Since 1995, Rude Mechs has used performance to explore collectivity, collaboration and community.Co-Producing Artistic Directors, Madge Darlington, Thomas Graves, Lana Lesley, Kirk Lynn, Sarah Richardson and Shawn Sides have created a mercurial slate of 22 original theatrical productions ranging from Low-Fi, Agit-Prop, Lec-Dems to Multi-Media, Romantic-Era, Closet Dramas. What these works hold in common is the use of play to make performance, the use of theatres as meeting places for audiences and artists, and the use of humor as tool for intellectual investigation. Rude Mechs tours these performances nationally and abroad; maintain The Off Center, a performance venue for Austin arts groups of every discipline; and produce Grrl Action, a year-round program in autobiographical writing and performance for teenage girls.

Kirk Lynn is a Founder and one of six Co-Producing Artistic Directors of Rude Mechs. With the Rude Mechs, Mr. Lynn has written and adapted more than a dozen plays including Lipstick Traces, Requiem for Tesla and I’ve Never Been So Happy, winner of a National Endowment for the Arts New Play Development Award, set to premiere in Fall 2010. Mr. Lynn also adapted The Wrestling Patient, a finalist for a NEA New Play Production Award, for 40 Magnolias in Boston. He wrote Major Bang for The Foundry Theatre in New York, with whom he is working on a new commission about “value” and its myriad meanings in America. Mr. Lynn received his M.F.A. from the Michener Center for Writers and currently teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.