Social Justice Themes

Environmental Justice is intertwined with Social Justice. We hesitated for a long time to say that we were making “Justice Theatre.” We simply make theatre that affects us deeply and personally, and as it turns out, that’s pretty consistently been about injustice and the movements toward justice.

We take a premise we are worried about (forced migration, totalitarianism, environmental collapse, hierarchy, immigration rights, human rights, patriarchy) and tell a highly visualized story built upon that premise. Our approach to the concepts is more subtle than Propaganda Theatre or Process Theatre (all respect due to those forms). We like to take you on a dream journey, with the hopes that you’ll keep thinking about it long after you go home. Changing deeply rooted social practices requires an imaginative leap. The ingenuity we need to create change is only achievable with imagination.

El Cucuy features undocumented siblings living in Texas in the apartment of their twenty-something tía. In the midst of sweeping ICE raids, the older brother, Yoyo, draws on the Latino tradition of telling terrifying stories to children to illicit good behavior. Teenaged Yoyo employs these Cucuy/ Llorona/ Lechuza stories to train his 12 year old sister Xiomara how to avoid being intercepted by immigration agents of ICE.

Cenicienta: A Bilingual Cinderella Story tackles culture, heritage, and the power of language. Belinda is a modern Mexican-American girl who dreams of becoming a poet like her hero Gary Soto. Ignored by her stepfamily and left alone in the basement to prepare for the party upstairs, Belinda uses her imagination and considerable sense of self to re-enact the story of Cinderella through Object Theater (puppetry with everyday objects). She makes discoveries about her own capacity and self-worth as a person, artist, and member of her familia.

Don Quixote de La Redo spotlights the hallmarks of Glass Half Full Theatre’s Lecoq-based approach to performance: wry humor and inventive use of actor as scenery and puppeteer as character, with Beckett-esque use of physical language and shifts in scale between tiny puppets, human actors, and large-scale puppets. The show explores the modern realities and imagined consequences of life in the borderlands between two cultures whose fortunes have shifted.

Once There Were Six Seasons invites audiences to travel the globe and explore the impact of climate change on cultures. Puppeteers recreate our rapidly changing planet using recycled objects and textiles, from string and paper to recycled Styrofoam packing shapes, as rainclouds and river valleys, farmland and icebergs, diamond mine workers, polar bears, and islands sinking into the sea.

Missionary Position: Pleasure Journeys for the Intrepid Lady Explorer is a queer and feminist comedy trilogy featuring Victorian Lady Explorers and Spokeswomen for Hartman’s Hygenic Towellettes for Ladies, the first commercially available menstrual products for women. They travel around the world at the turn of the 19th century, hocking their products and lecturing hilariously on topics of interest to the Ladies Society for Ladies, Where Ladies Share Knowledge with Ladies.

Simple Sundries takes a darkly comic look at the commodification of culture in Austin, Texas and the displacement of people and animals to feed Austin’s “progress.”

“Allow yourself to be immersed in the evening and I guarantee you days and nights of discussion over what you have experienced to follow.”