This year’s REDCAT NOW Festival launched with a surprising range of works, including a comedy special meets music concert, an experimental interrogation of the rodeo and an ensemble theater piece about what it means to be American.
The festival is known for presenting new works in development by local artists, and this year’s iteration has already proven REDCAT’s dedication to expanding its definition of experimental stage works. What stands out most in the first week’s presentation, which ran Nov. 6 – 8, is the distinct attention to how popular culture can be part of the experimental side of these artists. The artists—including Maylee Todd, Jacob Wolff and Diana Wynn with Ammunition Theatre Company—infused their artistic explorations with a level of conventionality. For Todd, it comes in the form of a pop music concert. For Wynn, it comes in the form of traditional theater elements. Beneath the conventionality is an interest in recontextualizing how we consume these art forms by changing our relationship with them, bringing us closer to interrupting the flow of expectations.
REDCAT NOW Festival – Maylee Todd in “MOUTH” choreography by Maylee Todd – Photo by Angel Origgi.
Maylee Todd does this best within the confines of a music concert. Her interdisciplinary approach melds music, comedy, and technology. Described as a “surreal cabaret,” “MOUTH” is a hilarious presentation of her forthcoming LP of the same name, sharing tracks from the project alongside humorous interludes where she interacts with the audience. It begins as a typical music concert does: a grand entrance. A giant inflatable mouth rises with air. Slowly, she appears at the tongue, singing the first track of the performance. Her movements during her performances, choreographed by fly lady di and Anthony Martinez, are provocative and interactive, often with whacking influences.
REDCAT NOW Festival – Maylee Todd in “MOUTH” choreography by Maylee Todd – Photo by Angel Origgi.
Her piece is riddled with sexual innuendos and quips about her clitoris. It is part of her brand as she aims to destigmatize mental health and sexuality by being candid about her sense of attraction and self-doubt. She spends time in between tracks getting a laugh out of the audience with an animated worm projected on the wall, brought to life by an audience member who becomes the subject of motion capture technology. Tech designed by Gavin Cloud opens up a whole new channel of exploration for Todd and the genre of music concerts as a whole.
REDCAT NOW Festival – “BEG” by Jacob Wolff – Photo by Angel Origgi.
Jacob Wolff’s “BEG” is an experimental opera that aims to shock with the aesthetics of the rodeo clown. He fully embodies the elements of clowning and rodeo by playing with risk and tension. This playfulness happens at the very beginning as two performers run across the stage, naked. The work—performed by sam wentz, Kensaku Shinohara, Jessica Hemingway, Mason Moy, Brody Scott, Kayla Dobbs, Redfield Clipper and Billy Kernkamp—often feels nonsensical, but Wolff is simply painting a picture one brush stroke at a time. It’s abstract. One second, wentz and Hemingway perform modern dance on opposite sides of the stage, and the next, Dobbs throws shaving cream all over Clipper, who is tied to a chair.
REDCAT NOW Festival – “BEG” by Jacob Wolff – Photo by Angel Origgi.
“BEG” is a crash course in theater of the absurd. Unexpected actions create tension, contrasting one another, but as the world builds, their common thread starts to peek through song and dance. The pre-chorus to “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton plays. Wentz, Shinohara and Hemingway repeat the same choreography in a line, changing directions with each iteration. A video discussing rodeo culture shows a side-by-side of a chicken and an animatronic running. The work presents nuggets of information that all feed into an interrogation of Americanness and the legacy of rodeos. At times, it’s self-aware. A voiceover will comment on how artists will place something at the center of the stage to distract them from what is happening around them, as the exact prophecy unfolds in the piece. The work will even bluntly ask performers, with the same voice-over, “What makes bad art?”
Overall, “BEG” presents questions about consumption and nationality, offering ideas of what it may mean to be American today vs. the past. It is smart, but not too didactic. It’s a perfect medley of images that leaves you wanting more.
REDCAT NOW Festival – Ammunition Theatre Company in “I Am an American (via Los Angeles)” – Photo by Angel Origgi.
Lastly, Ammunition Theatre Company’s “I Am an American (via Los Angeles)” offers first-person accounts of people’s experiences living in America and Los Angeles. The work conceived and directed by Diana Wyenn reflects the diversity of Los Angeles and shares the common struggles with identity that people may have today. The performance and work overall are lukewarm, depicting streams of consciousness and candid conversations about race, gender and sexuality. However, it rarely goes beneath the surface.
REDCAT NOW Festival – Ammunition Theatre Company in “I Am an American (via Los Angeles)” – Photo by Angel Origgi.
As someone who dedicated my undergraduate education to theater for social change, I often presented similar conversations in the wake of Trump’s first presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve worked with organizations like Black Lives Matter LA and Reform LA Jails Coalition to create works that reflect on racism and the prison-industrial complex. In 2025, I must question whether there is still space for this form of theater. In 2020, we were trying to inform people of these issues—that our community is made up of differing perspectives. As we enter 2026, the subtleties and handholding are gone. In the age of American Eagle ads made up of eugenic overtones and the deification of a right-wing extremist podcaster, it is clear that the audience of this form of theater knows injustice exists in this country, whether they seek to perpetuate or combat it. In a festival dedicated to presenting new experimental work, this piece lacks innovation and a powerful gut punch that could bring the art form to the next level—not simply saying, “we exist,” but “this is how we fight for existence.” It must offer a radical solution. Where’s the absurdity that matches the same absurd reality we live in? It lacks a goal.
Week one of the 2025 REDCAT NOW Festival revealed that art forms are taking large steps forward with interdisciplinary approaches to creation. The more uninhibited, the better.
REDCAT NOW Festival Week Three runs through November 22, 2025 with works by Lu Coy, jeremy de’jon guyton, and Laua Izpisua Rodriguez. For more information, please visit the REDCAT website.
Written by Steven Vargas for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: REDCAT NOW Festival – MOUTH by Maylee Todd – Photo by Angel Origgi.
