100 Years | 100 Women—Symposium: Culture in a Changing America by Park Avenue Armory

CULTURE IN A CHANGING AMERICA: 100 YEARS | 100 WOMEN saturday, february 15, 2020 at 12:00pm, 4:00pm, & 8:00pm Park Avenue Armory, with lead partner National Black Theatre, has invited ten New York City-based cultural institutions to join 100 Years |100 Women, a two-part, multidisciplinary initiative marking the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. 100 Years | 100 Women launches as part of our annual “Culture in a Changing America” symposium—a day-long event hosted throughout the institution’s historic period rooms, featuring conversations, performances, and salons led by artists, activists, scholars, and civic and cultural leaders exploring the complex topic of women’s suffrage. PRESENTED IN COLLABORATION WITH NATIONAL BLACK THEATRE

100 YEARS | 100 WOMEN PARTNERS

SEASON SPONSORS

Support for Park Avenue Armory's artistic season has been generously provided by the Charina Endowment Fund, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, the Richenthal Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation. The artistic season is also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Additional support has been provided by the Armory's Artistic Council. Interrogations of Form is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the city council. Cover photo courtesy Renée Cox.

FIRST FLOOR Lexington Avenue

Veterans Room

E W

Board of Officers Room

Entrance Park Avenue

SECOND FLOOR Lexington Avenue

Company M

Company I

Company G

Company F

Company E

Company D

Company A

Company C

Park Avenue 2

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at East 67th Street

SESSION ONE 12:00PM–1:00PM

Conversation: Conversation: The Decolonization Of Feminism Re-coding & Recording Womanhood VETERANS ROOM

BOARD OF OFFICERS ROOM

De’Ara Balenger, Jennifer Baumgardner, Regan de Loggans, and Gayatri Spivak, debate the ever-changing state of feminism, its inclusions and exclusions, and its many waves, moderated by Kaiama L. Glover. Traditional opening song performed by Henu Josephine Tarrant (Hochunk/Hopi/Kuna/Rappahanock).

Sofiya Cheyenne, Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, Kate Clarke Lemay, and Makeba Rainey discuss various definitions of womanhood, framing and re-framing, through an artistic lens, the ways in which we define gender, identity, sisterhood, and allyship, moderated by Murielle Borst-Tarrant.

1:15PM–2:45PM

Conversation: Legacy Bearing–Honoring our History, Charting our Future

Performance: Spoken Word

VETERANS ROOM

BOARD OF OFFICERS ROOM

Hosted by Urban Bush Women Urban Bush Women Co-Artistic Director Chanon Judson explores with Theara Ward and Tiffany Rea Fisher practices in preserving legacy, fueling vision, and charting new courses as it applies to these leaders of Legacy Organizations.

Hosted by Caridad De La Luz “La Bruja,” with performances by Jewel Rodgers, and Elisabet Velasquez.

3:00PM–4:00PM

Conversation: Public Art & Citizenship

Conversation: Protest & Justice

VETERANS ROOM

BOARD OF OFFICERS ROOM

Tomie Arai, Jessica Bell Brown, Zoë Buckman, and Kemi Ilesanmi examine the numerous ways in which art made for and in the public domain uniquely exposes issues of gender and racial equity, and the right to citizenship, moderated by Catherine D’Ignazio. Opening poem by Caridad De La Luz “La Bruja.”

Art, protest, and the pursuit of justice have long been intertwined: Vinnie Bagwell, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Carol Lynn Maillard, and Eryn Wise share multiple perspectives on this topic as it relates to their artistic practices and activist goals, moderated by Beverly GuySheftall. Opening song by Carol Lynn Maillard.

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SESSION TWO 4:00PM

Announcement of 100 Years | 100 Women Commissions SECOND FLOOR

4:30PM–6:00PM SALONS, OPEN STUDIOS, & WORKSHOPS SECOND FLOOR

Karen Finley: It’s My Body

Safe Harbors Indigenous Collective

SECOND FLOOR HALLWAY

COMPANY D

Mimi Lien: Examining Historical Drama through a Contemporary Lens COMPANY A

A conversation with artists creating theatrical works inspired by historical events, featuring Armory Artist-in-Residence Mimi Lien, Shaina Taub, Angela Sclafani, and Lauren Yee, moderated by Rachel Sussman.

Museum of the Moving Image: Cinefemme Cypher COMPANY C

Modeled on the “cypher” format of hip hop MC battles, these film scholars and filmmakers will critique the past and present, and then debate the future of representation of women in film and television. Program concept and introduction by Warrington Hudlin, Vice Chairman, Museum of the Moving Image. Participants include: Shola Lynch, Racquel Gates, Brandy Monk-Payton, Sheril D. Antonio, Gabri Christa, Cheryl Hill, Maria Perez Brown, Darnell Martin, Ursula Liang, and Kat Lazo. Please note: This salon will be filmed in VR.

Safe Harbors Indigenous Collective (SHIC) is founded by Artistic Director Murielle Borst-Tarrant. Cultivated as a program at the Tony Award-winning company La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club with the support of Artistic Director Mia Yoo, Safe Harbors is an Arts Initiative that focuses on the development and production of Indigenous/Native Theater and Performing Arts. The collective seeks to build an understanding of Indigenous methodologies and cosmologies that in turn will function as a cultural liaison to non-Native theater artists in New York City.

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company: Theater in an Age of Xenophobia: The Legacy of Ellen Stewart COMPANY E

Since 2014, the Trojan Women Project, a program of La MaMa, has been using La MaMa’s 1974 production of The Trojan Women, composed by Elizabeth Swados and directed by Andrei Serban, to create an international network for artists interested in using theater the way founder Ellen Stewart intended—as a vehicle for understanding across, and in spite of, geographic, political, and social boundaries. This conversation/ performance with artists from the Trojan Women Project will focus on the immediacy of Stewart’s vision for international theater. Featuring George Drance, Sara Galassini, Kim Ima, Onni Johnson, Mattie McMaster, Valois Mickens, and Bill Ruyle.

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at East 67th Street

The Laundromat Project: Sister Outsider: A Remembering and Declaration of These Her Self Evident Truths COMPANY F

An exploration of black women’s relationship to suffrage and citizenship in the US, including our responses to denials of our humanity through sound and song. Acoustic sonic meditations inspired by black women freedom fighters and knowledge producers. Featuring dancer Abby Dobson.

Shar Galarza: Tono Generacional (Generational Hues) COMPANY G

Tono Generacional (Generational Hues) es una representación visual que captura las historias y las vidas de las mujeres de mi familia desde la ciudad de Sajoma, República Dominicana hasta Brooklyn, Nueva York. Tono Generacional (Generational Hues) is a visual representation capturing the stories and lives of women in my family beginning from Sajoma City, Dominican Republic all the way to Brooklyn, New York. An Armory Arts Education Open Studio.

Sara Serpa: Recognition COMPANY I

A unique interdisciplinary performance melding powerful film imagery with live music. Armory Artist-in-Residence, singer and composer, Sara Serpa directs and produces a visual narrative using never-seen footage discovered in her family archives in Portugal and Angola. The segments date from the 1960’s under Salazar’s notorious fascist regime. The material has been edited and transformed to create a sensory experience in which music and image, highlighted with texts by the revolutionary, Amílcar Cabral, invite the viewer/listener to reflect on history in a visceral way. This extraordinary ensemble, featuring Zeena Parkins (harp), Mark Turner (saxophone), and David Virelles (piano), probes deep into the emotional core of this era through scored material and flowing improvisation.

National Sawdust: Forward Music Project COMPANY M

National Sawdust presents the Forward Music Project, a project committed to commissioning practices which elevate stories of feminine empowerment. This salon features performances by cellist Amanda Gookin and conversation with composers Angélica Negrón, Paola Prestini, and Shelley Washington.

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4:30PM – 6:00PM

New York University: Women Creating Nouns, Not Adjectives VETERANS ROOM

Suffragist and abolitionist Elizabeth Cady Stanton once said, “I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.” This panel will look at ways each artist has had to reflect on womanhood, citizenship, intersectional feminism, and the myriad ways they navigate these issues in their work: How is gender used as a means to interrogate, redefine, extrapolate boundaries? How does an adjective become a noun and vice versa? What values do we place on these words? Featuring visual artists Zalika Azim, Renee Cox, Rose DeSiano, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Lorie Novak; curator and visual artist Yelaine Rodriguez, moderated by Deborah Willis and Ellyn M. Toscano.

