2020-21 Season
Embark on a season of Brave New Art with artists who dare to embrace change, defy convention, and envision a bold new future.
We’re pleased to announce our virtual fall 2020 programming, which features leading artists across disciplines and underscores our commitment to bringing innovative, contemporary art experiences to the region during the current environment. The start of our 2020-21 season features a variety of Nashville-based and national artists in livestreamed performances, ranging from provocative writers and performers who confront urgent civil rights issues, to imaginative holiday-themed events that stretch the limits of theatrical and online forms.
Fall 2020
A Conversation with Roger Guenveur Smith & Caroline Randall Williams
How the Past Informs the Present
Thursday, October 29, 2020 | 8pm CST
YouTube & Facebook Live
This free program is made possible by supporters of OZ Arts — thank you! Optional donations are welcome.
This dynamic, free-of-charge evening features two acclaimed writers and performers who are influencing the national conversation about civil rights through powerful work that confronts the issues through both personal and historical lenses. Incisive Nashville poet and author Caroline Randall Williams is an influential activist/scholar/performer whose recent New York Times essay, “My Body Is a Confederate Monument,,” has become an important touchstone in the heated 2020 conversations about race relations and history. Award-winning writer and performer Roger Guenveur Smith is a frequent collaborator with filmmaker Spike Lee, who directed film versions of Smith’s acclaimed solo performances, which are often based on historic characters in the history of civil rights, including A Huey P. Newton Story, current Netflix offering Rodney King, and the upcoming Frederick Douglass Now. Both artists will read excerpts from their work and engage in an insightful discussion about the ways the past is informing our present moment.
Fast/Forward: Nashville Artists Look to Our Future
Filmed at OZ Arts
Rent the performance anytime through Vimeo on Demand!
In this lively evening of performances featuring artists from various disciplines, Nashville-based dancers, poets, musicians, theatre-makers and more reflect on the revelations, revolutions, and resiliency of the day. The evening features short-form works from 8 different projects, many from OZ past and present, that explore personal vulnerability, civic responsibility, and the sheer madness of the unexpected. Featured artists include: Dave Ragland and Shabaz Ujima, Becca Hoback, Cameron Mitchell, and the artists behind This Holding, all hosted by the evening’s emcee Ciona Rouse. Together, these inspiring artists share a vision of the world we hope to build together and spark the hope that will fuel us into the future.
Taylor Mac's Holiday Sauce... Pandemic!
Rent On Demand through January 2, 2021
Tickets start at $15
Join the most subversive event of the yuletide season! Holiday Sauce… Pandemic! blends music, film, burlesque, and random acts of fabulousness to reframe the songs you love and the holidays you hate. 2020 Ibsen Award winner and MacArthur Fellow Taylor Mac (who uses “judy” as a gender pronoun) joins longtime collaborators — designer Machine Dazzle, music director Matt Ray, and producers Pomegranate Arts — to create a virtual experience celebrating the holidays in all of their dysfunction. There is more to the holidays than rampant capitalism and gift giving, and in Taylor’s world, creativity and imagination are their own spirituality. Judy’s cathartic spell ultimately reminds us of the collective power of our chosen families — a message that rings true in such a bittersweet holiday season. This dazzling, and at times shocking, takedown of the sentimentality of the holidays celebrates and rails against Christmas as calamity.
Manual Cinema's Christmas Carol
Rent on demand through December 31 at manualcinema.com
In this world premiere online event created for audiences of all ages, Chicago-based multimedia collective Manual Cinema takes on Charles Dickens’s holiday classic with a visually inventive adaptation made to broadcast directly to your home. An avowed holiday skeptic, Aunt Trudy has been recruited to channel her late husband Joe’s famous Christmas cheer. From the isolation of her studio apartment, she reconstructs his annual Christmas Carol puppet show – over a Zoom call while the family celebrates Christmas Eve under lockdown. But as Trudy becomes more absorbed in her own version of the story, the puppets take on a life of their own, and the family’s call transforms into a stunning cinematic adaptation of Dickens’s classic ghost story. OZ Arts Nashville presents two performances of this world premiere event on Saturday, December 19th, performed live by Manual Cinema from their Chicago studio in a socially distanced manner, and live streamed to audiences at home. In signature Manual Cinema fashion, hundreds of paper puppets, miniatures, silhouettes and a live original score will come together to tell an imaginative re-invention of this cherished holiday classic.
Spring 2021
OZ Arts Nashville continues to plan for a dynamic lineup of live and virtual performances throughout 2021. Diverse performances include:
- The Nashville premiere of Roger Guenveur Smith’s tour-de-force solo production FREDERICK DOUGLASS NOW
- Miwa Matreyek’s visually stunning environmental animation Infinitely Yours
- An evening of riveting solo dance performed by New Dialect’s Becca Hoback
- A visit from world-renowned choreographer Ronald K. Brown and his company EVIDENCE
- The world premiere of Steal Away from Nashville composer Dave Ragland with Inversion Vocal Ensemble and Shackled Feet Dance
- The debut of Grand Magnolia, an immersive theatre production delving into Nashville’s forgotten history
Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, dates and additional details for these productions will be announced in early 2021.
This season is made possible with generous support from donors and grants, including funding from the Metro Nashville Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, HCA, UAL, Pinnacle Bank, and City National Bank.
