Austin Engagement of A Strange Loop for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Audiences Will Now Be Streaming Only

Deaf Austin Theatre (DAT) and Visionaries of the Creative Arts (VOCA) have canceled the Austin engagement of the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical A Strange Loop due to unexpected loss of funding and will move it to streaming for one night only on October 11 at 7pm CST. Tickets purchased for the Austin engagement will be automatically refunded.

This reimagined production of the musical by Michael R. Jackson, directed and choreographed by Alexandria Wailes (for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf), is performed by a company of Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing artists in ASL, spoken English, and supertitles. This co-production of A Strange Loop played the Sprenger Theatre at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, DC, last month.

Originally produced off-Broadway in 2019 and on Broadway in 2022, A Strange Loop follows Usher, a Black, queer, and, in this production, Deaf man writing a musical about a Black queer Deaf man writing a musical.

The cast includes Gabriel Silva as Usher, Tyler “T” Lang as Voice of Usher, Mervin Primeaux OBryant as Thought 1, ELLISON K. as Thought 2, Malik Paris as Thought 3, Damien DeShaun Smith as Thought 4, Wade Green as Thought 5, Jeremy Rashad Brown as Thought 6, and swings Elbert Joseph and Terrence Berry.

The creative team also includes associate director and music supervisor Stanley Bahorek, director of artistic sign language (DASL) Kailyn Aaron-Lozano, music director Walter “Bobby” McCoy, set designer Jessica Trementozzi, costume designer Izzy Fields, lighting designer Helen Alton-Garcia, projection designer Julian Kelley, sound designer Liv Farley, caption designer Andres Poch, and intimacy director Emily Sucher.

Tickets for the streaming event start at $25 and are available here.