Queer [Re]public Resident Artists
2023-2025 Cohort
Cheyenne Wyzzard-Jones
Cheyenne Wyzzard-Jones (they/she) comes from a political art background through her work as Director of Arts Programming of movement organization, In Solidarity. Their project “The Messenger” is a musical journey that shares an intimate “coming of age” story about a young femme, Zanyah, who has been chosen to become the next Messenger for her nation, The In-Between. As Zanyah goes on a spiritual journey with her elders, she meets people that each share a lesson about what Zanyah needs to know about her past, present, and future. The Messenger shares with the audience the complexities, sacredness, and love of what it means to take on the role of a Messenger within a community.
Over the course of Cheyenne’s Residency, they will work with a musical director to develop the musical score of the play, with mid-Residency work-in-progress readings, and a culminating multi-experienced listening session of the musical score on Noepe Land also known as Martha's Vineyard.
River Guidry
Informed by feminist notions of “A Love Ethic” by bell hooks and “Knowing Together” by Allison Weir, Annalise Guidry (they/them/theirs) will work to introduce a thesis for a theater of union that emphasizes storytelling, deep listening, and understanding to build worlds of knowledge that bring people together. Their hopes are to contribute to life sustaining world-making projects with theater as the vehicle by exploring lineage, the self and lived experiences in storytelling. During their residency, they will interrogate the question “In what ways can our stories bring us together?” through the development and praxis of their thesis in community through playwriting and directing for True Colors Troupe.
Victoria Awkward
Originally from Massachusetts, Victoria L. Awkward (she/her/hers), trained at Impulse Dance Center by LuAnn Pagella and worked with Boston-based artists such as Karen Krolak. Her project “In the Space Between” (ITSB) follows a soloist as they inspire their community to delve into an infinite space between their reality and their wildest dreams. This infinite reality provides opportunity for freedom-seeking, exploration, and embodiment. ITSB showcases a dynamic fabric set by architectural firm, NADAAA, extravagant handmade costumes by Mitzi Eppley and our costume team, light design by Elmer Martinez, original music by Aaron Brown, and performance by VLA DANCE. ITSB originally premiered as a short work at Boston Center for the Arts and The Dance Complex.
2021-2023 Cohort
Adil Mansoor
Adil Mansoor is a theatre director centering the stories of queer folks and people of color. His performance “Amm(i)gone” adapts Sophocles’s “Antigone” as an apology to and from his mother. “Amm(i)gone” is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creative and Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Kelly Strayhorn Theater, The Theater Offensive, and NPN.
Mansoor has developed work with New York Theatre Workshop, Woolly Mammoth, The Poetry Project, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Tofte Lake Center, NYU Tisch, PearlArts Studios, and others. Recent directing projects include “Daddies” by Paul Kruse (Audible), "Gloria" by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Hatch Arts Collective), "Kentucky" by Lean Nanoko Winkler (Pittsburgh Playhouse), and “Once Removed” by Paul Kruse (Tribeca).
Mansoor is a founding member of Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective and the former Artistic Director of Dreams of Hope, an LGBTQA+ youth arts organization. He has been an NYTW 2050 Directing Fellow, a Gerri Kay New Voices Fellow with Quantum Theater, and an Art of Practice Fellow and Community Leader with Sundance. He was part of the inaugural Artist Caucus gathered by Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and Woolly Mammoth. Mansoor received his MFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon.
Vashanti Cowan
Boston-native, Vashanti Cowan (she/they), is a self-taught “artivist” who devices performance art for her own spiritual fulfillment through a community activism and social justice lens. Vashanti’s artistic journey began as an active ensemble member of The Theater Offensive’s (TTO) True Colors Troupe. Performance credits include Sugar Spice and Everything Queer, and Traveler’s Guide to Self Love. She has also been an active member of the True Colors Creative Action Crew, Youth Advisory Board, and is the current Queer Republic’s Artist in Residence. Through their residency, Vashanti will be exploring and devising a self-performed piece combining dance, psychology, and somatic/embodied movement into their own personal aesthetic. Vashanti is the honoree for TTO’s 2021 Beyond the Stage Youth Resident Artist Award. Vashanti wants to thank the universe, family, & chosen family for their unconditional love and support.
Sophie Kim
Sophie Kim is an award-winning playwright, lyricist/librettist, performance poet, filmmaker, and producer from Los Angeles, CA. Kim was the 2018 Los Angeles County Youth Poet Laureate and is the author of SING THE BIRDS HOME (2019, Penmanship Books). Kim is a senior at Harvard College studying gender studies and theater.
Kim is the lyricist/librettist and executive producer of ISCARIOT: THE MUSICAL, which had its world premiere at the Agassiz Theatre at Harvard College in December 2022. Kim is co-lyricist/librettist of THE FORTUNATES, which had its virtual world premiere at the Harvard ARTS FIRST Festival in April 2021. Kim is the lyricist/librettist of ARE YOU HAPPY?, a new musical that was produced (in excerpted form) at the 2022 Harvard Playwrights Festival and is currently in development.
Kim received the 2022 Phyllis Anderson Prize for Playwriting from the American Repertory Theater for SWAN, a play. SWAN premiered in the 2023 Moonbox Productions’ Boston New Works Festival (directed by Kai Chao and assistant directed by Vinny Douglass). SWAN was previously developed in the inaugural Theater Offensive Emergent Artist Residency Cohort, an 18-month program of artistic and professional development for QTPOC artists, and had a work-in-progress showing in March 2023. Kim was a 2022 summer production & dramaturgy intern at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, M.A.