Austin Playfest Makes Digital Debut This Year

Austin Playhouse announces the first 13 features for Austin Playfest, a collaborative virtual theatre festival celebrating Austin’s creativity and resilience during the pandemic running November 11–15, 2021. Featuring works from Austin Playhouse, Deaf Austin Theatre, Glass Half Full Theatre, Ground Floor Theatre, Hyde Park Theatre, Jarrott Productions, New Manifest Theatre Company, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, ScriptWorks, Summer Stock Austin, TILT Performance Group, and The VORTEX. Virtual passes and single tickets on sale at austinplayfest.com.

First 13 Features:

• Austin Playhouse: Bernadette Nason’s Confessions of an English Danger Girl

• Deaf Austin Theatre: DAT Short Play Festival

• Glass Half Full Theatre: Trash Talks with Polly Mermaid

• Ground Floor Theatre: Trans Lives/Trans Voices

• Hyde Park Theatre: Port Arthur (Radio Play)

• Jarrott Productions: A Portrait of My Mother by Carlo Lorenzo Garcia

• New Manifest Theatre Company: Manifest Minifest 2020

• Salvage Vanguard Theater: amendment: the making of an american myth, or the slow sipping of a peacock tea by Taji Senior

• ScriptWorks: Out of Ink 2021: Perfect Glitch

• Summer Stock Austin: Scout

• TILT Performance Group: Loudly Proudly!

• The VORTEX: The VORTEX Odyssey, Straitjacket: Variations on a Theme of Horror

Additional content includes:

• shorts from The VORTEX: The CoviDecameron, "Life Reloaded", The CoviDecameron, "Self-Reflection", Baba Yaga and the Golden Bees.

• a livestream of The VORTEX 's Campfire Queer Storytime

• The Battlefields of Clara Barton song medley, featuring select songs from Austin Playhouse's summer workshop

• In-person mixer at the Butterfly Bar, Sunday, November 14, 5pm to 7pm

Tickets: Festival passes start at $42; individual event tickets are $7. Passes and individual tickets on sale today at noon at austinplayfest.com.

In March 2020, companies pivoted, re-imagined, re-worked, collaborated, and created new ways to reach their audiences. For many that meant virtual performances: livestreams, zoom readings, and works created whole cloth for this new medium. 

Offering over a dozen performances throughout five days, the virtual festival will additionally include livestreams, Q&As with the creative community, and an in-person mixer on Sunday, November 14 at The Butterfly Bar at The VORTEX, 2307 Manor Rd.

Produced by Austin Playhouse, Austin Playfest will include context for each piece to help audiences better understand the challenges each theatre and its creatives faced and their goals for each work. Ticket proceeds benefit participating theatre companies.

Austin Playhouse is dedicated to providing opportunities for Austin artists and audiences to celebrate the human experience. Austin Playhouse will nourish your mind, delight your spirit, and enrich your life through professional productions of classic, contemporary, and musical plays. For more information visit austinplayhouse.com.

Austin Playhouse is a professional theatre in its 22nd season. Under the leadership of Co-Producing Artistic Directors Don Toner and Lara Toner Haddock, Austin Playhouse has grown from a three-play season on the campus of Concordia University, to a year-round operation producing an average of six mainstage plays, theatre for youth productions, and a new play festival. Austin Playhouse plans to build a permanent home for the veteran theatre troupe and all of Austin’s artistic community.