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Carlton V Bell II (c.j) they/them is a southern based Black, queer, HIV+ cultural worker & arts facilitator primarily working as a theatre & film director/producer. As an artist, their praxis is to consistently interrogate the world by craft & by conjure. As an advocate & agent for representation through change in the way Art is landscaped globally, Carlton continues to inspire, make space, & take space for other performers across the African Diaspora in the southeast— In addition to their work as an artist, Recently Seen on CNN’s Blind Angels (cnn.com/blindangels) **Member of Stage Director & Choreographers Society

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Diovanna LaBeija is an Afrolatina, multidisciplinary visual and performance artist and small business owner, based out of Brooklyn, NY. She has choreographed for Grammy-nominated artist, starred in Tribeca film selects, and spoken nationally and internationally on Ballroom and Vogue cultural history. Her work lives at the intersection of spirituality and transfemme identity/experience, to create a unique expression of Black trans thought and artistic advocacy. “When We Arrive As Flowers” is her directorial debut.

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I'm creatrx, a black non binary multidisciplinary music artist deeply interested in black futurity. My music explores the gender myth, blackness, nature, ancestor reverence, pleasure, magic and twerking. I believe in order to see black liberation in the future we must vision ourselves into new worlds. We can do that by harnessing the power of black imaginations, play and experimentation as tools and gifts.

Last year I released my first EP titled dirt. honey. glitter. water, exploring what it means to be young, black, ratchet and spiritual in 2021. I recorded myself during quarantine in my bedroom closets in the Bronx and in Brooklyn.

Inspired by the process of making dirt.honey.glitter.water. I began producing the .WAVMAKERS podcast. .WAVMAKERS is an archive and toolkit, focusing on black & brown women, queer & trans independent artists in the music industry. My performance and audio work seeks to combine the whimsical and the mundane, knowing the necessity in both. .

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e. Franklin is an interdisciplinary artist with over fifteen years of professional experience in theatre, immersive performance, and community-based art. This wide-ranging freelance creative practice has utilized puppets, buildings, food, improvisation, song, installation, participation, travel, humor, text, time, imagination, algorithms, honesty, facilitation, and tape; lots of tape. Since 2018, they have focused on applying a reparationist framework to their creative practice, cultural organizing projects, and life. This dedication to relationship-centered process has put Franklin in collaboration with partners at non-profit organizations, municipalities, social service agencies, universities, farms, community centers, prisons, art galleries, and private homes.

In addition to collaborations, e. Franklin has independently created and produced over 25 original productions. They earned a Bachelor's in Theatre & Film from the University of Kansas and an MFA in Theatre Arts from Towson University. Awards and honors include: Bessie Award (Outstanding Visual Design), Lavender Magazine Best of List (Outstanding Performance), Elliot Norton Award (Outstanding Design), Minnesota Humanities Center Innovation Lab Grant, Art(ists) on the Verge 7 Fellowship, Naked Stages Fellowship, Artist Initiative Grant, Next Step Grant, Cultural Community Partnership Grant.

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Kendall Phillips is a Chicago-based director and playwright. Born and raised in Houston, they originally moved to Chicago to study Chemical EngineeringThey fell in love with the Chicago theatre scene and decided to dive right in. Currently they're studying Theatrical Directing at Columbia College Chicago, where their 10 minute play Angel Food Cake was chosen to be read during the end of year Manifest Festival Showcase. Their other 10 minute play, Emergency Use Only, was recently published in Fresh Words- An International Literary Magazine in their Contemporary One Act Plays anthology series. When not writing, they direct plays. Major directing credits include Grenadine by Neil Weschler at the University of Chicago and Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies by Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm with co-director Greg Geffrard at Columbia College Chicago. Having been an artistic intern at Collaboraction, a Chicago theatre company focused on promoting social change and accessibility to the arts, Kendall hopes to continue putting in the work to make theatre accessible and uplift marginalized voices. When not working on theatre, Kendall enjoys watching cartoons and participating in the fiber arts.

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Arit Emmanuela Etukudo is a Nigerian-American self-portrait Moving Image Installation and Performance Artist whose practice deals with the fluidity and metamorphosis of Black identity. She combines moving image, VFX, soundscapes, poetry, and sculpture to create work that transports viewers to immersive realms where they connect with the worlds created by her subconscious identities. She binds her audience through the communion of her body and the metaphysical. She uses the Black Radical Imagination as a tool to emancipate Black existence; by focusing on transformative dreaming. She is defining the term “AfroFrequency” as the root of this Black Magical Experience. That is the ontology, mysticism, history, and transcendental realities that live at the root of African existence.

She has exhibited in spaces such as New Art Exchange, UK; Art Share LA, USA; and Théâtre Paul Scarron, France. She was shortlisted for the 2020 Walter and Sondheim Art Prize, and the 2019 Left Bank Leeds Art Prize. She received the NAE Future Exhibition Prize in 2019. She currently holds a role as an Adjunct Professor at Stevenson University in Owings Mills, MD.

