QUEER

[RE]PUBLIC

/EMERGENT ARTIST RESIDENCY

ABOUT QUEER [RE]PUBLIC + EMERGENT ARTIST RESIDENCY

Queer (Re)public, launched in Spring 2020, is TTO’s program that honors, uplifts, and builds on emergent themes inherent to and in QTBIPOC art through workshops, residency, programs, and commissioning art by, for, and including queer and trans artists of color.  This work takes inspiration from the artist and activist adrienne maree brown's theory of Emergent Strategy. 

Emergent Artist Residencies -- TTO’s Queer (Re)public Residency Program, piloted in July 2021, is dedicated solely to queer & trans artists of color, whose work demonstrates artistic vigor and inquisitive exploration of their self-defined queer aesthetics.  Through Queer (Re)public’s Emergent Artist Residency, TTO will engage and support artists, both emerging and experienced.  The Theater Offensive will take on one or two (1 or 2) resident artists from either project level per twenty-two (22) month cycle.  Alongside TTO’s Programs Director & Staff, the selected artists will develop an in-process or new work of multidisciplinary art during their twent-two (22) month residency.  With the Emergent Residency Program, TTO seeks to:   

  • Assist emerging and experienced artists in discovering/developing an understanding of their personal aesthetic through interrogation and unpacking Queer Liberatory Aesthetics;

  • Create deeper relationships with local and national artists through artist-led & institution-supported development;

  • Interrogate the connection of people, place, publics, power, and practices essential to QTPOC art;

  • Become an incubator for QTPOC artists on their artistic journey towards edge & queering the performing arts platform;

  • Create and foster art that is life-affirming for queer artists; 

  • Work with Resident Artists to develop & grow a residency program that embraces and genuinely reflects Queer Liberatory Aesthetics.  

Des Bennett (they/them):left, attends a workshop for True Colors Resident Artist River Guidry at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

QUEER (RE)PUBLIC GOALS

The QR/Emergent Artist Residency Program seeks to:  

  • Support emerging and experienced artists in an artist-led process of developing their personal aesthetic through interrogation and unpacking of Queer Liberatory Aesthetics;

  • Create deeper relationships with local and national artists through artist-led & institution-supported development;

  • Interrogate the connection of people, place, publics, power, and practices essential to QTPOC art;

  • Become an incubator for QTPOC artists on their artistic journey towards the edge & queering the performing arts platform;

  • Create and foster art that is life-affirming for queer artists.

RESIDENCIES COMPONENTS

The EMERGENT ARTIST RESIDENCIES will recognize & support the work of two (2) QTPOC artists from September 2025 - June 2027. The chosen artist(s) work in both residencies must demonstrate exceptional artistic merit, an understanding of their own personal aesthetic, and self-directed project development. We are in an ever-evolving process of decolonizing the relationship between artists & producers, which manifests in a commitment to artist-led Residencies; selected artists are expected to be equal partners in communicating their artistic needs, planning and reaching goals for their projects, and shaping the Residency alongside TTO’s Programs & Producing Staff, and fellow cohort members. The Emergeant Artist Residency culminates in the Queer (Re)Public Festival, showcasing the work of our Resident Artists alongside EAR alumni, True Colors Ensemble, and partners engaged with the program.

2023-2025 QUEER [RE]PUBLIC COHORT

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Informed by feminist notions of “A Love Ethic” by bell hooks and “Knowing Together” by Allison Weir, River 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.

2021-2023 QUEER [RE]PUBLIC COHORT

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.