Mission

What We Do

• Produce new plays by up-and-coming writers from around the country
• Reach out to at-risk teens with our educational program ArtReach
• Publish the scripts of the plays we produce and release CDs of the original music from those plays
• Offer our expertise to the rest of the community through administrative workshops
• Manage a paid Resident Company, keeping Austin's local artists local

What we have done

Salvage Vanguard Theater has produced more than 50 productions in Austin since 1994, including new musicals and operas (The Cry Pitch Carrolls, MotherBone), wild solo shows (Terminal Hip) and straight-up plays (The Death of a Cat). We have reached more than 27,000 people in the past 10 years, 67% of whom are under the age of 30, and have employed more than 600 artists.

Awards we have won

Lots.
Including grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Meadows Foundation, Dell Computer Corporation, Austin Community Foundation, and The Houston Endowment. We’ve received numerous local theater awards over our ten years including Best Drama, Best Comedy, Best Musical, Best Director of a Comedy, Best Director of a Drama and Best Director of a Musical. Our original radio serial The Intergalactic Nemesis was chosen for Best of Public Radio by KUT (Austin’s NPR affiliate). In 2004, we won "Best Theatre Director" (Jason Neulander) and "Best Actress" (Lee Eddy) in the Austin Chronicle "Best of Austin" readers' poll and the Mayor of Austin officially declared March 26 "Salvage Vanguard Theater Day" in celebration of our tenth anniversary. We've been featured on NPR's All Things Considered American Stages series, in numerous American Theatre articles, and have had a number of our world premieres produced at several nationally recognized venues and theater festivals including the New York Public Theatre, NYC's Summer Play Fest and Humana Fest.

What other people say about us

"Weird, witty, and irreverent, this company likes to convert nay-sayers to traditional theatre by sweeping them up in productions of swollen excitement, bizarre, grotesque fantasy, and foul, unpolished reality."
--The Austin Chronicle

"[SVT's Artistic Director Jason] Neulander aims to change the world. Unlike most of his artistic compatriots, he is winning."
--The Austin American-Statesman

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