2007 Fellows
TANYA SARACHO
Institute/Goodman Theatre Fall 2007 Fellow
Tanya Saracho was the Institute/Goodman Theatre Fall 2007 Fellow. Tanya was working on her project, 27, during her month long Fellowship. 27 is an interview-based project to be constructed from twenty-seven interviews with Latin American/Caribbean women that make up the Latin Diaspora. The title refers to the twenty-seven Latin American (and Iberian) countries that comprise the disparate nations of origin that exist in the U.S. under the umbrella term "Latino/a," or "Hispanic." Saracho's work is an important step in exploring the huge variety of experience among these women given the fact that this single characterization is given to millions of people arriving here from areas of the world as different as the Andes and Andalusia. And perhaps, seen through the eyes of women, her work can help track a migration pattern to this continent with a look to the personal, to the individual.
For Saracho, the Fall was extremely productive for 27. While at the Institute, she was able to refine the questionnaire she created before the residency and make valuable contacts. During her fellowship, she realized that finding all twenty-seven women in the Chicago-land area would be a real challenge. Nevertheless, she enjoyed the interviewing process and began developing better skills with each interview. Saracho started conceptualizing the actual theatre piece (based on the interviews) much earlier in the process than she expected. Although the interviewing is not completed, after having conducted twelve out of the twenty-seven interviews, she noticed common themes and topics addressed by the interviewees, which was truly inspiring. A common factor in all the interviews is what she calls the "Coming to America" theme, which will most likely become an opening piece in 27. Saracho has created a skeleton of scenes from the common themes she found after conducting the twelve initial interviews. Pieces such as "My First Night in the United States," "The Difference Between Me...and Those American Women," and "In My Country, Things are Much Less/Much More..." Saracho and her colleague Tanya Palmer plan to finish the fifteen remaining interviews by the end of the Summer, develop a first draft by the end of Fall, and have a first table reading by Winter. She is planning to give a public reading of the script in early Spring 2009.
Tanya Saracho is a proud Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of TEATRO LUNA, Chicago's All-Latina Theatre Ensemble; a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists; and founder of the upcoming Latina Theatre Lab. She was born in Sinaloa, Mexico and moved to Texas in the late '80's. Her writing has been featured in most of Teatro Luna's ensemble-built works including Generic Latina, Dejame Contarte, The Maria Chronicles, SOLO Latinas, S-E-X-Oh! and Lunatic(a)s. Saracho's play Kita y Fernanda received a full production at Teatro Luna in early 2003, along with a reading at Repertorio Espanol while a finalist for the 2003 Nuestras Voces playwrighting competition. Other Awards include: The Ofner Prize given by the Goodman Theatre; Finalist for the Christopher B. Wolk Award at Abingdon Theatre in NYC; nominee for the Wasserstein Prize; and winner of the Khan Award. Her solo play Quita Mitos received a world premier with Teatro Luna in November 2006 and has toured colleges and festivals, including the International Hispanic Theatre Festival and the Goodman's Latino Theatre Festival. Saracho's acting credits include: Migdalia Cruz in Another Part of the House with Teatro Vista; Living Out with American Theatre Co./Teatro Vista; Electricidad at the Goodman Theatre; and Angels in America and La Casa De Bernarda Alba with Aguijon Theatre. Saracho is set to perform in Neil LaBute's Fat Pig at Renaissance TheatreWorks in Milwaukee, WI this coming spring. Tanya's voice can be heard around the country in radio and television commercials.
K. BRADFORD
Summer 2007 Faculty Fellow
K. Bradford is on the faculty in the English Department at Columbia College Chicago. Because of her interest in the "myth of America" as a cultural, political landscape, she utilized the Fellowship resources to research themes of otherness and belonging. Through this research, she deepened her thinking about "America" as an imagined landscape for searching, finding and not finding to more fully explore this central vein running through her poetry and performative work. At the root though, her Fellowship explored the unknown: poems not yet known, written or imagined so that new work can spring from this Fellowship's rich resource of time and space.
K. Bradford (aka Johnny T.) is a poet, performer, teacher and community organizer living in Chicago. K. teaches poetry and literature at Columbia College Chicago, and she also teaches poetry, storytelling and performance for the Raw Works, an after-school program for LGBTQ youth. K's poems have been published in journals such as Gulf Coast, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and Web Del Sol's In Posse Review. In addition to directing and performing a one-person show The Tales of a Gypsy Cowboy, K. has performed poetry and drag in Dublin, Berlin, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and major US cities. She has received poetry scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Tin House Writers Workshop. K. is currently at work on a manuscript of poetry entitled On Wishbones & Nine Other Lessons, which explores the threads of brokenness and connection in the worlds of desire, gender, otherness, love, war, and nation. K. will also dig into and consider mining some of her performative poetry, particularly The Tales of the Gypsy Cowboy, to see if and how this work might also contribute toward the manuscript.
JULES ROSSKAM
Summer 2007 Fellow
During his Fellowship period at the Institute, Jules Rosskam is embarking upon the production of his latest film tentatively titled, Remember: Repair: Retell. In this new film, he uses his critique of the current trend of "trans coming out" videos as a starting place to think about what voices within our communities are not being heard. What stories are not being told, and why is that?
