Program
UNBECOMING:
A Story Told in Form & Fashion
Red Nightfall Dance Theatre
March 19–21, 2026 | East Side Performing Arts
979 Springdale Rd, Austin, TX
Creative Team
Concept, Story, Writing, Direction, Visual Concept, Production Design: Dorothy O’Shea Overbey
Choreography: Dorothy O’Shea Overbey, in collaboration with the dancers
Guest Choreography (Interstice): Alexa Capareda
Spoken Word: Dorothy O’Shea Overbey, Ty Lyons Graynor & Madeleine O’Shea Robb
Costume Design: Robby Durand, EmmaSis Designs
Composer: Sofia Gonzalez
Live Music: Finn Dickens (piano) & SoJo Gonzalez (cello)
Lighting Design: Trent Brown & Katy Hallee, Doghouse Productions
Projection Design: Scott Gregory
Story Consultants:Elaine Fields & Madeleine O’Shea Robb
Artistic Assistant: Jessica Siclari
Production & Communications Associate: Cellise Brown
Film Producer: Whitney Rowlett
Production Manager: Kathryn Sharkey
Stage Manager: Andrea Williams
Stage Crew: Mars Johnson, Amadeus Gonzalez, Vincent Martinez, Sarah Patch-Kids, Kevin Flowers, Richie Garza, Caden Conaway, Melisa Balderrama Siles, Tommy Heath.
A Note from the Artistic Director
Unbecoming is new territory for me. I’ve spent my whole life in concert dance - ballet, contemporary, modern — and I’ve had the privilege of commissioning and presenting original music alongside that work. But this past year I’ve challenged myself to move beyond what I know into something truly interdisciplinary: film, audience interactivity, spoken word, and now fashion as narrative.
The fashion element is something I’ve wanted to explore for years, ever since I lived in New York and experienced the designs of Alexander McQueen for the first time, especially that transcendent exhibit, Savage Beauty. I made a pilgrimage there more times than I can count. In Unbecoming, we're using fashion not as decoration, but as visible evidence of a character's transformation - and I've pushed that idea into the production design itself: fabric that becomes architecture, garments that are born onstage, a a special homage to McQueen - a headdress inspired by antlers draped in tattered lace. These are images I've been carrying for a long time. Robby Durand of EmmaSis Designs took those ideas and made them real, bringing a craft and artistry to the costumes that elevated everything.
The story we are telling is deep. It asks difficult questions about power, belonging, and the compromises we make when we are afraid. It is not trivial work. But something I always come back to is that our job is to take our struggles and turn them into beauty. We look at profound things from a place of lightness, levity, and joy. There is too much heaviness in the world. Art does not have to add to it. Art can metabolize it.
My hope is that Unbecoming is a transcendent experience: beautiful to watch, alive with music and movement, and grounded in community and connection. We share this space together. We share this story together.
This production is new, and it is risky. I am playing with elements I haven’t used before: projection design, grand-scale fabric as architecture, fashion as narrative structure. You never know if it will work. But I am honored and humbled to be building this alongside a group of extraordinary artists who have devoted their lives to their craft: Guest Choreographer Alexa Capareda; Robby Durand of EmmaSis Designs; Trent Brown and Katy Hallee of Doghouse Productions; our composer Sofia Josephine, cellist SoJo Gonzalez and pianist Finn Dickens; our projection designer Scott Gregory; our six fashion models; our remarkable cast of dancers; our stage management and front-of-house team; and the leadership and team at East Side Performing Arts.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for showing up for live performance, for independent art, and for this community. It means everything to us.
With love,
Dorothy O’Shea Overbey
Founder & Artistic Director
About the Work
Unbecoming merges concert dance with theatrical fashion presentation, drawing inspiration from the runway productions of Alexander McQueen. The work follows three archetypal figures as they are recruited by a character named (as archetype) The General. Each character, The Prodigy, The Zealot, and The Follower, represents a different vulnerability that makes authoritarian belonging seductive. One is offered recognition. One is offered certainty. One is offered safety.
Each story unfolds through a sequence of spoken word, fashion presentation, and choreographed dance, revealing the transformation of identity through the symbolism of garments on the human body. Models enter in a “before” state, the dancers perform the journey of recruitment, and the models return altered: absorbed, armored, changed.
Rather than condemning those who are seduced by power, Unbecoming seeks to understand them — examining the internal fracture that precedes external transformation, the moment when one self gives way to another.
Unbecoming is the third chapter in RNDT’s interdisciplinary performance series building the universe of CRONE — a fantasy mythology exploring resilience, transformation, and the archetypal feminine. Previous chapters include Rituals of Light (July 2025) and Fractured Dawn (November 2025).
