Hedwig and The Angry Inch: Humanities Bridge Panels
Perishable Theater, with support from the Rhode Island Foundation Equity Action Fund and the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, contracted me to curate and produce free panels featuring expert artists and curators who would help the theater to deepen audience engagement around its production of the rock musical Hedwig and The Angry Inch. Participants in When the Language Fails Us: Art and Trans-Identities and Into the Void: Nurturing a Queer Canon, examined both themes from the play as well as the culture out of which the play developed:
When The Language Fails Us: Art and Trans Identities
When identities are fluid, it makes sense that vocabularies used to describe them would be too. People in the trans community, as well as allies, don't have great ways to track the changing conversation, but artists are often able to respond quickly to the changes, adapting their creative processes and performances to suit incredibly dynamic contexts. How are conversations about Trans issues shaped by the language we have to access them? How does art give us new language to access the conversation? This discussion will provide a forum for artists to offer first-person perspectives on shifting linguistic norms and the multiple meanings of their work.
Panelists:
Jaye Watts (Music Therapist and Social Worker, Youth Pride RI)
Andy Inkster (PhD Candidate in Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Jess Dugan (Photographer and Museum Educator)
Johnny Blazes (Performance Artist)
MODERATOR - Barbara Tannenbaum (Senior Lecturer in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown University)
Into The Void: Nurturing a Queer Canon
In the last thirty years, Queer artists have become more visible than their forbearers in the pre-Stone Wall days could have ever imagined, but there is still much debate over what constitutes Queer art, or a Queer aesthetic. Does such a thing even exist? This panel features Providence-based artists, activists and scholars who have contributed to a growing corpus of Queer art and art practices by fostering spaces that hale existing notions of Queer artistry, and disrupt them.
Panelists:
Matthew Lawrence (Curator, World of Queer Craft)
Sarah Kern and Noah Anacleto (Promoters, Paint it Pink)
Elmo Terry-Morgan (Producer, The Black Lavender Experience)
MODERATOR - Micah Salkind (DJ/Promoter/MA Candidate in Public Humanities)