Play in She Persists at Pillsbury House & Theatre, March 13th-24th

Sara Richardson, Ashawnti Ford, Nora Montañez Patterson & Audrey Park, cast of She Persists: An All-Woman Take on the Political Divide at Pillsbury House & Theatre. Photo by Rich Ryan.

I was commissioned by one of my favorite Minneapolis theaters, Pillsbury House & Theatre, to write a short play for She Persists: An All-Woman Take on the Political Divide, along with co-Jerome fellow Philana Imade Omorotionmwan and great writers, Cristina Florencia Castro, Oya Mae Duchess-Davis & Aameera Siddiqui.

I wrote a play called The Team about the heartbreak of failed solidarity among women and how progressive white women must transform ourselves to move into the future we want. You know just a light electoral politics play featuring Elizabeth Warren.

The plays are directed by Noël Raymond with music by Queen Drea. The cast (pictured above) is also amazing!

From Pillsbury House & Theatre:

“She Persists is a fresh take on the conversation that began with the popular 2017 production, The Great Divide: Plays for a Broken Nation and continued with 2018’s The Great Divide: Plays on the Politics of Truth. Featuring an all-woman cast, production team and playwright cohort, She Persists: The Great Divide III is a powerful, intersectional look at the place where womanhood and politics collide.”

Come see the plays! They will be up at Pillsbury House & Theatre Wednesday the 13th-24th. Tickets are pay-what-you-can $5-25!

Speaking with Claudia Rankine on Tuesday: Writing for the Stage while Navigating Whiteness

UPDATE: Talk today is cancelled due to weather. Stay tuned for reschedulement!

Claudia Rankine and I will having a conversation about "Writing for the Stage while Navigating Whiteness" at 6pm Tuesday, March 14th at The Kitchen as part of Half Straddle: Here I Go, pt. 2 of You a series of talks, programming, and an installation curated by Tina Satter. It's free. Come see us. 

Featured in Necessary Exposure!

The quote below my photo in the gallery: “I am staging the worlds I want to inhabit.”

I'm featured along a lot of great playwrights in Jody Christopherson's photography and sound project, Necessary Exposure: The Female Playwright Project. Ren Evans and I read an excerpt from O, Earth and Jody took my picture in Prospect Park! I went to the opening at Dixon Place, and it was interesting and great to hear plays as an audio experience. Hopefully the absence of staging of the voices of female playwrights that Jody is calling attention to with this project will not be one soon. 

You can listen to the excerpt here. 

I curated Little Theatre at Dixon Place for HOT! Come see the work of 5 amazing artists!

I had the honor of curating the HOT! Festival edition of Little Theatre at Dixon Place. The show is this coming Monday, July 11th at 7:30pm! Get your tickets now for this auspicious coming together of queer and trans brilliance!

Fresh off a reading of his CROOKED PARTS at National Black Theatre, visionary playwright Azure D. Osborne-Lee presents new work! Recently seen at Everybooty, Queer Memoir, and as Sylvia Rivera in O, EARTH, genius of storytelling that creates space for us all, Cecilia Gentili has something real, hilarious and life-affirming for us! If you cannot wait for another experience of Nia Witherspoon's brilliance after her gorgeous play THE MESSIAH COMPLEX at BRIC recently or if you missed it, this is your chance. This is your night! The one and only Queen Princess Carter will floor you with her channeling, her moves, and the raw power of her performance! This femme will be taking notes! And while we've all been here wondering what our lives are in 2016, Virginia Grise has been all over the country with her work while still making time for the book club where I got to know and love her. She's opening a show SHE-SHE-SHE at ICE Factory later this month, and she'll be showing a bit of a show she premiered earlier this year on Monday, YOUR HEALING IS KILLING ME. We all need this. I am SO EXCITED by the work of these incredible artists! I hope you can join us for this one-night-only HOT! Festival specialness.

Come tonight!

YOUR HEALING IS KILLING ME
written and performed by Virginia Grise
directed by Emily Mendelsohn

One artist’s reflection on living with post-traumatic stress disorder, near-blindness, ansia, testosterone and eczema in the new age of trigger warnings, the master cleanse, and kickstarter funded self-care. Based on lessons learned in San Antonio free health clinics and New York acupuncture schools; from the treatments and consejos of curanderas, abortion doctors, Marxist artists, community health workers, and bourgie dermatologists. Part performance, part lecture, part therapy (cuz her insurance doesn't cover it) this performance manifesto is unprocessed, gluten and guilt free. Because Capitalism is toxic and The Revolution is not in your body butter.

VECTOR
new work by Azure D. Osborne-Lee

Q: What's the difference between rabbits and hares?
A: Who picks up the pieces when a virus runs amok.

A PERFORMANCE
by Cecilia Gentili

Originally from Argentina, Cecilia worked at the LGBT Center, Apicha CHC and currently serves as the Assistant Director of Public Affairs at GMHC. She was a contributor to Trans Bodies Trans Selves and is a board member at Translatina Network. That's for work. For fun, she acts sometimes and loves doing storytelling events where she talks about her life experiences and she cooks amazing brunches for her friends on the weekends. She is very passionate about advocating for her community, and mostly for transgender women with a Latino background, sex work history, drug use and incarceration history.

