Ways to support "Muntu"

We are nearing the end of our Austin tour, and have reached hundreds of audience members, but have found that our production fund is still not quite where it needs to be. You can help!

1) Purchase an ad in our program! $30 for a quarter-page, $50 for a half page, $95 for a full page. For our show on April 18, 200+ people expected to be in attendance! Email nataliemarlena@gmail.com and...

Sizes

Quarter-page $30.00 Half-page $50.00 Full page $95.00

or send a check to Goodnow Productions, PO Box 181222, Austin, TX 78718

or

2) Donate to our raffle! Items needed by this Friday, April 3. Contact Natalie at nataliemarlena@gmail.com if interested. Great exposure for you and your business!

or

3) Just plain donate! Muntu offers humble thank you gifts in return:

Seedlings
Up to $25
A signed copy of Muntu

Saplings
$25 - $50
A signed copy of Muntu, original tree drawing in oil pastel

Bloomers
$50-$100
A signed copy of Muntu, original tree drawing in oil pastel, and framed tree photograph

Great Oaks
$100 and up
A signed copy of Muntu, original tree drawing in oil pastel, framed tree photograph, and signed poster

or send a check to Goodnow Productions, PO Box 181222, Austin, TX 78718

or bring donations to Muntu: Reflections in East Austin at Space12.

Thank you!

Muntu: Reflections in East Austin

A two-week reflection on the effects of development on the trees and people in East Austin

April 18 to 30, 2009
Space12
3121 12th Street

View Larger Map

“Muntu” is a word that means both tree and person.

What is happening to the "muntu" of East Austin amidst the city’s changing cultural and geographical landscape?

This multimedia exhibit offers the entire Austin community a time and space for shared reflection on this and related questions, for conversations of all kinds, in diverse media:

performance, poetry, storytelling, sculpture, music,
essays, photography, and good old-fashioned talk.

Austin – East of I35, a photography show by Rama Tiru

A community arts project:
Sculptures of trees by Theatre Action Project’s afterschool students
Audience responses to Natalie Marlena Goodnow’s one-woman play Muntu

Opening Reception
A satellite event of Austin Earth Day
Saturday, April 18, 2009
7:00 pm to 10:00 pm
7:30 pm Muntu
written and performed by Natalie Marlena Goodnow of Goodnow Productions and Teatro Vivo
8:15 pm Artist talk by Rama Tiru
9:00 pm DJing with Evan Wilson

City Council Candidates' Forum
Hosted by PODER
Thursday, April 23, 2009
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Questions for city council and mayoral candidates regarding community concerns

Open Albums
A Space12 Project
Saturday, April 25, 2009
10:00 am to 12:00 pm
The first of a series of free monthly breakfasts and Space12 to share photographs and stories from growing up in East Austin

Refreshments provided at all events.

This program is made possible in part with a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

What people are saying about Muntu...

“Natalie offered us a solo piece of reflections and personal anecdote, a sort of biography/confessional tied to trees - - both real ones and trees as allegories for human experience. She lifted lightly into describing the progression of her own feelings about her bicultural origins, about rootedness and the appeal of relocation, travel, and finding one’s rightful place. This was a light, eloquent flight of fancy, artfully and delicately accompanied on cello and percussion.”

- Theatre Critic Michael Meigs


“Natalie’s work is substantive and far-reaching in its implications. Through art, Natalie captures the kinds of intellectual, spiritual, and cognitive dilemmas that young people who are marginal to society face. These struggles further track back to policies and practices that encourage youth to 'shed' themselves of their ethnic and community-based languages and identities. Her work is a far cry from 'art for art’s sake,' but rather consciously aims to engage audiences, encourage reflection, and promote empathy for the challenges that so many face. Indeed, this work models the notion that art equates to a public good when it connects with the realities of the community. Like the best, most ennobling task of the social scientist, it promotes public responsibility by holding up a mirror that allows its recipients to imagine new, emancipatory possibilities for their lives. I cannot say enough about this work.”

- Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., Cissy McDaniel Parker Fellow


“Based on my own viewing and reading of Natalie Goodnow’s Muntu, the play represents a serious piece of work by a young Latina who tackles, from a deeply personal angle, an issue capital to Latinos--those whose parents or grandparents have immigrated from Latin America, and those descendents of settlers preceding the first Anglos. Ms. Goodnow’s Muntu, deals with gentrification. She does so, moreover, in a way that invites thoughtful participation from the audience, and a freshness which, while owing something to youth and exuberance, manages to convey much wisdom and depth of vision notwithstanding. One feels that Ms. Goodnow understands theater as a instrument used to impart not only pleasure and enjoyment, but also human aspects and vistas, and in Muntu she delves well under the surface in order to weigh diverse, competing perspectives. I wholeheartedly recommend this forward-looking, up-and-coming young playwright.”

- Spanish Professor and Theatre Critic Charles Rand

Special thanks to...

Teatro Vivo, Rupert and JoAnn Reyes, Marisela Barrera, Leticia Rodriguez, Mike Predtetchenski, Renan McFarland, Karen Tsang, Space12, Marco Martinez, Dr. Ferrari and Southwestern University, Echo-Earth, Janie and Steve Goodnow

Muntu is sponsored by Teatro Vivo, and funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

Biographies

Natalie Marlena Goodnow (Playwright and Performance Artist) is a performer, director, writer, educator, and cultural activist. She graduated from Southwestern University in 2007 with a Theatre major and Spanish and Feminist Studies minors. She helped to found the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center's Teen Arts Puentes Project, and currently leads writing and performance workshops at Eastside Memorial High School as a teaching artist with Theatre Action Project. She is actively involved in both Teatro Vivo and Stamp Lab: A Theatre Group.

Cliff Miller (Director) has studied movement and acting at the National Theater Conservatory, as well as movement, dance, acting, puppetry, and script analysis at the Rhodopi International Theater Collective; he has directed plays at Southwestern University, and performed with Capital T Theater and the Austin Playhouse.

Travis Jeffords (Cellist) is pursuing a Master's degree in Composition at UT. This summer he got married, made a website, and worked as an engraver, arranger, and composer for the Austin Classical Guitar Society.

Josh Casiano (Percussionist) is a Music Composition/Music Theory major at Southwestern University. He thinks that everyone should listen to more music, stress less, and generally slow down to appreciate life.


Dagmar Garza (Lighting Design) is a new designer to the Austin theatre scene. She studied at Del Mar College for two years and is finishing her degree at Texas State. She is thrilled to be working on such an original show and hopes to be blessed with more opportunities.

"Muntu" is a Kikongo word that means both 'tree' and 'person.'

Natalie Marlena Goodnow's one-woman show of the same name is a reflection on the relationships that exist between trees and people, between old Austin and its changing cultural landscape, and between the author and her many selves. It is an invitation to reflect.

The piece is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the playwright and musicians Travis Jeffords and Josh Casiano, with artistic direction from Cliff Miller, and additional direction from Teatro Vivo's Rupert Reyes, San Antonio's Marisela Barrera, and Performance Encounters' Leticia Rodriguez.

Natalie Marlena Goodnow has previously performed Muntu in San Antonio at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center as part of Teatro Fest (October 2008), and in Austin in Teatro Vivo's collection of new works, Voces de Vivo, and in Hyde Park Theater's Frontera Fest (February 2008). She is currently touring Muntu to diverse community settings in Austin.

At each performance, actress Natalie Marlena Goodnow 'harvests' written and drawn responses to the piece. The Austin tour of Muntu will culminate in an installation that showcases these responses, Muntu: Reflections in East Austin.