Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival 2023

Seven evenings of new work created by TNB2S+ artists for TNB2S+ artists at 3 Dollar Bill and in The Public’s Shiva Theater. Coinciding with LGBTQ+ History Month, the annual Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival brings together seven teams of transgender, non-binary and Two-Spirit+ (TNB2S+) playwrights, directors, dramaturgs, stage managers and performers (yes, even in roles written for cis folks!) to develop and showcase new work created entirely by and for TNB2S+ artists.

The current festival lineup includes:

PARADISE: An Interdisciplinary Revue
Co-conceived by Noax (they/them) & George Strus (they/them)
Monday October 23, 2023 @ 7:30 PM at 3 Dollar Bill
PARADISE is Breaking the Binary Theatre’s first-ever interdisciplinary revue. Co-conceived by Noax (they/them) and BTB Founding Artistic Director George Strus (they/them), the special opening performance will showcase the talents of twelve stellar TNB2S+ artists of various disciplines: vocalists, drag artists, comedians and more! 

Moon Bear
By Nina Ki (xe/she/they)
Directed by cara hinh (they/she)
Tuesday October 24, 2023 @ 7:30 PM in The Shiva Theater at The Public
Silver and Richie are siblings without parents. As the two grow up, they cling to one another as each other's family, and help one another navigate their positions as social outsiders—Silver as a genderqueer weirdo and Richie as a drug dealing gangbanger. In a parallel world, Bear is ousted from his tribe and, through a gesture of filial piety, is turned by Hwanung, a gay Korean god, into a human woman. S/he is then coerced into being Hwanung's pregnant beard and has Hwanung's child. As family bonds begin to disintegrate, and the god-world begins to crumble, Silver and Bear must redefine home for themselves, to find power through the magic of stories.

PLAY MAID
By Jesús I. Valles (they/them)
Directed by Lilliana Padilla (they/them)
Wednesday October 25, 2023 @ 7:30 PM Ii The Shiva Theater at The Public
PLAY MAID is a spell, a pre-emptive mourning ritual for my mother, who will be taken from me too soon by the labor she's performed in the service of all the women she cleaned for, all the babies she was paid to raise. This play is a eulogy for Lupe Ontiveros, legendary for playing over 150 maids in her acting career. This play is me obsessing over my strange desire to become my mother, whose love has absolutely devastated me. This is my obsession with ending this place and the labor that is killing her. Structured as a series of monologues that interrogate the role of the maid as a sociological, theatrical and pop culture figure, PLAY MAID is a confrontation with this house that never ends.

‘Tia Pray a Sound
By a.k. payne
Co-directed by abigail jean-baptiste (all pronouns) and Jaz Hall (they/them)
Thursday October 26, 2023 @ 7:30 PM in The Shiva Theater at The Public
sound and her mama, kendra, have lost a lot of memories. they gather on kendra’s back porch to try to put things back together. along the way, clowning elephants try to help sound along the journey and patriarchal shadows try to steal their dreams. can this Black mother and child witness one another by the end?

YOUR MAXIMUM POTENTIAL
By travis tate (they/them)
Directed by Dominique Rider
Friday October 27, 2023 @ 7:30 PM in The Shiva Theater at The Public
A gaggle of gay men are all out on their own journeys to enlightenment. In many different ways. Which leads them to lifestyle meetings led by the illustrious, social media queen, Uriel. Max wants happiness. Shail and Darren want a baby. Lucas wants a boyfriend. Well, maybe? The line between the internet and reality begins to blur as the group find their ways, by any means necessary, to their most desired wishes. YOUR MAXIMUM POTENTIAL is a play about what happens when the ambitious pursuit of desires becomes the only way to survive.

Fight Call
By Sarah Mantell (they/them)
Directed by Mei Ann Teo (they/them)
Saturday October 28, 2023 @ 7:30 PM in The Shiva Theater at The Public
How many ingenues can Emma play before she just completely loses it? FIGHT CALL is a time-bending story told through the fight calls for all of Shakespeare’s onstage female death scenes.

BLISS: A Collection of Commissioned Scenes and Monologues
Co-conceived by L Morgan Lee (she/her) & George Strus (they/them)
By Celeste Yim (they/them), Dante Green (they/he/she), Dena Igusti, Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel, Kit Yan (they/he/she), L Morgan Lee (she/her), Nazareth Hassan, Noax (they/them), Preston Max Allen (he/him), R. Réal Vargas Alanis (they+), Rob Madge (they/them) and Shualee Cook (she/her)
Sunday October 29 @ 7:30 PM in The Shiva Theater at The Public
Following last year’s presentation of OVERHEARD: Fifteen Commissioned Monologues Written BY TNB2S+ Artists FOR TNB2S+ Artists, BTB Core Community member L Morgan Lee and Founding Artistic Director George Strus are partnering with Broadway Licensing once again to create BLISS: A Collection of Commissioned Scenes and Monologues. The twelve commissioned works will be crafted together and brought to life by a cast of five TNB2S+ performers to close the 2023 Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival. The works will then be published and licensed by Broadway Licensing in 2024.