The 2011-12 Jump-Start Performance Co. Season

Welcome to our 2011-12 season! We are excited to share our mix of returning favorites, brand-new works and social events with a theatrical twist. Take a walk on the fantastical side with fire-eating carpa performers, sexy Sumerian goddesses and charming Slovakian visitors. And if you missed (or had a great time at) Lisa Suárez’ amazing play I’ll Remember for You or Alicia Fernandez’ Big, Bad & Beautiful, you’ve got a chance to see them again. We make it easy for you this season with longer runs, lower prices for opening weekends and our eclectic, accessible programming. Keep checking back regularly because we will be updating our listing with more details and extra events all year long. See you at the theater!

- S.T. Shimi, Artistic Director

What Comes Out of Chittlins
Written and performed by Kitty Williams
Directed by Steve Bailey
September 16-17, 23-24, 30-Oct 1st 2011
Friday and Saturday at 8p.m.

Miss Charlene Hughes is back with further ruminations about her love/hate relationship with those “never-clean-enough” chittlins. In this sequel to The Great Chittlin Debate, she is joined by a cast of characters including the inventor of the chittlin stew, her great-great-great grandfather, and the ever-judging Reverend DK, as they traverse the intersection of comedy, race and eatin’ higher up on the hog.

Featuring Kitty Williams, Pamela Dean Kenny, Chuck Squier & SkuDr Jones.
Opening Weekend: $12 general admission, $10 students & seniors
Final Two Weekends: $15 general admission, $12 students & seniors

Día de los Muertos Ball
Presented by Rene Roberts
November 2, 2011
Wednesday at 7p.m.

An adult social dance-party fundraiser benefiting Jump-Start Performance Co. and the San Antonio AIDS foundation. Special entertainment by local talent. Guests are asked to arrive in costume with skeleton face.

$75 Table Seating
$45 General

Stranger
Written and performed by Divadlo z Pasáže & Jump-Start Performance Co.
Directed by Viera Dubacova
November 18-19, 2011 at the Sterling Houston Theater @ Jump-Start
November 20, 2011 @ Salvage Vanguard in Austin
Friday – Sunday at 7p.m.

Jump-Start Performance Co. and Divadlo z Pasáže (an ensemble of profoundly mentally challenged performers from Slovakia) will collaborate on a new joint production. The play explores the feeling of being marginalized in society and what it means to experience sudden freedom, echoing the Slovak experience following the fall of the Soviet bloc. The piece uses the metaphor of the unexpected arrival of a “guest” into the lives of a group of people stuck in a sort of limbo, freeing them from their past constraints. How does sudden freedom affect their attitudes and actions? What is normal and what is strange?
$15 general admission, $12 students & seniors in San Antonio
Ticket information for the Austin show: www.salvagevanguard.org

Performance Party 27
January 7, 2012
Saturday at 7p.m.
(Various Artists)
Our annual marathon of entertaining acts from the Company & community artists.
$10 Suggested Donation

Big, Bad and Beautiful: Still Hungry
Written by Alicia Fernandez
Presented by Daddy’s Girl Productions
January 20-22, 27-29, 2012
Friday and Saturday at 8p.m., Sunday at 3p.m.

A touching, hilarious tribute to women of size. One of our most popular shows will be performed bigger and badder than ever in memory of visionary/creator Alicia Fernandez.
Opening Weekend: $12 general admission, $10 students & seniors
Second Weekend: $15 general admission, $12 students & seniors

I’ll Remember for You
Written by Lisa Suárez
Directed by Laurie Dietrich
March 9-11, 16-18, 23-25, 2012
Friday & Saturday 8p.m., Sunday 3p.m.

