SEVEN EVENINGS OF NEW WORK CREATED
BY TNB2S+ ARTISTS FOR TNB2S+ ARTISTS
AT LITTLEFIELD AND IN PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS’ PETER JAY SHARP THEATER
OCTOBER 21 - 27, 2024
Coinciding with LGBTQ+ History Month, the annual Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival brings together seven teams of transgender, non-binary, and Two-Spirit+ (TNB2S+) playwrights, directors, dramaturgs, stage managers, and performers (yes, even in roles written for cis folks!) to develop and showcase new work created entirely by and for TNB2S+ artists.
All tickets to the 2024 Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival are complimentary and will be available on Monday, October 7.
All casting and additional creatives for the 2024 Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival will be announced soon.
TRUTH //: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY REVUE
MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2024
7PM at Littlefield
co-conceived by Noax (they/them) and George Strus (they/them)
Following last year’s presentation of PARADISE, Noax and BTB Founding Artistic Director George Strus are joining forces again to create TRUTH //: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY REVUE at Littlefield. This special opening performance will showcase the talents of twelve stellar TNB2S+ artists and acts of various disciplines: vocalists, drag artists, comedians, and more showcasing original performance pieces inspired by the prompt "truth // dare."
PRUNIN, HOEIN N CUTTIN GRAPES
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2024
7PM at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater
by Nissy Aya (Nissy; she/ze/we)
directed by Dominique Rider
In the highly regimented ▇▇▇▇, we witness the lives and lessons of a community of femmes assigned to teach the tools of sexual pleasure to others. Led by Alpha and her right-hand, her beta, Bilinda, this proud community of hoes carries on just them and their chil'ren. But with the pressures of a Choosing looming, the community deals with an unexpected and daunting assignment.
HARVESTING OLIVES: A COLLECTIVE IMPROVISATION
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2024
7PM at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater
written and performed by Yaffa AS (they/she)
developed in collaboration with Rad Pereira (they/them)
Drawing from Mx. Yaffa’s books of writing and poetry as a trans Palestinian death worker and community organizer, we invoke utopias, spiral through grief and jump between realms through a collective improvisation. We hold a container for chaos, intimacy, restorative devastation, falling apart, and space to commune with ancestors through oral history and experimentation. HARVESTING OLIVES is adapted from Desecrated Poppies, Blood Orange, and Inara with guidance from ancestors, community members, and guides.
FIRESIDE DANCES
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2024
7PM at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater
by MJ Kaufman (he/they)
directed by Aya Ogawa
When 16-year-old Em decides to move from a farm in rural Oregon to Portland in order to go high school, she lands in the home of distant relatives: lesbian moms Greta and Annie and their overachieving 8-year-old Kaitlyn. Cultures clash between rural and urban queer lifestyles, class differences and politics but Em and Kaitlyn vow to stay sisters no matter what.
A RARE BIRD
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2024
7PM at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater
written and directed by Zaza Diana Oh (they/them)
A RARE BIRD is an interdisciplinary Play, Live Physical Intimacy, and Quiet and Honest Sex Show. One could say that it is the birth of a new genre of extreme slow porn. A Rare Bird captures Skye and Gabriel’s date on the carpeted floor against the couch of a studio apartment where neither is willing or able to make the first move. For Skye (ahem, the extrovert) and Gabriel, (ahem, the introvert) are stunted by their own respective shortcomings. We watch the date in real time with a VoiceEther (ahem, from Skye's POV) running. A RARE BIRD blends, defies, and subverts Erotic Thriller Cinema, Narrative Play, Stage Sex Show, and finally the Quiet and Slow Sex Education so many of us long for. This is an ode to Introversion, (loud) pauses, and letting less be.
LUPE FINDS ME IN THE GARDEN OF DREAMS
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2024
7PM at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater
by Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel (she/they
directed by Adin Walker (they/them)
Estrella, a young trans playwright, is at a spiritual crossroads. She becomes the Old Hollywood actress Lupe Velez on the last night of her life to find the answers to her questions, and the two people who hold them are Anna May Wong and Gary Cooper, her lifetime's greatest relationships. LUPE FINDS ME IN THE GARDEN OF DREAMS spans years in cinematic history to raise the question: what are the costs to being a queer artist of color in today's industry, and what would happen if we found a way of creating ourselves and our work outside of it?
// DARE: A COLLECTION OF COMMISSIONED SCENES AND MONOLOGUES
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2024
7PM at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater
co-conceived by L Morgan Lee (she/her) and George Strus (they/them)
directed by L Morgan Lee (she/her)
in partnership with Broadway Licensing
featuring new works by by D.A. Mindell, Dillon Yruegas (he/él), Esmé Maria Ng (they/he/she), Ianne Fields Stewart (they/she), Imani Russell (they/them), Jayne Deely (they/them), Jen Silverman (they/them), Jordan Ramirez Puckett (they/them), Nikhil Mahapatra (any pronouns), Nora Brigid Monahan (she/they), Sasha Velour (she/they) and Sophie Sagan-Gutherz (they/them)
Following OVERHEARD and BLISS, BTB Core Community member L Morgan Lee and Founding Artistic Director George Strus are partnering with Broadway Licensing for the third year in a row to create // DARE: A COLLECTION OF COMMISSIONED SCENES AND MONOLOGUES. The twelve commissioned works inspired by the prompt "truth // dare" will be crafted together and brought to life by a cast of five TNB2S+ performers to close the 2024 Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival. The works will then be published and licensed by Broadway Licensing in 2025.