July 2024 - RISK / REWARD

Risk/Reward’s 16th Festival of New Performance is in the bag!

Well it was in the truck, and now it’s in a pile in my living room, but you get the idea.

It’s been one week since we finished the Festival and we’re still riding high.

We literally ran out of the 450 wristbands we’d stockpiled for all of you. We were full to capacity on Saturday night, partied until just shy of midnight on Sunday, and kept Jake the bartender very busy the whole weekend!

We had a dozen different groups, comprising more than 30 individual performers, and that’s not even including the group of 5 children who performed the surprise Friday night intermission show inside of Dead People’s Sheets. The Drag Theatre Workshop was a huge success – I’ll just note that we all ate pickles – and our final act on the final night, Drama Informed, literally brought down a part of the house.

Make sure you keep scrolling down to get a zine about the festival mailed to you for free, the good old fashioned way.

The Mainstage artists performing
Sarah Finn (top)
Olivia and Celeste Camfield; Shane Donohue and Elby Brosch of Drama Tops
Zai Outlaw and the Clown Mystics; Paul Susi
All photos by Jingzi Zhao

If you didn’t get a chance to leave feedback on this year’s festival, we’d love it if you could. It helps up in so many ways! Sadly, Jake has clocked out and can no longer give you a free drink for filling out the survey, but it’s still a good and helpful thing to do.

In terms of feedback we’ve already received, we do know that it was just too dang hot in the Annex, especially Friday and Saturday nights. I promise we’ll have a plan for that if we return to PICA next year. (And, hey: was PICA a good venue for R/R? Let us know what you think at the link above!)

The Trash Witch Trio as part of the Late Night Showcase;
Emma Lutz-Higgins and Tahni Holt and Houseplant during their site-specific dance piece; all photos by Jingzi Zhao

The late nighters: Sarah Turner; Vera and Miau of Drama Informed

Once in a Lifetime: Dead People’s Sheets drew a lot of love and a lot of feels over the weekend; installation by Lyndsay Hogland, photo by Julian Blank.

The glorious 2nd Annual Drag Theatre Workshop, featuring RiMoan (top),
hosted by Carla Rossi and Pepper Pepper, featuring performances from the Pansy Agenda and Svetlana Trantastic (bottom)
All photos by Jingzi Zhao

And sign up now to receive our free zine about the festival!

No tricks or scummy data tactics: we just like sending art in the mail. Fill out your info here to receive a zine via USPS sometime in the next month or two. Huge thanks to BB, Jam, Liz, and Joseph for coming and sketching – we’ll have more from them soon!

And a big thank you to Simran Gleason / Slow Camera Paparazzi, who painted artists and audiences through-out the Festival. The artists got to take their paintings with them at the close of the festival. (Photo by Jingzi Zhao.)

From everyone at Risk/Reward, thank you so much.

Thank you to our sponsors, our donors, our vendors, our crew, everyone at PICA.

Thank you to everyone who came, everyone who helped, everyone who performed, and everyone who noticed.

Thank you!

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