Posts from the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Red Rainbow

The full-length play commissioned by Waterwell has a name — “Red Rainbow.” A team of amazing artists has come together to build the worlds of this brand new work. “Red Rainbow” will receive its world premiere with a digital production that will run from April 29 – May 1st. Check out all the juicy details below. Tickets are on sale now!

“Red Rainbow” by Azure D Osborne-Lee
Directed by Kevin R. Free
Stage Managed by Kaelin Fuld

Featuring Waterwell Drama Program Students and PPAS Alumni: Ethan Balan, Kinah Britton, Honesti Grant, Bernardo Manzolillo, Mia Pabon, Image Patterson, Jordan Samuels, and Molly Sannoo

Costume Design by Haydee Zelideth
Masks & Props by Najee Haynes-Follins
Sound Design by Germán Martinez
Video Design by Katherine Freer
Broadcast Designer and Technician: Romo Hallahan

Synopsis:
Covid-19 has hit New York City and the entire city is under quarantine. Nathaniel has decided to drag his best friend Ixchel out of bed to go on an adventure. When the two investigate a strange phenomenon in Ixchel’s basement, they are transported to a world that affords them both the chance to overcome the past and step into the future. Red Rainbow is a predominantemente English-language adventure for 2020 and beyond.

Streams online Thursday, Apr 29 – Saturday, May 1 at 7PM ET.

Tickets are $10 for Students
$20 General Admission
On sale now!

The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays

Friends, this groundbreaking anthology of trans plays is being published by Methuen Drama May 20, 2021, and you can find one of my plays in it! My full-length play “Crooked Parts” will be included in this, the first anthology to offer 8 new plays featuring trans characters written by trans authors. This book has been in the works for a while, and I am elated that soon it will make its way into the world!

The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays is available for pre-order now at bookstores large and small. So go ahead and purchase your copy now, and don’t forget to request the title at your local library. These stories are too important not to share!

Waterwell New Works Lab Commission

It is my pleasure to share that I’ve been seen selected as Waterwell‘s 2021 New Works Lab Commission recipient. Over the next three months, I will pen the first draft of a brand new full-length play, which will then be workshopped at and receive a world premiere production by Waterwell at Professional Performing Arts School (PPAS) in Manhattan in Spring 2021. Given the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic, we don’t yet know if the performances will take place in-person or online.

Previous recipients of this commission include Obie winner Dael Orlandersmith, Steinberg Award winner Qui Nguyen, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Stephen Karam, and Princeton and PoNY fellow A. Rey Pamatmat.

Learn more about Waterwell’s New Works Lab on their website. I will post more details about the commission as they develop. Stay tuned!

#WhileWeBreathe

Coming up next is an event I’m very excited about!

#WhileWeBreathe is A Night of Creative Protest to benefit the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.; and The Bail Project; Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD); BYP 100 Education Fund; Forced Trajectory Project (FTP); The Justice Committee; and Southerners on New Ground (SONG).

While We Breathe will showcase shorts written, performed and directed by artistic powerhouses. My short is called “Sundown Support,” and was directed by Kirya Traber and performed by Kevin R. Free, Alfie Fuller, Lori Parquet and TL Thompson.

The event will livestream on Wednesday, July 29th at 9PM ET/6PM ET on YouTube.

Visit the event’s website to learn more about the lineup.

Angry Women REvisited

I’ll be performing with 14 other amazing artists in Angry Women REvisited at HERE Arts Center from April 3rd – 6th. Here’s the official description of the show:

“Sublimely fantastic and inherently complex, Angry Women REvisited is a multi-ethnic, multi-generational, multi-disciplinary fifteen-person ensemble performance reexploring the 1990s classic feminist text. Think chainsaws, menstruation, everywoman demos, war, queer dance parties, amplified tender moments, interruptions, rage, academia, death, gender boxes, working-class queers working for rock stars, self-care as a strategy for dissent, and a good old dose of feminist humor. This charged wild epic journey and visual escapade embodies experimental conversations about feminism, queerness, race, and identity as it compares and contrasts 1990s feminist impulses to those of the contemporary moment.”

