poolboy00 BY SAM MAYER NOVEMBER 5-7 AT 8:30 P.M. VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE THEATREDANCE.UTEXAS.EDU Jackson Cobb – Video Editor • Alyssa Finger – Associate Lighting Designer • Andy Gottschalk – Artist Ari Jamieson – Associate Lighting Designer • Sam Mayer – Playwright • Julia Mounsey – Co-Deviser Ashton Bennett Murphy – Technical Director • Brisa Shaw – Stage Manager Keaton Smith – Video Editor • Mike Steele – Director • Peter Mills Weiss – Sound Designer
CAST poolboy00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sam Mayer
The Department of Theatre and Dance is a world-class educational environment that serves as the ultimate creative incubator for the next generation of artists, thinkers and leaders in theatre and performance.
NOTE FROM THE PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTORS Welcome to UTNT Fall 2020! It is an honor to present two new works this season by our ascending third-year M.F.A. in Playwriting candidates in collaboration with second-year M.F.A. in Directing candidates: Wyeth Airlines Flight Thirteen by Lena Barnard, directed by Andrea L. Hart and poolboy00 by Sam Mayer, directed by Mike Steele. Now in its fourteenth iteration, UTNT has consistently served as a launchpad for The University of Texas at Austin’s graduate and undergraduate theatre artists; artists who are continuing to change the American theatre landscape and influence hearts and minds around the globe. More than any other year, these trailblazing projects called for unique production concepts, development processes and presentation styles. The works you are about to experience are the products of insight, collaboration, craf, dedication and innovations for how we share stories in this changed and changing world. UTNT stands for UT New Theatre. Welcome to the launch of these inspiring works. Thank you for being the first!
NOTE FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT poolboy00 is a reality show streamed live on Twitch. Over the past two months, "poolboy00" has been streaming over five times a week, capturing raw footage for a reality show about himself. Every stream is both rehearsal and performance. We started with only a vague idea of what we were doing. As the project progressed, we worked to try to identify stories and patterns that were naturally arising. How could these be gently molded, live and in real time, in a way that would provide me and my guests with emotional catharsis, energy or, at the very least, pleasure? If The Real Housewives thrives on pressurized conflict between so-called friends, could the pressurized confines of poolboy00 bring me closer to the people I love? A question I get asked a lot is what is the diference between "poolboy00" and Sam. Is any self more “real” than another? I am two selves (ofen more!) simultaneously at all times. These selves are masks, flesh-colored and hard to distinguish. Doing poolboy00 has helped me to articulate something I love about The Real Housewives: that we always have two timelines going on at once – our lived, physical life which we’re always in the present with and then, hovering over us, is our sense of our lives as story/narrative/edited. We are trying to point at both of those timelines – in our own clumsy, dumb way – and trying to collapse them. I’m sad that we’re at the end of the project, as I feel like I’m only now starting to get a handle on its full potential. Look out for season 2!
NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR A few months ago, Sam approached me about doing a project that streamed live on Twitch. I agreed without hesitation. Then I spent the rest of the day figuring out, “What the hell is Twitch?” I only had a vague awareness of it as a platform where people played video games together. Quickly, I realized the potential Sam saw in it as a virtual space we could exploit to explore connection and storytelling during a time of physical isolation. As a medium, streaming turned out to be both exhibitionist and profoundly personal. The anonymity of the chat and the familiarity of speaking from your own living room created a shared virtual space that favored intimate revelations over the kind of melodramatic, conflict-driven explosions we associate with reality television. It also presented an arena to play with the idea of control. As a director, I was tasked with helping shape poolboy00’s story. However, the more I attempted to manipulate poolboy00’s story, the more I inserted myself as a character into Sam’s life, which in turn became part of the project. Through cataloging and editing, I could contort the material of poolboy00’s life to fit whatever narrative I liked. It made me wonder how ofen this happens to us every day? There’s always the sense that we’re being watched now – whether its algorithms tracking our keystrokes, phones filming us incidentally or (in our current moment) the omnipresence of Zoom and Skype. That kind of surveillance weighs on our psyche so that we start to see ourselves from the outside, constantly editing our own actions in real-time, to try and control the story others are capturing. poolboy00 has been an experiment in exerting and relinquishing that type of control. Now, as audience, it’s your turn to decide - what story do you see?
CREATIVE Andy Gottschalk (Artist) is an illustrator and writer. He makes looping gifs, sketchbook drawings and digital paintings. andygottschalk.com Ari Jamieson (Associate Lighting Designer) is an M.F.A. in Design and Technology candidate at The University of Texas at Austin. She gained her Associate of Science from Snow College, where she designed lighting for Wait Until Dark and studied in their theatre program. Jamieson continued her education at Southern Utah University, where she earned her B.A. and was steeped in lighting design work, with an emphasis in dance lighting. She has worked as the assistant master electrician at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival and as a stagecraf professor and in-house lighting designer for Snow College, assisting with shows including The Glass Menagerie, Phantom of the Opera and Our Town. Julia Mounsey (Co-Deviser) is a theatre artist and poet from New York. Her work has been presented at The Public Theater, Soho Rep., Baryshnikov Arts Center and abroad. She works in partnership with Peter Mills Weiss on devised work for the stage. peterjulia.com Ashton Bennett Murphy (Technical Director) graduated from The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance in 2018. Since graduating, she has been working full-time as assistant charge scenic artist and technical director at Texas Performing Arts. Murphy also freelances in and around Austin as a designer, content creator and scenic painter.
