EMERGENYC

About the Faculty

Lead Faculty, George Emilio Sánchez

George Emilio Sánchez is the Chairperson of the Department of Performing and Creative Arts at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). He teaches undergraduate courses in the Drama program and graduate courses for the Education Department. He has directed five original student productions for the PCA and continues to work with students and classes with the goal of creating original theater/ performance works. He continues to work as a teaching artist outside of the college demonstrating how the arts can be utilized in education across disciplines. Most recently he was the resident teaching artist for the Bronx Museum of the Arts for their Action Lab Theater. In this capacity he worked with teachers and artists teaching them Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed techniques. As a result of his work in education he was the recipient of the Brooklyn Arts Exchange 2006 Arts Educator Award. His most recent performance work with collaborator Patricia Hoffbauer, The Architecture of Seeing-REMIX, was presented at La MaMa in 2006. In 2004 they premiered Milagro at Dance Theater Workshop. A year earlier Hoc Est Corpus/This Is A Body premiered at Symphony Space in April 2003. His third solo performance ROSA premiered at Dixon Place in 2002. His first solo performance, Chief Half-Breed in the Land of In-Between, was commissioned and premiered at Dance Theater Workshop and was also part of Mo’ Madness curated by George C. Wolfe at The Public Theater. His second solo performance piece, LATINDIO also premiered in New York City and both pieces have since been performed in over 20 states as well as in Puerto Rico and Peru. He has collaborated with Brazilian choreographer Patricia Hoffbauer on numerous pieces. Among those are A Night in La Mezcla and The Architecture of Seeing. As an artistic associate under JoAnne Akalaitis he created the Latino Lab at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater. He has garnered two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships for Performance Art/Emergent Forms and was a Fulbright Scholar to Peru in 1994.

Invited Artists

Susana Cook

Susana Cook, born in Argentina, is a New York based playwright, director and performer who has been producing original work for over 20 years. Her work has been presented in numerous performance spaces in New York City, including Dixon Place, PS. 122, W.O.W Cafe Theater, Ubu Rep, Theater for the New City, The Puffin Room and The Kitchen. She has also performed internationally in Spain, France, India, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Canada and at several colleges and universities around the country. Some of her latest shows are include : Homeland Insecurities, The idiot King, The Values Horror Show, 100 Years of Attitude, Dykenstein, Hamletango, Prince of Butches, Gross National Product, Hot Tamale, Conga Guerrilla Forest, The Fraud, Butch Fashion Show in the Femme Auto Body Shop, Rats and Tango Lesbiango She is the recipient of several fellowships and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Arts International, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, The Franklin Furnace Archives, The Puffin Foundation and INTAR. www.susanacook.com

Avram Finkelstein

Avram Finkelstein is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn. His work has shown at The Whitney Museum, The Cooper Hewitt Museum, Kunsthalle Wien and Exit Art and is in the permanent collections of MoMA, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum, The New Museum, The Smithsonian, The Brooklyn Museum and The Victoria and Albert Museum. Finkelstein is a founding member of the Silence=Death Collective and the art collective, Gran Fury, with whom he collaborated on public art projects for international institutions including The Whitney, ArtForum, MOCA LA, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Creative Time, and The Public Art Fund. The collective had its first retrospective at 80 WSE in 2012, and has work in the permanent collections of The Whitney, MoMA, The New Museum and The New York Public Library. Finkelstein has been asked to speak about art, political activism, LGBTQ politics, and cultural production, the American Left, and art and intellectual property by Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Fordham, RISD, MassArt, The School of Visual Arts, CUNY, Concordia University, UMASS and by the Arts and Labor Working Group of Occupy Wall Street. He has been interviewed by The New York Times, Frieze, Artforum, Bomb and Interview, produced art and culture features for Italian Vogue, Dazed and Confused, and Visionaire, and written about art and culture for Artwrit, Van, Dune, NY Arts Magazine and the New York Public Library. He has created public awareness campaigns for AmFAR, The AIDS Policy Project, The Campaign To End AIDS, ACT UP, POZ, United Against AIDS, and ACRIA.