5:00PM – 6:30PM

National Black Theatre: Amplifying the Movement with Jillian Walker BOARD OF OFFICERS ROOM

National Black Theatre presents an unplugged music salon with Jillian Walker looking at original and historic songs that champion and uplift women’s suffrage, moderated by Mei Ann Teo. Come be energized by the sonic vibration of music that amplifies a movement and articulates the passion of a community.

6:45PM – 7:45PM

Conversation: Fighting Racism, Sexism, and Homo/Transphobia: From Participation to Inclusion to Equality VETERANS ROOM

Deborah N. Archer, Andrea Jenkins, Premilla Nadasen, and Michele Pred discuss the complex history of the 19th Amendment, its racial exclusions, and the many ways in which women, today, use the right to vote, artistic activism, and other political strategies to challenge the status quo, moderated by Susan Herman. Opening song by Akornefa Akyea.

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at East 67th Street

SESSION THREE 8:00PM – 9:00PM

Performed Reading & Conversation: Womanifesto VETERANS ROOM

Fringe First-winning artist Elisabeth Gray directs Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee Kathleen Turner, Drama Desk and Obie Award winner Laila Robins, actor-activist Tantoo Cardinal, actress Liza Colón-Zayas, performance artist Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, and seasoned television actress Michelle Hurst in WOMANIFESTO, a literary collage quilting together some of the most inspirational voices from the long, complex campaign for women’s rights. From Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Sojourner Truth to Gloria Steinem and Rebecca Solnit, WOMANIFESTO charts how far we’ve come…and how far we have to go. This performative reading is produced in partnership with Das Egg Productions and is followed by a discussion with the performers about the joys and challenges of portraying female characters on stage and screen, moderated by Mark Peikert.

9:00PM – 10:00PM

Performance: Daughters of Freedom BOARD OF OFFICERS ROOM

Martha Redbone, a multi-award-winning musician and charismatic songstress, is celebrated for her tasty gumbo of roots music embodying the folk and mountain blues sounds of her childhood in the Appalachian hills of Kentucky mixed with the eclectic grit of her teenage years in the pre-gentrified Brooklyn. With the power of her gospel singing African-American father’s voice and the determined spirit of her Cherokee/Shawnee/Choctaw mother, Redbone broadens all boundaries of Americana. In performance with Soni Moreno (Backing Vocals, Percussion), Aaron Whitby (Keys/MD), Charlie Burnham (Violin), Luca Benedetti (Guitar), Fred Cash (Bass), and Gene Lake (Drums).

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MEET THE PARTICIPANTS SHERIL D. ANTONIO

Dr. Sheril D. Antonio is an Associate Arts Professor in the department of Art and Public Policy and the Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives at NYU Tisch. From 2008-09 she served as the chair of the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music and was that department's inaugural chair for the 2003-04 academic year. She also served as chair of the Graduate Film Program in 2001-02 and for two years from 2013-15 the interim chair of the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing.

TOMIE ARAI

Tomie Arai is a public artist who collaborates with local communities to create visual narratives that give meaning to the spaces we live in. Through a framework of collaboration, Arai uses the specificity of her experience as an Asian American as a personal space in which to locate broader issues of race and gender; a space through which a glimpse of common ground is made possible. Working towards a more equitable art world and addressing issues of racial and cultural equity, inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and non-belonging, are the compelling themes of her artistic practice. www.tomiearai. com

DEBORAH N. ARCHER

Deborah N. Archer is an Associate Professor of Clinical Law; Co-Faculty Director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law; and Director of the Civil Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law. She is a nationally recognized expert on civil rights and racial justice. She previously worked as an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., where she litigated in the areas of voting rights, employment discrimination, and school desegregation.

ZALIKA AZIM

Zalika Azim is a New York-based conceptual artist and curator whose work investigates the ways in which memory, migration, belonging and black movement are negotiated throughout the African diaspora. Azim’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Dean Collection, International Center of Photography, Dorsky Gallery, Diego Rivera Gallery, Instituto Superior de Arte, and Philadelphia’s African American Museum. She has completed solo projects with the Baxter Street Camera Club of New York and SOHO20. Azim holds a BFA in Photography and Imaging from NYU Tisch and a BA in Social and Cultural Analysis from NYU. She is a 2019–20 Shandaken: Governors Island artist-in-resident and curatorial fellow at NXTHVN.

VINNIE BAGWELL

Sculptor Vinnie Bagwell was born in Yonkers and raised in the town of Greenburgh, New York. An alumna of Morgan State University, Bagwell began sculpting in 1993. Her first public artwork, “The First Lady of Jazz Ella Fitzgerald,” at Yonkers Metro-North/Amtrak train station, is the first sculpture of a contemporary African-American woman to be commissioned by a municipality in the United States. She has won 20 publicart commissions around the US. Presently, Vinnie Bagwell is creating the “Enslaved Africans’ Rain Garden” – an urbanheritage, public-art project for Yonkers, a 7’ Sojourner Truth for the Walk Over the Hudson in Poughkeepsie, and the $1M “Victory Beyond Sims” for Central Park.

DE’ARA BALENGER

De’Ara Balenger is a disruptor, creative, and strategist for brands and organizations on social impact, partnerships, philanthropy, and community engagement. She recently cofounded Maestra, a women’s thought leadership cooperative and creative strategy agency. Prior to Maestra, Balenger spent over a decade in public service: She worked in the criminal justice system in South Florida, ran the Philadelphia Youth Commission, worked on two Presidential campaigns, and was a political appointee in the Obama Administration at the U.S. Department of State, primarily serving as Special Assistant and then Senior Advisor to Cheryl Mills, Counselor and Chief of Staff to Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton.

JENNIFER BAUMGARDNER

Jennifer Baumgardner is editor in chief of the Women's Review of Books, publisher of Dottir Press, and co-founder of Soapbox, Inc. (a speakers' bureau) and Feminist Camp. She is author of Manifesta and Grassroots (with Amy Richards); Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics; and Abortion & Life. Baumgardner produced and directed the documentaries I Had an Abortion and It Was Rape and, as a journalist, has contributed to The New York Times, Glamour, The Nation, Dissent, Ms., Harper’s Bazaar, and Teen Vogue. She was previously executive director of the Feminist Press and writer in residence at the New School.

MURIELLE BORST-TARRANT

Kuna/ Rappahannock Nations. Playwright, Director and Actress. Artistic Director of Safe Harbors Indigenous Collective in New York City. She is a second generation legacy artist of Spiderwoman Theatre. The only Native American Woman to have her work to be selected by the Olympic Games in Sydney Australia at the Sydney Opera House. Global Indigenous Woman’s Caucus Chairwoman (North America). Keynote Speaker at the International Conference at the Muthesius Academy of Art in Kiel Germany and the Norwegian Theater Academy. Faculty member of the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at East 67th Street

JESSICA BELL BROWN

Jessica Bell Brown is the Associate Curator for Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the former Consulting Curator at Gracie Mansion Conservancy. Prior to joining the BMA, Brown had helmed roles at Creative Time, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. A PhD candidate in Modern and Contemporary Art at Princeton, Brown's art historical research explores American painting and identity in the post-civil rights decade. Brown’s writing and art criticism has appeared in catalogues and publications for The Studio Museum in Harlem, Lévy Gorvy, The Museum of Modern Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, Flash Art, Hyperallergic, Artforum, and The Brooklyn Rail.

ZOË BUCKMAN

Zoë Buckman studied at The International Center of Photography and was awarded an Art Matters Grant in 2017. Solo exhibitions: Gavlak Gallery and Papillion Art, Los Angeles; Garis & Hahn and Fort Gansevoort, NYC; and Project for Empty Space, Newark. Group exhibitions: Camden Arts Centre and Pippy Houldsworth, London; Studio Museum in Harlem, Children’s Museum of the Arts, Paul Kasmin Gallery, and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; Tarble Arts Center, Illinois; the Goodman Gallery, South Africa; National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta; National Museum of African-American History & Culture, D.C.; Visual Arts Center of New Jersey; and Centre Regional D’Art Contemporain, Sète, France. Public art installations: For Freedoms “50 State Initiative;” “Inaction is Apathy;” and “Champ.”