Brisa Shaw (Stage Manager) is a fourth-year B.A. in Theatre and Dance major with an emphasis in stage management and a minor in arts management and administration. Recent credits with Texas Theatre and Dance include Dance Repertory Theatre’s Fall For Dance (2019) and a place called the middle (UTNT (UT New Theatre) 2019), along with several film projects. Mike Steele (Director) is a director, performer and writer from Chicago, Illinois. In Chicago, he is a company member with Trap Door Theatre, where he founded the “Trap Open” Incubator Series and directed The Killer by Eugene Ionesco and Sad Happy Sucker by Lee Kirk. Steele is also the former founding artistic director of The Island Theatre of Chicago, where he led the creation of several originally-devised plays including Tourist Trap and The Glass Inward. Recently, Steele has been devising and directing a series of original dance-theatre pieces titled The Capillaries, which have been presented at Links Hall where he is a former resident artist. Steele holds a B.F.A. in Theatre Studies from the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University. steelemike.com Peter Mills Weiss (Sound Designer) is a theatre artist from Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared at The Public Theater, Lincoln Center Theater and abroad. He works in partnership with Julia Mounsey on devised work for the stage. peterjulia.com
CAST Sam Mayer (Playwright, poolboy00) is from Houston, Texas. His plays include Chet's Summer Vacation (Kennedy Center; Intramural Productions; Rec Room Arts), Spitshow (Collective48), Maria Maria and the Sun Tea (Finalist, Playwrights Center Core Apprentice) and The Yolo Plays Pt. 1 & 2 (The Silent Barn; Collective 48). His work has been developed at SPACE on Ryder Farm. He is a M.F.A. candidate at the Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas at Austin.
CREW
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FRANCES GARNETT
PROP STOCK MANAGER INDIRA RAMPERSAD
ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER MATTY HALL
COSTUME PRODUCTION DIRECTOR NANETTE ACOSTA
SCENIC STUDIO SUPERVISOR J.E. JOHNSON
COSTUME PRODUCTION ASSOCIATE DESIREE HUMPHRIES
SCENIC ART SUPERVISOR KAREN MANESS
DRAPERS SARAH ALDRIDGE POUA YANG
ASSOCIATE SCENIC STUDIO SUPERVISOR JASON HUERTA MASTER CARPENTER HANK SCHWEMMER ASSISTANT CHARGE SCENIC ARTIST ASHTON BENNETT MURPHY GRADUATE PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS INJI HA HARRISON HAYES ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANTS AYDIN HALEFTIRAS MADISON SHERIDAN PRODUCTION LEADS ZOE BIHAN GABBY CLEMENTE DANIEL GELD ISABELLA HOLLIS JAKE JOSEPHI EVAN MCCLAIN JULIO MUNOZ ALEX PASSANISI
COSTUME SHOP ASSISTANTS EMMA DICKERSON KATHRYN MILLER CALIFORNIA THORSON COSTUME CRAFTS ARTISAN TANYA OLALDE TEXAS PERFORMING ARTS SUPERVISING ELECTRICIANS SEB BOONE SARAH CANTU TEXAS PERFORMING ARTS LIGHTING SUPERVISOR JEFF ELLINGER SENIOR LIGHTING TECHNICIANS ARI JAMIESON EMILY NOVACK TEXAS PERFORMING ARTS LIGHTING CREW CHARLOTTE BRUMBELOW LIBBY JANTZ BRISA SHAW
PROP SHOP SUPERVISOR CAROLYN ALLINGHAM HARDIN
TEXAS PERFORMING ARTS AUDIO SUPERVISOR MIKE MALAK
PROP MASTER CAROLYN ALLINGHAM HARDIN
TEXAS PERFORMING ARTS ASSOCIATE AUDIO SUPERVISOR KENNY KUYKENDALL
TEXAS PERFORMING ARTS AUDIO CREW CHEYENNE CHESTER POLLYANNA O'HAIR WILLA SNOW MEDIA SHOP SUPERVISOR EARNEST MAZIQUE MEDIA GRADUATE ASSISTANTS JACKSON COBB BENJAMIN RANDALL PRODUCTION CREW SUPERVISORS EMMA CRAIG JOHN ERICKSON AURORA KENYON PRODUCTION CREW E'JA ALEXANDER MACY BUTLER SAYLOR DEMENT MELISSA ELKINS LILY FALCONER ISABELLA HAMBLETON RED HURTADO TIMMY HUYNH ESTELLE ISAAC LAUREN JERSHIN ZADA JONES ANDREW KUSMAN EDWARD LOPEZ-JIMENEZ DAGOBERTO LOPEZ KATYA LOPEZ ANDREA NUNEZ OZ OSBOURNE CHASE PARKER KENDRA PENA BRYNN PETERS ROSANNA PINEDA JAMES PRAEGER SEAN RAMIREZ JULIA SALAZAR SIMON SALINAS ABDOLHAY TALEBI KOLBY TATE AUSTIN TAYLOR EMILY TORRANCE QUOCPHUONG AVA TRAN WILLIAM TUOMEY
STAGE MANAGEMENT ADVISOR RUSTY CLOYES DIRECTING ADVISORS KJ SANCHEZ ALEXANDRA BASSIAKOU SHAW LIGHTING DESIGN ADVISOR MICHELLE HABECK ACADEMIC PRODUCTION MANAGER JEFF GRAPKO GRAPHIC DESIGNER JEFF GRAY SPECIAL THANKS TRAVIS L. TATE BENNETT KIRSCHNER RENAE JARRETT LANA LESLEY IGGY MARTENS JAMES MAYER ISABELLE MAYER KEVIN MULVEY DAVID WILLIAMS AND, OF COURSE, TO THE CHAT