Play a Day: Perspective

A piece of art hangs on the wall. Visitors stand in front of it to look. They crane their heads to the side. They climb a ladder. They walk to the back of the theatre. They hang upside down. They close their eyes and run their hands across the canvas. They sit cross-legged on the […]

Review: 2015 Fusebox Festival

  One of the more interesting thing about attending festivals is seeing how different performance pieces speak to one another. In their second week, the Fusebox Festival line-up included some interesting offerings at the intersection of performance and technology. Michelle Ellsworth’s performance piece, Preparation for the Obsolescence of the Y Chromosome, is a meditation on a world without […]

Play a Day: Catharsis

The stage is filled with spectators facing the audience, as if they are watching a live performance. Light from a projection screen hits their faces. Most of the spectators are in semi-darkness. One woman center stage is illuminated by a spotlight. The audience in the theatre watches her (and the other spectators if they wish) […]

OUTsider Festival: Narcissister and Gay Wax Museum

I wasn’t sure what to expect when headed to see Narcissister for the opening night of OUTsider Festival in Austin. Narcissister’s name is what it sounds like; the complication of our cultural understanding of the narcissist juxtaposed with the idea of sisterhood, and how being a “sister” relates to the identities of women of color […]

Christmas Thoughts and Fearless Women

Sometimes I think I could let myself off the hook more.

Maybe doing what I love can be enough.

Maybe I should stop worrying so much about whether what I’m doing is the most important thing I could possibly do, and worry more about if I feel alive.

I want to feel that joy and exuberance Julia Child felt when she graduated from cooking school, and again when her cookbook was published.

And if I was full of that joy, maybe I’d have the energy for something else, too.

Behind BedPost Confessions

What happens when several women writing about sex-positive issues on-line start talking to each another? In this particular case, it resulted in the long-running, sex-positive, monthly live performance event BedPost Confessions here in Austin. Co-producers Mia Martina, Sadie Smythe, and Julie Gillis all met virtually through their podcasts and blogs. Sadie knew co-producerRosie Q from […]

Review: Peter de Rome: Grandfather of Gay Porn

Peter de Rome Grandfather of Gay Porn is a new documentary by Ethan Reid. It chronicles the life and work of British filmmaker Peter de Rome, who began shooting erotic gay shorts in the 1960s, at a time when homosexual sex (and pornography itself) was still illegal. What most struck me about the film was how […]