TANTOO CARDINAL

Tantoo Cardinal is an award-winning actress of Métis/First Nations decent who can be seen on the ABC Television Network series Stumptown playing Sue Lynn Blackbird. Her 50-year career spans more than 120 film, television, and theater roles, and she is one of the most widely recognized First Nations actors of her generation. She has portrayed complex and diverse characters and challenged negative stereotypes of Indigenous culture and communities. A performer, and cultural and environmental activist, her credits include Legends of the Fall, Dances with Wolves, Wind River, SEE, Westworld, Longmire, Godless, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Rez Sisters.

SOFIYA CHEYENNE

Sofiya Cheyenne is a New York-based performance artist, educator, and disability advocate/consultant. Her recent performance credits include: Guys and Dolls at TUTS, Richard III at STC, The Briefly Dead at 59E59, “At Home With Amy Sedaris” (TrueTV), “StartUP” (Sony Crackle), and “Loudermilk” (AUDIENCENetwork). Cheyenne is the Chair of the Dwarf Artist Coalition of LPA and on the board of trustees for Access Champions Podcast. She strongly believes in using the arts as a way to challenge societal norms and continually invests herself in projects that push for inclusive culture and bring social change and awareness to people with disabilities. www.sofiyacheyenne.com

GABRI CHRISTA

Born and raised in the Caribbean island nation of Curaçao, Gabri Christa is a member of a crossroads culture, and her work expresses the politics and poetics of interchanging races, rhythms, and histories. Multi-disciplinary and wide-ranging in form, Christa’s art-making spans film, choreography, performance, curation, writing, and more. Her subject matter helps determine her approach. When the eloquence and expressive power of dance started to feel limited, she turned to film. Now when she choreographs, she finds herself looking through a more dramaturgical lens. Writing, research, and taking part as performer can all influence the medium or direction of a work.

LIZA COLÓN-ZAYAS

Off-Broadway: Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven (Atlantic), Mary Jane (New York Theater Workshop), Between Riverside and Crazy (Atlantic, 2nd Stage), In Arabia We'd All Be Kings (Center Stage), Our Lady of 121st Street (Union Square Theater), The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (The Public), The View from 151st Street (The Public), Living Out (2nd Stage), The Little Flower of East Orange (The Public), The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (The Public), Water By The Spoonful (2nd Stage), Sistah Supreme (PS 122), Othello (The Skirball), and more. Regional: Story of a Soldier, Othello (European Tour), Have You Seen Us? (Long Wharf ), The Blameless (Old Globe). She can be seen in the upcoming sci-if film Naked Singularity opposite John Boyega and on David Makes Man.

RENÉE COX

Renée Cox is a Jamaican-born African-American artist known for her provocative photographs and videos that address racism and sexism in society. Cox’s feminist critique is exemplified in her self-portrait Hot en Tot (1994). Born in Colgate, Jamaica, Cox worked as a fashion photographer in Paris and then New York. Cox received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts and later participated in the Whitney Independent Study program. Cox continues to push the envelope with her work by using new technologies that the digital medium of photography has to offer. By working from her archives and shooting new subjects, Cox seeks to push the limits of her older work and create new consciousnesses of the body.

CARIDAD DE LA LUZ “LA BRUJA”

Caridad De La Luz is a multifaceted performer known as “La Bruja,” one of America's leading spoken word poets for over 15 years. She raps, acts, sings, hosts, recites, dances, does stand-up comedy, writes, and teaches. Awards: Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship 2020-2021; Puerto Rican Women Legacy Award; Bronx Historical Society’s Edgar Allan Poe Award; named Bronx Music Heritage Center A Bronx Living Legend; Citation of Merit from The Bronx Borough President; named one of the “Top 20 Puerto Rican Women Everyone Should Know.” Off-Broadway: Boogie Rican Blvd. TV/Film: Bamboozled, Down to the Bown, El Vacilon, Gun Hill Road, and Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam for HBO. Hip Hop albums: Brujalicious and For Witch It Stands. www.CariadDeLaLuz.com

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REGAN DE LOGGANS

ABBY DOBSON

ROSE DESIANO

LADY DANE FIGUEROA EDIDI

Regan de Loggans (Mississippi Choctaw/ Ki’Che Maya) is an academic agitator, art historian, curator, and educator based in Brooklyn on Canarsie land. Their work relates to decolonizing, indigenizing, and queering institutions and curatorial practices, focusing on radical inclusionary anarchism. They are also one of the founding members of the Indigenous Kinship Collective. IKC is a direct action group of Native femme, trans non-binary people, and womxn creating an urban indigenous community. They have staged actions at The Whitney: Biennial, American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and on the MTA Subway in response to continued settler colonialism and institutionalized racism and violence. Pronouns: they/themme. Instagram: @phaggotplanet and @indigenouskinshipcollective. Rose DeSiano brings photography and sculpture together in a public art practice that examines cultural symbolism, collective consciousness and the long, tangled history of photography and monuments as both truth-tellers and mythmakers. Commissioned by multiple cities, her photo-sculptures have appeared in New York, San Diego, and Cleveland, and have received multiple international awards, including the Uniqlo Parks Grant and FLOW.17 Public Art Award. Solo gallery exhibitions include shows on the East and West Coasts and in Europe along with several group museum exhibitions (the Bronx Art Museum, Allentown Museum of Art, Heritage Museum of Málaga) and appearances at international art fairs (Photoville, FOTOFOCUS, Orange Changsha Photo, China). MFA, Art Center, LA; BFA, NYU Tisch.

CATHERINE D’IGNAZIO

Catherine D’Ignazio is a hacker mama, artist/designer, and writer, who focuses on feminist technology, data literacy, and civic engagement. She is an Assistant Professor of Urban Science and Planning at MIT and Director of the Data + Feminism Lab, which uses data and computational methods to work towards gender and racial equity. Most recently, she is the co-author of Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020, coauthored with Lauren Klein), which charts a course for more ethical and empowering data science and artificial intelligence.

Abby Dobson is a sonic conceptual performing artist/ composer, activist, and scholar. African American Policy Forum Artist-in-Residence, NOW-NYC Board Member, and Laundromat Project 2017 Create Change Fellow, Dobson is passionate about music as a tool for transformative change. Nominated for a 2014 BET Hip Hop Award for Best Impact Song, she has performed on The Tonight Show, in Talib Kweli’s “State of Grace,” at the Blue Note Jazz Club, and with the Resistance Revival Chorus and Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter. Publications: “From Baldwin to Beyoncé,” in African American Arts: Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity, Rutgers University Press December 2019. CD: Sleeping Beauty: You Are the One You Have Been Waiting On. JD, Georgetown; BA, Williams College. Dubbed the Ancient Jazz Priestess of Mother Africa, Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi is a Nigerian, Cuban, Indigenous, American performance artist, author, playwright (Klytmnestra: An Epic Slam Poem, For Black Trans Girls…, Ghost/Writer), a two-time Helen Hayes Award-nominated choreographer (2016, 2018), advocate (Founder of the Inanna D Initiatives), educator, and co-editor of the Black Trans Prayer Book. She is the first Trans woman of color to be nominated for a Helen Hayes Award (2016) and in DC to publish a work of Fiction (Yemaya’s Daughters, 2013). She costars as Patra in the webseries “King Ester.”

ADAMA DELPHINE FAWUNDU

Adama Delphine Fawundu is a photographer and visual artist born in Brooklyn, NY to parents from Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea, West Africa. Fawundu co-founded and independently published the sold-out book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. In recognition of her artistic practice, Fawundu won the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Award, named one of OkayAfrica’s “100 Women Making an Impact on Africa and its Diaspora,” and included in the Royal Photographic Society’s (UK) Hundred Heroines in 2018. Fawundu has exhibited internationally, with two solo shows in 2019 at the African American Museum in Philadelphia and Crush Curatorial Gallery in New York.

TATYANA FAZLALIZADEH

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is an artist and author based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the creator of Stop Telling Women to Smile, an international street art series that tackles gender-based street harassment. As an artist, her work moves between the gallery and the street, depicting experiences of race and gender. She was the recent Public Artist in Residence for the New York City Commission on Human Rights. Fazlalizadeh has been profiled by The New York Times, NPR, MSNBC, The New Yorker, and TIME Magazine. She is the author of Stop Telling Women to Smile: Stories of Street Harassment and How We're Taking Back Our Power, released this winter.

