The Flea Reveals Resident Companies For The 2025-2027 Seasons

The Flea has announced their new Resident Companies for the 2025, 2026, and 2027 seasons: viBe Theater Experience and TRIBE. Since its refounding in 2021, the Flea's new relationship with artists, born out of its reinvigorated mission and vision, includes this Resident Companies Program. Through this program, The Flea will provide a home for these two companies to create and present – as well as resources to support – their boundary-breaking work throughout the multi-year season.

Lauren Britt-Elmore, The Flea's Executive Director, said, “These companies captivated us with their creativity, vision, and dedication to experimental art making. I know that their presence will bring vibrancy, excitement, and passion to the Flea for the next three years, and that their impact on audiences will last a lifetime.”

viBe Theater Experience, The Flea's Key Resident Company, is a Brooklyn-based, performing arts nonprofit organization that provides free theater and music education programming, academic and wellness support services, youth leadership and workforce development opportunities to BIPOC girls, young women, and gender-expansive youth ages 13-26 throughout New York City and nation-wide.

"This partnership represents a new era for viBe. Originally founded in 2012, the young adult acting ensemble was designed to provide artistic and professional training to femme-identifying and emerging actors, playwrights, and directors of color. Now, as the Key Resident Company of The Flea Theater, viBe celebrates this legacy of experimental theater-making and artistic leadership by BIPOC femmes and looks forward to deepening its artistic footprint on NYC's arts and culture sector - providing creative opportunities to entirely new company members, in-person for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Beryl Ford and Michelan Le'Monier, Co-Executive Directors of viBe Theater Experience.

TRIBE is a multidisciplinary arts collective that was founded by MacArthur Fellow Shamel Pitts in December 2019 as a non-profit arts organization based in Brooklyn. TRIBE's mission is cultivating space to create a platform for artists with huge inspiration from the Afrofuturism movement.

“TRIBE is thrilled to begin our artist-in-residency program at The Flea Theater. This partnership is a powerful opportunity to bring our creative vision to life in a space dedicated to fostering innovative and thought-provoking work. We look forward to pushing boundaries and inspiring our audiences in this dynamic community,” said Shamel Pitts, Artistic Director of TRIBE.

Niegel Smith, The Flea's Executive Artistic Director said, "I couldn't be more excited to throw The Flea's support and resources behind these incredible companies. Our three companies, working together, will make great strides in residence. I'm looking forward to deepening our audience's experience with TRIBE, which has an incredible track record of innovation and experimental performance, and with viBe Theater Experience, which brings their decades-long history of empowering young women and gender expansive youth of color to our home."

These innovative companies will fill The Flea with art and life beginning January of 2025. Bringing artists and audiences together in community, the art that will be presented at the Flea by these resident companies will amplify Black, brown, and queer identity and will be led by artists who identify with those intersections. The full 2025 Flea season will be announced shortly.

ABOUT viBe THEATER EXPERIENCE

viBe Theater Experience is a Brooklyn-based performing arts nonprofit that provides free theater and music education programming, academic and wellness support services, youth leadership and workforce development opportunities to BIPOC girls, young women, & gender-expansive youth ages 13-26 throughout New York City and nation-wide. viBe's intensive programming engages, inspires, and empowers young people to write, publish, direct, and perform personal and collaborative performance art based on their lived experiences on stages throughout NYC. Since 2002, viBe's community and cultural impact has been recognized locally and nationally. Artistically, viBe produces 4-5 full length performances annually. These live theater and musical performances have been staged in some of New York City's most distinguished cultural venues, like The New York Philharmonic, The Billie Holiday Theatre, The Mark O'Donnell and WP Theaters, and The Flea Theater. For more information on viBe Theater Experience, please visit: https://vibetheater.org/.

ABOUT TRIBE

TRIBE multidisciplinary arts collective founded by Shamel Pitts in December 2019 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization based in Brooklyn, New York. TRIBE is committed to cultivating a platform for artists to thrive and share their innovative voices. The multidisciplinary arts collective is composed of international and local artists working across mediums such as movement, choreography, lighting design, video mapping projection, poetry, spoken word, painting, cinematography, scenography, dramaturgy, costume styling, and music composition. Our community outreach projects also involve art residencies, artist talks and workshops. TRIBE's mission is cultivating space to create a platform for artists – most specifically artists of color – with huge inspiration from the Afrofuturism movement. This movement states that we have a responsibility through our work to tell new stories and create a brighter future that is different, and shines more luminously, from its past. For more information on TRIBE, please visit: https://itsatribe.org/.

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