love story creating a modern day mythological tale of how stargazing can score you a ticket to a party at the end of the universe.

06.03.2018 BWW Review: POLLY MERMAID: APOCALYPSE WOW! Invites Austinites to the Depths of Plastic Destruction in East Austin, TX. POLLY MERMAID: APOCALYPSE WOW! examines how humans create and use plastic in a destructive way.

06.01.2018 Glass Half Full Theatre's Polly Mermaid: Apocalypse WOW!
This playful eco-fable by Caroline Reck and Indigo Rael creates a surprising plastic paradise under the sea.

5.30.2018 With science fiction and sexy one-liners, this puppet show is not for kids
It is a comedy, but there are also elements of surprising beauty and engaging storytelling.

5.28.2018 Review: Polly Mermaid: Apocalypse WOW by Glass Half Full Theatre
Glass Half Full The Vortex stage comes alive with mundane plastic and unbounded imagination.

05.04.2018 The Vortex's Performance Park
Whatever you want to call this play / scavenger hunt / immersive live roleplay, it's a one-of-a-kind, wonderful theatrical experience

04.19.2018 The Vortex Has Become 'Performance Park' For The Spring
Performance Park might hold the record as largest Vortex production for the foreseeable future.

03.31.2018 Performance Park Takes Over the Vortex Austin Chronicle Review
Bonnie Cullum's dream wakes the Tarot into life in her company's immersive theatrical experience

03.30.2018 Immersive, interactive ‘Performance Park’ is unlike anything else in Austin theater
if you want to lose yourself in a magical carnival, made up of exploration and a personal philosophical journey couched in metaphorical games and quests, then it is truly something to experience.

03.29.2018 Performance Park brings Tarot to real time at the Vortex
After three years in the making, Performance Park is now live at the Vortex.

03.14.2018 It’s All in the Game at VORTEX’s ‘Performance Park’ The Austin troupe’s new immersive piece offers audiences an interactive space to wander, watch, play—and reflect on the world.

02.02.18 Austin Chronicle Review of GenEnCo's 893 | Ya-ku-za
This suspenseful two-hander serves up tension in its silences as much as its words

01.31.18 BWW Review: 893 | YA-KU-ZA
An Intriguing Look Into Crime Syndicate World

01.31.18 CTX Review: 893/Ya-Ku-Za by Vortex Repertory Theatre
it works at maintaining a level of tension comparable to that you achieve when a cobra is dropped into a box with a mongoose.

01.16.18 BWW Review: The Way She Spoke: A Docu-Mythologica

01.12.18 Play about Juarez murders – and how we react to such stories – challenges audiences at the Vortex
Rodriguez and Ramirez plumb those depths with great skill and empathy, crafting a performance that is powerful, thought-provoking, and a fundamentally resonant call to action for its audience.

01.26.2018 Isaac Gomez's drama made us remember the lost women of Juárez
Once we heard their names their full humanity was thrust in our faces, and the tragedies of these women became intensely personal.

12.01.2017 Wild Horses Austin Chronicle Review
This staging of Allison Gregory's new play takes you back to your 13th summer with all its freedom and fear

12.01.2017 Feats of bareback storytelling in Allison Gregory’s “Wild Horses”
Wild Horses” is a visceral reminiscence. The drama doesn’t stem from whether the narrator will be alright – she’s here with us in the living present. Instead, she is a returner able to transport the audience back into her unorganized reaches of her past.

10.19.2017 The Vortex’s bloody ‘Vampyress’ is an adults-only Halloween treat
There is a seed of dark and violent beauty, and Salvata’s opera leaves its audience disturbed, aroused and more than a little afraid.

10.13.2017 Vampyress, Austin Chronicle Review
Chad Salvata's gothic opera is the perfect treat for the season of ghouls, sensual and spooky

10.04.2017 Vampyress, Statesman Review
The Vortex’s bloody ‘Vampyress’ is an adults-only Halloween treat

09.15.2017 ‘Storm Still’ explores family dynamics through one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies; Austin 360 Review
What is most impressive... they remain true to the core of the sister they portray, creating layers of performative nuance that further blur the distinction between reality and fantasy.'