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at East 67th Street

KAREN FINLEY

Karen Finley works in many mediums, including installation, video, performance, public art, visual art, entertainment, television and film, memorials, music, and literature. She has presented at wordwide venues, such as Paris’s Bobino in Paris, London’s ICA, and Lincoln Center. Her work is in collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Pompidou. Books: 25th anniversary edition of Shock Treatment (City Lights 2015); Reality Shows (Feminist Press 2011); and George and Martha (Verso, 2008); plus five others. Recent work includes Artist Anonymous (Museum of Art and Design, 2014); Written in Sand; Open Heart (Camp Gusen, Austria); Broken Negative; and Sext ME if You Can (New Museum). Awards/ grants: Guggenheim, NYSCA, and NEA fellowships; Richard J Massey Foundation Arts and Humanities award (2015). MFA, San Francisco Art Institute.

SHAR GALARZA

Shar Galarza is a Queer Latinx Brooklyn native artist and educator. She specializes in painting, illustrating, embroidering and printmaking. She uses multidisciplinary mediums to create content around the theme of self-identity, community, and activism.

RACQUEL GATES

Racquel Gates received her Ph.D. in Screen Cultures from Northwestern University after getting her M.A. from the University of Chicago and her B.S. from Georgetown University. She specializes in African American media, particularly representations of race in popular film and television. Her dissertation, Acting White: African Americans, Whiteface, and Post-Civil Rights Popular Culture, examines how African-American performances of whiteface in the postCivil Rights era operate as a means of strategically navigating shifting tropes of blackness across time. In addition to film and media theory, Dr. Gates’ research also incorporates gender, queer, and critical race theories.

KAIAMA L. GLOVER

Kaiama L. Glover is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of French and Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, among other publications, and prizewinning translator of three works of Haitian prose fiction. Her most recent monograph, “The Regarded Self: Toward an Ethics of Disorderly Being,” is forthcoming with Duke University Press, and she is currently researching an intellectual biography titled, René Depestre: For the Love of Revolution. Glover has been awarded grants from the PEN/Heim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Mellon Foundation.

AMANDA GOOKIN

Adventurous cellist Amanda Gookin "pushes Classical forward" (LA Times) and champions the future of music through the creation and bold performance of new works, and a dedication to education, culture, and community engagement. Amanda was the founder and Decade-long cellist of Grammy-nominated string quartet, PUBLIQuartet. She serves on the faculty at Mannes School of Music and SUNY Purchase, leading courses on experimental performance, social leadership, and women in music and was a speaker on activism through music at TEDxMidAtlantic. Her initiative, Forward Music Project, commissions new multimedia works for solo cello and video art that elevate stories of feminine empowerment through raw performances and educational programs.

ELISABETH GRAY

“The talented writer and actress Elisabeth Gray” (The New Yorker) primarily writes, directs, and produces work that captures her Southern gothic heritage. Off-Broadway: Yours Unfaithfully, Mint Theatre Company. Directing credits: trilogy of short films starring Amy Sedaris, Lee Tergesen, Elizabeth Ashley (Das Egg Productions); her mockumentary series UNDERSTUDIES, starring Richard Kind, David Rasche and Elizabeth Ashley; and her short film Socks and Bonds, a 2013 festival favorite. Playwriting credits: Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath (Fringe First Award for Innovative and Outstanding New Writing). She was a 2014 IFP Emerging Storyteller at Lincoln Center.

BEVERLY GUY-SHEFTALL

Beverly Guy-Sheftall is the founding director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center (1981) and Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies at Spelman College. For many years she was a visiting professor at Emory University’s Institute for Women’s Studies where she taught graduate courses in Women’s Studies. She has published a number of texts within African American and Women’s Studies which have been noted as seminal works by other scholars. She is the past president of the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) and was recently elected to the National Academy of Arts and Sciences (2017).

SUSAN N. HERMAN

Susan N. Herman is President of the American Civil Liberties Union and Centennial Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, specializing in constitutional and national security law. She writes extensively on constitutional and criminal procedure topics for scholarly and other publications. Oxford University Press reissued her book, Taking Liberties: The War on Terror and the Erosion of American Democracy, in paperback in 2014. In 2019, Crain’s New York Business placed her on its list of “50 Most Powerful Women in New York” and the Dublin University Law Society of Trinity College, Dublin, honored her with the Praeses Elit Award 2019, in recognition of her leadership of the ACLU.

armoryonpark.org | @ParkAveArmory | #100Years100Women

CHERYL HILL

Cheryl Hill is the Co-Founding Partner of the Harlem Film Company (HFC). HFC productions include the feature film Chapter & Verse (produced 2015, released 2017) and the feature documentary, Behind the Glass (about children of incarcerated parents). Hill has more than 20 years experience in the film and television industry in New York and Los Angeles, and is credited with bringing the Cheetah Girls property to Hollywood. She served as producer on three Disney movies: Cheetah Girls, Cheetah Girls 2, and Cheetah Girls: One World. With Kroyt Brandt Productions, Hill produced and directed the critically acclaimed Crucible of the Millenium, an award-winning multi-part documentary that aired nationally on PBS, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

WARRINGTON HUDLIN

Warrington Hudlin is a veteran producer of motion pictures, television, and online media. His work challenges the false dichotomy between social concerns and popular entertainment. Best known as the producer of the landmark African American films, House Party, Boomerang, and Bebe Kids, and television specials, “Cosmic Slop” and “Unstoppable.” His most recent work is a VR production: “Kung Fu #MeToo,” in addition to developing “The Siege of Detroit,” a genre busting episodic original drama for OTT platform distribution.

MICHELLE HURST

(Soothsayer) Theater: Theatre for a New Audience, Portland Stage, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Long Wharf Theatre, The Public Theater, Soho Rep, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 651 ARTS/Irondale Ensemble, The Kitchen Theatre (Ithaca, NY). Film: Jean of the Joneses; Airheads; Sherrybaby; Smoke; Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home. Television: BBC1's “Last Tango in Halifax,” “Broad City,” “The Good Wife,” “Blue Bloods,” “Law & Order” (multiple episodes), “Sex and the City,” “Orange is the New Black.”

KEMI ILESANMI

Kemi Ilesanmi is the Executive Director of The Laundromat Project. Previous positions include Director of Grants and Services at Creative Capital Foundation and Visual Arts Curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (19982004). In 2015, she was appointed by the Mayor of New York City to the Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission and has served as Chair since 2020. She has been honored by the Metropolitan Museum and Project for Empty Space and serves on the boards of the Joan Mitchell Foundation and The Broad Room, as well as advisory boards for Brooklyn Public Library, Smith College Museum of Art, Black Arts Future Fund, Indigo Arts Alliance, and WNET All Arts. A graduate of Smith College, NYU, and Coro Leadership NY, she is also a Sterling Network Fellow.

ANDREA JENKINS

Andrea Jenkins is a writer, performance artist, poet, and transgender activist. She is the first African American openly trans woman to be elected to US office. She worked as a workforce specialist for Hennepin County government, staff member on the Minneapolis City Council, and curator of the Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota’s Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies. She is a nationally and internationally recognized writer and artist, 2011 Bush Fellow to advance the work of transgender inclusion, and recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. MA in Community Development, Southern New Hampshire University; MFA Creative Writing, Hamline University; BA Human Services, Metropolitan State University; Senior Executives in State and Local Government program, Harvard University.

CHANON JUDSON

Chanon Judson (Co-Artistic Director/Performer) joined Urban Bush Women in 2001. Additional credits: Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, Prophecy Dance Company, Cotton Club Parade, Fela!. Commercial credits: L’Oreal Live, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and Michael Jackson’s 30th Anniversary Concert. Judson was part of the APAP Leadership Fellows Program, and DirectorsLabChicago. She was an arts educator with Alvin Ailey Arts in Education, BAM, and is founder of Cumbe Center’s Dance Drum and Imagination Camp for Children and Family Arts Movement.

KAT LAZO

Kat Lazo is a director, producer and host. The ColombianPeruvian New Yorker has made a name for herself as the Internet’s favorite no-nonsense Latina who tells it how it is – in front and behind the camera. She transitioned her popularity as a YouTuber into a thriving career as a video producer. With more than 7 years of digital video production experience, her work has been featured in The Daily News, Huffpost, Latina Magazine, and Buzzfeed, just to name a few. As a host, Lazo has worked and partnered with the likes of U by Kotex, Thrillist, and Bustle.

