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In 2002, Katy Houska was a UNM theater student bound for a “traditional” acting career, but the Tricklock Theatre Company’s Revolutions International Theatre Festival spurred a life change for her.
“I was going to go on the commercial track until I took some of the workshops offered by the Revolutions festival to UNM students,” she said. “It changed everything; I saw that theater has so many other ways of existing in the world, and it exposed me to the world of true theater.”
Albuquerque-raised Houska performs in “Play Actually” with her Australian-born partner Tim Monley at the 13th annual Revolutions International Theatre Festival. The event features performances across the city through Feb. 2. Performances include a story mainly told through hand gestures; a video and dance collaboration that explores one dancer’s African-American, Native-American and Jewish heritage; and a play set in an igloo.
Performers travel to Albuquerque for the festival from all corners of the globe, including Italy, Switzerland, Poland and Mexico.
Even though the artists come from a variety of locations, co-artistic director and co-curator of the festival Kevin R. Elder said they are bound by a common thread:Most of the performances are physical or experimental.
“When I say physical theater, I mean not simply that they’re doing acrobatics or some type of physical tricks, but it’s a way of approaching theater from a physical place rather than an intellectual place,” Elder said. “The performers are very specific in their physical movements so that there’s a story being told physically as well as vocally.”
Many of the performances experiment with setting, sound and acting, but Elder said they are still accessible to the audience.
“When people think of experimental, they think it’s all in black or it’s strange and they won’t understand, and the shows that we have in the festival are accessible because they tell a story that’s recognizable as theater,” Elder said.
The performances are created, written and performed by the theater companies behind them, which differs from the traditional setup of a playwright, director and actors.
Houska said she and Monley created material for their show by playing games. They held tennis balls between their foreheads, came up with zany explanations for strange human movement and gave each other elaborate compliments.
“It’s all really loose and can exist in any environment,” she said. “We don’t have to have this flawless world that doesn’t get broken in most theater. We’re always trying to break it or having fun when it does get broken.”
Elder said hundreds of UNM students are involved in various ways in the festival, from handing out brochures to attending master classes by visiting companies. Many Albuquerque artists are directly influenced by the festival, and Tricklock always tries to bring in artists from new countries, he said.
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“What will make an audience think about that show later in the day, or maybe a couple years later?” Elder said. “A few months later, you hear ‘This show was directly influenced by a show from Poland or a show from Italy.’ Being able to see the reverberation of what this festival does and gives, and how it directly affects artists in Albuquerque, is pretty remarkable.”
Elder said every Revolutions festival is unique, and this year there are more collaborations from theaters across the globe.
“A lot of groups coming this year are what we call ‘slash companies’ in that it’s like Italy/Switzerland or Mexico City/Chicago,” Elder said. “There’s this quality that artists are starting to not be bound by location.”
