Texas Performing Arts Residencies help Austin-based artists of international renown create new work. The residencies are laboratories for developing projects that will go on to have a tangible impact on American culture.
22/23 Resident Artists
Virginia Grise
Award-winning playwright and director Virginia Grise makes work through a political and historical lens. With her collaborator Martha Gonzalez, Grise is developing Riding the Currents of the Wilding Wind. The music-driven performance is based on Helena María Viramontes’ 2007 novel Their Dogs Came with Them. Learn more about this residency.
Deborah Hay
A legend in postmodern dance whose approach to movement changed how the world makes and views dance. Based in Austin since 1976, Deborah Hay recently established her archive at the Harry Ransom Center at UT Austin. Her latest work is a collaboration with Austin-based composer Graham Reynolds. Learn more about this residency.
Kenyon Adams
An interdisciplinary artist and creative director, Kenyon Adams seeks to reclaim or expand embodied ways of knowing, towards imagining and constructing sustainable futures. He is developing Compline, a ritual performance work with a vocal ensemble inspired by the “night prayer” from the early Christian church.
Adams’ residency is scheduled for August 2023, where he will workshop Compline Noir: a ritual of healing and satisfaction, the third installation in the artist's ritual trilogy, WATCHNIGHT: WE ARE ALMOST TO OUR DESTINATION. Set in the near dark, the piece is a sonic and sensory experience that invites the audience to seek a fulsome solitude, at once alone and together, in the intimate, music-filled and silent moments created by the artist. The piece delivers a distinct and unexpected culmination to the artist’s years-long work with the trilogy. Compline Noir will include design elements from Department of Theatre and Dance faculty members David Arevalo and Kate Freer.
TPA x Fusebox 23/24 Artist in Residence
Lisa B. Thompson
Lisa B. Thompson is a playwright, scholar and the Patton Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She is also affiliate faculty in English, Theatre and Dance and Women and Gender Studies. Her scholarship focuses on Black feminist theory, theatre, film, Black popular culture and literature. Through her residency, she will develop her latest project The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body—a meditation on the experience of aging as a Black woman in the U.S. Part performance art, health fair, and group research project, this piece explores Black women’s health disparities and the toll that reality takes on the psyche. It will premiere as part of the 2024 Fusebox Festival at The VORTEX.
IN THE NEWS
Cultivating Creativity - The University of Texas College of Fine Arts
Texas Performing Arts unveils 2022-23 season, and a new slate of artists-in-residence - Sightlines
Dianne Donovan talks with Executive & Artistic Director Bob Bursey about the 22/23 Season - KMFA
World premieres, TX debuts and more are in store for the TX Performing Arts 22-23 season - CBS Austin