KATE CLARKE LEMAY

Kate Clarke Lemay is a historian at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. She earned a dual PhD in art history and American studies from Indiana University, Bloomington. Her book, Triumph of the Dead: American WWII Cemeteries, Monuments and Diplomacy in France received the 2018 Terra Foundation in American Art Publication Award. She is the curator of “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence” and the editor of its accompanying catalog published by Princeton University Press. Currently, she is researching her next exhibition on the topic of American empire, focusing on the imperial conflicts of 1898.

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at East 67th Street

URSULA LIANG

Ursula Liang (director, producer, cinematographer) is a journalist who has told stories in a wide range of media. She has worked for The New York Times Op-Docs, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, Asia Pacific Forum on WBAI, StirTV, the Jax Show, Hyphen Magazine, and currently freelances as a film and television producer (“Tough Love,” “Wo Ai Ni Mommy” “UFC Countdown,” “UFC Primetime”) and story consultant. Liang also works for the 2050 Group, is a founding member of the Filipino American Museum, and sits on the advisory board of the Dynasty Project. Liang grew up in Newton, MA and lives in the Bronx. “9-Man” is her debut as a director.

MIMI LIEN

Mimi Lien is a designer of sets/environments for theater, dance, and opera. In 2015, she was named a MacArthur Fellow, and is the first stage designer ever to achieve this distinction. Mimi is a company member of Pig Iron Theatre Company and co-founder of JACK, a performance/art space in Brooklyn. Selected projects include: Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway); Fairview, An Octoroon (Soho Rep.); Die Zauberflote (Staatsoper Berlin). She is a recipient of a Tony Award, Bessie, Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, American Theatre Wing Hewes Design Award, LA Drama Critics Circle Award, and an OBIE Award for sustained excellence.

SHOLA LYNCH

Shola Lynch oversees the New York Public Library Schomburg Center’s collections of motion picture films, video recordings, music, and spoken-arts recordings, which document the experiences of people of African descent. She is also an accomplished filmmaker focusing on African American history. Her works include the feature documentary Free Angela and All Political Prisoners and the Peabody Awardwinning documentary Chisholm ’72 - Unbought & Unbossed. Lynch holds an MA in American History and Public History Management from the University of California, Riverside, and an MA in Journalism from Columbia University.

CAROL LYNN MAILLARD

Broadway: Eubie!, Comin’ Uptown, Beehive, It’s So Nice to Be Civilized. Off-Broadway: Zooman and the Sign, Home, A Photograph, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, productions with Negro Ensemble Company and New York Shakespeare Festival. Television “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” “Hallelujah!” Film: Beloved, Thirty to Life. Grammy nominations: Best Musical Album for Children in 2007 (Experience…101) and 2000 (Still the Same Me [Album]). Maillard is one of the founding members of the Grammy Award-winning a capella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock.

DARNELL MARTIN

Darnell Martin is a writer and director of TV and film. She is best known for I Like It Like That, and Cadillac Records, a period piece about the rise of Chess Records in Chicago, with Jeffrey Wright in a stunning turn as blues musician Muddy Waters.

BRANDY MONK-PAYTON

Professor Brandy Monk-Payton is a media and black cultural studies scholar at Fordham University specializing in the history and theory of African American media representation and cultural production. Broadly, her research engages with questions concerning critical race theory as they relate to topics in television, film, and new media studies, gender and sexuality studies, performance studies, as well as United States public and popular culture.

PREMILLA NADASEN

Premilla Nadasen is a Professor of History at Barnard College. She is most interested in visions of social change and the ways in which poor and working-class women of color have fought for social justice. She has published extensively on the multiple meanings of feminism, alternative labor movements, and grassroots community organizing. Nadasen has been engaged with community and campus activism for many years and has built bridges between those inside and outside the academy. She is the author of two award-winning books, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States and Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement, and is currently writing a biography of South African singer and anti-apartheid activist Miriam Makeba.

ANGÉLICA NEGRÓN

Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys, and electronics as well as for chamber ensembles, orchestras, and choir. Her music has been described as “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR/Q2), while The New York Times noted her “capacity to surprise.” Negrón has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can AllStars, loadbang, MATA Festival, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Sō Percussion, the American Composers Orchestra, and the New York Botanical Garden, among others. Upcoming premieres include works for New York Philharmonic (Project 19), Dallas Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, and San Francisco Girls Chorus.

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LORIE NOVAK

Lorie Novak is an artist and Professor of Photography & Imaging at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and Associate Faculty at The Hemispheric Institute. She is the founding director of Tisch Future Imagemakers, a free social practice project for NYC area high school students. Her photographs, installations, and Internet projects explore issues of memory and transmission, the relationship between the intimate and the public, and the shifting cultural meanings of photographs. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and her photographs are in many museum permanent collections. Novak’s collaborative collectedvisions.net, 1996-present, exploring how family photographs shape our memory, was one of the earliest interactive storytelling sites. www.lorienovak. com

MARK PEIKERT

Playbill’s editor-in-chief Mark Peikert has over a decade of experience as an editor and writer covering film, television, theater, and every other aspect of the performing arts. Also a moderator, Peikert has shared the stage with some of the most talented and celebrated actors working today, including Angelina Jolie, Julianne Moore, Janet McTeer, Liev Schreiber, Paul Bettant, and Willem Dafoe. Peikert has contributed freelance articles for publications including Out Magazine, Town & Country, and The Wrap. He holds a degree in film history from Sarah Lawrence College.

MARIA PEREZ-BROWN

Maria Perez-Brown is an award-winning content creator, executive producer, and senior television executive with more than 20 years experience bringing culturally relevant and brand-defining shows for mainstream and niche audiences to leading television and digital brands, including Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., and NuvoTV. A visionary, Perez-Brown created the iconic children’s shows “Gullah Gullah Island” for Nick Jr. and “Taina” for Nickelodeon. As a television executive, she oversaw the production of original content and led the programming strategy and rebranding of Nuvo TV. Through her production company, she has developed projects for leading brands including, ABC/Touchstone, PBS, Sesame Workshop, and Corus Entertainment/Nelvana.

MICHELE PRED

Michele Pred is a Swedish-American conceptual artist whose practice includes sculpture, assemblage and performance. Her work uncovers the cultural and political meaning behind everyday objects with a particular focus on themes like equal pay, reproductive rights and personal security. She organized the Parade Against Patriarchy during Miami Art week in 2017 and the We Vote Parade in NYC 2018. Pred is a founding member of the artist organization For Freedoms. Recent exhibitions include her solo show Vote Feminist at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery, group shows For Freedoms at Jack Shainman Gallery, and The Future is Female at the 21C Museum.

PAOLA PRESTINI

Co-founder and Artistic Director of National Sawdust, composer Paola Prestini has been commissioned by and performed at BAM, Cannes Film Festival, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Los Angeles Opera, among others. Upcoming projects include operas Edward Tulane (Minnesota Opera), Sensorium Ex (Atlanta Opera and Beth Morrison Projects Prototype Festival), and Silent Light (Banff’s Opera in the 21st Century); piano concertos for Awadagin Pratt and A Far Cry, Lara Downes and the Louisville Symphony, Oregon Bach Festival, and Ravinia; and music for documentary and arts event The Amazon. Prestini started the Hildegard Competition for emerging female, trans, and non-binary composers and Blueprint Fellowship for emerging composers with The Juilliard School. Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, Sundance Fellow, and Juilliard graduate.

MAKEBA RAINEY

Makeba Rainey’s creative practice focuses on building community and what that looks like. By centering her work on social justice for Black Americans, community becomes the key to liberation. Her artwork taps into aspects of the Black community, merging old with new by re-envisioning ancestors through new media and creating space for young creatives. Her work is both local to Harlem and bonded to the larger Black community through her web-based artist collective, incorporating movements like Black Lives Matter. Originally from Harlem, Rainey is an internationally-exhibited artist known for her digital collage portraits of Black icons. The Laundromat Project 2017 Create Change Fellow, 2018 member of Philadelphia’s Vox Populi gallery, 2018 CFEVA Fellow, Absolut Art artist, and National Arts Club 2020 Artist Fellow.

TIFFANY REA-FISHER

Tiffany Rea-Fisher uses disruption through inclusion as a way to influence her company’s culture. In the spring of 2018 she was awarded a Citation of Merit from the City of New York for her cultural contributions. Recently Rea-Fisher’s works have been seen on the Joyce stage as well the Apollo, Joe’s Pub, Aaron Davis Hall, and New York Live Arts. Rea-Fisher’s work extends well beyond the stage including film, fashion, theater, music, and museums. Rea-Fisher is also the Dance Curator for the Bryant Park Dance Summer Series. Professional affiliations include Vice President of the Stonewall Community Development Corporation; Advisory Board member Dance/ NYC; and Women of Color of the Arts member.