SEASON 29 PRESS

09.01.2017 Ocean, The Austin Chronicle Review
In her solo show, Ebony Stewart makes a canvas out of herself and a beautiful gift we should embrace

05.05.2017 My Big Fat Bahookie Tackles the Human Experience; Broadway World Austin Review

05.03.2017 My Big Fat Bahookie Brings Body-positivity to the Vortex; Austin360 Review

04.28.2017 My Big Fat Bahookie; Austin Chronicle Review
Lorella Loftus' really funny new play preaches that everybody's got back, and that's just great

03.31.2017 Underground; Austin Chronicle Review
Driven by Lisa B. Thompson's powerful text and masterful acting, this new drama drops a truth bomb

03.28.2017 Underground; Austin360 Review
Race, politics, and friendship take center stage

03.25.2017 Underground; Broadway World Austin Review
exhilarating mental and intellectual dance that presents important things we all should be considering, especially now.

03.24.2017 Austin Chronicle Feature on Underground
Lisa B. Thompson's new drama digs deep into politics past and present, and asks us all: What are you gonna do?

01.27.2017 A Perfect Robot; Austin Chronicle Review
Sarah Saltwick's timely script elegantly explores the tension between idealized automatons and messy humans

01.23.2017 A Perfect Robot; Broadway World Austin Review
a multilayer world premiere marvel... time and again he presents us with visual beauty on the stage.

12.14.2016 BWW Interview: Bonnie Cullum and The Vortex
An interview with Bonnie Cullum of The Vortex, asking her about the past, present and future of the popular East Austin venue.

09.23.16 Robin Hood: An Elegy at The Vortex Puts Hero in Modern Racial Divide

09.18.2016 Ethos' Atlantis: A Puppet Opera; CTX Live
The singing, lights, music, and monumental imagery merge and start swirling together, falling into a true vortex of art, imagination, color, and heart.

09.16.2016 Ethos' Atlantis: A Puppet Opera; Austin Chronicle Review
This new musical take on the fall of Atlantis pulls us into an ancient place, powered by myth and ritual

09.06.2016 Puppets meet mythology in “Atlantis: A Puppet Opera”
A sumptuous visual feast that creates an epic, mythic ambience.

SEASON 28 PRESS

08.19.16 Gale Theatre Company’s Salomé

06.29.16 Interview with Reina Hardy

06.10.16 The Vortex’s Privacy Settings: A Promethean Tale

06.03.16 Privacy Settings: A Promethean Tale Dares Audiences to Question What is Happening Behind The Screen

05.25.16 Privacy Settings: A Promethean Tale CTX Live Theatre Review
We’re all in the game, like it or not.

05.13.16 The Tempest - An Aerial Tale; CTX Live Theatre Review

04.03.16 Persephone Breaking Tradition; Austin Entertainment Weekly Review

04.01.16 Vortex’s “Persephone” brings music to mythology; Austin360 Arts Review

03.28.16 New Austin Show Celebrates the Lighter Side of Ethnic Assimilation
Lucky Chaos Theatre’s Leng Wong tells us about Living on the Hyphen

02.12.16 The Mikado Reclaimed: Austin Chronicles Review
In this newly devised work, Asian-American artists grapple with the complicated legacy of Gilbert & Sullivan's opera.

02.16 Review: The Mikado Reclaimed by Generic Ensemble Company

01.19.16 Terminus: Austin360 Review
We can only hope will receive the widespread national audience it deserves.

01.18.16 Terminus - A Work of Great Power and Beauty

01.15.16 Terminus; CTX Live Theatre Review
A place in the mind, fertile with characters and stories, that we can hope to visit in coming years.

2015 Playbill: A Chronology of Hip Hop Theatre
The Hip-Hop Theatre Explosion is first presented by Vortex Repertory Theatre and UpRise! Productions in Austin, TX.

09.24.15 Hands Up Hoodies Down - A Show That Matters

09.14.15 Zell Miller III’s Hands Up Hoodies Down

08.14.15 Robin Hood: An Elegy
Rough edges aside, Generic Ensemble Company's new work makes an urgent statement that #blacklivesmatter.

