NEW ORIGINAL WORKS Festival Will Bring Nine LA Artists to REDCAT

The Roy and Edna Disney CalARTS Theater (REDCAT) will present the 23rd annual New Original Works (NOW) festival, a celebration of innovative new work by Los Angeles artists. REDCAT's NOW festival has served as a catalyst for experimentation and new work in dance, theater, music, and performance since its inaugural edition in 2004. NOW has presented the work of over 200 artists who continue to be seen on stages throughout the US and abroad. NOW 2026 features nine new original works in dance, theater, music, and performance presented over three weeks from November 5-21.

Each of the three weeks of NOW features three artists in a shared evening on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 PM, with Saturday performances livestreamed. Artists are selected through an open application process. All artistic teams are provided rehearsal space, production support, technical support, artist fees, and professional development.

NOW Festival artists are selected through an open call for applications. NOW Festival 2026 submissions were reviewed by Dimitri Chamblas, Jessica Emmanuel, and Jasmine Orpilla as part of a rigorous, multi-tiered process. NOW Festival 2026 is curated by Katy Dammers, Deputy Director and Chief Curator.

Week One: Nov. 5-7, 2026

Alfonso Abraham Cervera and Irvin Manuel Gonzalez: las cosas que enter(r)amos

Drawing on Latinx American social and folk dance, storytelling, and contemporary dance, Alfonso Abraham Cervera and Irvin Manuel Gonzalez explore the (im)materiality of belonging in this new dance duet. Partners in life and on dance floors, they use movement to tell stories that foreground cuir/queer Mexicanidades. las cosas que enter(r)amos centers rhythm, aesthetics, and the body as sites of memory, mourning, and resistance. Set in Latinx nightlife, the duet presents grooving and exchange as living altars that honor past and present cuir/queer lives and transborder movidas (moves that expand possibilities for worldmaking). Rooted in rascuachismo—a Chicanx working-class aesthetic of creative resourcefulness—the duo dances between remembering and re-membering.

Scottie Harvey: Hole Gazers

Hole Gazers is a comedic satire about fantasy, surveillance, and life online. Wearing a Halloween muscle costume, Scottie Harvey plays the role of MAN—a gay porn star—who feels violated when he finds his likeness is being used in workplace accident prevention videos. Alone in his claustrophobic apartment, MAN begins messaging the anonymous animator, who has crafted his online avatar, and imagines an escape from his life through the chat box of their relationship. Combining humor, animation, and performance, this piece probes the absurdity and possibility of safety and connection in our slippery virtual world.

Jeonghyeon Joo: how to bathe properly

how to bathe properly is a solo work for haegeum, a two-string instrument, performed in a staged Korean sauna. The piece extends the gesture and sound of bowing an instrument to the repetitive, vigorous body scrubbing offered in a jjimjilbang, or Korean spa. As water flows onstage, Jeonghyeon Joo (Musical Arts PhD 2023) turns the private ritual of bathing into a public performance. Proposing that the labor of being spotless is an endless cycle of erasure, Joo asks what is left behind when we attempt to scrub away the history of our own skin.

Week Two: Nov. 12-14, 2026

Brenda Barrios: Muñequita Muy Muy

Drawing inspiration from her experience as a first-generation Mexican American, Brenda Barrios ' Muñequita Muy Muy blends cultural symbolism, queerness, and disability into a celebration of healing and visibility. Barrios uses sculpture, dance, song, and storytelling to bring life-size replica dolls and a motorized truck onstage alongside live musicians and performers. Barrios composes and performs original music combining pop music and Mexican operatic vocal traditions with ranchera and rock en español, alongside extended vocal techniques including el grito mexicano. Her detailed, hyperrealistic sculptures transform familiar objects into milagritos—Mexican charms to meditate on how bodies hold histories of care, struggle, and evolution.

Cody Perkins / Algorythm.Code: Motherboard

Can machines support empathy, rather than extraction? Choreographer, composer, and director Cody Perkins / Algorythm.Code (Art and Technology MFA) takes up this question about technology and intimacy in Motherboard. In this dance and music piece, performer Gretchen Ackerman enters into an evolving relationship with the Motherboard shrine—an independent electronic device onstage that observes, responds to, and directs her body. Perkins draws a connection between women and machines, recognizing that both have historically been controlled and discarded within systems of power. Through movement, sound, ritual, and interaction with the Motherboard shrine, a shared history of exploitation evolves into a duet of care and exchange.

SUUVI: REGENESIS

REGENESIS is a multidisciplinary work exploring the intertwined cycles of life, death, transformation, and renewal. Drawing connections between regenerating ecosystems and the continual processes of decay and emergence that shape the natural world, the work weaves SUUVI's personal experience of grief and loss into a broader meditation on the processes of dissolution and renewal through which living systems continually transform. Composed, directed, and performed by multidisciplinary artist SUUVI, the work brings together original music for cello and electronics, live dancers and choreography by Megan Paradowski, cinematic projections and lighting design by Matt Brown, and painted elements by Reed Gibson, creating an immersive work that considers endings as part of an ongoing process through which new forms, memories, and possibilities emerge.

Week Three: Nov. 19-21, 2026

Chica Barbosa: Marilyn Times

Chica Barbosa's Marilyn Times revisits the legend of Marilyn Monroe through a Latin American lens to question what might be possible when an icon is liberated. The performance stages a dream-state encounter between three characters: Norma Jeane (the woman), Marilyn Monroe (the myth), and Bia Borinn (the performer). Inspired by Brazilian playwright Sergio Roveri's play imagining Monroe's final moments, director and filmmaker Chica Barbosa expands that text in a multidimensional piece layering film projection and solo performance. Created in Marilyn Monroe's centenary year, Marilyn Times frames Monroe's life as a site of rupture exceeding the illusions of Hollywood projected onto her.

Friidom: THE TETHER

THE TETHER is a deep dive into the ethos of street dance. The piece stems from a pivotal lesson Friidom's parents taught him about support: when helping someone, you grab them by the wrist, not just the hand, to hold their full weight. In an increasingly divided world, Friidom (Dance and Choreography MFA 2026) sees the keys to survival in the ways dancers support each other. Bringing together dance forms including Krump, D-Boogie, Poppin, Waving, and Tutting, this dynamic piece explores the connections that tie community together,moving beyond one style, neighborhood, or generation. As live music builds and freestyling dancers gather in a propulsive cypher Friidom asks: how do we tether our ancestors' wisdom and the needs of future generations to the decisions we make today?

Tarren Johnson: High Earners Not Rich Yet