This month’s Salon will feature two short one acts:

Sunday, April 28th at 6:30 PM
Trinity Church of Austin, 4001 Speedway

MAGIX ISLAND by Yadira Uranga

MAGIX ISLAND follows the story of a Blind young girl named Claudette who is trying to live her life as independently as possible, however the family has to move to an island because her father will be working for the King. Besides her mother being overly protective of Claudette, the islanders are not very welcoming of persons with disabilities, isolating them from society. The King also has a son who is blind but he isn’t very accepting of the young man. Some persons with disabilities are having to mask their disability in order to provide for themselves. Claudette will meet other persons with disabilities along the way. They will gather together as a team to advocate for their rights and for the freedom of the unicorns.  This play shares some of the realism of some of the struggles of living with a disability, but this play is also filled with fantasy.

Yadira Uranga was born with an eye condition named Optic Nerve Hypoplasia. In 2011 Yadira graduated with an associate’s degree in music. She has performed in several Operas including “Sister Angelica” by Giacomo Puccini, and she has performed in several productions with TILT Performance group including “Strange Faces” by Andrea Grody. She has written a short Play for TILT Called Audition of Chaos. Ms. Uranga has a Guide dog who has performed with her in several productions as well as in improvised shows.

THE BRIDGE AND THE BATS by Kathy Rose Center

Set at least 50 years in our future, retired civil engineer Grammy, the woman responsible for demolishing the Congress Avenue Bridge fifty years earlier, displacing its famous urban bat colony, tells her adult granddaughter Olivia the same magical tale she told her as a child, instead of what Olivia wants to know: what really happened that day. 

THE BRIDGE AND THE BATS is a 10-minute play with a magical-reality twist, based on an 8-minute audio drama that Kathy wrote as a class assignment for Austin Community College in 2020. It was produced for their ”radiopidemic” audio drama series “Tales from the Congress Avenue Bridge.” 
 
Kathy Rose Center, a native Texan, worked 30 years for IBM Austin as a product and software developer before unexpectedly starting a second career at age 54, as an actor, screenwriter and playwright. She has since appeared in more than 30 roles on film and television, and in 22 stage productions, both scripted and improvised, including leading roles  in Bryony Lavery’s FROZEN,  Horton Foote’s THE CARPETBAGGER’S CHILDREN, and  Don Fried’s POSTVILLE. While studying playwriting at ACC, she had a 1-minute play published in the Spring 2020 Rio Review, and an 8-minute audio drama produced by ACC. In 2021, her full-length play THE SCENT OF PEACHES which was developed with the inestimable help of two ScriptWorks Salon readings, was selected as a finalist for Hyde Park Theatre’s new play development workshop. Kathy’s primary playwriting focus is on telling stories that matter, that engage and empower senior women, especially stories that employ unexpected moments of courage, kindness and humor.