Audience members seated in theater two at AFS Cinema on Thursday night weren’t the usual moviegoers. Instead, they were there for pizza.
“Pizza is pizza is pizza. People pontificate pointlessly upon pizza positions,” Jacob Duffy Halbeib read from the stage. “Providing Protestant prospects proving that posturing, peacocking and preeminence are a perceived priority part of the populace. There is no bad type of pizza.”
He was one of 14 participants in “Stories About Pizza,” a storytelling show featuring an original short film, Pizza My Heart, followed by a variety of minute-long “pizza pieces” — from songs to flash fiction to drag performances.
This pizza night was the fourth annual “Stories About” event. Every year, it takes on a different theme — the first in 2023 was comfort food, then birth order, unique jobs and now pizza.
“It’s goofy, wholesome, very heart-forward. It’s vulnerability and connection through food,” said Christine Hoang, the creator of “Stories About” and writer and star of Pizza My Heart.
‘A little bit holy’
Hoang founded Color Arc Productions, the nonprofit company behind both projects. She launched the business in 2015 with the goal of promoting Central Texas stories rooted in diverse perspectives and told through diverse mediums.
Hoang had been a practicing attorney and young mom producing her first play.
“I quit my job,” she said. “Now I’m doing nonprofit artistic work full time.”
Color Arc has produced several plays, storytelling shows and short films. Hoang created “Stories About” after the pandemic as a way to connect with fellow storytellers.
Pizza My Heart, Color Arc’s first short film, follows a heartbroken teenager who is comforted by a pizza delivery woman.
“When you share in a room full of almost strangers,” she said, “you feel like you’re taking part in something so sacred and special — and maybe a little bit holy. That’s what live art can do.”
Realizing how much of her own work was grounded in the joy of the food she made and grew up around, she decided to dedicate the first year of “Stories About” to comfort food.
“ There are memories that are inherent when you’re talking about food: who made it for you, what you felt like when you ate it, what you felt like when you didn’t have enough of it,” she said. “There were so many things that came forth from that night that it became an annual thing.”
Pizza My Heart, Color Arc’s first short film, also grew out of the pandemic. The story follows a young heartbroken girl, played by Hoang’s 12-year-old daughter, and a pizza delivery woman who comforts her, played by Hoang.
“[Austin Community College] commissioned me to write a radio play called Radiopodemic, and the prompt was pizza delivery,” Hoang said. “What if it’s a singing delivery specialist? What if the jingle is to a little girl? What if the little girl wants someone to talk to and so the delivery person stays with her?”
Last year, PBS announced it would distribute the short. To celebrate, Hoang decided to make the next “Stories About” about pizza. They would show the film and get together a group of performers to tell their favorite pizza stories.
Hoang reached out to Via 313 to provide pizza for the event. After hearing her idea, the company decided to sponsor it.
“It was a pitch about telling stories through pizza, and that’s the core of what we do,” said Jessie Galioto-Grebe, Via 313’s marketing director. “We try to focus on who is a local partner. With Color Arc we get to celebrate Austin and art and help to invigorate these communities that we show up in.”
The unity of pizza
With a sponsor in place and AFS as the venue for the second year in a row, Hoang put out an open call for original short pizza performances. She challenged applicants to make their stories a minute or less.
“One person submitted an abstract comedy dance. Her hands and arms were just flying like windmills,” Hoang said. “That was her interpretation of putting toppings on a pizza.”
Christine Hoang emcees “Stories About Pizza” on Thursday. Hoang quit her job as an attorney and founded Color Arc Productions, the nonprofit behind the event and her short film, Pizza My Heart.
The final lineup emphasized the unity of pizza.
“You go from pizza at a children’s birthday party, pizza when you move into your first apartment, pizza when you bribe your friends to help you move into your first house,” Galioto-Grebe said. “Pizza comes with these milestones and celebrations. Color Arc has had a vision to bring to life that recognition of this one food can bring people together.”
Poet Felice Trirogoff based her haiku series on an elementary school lie about a program where students read books in order to earn points for pizza. In third grade, she pretended to read the books her older sister had read. But it all came crashing down when she failed to convince her teacher she had read Anna Karenina.
“ I got got by Anna Karenina,” she said.
Some of the other chosen pieces were less light-hearted. Lynn Mikeska strummed a ukulele while singing about a situationship gone wrong.
“ I’ve heard people say that love is like pizza,” she sang. “Even when it’s bad, it’s good.”
A universal language
Food will continue to be a theme for Color Arc. The company’s next short film is adapted from a story Hoang’s mom told at “Stories About Comfort Food.”
“ It’s called Sweet Potato Pig,” Hoang said. “I’m directing it. My mom is a Vietnamese American refugee, and it’s her immigrant story told through her food memories.”
For Hoang, food is the ultimate connector, which also makes it the ultimate story anchor.
“It’s a universal language; the guard comes down, and you immediately connect,” she said. “You might not know someone’s language or where they came from, but you know when something tastes good.”