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at East 67th Street

MARTHA REDBONE

Martha Redbone is a Native and African-American multiple award winning vocalist/songwriter/composer/educator. She is known for her “gumbo” of folk, blues, and gospel from her childhood in coal mining Kentucky infused with the eclectic grit of pre-gentrified Brooklyn. Inheriting the powerful vocal range of her gospel-singing African American father and the resilient spirit of her mother’s Cherokee/Shawnee/Choctaw culture, Redbone broadens the boundaries of American Roots music. With songs and storytelling of her experience as a Native and Black woman and mother in the new millenium, Redbone gives voice to issues of social justice, bridging traditions, connecting the past to present, celebrating the human spirit. Her work is described as “a brilliant collision of cultures” (The New Yorker).

LAILA ROBINS

Broadway: Heartbreak House, Frozen (Lucille Lortel nomination), The Real Thing, The Herbal Bed. Off-Broadway: The Apple Family Plays (Drama Desk Award), Lady from Dubuque (OCC nomination, Richard Seff Award), Mrs. Klein (Jefferson Award, Helen Hayes nomination), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Public's Shakespeare in the Park), Antony and Cleopatra, Sore Throats (Lortell nomination), Tiny Alice, Merchant of Venice (Calloway Award). Regional: A Streetcar Named Desire (Steppenwolf, Jefferson Award), productions at the Guthrie, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, McCarter, George Street, Williamstown, Barrington Stage. Film/TV: “The Boys,” “The Blacklist,” “The Bold Type,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Deception,” “Homeland,” “New Amsterdam,” “The Rest of Us.” MFA: Yale School of Drama.

JEWEL RODGERS

Jewel Rodgers is a spoken word poet from North Omaha, Nebraska. She was also a community organizer, speaker, and scholar before coming to New York City to further her education in Real Estate Development. Her goal is to emphasize and/or contribute to a more practical approach toward collective economics in communities experiencing rapid gentrification.

YELAINE RODRIGUEZ

Bronx-born curator and interdisciplinary artist Yelaine Rodriguez received a BFA from The New School (2013), and her Masters from NYU. Rodriguez’s curatorial portfolio includes Afro Syncretic at NYU; Resistance, Roots, and Truth at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute; and (under) REPRESENT (ed) at The New School. Rodriguez participated in The Bronx Museum AIM Program (2020), The Latinx Project Curatorial Fellowship (2019), Wave Hill Van Lier Fellowship (2018), and ICA Fellowship from the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (2017). She has exhibited at American Museum of Natural History, Rush Art Gallery, El Centro Cultural de España, and Centro León Biennial.

ANGELA SCLAFANI

Angela Sclafani is a composer and performer. She has developed theater with the support of The Orchard Project, Ars Nova, Fresh Ground Pepper, and Musical Theatre Factory. This spring she will write the second volume of her Passion Project song cycle at La Napoule Art Foundation's International Artist Residency in the South of France. Sclafani is a 2019 Fred Ebb Award Winner, a 2018 Richie Jackson Artist Fellow, and a 2018 Jonathan Larson Grant Finalist. She has released two EPs of original music and will release her third EP in April. Sclafani holds a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

SARA SERPA

Sara Serpa is a singer, composer, improviser who implements a unique instrumental approach to her vocal style. Described by The New York Times as “a singer of silvery poise and cosmopolitan outlook,” Serpa creates ethereal music drawing from inspirations including literature, film, visual arts, history, and nature. She has collaborated with an extensive array of noted musicians, including Danilo Perez, Ran Blake, Greg Osby, John Zorn, Guillermo Klein, Zeena Parkins, Mark Turner, Tyshawn Sorey, Nicole Mitchell, among others. She has produced and released nine albums, most recently “Close Up” with Ingrid Laubrock and Erik Friedlander. Previous engagements include performances at the Bergamo Jazz Festival, Festa do Jazz, Adelaide Festival, BAM, Met Museum, Lincoln Center, Met Breuer, and Kennedy Center, among others. Serpa is a Park Avenue Armory Artist-in-Residence, and teaches at The New School and New Jersey City University.

GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. Latest books: An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (Harvard, 2012) and Readings (Seagull, 2014). Awards: Kyoto Prize (2012); Padma Bhushan (2013); Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2016); MLA Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement (2017). She holds twelve honorary doctorates. She trains teachers and guides ecological agriculture in the western Birbhum district, West Bengal, India. Current projects: consortial initiatives in continental Africa; Himalayan Studies initiatives in Kathmandu-Kolkata-Kunming; thinking globality together in French India and Senegambia; and finishing a book on W. E. B. Du Bois.

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RACHEL SUSSMAN

Rachel Sussman is a Tony Award-nominated producer and a co-founder of The MITTEN Lab, an emerging theater artist residency program in her native state of Michigan. Producing credits include: Heidi Schreck’s Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award-nominated play, What the Constitution Means to Me (Broadway/National Tour), the Obie Award-winning production of The Woodsman (Off-Broadway), and Eh Dah? Questions for My Father (Next Door at NYTW). A past Women’s Project Lab Time Warner Foundation Fellow, Sussman was the recipient of the 2019 Geraldine Stutz T. Fellowship in Creative Producing, founded by Hal Prince in conjunction with Columbia University. She is a graduate of the Commercial Theater Institute and a University Honors Scholar alumna of NYU Tisch.

SHAINA TAUB

Shaina Taub is an Emmy-nominated songwriter and performer. She is a winner of the Kleban Prize, the Fred Ebb Award, and the Jonathan Larson Grant. She is an artistin-residence at the Public Theater where she has a regular concert residency at Joe’s Pub. She is currently writing lyrics for the upcoming Broadway musical The Devil Wears Prada, with music by Sir Elton John, as well as a new musical about the American women's suffrage movement. She created and starred in musical adaptations of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and As You Like It that were commissioned and produced by the Public Theater at the Delacorte in Central Park as part of their groundbreaking community-based program, Public Works. Those adaptations have now been produced in London, Seattle, Dallas and beyond.

MEI ANN TEO

Mei Ann Teo (she/they) is the Producing Artistic Director of Musical Theatre Factory, a resident company of Playwrights Horizons and an artist service organization that provides all access and affinity spaces for the development of new musical theater that dismantles oppressive ideologies towards collective liberation. Teo directs internationally, most recently the nationwide China tour of the world premiere musical Dim Sum Warriors by Colin Goh and Yen Yen Woo, composed by Pulitzer awardee Du Yun. Upcoming premieres include SKiNFoLK: An American Show by Jillian Walker at the Bushwick Starr and Chronicle X by Nia Witherspoon at The Shed.

ELLYN M. TOSCANO

Ellyn M. Toscano is New York University’s Senior Director for Programming, Partnerships and Community Engagement in Brooklyn. In this position, she is charged with fostering programming partnerships at the intersection of technology, new media, and the arts, and establishing new programming and strategic partnerships with Brooklyn’s civic, cultural, business, and educational communities. Before assuming these duties, Toscano was Executive Director of NYU Florence: Director of Villa La Pietra, a 15th-century villa and historic garden that houses a collection of six thousand objects dating from the Etruscans to the 20th century. A lawyer by training, Toscano serves as a commissioner of the New York City’s Commission on Gender Equity.

TROJAN WOMEN PROJECT

The Trojan Women Project is a program of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. Started in 2014, the TWP uses the music, staging, and themes of the 1974 La MaMa production of The Trojan Women, composed by Elizabeth Swados and directed by Andrei Serban, as a foundation for work with artists and activists who use theater to address contemporary issues in their communities. In December 2019, performers from Guatemala, Cambodia, and Kosovo traveled to New York to join local artists for the Trojan Women Project Festival, an 11-day celebration of international exchange. The TWP continues to partner with new communities here in the US and internationally.

