Featuring Performances By:

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Andrew Whit

"Andrew Whit brought a "choose your own adventure" style performance to The Happening stage with a piece titled Luck Or Wisdom. Depending on their choice at the beginning of the piece members of the audience either tried their Luck and competed for prizes through a series of challenges (coin flips, throwing water balloons at Andrew, or tossing different sized hula-hoops) varying in difficulty - or recieved everything they would've got from competing (custom coins, plastic trophies, and candy) gifted to them in a brown paper bag. "You can be smart as hell, but you still can't beat blind luck" however, and with that - the final challenge for those who chose Luck was to compete with those who chose Wisdom in a game of rock, paper, scissors. If wisdom won, they kept their bag. If Luck won, the full bag was traded for whatever prizes the Lucky competitor had managed to earn from the games."

Urethra Burns

"Urethra is a Houston drag / experimental performance artist who aimed to make something from nothing, and challenge the audience to say it wasn't art. They read random lines from books, played clips of scenes from television and movies mashed back-to-back to create new moments, and frantically pulled, read, and tried to find meaning in the text of a receipt paper so long it would humble the likes of Walgreens. Their performance was intense and intentionally disorienting - pulling the audience along through the stress of trying to "make sense of it all." 

Joey Z

"Joey Z is an Austin based theatrical performer and composer. While Joey might've traveled across the state for his performance at The Happening, the real journey was the one he took the audience on in his piece, Sheep Mode. Dressed as a sheep, Joey brought to life scenes of a peaceful field filled with friends having a picnic, a chase scene involving a Big Bad Wolf, and ultimately an escape from peril as the Sheep overcame not only the wolf but it's own fears - turning the whole space into a dance club featuring everything from a live DJ set, bouncing stage lights, and of course, glowsticks. In end the sheep was both safe and satisfied with its adventure, and gently drifted off to sleep counting people."

Architects Of Cinema 

"All world renowned in their own right, Sandy Ewen, Chris Nelson, and Y.E.Torres brought a trifecta of artistic practice to The Happening stage. Through rolling combinations of improvisational music, found metal percussions, dance, fire acts, and projections, they formed the unique experience of a living art-chitecture. For that 45 minute set the audience was no longer in Houston, or even on Earth it seemed - but in a place where things had no beginning/end, and the lines between sense and experience were born, burned, and buried."

BEVRAYGE : Fern and Rocket

"This debut collaboration of Nathan Ray & Beverly Buchanan invited the audience to explore the deep cutting idea of one's own autonomy to the tune of an original and involved score. From the choice to press a button knowing it would cause the performer pain, to getting more figurative blood on their hands that they would then later clean off ritualistically. The piece was finally completed with the cutting of hair as a means of both rebellion and the sacred act of self-expression."

Daria Pugachova ft. Tom Carter

"Daria Pugachova is a multidisciplinary artist from Ukraine who chose to return to The Happening stage for their newest piece "Everything I am, I am not" , a practice in finding connection in one's own contradictions. The performance was oriented around communal creation that invited the audience to Play It, Spray It, or Say It - utilizing on stage instruments, a bullhorn, and several cans of spray paint. Tom Carter performed alongside Daria and the audience using his unique, entrancing style of guitar playing as a soundscape backbone for the (messy) experience.