Shows are expected to sell out, so get your tickets now! Don’t live in New York City? Going to be out of town during the run? We have an Indiegogo campaign running to raise money to cover the costs incurred while mounting the show, including rehearsal space and theatre rental. Please consider donating the cost of a ticket (or more!) if you can.

We’re all very excited to see our hard work come to fruition and to share a moment with you. I look forward to seeing your lovely face in the audience!

Angry Women REvisited
Conceived and Directed by J Dellecave
April 3rd-6th, 2014
HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Avenue
New York, NY 10013

Equilibrium

Spring has come and gone, and now with the arrival of summer, I’m happy to share with you the new of other changes that have been wrought in my life. I am now based in Austin, TX again, and I’m branching out into photography in earnest. I’m pleased to share with you all that my photograph, “Small Golden Blessing,” was featured as the cover photograph of Equilibrium Magazine, Issue 48. You can check it out here.

To the left is a picture my friend took of me at the LOST Show at Grumpy Bert in February. That particular print of “Small Golden Blessing” is now up at Black Women’s Blueprint in Brooklyn. If you don’t know about Black Women’s Blueprint, they’re doing some tremendous work. Visit their website and if you’re in NYC, visit them in person.

But I digress, yes, change is afoot in my life. (Thanks a lot, Saturn!) I am now based in Texas once again, but I am looking forward to continuing to travel for my work. I had the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks in Philadelphia as I made my way down South, and I had a really great time there. I can’t to go back and visit my artist friends, most especially the good people at The New Black.

Anyway, stay tuned. I promise to post more updates to let you know what I’m up to. There’s a whole lot brewing here in the Lone Star State!

Photo by Jamie Larson

Lost in Brooklyn

It’s been quite some time since I last posted on my personal website. 2012 was a whirlwind, starting out with emergency surgery and seeing me working in various capacities with two companies that are very dear to my heart — Roots and River Productions and Half Moon House. It many ways, it was a wild and chaotic year, a year of radical transformation, and a year in which I spent much less time focusing on promoting my personal artistic practice.

But 2013 is now upon us and we’ve just experienced a Universal reboot. I’m excited to share with you all that one of my photographs will be included in the LOST show at Grumpy Bert in Brooklyn. Photos will be on display from January 26th to February 24th. Some prints, including mine, will be for sale. The show is kicking off with a reading and reception on January 26th. I hope that those of you who are local to New York City will come out and say hello. I won’t be based in the Big Apple for too much longer. But that’s a post for another day…

**Update** I’ll be reading a couple of poems in the show as well. So come at 6pm!

LOST 
Grumpy Bert
82 Bond St, Brooklyn, NY
Reading — January 26 @ 6pm
Reception – January 26th @ 8pm
Show runs from Jan 26th – Feb 24th

Poetic Flow

I have officially moved back to New York City, having finished my coursework for my M.A. I live in Brooklyn and I’m loving it! Excitingly, my work of late has taken a turn for the poetic. Over the summer, I decided that I wanted to focus on my poetry again. (My poetry was published years ago, but since then I have been devoting my writing energies to theatre.)

So I applied to Cave Canem‘s fall poetry workshops and was accepted to both! For the past few weeks, I have been attending poetry workshops on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I have been writing a lot. I have to say that it feels good to immerse myself in verse.

Both workshops are culminating poetry readings that are open to the public. See details below:

November 10, 6:30 pm
Breaking Line, Building Lyric: A Reading
Participants in Cave Canem’s Fall New York City Workshop share poems honed in class. Instructor Linda Susan Jackson hosts. Reception to follow. Wheelchair accessible.

November 15, 6:30 pm
Poetry Conversations: A Reading
Participants in Cave Canem’s Fall Poetry Conversations share poems honed in class. Instructor Bakar Wilson hosts. Reception to follow. Wheelchair accessible.