KATHLEEN TURNER

Kathleen Turner’s numerous accolades include Golden Globes for Romancing The Stone and Prizzi’s Honor, an Academy Award nomination for Peggy Sue Got Married, Tony nominations for Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, BAFTA nomination for Body Heat, and two Grammy nominations. Most recently she guest starred on “The Kominsky Method,” “Mom,” and “Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings.” On Broadway, she’s starred in High, The Graduate, and Indiscretions. Additional theater credits include Bakersfield Mist; Red Hot Patriot: The Kick Ass Wit Of Molly Ivins; Mother Courage And Her Children; and The Year Of Magical Thinking. Also a best-selling author, she’s written Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts On My Life, Love, and Leading Roles and Kathleen Turner On Acting.

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at East 67th Street

ELISABET VESLASQUEZ

Elisabet Velasquez writes poems that speak to and about feminism, body positivity, sex, love, mental illness, education and women’s choices through an intersectional lens. She has performed at Lincoln Center Out Of Doors, Pregones Theatre, Bushwick Starr Theatre, The Bowery Poetry Club, Brooklyn Museum, Museum Of Natural History, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Rutgers University, Williams College, Adelphi University, Pace University, Princeton University, James Madison University, Harvard University, and The Amber Rose Slut Walk 2017. Her work has been featured on TIDAL, NBC, Now This, Huffington Post, Latina Magazine, Vibe Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, Centro Voces. Her work is forthcoming in the anthology: WHAT SAVES US Poems of Empathy and Outrage In The Age Of Trump, edited by Martin Espada.

JILLIAN WALKER

Jillian Walker is a multi-faceted theater artist. Her work aims to make space for healing and liberation; embodying remembrance for our ancestors and legacies. She makes plays, musicals, sacred lecture-sermon-concert gatherings, and self-reflective space that push what we think of as genre and blur the perceived boundaries between performer, audience, and self. Her work has recently appeared at Joe’s Pub, Judson Memorial Church, and in Times Square. Walker is currently developing work with The TEAM, Musical Theater Factory, Ars Nova, and Soho Rep, where she is the 2020-21 Tow Playwright-in-Residence. Her bio-musical, SKiNFoLK: An American Show, will premiere at The Bushwick Starr in March. www.thisisjillianwalker.com

THEARA J. WARD

“Baby ballerina” with Dance Theater of Harlem. Musical debut: Cats, Paris. Recent: From the Horse’s Mouth (14th Street Y, New York). Broadway: Black and Blue; Crazy For You; original Ghost of Christmas Future, A Christmas Carol (Madison Square Garden). Regional: Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Cleveland Playhouse); Ragtime (Chicago); The Love Space Demands with Ntozake Shange (Crossroads Theater). TV and commercials: Belhaven College, visiting artist; Duke University, facilitator/panelist. Works with arts education programs: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dance Theatre of Harlem, New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Ward penned her one woman show, From The Heart of a Sistah: A Chorepoem.

SHELLEY WASHINGTON

Shelley Washington (b. 1991) writes music to fulfill one calling—to move. Described as having the ability to “expertly mine the deep wells of private emotion,” (Steven Jude Tietjen, Opera News) she uses driving, rhythmic riffs paired with indelible melodies to create a sound dialogue for the public and personal discourse. Washington performs regularly as a vocalist and baritone saxophonist, and loves making sound— anything from Baroque to Screamo. She is based in the New York City area, and is currently studying at Princeton University in pursuit of the PhD in Music Composition. She is a founding member of the Kinds of Kings composer collective.

DEBORAH WILLIS

Deborah Willis, Ph.D, is a photographer and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Willis is the author of Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present and Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs. Professor Willis’s curated exhibitions include: “In Pursuit of Beauty” at Express Newark. Since 2006 she has co-organized thematic conferences exploring imaging the black body in the West such as the conference titled Black Portraiture[s] which was held in Johannesburg in 2016.

ERYN WISE

Eryn Wise belongs to the Jicarilla Apache Nation and Pueblo of Laguna. She is the Communications and Digital Director at Seeding Sovereignty, and is a co-founding mentor to the International Indigenous Youth Council. Ensuring a future for generations to come is a duty and responsibility to her, and she focuses the traditional teachings of her predecessors on the intersectional challenges faced by the youth and organizers she works to build community with. She aims to do all her work in homage to her ancestors whose resistance ensured her existence. She is a human being, just like you.

LAUREN YEE

Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band premiered at South Coast Rep, subsequent productions at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Signature Theatre, and more. Her play The Great Leap has been produced at the Denver Center, Seattle Repertory, Atlantic Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre, Steppenwolf, and more. Honors include Doris Duke Artists Award, Steinberg Playwright Award, Whiting Award, Horton Foote Prize, Kesselring Prize, and Hodder Fellowship. Residency 5 playwright at Signature Theatre, New Dramatists member. TV: “Pachinko” (Apple), “Soundtrack” (Netflix). BA: Yale. MFA: UCSD.

armoryonpark.org | @ParkAveArmory | #100Years100Women

MEET THE PARTNERS NATIONAL BLACK THEATRE

Founded by visionary Dr. Barbara Ann Teer in 1968, National Black Theatre (NBT) is a nationally recognized cultural and educational institution. Dr. Teer pioneered “the healing art of Black theater as an instrument for wholeness in urban communities where entrepreneurial artists of African descent live and work.” In 1983, Dr. Teer expanded the vision of NBT by purchasing a 64,000-square-foot building on 125th Street and Fifth Avenue (renamed “National Black Theatre Way” by local law in 1994). This was the first revenue-generating Black arts complex in the country, an innovative arrangement through which for-profit businesses who shared NBT’s spiritual and aesthetic values rented retail space to subsidize the arts. Out of her vision, NBT houses the largest collection of Nigerian New Sacred Art in the Western hemisphere and is considered the authentic representation of a model whose time has come. NBT is supported by grants from the Ford Foundation, New York Community Trust, Time Warner Corporation. Howard Gilman Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Andrew Mellon Foundation, City Council of New York, City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Columbia Service Society and private donations. www. nationalblacktheatre.org

APOLLO THEATER

The legendary Apollo Theater-the soul of American cultureplays a vital role in cultivating emerging artists and launching legends. The Apollo Theater is a non-profit performing arts presenter, commissioner, and collaborator that has served as a center of innovation and a creative catalyst for Harlem and the world. With music at its core, the Apollo's programming extends to dance, theater, spoken word, festivals, and more, including premieres of the theatrical adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me and the opera We Shall Not Be Moved. Since its founding, the Apollo has served as a testing ground for new artists and ushered in the emergence of musical genres. In fall 2020, the Apollo will mark its first ever physical expansion with the theaters at the Victoria, which will support the creation of an expanded 21st century American performing arts canon, as the Apollo continues to provide a home to artists of color, and offer educational and community programming in Harlem and beyond.

THE JUILLIARD SCHOOL

The mission of The Juilliard School is to provide the highest caliber of artistic education for gifted musicians, dancers, and actors from around the world, so that they may achieve their fullest potential as artists, leaders, and global citizens.

LA MAMA EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE CLUB

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club is New York’s premier Off-Off-Broadway venue, celebrating works that push the boundaries of language and culture, and showcasing cuttingedge talent from around the globe. Founded by Ellen Stewart in 1961 in the East Village, the company has grown into a vibrant and vital hub for artists and theatergoers alike, presenting more than 5,000 productions and supporting more than 150,000 artists in its four performances spaces. Among these artists are Blue Man Group, Sam Shepard, Estelle Parsons, Adrienne Kennedy, Diane Lane, Jackie Curtis, Harvey Keitel, Robert Wilson, Bette Midler, André DeShields, Harvey Fierstein, Steve Buscemi, Julie Taymor, Philip Glass, and Olympia Dukakis. A place for American theatergoers to see artists from around the globe, La MaMa has presented the US debuts of Peter Brook, Tadeusz Kantor, Andrei Serban, Kazuo Ohno, and Belarus Free Theatre. La MaMa has been honored with many Obie, Drama Desk, Bessie, and Villager Awards, and American Theatre Wing’s 2018 Regional Theatre Tony Award.

THE LAUNDROMAT PROJECT

The Laundromat Project advances artists and neighbors as change agents in their own communities. It envisions a world in which artists and neighbors in communities of color work together to unleash the power of creativity to transform lives. It makes sustained investments in growing a community of multiracial, multigenerational, and multidisciplinary artists and neighbors committed to societal change by supporting their artmaking, community building, and leadership development.

