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. 


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.

IN the SPACE BETWEEN

by VICTORIA L. AWKWARD

Photography by Vika Brennick

Photography by Micah Fong

THE MESSENGER

a STAGED READING by CHEYENNE WYZZARD-JONES

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 who 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.

Photography by Micah Fong

THEATER OF UNION

by ANNALISE “RIVER” GUIDRY

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.

OUR 2023-2025 QUEER REPUBLIC RESIDENT ARTIST COHORT

Portrait of Victoria Awkward
Portrait of Cheyenne Wyzzard-Jones
Portrait of Annalise "River" Guidry

QUEER [RE]PUBLIC FESTIVAL PRODUCTION TEAM

Des Bennett | Festival Producer/QR Programs Manager

Jesse Cannon | Associate Technical Director

Malena Logan | Associate Scenic Designer

Andrea Sala | Production Manager

Ollie Rizzo | Associate Producer - TM

Elmer Martinez | Lighting Designer - TM & TOU

Lena Broach | Assistant Lighting Designer - TM & TOU

Eddie Maisonet | Access Coordinator

Saturn | Community Altar Builder

Duncan Stone | Scenic Overhire - ITSB

Becki Gray | Scenic Overhire - ITSB

Wesley Pang | Scenic Overhire - ITSB

Jesse Lipschutz | Scenic Overhire - ITSB

KC Haye | LX Overhire - ITSB

Billie Frank Smith | LX Overhire - ITSB