2024 FESTIVAL — Breaking the Binary Theatre

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 are available to reserve here:

2024 Breaking the binary theatre festival tickets

FESTIVAL STAFF

Co-Sound Designer: Bailey Trierweiler (he/him)
Literary Manager: Bryar Barborka (they/them)
Casting Director: Charlie Hano, CSA (he/him)
Co-Sound Designer: Christopher Darbassie
Associate Producer: Esmé Maria Ng (they/she/he)
Assistant Producer: Flower Estefana Rios
Founding Artistic Director: George Strus (they/them)
Graphic Designer: Marc Ella Roy (they/them)

**TRUTH //: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY REVUE**

MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2024
7PM at Littlefield

co-conceived by **Noax** (they/them) and **George Strus** (they/them)
featuring **Alaïa, Amanda Tori Meating** (she/her), **Anania Williams** (they/she), **Ari Notartomaso** (they/he), **César Alvarez** (they/them), **Garrett Allen** (Garrett/they/them), **Justin David Sullivan** (he/she/they), **Jade Jones aka Litty Official** (they/them), **JMV** (they/them/thou), **Nico Carney** (he/him), **Nora Schell** (they/them), & **ONE** (Esco Jouléy)
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."
For more information on TRUTH //, please click **here**.

**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**
Stage Manager: **Rachel Denise April** (they/them)
Stage Directions Reader: **Ren King** (they/he)
featuring **Aja Lynn Downing** (she/her), **fatima jamal**, **Javon Q. Minter** (they/she), **Jennifer Nikki Kidwell** (she/they), **Mariyea** (she/her), **Starr Kirkland** (she/they), & **Temidayo Amay** (them)
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.
For more information on PRUNIN, HOEIN N CUTTIN GRAPES, please click **here**.

**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)
Stage Manager: **Bea Perez-Arche** (she/they)
Co-Producer: **Sara Ramirez** (they/them)
ASL Interpreter: **Zoey Walker** (they/them)
HARVESTING OLIVES is a **mask required** performance.
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.
For more information on HARVESTING OLIVES: A COLLECTIVE IMPROVISATION, please click **here**.

**FIRESIDE DANCES**

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2024
7PM at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater
by **MJ Kaufman** (he/they)
directed by **Aya Ogawa**
Stage Manager: **Angie Salazar** (she/they)
Stage Directions Reader: **Colin Buckingham** (He/they)
featuring **Blair Barker** (they/them), **Colleen Litchfield** (she/they), **Drae Campbell** (she/they), **Karoline** (they/them) & **Zo Tipp** (they/them)
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.
For more information on FIRESIDE DANCES, please click **here.**

**A RARE BIRD**

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2024
7PM at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater
written and directed by **Zaza Diana Oh** (they/them)
Intimacy Director: **Alex Might** (she/her)
Stage Manager: **Ariana Swei** (they/them)
Assistant Director/Acting Coach: **Michi Zaya** (any pronouns)
Assistant Director/Movement Coach: **Shannon Yu 余香儒** (sha/shas)
featuring **Akane Little** (they/them), **Mei Ann Teo** (they/them) & **Zaza Diana Oh** (they/them)
Unboxable Artist, Sonic Ritualist, and Actor Zaza Diana Oh’s (they/them) *A Rare Bird* is pulled from *THE DESIRE ARCHIVES,* Oh's year-long personal study on epigenetics, desire, and the brain. *A Rare Bird* is an interdisciplinary choreo-play, Live Physical Intimacy, and Quiet and Honest Sex Show, as it 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. *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. While seeking Refuge in Ceremony, this is an ode to Introversion, (loud) pauses, and letting less be.
For more information on A RARE BIRD, please click **here.**

**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)
Dramaturg: **abigail jean-baptiste**
Stage Manager/Assistant Director: **Bea Perez-Arche** (she/they)
Stage Directions Reader: **Janice Amaya** (they/them/elle)
Design Consultant: **Hannah Tran** (she/they)
featuring **Clew** (they/them), **Marquise Vilsón** (he/him) & **Samora la Perdida** (she/they)
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?
For more information on LUPE FINDS ME IN THE GARDEN OF DREAMS, please click **here.**

