About the Faculty
Lead Faculty, George Emilio Sánchez
George Emilio Sánchez is the Chairperson of the Department of Performing and Creative Arts at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). He teaches undergraduate courses in the Drama program and graduate courses for the Education Department. He has directed five original student productions for the PCA and continues to work with students and classes with the goal of creating original theater/performance works. He continues to work as a teaching artist outside of the college demonstrating how the arts can be utilized in education across disciplines. Most recently he was the resident teaching artist for the Bronx Museum of the Arts for their Action Lab Theater. In this capacity he worked with teachers and artists teaching them Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed techniques. As a result of his work in education he was the recipient of the Brooklyn Arts Exchange 2006 Arts Educator Award. His most recent performance work with collaborator Patricia Hoffbauer, The Architecture of Seeing-REMIX, was presented at La MaMa in 2006. In 2004 they premiered Milagro at Dance Theater Workshop. A year earlier Hoc Est Corpus/This Is A Body premiered at Symphony Space in April 2003. His third solo performance ROSA premiered at Dixon Place in 2002. His first solo performance, Chief Half-Breed in the Land of In-Between, was commissioned and premiered at Dance Theater Workshop and was also part of Mo’ Madness curated by George C. Wolfe at The Public Theater. His second solo performance piece, LATINDIO also premiered in New York City and both pieces have since been performed in over 20 states as well as in Puerto Rico and Peru. He has collaborated with Brazilian choreographer Patricia Hoffbauer on numerous pieces. Among those are A Night in La Mezcla and The Architecture of Seeing. As an artistic associate under JoAnne Akalaitis he created the Latino Lab at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater. He has garnered two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships for Performance Art/Emergent Forms and was a Fulbright Scholar to Peru in 1994.
Invited Artists
UNIVERSES
www.universesonstage.com
Universes is a National / International ensemble Company of multi-disciplined writers and performers who fuse Poetry, Theater, Jazz, Hip-Hop, Politics, Down Home Blues and Spanish Boleros to create moving, challenging and entertaining theatrical works. The group breaks the bounds of traditional theater to create their own brand, inviting old and new generations of theater crafters as well as the theater goers and new comers to reshape the face of American Theater. They are the Hemispheric Institute's Artists in Residence for 2010-2011.
Susana Cook
www.susanacook.com
Susana Cook, born in Argentina, is a New York based playwright, director and performer who has been producing original work for over 20 years. Her work has been presented in numerous performance spaces in New York City, including Dixon Place, PS. 122, W.O.W Cafe Theater, Ubu Rep, Theater for the New City, The Puffin Room and The Kitchen. She has also performed internationally in Spain, France, India, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Canada and at several colleges and universities around the country. Some of her latest shows are include : Homeland Insecurities, The idiot King, The Values Horror Show, 100 Years of Attitude, Dykenstein, Hamletango, Prince of Butches, Gross National Product, Hot Tamale, Conga Guerrilla Forest, The Fraud, Butch Fashion Show in the Femme Auto Body Shop, Rats and Tango Lesbiango She is the recipient of several fellowships and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Arts International, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, The Franklin Furnace Archives, The Puffin Foundation and INTAR.
Fulana
www.fulana.org
Fulana is a video collective in that emerged as the vision-fusion of four New York-based Latina artists joined by a love of video and performance, a critical gaze, a bilingual sense of humor and —most of all— a shared desire to create art within a collaborative onda. So we put our Spanglish brains together, drank some coffee, and founded Fulana in 2000. Through parody and satire, we explore themes that are relevant to Latino cultures in the U.S., delving into the nuances that bind our experiences, experimenting with strategies to make visible what we're so often made to read between the lines. Our work, whose aesthetic ranges from cable-access kitsch to Telemundo tinsel, consists mainly of mock television commercials, music videos and print advertisements. Focusing on popular culture, we respond to the ways ideologies and identities are marketed to us, sold to us—and how we sell ourselves—through the mass media.
Peggy Shaw
www.splitbritches.com
Peggy Shaw is an independent performance artist, painter and poet who believes in new images, and rejects old ideas. She challenges established practices in theatre, prisons, gender, relationships and humor. Her work is firmly rooted in a queer feminist perspective, with an unceasing quest for global equality in writing, spoken word and performance.
