Broadway Advocacy Coalition to Present THE FELLOWSHIP HALL Festival Celebrating the BAC Artivism Fellowship

The Broadway Advocacy Coalition will present "The Fellowship Hall", an inspiring virtual event celebrating the second annual cohort of the BAC Artivism Fellowship, supporting eight artist-activists using their artistic tools to have an impact on the world around them. The event will feature these phenomenal Black and Brown writers, movers, actors, and healers and a preview of the projects they have been developing over the course of the last four months.

This year's fellows include Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez (they/them; multi-hyphenate; Brooklyn, NY), Davia Spain (she/her; performance artist, musician, and filmmaker; Los Angeles, CA), , Farah Habad (he/him; poet and organizer; Minneapolis, MN), Immanuel Simone (she/they; multi-hyphenate; New Orleans, LA), Janai Lashon (she/her; Theater practitioner; Kalamazoo, MI), Jasmine Leeward (they/them; filmmaker; Richmond, VA), KB Brookins (they/them; poet, essayist, and cultural worker; Fort Worth, TX) Lorenzo Roberts (he/him; performance artist & writer; Iowa City, IA),

The pieces featured at The Fellowship Hall will include:

We Are Holding This, a media distribution hub created by Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez

The Alternate, a multimedia presentation by Davia Spain

Out of the Ashes, a short film by Farah Habad

Home, a multi-disciplinary documentary by Immanuel Simone

Kulture Shock Vol. II: Transforming Learning Spaces, a theatrical presentation by Janai Lashon

Free Our Families: A Choreopoem of Resistance by Jasmine Leeward

SAFETY IS: Youth Video-Poems on Policing in Austin, TX Schools by KB Brookins

Abolitionists, a play by Lorenzo Roberts

The Opening Night on Saturday, May 7 is a virtual night of celebration and reflection featuring Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew (SAG Award nominee for King Richard), mentors Andrea Ambam and Rae Perez, Artistic Director Chesray Dolpha, Program Coordinator Nina Riley and the full cohort of Artivism Fellows. The event will mark the official launch of the Fellowship Hall website spotlighting each of the Fellows and their work.

"Our theme this year was 'Reimagining Justice Through Abolition,' where we created intentional space for fellows to reconceptualize and reenvision a world we would be excited to live in," said Artistic Director Chesray Dolpha. "Our fellows worked on artistic narrative based projects that held this society up to task - how can justice reframing help us recreate the world we want to occupy? And in this question is the work of the Artivist."

"The work at The Fellowship Hall this year will be nothing short of innovative, confronting, and inspiring," said Artivism Fellowship co-facilitator and mentor Andrea Ambam. "It is a gift to peek into the fascinating process of artists who have brilliant visions for a more just world and generously offer us tangible next steps for how to get there."

Admission to the festival is free. To learn more or reserve your ticket, visit: https://bit.ly/3L4f7nf

This year's theme is Reimagining Justice through Abolition and focuses on criminal justice reform through use of narrative storytelling and artistry as we continuously strive to address and combat systemic racism. Embedded with our Theater of Change methodology, the fellowship enabled participants to blend artistry, law, policy, and community engagement, and produce narratives with powerful impact in policy spaces where change can happen. In the process all the participants worked with community members to amplify the power of their stories informed by legal and policy research. The BAC Artivism Fellowship provided financial support, mentorship, networking opportunities and artistic education workshops that supported our fellowship using the power of storytelling in their work in order to impact systemic racism and criminal justice reform.

Broadway Advocacy Coalition is a Tony Award winning arts-based advocacy nonprofit dedicated to building the capacity of individuals and organizations to dismantle the systems that perpetuate racism through the power of storytelling and the leadership of people directly affected.

The Broadway musical Wicked is proud to be the lead sponsor of the BAC Artivism Fellowship.

For more information, visit https://www.bwayadvocacycoalition.org/artivismfellowship.

ABOUT THE FELLOWS

BENJAMIN LUNDBERG TORRES SÁNCHEZ (b. 1987, Bogotá) uses their art to transform individual witness into collective action. As a person who was separated from their first family for 28 years through a private, transnational adoption process, they co-create spaces that encourage people to express truth to power by working together in shared knowing and practice. Lundberg Torres Sánchez's work has been shown in the U.S. at the Queens Museum, Museum of the Moving Image, The Mills Gallery at Boston Center for the Arts, RISD Museum, and the Knockdown Center, and internationally in Montreal, Mexico City, São Paulo, Lima, and La Paz. They are the founder of the exhibition series, Se Aculilló?, co-editor of You Are Holding This: an abolitionist zine for and by adopted and fostered people, and were the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts 2017 and 2018 Merit Fellow in New Genres and Film & Video respectively.