**// 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**
Stage Manager: **Rachel Denise April** (they/them)
Stage Directions Reader: **Sagan Chen**
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)
featuring b (they/them), **Brigette Lundy-Paine**, **Carl Clemons-Hopkins** (they/he), **Che Kabia** (they/them/theirs), **Joslyn Defreece** (she/her) & **Lux Pascal** (she/her)
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.
For more information on // DARE please click **here.**

2024 Breaking the Binary Theatre Staff:

Bailey Trierweiler (he/him)

**Co-Sound Designer**
Bailey Trierweiler (he/him) is a New York based sound designer, editor, engineer and mixer for live theater performance, installation, dance and audio drama. Select design credits include Blood of the Lamb (59E59); Riverside (Indy Shakes); Dangerous Days (Miami New Drama); The Slow Dance (59E59); Fires in the Mirror (Baltimore Center Stage/Long Wharf Theatre); already there (The REACH at the Kennedy Center), among others. Select associate sound designer for The Blood Quilt (Lincoln Center Theatre); Valour: A Drag Spectacular (La Jolla Playhouse); The Welkin (Atlantic Theater Co); KATE (Connelly Theater); The Comeuppance (Signature Theatre Company); Becky Nurse of Salem (Lincoln Center Theatre); King John (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Peerless (59E59) among others. M.F.A - Yale School of Drama.

Bryar Barborka (they/them)

**Literary Manager**
Bryar Barborka (they/them) is a Chicago-based nonbinary Latine theater artist. They are the Literary Associate at Seven Devils New Play Foundry and the Literary and Casting Associate at Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Bryar has also worked with: Second Stage Theater, The Playwrights' Center, Goodman Theatre, Victory Gardens Theater, Teatro Vista, Definition Theatre, Interrobang Theatre Project, and the Ojai Playwrights Conference among others in various capacities. They are passionate about work that expands theater audiences and reaches those that have historically been left out of the American theatre.

Charlie Hano (he/him)

**Casting Director**
Charlie Hano, CSA (he/him). Charlie is a casting professional and creative consultant based in New York and Chicago. Some of his previous credits include MUD (Mabou Mines, winner of a 2020 Obie Award for best director), Work In Progress: Season 2 (PR Casting, Showtime), The Life! (Encores), Camelot (The MUNY), The Wolves (Actors Theatre of Louisville), soft (MCC), and John Proctor Was The Villian (Studio Theatre in DC). In addition, he is a member of the team at The Telsey Office. For more information, visit www.hanocasting.org. Charlie is a proud member of the transgender community and is thrilled to be part of this festival.

Christopher Darbassie

**Co-Sound Designer**
(Select Credits): *The Counter* (Roundabout)*, Almost There* (Audible @ Minetta Lane), *Table 17* (MCC)*, Six Characters* (LCT3)*, Apiary, Camp Siegfried* (2nd Stage) Antiquities, *Amusements (*Playwrights Horizons), *Grangeville*, *A Bright New Boise, A Case for the Existence of God* (Signature Theater), *Uncle Vanya* (O’Henry Productions), *This Beautiful Future (Cherry Lane Theater), Fly Away (Petzel Gallery)*, *Black Exhibition* (The Bushwick Starr). Chris has designed for art installations, radio plays, and devised works in collaboration with The National Black Theater, The Public, Ars Nova, and more. *www.darbassiedesign.com* | Free Palestine | Free Congo

Esmé Maria Ng (they/he/she)

Associate Producer

Esmé Maria Ng (they/he/she) is a queer, non-binary theater maker of Cantonese and Scottish descent who loves heartbreak and developing new plays. They have held artistic and producing positions at Manhattan Theatre Club, Ma-Yi Theater Company, Breaking the Binary Theatre, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and Little Island. As a playwright, Esmé has been recognized as a Eugene O’Neill Finalist, a Lambda Literary Playwriting Fellow, and a June Bingham New Playwright Commission Recipient. Currently, Esmé is a writer with bylines in American Theater Magazine and a fellow at The Tank NYC and Creative & Independent Producers Alliance. @esmemariang esmemariang.com

SEVEN EVENINGS OF NEW WORK CREATED BY TNB2S+ ARTISTS FOR TNB2S+ ARTISTSAT LITTLEFIELD AND IN PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS’ PETER JAY SHARP THEATEROCTOBER 21 - 27, 2024

FESTIVAL STAFF

2024 Breaking the Binary Theatre Staff:

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