06.05.15 The New Electric Ballroom
At the Vortex, the siblings of Enda Walsh's play can't move past a night from 50 years ago.

05.11.15 Emma When You Need Her

02.07.15 Changelings at The VORTEX

01.29.15 Changelings, at The VORTEX

01.23.15 Changelings
The Vortex's staging of Reina Hardy's magical new play Changelings casts a uniquely compelling spell.

SEASON 27

09.05.2014 Review: Spirit CTX Live

03.20.2015 Hands Up Hoodies Down
Zell Miller III mounted a stirring, provocative blend of slam poetry, dance, improv, and rap.

01.16.2015 Review: Changlings CTX Live

05.15.2015 "Emma When You Need Her": An enrapturous romp through the life of Emma Goldman Austin Theatre Examiner!

05.24.2015 The New Electric Ballroom CTX Live

SEASON 26 PRESS

08.08.14 Vortex Cosplay Expo
All week, Austin's masters of theatrical fantasy show you how to make an out-of-this-world look.

04.2014 Review: For Fear the Glass May Shatter by The Vortex Repertory Theatre

01.22.14 Review: W.K. by Gale Theatre Company
Gale Theatre Company has hit the ground running -- and jumping and performing gymnastics -- since founders Katherine Wilkinson and Celina Chapin arrived in Austin last year.

01.09.14 Never Mind the Polar Kind; Austin Has Its Own Vortex
And that irrepressible powerhouse of theatre is about to turn 25

11.08.13 Stars and Barmen
Reina Hardy's celestial romance keeps the audience in stitches while grappling with some heady philosophical ideas.

11.2013 Review: Stars and Barmen by Vortex Repertory Theatre

11.06.13 Stars and Barmen, by Reina Hardy, Vortex Repertory, October 26 - November 16, 2013

10.29.13 Stars and Barmen; Austin 360 Review
We’ve all been there: that sad and lonely place that has us searching for someone who can help us grasp something more out of life.

SEASON 25 PRESS

08.27.13 Sing Muse; Austin360 Review
How do we find the space to listen for inspiration in an era of so much technological chatter?

08.16.13 A Raisin in the Sun; Austin Chronicle Review
UpRise! Productions' revival of a trailblazing drama

06.07.13 Qualities of Starlight; Austin360 Review
Dean’s play and the exceptional performances of this production’s cast cultivate a verisimilitude that can’t be overlooked.

06.04.13 Qualities of Starlight Offers an Honest Look at Drug Abuse

05.10.13 The Chimponauts and the Mechanical Phantom; Austin Chronicle Review
It may help to know sci-fi B-movies, but this space spoof by Electronic Planet Ensemble is silly fun for everyone

04.01.13 EARTH; Austin American Statesman Review
The sensory experience, as with all Vortex Repertory Company productions, transports the viewer to another world.

03.29.13 EARTH; Austin Chronicle Review
Vortex Repertory Company's ritualistic celebration of earth may make you want to dig your toes into the dirt

01.18.13 Elizabeth Heart of a Queen; Austin Chronicle Review
Lorella Loftus' ambitious new bio-play boasts strong performances by the three women portraying the Virgin Queen

11.30.12 You Can't Take It With You; Austin Chronicle Review
Director Mick D'Arcy warms an old chestnut at the Vortex

11.02.12 Heather Woodbury's 'As the Globe Warms'; Austin Chronicle Review
Woodbury's latest solo stage epic is a beautiful experiment in soap opera meets PSA

SEASON 24 PRESS

09.21.12 The Elementals: WATER; Austin Chronicle Review
This Vortex dance exploring water as sacred is often beautiful but not always deep

09.10.12 WATER, Austin Live Theatre Review
Imagination is a keyword for the entire show.

09.2012 Review: Water by Vortex Repertory Theatre

08.10.12 Sing Muse; Austin Chronicle
Ramirez and his stellar ensemble emphasize that the goddesses are neither Homeric nor Disneyfied.

02.17.12 What's Black & Female & A Thrill To Behold?; Austin Chronicle Review
How about "tight ensemble piece in a seven-part harmony"?

