The Austinites Behind the Curtain: FronteraFest
Previously in this series:
The Austin Salon
ATX TV Festival
Democrasexy
Poo Poo Platter
Cheerful Secrets
Hyde Park Storytelling
Wishing Horse Productions
blend.mode
Tiny Minotaur
Art Island
Mouthfeel
Erica Lies
Mike Stefanik
Ron Berry
Hyperreal Film Club
Gino Scaramuzza
We love spotlighting local creatives who are responsible for the events that we list. Remember, there would be no pig parades, facial hair competitions, dance shows in quarries, or sound installations in tree houses without the individual people who organize and promote them.
In February 2026, we spoke with Christina J. Moore, Executive Artistic Director of ScriptWorks and FronteraFest Producer. FronteraFest is Austin’s annual fringe theater festival, showcasing original, unusual, and uncategorizable short performances for five weeks every January and February. Here’s how the producers make it happen…
Lite + Brite: Can you describe FronteraFest for folks who aren’t familiar with it?
Christi Moore: FronteraFest is a five-week long performance festival produced by Hyde Park Theatre and ScriptWorks. The Short Fringe is the core of the festival, and it runs all five weeks. Five short pieces (25 minutes or less) are presented every Tuesday through Saturday, Saturday shows are “Best of the Week,” and the final week (February 10-14) is “Best of the Fest.” The festival is unjuried, so anyone can participate and we welcome all kinds of performances—theatre, poetry, improv, sketch comedy, dance, magic shows, clowning—you name it.
L+B: What’s your process for finding and booking pieces for the Short Fringe?
CM: The festival is unjuried, which means that anyone who pays a $50-$60 application fee can get a show into the Short Fringe. We don’t see the shows until their tech rehearsal, and sometimes not until their performance.
L+B: How do you decide which shows get into Best of Week and Best of Fest?
CM: We have a different panel of three people attending each Tuesday through Friday of the first four weeks. They, along with the audiences, select what will appear in the Best of Week shows. We have a different panel attend all the Saturday Best of Week shows and they, along with the audiences, select the Best of Fest shows.
The staff and crew select the Wild Card shows, those that they think were overlooked by the panels and audiences. There is a strict time limit of 25 minutes, and shows that go over that are eliminated from moving on in the festival. Panelists vote by secret ballot so there aren’t any deliberations, generally, unless we have an unbreakable tie.
L+B: What are the logistics of putting up multiple different short plays back to back, day after day, when presumably each has its own tech and staging needs?
CM: Each show gets a 75-minute tech rehearsal during the weekend prior to their performance. We tech shows Saturday daytime, all Sunday until late in the night, and Monday nights. We do have limitations on the technical elements people can use–light cues, sound cues, the amount of stuff they can have on stage, etc.
L+B: Where does Mi Casa Es Su Teatro come into all of this?
CM: The other component of FronteraFest is Mi Casa Es Su Teatro, a day of unique performances in private homes. It’s a curated event, so most of the artists in that have been invited to be part of it. I think it started in the third year of the festival. This year it’s happening on Saturday, February 7, at Mishpocha Woods Artist Compound. [A note from L+B: We attended Mi Casa Es Su Teatro at Mishpocha Woods during last year’s Frontera Fest, and it was delightful! You know we love site-specific art. We still frequently reference Kirk Lynn’s one-man play about the Wright brothers.]
L+B: What’s FronteraFest’s origin story?
CM: FronteraFest was started by Frontera Productions in 1993. Vicky Boone, Jason Phelps, and Annie Suite came up with the festival as a way of meeting other artists in town and of bringing in some money for their other shows. It has always been open to anyone for a modest application fee.
In 2001, Vicky stepped down as the Artistic Director of Frontera. She looked at their two biggest assets, the Hyde Park Theatre venue and FronteraFest, and wanted to pass them on. She offered the leased venue to Subterranean Theatre Company, run by Ken Webster. And she offered the festival to ScriptWorks, a playwright development and service organization. Ken had been part of many Frontera shows and often rented the venue for Subterranean productions. ScriptWorks had been presenting a commissioned piece every week of the festival for the preceding few years. Subterranean became Hyde Park Theatre and joined forces with ScriptWorks to co-produce the festival starting in 2002.
L+B: What’s the most memorable or unexpected thing to ever happen at FronteraFest?
CM: That’s a tough one! This is my 23rd year producing the festival, and I’ve seen a lot of surprising things. Not knowing what to expect is one of the most enjoyable aspects of FronteraFest. There is no requirement that the performance be original work but probably 98% of it is. Austin has such a wealth of talented, creative artists and it is always a joy to see what they come up with.