the THEATER OF IRREGULAR DESIRE presents...
RE/GENERATOR
> a proposed project for the Queer Cultural Center's 2010 Creating Queer Community program/2011 National Queer Arts Festival

RESUME & ARTWORK SAMPLES

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CONFIRMED ARTISTS LIST
AMIR RABIYAH | ANNA MARTINE WHITEHEAD | ANNAH ANTI-PALINDROME * Lead Artist/Curator | DAVE END | ENCIAN MICHAEL (NCN) | JEZEBEL DELILAH X | LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA | NOMY LAMM | VOULA O’GRADY * Lead Artist/Curator

INVITED ARTISTS LIST (NOT YET CONFIRMED)
DANA ALESHIRE | DEWAYNE DICKERSON | LEX MCQUILKIN | TRUONG TRAN | We are currently reviewing and recruiting other artists, particularly visual artists.



WORK SAMPLES:
Work samples can be viewed in the bios in the next section, or by clicking links below:


BRIEF BIOS:
Below are brief bios and work samples for the Participating Artists. Additional artists may join by invitation.


ANNA MARTINE WHITEHEAD
Anna Martine’s history-telling performances are an extension of her investment in transformative performance traditions and her commitment to disidentificatory countermemory . Working within thematic discourses of diaspora, memory, melancholia, and desire, her practice narrativizes those invisible and unwritten moments where hybrid identities and collective knowledges meet. She has worked with Philadelphia’s prestigious Spiral Q Puppet Theatre and holds an MFA in Social Practice from CA College of the Arts.

SELECTED PROJECTS & PERFORMANCES
2010 This Is What I Want (AIRspace/National Queer Arts Festival), The Garage, San Francisco CA
2010 Fair Share! a cabaret celebrating queer people of color and our allies, Mama Calizo's Voice Factory, San Francisco CA
2010 Out of Work: Artists Respond to the Economy, CounterPULSE, San Francisco CA
2010 Tell Them That You Saw Me, CounterPULSE, San Francisco CA



Annah Anti-Palindrome
Annah Anti-Palindrome is an Optical Sound-Smith, and queer/femme antagonist from Oakland, CA. Annah performs using a variety of different mediums including a Line 6 (DL4) looping system, kitchen utensils, gas-masks, raw eggs, blood pressure cuffs, found objects, her body, and more. She has released two albums of songs and soundscapes and has performed hundreds of shows in the past five years, including several national tours. Annah has performed at various galleries including Mina Dresden and Viracocha in San Francisco CA, 1026 Space in Philadelphia PA, and The Northern in Olympia WA. She is also a poet and creative non-fiction writer currently enrolled in an MFA program (English/Poetry) at Mills College.

SELECTED PROJECTS & PERFORMANCES
2010 Featured performer, Choking On Oil, Viracocha Gallery, San Francisco CA
2010 Commissioned performer, Spontaneous Combustion (curated by Alicia Ohs and Yvette Choy), The Garage, San Francisco CA
2010 Released Collection of Crutches (album of songs and soundscapes)
2006-present: Numerous performances including national tours (shows at universities, cultural centers, community spaces)
2009-present: Founding Member & Performer, Poetic Liberation Collective
2008 Released White Knuckle Sonnets (album of songs and soundscapes)

> > WORK SAMPLES: listen www.myspace.com/annahantipalindrome | watch www.youtube.com/annahantipalindrome



Amir Rabiyah
Amir is an Arab/queer/trans poet and performer who has performed and read his poetry, fiction and non-fiction all over the US.
His work has been published in Mizna, Riffrag, Tea Party Magazine, and the Kearny Street Workshop's anthology: I Saw My Ex at a Party. His education includes an MFA in Writing and Consciousness from New College of California.

SELECTED PROJECTS & PERFORMANCES
2008 Finalist in Cutthroat Magazine's Joy Harjo Poetry Contest
2008 Featured performer with the Men's Story Project at UC Berkeley
2008- present: Performer with Mangos With Chili, a touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color performing artists

> > WORK SAMPLES: http://amirrabiyah.yolasite.com/writing-samples.php



dave end
Dave End is a performance artist and acoustic D.I.Y. troubador whose work tackles homophobia, bullying, body image, gender identity, and heartbreak. Dave performs as a solo artist and with several collaborative projects. In the past 3 years, Dave released 2 albums, played over 250 shows, toured over 18,000 miles, wrote a thesis on American supermarkets, and co-founded and performed with the musical act Gender Mountain.