01.06.12 Top 10 Notable Theatrics of 2011; Austin Chronicle

10.21.11 Sarah Silverhands; Austin Chronicle Review
The magic in this new fairy-tale opera lies in its look more than its story

10.10.11 Review of Sarah Silver Hands; Austin 360

10.01.11 Vortex takes a kid-friendly turn; Austin 360

09.09.11 For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf; Austin Chronicle Review
The classic choreopoem becomes a tight ensemble piece in seven-part harmony

08.11.11 The Butterfly Bar; Culture Map

SEASON 23 PRESS

06.03.11 Lear; Austin Chronicle Review
The flashy modern setting takes priority over Shakespeare's text in this update

05.27.11 Lear; Arts Eclectic Interview

05.24.11 Review 'Lear'; Austin 360
Swapping a queen for a king and a sister for a son, Ramirez foregrounds gender roles without letting them consume the production.

03.01.11 interview on AIR; Arts Eclectic

01.21.11 Planet of the Mermaids; Austin Chronicle Review
A hot band plays cool music for a wild sci-fi film that may or may not be a put-on.

01.2011 Review: Planet of the Mermaids by Electronic Planet Ensemble

12.17.10 Culture Flash! Vortex Receives Grant for Sarah Silverhands; Austin Chronicle

11.02.10 Vampyress; Examiner.com Review
Blood and nudity can't take away from the beauty of this dark opera

SEASON 22 PRESS

08.27.10 B-boy bluez; Austin Chronicle Review
Zell Miller III makes the four corners of hip-hop come together in the theatre

06.02.10 The Wife Of Bath’s Tale At The Vortex; DO512 Review
a fresh take on Geoffrey Chaucer’s classic tale from the Middle Ages and the results are incredibly fresh, intoxicating, and highly hilarious.

06.01.10 ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale; Austin 360 Review
‘Things never change, do they?’ asks an effervescent woman in an oversized hat as she browses through the Cliff Notes to Chaucer?s ?The Canterbury Tales.’

04.30.10 Sleeping Beauty; Austin Chronicle Review
The strength of Vortex's original musical adaptation is in its imagination

04.01.10 Audio Interview with Sleeping Beauty's Prince, Princess, musical director, and Artistic Director; KOOP Radio's Off Stage and On the Air

04.2010 Review: Sleeping Beauty, musical by Vortex Repertory Theatre

03.31.10 Vortex production re-imagines 'Sleeping Beauty'; Austin 360 interview with Bonnie Cullum

03.30.10 Audio Interview with Sleeping Beauty's cast and director; KUT Radio's Arts Eclectic

02.12.10 ‘Arrhythmia’; Austin 360 Review
What is love? Writer Zell Miller III ponders that question in “Arrhythmia,” his newest piece of hip-hop performance theater now getting its debut at Vortex.

02.04.10 Tim Miller Preaches to the Choir; Austin Chronicle Review

01.27.10 Tim Miller's 'Lay of the Land' challenge same-sex marriage ban; Austin 360 Interview with Tim Miller

01.15.10 Sufrin' UFO; Austin Chronicle Review
Another blast of otherworldly wonder and weirdness from Electronic Planet Ensemble

01.2010 Review: Surfin' UFO by Electronic Arts Ensemble

10.30.09 Murder Ballad Murder Mystery; Austin Chronicle Review
You'll be hard-pressed to find a riskier production in Austin this year than this strange string of ballads and mysteries.

10.2009 Review: Murder Ballad Murder Mystery by Tutto Theatre

09.2009 Review: The Dragonfly Queen by Ethos

08.28.09 The Dragonfly Queen; Austin Chronicle Review
Return to Mala's world

SEASON 21 PRESS

06.17.09 Good Things; Austin Live Theater Review

05.22.09 Oceana; Austin Chronicle Review
The Vortex's latest theatrical immersion in myth sinks you down 20,000 leagues

05.15.09 'Oceana' The life aquatic; Austin Chronicle Review

05.2009 Review: Oceana by The Vortex Repertory Theatre

03.27.09 Holy Cross Sucks!!!; Austin Chronicle Review
Rob Nash plays 29 characters over four years of high school and makes it look so easy

02.12.09 Secret Life of the InBetweeners; Austin Live Theatre Blog
Aaron Brown's musical at the Vortex benefits from a strong cast, Bonnie Cullum's assured direction, and a bouncy score.

