BREAKING THE BINARY THEATRE FESTIVAL Announces Full Cast & Creative Team

Founding Artistic Director George Strus (they/he) has announced the complete cast and additional creative team members for the inaugural Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival. Curated by Strus, Dominique Rider and Josephine Kearns (she/her), Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival will feature seven evenings of work created and developed by TNB2S+ theatermakers. Coinciding with National Coming Out Day and LGBTQ+ History Month, the festival will run from Monday October 10 through Sunday October 16, 2022 at Theatre Row (410 W 42nd St, New York, NY 10036). Tickets to Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival are free and can be reserved online at 12pm ET today. To reserve complimentary tickets, please visit www.bfany.org/theatre-row/.

The current festival lineup includes:

Trans World

By Core Community member Ty Defoe (he/we/ty)

Directed by Co-Curator Dominique Rider

Dramaturgy by Co-Curator Josephine Kearns (she/her)

Monday October 10, 2022 at 7:00 PM

When several trans individuals are picked to temporarily live in a house and get filmed non-stop for a new reality TV show, the lines between pretend and real drama become uncomfortably blurred. What happens when people stop being nice and start getting real. Celebrated theater artist Ty Defoe brings an abundance of heart and humor to this new playful piece.

The cast of Trans World will include b norwood (they/them, American (Tele)visions), Carolina Đỗ (she/her, Linda Vista), Futaba Shioda (he/him, 39 Steps), Logan Rozos (he/him, "David Makes Man"), Mariyea (she/they, On Sugarland), Maybe Burke (they/she, Love Letters to Nobody), MJ Rawls (she/her, The Healing), and Samy Nour Younes Figaredo (he/him/they/them, The Watering Hole). Sami Binder (they/them) will serve as Stage Manager. Stage directions will be read by Zainab Barry (she/they).

TRANS WORLD is generously sponsored by Salman Al-Rashid (he/him).

Twitch

By Liliana Padilla (they/she)

Directed by Jack Ferver (they/them)

Dramaturgy by Desiree S. Mitton (she/they)

Tuesday October 11, 2022 at 7:00 PM

Doug Lemons goes missing. The rehab center is (still) under construction. Good Yelps. A VERY HAPPY marriage falls apart. Guitar for sale! Craigslist! Too good to be true! Isn't true? Pam's eye is twitching, is it God? A brutal trip to the pound... Doug would never treat his dog like that. Jill would like a friend? In this town no one trusts each other. Kidding! Try the directory.

The cast of Twitch will include Jojo Brown (she/her, "Billions"), Pauli Pontrelli (they/them/ze/zir, The Visitor), Rev. Yolanda (she/her, "High Maintenance"), Spencer Weidie (they/them, The Lost Supper), Marilee Talkington (she/they, The Lily's Revenge) and TL Thompson (they/them/T, Straight White Men). Annika Prager (they/them) will serve as Stage Manager and Assistant Director. Stage Directions will be read by Meghan Piper Johnson (mpj) (they/them).

Hide and Hide

By Roger Q. Mason (they/them)

Directed by é boylan (they/them)

Dramaturgy by Gaven Trinidad (they/he/siya)

Wednesday October 12, 2022 at 7:00 PM

Constanza is a recent Filipina immigrant, who moved from Marcos' Philippines to America in search of the dream she saw in the movies. Billy is a white gay male rent boy, an escapee from a Christian conversion camp where something terrible happened. He moved to LA because that's where the last bus stop was. Their lives collide in 1980 Los Angeles in this Homeric critique of the American Dream.

The cast of Hide and Hide will include Han Van Sciver (they/them, Love's Labours Lost). Mars Neri (they/them) will serve as Stage Manager. Stage Directions will be read by Eliana Coe (they/she). Other cast members will be announced at a later date.

Work Hard Have Fun Make History

By ruth tang (they/them)

Directed by Kedian Keohan (they/he)

Dramaturgy by Lewis Fender (he/him)

Thursday October 13, 2022 at 7:00 PM

This play is not about Amazon, and certainly not about Jeff Bezos. It is also not about Elon Musk. It is an exhaustive catalogue of all the possible kinds of phone call that exist: customer service helplines, phone sex with familiar strangers, future children complaining about being born, and cold calls from prophets warning about events that are - oops - happening right now.

The cast of Work Hard Have Fun Make History will include Morgan Sullivan (he/they, "Dickinson"), Sagan Chen (they/he, Two Mile Hollow), and Z Infante (they/them, Kiss My Aztec!). Elyse Durand (they/she) will serve as Stage Manager. Stage Directions will be read by Marisa Budnick (she/they).

Nana

By Aziza Barnes

Directed by Rad Pereira (they/them)

Dramaturgy by Al Parker (they/them)

Friday October 14, 2022 at 7:00 PM

NANA is a multi-generational play based on Barnes' paternal lineage and their self-mythologies. Set in the Bronx in the late fifties, NANA explores colorism within a family unit, dysfunctional logics of attempts at loving one's blackness before it was a trend, the ease of whiteness, and substance abuse as self-medication.

The cast of Nana will include B Alexander (they/them, Dreamer in the Falls), Ianne Fields Stewart (she/they, "Dash & Lily"), Lily Dominique (Venus, and What Else is Nocturnal), Becca Blackwell (they/them, Is This A Room), and Javon Q. Minter (they/them, What to Send Up When it Goes Down). Mia Sterbini (they/she) will serve as Assistant Director. Joseph Distl (he/they) will serve as Stage Manager. Other cast members will be announced at a later date.

Thelma and Louise and The Time Machine

By Mara Vélez Meléndez (she/her)

Directed by Sivan Battat (she/they)

Dramaturgy by Aydan Shahdadpuri (they/he)

Saturday October 15, 2022 at 7:00 PM

Thelma loves Louise. Louise loves Thelma. And Louise built a time machine.

