Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > May > 20 > Entry
Austin Arts Hall of Fame: Bonnie Cullum
First in a series of capsule profiles for the Austin Arts Hall of Fame, part of the Austin Critics Table Awards, held 7 p.m. June 1 at Cap City Comedy Club. The event is free and informal. Some other capsule profiles will appear in the Seeing Things blog.
Bonnie Cullum has remained remarkably true to her artistic vision, first revealed to Austin audiences more than 20 years ago. She snatched the public’s imagination during her University of Texas graduate-school years in the 1980s, when her ritual-based directing and playful, speculative performances borrowed liberally from world theater and religions.
In co-founding Vortex Repertory Company in 1988, however, Cullum expanded her reach to include commissioning new works and nurturing up-and-coming performance groups. The company’s first full-time home, a former movie theater multiplex on Ben White Boulevard, became a hothouse for provocative, sometimes sexually bold performances. Later, she purchased and renovated a large shed on Manor Road that became an ignition point for East Austin’s warehouse-theater revolution.
She has directed more than 60 world-premiere productions and dozens of published works. She founded the Summer Youth Theatre program in 1991 to provide artistic training for young Austinites. She came by her creativity through family as well as educational means — her father is jazz great Jim Cullum, her mother, Susan Estelle Kelso, a professor of theater. She is married to composer and artist Chad Salvata, a frequent collaborator on Cullum’s signature “cybernetic operas.” Cullum adds that she is “an initiated witch and teacher in the Reclaiming Tradition.”
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