For the last year, National Queer Theater and the Dramatists Guild have been working together to bring to life the New Visions Fellowship, a biannual creative incubating program for Black trans and gender non-conforming (TGNC) dramatists. You can read more from our incredible inaugural Fellows, Ayla Xuan Chi Sullivan (they/them), Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko (he/they), and lead mentor Roger Q. Mason (they/them) in a roundtable with the sensational Miss Peppermint (she/her) in The Innovation Issue of The Dramatist.
On February 21, 2022, President’s Day, no less, we hosted a showcase for the New Visions Fellowship entitled Jubilee for a New Vision at MCC Theater, produced as part of Carnegie Hall’s Afrofuturism Festival. This showcase also featured the work of NVF Finalists Alexander Paris (they/them), Chantal Vorobei Thieves (she/her), and Storm Thomas with a dazzling cast of fellow queer creatives, production team, and actors.
But more broadly, as has always been the case for our formation of this program, we are here to celebrate and center Black TGNC artists and voices as the future of the American theatre, and an abundant future wherein their voices are front and center. Here is an excerpt from the welcome note shared in the evening’s program:
“This evening will be one of many punctuated and sacred moments in our shared queer history wherein we are choosing to dream. The production team will take you through a 70-minute ritual wherein these artists will share a bit of their souls, joy, and pain with you. These offerings, both incidentally and intentionally, will be challenging a Theatre that has historically excluded and created barriers for these stories to be told authentically and has not harbored the infrastructure necessary to nurture them. In some cases, we may witness the consequences of how these imbalances of power may impact their experiences in narratives both imagined and experienced. It is an interesting world we live in wherein someone’s expression of pure joy can be perceived as politics. We ask you not to question this joy, but instead the world that has politicized that joy.
We hope you take them in, harbor them, and choose to dream with us. We hope you take them out into the world with you after this ritual, and that regardless of your intersectionality, you may choose to walk alongside, or with us. Where this dream takes you after tonight is your part of the journey.”
More information on the New Visions Fellowship, and to donate.
Read Ayla’s excerpt, “Lock Up Tha Theatre” in American Theatre magazine.
