QUEER [RE]PUBLIC FESTIVAL

June 26-29, 2025 | Arrow Street Arts

Born from The Theater Offensive’s OUT In Your Neighborhood Festival in 2017, the QUEER [RE]PUBLIC FESTIVAL is a vital part of TTO’s next lifecycle and mission, presenting liberating art by, for, and about queer and trans people of color that transcends artistic boundaries, celebrates cultural abundance, and dismantles oppression. This inaugural 4-day festival serves as the culmination of our first 22-month long Emergent Artist Residency and True Colors Residency programs, featuring a series of workshops, staged readings, and dance performances.

Photography by Hakeem Adewumi

Victoria L. Awkward’s In the Space Between

In The Space Between is a river towards care and liberation. Expansive movement, breath, and tactile fabric textures guide Victoria Lynn Awkward and collaborators as they carve space and transcend into joy, beauty, and pleasure, wading through the rifts and tangles of their efforts along the way. Crafted in collaboration with the dancers, Victoria’s choreography conjures new and ancient rituals of flight, weaving, and enacting love in community. Victoria invites audiences to stretch into the erotic as defined by Audre Lorde, a necessity for the realization of liberation in an often-vicious world.

Performance Dates:

Friday, June 27th @ 7:30pm

Saturday, June 28th @ 3:00pm & 8:00pm

Sunday, June 29th @ 3:00pm

Location: Arrow Street Arts

Cheyenne Wyzzard-Jones’ The Messenger (Staged Reading)

Photography by Tavon Taylor

The Messenger is a play with music 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.

Performance Dates:

Saturday, June 28th @ 5:00pm

Sunday, June 29th @ 5:00pm

Location: Arrow Street Arts

Annalise “River” Guidry’s Theater of Union

Photography by Tavon Taylor

Theater of Union is a life-sustaining, world-building pedagogy and praxis that seeks to dismantle systems and our culture of domination with theater as its vehicle. Drawing on anthropological theories and indigenous ways of knowing, this praxis utilizes interconnectedness as survival, a love ethic, and community-based healing as core values for social change to build worlds that are life sustaining through an original theatrical praxis.

Annalise "River" Guidry is offering a three-fold sharing of Theater of Union: an open table talk presentation of the work in praxis & pedagogy; a workshop; and a devised performance starring the first ever Theater of Union company of artists.

Theater of Union Dates:

Thursday, June 26th @ 7:30pm: Remembrance

The performance will close with a second line, leading us into our Opening Night Reception in the lobby, where we invite our community to celebrate the kick off of the Festival with our artists with snacks and drinks!

Saturday, June 28th from 1:00pm-2:30pm: Open Table Talk & Workshop

In this talk, River invites audiences into a presentation and open discussion of Theater of Union in praxis and pedagogy. The first half of this offering is a presentation of the work that transitions into an open discussion of the intricacies of a love ethic as cultural transformation: what are the stakes and costs of choosing love in a culture of domination? How do we choose love, again and again, especially when we don't have to?

QUEER [RE]PUBLIC ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

Photography by Hakeem Adewumi

Victoria Lynn Awkard (she/her)

Victoria Lynn Awkward is a multi-hyphenate creator, administrator, educator and the Director of VLA DANCE. Through her work she aims to inspire people to pause and reflect on their actions towards themselves, their community and their environment. She pursued her multiple interests at Goucher College and graduated with high honors in Dance, Visual Art and Secondary Education. Alongside directing VLA DANCE, Victoria is a freelance artist, who most recently choreographed for Huntington Theater, Company One Theatre, Boston Lyric Opera, and Commonwealth Shakespeare. Victoria is also an educator having worked at Salem State University, Brown University, West End House, Middlesex School, and Urbanity Dance. She continues to deepen her teaching practices as a mentee with Midday Movement Series. Victoria is currently a Brother Thomas Fellow, and recipient of the Next Steps for Boston Grant Dance Program as well as a recipient of the Queer (Re)public Theater Offensive Residency.

Photography by Tavon Taylor

Cheyenne Wyzzard-Jones (she/they)

Cheyenne Wyzzard-Jones is an artist of playwriting, contemporary art curation, radical learning environments, and joyful third spaces. They come from a political art background, as the former Director of Programming at In Solidarity and the current Associate Education Director at Company One Theatre. Cheyenne loves capturing conversations, the imagination, and the ways history cycles itself in our culture, language, clothing, and political beliefs. She started her art career in Boston, MA as a child actor where she appeared in historical pieces such as Aftershock: Beyond The Civil War directed by The History Channel, Fences directed by Up You Mighty Race Company, and Voices of Hope: Autobiography of Barbara Jordan directed by Jaqui Parker. Her love for theater has led her to write her first production, The Messenger, commissioned in 2022 by 5th Avenue Theatre.

As an artist who blends the power of storytelling, Cheyenne assumed the role of Independent Contemporary Art Curator through the platform Spiritual is Political, blending her expertise in radical space-making, art history, curriculum development, facilitation, and design. Her curation centers around histories, realities, and narratives that often go unnoticed and erased. Her curatorial practice has included collaborations with The Studio Museum in Harlem, Indigenous Curatorial Collective, The New Museum, and The Longwood Art Gallery, among others. Cheyenne holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Development & Social Change from Clark University and Master of Arts in Comparative and International Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Whether through intimate, character-driven plays or multi-sensory exhibitions, they seek to create spaces where audiences can experience what is, what was, and what could be. They hope to center the breadth of Black Indigenous Queer Technologies in this work.

Photography by Tavon Taylor

Annalise “River” Guidry (they/them)

Known by many names: Annalise, River or Rio. Annalise “River” Guidry (they/them) is a non-binary Black and Puerto Rican theater artist—playwright, director, educator, dramaturg, and theorist—based in Boston, originally from New Orleans. With a background in anthropology, Annalise blends interdisciplinary approaches to create theater that challenges cultural norms and fosters collective liberation.

Throughout their career, Annalise has demonstrated a deep commitment to both theater and the Boston community. Their credits include work as the True Colors Resident Artist with The Theater Offensive, as a two-time Volt Lab playwright and director with Company One Theater, as a teaching artist with Stage One at Company One Theater and Hyde Square Task Force, and as a playwright and dramaturg with Fresh Ink Theater (Mad Dash, 2023; The More the Man, 2024). They have previously served as the Artistic and Community Engagement Fellow at Speakeasy Stage (2023–2024).

Annalise’s directing credits include eight productions, over half of which are original works, such as XROADS (Company One Theater), 3 Womxn, 3 Myths (Edinburgh Fringe), and Just a Thing (Emerson College).

Currently, Annalise is developing an innovative pedagogical framework called Theater of Union, which seeks to dismantle systems of domination through theater. Drawing on anthropological theories and indigenous ways of knowing, this praxis emphasizes interconnectedness, a love ethic, and community-based healing as core values for social change.

Annalise’s work as a playwright, director, dramaturg, speaker and educator is rooted in a deeply embodied practice that explores the intersection of theater, anthropology, and social transformation, all through the lens of love and collective liberation."