Show Order
Choreography by Dorothy O’Shea Overbey, in collaboration with the dancers, and Music composed by Sofia Joesphine, unless otherwise indicated.
I. The Dark Birth
II. The Prodigy
III. The Zealot
IV. The Follower
featuring selections from Rachmaninov’s Études-Tableaux, No. 2 in A minor
V. Interstice
choreography by Alexa Capareda
VI. Model Reprise
VII. The Mother Rises
featuring “Nimrod” by Edward Elgar
Runtime: approximately 70 minutes, no intermission. Please feel free to leave the theater and return!
Cast & Models
THE PRODIGY — danced by Megan Davidson
modeled by Aurora Banks & Georgia Garner
THE ZEALOT — danced by Kanami Nakabayashi
modeled by Neha Mambapoor & Jonathan Oliver Foster
THE FOLLOWER — danced by Rachel Culver
modeled by Laney Phillips & Juniper Darrow
THE GENERAL — Ty Lyons Graynor
THE MOTHER — Cellise Brown
The Follower’s Lover / Caster — Clay Moore
Caster — Elaine Fields
Caster — Jessica Siclari
*The models carry each figure’s transformation visibly — entering as one self, returning as another. The dancer lives the journey between.*
About Red Nightfall Dance Theatre
Red Nightfall Dance Theatre is an Austin-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to liberating the human spirit through transformative, immersive performing arts experiences.
*In the face of a chaotic world, the creation of beauty is an act of liberation. The creation of beauty is not the privilege of the pedigreed, but a birthright to us all.*
RNDT champions artists who don’t fit traditional molds — the brilliant creators working beyond conventional stages, whose unique perspectives and authentic voices are essential to the future of performing arts. The company operates as a creative hub where disciplines converge, weaving together dance, live music, film, fashion design, and audience collaboration into experiences that transcend traditional artistic boundaries.
Red Nightfall Dance Theatre was founded by Dorothy O’Shea Overbey, who spent nine years on the faculty of UT Austin’s Department of Theatre and Dance before leaving to lead RNDT full-time. The company performs at East Side Performing Arts, co-owned by Overbey and AJ Garcia-Rameau.
**@rednightfalldancetheatre** | rednightfallproductions.com
spoken word
The Dark Birth
In a world not unlike this one, there were those who practiced an ancient magic — a magic of giving, of tending, where every act of power returned something to the earth. They were called the Casters, and they were led by the one they called the Mother.
But among them was one who carried a fire that would not quiet. He had been loved. He had been held. But the holding felt like a cage, and the love felt like a leash.
He could feel it — the power just beneath his skin, vast and restless, pressing against the edges of everything he had been taught to contain.
And so they came to him, as they had always come — with the bonds of the ones who loved him. Threads of protection. Threads of belonging. Woven with care, laid upon him like prayers. But he felt them as chains. Every gentle hand, a restriction. Every act of devotion, a weight.
And in the dark, beneath the weight of all that love — he chose. He rose. And what had been given to hold him became the raiment of his becoming. The bonds reshaped themselves around his body — no longer theirs His.A new skin. A new name. In the world he was leaving, magic was a conversation. You gave, and the world gave back. You offered, and the offering returned to you — changed, and changing. But he had tasted something else.
He had learned that if you only take — if you pull the power from the living things around you, from the people around you the fire does not dim. It multiplies. Born not into the light, but into the space where the light refuses to go.
A dark seed, long gathering, has found its form. A new will, dense and burning, forged into being. All that restless wanting distilled into a single body, a single name.
The General is born.
The Prodigy - Before
Among the Casters, there was one who burned brighter than the rest. They called them the Prodigy. From the beginning, their power was immense — instinctive, unruly, radiant. The kind of force that filled a room before they entered it.
And the people around them — who loved them, who truly loved them — did not know what to do with all that fire.
So they said: careful. They said: not so fast. They said: hold back. Not because they wished to diminish — but because they did not understand a power that large in a body that young. They meant it as love.
But what the Prodigy heard was not care. What the Prodigy heard was: we do not trust you. What you are is too much. What you carry is dangerous. Be less.
And so a door opened inside them — a hunger for someone, anyone, to look at the full blaze of what they were and say: yes. I want that. I trust you with all of it.
The Prodigy - After
The General found the Prodigy in that open, hungry place. He saw what the others could not bear to look at. He looked at them and did not flinch. Did not caution. Did not look away. He said: I see you. He said: don’t hold back. He said: I trust you with power. And it was everything they had ever wanted to hear.
So the Prodigy opened. They let the fire off its leash. And for a moment, they felt whole. To stop containing. To stop apologizing for the size of what they carried.
But a fire with no boundary does not illuminate. It consumes.
