News: “Dreaming the Queer Future”: Peppermint in Conversation with the New Visions Fellowship on 10/19 [Rescheduled from 7/8]

 

Peppermint. Photo courtesy Emily Owens PR

Activist and international star Peppermint (she/her) will host an online conversation on Tuesday, October 19th at 6pm ET (5pm CT, 4pm MT, 3pm PT) with the recipients of the 2021-22 New Visions Fellowship, Ayla Xuan Chi Sullivan (they/them) and Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko (he/they), along with New Visions Lead Mentor, Roger Q. Mason (they/them) on the importance of transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) representation in the American Theatre. The conversation, originally scheduled for July 8th, will take place on Zoom and will be FREE and open for all to attend. 

New Visions Fellowship is an innovative new artistic program established by National Queer Theater and The Dramatists Guild of America. The 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 they have endured within American theater. The 2021 New Vision Fellowship playwrights will each be awarded $5,000, fully funded by National Queer Theater, to develop a play, musical, or performance experience of their design and choosing, and the theater will host a professionally cast and directed reading of their play at the end of the program. Fellows will also have the opportunity to participate in professional development sessions covering a wide range of artistic topics. In addition, they will receive a five-year complimentary membership to The Dramatists Guild including access to contracts, business advice, and career services, to help protect the artistic and economic integrity of their work.

The entertainment industry not only struggles in depicting TGNC lives but it also falls short of hiring trans people to tell our own stories. This is especially true in American theater; the Asian American Performers Action Coalition’s latest Visibility Report reported that of the 37 shows that either opened or were slated to open on Broadway, none featured trans roles. According to Production Pro, this past season had 365 titled characters, of which only 0.27% of roles were “nonbinary plural.” The Actor’s Equity Association’s latest DEI report found that, from 2016 to 2019, a total of 93,957 Equity contracts were issued nation-wide. Of those contracts, only 0.65% were issued to actors who self-identify as transgender or non-binary.

The dialog hosted by Peppermint will explore how TGNC-led stories and characters on stages have the capacity to humanize through art, and how other TGNC artists and individuals can begin to imagine more fully realized lives as individuals in society as a result. 

To register for the event, CLICK HERE.
It will also be streamed to National Queer Theater’s Facebook Page.

To read more about the Fellowship and/or to donate, please visit this page. 

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