Therefore: Art, Sound, and Performance Group, led by associate professor Dean Terry, garnered acclaim from local media outlets for their June performances of Poems for Broken Screens.
The acclaimed transmedia performance art project, hailed by The Dallas Morning News as one of the series’ finest, staged three performances at Hamon Hall in the Winspear Opera House as part of the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s The Elevator Project.
Poems for Broken Screens, a cross-genre show spanning multiple genres and disciplines, was one of seven showcased productions in the Elevator Project’s 2022/2023 season. Every year, the nonprofit AT&T Performing Arts Center’s The Elevator Project features the work of small and emerging arts groups performing on the Center’s campus in the Dallas Arts District.
The performance, as described by The Elevator Project’s program, is an adventurous expression of 21st-century poetry, broadly interpreted: the poem as sound, as image, as movement, as media. The ambitious project is an avant-garde interpretation of poetic forms translated through technology and experimental performance.
“This production engaged numerous current and former UT Dallas students, offering them a firsthand, high-stakes opportunity to craft an elaborate production,” Terry said. “Over a nine-month development period, professional and emerging artists alike worked closely, showcasing their creative abilities and fostering skillful growth in a professional setting,” the article states.
In his Aug. 8 DMN news article, “ATTPAC’s Elevator Project is so good. It could be bigger and better,” Manuel Mendoza lauds Poems for Broken Screens as the performance that topped the season:
“In a series of distinct vignettes, Terry and his troupe played electronic and analog music; sang; projected live video onto screens arrayed around the Hamon Hall stage; donned silly, colorful get-ups; delivered over-the-top monologues; and acted out absurd scenes of human-machine interaction.”
Among those who played integral roles in bringing this captivating performance to life are:
Terry, a transmedia artist, writer, and education designer, has been a UT Dallas faculty member since 2002. In addition to his professorship, Terry serves as the faculty advisor of the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology’s Anechoic Chamber and Transmedia Studio (ACTS) and director of the performance group Therefore.
ACTS, a soundproof chamber located on the third floor of the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building, serves as an experimental space and home to various creative research projects created by graduate and undergraduate students. The lab is also home to Therefore, which makes live art and technology experiences for audiences in significant arts venues and online via live streaming.
At UT Dallas, Terry instructs undergraduates, guides senior seminars, and advises Capstone projects. Additionally, he conducts graduate courses, including Aesthetics of Interactive Arts (ATCM 6301) and Research in Sound Design (ATCM 6326).
This Fall, Terry will lead the undergraduate course Digital Audio Processing (ATCM 4345), covering theoretical and technical aspects of digital audio processing, sound synthesis, and hands-on applications and experiments.
The Best of Dallas 2023 issue, published on Sept. 21 by the Dallas Observer, lists Therefore as this year’s Best Experimental Theater group, hailing the ‘Poems For Broken Screens’ performances.
“Dean Terry’s mad brainchild, the experimental theater collective Therefore, made a comeback this year with AT&T Performing Art Center’s Elevator Project series. The play Poems for Broken Screens was an intermedia collection of skits that delve deeply into digital existentialism, much like its 2018 predecessor, The Alexa Dialogues. The high-tech components of the show are just as masterful as its flesh-and-bone actors, including Abel Flores and Hilly Holsonback, and its impressive original music. The result was a too-real analysis of the ways technology exposes the best and worst of us,” the review states.
The Dallas Observer’s yearly Best of Dallas editions celebrate the most outstanding aspects of Dallas. With input from readers and their staffers, Dallas Observer gathers and shares the latest news about exceptional visionaries across various fields, including arts and entertainment, sports, food and drink, and shopping and services.
The Best Experimental Theater classification is among 78 categories in the Dallas Observer’s Arts & Entertainment section, including Best Music Video for Headbanging Into Oblivion, Best Artist to Go from Bedroom to Breakthrough, and Best Place to Read a comic book.
The Bass School’s communications team updated this Aug. 18 publication on Sept. 22 to include the Dallas Observer’s Best of Dallas listing.