Glass Half Full Theatre Awarded National NEFA Funding to Develop New Bilingual Fungal Play FRUTOS

Glass Half Full Theatre, a mainstay of the experimental theater scene in Austin, has secured an Artist Development Grant from the New England Foundation of the Arts.

The grant, selected from a national pool of ensemble applicants to the NEFA National Theater Project, will support the development of their previously announced Los Frutos de la Muerte, or the Breakdown Play, at CRASHBOX during Fall 2025 with a workshop production, to be followed by a world premiere scheduled for Spring 2026.

In addition to GHFT, Deaf Austin Theatre (DAT) secured a National Theater and Development Grant, making GHFT and DAT the only two companies in the state of Texas to receive these nationally competitive grants. Austin and New York City are the only cities to have more than one ensemble represented in this year’s roster of Awardees, a testament to the rigor of Austin’s local artists. The encouraging news of the NEFA grant comes at a time when other sources of arts funding have come into question.

Glass Half Full will present Los Frutos de la Muerte, an original, devised, fungal play taking a closer look at the mess of cleaning up after the worst has happened.

The play follows two Guatemalan women, Ixq’anil and Isabela, as they navigate relationships in the wake of familial upheaval. Blending Guatemalan culture, ethnomycological insight, and the emotional complexities of family, the play is a love letter to the ones we didn’t choose, and the ones we can choose to live without. It builds on the success of earlier acclaimed GHFT shows like the visually stunning Orchid Flotilla, multiple award-winning Yamel Cucuy, and the clever, bilingual satire Don Quixote de La ReDo.

Frutos questions how fungal taboos are complicit with the marginalization of the kinds of labor that fungi perform–cleaning, healing, decomposing–and the people who perform them–janitors, cleaners, nurses–often women and people of color. This production uses the company’s signature blend of movement, puppetry, bilingualism, and fresh dramaturgical structures.

The devising team includes Co-Producing Artistic Directors Caroline Reck, Gricelda Silva, Khristián Méndez Aguirre, in addition to Minerva Villa, Barbara Mojica, and Delena Bradley. Future cast and creative team announcements will be made at a later date.

The play also draws from Reck and Silva’s signature blend of physicality, humor, outside-the-box puppetry, translingualism, and social and environmental themes, and it blends it with the uncanny textures of Bradley’s designs, Méndez Aguirre’s ecodramaturgy, Mojica’s trajectory as a Latinx performer, and Villa’s dynamic stage presence.

By securing this award, Glass Half Full Theatre and Deaf Austin Theatre join a prestigious cohort of previous NEFA Grantees in Austin to include Fusebox Festival, Rude Mechanicals, Forklift Danceworks, and TAPESTRY dance.

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