I first learned of the playwright Sarah Kane through Houston’s Catastrophic Theatre and founder Jason Nodler in 2011, just a few months after I embarked on a dance theater collaboration with a contemporary ballet and dance theater company I had followed avidly for many years. I was running off the high of what the best collaborative relationships can be. It was through that collaboration that I would meet and date one of the actors cast in the Catastrophic Theatre’s production…
Continue Reading
By Addie Tsai The conversation around gender and sexuality has considerably shifted since the 1970s, when queer Cuban playwright Maria Irene Fornes wrote her avant-garde feminist play Fefu and Her Friends, set in 1930s New England. America would see the legalization of marriage equality just three years before Fornes’s passing, and Merriam-Webster would name the gender-neutral pronoun “they” as the word of the year in 2019. The #metoo movement would bring about a national conversation regarding consent, sexual assault, and…
Continue Reading
The Spectrum South Sunday performance of Robert O’Hara’s Bootcandy was held on February 24, 2019 at The Catastrophic Theatre. Autobiographical in nature, Bootycandy uses O’Hara’s experiences growing up Black and queer to dramatize the story of Sutter, a young gay man who takes us on a whirlwind journey through the homes, churches, dive bars, motel rooms, and nursing homes that marked his childhood. The subversive comedy is a fast-paced, eclectic memory piece in which scenes, sermons, and sketches from Sutter’s childhood come together to comment on how being Black…
Continue Reading
Mai and Julien sit down with the Catastrophic Theatre to talk about Bootycandy, a production that is loosely based on playwright Robert O'Hara life and explores the complicated layers of growing up Black and queer.…
Continue Reading
Veer Queer sits down with The Catastrophic Theatre to talk about 'Bootycandy', a play that explores the complicated layers of growing up Black and queer. …
Continue Reading
Recent years have seen a rise in mainstream discussions centered on queer Black masculinity. Frank Ocean’s lyrics hinted at his queerness before the rapper opened up about the subject. Actress and writer Issa Rae’s Insecure questioned how women view Black men who have had sexual experiences with other men. Jaden Smith disrupted traditional notions of masculinity by playing with gender presentation before ultimately coming out as queer in 2018. And, perhaps the most landmark cultural production about the subject, director…
Continue Reading
The Spectrum South Night performance of Leap and the Net Will Appear was held on February 23 at The Catastrophic Theatre. The thought-provoking, gender-bending play was followed by a post-show discussion led by Spectrum South writers Josh Inocéncio and Crimson Jordan, who answered audience questions about queer identities presented in the evening’s performance.…
Continue Reading
Rarely do theatres in Houston offer rich experimental plays that depart starkly from the theatrical canon. But The Catastrophic Theatre, building upon its tradition of producing work that “will destroy you,” is premiering a play that is experimental and queer. The company, housed in the MATCH through the facility’s residency program, has consistently produced harrowing works, from Sam Shepard’s Buried Child to Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. But Leap and the Net Will Appear, which premiered on February 9 and runs through…
Continue Reading