Back by popular demand! This funny, sad and courageously honest look at Suárez’ experiences as the primary caregiver for her mother with Alzheimer’s was listed as one of San Antonio’s Best of 2010 on Stage by the San Antonio Express News.
Featuring Lisa Suárez and Veronica Rogers.
Opening Weekend: $12 general admission, $10 students & seniors
Final Two Weekends: $15 general admission, $12 students & seniors

NEW WORKS FEST
June 8-9, 15-16 2012
(Various Artists; more details TBA)

In the spirit of Short Sparks, New Moves and Electric Performance Lab, Jump-Start invites you to a mini-festival of short new pieces by a rotating line-up of Company and selected community artists. Anything and everything from multi-media experiments, improvised dance pieces, staged stories and possibly some audience participation. Come and be surprised, charmed and inspired!

Hetaerae/A Carpa, Maybe
Written by Laurie Dietrich/Billy Muñoz
September 14-15, 21-22, 28-29, 2012
All shows 8p.m.

A double-bill of new works about “entertainers” – who they are, why they are, and the passion (and price) of “show-biz”.

Hetaerae (Dietrich): When the curtain rises and the lights come on, who do you see onstage? Are they stereotypes or archetypes, goddesses or whores? How do they serve your needs? From Sumerian goddesses to Greek priestesses to modern-day sex workers & stage performers, Hetaerae uses ritual theatre, live music & other experimental forms to explore performance and voyeurism on a whole new level.

A Carpa, Maybe (Muñoz): El Payaso, an old performer, tells the story of the downfall of a carpa, along with the eccentric denizens who populated it: A controlling ringmaster, a gentle mind reader, manipulative triplet acrobats, a strong man, and a captured mermaid.
Opening Weekend: $12 general admission, $10 students & seniors
Final Two Weekends: $15 general admission, $12 students & seniors

Windows Series
Produced by Laurie Dietrich & Dino Foxx; featuring various artists.
Performance times TBA
Free!
This popular series of free, First Friday performances returns to grace the front window at Jump-Start with short, visually-rich, diverse performance work.
October 7, 2011
December 2, 2011
March 2, 2012
May 4, 2012

W-I-P
Produced by S.T. Shimi & Amber Ortega-Pérez; featuring various artists.
All performances at 7p.m.
$5 general admission, $3 students & seniors
An eclectic monthly lab space for new, in-progress dance and movement-based performance works, accompanied by a facilitated post-performance discussion.
September 28, 2011
November 9, 2011
December 21, 2011
January 11, 2012
February 1, 2012
March 28, 2012
April 18, 2012
June 27, 2012

W-I-P Créme
May 30, 2012
Wednesday at 7p.m.
$10 general admission, $8 students and seniors

This one-night event showcases the best new works from the W-I-P 2011-12 season.

Rodney Garza
EL CHUCO LOVES LA CHE
November 12 & 13 – Friday & Saturday at 8 p.m.

A poetically comedic homage to the letter ‘Ch’ of the Chicano\Spanglish alphabet, told in the voice of a sharp-witted, zoot-suited pachuco. This hilarious trip through his memories of the bi-cultural barrio is full of colorful characters and customs.

Admission: $15 general, $12 students & seniors (group rate available)

Rene Roberts’
Dia De Los Muertos Ball

Tuesday, November 2 at 7 p.m.

$50 Table Seating
$25 General
Special $100 Table Seats available in the front row! Call 210-227-5867 to reserve your table today!

An adult social dance party fundraiser benefiting Jump-Start Performance Co. and the San Antonio AIDS foundation. Special entertainment by local talent and special guest Erica Andrews. Music provided by DJ Joe Alforo from the Saint!

Guests are asked to arrive in costume with skeleton face. See photo above for example.

The Macondo Foundation and Jump-Start present Nuevo Mundo, an evening of readings and performances by renowned writers Leslie Marmon Silko and Elena Poniatowska, hosted by Sandra Cisneros. In this new millennium, far-flung communities are coming into contact and creating something new. From this fusion and confusion arise flourishing hybrids, a time of intense creation and a new mestizaje. These writers blend history and visionary thinking in an evening that will challenge and amaze.

Ruby Nelda Perez in
EL FIN DEL MUNDO MOTEL
written by Rodrigo Duarte-Clark

November 14 & 15, 2009
Saturday at 8 p.m.
Sunday at 3 p.m.