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

The Metropolitan Museum of Art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas. The Met presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy. The Museum lives in three iconic sites in New York City—The Met Fifth Avenue, The Met Breuer, and The Met Cloisters. Millions of people also take part in The Met experience online. Since it was founded in 1870, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects. Every day, art comes alive in the Museum's galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing both new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at East 67th Street

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE

Museum of the Moving Image advances the understanding, enjoyment, and appreciation of the art, history, technique, and technology of film, television, and digital media. In its stunning facility—acclaimed for both its accessibility and bold design—the Museum presents exhibitions; screenings of significant works; discussion programs featuring actors, directors, craftspeople, and business leaders; and education programs which serve more than 50,000 students each year. The Museum also houses a significant collection of movingimage artifacts.

NATIONAL SAWDUST

National Sawdust is a non-profit music venue whose mission is to build new audiences for classical and new music by providing outstanding resources and programmatic support to both emerging and established artists and composers. Centered upon discovery, National Sawdust’s programming introduces audiences to new artists and styles, and introduces artists to new audiences. An incubator for new music, National Sawdust also provides artists the space, time, and resources they need to create their art.

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

When the School of the Arts was founded at New York University in 1965, it was heralded as a daring adventure — to be a school unlike any other. We met that challenge, and what has emerged over the last 50 years is the country’s preeminent center for the study of the performing, cinematic and emerging media arts. Our breadth of excellence across the departments is unique and world-renowned. You can earn a BA, BFA, MA, MFA, MPS or PhD in a wide range of disciplines that are uniquely integrated within one school. Artists and scholars come from around the world to study acting, dance, design, performance, film, animation, writing for musical theater, stage, screen & television, preservation, recorded music, photography, interactive media, games, and public policy.

URBAN BUSH WOMEN

Founded in 1984 by choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women seeks to bring the untold and under-told histories and stories of disenfranchised people to light through dance. It does this from a woman-centered perspective and as members of the African Diaspora community in order to create a more equitable balance of power in the dance world and beyond. As UBW celebrates its 35th Anniversary year, it continues to use dance as both the message and the medium to bring together diverse audiences through innovative choreography, community collaboration and artistic leadership development. armoryonpark.org | @ParkAveArmory | #100Years100Women

ABOUT PARK AVENUE ARMORY Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory fills a critical void in the cultural ecology of New York by enabling artists to create, students to explore, and audiences to experience, unconventional work that cannot be mounted in traditional performance halls and museums. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall—reminiscent of 19th-century European train stations—and an array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory offers a platform for creativity across all art forms. Together, these and other spaces within the historic building utilized for arts programming comprise the Thompson Arts Center, named in recognition of the Thompson family’s ongoing support of the institution. Since its first production in September 2007, the Armory has organized and commissioned immersive performances, installations, and cross-disciplinary collaborations in its vast Drill Hall that defy traditional categorization and challenge artists to push the boundaries of their practice. In its historic period rooms, the Armory presents small-scale performances and programs, including its acclaimed Recital Series, which showcases musical talent from across the globe within the intimate salon setting of the Board of Officers Room; and the new Artists Studio series in the newly restored Veterans Room, which features innovative artists and artistic pairings that harken back to the imaginative collaboration and improvisation of the original group of designers who conceived the space. The Armory also supports artists across genres in the creation and development of new work through its Artist-in-Residence program, which each year offers several artists space and resources to produce new works and present them as part of the Armory’s programming. Theaster Gates is a current Armory Artist-in-Residence. Other current Artists-in-Residence include: Mimi Lien, Reggie “Regg Roc” Gray and the D.R.E.A.M. Ring, Sara Serpa, Christine Jones, Steven Hoggett, Lynn Nottage, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Carmelita Tropicana. The Armory also offers robust arts education programs at no cost to underserved New York City public school students, engaging them with the institution’s artistic programming and the building’s history and architecture. These programs, which serve more than 5,000 students per year, include student-only performances and workshops for every production, commissioned works for family programming, school partnerships, and paid internships. Programmatic highlights from the Armory include The Let Go, a site-specific immersive dance celebration by Nick Cave; a Lenape Pow Wow and Standing Ground Symposium, the first congregation of Lenape Leaders on Manhattan Island since the 1700s; Ernesto Neto’s anthropodino, a large-scale, interactive sculpture and labyrinth comprising a 120- by 180-foot canopy extended across the Drill Hall and 60-foot aromatic fabric stalactites; FLEXN, an Armory-commissioned presentation of the Brooklyn-born street dance Flex, created by Reggie “Regg Roc” Gray and Director Peter Sellars; Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto, a multi-channel cinematic installation featuring Cate Blanchett; eight-time Drama Desk-nominated play The Hairy Ape, directed by Richard Jones and starring Bobby Cannavale; and Sam Mendes’ critically acclaimed production of The Lehman Trilogy, starring Adam Godley, Ben Miles, and Simon Russell Beale. Concurrent with its artistic program, the Armory has undertaken an ongoing $215-million revitalization of its historic building, designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron. www.armoryonpark.org

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at East 67th Street

NEXT AT THE ARMORY MONTEVERDI’S MARIA VESPERS

INTERROGATIONS OF FORM

Marian Vespers, written in 1610 and among Claudio Monteverdi‘s greatest choral and instrumental achievements, will be performed in the Armory’s soaring Wade Thompson Drill Hall in the North American premiere of Pierre Audi‘s celebrated Dutch National Opera’s production that opened the 2017 Holland Festival. Conductor Raphaël Pichon will lead his renowned Baroque orchestra and choral ensemble Pygmalion, in this tour de force, offering up a dizzying array of textures and sonorities, opulent choruses, and touching solo arias and duets. Audi’s fresh visual and spatial interpretation with its cathedral-like setting and wandering chorus creates a wondrous, spiritual “mise-en-écoute.” Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere‘s massive, haunting sculpture Cripplewood contributes the central visual element. A Park Avenue Armory, Dutch National Opera, and Holland Festival Production.

UPCOMING EVENT:

march 21–29, 2020

ARTISTS STUDIO

“…it was a block of music that made you think as the room does: Take note. Listen deeply. The rest of the world is not like this…that sublime and exclusive room, almost too opulent for this world.” —The New York Times UPCOMING PERFORMANCE:

KRENCY GARCIA: EL PRODIGIO

tuesday, march 3, 2020 at 7pm & 9pm

Dominican accordionist El Prodigio brings his syncopated merengue playing to the Armory in an explosion of sound and joy. He and fellow band members introduce us to the multiple styles of merengue playing found in the Dominican Republic. El Prodigio, known for his contemporary and improvisational compositions, will travel through some of the rich musical styles of accordion merengue from the “güira” and the “tabura” and to the “perico ripiao.” Joined by his ensemble band, El Prodigio delivers an updated contemporary sound with harmonic and rhythmic colors resulting in an updating of this infectious musical form.

Held in our historic period rooms, these insightful conversations throughout the year feature artists, scholars, cultural leaders, and social trailblazers who gather to offer new points of view and unique perspectives on Armory productions, explore a range of themes and relevant topics, and encourage audiences to think beyond conventional interpretations and perspectives of art.

SUNDAY SALON: FAZAL SHEIKH

sunday, april 19, 2020 at 3pm

Renowned photographer Fazal Sheikh, who uses photographs to document people living in displaced and marginalized communities around the world, hosts a special afternoon of installations and conversation. Sheikh will display his signature combination of portraits, personal narratives, found photographs, archival material, sound, and his own written texts and discuss his conviction that a portrait is, as far as possible, an act of mutual engagement, and only through a long-term commitment to a place and to a community can a meaningful series of photographs be made.

RECITAL SERIES

“With the exquisite renovation of the Board of Officers Room…, the Armory now has a space for chamber music which marries excellent acoustics and an austerely elegant Gilded Age interior.” —The New York Times UPCOMING PERFORMANCE:

LINDEMANN YOUNG ARTIST CONCERT

tuesday, february 18 & thursday, february 20, 2020 at 7:30pm

The Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program was established to nurture and develop extraordinarily talented young artists in the realm of opera. The program has trained a new generation of celebrated American and international opera singers. Notable alumni include Dawn Upshaw, Nathan Gunn, Stephanie Blythe, Christine Goerke, Mariusz Kwiecień, and Sondra Radvanovsky. In this program, soprano Gabriella Reyes and mezzo-soprano Megan Esther Grey will perform selections from Mahler, Turina, and more. Nate Raskin returns as accompanist. For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit armoryonpark.org.

armoryonpark.org | @ParkAveArmory | #100Years100Women