Natalie Marlena Goodnow
is
a nationally recognized teatrista, teaching artist, and cultural activist from
Austin, Texas. She performs, directs, and writes; she's been practicing some
combination of those forms for seventeen years, and began teaching through and about
them 8 years ago. She specializes in the creation of original works for the
stage, as a solo performer and in collaboration with other performers and
playwrights, both youth and adults.
Goodnow’s
work is dialogical in both its process and product, using performance as a tool
with which to engage communities in conversation. Natalie explores the
relationships between people and places, in terms of relationships to
community, to the Earth, and to our own bodies. She has studied under artists such as Adelina Anthony, Omi Osun Jones,Sharon Bridgforth, and Abe Louise Young.
Her
solo play “Mud
Offerings,” is the 2011 winner of the Jane Chambers Playwriting Contest, a
national award recognizing female playwrights and feminist plays. “Mud Offerings” has been presented
nationally, at venues such as the Women
at Work Festival at Stage Left Studio (New York, NY), El Mundo Zurdo: An
International Conference on Anzaldúan Thought and Art and Performance (San
Antonio, TX), and was “Best of the Fest” in Frontera Fest Short
Fringe 2011.
Other
original, solo performances include "Muntu: a word that means both tree and
person," and “Eagle
Woman Poems.” In recognition
of this work, she was selected as an Arts, Culture, Nature Eco-Performance
Fellow at the Earth
Matters on Stage conference (2009), and as an Artist in Residence at the Alma de Mujer Center for Social
Change (2009).
Some
of Natalie’s favorite roles include 'Zoe/Lupe' in the Generic Ensemble Company's
"Stuck on Gee-Dot" (2010), ‘Gemini’ in Virginia Grise’s
“blu” directed by Florinda Bryant (2009), ‘Medea’ in Euripides’ “Medea”
directed by Elena Araoz (2005), and ‘The Runner’ in Wura Natasha Ogunji’s “by a quiet sea” directed by k.t.
shorb (2009). She was also a featured performer in "Remember
el Alma" written by Barbara Renaud Gonzalez and
directed and adapted for the stage by Virginia Grise (2010) and in “I
Was Born Here,” a multimedia tableau based on “Remember el Alma,” featuring
an installation by Deborah
Kuetzpalin Vasquez, with video by Sandra “Pocha” Peña.
Goodnow
is proud to be a Teaching Artist, she has taught numerous afterschool and
summer classes, and has created devised theatre in partnership with teenage
youth at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center's Teen Arts Puentes Project
(2007, 2008) and also with Theatre Action Project and the University of Texas' Living
Newspaper Summer Program (2009). She currently tours the interactive performance residency “Courage
in Action” to the 5th grade classrooms of Austin, Texas,
teaching young people to become “courageous leaders” who can recognize problems
in their worlds and work together to solve them.
Natalie
studied Theatre, Spanish, and Feminist Studies as an undergraduate at Southwestern University, where she
directed and produced three original, ensemble-based pieces promoting dialogue
within the campus community. She was awarded the Angus Springer Theatre
Scholarship (2006) and the Overall Leader Award (2006, 2007). She graduated
summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa (2007). As a first year student, she
presented at graduate-level conferences on the use of Spanish, English, and
code-switching in Chicano theatre. Goodnow also studied independently with Yuyachkani, the award-winning (with
prizes for both artistic merit and human rights) theatre collective during a
semester abroad in Peru (2006).
Natalie
is an Artistic Associate of Theatre
Action Project and a member of The
Austin Project.