Cave Canem
20 Jay Street, Suite 310-A
Brooklyn, NY

In August, I participated in Ana-Maurine Lara’s online art/performance project, 36daysweeksmonthsyearsliftetimes (36 for short). Dozens of artists from all over contributed to 36, and I’m happy to say that my poem “Homeland” was included in the project. Check out my poem here, or better yet, explore all of 36.

In other news, I am honored to say that in September, I was selected as a finalist for the Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab. Also in September, Roots and River Productions kicked of the Emerging Artist Mentorship Program. Pictures from the welcome dinner can be found on our facebook page. If you haven’t been keeping up with Roots and River, you are missing out!

All in all, it has been a time of immense beauty, change, and productivity for me. I look forward to seeing what the near future holds.

Photo by Azure D. Osborne-Lee

Roots and River Productions

I am pleased to announce the formation of the new Brooklyn-based company Roots and River Productions. Roots and River’s mission is to cultivate and support creative work grounded in the community. The company serves as a home for artists of color in the New York City metropolitan area. Roots and River is an incubator for new work, a site of artistic exploration, and an agency for community outreach.

Roots and River’s primary programming includes a mentorship program designed to pair emerging black queer artists, especially those just coming out of college, with established artists in their field. Roots and River also produces the Voicebox Writing Workshops, which were originally developed in London, UK by Artistic Director Azure D. Osborne-Lee in collaboration with New Shoes Theatre and Central School of Speech & Drama. Look for the Voicebox Workshops and the Voicebox method of creating new work this summer in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas and this fall in New York City!

Roots and River Productions has a particular interest in supporting the work of emerging interdisciplinary and performing artists. In 2012 Roots and River will kick off an artist residency program. Find out more about Roots and River Productions at our website or on facebook

Roots and River is currently completely funded by contributions from the community. Please consider supporting us by making a donation via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas.

Roots and River Productions is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the purposes of Roots and River Productions must be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Artwork by Autumn Mackey

Two Weeks ’til Texas!

Winter has finally moved on and the winds of change are a-blowin’ here in the Empire State. As the weather heats up, I am in the process of selling off my New Yorkly belongings in preparation to spend some serious quality time in Texas this summer. There are less than two weeks left until I board a JetBlue flight to Houston, TX. Once I touch down in Texas, I’ll have less than 24 hours to say hello to my folks before I have to pack up my car and drive up to Austin, TX to start rehearsals for SYCORAX. The next couple of weeks are going to be very busy for me, but it’s all well worth it.

In other news, May 19th will make one year since I moved to New York City in 2009, and I have to say that it’s been a rich and dynamic year. I feel unbelievably grateful for my supportive family and friends. So many great things have happened in the past year. Here’s a small recap of my year in art, lest it be forgotten.

I started the summer off interning with Freedom Train Productions and writing educational workbooks in my subleased Harlem apartment. I made lots of awesome contacts and gained invaluable experience working for FTP. One of the definite highlights of the summer was my participation in FTP’s Open Workshop, a community playwriting workshop, in which I wrote my one act play CROOKED PARTS and formed some lasting artistic relationships with the other participants.  As the summer closed, I finished my internship with FTP and moved further uptown to Inwood, Manhattan. In October, after returning from Fire & Ink: Cotillion in Austin, TX, I started a new internship with Sundance Institute Theatre Program and saw the New York debut of CROOKED PARTS in FTP’s We Were All Artists Once.

In the new year things started to speed up. I applied and was admitted to graduate school in London. I became a resident playwright at Freedom Train Productions, and CROOKED PARTS was featured at Brooklyn Arts Exchange as part of Black and White: Performing the Personal/Political. 2010 promises to continue to be eventful as I make my way through the wide world of arts. Stay tuned for more information on how to buy tickets for SYCORAX, news on the debut of my newest work with Freedom Train Productions, and the skinny on CROOKED PARTS coming to Texas. I promise to let you know the very latest as it happens. Cheers!

 Photo by Flickr user qthrul