DAVIA SPAIN is a performance artist, musician, and filmmaker born and raised in California. She harnesses afro-future themes of time travel, multi-dimensionality, and circular time theory to imagine new possibilities for this physical plane. Her education in music, dance, and acting started in highschool and continued through college until she started working as a professional performance artist in San Francisco. In the past 5 years she has performed at A.C.T. The Strand, REDCAT, The Broad Museum, CounterPulse and more. She has shown work across the US and internationally performing in Montreal, Canada and Mexico City, Mexico. In 2020, she released her debut solo music project titled "Dawning".

FARAH HABAD is an artist and advocate based in Minneapolis, MN who explores the intersection between storytelling and policy. An alumni of the Melvin B. Tolson/Denzel Washington Forensic Society at Wiley College, Farah is an avid supporter of HBCU's and the amazing work those institutions produce. In his time at Wiley, Farah received numerous awards highlighted by a top 6 finish at the 2017 National Forensics Association National Championship, before going on to help coach the team after its resurgence following the 2007 film The Great Debaters. From having seven poems featured on Button Poetry, the largest online distributor of Poetry and Spoken Word, to working on a successful Minneapolis City Council campaign following the uprising after the murder of George Floyd- Farah brings a wide ranging set of experience to his work which translates to a unique perspective in his craft.

IMMANUEL SIMONE. Simone's name Immanuel, means "God is with us". Through her work she hopes to show that God is with us all. She is from New Orleans, Louisiana and attended the New Orleans Center for creative Arts. Simone graduated with her BFA in acting from Ball State University and is currently apart of the Artist at Work residency in partnership with Ashé Culture arts Center. Simones goal is to use her unique experiences to show why representation is one of the most important goals of art in this generation! She is forever grateful for her family,friends,and especially her mother. Broadway Advocacy Coalition is creating dream come true moments, with a powerful artivism lense and I am so glad to feel seen by this coalition.

JANAI LASHON is a recent graduate of Ohio University's School of Theatre, MFA Acting program. She Co-Founded Vibrancy Theatre in response to the constant racial injustices she experienced along with other BIPOC theatre students. Janai Lashon is the Founder and Lead Creator of J.L Creative Services (DBA) where she provides a menu of empowerment through creative consulting, cultural competency education, and unapologetic artistry curated to authentically share black experiences. She is also a proud Co-Founder and board member of Face Off Theatre Company located in her hometown of Kalamazoo, MI.

JASMINE LEEWARD is an activist, narrative strategist, and emerging filmmaker committed to the delicate work of culture shifting towards Black liberation, particularly in the US South. They are the owner of Impulse Media, an independent consulting company. They have worked as a Communications Specialist for Marijuana Justice, ReFrame, and New Virginia Majority, a group organizing for racial, environmental, and economic justice through strategic electoral work and grassroots campaigns. Their first short film "dusk" was selected for the 2020 Africana Film Festival. They are currently directing their first feature-length documentary, "LOVE WEST". Jasmine's primary goal as a filmmaker is to translate complex policy into accessible stories that inspire people to action. Their work is anchored in pan-africanism. Jasmine is a 2019 Echoing Ida fellow, 2020 Visionary Justice StoryLab fellow, and a 2021 Rockwood Leadership JustFilms fellow.

KB BROOKINS (also known as KB) is a Black trans poet, essayist, and cultural worker from Texas. Their work is published in American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, Huffington Post, Teen Vogue, and elsewhere. Their poem, "Good Grief", won the Academy of American Poets 2022 Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize. KB is the author of How To Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022), a chapbook selected by ire'ne laura silva as winner of the Saguaro Poetry Prize. They have received fellowships from PEN America, Lambda Literary, and The Watering Hole among others. Their cultural work spans six years. Most recently, they served as Project Lead for the Winter Storm Project. KB lives in Austin, TX, where they are working on projects and trying their best. Follow them online at @earthtokb.

ML "LORENZO" ROBERTS is a writer and performer who believes that art can model and illuminate paths(past, present and future) toward collective liberation. He uses his work to highlight, examine and decontruct the effects of what bell hooks called the imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, cis-hetero, patriarchy. He is the son of a Veteran, descendent of the Gullah Geechee of the Carolinas, and company member of ACT Theatre (Seattle) and Indianapolis Shakespeare Company. Incoming MFA Candidate in Playwriting at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, BFA in Acting from UNC School of the Arts.

ABOUT THE BROADWAY ADVOCACY COALITION

Founded in 2016 by members of the Broadway community as a direct response to the nation's pandemic of racism and police brutality, the Broadway Advocacy Coalition is a multidisciplinary organization which unites artists, legal experts and community leaders to create lasting impact on policy issues from criminal justice reform to education equity to immigration. In 2021, BAC received a Special Tony Award for providing an unparalleled platform for marginalized members of the theatre community and tools to help the theatre industry move toward a more equitable future. Via its partnership with the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School, BAC has collaborated with institutions across New York City, including the New York City Council, Bronx Defenders, and the Brooklyn District Attorney's office. To learn more about their work, and to get involved, visit their website at https://www.bwayadvocacycoalition.org/ or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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