Does that mean Thelma and Louise had a past? That they have a future? Can the time machine help them escape their present?

THELMA AND LOUISE AND THE TIME MACHINE is a romance through the multi-verse about all the possibilities and impossibilities of women loving women.

The cast of Thelma and Louise and The Time Machine will include Alex Might (her, Are You There?), Nora Schell (they/them, Jagged Little Pill), and Tẹmídayọ Amay (they/them/friend, The Color Purple). Nat Kelley DiMario (they/them) will serve as Stage Manager. Pauli Pontrelli (they/them/ze/zir) will serve as Assistant Director. Other cast members will be announced at a later date.

OVERHEARD: Fifteen Commissioned Monologues Written BY TNB2S+ Artists FOR TNB2S+ Artists

By A.A. Brenner (they/them/he), Azure D. Osborne-Lee (he/they), Bianca Leigh, Else Went (they/she), Isaac Gómez (they/them), Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin (they/she), Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi (she/her), Liqing Xu (they/she), Mashuq Mushtaq Deen (he/they), Sam Hamashima (they/them), Sharifa Yasmin (she/her), Sylvan Oswald (he/him), Timothy DuWhite (pronoun inclusive), travis l. tate (they/them), and Victor I. Cazares (they/them)

Directed by L Morgan Lee (she/her)

Dramaturgy by Founding Artistic Director George Strus (they/he)

Sunday October 16 at 7:00 PM

In partnership with Broadway Licensing, Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival will present an evening of fifteen new monologues from the TNB2S+ community commissioned by BTB. Following this presentation, Broadway Licensing will publish and license the monologues with profit proceeds being donated back to BTB.

The cast for OVERHEARD: Fifteen Commissioned Monologues Written BY TNB2S+ Artists FOR TNB2S+ Artists will include Evie Schuckman (they/them, Octavia E Butler's Parable of the Sower) and yannick-robin eike (they/he, Ride the Cyclone). Mika Kauffman (they/them/ze/zir) will serve as Assistant Director. Other cast members will be announced at a later date.

OVERHEARD: Fifteen Commissioned Monologues Written BY TNB2S+ Artists FOR TNB2S+ Artists is generously sponsored by Galvan.

Sam Morreale (they/them) will serve as Cultural Consultant and rohr driscoll will serve as Line Producer for Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival. Molly Barson (they/them) has also joined the team, serving as the festival's Marketing Advisor.

Additionally, Breaking the Binary has launched an "Admin Ally" program for non-profit theatrical organizations that would like to partner with BTB and support its work by TNB2S+ artists for TNB2S+ artists. Current Admin Allies include Manhattan Theatre Club (Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director; Barry Grove, Executive Producer), Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director), and WP Theater (Lisa McNulty, Producing Artistic Director; Michael Sag, Managing Director).

Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival defines a "TNB2S+ artist" as any artist who does not correspond with the male and female binary and is transgender, non-binary, Two-Spirit, gender non-conforming, genderqueer, agender, gender expansive, bigender, gender fluid, or otherwise lives outside of the cisnormative gender binary.

The festival will bring together TNB2S+ playwrights, directors, dramaturgs, and stage managers to collaborate with a team of TNB2S+ performers (yes, even in roles written for cis folx!) to develop a piece over the course of approximately 29 hours, culminating in a public reading presentation over the week of October 10 - 16, 2022.

Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival is counseled by its previously announced Core Community, a voluntary advisory board of prominent TNB2S+ theater artists working to further its outreach and impact. The board includes Tony Award-nominated designer Adam Rigg (they/them, The Skin of Our Teeth), Kleban Prize and Jonathan Larson Award-winning writer César Alvarez (they/them, Futurity), New York Stage and Film's Artistic Director Chris Burney (he/they), Princess Grace Award Honoraria recipient and director David Mendizábal (they/he, Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Board Members), Guggenheim Fellow and writer Jen Silverman (they/them+, The Moors), Tony and Obie Award-winning actor and writer John Cameron Mitchell (he/they, "Shrill" on Hulu), Tony Award-winning multi-hyphenate KO who was formerly known as Karen Olivo (they/them, In the Heights), Kleban Prize and Jonathan Larson Award-winning poet Kit Yan (they/he/she, Interstate), Tony Award nominee L Morgan Lee (she/her, A Strange Loop), Jane Chambers Prize and Helen Merrill Award-winning writer MJ Kaufman (he/they, Masculinity Max), Antonyo Award-nominated costume designer and activist Qween Jean (she/her, soft), Co-Director of A.R.T./New York Risa Shoup (they/them), Tomás Matos (they/them, "Fire Island"), Grammy Award-winning interdisciplinary storyteller Ty Defoe (he/we/ty, Straight White Men), and Princeton Arts Fellow and Helen Hayes Award-winning director Will Davis (he/him, California).

Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival expresses immense appreciation for their 'BTB Founders': crucial pre-announcement funders of the project. BTB Founders include Stacey Mindich Productions, Jean Doumanian (she/her), Mark Gordon Pictures, Daryl Roth (she/her), Jodi Balsam (she/her) & Craig Balsam (he/him), Jody Falco (she/her) & Jeffrey Steinman (he/him), Tracey Knight Narang (she/her), Michael Sag (he/him) & Lindsey Sag (she/her), Christopher Liam Moore (he/him) & Bill Rauch (he/him), and Rachel Routh (she/her).

Logo design is by Kit Wallace (he/they) and website design is by Jesse Ye (they/them). Casting by The Telsey Office / Charlie Hano, CSA.

Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival is powered by Producer Hub.

For more information, visit www.btb-nyc.com.

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