Locating four major issues he dealt with in the constuction of his own trans identity: his relationship to the scientific/medical community, his relationship to other transmen, self-awareness and critique, and lastly the intimate relationship he had at the time with an anti-trans feminist and their struggles to reconcile their differences. Rosskam moves from here to create a more nuanced and diverse dialogue about issues the community faces when attempting access to health care, employment, building alliances with other trans-masculine folks, practicing and defining feminism, and having relationships.
Jules Rosskam is the founder of MamSir Productions and has worked in video production and post-production for 7 years. From 2002-2005 Rosskam acted as the Executive Producer and Senior Editor for Dyke TV and has worked for numerous production companies including Richter Productions, Curious Pictures and PBS, and has independently made four short films and one documentary, transparent. Rosskam has also worked with such artists as Martha Rosler and Beat Strueli. In November 2004 Curve Magazine featured Rosskam as one of ten emerging filmmakers to look out for, and Rosskam's work as a filmmaker was highlighted in Velvet Park Magazine, After Ellen.com, TransNation, the Village Voice, The Advocate, among other feature publications. Rosskam is currently pursuing an MFA in Film, Video and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
JESS WEIDA
Summer 2007 Fellow
Jess Weida is a freelance graphic artist and designer and the Institute's Summer 2007 Fellow. Weida utilized the opportunity of the Fellowship to explore her work in the context of the visual arts. She is interested in graphic narratives, as well as creating and exploring public-space artwork with a broader audience in mind. Weida capitalizes on her training and experience in the graphic and communication arts, utilizing the tenets of those practices and applying them to performance and visual art endeavors.
Artist and designer Jess Weida has been involved in the drag performance scene for a number of years, performing in Chicago, around the US, and abroad as JR Stranger. Among the original members of the Austin, TX drag troupe Kings n Things, founded creating the graphics and materials for the group during their inaugural year. In 2006, Weida performed in and helped lead and produce The Lola Project, a full-length drag and burlesque production which traced the connections and divergences around and among ten feisty characters as they traversed early-twentieth century Chicago.
IFA BAYEZA
Institute/Goodman Theatre
Spring/Summer 2007 Fellow
Ifa Bayeza was the Institute/Goodman Theatre Spring/Summer 2007 Fellow. The Fellowship supported the continuing development of Bayeza's new play, Ballad of Emmett Till. The focus of her Fellowship was primarily archival research and interviews in Chicago and New York and further research and interviews in Mississippi. She conducted the work in the spring and summer of 2007 in preparation for a full production at the Goodman Theatre in April 2008.
The Institute is collaborating on two projects in 2008 as a complement to this fellowship; a staged re-enactment of the 1955 trial of the murder of Emmett Till (February 2008) and educational programs relating to the major production Ballad of Emmett Till in collaboration with the Goodman Theatre and other partners (May 2008).
Ifa Bayeza's works for the stage include Amistad Voices, Club Harlem and Homer G & the Rhapsodies, for which she received a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays fellowship. Her work has been described by the Chicago Tribune as "haunting, riveting and timeless" and has been performed at The Goodman Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, New Federal Theatre, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Crossroads Theatre, National Black Arts Festival and BRAVA Women's Center for the Arts.
Bayeza is co-founder of DBA Studios, an independent production company, creating innovative theatre-based work, encouraging dialogue among races, cultures and people. Her hip-hop musical, Kid Zero, designed to give children new tools to understand math, launched the company in 2005 and, to date, has been seen by over 10,000 Chicago Public School students. In 2005, Ms. Bayeza received a fellowship from Brown University's Rites & Reasons Theatre and Providence Black Repertory Theatre for Ballad of Emmett Till, which was later presented in the Goodman Theatre's 2006 New Stages Series. For her work on Till, Bayeza was named artist-in-residence and research fellow of the SonEdna Writer's Retreat in Mississippi. Bayeza was dramaturg and set designer for the original, landmark production of for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange at New Federal Theatre and The Public Theatre. Bayeza and Shange have renewed their collaboration with the joint authorship of a new novel, Some Sing, Some Cry, which will be published by St. Martin's Press. A graduate of Harvard University, Bayeza is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. Bayeza lives in Chicago.
SAMANTHA FEDER
Spring 2007 Fellow
Samantha Feder is a media producer, activist and educator, who has been working on documentaries for political and social justice since 1999. Her first feature documentary Boy I Am has been screened around the globe at festivals, universities, and community centers since May 2006. With the help of a Fellowship from the Institute, Feder has begun pre-production on her second documentary on transfeminism. The fellowship enabled Sam to continue research on the project and travel through the country interviewing transwomen on feminism. She continues to conduct interviews, write, and fundraise for the film.