THE BEAUTY OF PRINCESS CARTER
created and performed by Princess Carter

Are you ready to be entertained?

A READING from SHE
by Nia Witherspoon

performed by Tanisha Thompson, Kirya Traber & Nia O. Witherspoon

All this and more on
Monday, July 11, 2016 — 7:30 p.m.
@ Dixon Place
161A Chrystie btw. Delancey & Rivington
(F/V 2nd Ave; 6 Bleecker; JMZ Bowery)

Tickets $18 @ the door but just $15 online, in advance
(http://dixonplace.org/performances/little-theater-at-dixon-place/); students & seniors $12
 
1st come, 1st served, no reservations ('less you buy yr. tix online)
For more information, call (212) 219-0736, or browse www.dixonplace.org

I Am Bleeding All Over the Place! This June! Collaboration with Brooke O'Harra!

I'm co-writing a piece with Brooke O'Harra that she conceived, and I'm really excited about! It runs June 16-26th at La Mama, and it's part of ongoing project exploring The Audience. The cast and team are amazing! Erin Courtney, Kristin Kosmas and Heidi Schreck wrote scenes for it. Brendan Connelly made the music for it. Becca Blackwell, Jane Bradley, Hye Young Chyun, Sharon Hayes, Laryssa Husiak, Anna Kohler, Zavé Martohardjono, Greg Merhten, Alexander Paris, and Tanya Selvaratnam are acting in it! 

Buy tickets and read more about the project here!

Support the show happening and everybody getting paid here!

Brooke's words:

"As a director, I think about the audience a lot. Wondering what they're thinking, wishing they would do different things, come somewhere else with me, the tour is part of a continued attempt to collaborate with the audience in a direct way to understand the nature of the relationship at the heart of performance and make something new together. Take the tour.

"I’m Bleeding All Over the Place: A Living History Tour is presented by La Mama E.T.C. and premiers this June – very soon! …A Living History Tour is the latest component of an ongoing project called: I’m Bleeding All Over the Place: Studies in Directing or Nine Encounters Between Me and You. Delving into the emotional landscape of everyday conflict, this work examines how gender and sexuality, narrative and story, conflict and resolution, relate and come to form in the dynamic space between the audience and the performer."

Tickets on Sale Now for O, Earth! $15 in 2015!

Get your tickets now for O, EARTH!

Performances January 23rd-February 20th, 2016

O, Earth

By Casey Llewellyn

Directed by Dustin Wills

With:

Moe Angelos, Jess Barbagallo, Ato Blankson-Wood, Emily Davis, Cecilia Gentili, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, Tommy Heleringer, Mizz June, Martin Moran, and Kristen Sieh.  

Portia DeRossi stares into the soft light of her refrigerator and wonders if she’ll ever be truly happy; Our Town’s Emily and George venture into the unknown; Thornton Wilder digs in search of a time capsule he buried under the stage long ago; Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are jettisoned from the world of the dead, curious to discover what’s happened in the world they left..

O, Earth floods the stage with a panorama of characters from gay popular culture, theatre history, and radical New York City, to ask how we live as ourselves and in communion with others. An interrogation of the "universal," Casey Llewellyn's epic play imagines the boundless possibilities within everyone, every day.

2015 Ticket Discount is $15, if you buy them in 2015, for the first 15 performances!

Use code: 15for15

O, Earth Cast Announced!

We're cast! OMG! These people are SO beautiful.

Cast of O, Earth from left to right: Moe Angelos (Ellen Degeneres), Donnetta Lavinia Grays (Stage Manager), Martin Moran (Thornton Wilder), Kristen Sieh (Emily), Tommy Heleringer (Duncan), Jess Barbagallo (George), Emily Davis (Portia De Rossi), Cecilia Gentili (Sylvia Rivera), and Mizz June (Marsha P. Johnson). And Ato Blankson-Wood was out of town when this picture was taken, but he's playing Spencer.

I'm so in love with these amazing artists! 

The Creative Team and Crew are also amazing! Dustin Wills is directing, Kate Attwell and The Foundry Theatre are everything, Adam Rigg is designing the set, Montana Blanco is designing the costumes, Barbara Samuels is designing the lights, Raphael Mishler is designing the props and Janie Bullard is designing the sound! Amanda Feldman is the Line Producer, Jeff Drucker is the Production Manager, Nicole Marconi is the Production Stage Manager and Andrea Berkey is the Assistant Stage Manager!

O, Earth Production Dates Announced!

O, Earth, the play I'm writing for The Foundry Theatre, will run January 23rd-February 20th at HERE. Here is a quote from the production announcement on Broadway World:

A contemporary epic, O, Earth brings a panorama of characters to the stage: Our Town's Emily, George, Simon Stimson, the Stage Manager and Wilder himself join historical LGBTQ icons Gertrude Stein, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera as well as Ellen DeGeneres and Portia DeRossi. In this play's ever expanding universe, Llewellyn invites the audience to consider the ways we organize our togetherness.

Read the rest of the announcement here.