PERFORMANCE: MAIZE BY ACT II

Friday October 9, 6 PM DiverseWorks Gallery @ MATCH A performance by ACT II artist collective featuring Monica Villarreal, Koomah, Laura Rios, Red Rojas, and Killjoy. Maize unfolds through a series of interconnected storytelling vignettes, using corn as a connecting thread to explore how people, foods, stories, and knowledge move across lands and generations. Through movement, live sound, puppetry, costume, body transformation, and multimedia, each artist asks us to imagine migration through nourishment, reciprocity, and belonging—to embrace people as readily as we embrace the foods they bring. Note: the performance is approx. 30 mins and the audience will move through the gallery as the performance unfolds. The ACT II artist collective brings together interdisciplinary artists Monica Villarreal, Laura Yohualtlahuiz Rios-Ramirez, Red Rojas, Kill Joy, Koomah, and Aryn Ward. Working across performance, movement, music, visual art, puppetry, storytelling, ritual, and multimedia, the artists bring distinct cultural perspectives, ancestral stories, and creative practices into conversation. Their collaborative work explores migration, land, foodways, transformation, gender, cultural memory, and our relationships with the natural world. Rather than blending their traditions into a single narrative, the collective creates space for individual stories to intersect, exchange, and cross-pollinate. Through ACT II – MAIZE, they will use corn as a connecting thread to explore how people, seeds, foods, stories, and knowledge move across lands and generations, and how art can create spaces for reciprocity, nourishment, and belonging. Related Programs OVERFLOW RADIO: Šakotayišol Nunuš Constellation October 3-24, 2026 DiverseWorks Gallery @ MATCH Saturday, October 3, 5 – 9 PM 5 PM Good Medicine Indigenous Music Festival, Pay-What-You-Wish Tickets 7 PM Opening Reception Friday, October 9 – Monday, October 12, 11:30 AM – 6 PM (first transmissions start at 12 PM each day) Listening Sessions, Skill Shares and Panel Discussions RSVP Friday, October 9, 6 PM Performance: Maize by ACT II Free Tickets Saturday, October 17, 6 PM Diverse Discourse Lecture w/Mary V. Bordeaux, Ed.D., Co-Founder & Co-Director, Racing Magpie RSVP Thursdays – Saturdays, 12 – 6 PM Exhibition Hours Press Read 2026-27 Season Preview: 23 Shows Marked on Our Contributors’ Calendar, Dance Magazine (Sep 2026). Read What Carries Forward: Emily Johnson’s ‘Overflow Radio’ at DiverseWorks, Arts and Culture Texas Magazine (Aug 2026). Read Previewing Exhibitions Coming to the Greater Houston Area in Fall 2026, Glasstire (Aug 2026). Acknowledgements Overflow Radio is a National Performance Network Creation & Development Fund Project commissioned by Roy and Edna Disney / CalArts Theater (REDCAT) and co-commissioned DiverseWorks, MASS MoCA and University of Minnesota Department of Theatre Arts & Dance, more information at www.npnweb.org. Overflow Radio is developed through creative residencies provided by MASS MoCA, John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art, Roy and Edna Disney / CalArts Theater, University of Minnesota’s Imagine Fund with support from the McKnight Foundation, and Danspace Project with support from the New York State DanceForce, a partnership program of the New York State Council on the Arts. Overflow Radio is created with generous support from First Peoples Fund, Howard Gilman Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, and the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and The Mellon Foundation. Emily Johnson / Catalyst is fiscally sponsored by Producer Hub. For more information about Overflow Radio: Šakotayišol Nunuš Constellation, visit www.diverseworks.org. For more information about Overflow Radio and Emily Johnson, visit https://www.catalystdance.com/.