Pamela Sneed
www.youtube.com/user/pamspeaks
Pamela Sneed is a New York-based poet, performer, writer and actress. She is the author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery, published by Henry Holt (1998.) And KONG and other works published by Vintage Entity press 2009. She is the recipient of the 2006 BAX award for performance. Sneed has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Source, Time Out, VIBE, Karl Lagerfeld's "Off The Record," on the cover of New York Magazine and in 2009 her work appeared in Essence magazine. Recent & forthcoming publications include work in The 100 Best African American Poems edited by Nikki Giovanni (Nov. 2010) Best American Short Plays and In 2001, 2002, and in 2005 she headlined the New Work Now Festival at Joe's Pub/Public Theater and performed before sold out houses.
Reverend Billy
www.revbilly.com
Reverend Billy and the Life After Shopping Gospel Choir believe that Consumerism is overwhelming our lives. The corporations want us to have experiences only through their products. Our neighborhoods, "commons" places like stoops and parks and streets and libraries, are disappearing into the corporatized world of big boxes and chain stores. But if we "back away from the product" – even a little bit, well then we Put The Odd Back In God! The supermodels fly away and we're left with our original sensuality. So we are singing and preaching for local economies and real – not mediated through products – experience. We like independent shops where you know the person behind the counter or at least –you like them enough to share a story.We ask that local activists who are defending themselves against supermalls, nuke plants, gentrification – call us and we'll come and put on our "Fabulous Worship!" Remember children... Love is a Gift Economy! — The Rev
Tim Miller
www.timmillerperformer.com
Tim Miller is an internationally acclaimed performance artist. Miller's creative work as a performer and writer explores the artistic, spiritual and political topography of his identity as a gay man. Hailed for his humor and passion, Miller has tackled this challenge in such pieces as POSTWAR (1982), COST OF LIVING (1983), DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA (1984), BUDDY SYSTEMS (1985), SOME GOLDEN STATES (1987), STRETCH MARKS (1989), SEX/LOVE/STORIES (1991), MY QUEER BODY (1992), NAKED BREATH (1994), FRUIT COCKTAIL (1996), SHIRTS & SKIN (1997) GLORY BOX (1999), US (2003) and 1001 BEDS (2006). Miller's performances have been presented all over North America, Australia, and Europe in such prestigious venues as Yale Repertory Theatre, the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He is the author of the books SHIRTS & SKIN, BODY BLOWS and 1001 BEDS, which won the 2007 Lambda Literary Award for best book in Drama-Theatre. His solo theater works have been published in the play collections O Solo Homo and Sharing the Delirium. Miller’s newest book 1001 BEDS, an anthology of his performances, essays and journals, was published by University of Wisconsin Press in 2006. Miller has taught performance at UCLA, NYU, the School of Theology at Claremont and at universities all over the US. He is a co-founder of two of the most influential performance spaces in the United States: Performance Space 122 on Manhattan's Lower East Side and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, CA.
Aisha Jordan and Frantz Jerome (2050 Legacy)
2050 Legacy is a hip-hop and social justice theater group devoted to continuing the great work of the New WORLD Theater's Project 2050 in empowering artists and strengthening communities through animating democracy. Aisha Jordan is a performer and arts organizer currently working with the group. She has performed and done work for, PS 122, EmergeNYC - Hemispheric Institute, Nuyorican Poets Café, Bowery Poetry Club, The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, New 42nd street studios, New Victory Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, New WORLD Theater, Lyrical Circle with the Brotherhood Sister-Sol, and the Hip-Hop Theater Festival. She has worked with numerous artists in social justice theater to develop original works for the stage, including Tim Miller, Steven Sapp and Mildred Ruiz of Universes, Rha Goddess, Reggie Cabico, Magdalena Gomez, George Emilio Sanchez, Baba Israel, and Kamillah Forbes. Aisha Currently attends NYU’s intensive master’s program studying Arts and Politics at the Tisch School for the Arts and works to facilitate social change through self-exploration and the transformation and empowerment of artists and audiences, utilizing collaborative theater development and performance. Frantz Jerome is an MC, poet, essayist, performer, educator, activist, and husband. Frantz is currently teaching modern mythology, media, technology, and empowerment with Inwood House in NYC high schools. An alumn of EMERGENYC and a lover of words, Frantz hopes to share 'the meaning of things' with everyone he comes in contact with.
Debra Levine (ACT UP)
deblevine.blogspot.com
Debra Levine is an ABD student in the department of Performance Studies at New York University, where she is also an adjunct instructor in the department of Undergraduate Drama in the Tisch School of the Arts. She holds an MA in performance studies from New York University and an MFA in theatre direction from Columbia University. She is currently working on her dissertation entitled Enduring ACT UP: The Ethics, Politics and Performances of Affinity and was an active member of ACT UP New York from 1988–1993.
Ricardo Gamboa