We believe creating art through a collaborative and consensus-based process will lead to expansive thinking and the creation of a just world.
Our collective makes performance.
The work is new, live, and deeply collaborative.
We provide a home for creation and performance where people gather, experiment, and share new ideas.
Everything we do is gritty, affordable, and accessible.
Since 1996, Rude Mechs has created a genre-averse slate of original theatrical productions peppered with big ideas, cheap laughs, and dizzying spectacle. What these works hold in common are the use of play to make performance, the use of theaters as meeting places for audiences and artists, and the use of humor as a tool for intellectual investigation. We tour these performances nationally and abroad; maintain CRASHBOX, a rehearsal / performance / workshop warehouse; we house a scenic lending library; and we run Why We’re Here, offering refugees and asylees a forum for artistic expression. The quality and innovation of the company’s theatrical productions have firmly established Rude Mechs as one of Austin’s most highly valued cultural assets
As we create new works for adventurous theatre-goers, we seek to demystify the art-making process, and we work hard to foster real communication with and responsiveness to our patrons by holding workshops, talkbacks, and open rehearsals along the way. We will not make work we ourselves could not afford to go see and offer pay-what-you-can nights to keep our work accessible to all, regardless of economic status.
In 1999, Rude Mechs assumed the management of The Off Center, a performance warehouse in East Austin. The Off Center housed a flexible 100-seat theatre, the administrative offices of Rude Mechs, studios for visual artists, a rehearsal room, Austin Scenic Coop, and a scene shop, and The Off Shoot, a classroom dedicated to the work of Off Center Teens and Grrl Action before that. In 2012, The University of Texas at Austin increased Rude Mechs’ rent by over 300%, and the company was forced to leave The Off Center at the end of that term, in May 2017. In June 2017, Rude Mechs acquired an 18-month lease on 5K sf of the weirdest low-ceilinged sad rooms in the bowels of our dead daily newspaper and created Rude Studios: rehearsal rooms, crafting space, classroom, meeting, dance, admin and storage space for Austin artists. As the landlord desired to “aggressively market” that space for short-term rentals, we left in January 2019. In April 2019, Rude Mechs signed a three-year lease on Crashbox: a 1500 sf space for rehearsal, meeting, crafting, and performance space for Austin artists. We are looking for an affordable permanent venue.
Rude Mechs is an ensemble-based theatre company that operates with a full company of 33 members. We create original plays that we produce in Austin, TX. We have received over 200 local and national awards and nominations for our work. We’ve enjoyed four Off-Broadway premieres and toured to top national venues such as The Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis, MN), The Wexner Center (Columbus, OH), and Woolly Mammoth (Washington D.C.). We seek to participate in the international community of artists by contributing to festivals such Austria’s SommerSzene, the Galway Arts Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (winner Total Theatre Award for Best New Play by an Ensemble), the Kiasma Festival, the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, and the Under the Radar Festival in NYC. Our touring productions include Field Guide, Not Every Mountain, The Cold Record, Replacement Tapes, Stop Hitting Yourself, Now Now Oh Now, The Method Gun, Get Your War On, How Late It Was, How Late, Cherrywood, and Lipstick Traces. Our Off-Broadway productions include Stop Hitting Yourself, The Cold Record, The Method Gun, Match-Play, Get Your War On and Lipstick Traces. Our production The Method Gun was selected for the 34th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. Our emergence into this community was marked by a feature in The New York Times that identified Rude Mechs as one of three companies in the country “making theatre that matters.” We are deeply proud to represent Texas as a home for cutting-edge theatrical practice.
The artistic directors of Rude Mechs often compare ourselves to a cycling team because of the fluid manner with which we switch roles—when one of us is having a hard time another swoops in to take the lead. We often compare the full company to a band because of the various harmonies you get when you combine the talents of the individual members and their particular training, histories, and experiences. But perhaps the most astonishing description is the one that lacks all metaphorical drapery—Rude Mechanicals is made up of six artistic directors who have chosen, day after day, to commit to each other for 15 years. As a company of almost 30 actors, designers, and crew we apprentice ourselves to the idea that the best work is made by combining the depth of multiple points of view with the discipline to speak as a single voice.
We are lucky to live in Austin. We are lucky to live in a city where the press engages the arts in ways that are deep and supportive.
We are lucky to live in a community this creative and hard working and confident and intelligent. All this new work and all these open minds. We are lucky to live in a community where artists support one another, rather than compete with one another – where we lift each other up instead of trying to tear each other down.
We are lucky to have so many amazing creative people that can make work with us, that are interested in making new work of their own, that understand failure is a symptom of working well and working hard and working right, not a predictor of future success.
We are lucky to live in a city where the audience is well-read and has a good sense of humor and brags on itself and yet somehow doesn’t take itself too seriously. We are lucky to have an audience that wants to participate in the creation of the play – that knows it isn’t finished until they show up and bring their own associations and dreams to the piece. And yet an audience that holds us accountable – with honesty but never dismissiveness.
We are lucky to live in a city that is full of bands and reads a lot of books and likes the outdoors and knows that a creative community isn’t just the money-generating ‘movers and shakers’ but also the teenage punk rockers and the quirky artist who builds spaces from trash and the hippies with their butterfly bicycles and the students making films and plays and music and their own new thing, whatever the new form will be.
We are always asked why we chose to live in Austin, so far from the artistic meccas on the coasts. Why would we have chosen anywhere else? Here we have friends and colleagues who know the value of a life lived making art with comrades and taking time to relax on the patio and share a beer and not get all het up about ‘making it’ because ‘making it’ isn’t how much money is in your bank account or how famous you are, or how ‘respected’ or ‘hot’. But how rich the hours in your day are, surrounded by people you love and admire, in a beautiful place that is both a safety net and the trapeze high above it.
Rude Mechs
5305 Bolm Rd. #12, Austin, TX 78721
Phone: 512 476 RUDE (7833) – we don’t really do phone
Email: info[at]rudemechs.com
ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF
Reach all of us at once at staff[at]rudemechs.com
CO-PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTORS
Reach all of us at once at copads[at]rudemechs.com
COMPANY MEMBERS
Reach all of us at once at company[at]rudemechs.com
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Reach all of us at once at board[at]rudemechs.com
VOLUNTEER FOR US!
volunteer[at]rudemechs.com
