National Queer Theater in partnership with The Dramatists Guild of America will present Jubilee for a New Vision: A Celebration of Trans and Gender Non-conforming Artists on Monday, February 21 at 7pm at The Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space (511 W 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019), presented as part of Carnegie Hall’s citywide 2022 Afrofuturism Festival. Admission is Pay-What-You Can and tickets can be purchased in advance by clicking here. The performance will run approximately 70 minutes, with no intermission.
Join the artistic residents of the New Visions Fellowship, a new initiative of National Queer Theater and The Dramatists Guild of America, as they showcase excerpts from new works amplifying the TGNC experience in scene, song, and performance. This event features exclusive new work by inaugural New Visions Fellows Ayla Xuan Chi Sullivan (they/them) and Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko (he/they), New Visions Fellowship Mentor Roger Q. Mason (they/them), and some special guests.
Trans and gender non-conforming playwrights, librettists, and performers are living out loud and daring to write it down. Through their art, they envision Black Futures which transform systemic invisibility into fonts of joy, community, and infinite imagination. The Black Trans and Gender-nonconforming playwrights making work in America are at the forefront of Afrofuturism. They've had to make a way out of no way and still hold their heads high while striving.
The New Visions Fellowship is a rigorous year-long professional development initiative aimed at celebrating the brilliance of and uplifting Black TGNC writers in the face of the systemic exclusion that Black TGNC writers have endured within American theater. The inaugural fellowships were awarded to Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko (he/they) and Ayla Xuan Chi Sullivan (they/them). The program is helmed by Black and Filipinx playwright Roger Q. Mason (they/them) along with Project Manager Jordan Stovall (they/them).
Carnegie Hall’s Afrofuturism Festival is a citywide festival exploring the thriving aesthetic movement and practice that looks to the future through a Black cultural lens, intersecting music, visual art, literature, politics, science fiction, and technology. Festival concerts at Carnegie Hall by celebrated artists will explore Afrofuturism’s boundless sonic essence through jazz, funk, R&B, Afrobeat, hip-hop, and electronic music. More than 60 leading cultural institutions from across New York City and beyond will extend the scope of the festival with a diverse array of live and online events, including exhibitions, performances, talks, and more with a complete schedule to be announced in January. An introduction for some and a continued quest for others, this trek across space and time through the lens of global Black cultures will enrich and revitalize our relationship to new futures and futures’ past. Whether you know Afrofuturism through Alice Coltrane, the literary genius of Octavia E. Butler, the glowing world of comics, or the mythos of Sun Ra and P-funk, epiphanies will abound in this experiential saga through the realm of Astro-Blackness.
MCC Theater is one of New York’s leading nonprofit Off-Broadway companies, driven by a mission to provoke conversations that have never happened and otherwise never would. Founded in 1986 as a collective of artists leading peer-based classes to support their own development as actors, writers and directors, the tenets of collaboration, education, and community are at the core of MCC Theater’s programming. One of the only theaters in the country led continuously by its founders, Artistic Directors Bob LuPone, Bernie Telsey, and Will Cantler, MCC fulfills its mission through the production of world, American, and New York premiere plays and musicals that challenge artists and audiences to confront contemporary personal and social issues, and robust playwright development and education initiatives that foster the next generation of theater artists and students.
National Queer Theater is an innovative queer theater collective dedicated to celebrating the brilliance of generations of LGBTQ+ artists and providing a home for unheard storytellers and activists. Founded in 2018, National Queer Theater amplifies queer stories and experiences to increase visibility within the broader NYC community. By serving our elders, youth, and working professionals, NQT creates a more just future through radical and evocative theater experiences and free community classes.
The Dramatists Guild of America is the national, professional membership trade association of theatre writers including playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists. The Guild was established for the purpose of aiding dramatists in protecting both the artistic and economic integrity of their work. We believe that a vibrant, vital, and provocative theatre is an essential element of the ongoing cultural debate which informs the citizens of a free society; and that if such a theatre is to survive, the unique, idiosyncratic voices of the men, women, trans and non-binary artists who write for it must be cultivated and protected.