Sam Feder is founder of Moving Train Media. Her first project brought her to Cuba for four months, where she worked alongside renowned Cuban filmmakers producing Versus, a film about US Cuba policy. Feder was the Associate Producer for the film Beyond Good & Evil: Media Children and Violent Times, which explored the ways that the media's representation of the war in Iraq has affected children both in the US and abroad. She produced and edited the short narrative F. Scott Fitzgerald Slept Here, which won the Frameline Completion Fund. Boy I Am, the award winning documentary, was her first feature film and is currently in world wide distribution. Feder received a BA in Anthropology from Skidmore College in 1997 and a MA in Media Studies from the New School University, with concentrations in media criticism and documentary production. Born and raised in NYC and after extensive travel/living/working in Europe, West Africa, Mexico, and Cuba, she currently teaches documentary production in Chicago and is an editor for filmmaker Michelle Mahoney.
WONDA WOMEN PROJECT
Spring 2007 Fellows
The Wonda Women Project is a Chicago-based network of female hip-hop emcees working to empower women and promote a socially conscious message through hip-hop music. Led by local hip-hop artists and activists, Ang13 (Angela Zone) and Unmuvabo Vendetta (Tequilla Cooper), the group traveled around the country as part of their "Zero Tolerance Tour" in Summer 2007 interviewing a wide range of hip-hop artists for a documentary film Enough is Enough. The Institute's Fellowship provided key support for this tour and the development of the film-in-progress. It also enabled the group to further develop a vibrant network of progressive and political activists, while creating a cinematic conversation addressing gender issues in hip-hop. As part of this fellowship, the Institute organized a premier screening of the film-in-progress, followed by a discussion with Ang13, Unmuvabo Vendetta, and Invincible, a Detroit hip-hop artist and activist who appears in the film.
Ang13 (Angela Zone) is a legendary Hip-Hop artist and owner of Verseen Publishing based in Chicago. She has been a stage performer for more than 10 years, while also doing voice-over work for major products such as Bisquick (get with the Biz), Coca-Cola (always Coca-Cola) and BET.com (Woman Zone). She is one of the founding members of the Chicago Props awards, an organization that recognizes the city's best in the culture of Hip-Hop. Her work is part of the Museum of Science and Industry's Hip-Hop Floating Exhibit, currently in its sixth year. Ang13 participates in Hip-Hop culture panels across the U.S. at universities, colleges, and museums. Her work has been published in several magazines, books, and periodicals. She is the Founder and President of the Wonda Women Project.
Unmuvabo Vendetta (Tequilla Cooper) has gracefully charmed her way into Chicago's renowned hip-hop family since her performing debut in 2001. Her explosive energy, satirical lyrics, and charisma instantly drew attention. She has performed and recorded with local greats such as Blunt Crew, Pugslee Atomz, All Natural, Ang13, and many others, and at such venues as the Double Door, Sub-T, Blue Note, Elbo Room, Exodus, and Funky Buddha Lounge.
Besides being a local Chicago emcee, mother and womanist, Unmuvabo Vendetta is co-project coordinator of the Wonda Women Project. She is currently developing Black Boot Ink (BBI)- a Public Administration firm linking artists, academics, organizations and philanthropy. Her primary goal is to assist these communities with project planning and development. In addition, she is creating alternative curriculum for teens using urban writing forms. After the Wonda Woman Project, Unmuvabo decided to pursue her PhD in Public Administration and explore her love for writing beyond music. Besides writing lyrics, she has challenged herself by writing a Hip-Hop theatrical production titled The Chronicles of Unmuvabo Vendetta, for which she was awarded a fellowship from Naivete Studios. The Chronicles will premiere in April 2008.
MISTY DEBERRY
'J' Term Student 2007 Fellow
Columbia College graduate student in Inter-Media Arts Misty DeBerry was the Institute’s Student Fellow throughout January during Columbia’s J-term. During the three week “J” Term Fellowship Misty began creating and shaping an intimate narrative entitled 25. This work is an exploration through prose and mixed media of the lingering effects of surviving gender based sexual violence. It served as a jumping off point into Milkweed, a one-woman show exploring the lives of five African American women surviving the trauma of sexual violence while spanning an intergenerational and socio-economic gap with an intimate look into the politics of sexuality in the black community. In hopes of reaching a discovery to both personal transformation and artistic fortitude through research, interviews, the written word and captured image, the work could ultimately take the form of a reading and performance, or an anthology, as well as an interdisciplinary physical presentation which will take place at the Institute at a future date.
Misty DeBerry, originally from South Carolina, is a graduate from North Carolina School of the Arts where she graduated with a BFA in Acting. After graduation, she received an independent artist’s grant from Sidney Poitier to study at the historical New Freedom Theater in New York City under the direction of Clinton Turner-Davis. Immediately following her study she was selected for The Seaman’s Grant for a year’s residency at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC. When in New York City, Ms. DeBerry worked with such esteemed theaters as The New York Theater Workshop, the NYC Hip-Hop Theater Festival and the 78th Street Theater Lab with whom she won the coveted best original production by an ensemble at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the Off Broadway Production of Boy Steals Train; which later aired on BBC Radio. Poignantly altered by her artistic experiences abroad, she moved to Chicago to pursue her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts-Film/Media at Columbia College Chicago. Most recently she completed an installation of mixed media and literature inspired by the works of world renowned artist, Nan Goldin. DeBerry was recently appointed Coordinator of Education and Community Programs at The Goodman Theatre.