The annual Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival brings together seven teams of transgender, non-binary and Two-Spirit+ (TNB2S+) playwrights, 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.
Past participants include Tony Award nominee L. Morgan Lee (she/her), Liliana Padilla (they/them), Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winner Sarah Mantell (they/them), Aziza Barnes, Ruth Tang (they/them), Ty Defoe (he/we/ty) and so many more.
The festival lineup includes:
TRUTH //: An Interdisciplinary Revue
October 21 @ 7 PM
Co-conceived by Noax (they/them) and George Strus (they/them)
at Littlefield (635 Sackett Street, Brooklyn)
Following last year’s presentation of PARADISE, Noax and BTB Founding Artistic Director George Strus are joining forces again to create TRUTH //: An Interdisciplinary Revue at Littlefield. This special opening performance showcases the talents of twelve stellar TNB2S+ artists and acts of various disciplines: vocalists, drag artists, comedians and more showcasing original performance pieces inspired by the prompt "truth // dare."
Prunin, Hoein, n Cuttin Grapes
October 22 @ 7 PM
By Nissy Aya (Nissy; she/ze/we)
Directed by Dominique Rider
at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons (416 West 42nd Street, Manhattan)
In the highly regimented ????, we witness the lives and lessons of a community of femmes assigned to teach the tools of sexual pleasure to others. Led by Alpha and her right-hand, her beta, Bilinda, this proud community of hoes carries on just them and their chil'ren. But with the pressures of a Choosing looming, the community deals with an unexpected and daunting assignment.
Harvest Olives: A Collective Improvisation
October 23 @ 7 PM
By Yaffa AS (they/she)
Developed in collaboration with Rad Pereira (they/them)
at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons (416 West 42nd Street, Manhattan)
Drawing from Mx. Yaffa’s books of writing and poetry as a trans Palestinian death worker and community organizer, we invoke utopias, spiral through grief and jump between realms through a collective improvisation. We hold a container for chaos, intimacy, restorative devastation, falling apart and space to commune with ancestors through oral history and experimentation. Harvest Olives is adapted from Desecrated Poppies, Blood Orange and Inara with guidance from ancestors, community members and guides.
Fireside Dances
October 24 @ 7 PM
By MJ Kaufman (he/they)
Directed by Aya Ogawa
at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons (416 West 42nd Street, Manhattan)
When 16-year-old Em decides to move from a farm in rural Oregon to Portland in order to go high school, she lands in the home of distant relatives: lesbian moms Greta and Annie and their overachieving 8-year-old Kaitlyn. Cultures clash between rural and urban queer lifestyles, class differences and politics but Em and Kaitlyn vow to stay sisters no matter what.
A Rare Bird
October 25 @ 7 PM
Written and directed by Zaza Diana Oh (they/them)
at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons (416 West 42nd Street, Manhattan)
A Rare Bird is an interdisciplinary Play, Live Physical Intimacy and Quiet and Honest Sex Show. One could say that it is the birth of a new genre of extreme slow porn. A Rare Bird captures Skye and Gabriel’s date on the carpeted floor against the couch of a studio apartment where neither is willing or able to make the first move. For Skye (ahem, the extrovert) and Gabriel (ahem, the introvert) are stunted by their own respective shortcomings. We watch the date in real time with a VoiceEther (ahem, from Skye's POV) running. A Rare Bird blends, defies and subverts Erotic Thriller Cinema, Narrative Play, Stage Sex Show and finally the Quiet and Slow Sex Education so many of us long for. This is an ode to Introversion, (loud) pauses and letting less be.
Lupe Finds Me in the Garden of Dreams
October 26 @ 7 PM
By Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel (she/they)
Directed by Adin Walker (they/them)
at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons (416 West 42nd Street, Manhattan)
Estrella, a young trans playwright, is at a spiritual crossroads. She becomes the Old Hollywood actress Lupe Velez on the last night of her life to find the answers to her questions, and the two people who hold them are Anna May Wong and Gary Cooper, her lifetime's greatest relationships. Lupe Finds Me in the Garden of Dreams spans years in cinematic history to raise the question: what are the costs to being a queer artist of color in today's industry, and what would happen if we found a way of creating ourselves and our work outside of it?
// DARE: A Collection of Commissioned Scenes and Monologues
October 27 @ 7 PM
Co-conceived by L Morgan Lee (she/her) and George Strus (they/them)
Featuring new works by D.A. Mindell, Dillon Yruegas (he/él), Esmé Maria Ng (they/he/she), Ianne Fields Stewart (they/she), Imani Russell (they/them), Jayne Deely (they/them), Jen Silverman (they/them), Jordan Ramirez Puckett (they/them), Nikhil Mahapatra (any pronouns), Nora Brigid Monahan (she/they), Sasha Velour (she/they) and Sophie Sagan-Gutherz (they/them)
at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons (416 West 42nd Street, Manhattan)
Following OVERHEARD and BLISS, BTB Core Community member L Morgan Lee and Founding Artistic Director George Strus are partnering with Broadway Licensing for the third year in a row to create // DARE: A Collection of Commissioned Scenes and Monologues. The twelve commissioned works inspired by the prompt "truth // dare" will be crafted together and brought to life by a cast of five TNB2S+ performers to close the 2024 Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival. The works will then be published and licensed by Broadway Licensing in 2025.
