Zell Miller III, the poet, performer, and theater artist, has some simple advice for folks trying to get started in the Austin performance scene. “I tell anybody who is asking me like, how do I get in, I'm like, ‘you should just do a Frontera Fest piece,” he says. “Do a Frontera Fest piece. You will get introduced to an incredible, big group of people who are welcoming and open to you. And I think that's the big part of it too – it's the audiences that make the real festival because they're open to pretty much everybody's work that comes through. And as an audience member, you get to see 4 or 5 different things, you know, for one ticket. So I think that's the cool part of it.”
Ken Webster, the artistic director of Hyde Park Theatre, Frontera’s home base, has been with the fest since it started 32 years ago (this will be the 30th Frontera Fest in 32 years – there were a couple of off years during the pandemic). “I've been involved every year of the festival, but it was created by Vicky Boone, Jason Phelps, and Annie Suite,” Webster says. “They came up with this great idea. They were at Ted's Greek Café and they came up with the idea of having this festival every year. I directed a show in that first festival by this junkie surfer playwright from California called Storyland. But I've been involved in every capacity – acting, writing, directing, artistic director of the theater. I've been a panelist. So I've seen it all since the beginning, but it might never have happened if not for Vicky and Jason and Annie.”
Miller was at that first festival, too. “I was called in, someone had canceled,” he remembers. “And so Vicky called me in on a Tuesday to perform on a Thursday. And I was a company member with Frontera Theater Productions at the time. And so that's why she reached out because she's like, ‘We're stuck, we're stuck, we're stuck. Can you just come read poetry, do something?’”
“We always say expect the unexpected, and that's pretty much true,” Webster says. “It's like the greatest arts incubator in the history of Austin theater. Every year there are new people, new artists, new playwrights, new directors, new actors getting their start at Frontera Fest, and it's a great venue for old hands to try out new work and every year it's… a great mixture of brand new people and people who've been around the Austin theater scene since dinosaurs roamed the earth.”
“It absolutely builds community,” Miller says. “I mean, I think like Ken said, it's a way to try new stuff as a writer, as a director. You could put something on the page and you might want to see what it looks like on its legs, which I've literally done, and it led to… my first production that was produced and directed by Ken, My Child, My Child, My Alien Child. So it's that opportunity to try out new work and just be part of the whole lore of it. And this year I'm super excited because it comes full circle. I'm doing a show with my 17-year-old daughter who's also a writer and an actress. So I'm super excited [about] the fact that, you know… my second or third piece was about her brother when he was 5 or 6 years old and now I'm getting to do a piece with this 17-year-old phenom of an actress. So I'm really excited.”
“We have the same audiences come back every year and we get a lot of new people who want to see their friends who are doing their first Frontera Fest piece,” Webster says. “So it's a really great experience. There’s a bunch of people who've performed many times, and there's some new faces that I'm not familiar with. So I'm looking forward to seeing what the old guard come up with this time around and seeing these new creatives have their work seen for the first time before an Austin audience.”
Frontera Fest runs January 14 - February 15 at Hyde Park Theatre.