Jacqui Sutton leads the Frontier Jazz Orchestra in a presentation of original jazz/bluegrass compositions, exploring the cross-pollination of these two uniquely American music forms.Read more

Tamarie is going on a field trip. But don’t expect to board a bus and take in the sights. This is a metaphysical field trip--musical theatre style!Read more

George W. Bush wants to kill PBS newsman Jim Lehrer. He wants to kill him right on the stage of his first presidential debate with John Kerry. A surreal reimagining of real events, THE STRANGERER delves deeply into the minds of the three characters, especially Bush, in surprising, often hilarious, and sometimes unsettling ways. This production reunites the cast of The Catastrophic Theatre’s 2008 production of THE STRANGERER, about which The Houston Chronicle wrote, “The Strangerer may be Theatre of the Absurd — yet it's also the funniest and most acutely meaningful example of the genre I've encountered in ages.”Read more

SMALL BALL is a new musical commissioned by Houston Rockets' General Manager, Daryl Morey. SMALL BALL tells the story of a melancholy journeyman basketball player who has recently become the star player for the Lilliput Existers—yes, Lilliput, the same one from Gulliver’s Travels—so his teammates are each six inches tall. It’s tough to pass a regulation size ball to a six-inch player, so the team hasn’t been doing too well, and the post-loss press conferences are getting rough. This surreal, magical musical features a book and lyrics by Catastrophic Theatre favorite Mickle Maher and original music by Merel Van Dijk and Anthony Barilla.Read more

Margie was raised to be a good girl, but Margie has a secret: she wants to be a lion. LEAP AND THE NET WILL APPEAR traces one woman’s highly theatrical, time-hopping search for adventure, for love, and for her true self. Packed with wildly eccentric family members and unpredictable lovers, Margie’s journey is at turns uproariously funny and probingly melancholic. Two time Obie Award-winning playwright and director Craig Lucas says of LEAP AND THE NET WILL APPEAR: “No one else is doing what Chana Porter is doing—unhinging logic and time from their outward solidity, revealing enduring landscapes within the scenes resembling life but doing it one better each time.”Read more

Jim Lehrer, legendary PBS news anchor and presidential debate moderator, is now retired and sitting alone on a gloomy evening in his suburban Washington, DC home. Suddenly his double, Jim Lehrer the aspiring playwright, bursts in, having narrowly escaped the rabidly angry audience from the opening night of his first produced play. Lehrer II must now convince his twin their lives are in danger from the mysteriously incensed mob. The Catastrophic Theatre’s mini-festival of Mickle Maher plays continues with this wildly inventive spiritual sequel to THE STRANGERER.Read more

During the anniversary weekend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic and timeless "I HAVE A DREAM" speech, the Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC) presents the Houston premiere of Lois Moses’ “Say That He More Than A Dream.” This gripping multifaceted drama honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the sacrifices he made during the last years of his courageous life. HMAAC brings you the Philadelphia-based First World Theatre Ensemble production of this provocative piece that moves beyond the "mountaintop."

Directed by Zuhairah McGill and choreography by Charles Tyson, Jr, this fact-based drama gives us another lens through which to view the lives of Dr. and Mrs. King. Powerful acting interwined with spoken word, music, song, dance, music, and multimedia unveil untold truths from the Poor People’s Campaign to the Hoover administration’s four-year harassment of Coretta Scott King!!!Read more

A rhinoceros suddenly appears in a sleepy town, trampling through the peaceful streets. Soon another appears, and another, and another until it becomes clear that ordinary citizens are actually transforming into beasts as they learn to “move with the times.”  The Catastrophic Theatre continues its tradition of presenting avant-garde classics with Eugene Ionesco’s anti-fascist, absurdist comedy RHINOCEROS. Full of biting wit and nightmarish anxiety, RHINOCEROS is a modern masterpiece that comments on the plight of the human condition, made tolerable only by self-delusion.Read more

In an imagined near future, the creative team behind a critically lauded but ultimately unsuccessful play called “Midnight in a Clearing With Moon and Stars” have gathered at their old haunt, The Talk House. It’s the ten-year anniversary of what turned out to be one of the last plays ever performed. Over the course of a night the characters begin revealing disturbing secrets about what their lives have become. The unnamed country they live in is ruled by a charming but frightening autocrat, and many people are finding themselves increasingly complicit and morally compromised in surprising and ominous ways. This new darker-than-dark comedy by Catastrophic favorite Wallace Shawn examines the ways in which artists resist, try to hide from, and sometimes abet brutal state power.Read more