SELECTED PROJECTS & PERFORMANCES
2010 Writer, Composer, Producer, Performer:Fabulous Artistic Guys Get Overtly Traumatized Sometimes: The Musical!, The HOT! Festival, Dixon Place, New York, NY

2010 Founding member, performer, booker, national college tour: GENDER FABULOUS!

2008-10 Event organizer, Booker, Performer: The Mitten (a DIY performance space in Philadelphia showcasing Queer and Lady acoustic performers)

2007-09 Underthrust! A Dance Troupe! (Founding member, Dancer, Costume Designer, Stylist), Performed at Carnegie Hall and other venues in NY


Encian Michael (NCN)
Encian Michael is a conductor of storytelling experiments for children and adults. Tigerlad, the baby donkey, and all Encian’s other characters inhabit worlds where Newtonian physics and cause and effect logic have been replaced by desire, emotion, and SM fantasy. He holds a BA in Cultural Studies and Visual Anthropology from Boston University.

SELECTED PROJECTS & PERFORMANCES
2008-present Featured performer at Art Fag (San Francisco, CA), Queer Open Mic (Modern Times), Heavy Rotation (El Rio), Queer Autonomous Zone (Mama Calizo's Voice Factory)
2007 Limited edition of handmade zine/artist book of The Tigerlad Chronicles, vol. 1.



jezebel delilah x
Jezebel Delilah X is a fierce fat femme faerie princess and English Instructor who uses literature, performance, storytelling, and flirting to advance her politics of radical love, economic equity, and empowerment through literacy. JDX is currently completing her second film at QWOCMAP (Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project), where she is also a member of the Festival Team. She holds an 2010 MFA, English and Creative Writing with an emphasis in Fiction from Mills College, and a BA in English from San Francisco State University.

SELECTED PROJECTS & PERFORMANCES
2010: Performer, Queer Rebels of the Harlem Renaissance (National Queer Arts Festival 2010)
2009-present: Founding Member & Performer, Poetic Liberation Collectiv
2007 - Present: Festival Team Member, Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project



Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer Sri Lankan writer, performer and teacher. In 2009 she was honored as the Bent Writing Institute's 2009 Bent Mentor. Her one woman show, Grown Woman Show, has toured nationally, including performances at the National Queer Arts Festival. Leah’s writing has appeared in the anthologies including Yes Means Yes, Visible: A Femmethology, Homelands, Colonize This, We Don’t Need Another Wave. She writes regularly for magazines including Colorlines, Left Turn and Make/Shift. Leah is the author of Consensual Genocide and the forthcoming Love Cake and Dirty River, and co-editor of The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College.

SELECTED PROJECTS & PERFORMANCES
2006- present Co-founder,co-artistic director of Mangos With Chili, touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color artists
2009-10 Artist in Residence and part-time professor at UC Berkeley’s June Jordan’s Poetry for the People
2009-present Commissioned performer with Sins Invalid, the national performance organization of queer people with disabilities

> > WORK SAMPLES: http://www.brownstargirl.org/listenwatchread.html


Voula O'Grady
Voula O'Grady is a visual artist and crafter whose current projects explore themes including queer history, the build-up and breakdown of identity, and the role of memory in family relationships. Much of her work sits at the intersection of art/craft. Voula sells her work nationally via her Gold Dust Studio line. As part of her commitment to social justice and her belief in the power of art as a force for change, Voula regularly works with community organizations and supports their work via workshops and donations of artwork and graphic design work. She has worked in arts education since 2004: first as the co-founder and coordinator of the Creative Action Project and currently as Coordinator for Academic Advising at California College of the Arts. She holds a BA from Wesleyan University where she received High Honors for her Mixed Media/Installation Thesis, and has since studied at California College of the Arts, Mass College of Art, and the Boston Film & Video Foundation.

SELECTED PROJECTS & PERFORMANCES
2003-present Gold Dust Studio
2010 Fun-A-Day Exhibition, Rock Paper Scissors Gallery, Oakland CA
2006 Community-based art workshops and fundraising project for multicultural arts center, Spontaneous Celebrations, Boston, MA
2004-07 Co-founder/Coordinator, Creative Action Project, arts and leadership/activism program for teen girls, Cambridge MA
2004 Curator, Three/Two/One: Self-Portraits by LGBTQ Artists & Writers, Art Market Gallery, Boston MA
2004 Cover art for poetry monograph, Chunky by DeWayne Dickerson, V52 Press, Boston MA
1999 Teaching Assistant, Southern Exposure, San Francisco CA

> > WORK SAMPLES: www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/32608-voula-ogrady | www.GoldDustStudio.com

 

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