02.2009 Review: The Secret Lives of the InBetweeners by The Vortex Repertory Theatre

01.23.09 Spaceman:Dada:Robot; Austin Chronicle Review
A song cycle with its head in the stars and a sense of wonder makes space cool again

01.2009 Review: Spaceman Dada Robot by Electronic Planet Ensemble with David Jewell

01.02.09 12 Steps to a More Dysfunctional Christmas; Austin Chronicle Review
Rob Nash's solo show is funny, honest, and a welcome relief from saccharine holiday shows

10.31.08 Gretchen Phillips Reviewed; Austin Chronicle Review

08.29.08 Radio Silence: a word opera; Austin Chronicle Review
Zell Miller III's hip-hop opera is fascinating when it isn't flying by so quickly

08.22.08 Talkin' the Walk; Austin Chronicle
Hip-hop theatre artist Zell Miller III speaks truth about radio, race, and fatherhood

SEASON 20 PRESS

06.20.08 Beauty Queen of Leenan; Austin Chronicle Review
This Beauty Queen is harsh but effective, gritty as a sandpaper shamrock

04.16.08 The Last Days of Desmond"Nani" Reese; Austin Chronicle Review
Heather Woodbury's new solo show about a 108-year-old fallen woman humanizes strippers and storytellers, whores and academics

03.28.08 Troades; Austin Chronicle Review
This new adaptation of The Trojan Women is fueled by an earnestness that is the show's blessing and its curse

03.24.08 ‘Troades’; Austin360 Review

01.18.08 Beirut; Austin Chronicle Review
Vortex's revival confronts issues of the body – as object, as weapon, and as prison – head on

11.20.07 The Neovaginal Monologues: Tales of Transformation; Austin Chronicle Review
UT RTF professor Sandy Stone takes the stage to tell stories from the lives of transgendered individuals

09.21.07 Accidental Death of an Anarchist; Austin Chronicle Review
Staging of Fo's farce never quite musters the urgent lunacy of its Looney Tunes inspiration

08.31.07 Dragonfly Princess; Austin Chronicle Review
ethos' opera The Dragonfly Princess takes us down a dark path of intrigues, heresy, power struggles, and death

SEASON 19 PRESS

07.27.07 The Wyrd Sisters; Austin Chronicle Review
The Vortex's 2007 Summer Youth Theatre showcases more talented youth with Terry Pratchett's lighthearted, adventurous Wyrd Sisters

06.01.07 Wallace Shawn's 'A Thought in Three Parts': The author approves; Austin Chronicle

05.18.07 A Thought in Three Parts; Austin Chronicle Review
In staging Wallace Shawn's famously unproduced and pornographic A Thought in Three Parts, it'd be so easy to stumble or misjudge, but Rubber Repertory has gotten almost everything stunningly right.

03.23.07 Hamlet; Austin Chronicle Review
Vortex Repertory Company's new production of Shakespeare's Hamlet has a strong contemporary feel...

01.19.07 Trickster; Austin Chronicle Review
Vortex Repertory Company's latest production, about those weaselly mythological misfits who pull pranks and break rules, Trickster, is an extravaganza

12.15.06 Rob Nash, Bedford Falls by way of television city; Austin Chronicle
Austin solo performer Rob Nash is moving to Los Angeles, and as a parting Christmas gift, he's created a holiday special that never was

12.01.06 Finding Hope ... in Bed!; Austin Chronicle Review
Tim Miller's latest trip to Austin finds the noted performance artist optimistic about being gay

11.03.06 Ring Rip Rent; Austin Chronicle Review
Showing us a future where women who have violated society's sexual mores are confined, classified, and treated

SEASON 18 PRESS

09.09.06 Bell(e); Austin Chronicle Review
Bell(e), ethos' installation focusing on literary suicides, chucks the adolescent illusion that killing oneself is a meaningful act of passion...