Dan Fishback

Dan Fishback has been writing and performing in New York City since 2003. His play “The Material World” was called “one of the best downtown musicals in years” by Time Out New York (Top Ten of 2012). Major works also include “thirtynothing (2011) and "You Will Experience Silence (2012), all directed by Stephen Brackett at Dixon Place. Other work has been performed at the New Museum, Joe’s Pub, P.S. 122 and BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange. He has enjoyed residencies at Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania (2012-2013), the Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics (2012), BAX (2010-2012), Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. He has received grants from the Franklin Furnace Fund (2010) and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (2007-2009). Also a performing songwriter, Fishback got his start in the East Village’s anti-folk scene. His band, Cheese On Bread, has toured Europe and North America in support of their two full-length albums. As a solo artist, Fishback has released several recordings, including “Sweet Chastity” (2005, produced by César Alvarez of The Lisps), and his latest The Mammal Years (2012, produced by Casey Holford). Fishback is currently writing a book about AIDS and the gay generation gap based on his solo show "thirtynothing." He is also the director of the Helix Queer Performance Network, a collaboration between the Hemispheric Institute, BAX and La MaMa E.T.C. 

www.danfishback.com

Fulana

Fulana is a video collective in that emerged as the vision-fusion of four New York-based Latina artists joined by a love of video and performance, a critical gaze, a bilingual sense of humor and —most of all— a shared desire to create art within a collaborative onda. So we put our Spanglish brains together, drank some coffee, and founded Fulana in 2000. Through parody and satire, we explore themes that are relevant to Latino cultures in the U.S., delving into the nuances that bind our experiences, experimenting with strategies to make visible what we're so often made to read between the lines. Our work, whose aesthetic ranges from cable-access kitsch to Telemundo tinsel, consists mainly of mock television commercials, music videos and print advertisements. Focusing on popular culture, we respond to the ways ideologies and identities are marketed to us, sold to us—and how we sell ourselves—through the mass media. www.fulana.org

Ebony Noelle Golden

Houston, TX native, Ebony Noelle Golden, is a public scholar, performance artist and director of Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative.  She also serves as the artistic director of Body Ecology Performance Ensemble. BDAC specializes in creative workshops, curriculum development, cultural and performance art design for progressive social change. Working nation-wide, her work spans creative, academic and community organizing spheres.  Ebony believes that liberation is a precarious and awesomely terrifying pursuit; yet she is wholly dedicated to activating art, culture and education for liberation and transformation of individuals and communities.  ​Golden’s approach to community arts and cultural design is steeped in the practices of black women, activism, experimental performance and secular/spirituality that honors and affirms individuals and communities working  to be self-actualized, self-determined, creative and liberated. Recognized as a Woman Warrior by Casa Atabex Ache and a Black Girl Geek in Arts & Culture by Lived Unchained, Ebony’s work has been supported by a variety of organizations including:  New York University, Alternate Roots, We Shall Overcome Fund, Fund for Southern Communities, Soul Mountain Poetry Center, The Highlander Center for Research and Education, Cave Canem Foundation, North Carolina Humanities Council, State of the Nation and Atlantic Center for the Arts.​ Currently Golden is conjuring RingShout for Reproductive Justice (cultural arts campaign), Weaving Revolution: A Tool Kit for Cultural Organizers, Black Fantastic: New Media Exhibit, The Body Ecology: Performing Cultural Arts Direct Action (tool kit) and "again, the watercarriers”, a book of poems.​

Patricia Hoffbauer

Pat Hoffbauer is a dance artist and educator. She teaches at Hunter College and Princeton and performs with Yvonne Rainer. Her work Para-dice (stage 1) was presented by Danspace Project as part of Platform and stage 2 is on its way!