Ruby Nelda Perez, and playwright Rodrigo Duarte-Clark are back with the premiere of their latest play “El Fin del Mundo.” They are the team that brought us the hilarious and thought-provoking shows “Dona Rosita’s Jalapeno Kitchen” and “Rosita’s Day of the Dead.”

“El Fin Del Mundo Motel” is a show about two veteranas who cut their teeth in the Chicano Movement, who loved each other through fundraisers, children, diapers and protest marches. A disagreement ensued about politics and they went their separate ways. Lola is now the owner of “El Fin del Mundo Motel” in El Paso. Her friend Maria Lupe is on a bus with a dead cell phone on her way to see Lola. Each woman finds herself alone, in trouble and in danger. They need each other, but first there is a desert to cross.

El Fin Del Mundo Motel is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Jump-Start Performance Co. in partnership with Teatro De La Esperanza and NPN. For more information: www.npnweb.org. Project supported in part by the Ford Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Southwest Airlines through a grant from NALAC Fund for the Arts.

May 2 – 3, 2009, Saturday at 8:00 p.m. & Sunday at 4:00 p.m.
General Admission $16 and other discounts available

This new full-length play is a lively, absorbing tale about queer and punk Latinos living as the freaks in Eastside L.A in the face of everyday annihilation. It delivers a compelling mix of fictional characters and real events, political communities and identities framed against the tumultuous period of the Reagan-era 1980s. Based on a real-life local heroine, now 75, it is the story of Chonch’s rough ride through love, a broken heart, jail time and life as a butch barber in a tough hood — a moving look at estrangement and reconciliation between family and community told through sketches, music and energetic multi-role performances.

Jump-Start Performance Co., 108 Blue Star, located in the Blue Star Arts Complex at the corner of S. Alamo and Probandt. For more information call 210-227-5867 or visit www.jump-start.org.

This project is made possible in part by a grant from the National Performance Network’s Performance Residency Program. Major contributors of the National Performance Network include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), Altria and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. For more information: www.npnweb.org.

Individual tickets are $15
2 tickets for $25!

This is the 4th year that San Antonio has supported VDAY San Antonio by showing Eve Ensler’s award winning play, The Vagina Monologues and having events surrounding the TVM, such as a benefit concert, a movie showing, a poetry reading, and a woman’s only self defense seminar!

Visit VDAY 2009′s myspace here or the Rape Crisis Center’s website here for a full calendar of events and more information!

Note: Not all of the VDAY events will be at Jump-Start! Please check the VDAY calendar on myspace for more details.

Visit www.rapecrisis.com or call 210-208-5750 to purchase tickets to The Vagina Monologues at Jump-Start.

“Fabulation or,
the Re-Education of Undine”
by Lynn Nottage
Directed by Antoinette F. Winstead

February 13 – March 1, 2009
Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening shows at 8 pm
Sunday Matinee at 4 pm

A social satire about an ambitious and haughty African-American woman, whose husband suddenly disappears after embezzling all of her money.

General Admission $20
Discounts for Military and Students $15/Seniors $13
SATCO and ATAC members $10
Call for group rates
Only Cash or Check accepted at the door
Pay Online now for Just $15

For reservations and more information call (210) 656-0349
Check out Discount Thursday!
$10.00 Admission for anyone on Thursday, February 19 or 26, 2009
To make a reservation, pay online at our web site:
www.therenaissanceguild.org
For more information call 210.656.0349
Only cash or check accepted on Thursday for tickets-
Paypal and other discounts are not accepted.

Dancing is moving, exploring, creating, and knowing ourselves as whole people. Since time began, dance has threaded itself through the fabric of personal, social, cultural, and religious traditions. It excites, invigorates, and entices us, echoing our life experiences. This new dance performance reflects our human desire to shape feelings, ideas, and images with an aesthetic sensibility. Also performed will be “Asmarandana: The Fire of Passion” the title of an Indonesian Makapit, a poem that is usually sung. Cruz will transform his state of being from evil to good in a dance solo. (Music by Emiko Susilo and Rob Levit.)