08.25.06 Web Extra: B-Boy Bluez / Hot Dogs at the Eiffel Tower; Austin Chronicle Review
Zell Miller III creates whole worlds on stage and performs his heart out for whatever audience he gets.

07.21.06 Summer Youth Theatre's The Visit: Kill Schill; Austin Chronicle Review
For 15 years, Vortex SYT has been not patronizing kids. On the contrary, this program has historically chosen challenging and significant material for its participants to tackle...

05.19.06 4:48 Psychosis; Austin Chronicle Review
One really gets the full abysmal experience of being clinically depressed...

12.23.05 A Christmas Carol Roasting on an Open Fire; Austin Chronicle Review
Nash has lit a fire under Dickens' perennial fable like Austin's problem child with a grill...

10.28.05 Vampyress; Austin Chronicle Review
a ghoulish countess who killed 600 women so she could bathe in their blood

SEASON 17 PRESS

09.23.05 Phaedra's Love; Austin Chronicle Review
'Phaedra's Love' is not for the prudish eye, what with its incest, murder, rape, and graphic scenes that require splash guards

07.22.05 Getting Kids Into the Act; Austin Chronicle
Curtain up on GRRL Action and Vortex Summer Youth Theatre

07.15.05 To be Continued; Austin Chronicle Review
Something about 'hOle,' a new live theatrical serial in nine episodes, is bringing folks back to the Vortex every Tuesday night of this long, hot summer

03.25.05 Sleeping Beauty; Austin Chronicle Review
'Sleeping Beauty' shows the company in a playful mood, delivering a musical adaptation that is fanciful, lighthearted, and disarmingly sweet.

03.11.05 Working Beauty: An Interview with Bonnie Cullum; Austin Chronicle

01.28.05 St. Enid and the Black Hand; Austin Chronicle Review
an archetypal family enacts a fairy tale with many-layered meanings

12.24.04 A Christmas Carol Roasting on an Open Fire; Austin Chronicle Review
Nash adds a clever curve to the holiday tale, matching Hollywood stars with Dickens' familiar characters

SEASON 16 PRESS

08.20.04 12-Steps to a More Dysfunctional Musical; Austin Chronicle Review
Nash gives the Smiths something new to bind the family, someone to look out for, a future, hope...

07.30.04 The Good Woman of Setzuan; Austin Chronicle Review

06.06.04 Do Kill the Messenger; Austin Chronicle Review

05.14.04 Ghost From a Perfect Place; Austin Chronicle Review

04.23.04 Oh, What a Lovely War Protest!; Austin Chronicle Interview with Kathryn Blume
How the Lysistrata Project became a global phenomenon, from one woman who lived it

03.12.04 Dark Goddess 2004; Austin Chronicle Review
"Take responsibility for your own transformation," the women tell us. "Change is eternal. Accept change. Embrace it."

01.30.04 Pythia Dust; Austin Chronicle Review
Welcome to the cabaret at the end of the universe, where every song pulses with a quasar beat and love burns hotter than a supernova.

11.28.03 Coriolanus; Austin Chronicle Review
Gusts of oratory describe the injustices and illegitimacy of the powers that be...

SEASON 15 PRESS

08.08.03 Norman Normal Saves the World: The Geek Breaks Out!; Austin Chronicle Review
Nash's art is in the insta-characterization. He tells his story through characters' "dialogues,"

06.27.03 Eggheads: Ain't That a Kick in the Head; Austin Chronicle
To see such assuredness of style, combined with the sense that the actors were really having fun, was a kick.

05.23.03 Holy Cross Sucks!: One for All; Austin Chronicle Review
The story's thrust is the musketeerish friendship that propels the boys through four tough years from timidity to freedom via New York.

04.25.03 Black Tower: Timeless Struggles; Austin Chronicle Review
ethos creates another theatrical museum through which audiences may examine living dioramas populated by Greek gods engaged in struggles with each other as old as the human race.

03.21.03 The Scarlet Letter: A Recurring Nightmare; Austin Chronicle Review
Within this atmosphere of dread, director Michelle Fowler and her cast create a society of suffocating morality and the cruel reprisals that await any who violate its rigid rules of conduct.

