BALTIMORE: The second cohort has been announced for the Trans History Project, a national initiative created by Baltimore Center Stage Artist-in-Residence Bo Frazier. They include five plays by five TGNC playwrights: Ty Defoe, Justice Jamal Jones, Youri Kim, Nico Pang, and K.T. Peterson.
The second cohort will continue the Trans History Project’s mission of developing new plays that center TGNC histories, experiences and perspectives. This project is commissioning and developing 10 new plays by 10 transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) writers. The first cohort featured four TGNC playwrights and one TGNC theatre ensemble.
“At a moment when trans and gender non-conforming people are being targeted, erased, and forced to fight for the right to exist openly and safely, telling our stories is an act of resistance,” Frazier said in a statement. “The Trans History Project is about more than representation. It’s about reclaiming the history that has always been ours, honoring the artists who are shaping our present, and ensuring that future generations know we have always been here. By investing in trans and gender non-conforming artists, we are insisting that our stories belong in the American story—and that our voices deserve to be heard, celebrated, and remembered on stages across this country.”
There were 100 submissions, with 12 finalists and five selections from those finalists. Each playwright receives a $10,000 commission and developmental support from a coalition of regional theatres, including Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky, About Face Theatre in Chicago, and East West Players and Native Voices in Los Angeles.
Ty Defoe (giizhig) (he/we/ty) is a Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer citizen of the Oneida Nation and Anishinaabe Tribe. A playwright and sovereign story trickster, Defoe’s work centers gender sovereignty, Indigenous futurity, and the transformative power of storytelling. Defoe’s Trans World Chapter 0 – Obsidian will be developed at Native Voices. Set in 1976 Philadelphia during the nation’s Bicentennial celebration, the play follows Yarrow, a two-spirit transsexual artist, who discovers that art and obsidian can open portals into erased trancestor histories. Yarrow moves between queer nightlife, colonial pageantry, and ancestral memory, unearthing stories the nation has tried to bury, and Yarrow is faced with painful choices and truths.
Justice Jamal Jones (they/she) is a New York City-based filmmaker, theatremaker, and actor whose award-winning films How to Raise a Black Boy and Notes on a Siren have earned international acclaim. Jones’ La Prophétesse will be developed at About Face Theatre. The play is based on “The Priest and the Prophetess,” an award-winning book by Terry Rey. Jones’ work, described as “a blur of possession and performance,” is an examination of the life of gender-queer Haitian revolutionary and mystic Romaine La Prophétesse.
Youri Kim (they/she) is a Korean playwright, director, and teaching artist based in the DMV. Their work examines how systems of power shape and regulate bodies. They are the founding artistic director of Jaemi Theatre Company, an AAPI theatre company in the DMV. Kim’s SABANGJI.EXE will be developed at Baltimore Center Stage. The play is built from a single line written six centuries ago in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty that records a person named Sabangji. It explores questions like who gets to write a person into the record, who gets to erase them, and what it costs to be consumed by systems never built to hold you.
Nico Pang (they/he) is a Cantonese writer and director exploring diasporic belonging, ancestral memory, and queerness as possibilities. Pang co-founded Passion of the Cut Sleeve, a queer multidisciplinary collective that reimagines Chinese folklore. Pang’s Stone Maiden will be developed at East West Players. In 1851 Qing Dynasty China, Liao Zhanggu is labeled a “stone maiden” for being unable to reproduce and is exiled to a Daoist monastery. Two hundred years later in the U.S., a trans Chinese musician finds Zhanggu’s buried court record, and time travels. They wake up inside Zhanggu’s body, encounter a world where the ideal self is androgynous, and face a choice: fight to return to 2051 or stay and alter the fate of someone who may be an ancestor, a mirror, or both.
K.T. Peterson (she/he)’s Everybody’s Total Pal! will be developed at Actors Theatre of Louisville. It’s part public access show, part cabaret aboard the ship ENDURANCE!, where a frostbitten sailor from Shackleton’s crew puts on a show to keep himself from going mad. The sailor, however, is not who he seems. This shape-shifting solo performance is inspired by historic TGNC figures like gender-queer prophet Public Universal Friend, trans doctor Alan L. Hart, and Shaker founder Ann Lee. The play asks what happens when we reclaim the divine, the creative, the queer, and the joyful from the boxes we’ve inherited.