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The creative output of Anthony R. Green (b. 1984; composer, performer, social justice artist) includes musical and visual creations, interpretations of original works or works in the repertoire, collaborations, educational outreach, and more. Behind all of his artistic endeavors are the ideals of equality and freedom, which manifest themselves in diverse ways in a composition, a performance, a collaboration, or social justice work. Green’s compositions have been presented in over 25 countries across six continents by internationally acclaimed soloists and ensembles. He has received commissions from pianists Jason Hardink and Stephen Drury, the McCormick Percussion Group, the Fromm Foundation, Celebrity Series Boston, Chamber Music Tulsa, Access Contemporary Music, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, NOISE-BRIDGE, and other soloists, ensembles, festivals, and organizations. As a performer, Green has presented projects in 11 countries across 4 continents. He is also co-founder of Castle of our Skins: celebrating Black artistry through music. www.anthonyrgreen.com

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JNK Enzo (they/ze) is a non-binary, queer, trans-anti-disciplinary artist from Cleveland, Ohio. Ze are a trained actor, director, screenwriter, filmmaker and theater-maker working in the mediums of film, africana, painting, video, photography, digital technologies, and new media arts. Enzo holds an MFA in Performance and Interactive Media Arts, BA in Theater and BA in Film Production. Enzo's current works are on flesh, capital, sustainability, and disability in Porto, Portugal with PH-@-L3$H (flesh). Enzo’s most recently completed work was shown at Art Bazaar at Pragovka Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic. This work is through sustainability and accessibility, combating poverty, famine, and climate change in the Czech Republic building a solar powered aquaponic garden for what t**y won’t do is…aka mygreenhome.

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T. Carlis Roberts is an award-winning artist and scholar who engages sound as a tool for transformation and liberation. His professional work has straddled theatre, film, television, dance, performance art, music, and education. As a composer and sound designer, T has worked around the U.S. at theaters including Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, About Face Theatre, San Jose Repertory Theater, California Shakespeare Theatre, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. As a songwriter and performer, T appeared on the Grammy-nominated album THE LOVE by Alphabet Rockers, wrote original music for the Starz series VIDA, and toured the country in A QUEER STORY OF THE BOY BAND, a theatrical concert he co-created with QT/POC boy band The Singing Bois. T is co-founder of the Spiritual Technologies Project, a research and performance consortium that explores the metaphysical dimensions of African diasporic music, and author of multiple books and articles on music, identity, and cultural politics. T is also a noted teacher, most recently serving as Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at UC Berkeley.

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Estrellx embodies a they/them energetics and straddles the roles of choreographer, performer, curator, writer and somatic entrepreneurial brujx. They have roots in Guatemala, Belize, Angola, Portugal, Spain, and beyond. Lately, they call themselves the Cosmic Energetic Orchestrator (CEO) of The Universe of Rhizomatic Tenderness (TUoRT), which is an ecosystem they've been designing since 2019 comprised of:

Estrellx Supernova, the alias for their solo work + The Cosmic Angels, their experimental dance company + The School(s) of Tenderness, a network of (13) Hive Sites (or campuses) located near energetic Earth chakras, run by and for Black, Indigenous, Queer, Trans Creatives (BIQTC+) + Honey Pots (additional art projects that take the form of apps, restaurants, club spaces, tarot decks, and more).

TUoRT is designed to empower BIQTC+ erotically, spiritually, artistically, and entrepreneurially via pedagogical offerings that center embodied kinetics, choreographic ritual, and performative excavation.

Estrellx integrates club spaces as sites of generative dissonance and asks, "Are we celebrating or mourning or both? What do you really want and how exactly do you want it?" They implement [task as meditation, Qi Energetics, divination, and subtle Butoh energy] into their ritualistic performative language. Their performances are templates for reclaiming their agency, re-membering ancestral wisdom, and rewiring limiting beliefs in service of birthing new queer paradigms into the world where pleasure, rest, and grief are welcome to collide with one another.

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Philadelphia-based playwright Devin Randall nestles in stories of black and queer fantasia. Through Philly’s SoLow Fest and Fringe Festival, Devin premiered his plays "Lionel Questions the Universe" and "Whine & Waffles." Then in 2020, he and three playwright colleagues founded the It Gets Worse But Then... Theatre Company. Together they released two multi-media productions titled "play/paint/pass" and "FOUND." Those two projects premiered through the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Devin has also hosted a story slam and separate table read of his play "Liars Game" with the Wings of Paper Theatre; premiered his short play "Reflect" in the Untold Playfest with Curly Fish Productions; hosted a “Salon" series to help Philly writers network; performed a staged reading of "Cookies & Creamed" with the Plays & Players Theatre and PlayPenn’s The Foundry, for which he holds membership; spent a 2020/2021 Residency with the Studios of Key West; and interned for PlayPenn’s 2017 Summer Conference.

