![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782125686_625_.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nAudience members seated in theater two at AFS Cinema on Thursday night weren\u2019t the usual moviegoers. Instead, they were there for pizza.<\/p>\n
\u201cPizza is pizza is pizza. People pontificate pointlessly upon pizza positions,\u201d Jacob Duffy Halbeib read from the stage. \u201cProviding Protestant prospects proving that posturing, peacocking and preeminence are a perceived priority part of the populace. There is no bad type of pizza.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was one of 14 participants in \u201cStories About Pizza,\u201d a storytelling show featuring an original short film, Pizza My Heart, followed by a variety of minute-long \u201cpizza pieces\u201d \u2014 from songs to flash fiction to drag performances.<\/p>\n
This pizza night was the fourth annual \u201cStories About\u201d event. Every year, it takes on a different theme \u2014 the first in 2023 was comfort food, then birth order, unique jobs and now pizza.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s goofy, wholesome, very heart-forward. It’s vulnerability and connection through food,\u201d said Christine Hoang, the creator of \u201cStories About\u201d and writer and star of Pizza My Heart.<\/p>\n
‘A little bit holy’<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Hoang had been a practicing attorney and young mom producing her first play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI quit my job,\u201d she said. \u201cNow I’m doing nonprofit artistic work full time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Color Arc has produced several plays, storytelling shows and short films. Hoang created \u201cStories About\u201d after the pandemic as a way to connect with fellow storytellers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Pizza My Heart, Color Arc\u2019s first short film, follows a heartbroken teenager who is comforted by a pizza delivery woman. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you share in a room full of almost strangers,\u201d she said, \u201cyou feel like you’re taking part in something so sacred and special \u2014 and maybe a little bit holy. That’s what live art can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cStories About\u201d to comfort food.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aThere 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,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were so many things that came forth from that night that it became an annual thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pizza My Heart, Color Arc\u2019s first short film, also grew out of the pandemic. The story follows a young heartbroken girl, played by Hoang\u2019s 12-year-old daughter, and a pizza delivery woman who comforts her, played by Hoang.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Austin Community College] commissioned me to write a radio play called Radiopodemic, and the prompt was pizza delivery,\u201d Hoang said. \u201cWhat 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?\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, PBS announced it would distribute the short. To celebrate, Hoang decided to make the next \u201cStories About\u201d about pizza. They would show the film and get together a group of performers to tell their favorite pizza stories.<\/p>\n
Hoang reached out to Via 313 to provide pizza for the event. After hearing her idea, the company decided to sponsor it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a pitch about telling stories through pizza, and that’s the core of what we do,\u201d said Jessie Galioto-Grebe, Via 313\u2019s marketing director. \u201cWe try to focus on who is a local partner. \u200aWith Color Arc we get to celebrate Austin and art and help to invigorate these communities that we show up in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The unity of pizza<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne person submitted an abstract comedy dance. Her hands and arms were just flying like windmills,\u201d Hoang said. \u201cThat was her interpretation of putting toppings on a pizza.”<\/p>\n
![\"Christine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782125687_644_.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The final lineup emphasized the unity of pizza.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou 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,\u201d Galioto-Grebe said. \u201cPizza 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.\u201d\u200a<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI got got by Anna Karenina,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Some of the other chosen pieces were less light-hearted. Lynn Mikeska strummed a ukulele while singing about a situationship gone wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI’ve heard people say that love is like pizza,\u201d she sang. \u201cEven when it’s bad, it’s good.\u201d<\/p>\n
A universal language<\/p>\n
Food will continue to be a theme for Color Arc. The company\u2019s next short film is adapted from a story Hoang\u2019s mom told at \u201cStories About Comfort Food.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aIt’s called Sweet Potato Pig,\u201d Hoang said. \u201cI’m directing it. My mom is a Vietnamese American refugee, and it’s her immigrant story told through her food memories.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Hoang, food is the ultimate connector, which also makes it the ultimate story anchor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a universal language; the guard comes down, and you immediately connect,\u201d she said. \u201cYou might not know someone’s language or where they came from, but you know when something tastes good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audience members seated in theater two at AFS Cinema on Thursday night weren\u2019t the usual moviegoers. Instead, they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[53788,132,134,133,123221,123222,123223,123225,123224,27],"class_list":["post-345432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-afs-cinema","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-christine-hoang","tag-color-arc-productions","tag-pizza-my-heart","tag-pizza-palooza","tag-stories-about-pizza","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}