Public Service Announcement: Schofield and Devil Bunny Make the Rounds.

From time to time I get contacted by the great programmers of queer performance here and around Los Angeles asking if I could get the word out about upcoming projects and events. So this week, in addition to my upcoming blogging about live shows I've caught in the last six days, you will be seeing posts related to events happening that maybe you should go check out. I'm checking them out, maybe I'll see you there.

Highways is doing a big FROM THE MARGINS event/artist exchange with folks from Los Angeles and San Francisco. The weekend features a milieu of identities from the queer spectrum in what I imagine is an earnest attempt at cross-pollinating audiences and minds. If you're still bleeding for queer theory and/or want to break out and experience some actual praxis then head over to FROM THE MARGINS and enjoy your outsider street cred or for those who used to be soccer moms you can get some here.



I'm really excited to see Scott Turner Schofield, newly moved to the great metropolis. I know homeboy is probably still adjusting to the big city lights and taco trucks and probably missing sugar in his tea and hoping Nickelodeon will call his ass back one of these days. But in the meantime he's going to represent Los Angeles in this Highways/Queer Cultural Center artist exchange. I'm not sure what he'll be presenting, but Turner's milkshake always brings out the cutest questioning corn-fed college-bound bois and femmes to his yard. If you haven't seen this charmer in action then save your pennies and get to Highways and check his shit out.

Same with Gigi Otalvaro Hormillosa. She is so way overdue for a performance in Los Angeles it's not even funny. Gigi was one of the first artists Tongues promoted back in that identity-driven moment. She's the devil bunny and has been nesting in her hellhole for far too long methinks but I'm happy she's making the trek down. For all you vagina-come-latelies Gigi's work is a must for critical consumption. Gigi does really heady, complicated post-identitarian projects these days, gay marriage cheer routines that are infused with clever gestures to race and class, and making general creepy performance art that probably triggers many a sensitive over-educated queer woman of color. Personally, I can't wait to get triggered. I've been feeling awfully comfortable these days and I could use a good disturbance to shake me out of my smug zombie state.

Check out the info and rest of the performer bios below:

Highways Presents
8 LGBTQ Performers in From the Margins, a Radical New Works

+++Friday and Saturday, March 6 + 7, 2009 at 8:30 p.m.
+++Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 3:00 p.m.


Highways Presents the Los Angeles presentation of a four-city tour of Fringes-Margins-Borders featuring L.A.’s Queer Exchange: Deadlee, Ian MacKinnon, Saleem, and guest artist Scott Turner Schofield + San Francisco Artists: Stephanie Cooper, Sean Dorsey Dance, and Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa.

Fringes-Margins-Borders is a multidisciplinary performance project of new works drawn from personal narratives designed to initiate community across artificially and socially constructed identity divides. For the tour, Highways is partnering with San Francisco’s Queer Cultural Center and San Diego’s Sushi Performance and Visual Art.

L.A. Artists:
Deadlee is a wordsmith, actor, activist, and entrepreneur. Gay.com's Josh Tager said: "Like many of his rap peers, Deadlee's albums are intense, writhing outbursts of anger. The notable distinction here is that when Deadlee bashes, he's bashing back. He is a vigilante for social justice, committed to confronting homophobia wherever he sees it."

Ian MacKinnon is a gay centered performance artist and curator of queer theater events in Los Angeles. He was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for "Best Off Off Broadway Performance" for his piece, SPANKED! at the New York International Fringe Festival, which he also toured to The New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. Locally he has performed all over: Highways Performance Space, The Hammer Museum, The Electric Lodge, The Cavern Club, The Coast Playhouse, Theater Theatre, El Cid, Dragonfly, The Celebration Theatre, The Davidson/Valentini and The Renberg Theatre at the Gay and Lesbian Center.

Saleem is an award wining Middle Eastern performance artist, best known for his GLAAD award wining play Salam Shalom A Tale Of Passion, a love story between an Arab man and a Jewish man based on his own biography, the work is being developed as a film. As a dancer, he has developed his own dancing style, which incorporates Middle Eastern dance, gypsy movements, flamenco, and jazz. This mélange produces what he terms “free style belly dancing.”

Scott Turner Schofield is a man who was a woman, a lesbian turned straight guy who is often called a fag. Since 2001, Schofield's three major works, Underground Transit, Debutante Balls, and Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps - as well as readings from his book, Two Truths and a Lie - have entertained feminists and fratboys, season subscribers and people who “don't like theater” in big cities and small towns across the US.

San Francisco Artists:
Sean Dorsey is an award-winning San Francisco-based choreographer and dancer. Recognized as the nation’s first out transgender modern dance choreographer, Dorsey has blazed a new trail for transgender and queer bodies and stories onstage.

The consummate candy-fag, Thisway/Thatway (aka Stephanie Cooper) is an intermedia performance artist who enjoys the messy collision of glitter and theory. They launched into performance with the finest of Washington, DC's drag king and burlesque scene before wandering to the Bay area. The child of Black-Panamanian immigrants, their work explores the perils and possibilities of interstitial spaces through voice, video, and movement.

Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, also known as the Devil Bunny in Bondage, is a San Francisco based interdisciplinary performance artist, video artist, cultural activist, curator and percussionist of Filipino and Colombian descent. She is originally from Miami, Florida and received her B.A. from Brown University where she created an independent concentration entitled "Hybridity and Performance."


Highways Performance Space
at the 18th Street Arts Center
1651 18th Street; Santa Monica, CA 90404

Tickets are $20 general admission and $15 for members/students/seniors.
Buy your tickets online @ www.highwaysperformance.org.
Call 310-315-1459 for show information and to reserve

PS - IF YOU READ THIS AND WANT TO GO THEN MENTION RAQUEFELLA TO GET A PAY WHAT YOU CAN DISCOUNT AT HIGHWAYS. ORALE, AND YOU THOUGHT THIS WAS A STRICTLY NARCISSISTIC PROJECT...