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Artemis Montague (they/them) is a composer-lyricist, top-liner, librettist, scriptwriter, director, and producer. A Black mixed-race nonbinary creator with co-occurring disabilities, they write and encourage the development of stories and music that feature people at different ages, stages, and places in life, but always with honesty and integrity. date, Montague has written 130 songs and two queer-, trans-, and Black-led musicals. “She Sings Me Home” is their flagship musical: a modern story in the African American musical tradition about young love and alliances in a mental health institution’s under-21 ward and was part of the Page to Stage Festival at the Kennedy Center. “Rhapsody In Sunflower Yellow”, a musical involving Vincent van Gogh, is being co-composed with Sydney E. Crutcher, with the book and lyrics were written in full by Artemis Montague.

They have also published online opinion pieces related to social justice and the arts on DC Metro Theatre Arts and The Sappho Project. They have a deep investment in dismantling ableism, (trans)gender bias, and racism/colorism in theatre and the performing arts, which is why they choose stories to tell that are close to their heart but also to their values of diversity, inclusion, equity, accessibility, and accountability.

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Louis DeVaughn Nelson is an interdisciplinary artist and the founder Hokum Arts started in 2006. Nelson has worked for 20 years as a performer, choreographer, producer and director for film, theater, dance and more. His works have been shown in USA, Europe, Australia and South Korea. He has studied at DeSales University, Drexel University, The New School, The Jeanne Ruddy School of Dance, The Koresh School of Dance, and is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America and Working Title Playwrights.

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My love for storytelling began at a young age as I put on plays for all my friends and family to see. Art, for me, has always been about more than creating, it’s about understanding. I aim to not only design stories and characters but to learn something from them. I believe even the most mundane story has something to say to its audience.

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I am 25 years old. I am from Mobile, Alabama born and raised but recently relocated to Durham, North Carolina in February of this year to pursue my artistry and movement work full-time. I began classical training at 17 years old and it instantly became everything to me. I missed my senior prom to perform in my first opera. And my love for the genre is still the foundation of all of my musical endeavors. I am also an instrumentalist (piano, bass guitar) a rapper, a songwriter, and a poet. My desire with my work is to liberate, to inspire, and to move people with music. We are all connected through something greater than ourselves, and I want my art to be a reminder of that.

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New York based artist Jaxin Jackson They/He is a black, queer, trans, non-binary, actor, comedian, writer and educator. Jaxin’s academic artistic training consists of an MA in Theatre Education from Hunter College where they were awarded the Lincoln Center Scholar Fellowship, and a BFA from DePaul University in Acting. Jaxin’s professional acting and comedic work spans over a decade. Jaxin feels most called to explore themes of race, class, gender, sex, sexuality and spirituality in their artwork. Jaxin is also a yoga teacher, an herbalist and a buddhist practitioner.

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x (they/ze/fae) is a TRANSdisciplinary artist who offers a conceptual and anti-technique approach to movement-driven performance. Their work leans towards the experimental, avant-garde, and anti-modern. x has shared short films, installations, and dance works in Budapest, HU; Detroit, MI; Ithaca, NY; and NYC. Selected accomplishments include: AXIS Choreo-Lab Fellow (2022), GALLIM Moving Artist Residency (2022), Bronx Cultural Visions Fund (Bronx Council on the Arts, 2021), City Artist Corps grant (2021), LiftOff Residency (New Dance Alliance, 2021); Fellowship with The Performance Project @ University Settlement (2021-2022); Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance. Residency Program (Dance/NYC, Gibney, 2021-2022). x currently teaches at Mark Morris Dance Center and performs with Heidi Latsky Dances. x’s first full length solo show is premiering August 2022 at HERE Arts Center (NYC) through HERE’s Sublet: Co-Op series.

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Alle Mims is a writer and performer based in NYC. Originally from San Diego, California; they moved to Dallas when they were 18 where they earned their BA in Drama from Texas Woman’s University. After graduation, they acted with companies such as Theatre Three, Shakespeare Dallas and Funimation, and were featured in local TV, film and commercials. They worked as an editor on the Dallas Theatre Standards and were a co-producer of the first ever Women in Theatre Festival in Dallas. They also started their own company, Altered Shakespeare, dedicated to giving BIPOC, queer and untapped talent the opportunity to perform classic theatre for new audiences. Mims is currently in their final year of Columbia University’s MFA Playwriting program (’23). They are studying playwriting, screen writing and musical theatre writing under David Henry Hwang and Lynn Nottage. Mims has had plays produced in Dallas and New York. Mims was a semifinalist for Alter Theatre Ensemble’s Decolonization Commission. Mims’ play, Pink (full-length drama), was a finalist for Roundabout Reading Series (2020), and their pilot, The Queen’s Crown (30 min comedy) was a winner in WeScreenplay Student Screenwriting Competition (2021). They are currently commissioned by The Grio for an audio play.

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KB Brookins is a writer and cultural worker from Texas. Their poems and essays are published in Academy of American Poets, Huffington Post, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. KB is the author of How To Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022) and Freedom House (Deep Vellum Publishing, 2023). They have earned fellowships from PEN America, Broadway Advocacy Coalition, and Lambda Literary among others. Currently, KB is a board member with Ground Floor Theatre and Texas PRIDE Health’s PrEP for ALL project; MFA candidate at The University of Texas at Austin; and freelance artist/consultant. Follow them online at @earthtokb.