01.17.03 Holy Well, Sacred Flame: Spring Down Memory Lane; Austin Chronicle Review
Writer-director Bonnie Cullum makes a unique rite from sincerity, sensuousness, and outlandish vision.

SEASON 14 PRESS

11.29.02 Medea: If Looks Could Kill; Austin Chronicle Review
The feast for the eyes includes Loftus' use of four actresses to share the title role, as well as play the Chorus.

07.26.02 Moby Dick: Study of Mortality in Blue and White; Austin Chronicle
You never see the sea in the Vortex Repertory Company's new stage adaptation of Moby Dick, but you sense it around you and under you...

07.19.02 Moby's Play: Kirk Smith on Bringing Melville's Whale to the Stage; Austin Chronicle; Interview with Kirk Smith

07.07.02 12 Steps to a More Dysfunctional Family; Austin Chronicle Review
This is the play to attend with that family member who impersonates you best.

05.31.02 The Music of Erica Zann: That Way Lies Madness; Austin Chronicle Review
Entering is akin to falling into a fever dream, a hallucinatory state in which you're overwhelmed by strange visions and a palpable sense of anxiety and apprehension.

SEASON 13 PRESS

12.28.01 Rob Nash Does Romeo and Juliet: The Power of One; Austin Chronicle Review
He shifts smoothly from character to character, sometimes instantly, sometimes after a slow turn for shifting's emphasis, and his skill in doing this is obviously beside the point.

09.14.01 The Deluge: Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain; Austin Chronicle Review
... highly imagistic and poetic, with live music -- complementing the cool, wetness of the environment and the gentle storytelling.

05.08.01 Twelfth Night: Gently Into that Good Night; Austin Chronicle Review
if you wondered what kind of stage director Faires might be, waste no time and pick up tickets for this last weekend of his elegant, understated (with a few hilarious exceptions) labor of love

03.21.01 Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities: Immediate, Raw, Raw Storytelling; Austin Chronicle Review
Kirk Smith has pulled the disparate parts of Dickens' long, tortuously wrought plot together with a mix of verve and passion, intimacy and grandeur.

03.09.01 Radio Radio; Austin Chronicle

01.05.01 Austin Chronicle - Event You Can’t Wait for in 2001

SEASON 12 PRESS

09.08.00 Elytra: New Synthesis; Austin Chronicle Review
He's clearly dealing with issues of death and regeneration, creation, power and control...

07.29.00 The Frogs: Awkward Bawdy; Austin Chronicle Review
And prance these young actors do, with all the glorious energy and presence of youth, and all the slickness of a well-trained troupe

07.14.00 And You Come From Where ...?: Where Did the Love Go?; Austin Chronicle Review
I haven't told anyone yet. I didn't want to jinx it, but I fell in love this weekend...

05.26.00 Fractured Greeks: Great Deeds, Human Follies; Austin Chronicle
Every year the Vortex Workshop brings together local actors to "train, play, work, write, experiment, and perform together."

04.04.00 Warning! Nudity!
Austinites Exposing Themselves Onstage—What's Up With That?

03.31.00 Heaving Shadows at the Skin Show; Austin Chronicle Review
Within the dark, funny realm of her ultra-revealing Heaving Shadows at the Skin Show, Fix manages to combine her endless influences into a pleasantly chaotic fairy tale straddling harsh realism and the giddiest dreaminess.

03.17.00 The Apocalytes & the Tetragons: Psychic Blasts and Undulating Bodies; Austin Chronicle
With the hyper-stylized, absurdist, nudity-rich videos looming behind them, Electronic Planet Ensemble, churned out loud, rockin' electronica to accompany the action.

02.18.00 Dark Goddess: Remembrance of Deities Past; Austin Chronicle Review
Not just a theatrical performance; it's a spellbinding ritual bringing together goddesses from the far reaches of the world

01.14.00 Despair's Book of Dreams and the Sometimes Radio: Grooving Among the Shreds of Shadow; Austin Chronicle Review
It's the waking dreamscape of a lonely, abandoned man capering through the confines of a house as jumbled and tattered as the ruins of his mind...