Directed by Veronica Santoyo
Original Dramaturgy by Diana Grisanti
February 6-8, 13-14 at 7:30 p.m. | February 14 at 2:30 p.m. | Oakwood 154
It’s the day of The Big Game, and the citizenry is aflutter. The football bros are hungry for blood, the ESL kids are hungry for knowledge, and the hunger strikers are just hungry. Meanwhile, Nubu, a newcomer to our world, considers the meaning of life. When the The Big Game gets cancelled, a group of intrepid weirdos decides to throw an epic DIY costume party—a ball! Balls Balls Balls is a strange and exuberant new work that asks, “Can you imagine a world where we all make bread and break bread together?”
Written by award-winning playwright Alice Tuan, Balls Balls Balls was commissioned by the Ball State Department of Theatre and Dance. We’ll present the script as an on-book reading with choreography. No play is complete without an audience, so we invite you—yes, you!—to participate in the developmental process. Each performance will be followed by a talkback with the playwright and production team. Come take part in the future of American theatre!
Commissioned by the Department of Theatre and Dance of Ball State University
Tickets are available through the College of Fine Arts Box Office located at Sursa Hall in person, by phone at 765-285-8749, or online.
Enjoy a concert of standard jazz favorites and original compositions with the Ball State University Jazz Ensembles in honor of alum and trumpet player Tom Shah. The ensembles are under the direction of Mark Buselli.
Tickets available through the College of Fine Arts Box Office located at Sursa Hall.
General Public: $8 in advance / $10 at the door
Seniors: $5 in advance / $7 at the door
BSU Faculty/Staff: $5 in advance / $7 at the door
Students: free* in advance / $5 at the door
*One (1) free student ticket per ID is available in advance at the College of Fine Arts Box Office
Purchase Options
Online at bsu.tix.com
Phone: 765-285-8749
In person: Monday through Friday from Noon to 5 p.m., or starting 1 hour before the performance
**Please note: As part of our commitment to sustainability, all College of Fine Arts tickets are paperless and are accessible via email confirmation. Your confirmation email contains your digital tickets which can be scanned at the door from your mobile device, or you can print your digital tickets at home to be scanned. There is no need to visit Will Call prior to the performance.
Parking is available in the McKinley Parking Garage (entrance on Ashland Avenue) located immediately south of Sursa Hall. Metered parking is available on the first floor of the garage until 7 p.m. at which time parking is free.
Cheeny Celebrado-Royer (b. Naga City, Philippines) is a multidisciplinary artist working with found and discarded materials to create installations, sculptures, and drawings that explore precarity, memory, and displacement. Drawing from decaying architectures and chroma-key aesthetics, she maps fragments of space—wreckage, green or blue tape—into constellations of unstable time and place. Her work reimagines drawing as a form of mapping, assembling familiar-yet-elusive icons into landscapes shaped by liminality. Through building from residue, she explores what might resemble home—transient, cartographic, unresolved.
She is currently a studio fellow in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program and serves as an Associate Professor in Experimental and Foundation Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. She holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (Mount Royal School of Art). Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum, Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Columbia College, Louisiana Tech University School of Design, and the RISD Museum.
Directed by Veronica Santoyo
Original Dramaturgy by Diana Grisanti
February 6-8, 13-14 at 7:30 p.m. | February 14 at 2:30 p.m. | Oakwood 154
It’s the day of The Big Game, and the citizenry is aflutter. The football bros are hungry for blood, the ESL kids are hungry for knowledge, and the hunger strikers are just hungry. Meanwhile, Nubu, a newcomer to our world, considers the meaning of life. When the The Big Game gets cancelled, a group of intrepid weirdos decides to throw an epic DIY costume party—a ball! Balls Balls Balls is a strange and exuberant new work that asks, “Can you imagine a world where we all make bread and break bread together?”
Written by award-winning playwright Alice Tuan, Balls Balls Balls was commissioned by the Ball State Department of Theatre and Dance. We’ll present the script as an on-book reading with choreography. No play is complete without an audience, so we invite you—yes, you!—to participate in the developmental process. Each performance will be followed by a talkback with the playwright and production team. Come take part in the future of American theatre!
Commissioned by the Department of Theatre and Dance of Ball State University
Tickets are available through the College of Fine Arts Box Office located at Sursa Hall in person, by phone at 765-285-8749, or online.
Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, Colorado) is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, painting, installation, video art, and performance. He is a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is half Cherokee. In his work, Gibson combines Native American traditions and materials with visuals from Modernism to explore the connections between personal identity, culture, and history and how these elements influence each other. He grew up in Germany, South Korea, and England, and in each of these multicultural environments, he found friendships and connections in the music scenes. Following this influence, song lyrics and costumes are important elements in his work, along with objects associated with Indigenous culture and ceremonies such as leather, beadwork, drums, and metal jingles. Gibson received his BFA from The Art Institute of Chicago and his MA from the Royal College of Art. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Claremont Graduate University in 2016. Gibson has received distinguished awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institution), TED Foundation, and the Jerome Hill Foundation. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2019. Notable solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at the Brooklyn Art Museum, Times Square Arts, Blanton Museum of Art, Wellin Museum of Art, The New Museum, and Denver Art Museum.
This exhibition runs January 7-29
John C. Gonzalez is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans installation, sculpture, painting, performance, writing, music, game design, and socially engaged projects. Deeply collaborative in nature, his work often blurs the lines between artist, viewer, and participant, challenging conventional notions of authorship and production. Gonzalez frequently partners with individuals or institutions not traditionally associated with artmaking to create pieces that reflect shared labor, conversation, and experience. These conversations result in works that are as much about the process and relationships as they are about the final product. Through his ongoing exploration of labor, cooperation, and institutional critique, Gonzalez’s practice offers a reflective and often playful lens on the social systems that shape artistic and everyday life. Whether building systems that critique their own fabrication, facilitating game-based art experiences, or searching for meaning in collective action, he consistently seeks to expand the role of the artist beyond the studio and into the shared spaces of work, play, and community. Gonzalez lives in Rhode Island and teaches drawing and game design at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI.
The exhibition Checkpoint: Interactive Artworks & Experimental Play will include several interactive and game-adjacent artworks in the galleries. These works will include images, performance, and site-specific works that will solicit viewer engagement and provide space for unexpected connections and exchanges.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday: 10 A.M. – 4 P.M. Closed weekends and all Ball State breaks and holidays.