The Prodigy became his instrument. Their strength, his to direct. Their power, unquestioned, unchosen - aimed wherever he pointed. They mistook being used for being valued. They mistook obedience for trust.
And the ones who had loved them - the ones who had said careful, hold back, not so fast - could only watch as the brightest among them became a weapon.
The Zealot - Before
There was another among the Casters whose gift was not in power but in thought. They called them the Zealot — though that name would come later, after the seeking turned to certainty.
Their mind was sharp — searingly so — but it turned inward like a blade.
Every choice opened into another choice. Every answer bred ten new questions. Every path forward forked, and forked again, until the way ahead was nothing but branches and no ground beneath their feet.
You should do this. No — this. What will they think? I don’t understand. Give me the answer. But there was no answer. Only: figure it out. Only: you must have faith. They were not weak. They were not foolish. They were exhausted.
Exhausted by the weight of choosing. By the terror of choosing wrong. By a world that offered no certainty and demanded they move through it anyway. And somewhere inside that exhaustion, a door opened — not to more questions, but to the dream of silence. The dream of someone who would say: stop.
I will tell you what is right.
The Zealot - After
Where there had been noise, the General brought silence. He entered like stillness itself. He silenced the noise. He lifted them above the fray, and covered their eyes, and said: I have the answers. Stop struggling. Just follow. I will tell you what is right. And the relief — the relief was like a breath after years of drowning.
So the Zealot surrendered. Not in defeat, but in gratitude. They let go of the questions. They let go of the choosing. They let someone else decide. And the mind that had been so sharp, so restless, so alive with wondering — went quiet. And then went still. And then went empty.
Now they move as they are told to move. They repeat what they are given to repeat. The steps are simple. The steps are clear. The steps never change. They call it peace. They call it faith. But faith without questioning is just obedience wearing a gentler name.
The Follower - Before
And then there was one more. The last to fall. The one they would call the Follower. They were afraid of the quiet. Not the quiet of solitude — the quiet of reaching out and finding no one reaching back. They had learned, early, that the safest place to stand is next to someone. That the quickest way to belong is to become whatever is needed. Softer when softness was wanted. Smaller when smallness was safe. A mirror, always reflecting back what the other person hoped to see.
They were held. They were carried. They were seen. But even being seen by one person cannot fill a silence that began before you had language for it. What the Follower wanted was not to be chosen. It was to be absorbed. To become part of something so much bigger than themselves that the self was no longer required.
The Follower - After
No one came to recruit the Follower.No one had to. The General’s world had grown.The Prodigy. The Zealot. And others after them.The collective was already moving — bodies in unison, steps in time, a rhythm so steady it felt like a heartbeat. And to someone who had spent their whole life listening for a pulse outside themselves — it was irresistible. They moved toward it the way a body moves toward warmth. Not choosing. Not deciding. Just… leaning.
The ones who loved them tried. They pulled. They called. They shook them. Wake up. Come back. But you cannot wake someone who has finally found the dream they’ve been reaching for their entire life.
The lover let go. The Mother let go. Not because they stopped loving — but because love, at a certain point, has to open its hands. And the Follower stepped inside the formation and disappeared. Not in violence. Not in fire. Just — gently. Like a voice joining a chorus until you can no longer hear it on its own.
The Mother Rises
And the Mother —who had led them,who had taught them, Who had built the world they were now leaving — She watched them go.One by one. The bright, the searching, the afraid. She held out her hands and they turned away. She called their names and they did not answer.
And the Mother grieved. Not as the broken grieve — but as the earth grieves when the season turns. Knowing that what has fallen away is not the end of the story.
Because this is what the darkness does not understand: every fracture is an opening. Every wound is a place where new roots take hold. The dark seed has been planted. And in its shadow, a deeper light is gathering. Not the light of before — not the old ways unchanged — but something forged in the breaking.
Something stronger.
Something wider.
Something that knows the dark because it has walked through it and chosen to bloom.
The Mother rises.
-Dorothy O’Shea Overbey
Our Donors
**Production Design Underwriter**
Nancy Scanlan
**Season Supporters**
Andrew Schwartz & Sylvia Arabian
Marvin Brittman
Jaelene Fayhee
Laura Galt
Joel Hobbs
Blair Johnson
Richard Kahn
Brad King
Nancy Lesch
Leath Nunn
Karin Richmond & Associates
Peter Rock
José Velazquez
-----
Special Thanks
-----
## ASL-Interpreted Performance
The Friday, March 20 performance is ASL-interpreted, with interpreters present throughout the evening to facilitate communication between Deaf and hearing audience members.
-----
*Unbecoming* was developed at East Side Performing Arts, Austin, TX.
Photography and video documentation of this performance are not permitted.