Austin’s Rude Mechs
Throw a stone and you’re likely to hit an art gallery or a performance art space in Austin, Texas. Long known for its music scene, over time, the city has contained about fifty theatrical companies and over thirty art galleries. While I’ve been to this city several times, staying at one of the hotels Austin has on Congress Street, one of which President Lyndon Baines Johnson held an inaugural ball, I’ve only checked out a handful of theatre shows here. Most of the time, I may be found down at Mozart’s, a popular coffee house, and which I highly recommend, not only for its coffee, but its deserts. You can accomplish a great deal of work there, too, if you bring a laptop, sitting inside its large glass enclosed table area with a view of Austin Town Lake. At least one theater company you shouldn’t miss if they happen to be performing when you are in town is The Rude Mechanicals.
The Rude Mechanicals, also known as the Rude Mechs, is ensemble based, creating collaboratively new works for the stage. Part of their mission statement is to develop new voices for the theater, fostering young theatre artists, and form with other artists alliances, not just in Austin but nationally and internationally. Since 1995, they’ve created over 22 original theatrical productions in a number of broad ranging styles, many of which, I’m betting, most people will be unfamiliar — styles such as Low-Fi or Agit-Prop, Lec-Dems to Romantic-Era, to Closet Dramas, and so on. They’re style is often very physical, almost acrobatic, with an emphasis on visuals. In its decade-plus of performances, the group has received more than one hundred and seventy local and national nominations and awards for the work.
The group has just closed their latest work, Dionysus in 69, which was a work built on John Cage’s ideas of “life as theater” and chance, as well as radical approaches to art as illustrated by painter Allan Kaprow. This Rude Mech work attempted to illustrate the axioms contained in Kaprow’s manifesto for theater, Six Axioms for Environmental Theater, first proposed in 1967. Their next work, currently in production, is I’ve Never Been So Happy, which has been described as a smart 21st century theatrical valentine to Texas. Heady and diverse stuff. The Rude Mechanicals goal, though, is to use a collaborative approach to produce politically and socially conscious work, to mix the artistic genres. While this seems all very esoteric, the result is something lively and entertaining and more often than not, an evening to seek out whenever you’re in Austin.
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