Poolboy00
by Sam Mayer

Mar. 21 - Mar. 23
Thursday-Saturday

poolboy: don’t pick up is an immersive party and performance about submissiveness, friendship, and failure. Your computer is whitehot in your lap. What happens next is entirely in your control.

poolboy is trying to write a murder mystery. His best friend, momgrab (artist Julia Mounsey), is ghosting him. To avoid writing, poolboy will do anything you ask. Anything. don’t pick up seems simple, an excavation of 20 years of writing: from School of Rock fanfic to failed plays to abandoned journals. The audience freely interrupts with questions, new conversation topics, or by giving poolboy tasks to complete on the spot. Reality and fiction intertwine. All is not what it seems. poolboy: don’t pick up is pure chaos: a participatory, living, white-knuckle document of poolboy’s very real life.  

about poolboy00
This is the fifth iteration of poolboy00. Since 2020, Houston-born, Austin-based artist Sam Mayer has chronicled his life on-and-offline as his alter ego: poolboy00. This documentation became poolboy00 (2020-present) an experimental reality show/participatory memoir/talk show for the streaming platform Twitch and irl. Initially inspired by The Real Housewives franchise, it has since morphed into long-term performance about friendship, public intimacy, partying, surveillance, and control. 

credits
poolboy: don't pick up
by Sam Mayer
Installation by Anderson Funk
Additional material by Julia Mounsey
Sound by Bryan Dalle Molle
Produced by Christine Gwillim
With help from Jay Roff-Garcia, Leah Yacknin-Dawson
Graphics by Andy Gottschalk

Sam Mayer is from Houston. Full length works include POOLBOY00 (IRL@MoHA; Beaubourg; Co-Lab Projects; UT Austin), THE CUCK (Intramural Theater), and CHET'S SUMMER VACATION (Kennedy Center; Intramural Theater; Rec Room Arts). His work has been developed at and/or with The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, The Orchard Project, The Museum of Human Achievement, The Workshop Theater, The Mastheads, and SPACE on Ryder Farm. He is the recipient of the Chesley/Bumbalo Foundation Prize. MFA: Michener Center for Writers. https://sammayer.info

Julia Mounsey is a director and writer. Her work has been presented at The Public Theater, Soho Rep, JACK, the München Volkstheater in Munich and the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. She was a member of the 2017-2018 Devised Theater Working Group at The Public Theater, the 2017-2019 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and was a Baryshnikov Arts Center Resident Artist in 2019. Her play while you were partying was a finalist for The Drama Desk Award in 2021. She lives in Brooklyn and has no secrets. https://peterjulia.com 

My name is anderson funk, born 1989. I study and read a lot, and I like to make beautiful objects, situations, and sentences. I studied engineering at Vanderbilt and art at MICA.  I like using the languages I learned in both places to inform my understanding of the other. I ride a pedicab to pay rent, I'm a member of the front, a co-op gallery in New Orleans, and I host a radio show on WTUL New Orleans. I hope to make more and bigger sculptures, situations, and sentences as I grow up, grow down, and change all around. . . https://andersonfunk.com 

This project is supported in part by the City of Austin Economic Development Department.

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Poolboy00
by Sam Mayer
Sam Mayer

March 21 - 23, 2024 at 8 p.m.

Museum of Human Achievement, 3600 Lyons Rd, Austin, TX 78702

All tickets are sliding scale  $0 - $35 (no minimum)! (reserve tickets HERE)