Driven Theatre Company returns to Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) with the theatrical work titled Deferred Landscape: Hexed, Hijacked, and Hopeful. Three separate scenes, created by Texas-based artists Yunina Barbour-Payne, Rachel Dickson, and Angela Rice, converge into a one-hour experience using the exhibition Will Boone: The Highway Hex as the inspiration and springboard to create original work that explores the personal and local character of home.

Reservations requested, walk-ins are welcome but not guaranteed a seat. Register through our Eventbrite.

Reservations available for the following start times: 6:30PM and 7:30PM. The show is a total of one hour. Tickets will be available starting on Monday, December 9, 2019 at noon. If you have a reservation you must check-in ten minutes before your start time in order to guarantee your seat.

Driven Theater Company is dedicated to empowering, connecting, and entertaining diverse audiences during quality issue-driven theater, and education designed to encourage the healthy development of the individual, the family, and society.

Yunina Barbour-Payne is a PhD candidate in the Performance as Public Practice program at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and practice focus on performance ethnography, Affrilachian aesthetics, and the intersections of Performance, Africana and Appalachian Studies. She holds a BA in Integrated Studies from Northern Kentucky University and an MA in Performance Studies from Texas A&M University. Barbour-Payne has studied and worked as an actor, playwright, director, and arts educator. She was a National Endowment for the Humanities scholar in Shakespeare and Performance. In 2018, Barbour-Payne received the Boulder International Fringe Festival’s ‘Hibner Brown Award: Most Important Historical Message’ for Where I’m from the Mountains are Red, White, and Yellow, which she created in collaboration with Kelley Ann Walsh. Barbour-Payne has performed on stages locally and regionally including: The Boulder Fringe Festival, The National Black Theater Festival, Boiling Point Players, Cone Man Running Productions, and The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Her one-woman show and oral history performance, Precious Memories, is available at the Odd Fellows Museum in Blacksburg, Virginia. Barbour-Payne serves as founder of The Affrilachian Memory Plays, a performative inquiry which centers experiences of people of color within the region of Appalachia. For more information about Barbour-Payne’s work, please visit affrilachianmemoryplays.com.

Rachel Dickson is excited to return to CAMH where she presented her piece juxtaPOSED in the exhibition Nicolas Moufarrage: Recognize my Sign in 2018 through a collaboration between Scriptwriters Houston and Driven Theatre Company. Dickson is the founding Artistic Director of Driven Theatre Company, which has a focus on issue-based works, and she is the current president of Scriptwriters Houston (scriptwriters-houston.org). After receiving her MFA in acting from University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign Dickson worked primarily as an actor and director in the Chicago and Houston regions. She held instructor or adjunct positions in the theater department at several universities, including in Texas at the University of Houston-Downtown and Prairie-View A&M University. Dickson holds her Master of Social Work degree from University of Houston and has taught everything from Pre-k to adults in many subjects, including algebra, life-skills, and theater. Currently serving as the BOLD Artistic Associate at The Ensemble Theatre, Dickson has performed in over fifty productions, has many directing projects to her credit, and has written many plays that have seen production. Her most recent projects include: (Playwright) Grounded commissioned by The Ensemble Theatre and performed at Kingwood College; (Actor) Front Porch Society by Melda Beatty for The Ensemble Theatre at the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; (Producer) 27th Annual Scriptwriters-Houston 10×10 Ten-Minute Play Festival; and (Director) Giorgee Award Winning Best Director Award for Pipeline by Dominique Morisseau at The Ensemble Theatre.

Award winning playwright, Angela Yvette Rice is a native Houstonian. She is an accomplished, director, vocalist, songwriter, motivational speaker, private performance coach, and actress. Rice received her college education from Prairie View A&M University,Texas, where she majored in theatre and Houston Community College, Texas, with a concentration in film production.

Rice’s non-profit endeavors include her position as founder/creator of Village Privilege, a non-profit organization that serves underprivileged youth. Founded on the belief that by bridging communities and inspiring them to be empowered; they can rebuild our villages from the inside out. Rice is also the founder/creator of Autistic Rehabilitation through Theatre (ARTT) Program which believes that recreational therapy opportunities are important for all children, including children with autism and special needs. Their afterschool programs, extracurricular activities, and adaptive theatrical stage productions offer autistic children an opportunity to enhance their self-esteem and improve social skills while building meaningful relationships with their peers.

Rice is a teaching artist for the renowned Ensemble Theatre as well as owner and operator of Bravissimo Inc., a private fine arts tutoring and audition preparation service.