Daniel Alexander Jones

Daniel Alexander Jones makes live art. An award-winning performer, writer and director, American Theatre Magazine named him "one of fifteen artists whose work will be transforming American stages for decades to come." His unconventional body of work includes plays (Bel Canto, Earthbirths, Phoenix Fabrik), performance pieces (Blood:Shock:Boogie, The Book of Daniel, Cab and Lena) and devised work (Qualities of Light, Clayangels). In collaboration with composer Bobby Halvorson, Daniel, as his "altar-ego" Jomama Jones (called "a true theatrical original" by Backstage Magazine), has released the CDs Lone Starand Radiate; has performed in concert at Joe's Pub and Symphony Space; and sold out a theatrical run of the critically acclaimed show Radiate, directed by Kym Moore at Soho Rep. Daniel holds a degree in Africana Studies from Vassar College and a graduate degree in Theatre from Brown University.  He is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Fordham University and previously taught in the MFA programs at the University of Texas at Austin and Goddard College.  Daniel is a Creative Capital grantee, a MAP Fund grantee, and a Howard Foundation Fellowship recipient.  He is an alumnus of New Dramatists, a Core Member of the Playwrights' Center, a national company member of Pillsbury House Theatre and a newly appointed Fellow at the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women & Gender in the Arts & Media at Columbia College, Chicago. Daniel Alexander Jones received the prestigious Alpert Award in the Arts for Theatre in 2006 in recognition of his body of work.danielalexanderjones.typepad.com/about.html

Debra Levine

Debra Levine is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at New York University and is an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Undergraduate Drama at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and The Hemispheric Institute for Politics and Performance. Debra received her doctorate in 2012 from New York University’s Department of Performance Studies where she was a recipient of the J. Ndukaku Amankulor Award for Academic Excellence and a two time NEH Vectors Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy (2010, 2011). Debra’s work explores the intersection between performance, politics and new media/digital humanities in the 20th and 21st century through the lens of feminist and queer theory, disability studies, and visual studies. deblevine.blogspot.com

Paloma McGregor

Paloma McGregor is a choreographer, writer and organizer living in Harlem. Her performance work has been presented throughout New York, including at The Kitchen, Harlem Stage, EXIT Art, SummerStages, Brecht Forum, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Dixon Place, Fordham University and Bronx Academy of Art and Dance, as well as at UCLA, U.C. Berkeley, Yale University, The Dance Place in Washington, DC, Cleveland Public Theatre and the McKenna Museum in New Orleans. She has collaborated with directors Patricia McGregor, Niegel Smith and Emily Mendelsohn, multidisciplinary artists Mendi+Keith Obadike and LaTasha Nevada Diggs and musician Greg Tate.

Paloma is co-founder of Angela's Pulse, along with her director-sister, Patricia McGregor. Angela’s Pulse devises collaborative performance work; collaborates with diverse communities, including artists, activists, educators, students, seniors and scientists; and is dedicated to building community and illuminating undertold stories. Their first evening-length work, Blood Dazzler, was based on poetry by Patricia Smith and premiered in a sold-out run at Harlem Stage in 2010. Paloma is currently developing Building a Better Fishtrap, a performance project that explores water, memory and home, as well as examines what we carry with us, what we leave behind and what we reclaim.

Jennifer Miller/ Circus Amok

Jennifer Miller is a playwright, performer and the director and founder of Circus Amok.  She  has been working with alternative circus forms, theater, and dance, and for over twenty years. She is the recipient of the 2008 Ethyl Eichelberger Award.  Her work with Circus Amok was awarded a “Bessie” (a New York Dance and Performance Award) in 1995 and an OBIE in 2000.  Circus Amok is the subject of a French documentary film, “Un Cirque a New York” 2002 and Brazilian documentary, “Juggling Politics” 2004. As a dancer she has performed with Cathy Weis, Jeff Weis, Jenny Monson, John Jasperse,  Johanna Boyce, Doug Elkins,  and They Won’t Shut-up among others.    She had a seven year stint at Coney Island Sideshow by the Seashore.   She toured her solo shows Morphadyke and Free Toasters Everyday here and abroad.  She is the author of  Cracked Ice or The Jewels of the Forbidden Skates and The Golden Racket. She is an associate professor of performance at Pratt Institute.

Tavia Nyong’o

Tavia Nyong’o teaches the aesthetic and expressive cultures of the African diaspora at New York University, with particular attention to gender and sexuality. His first book was The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance and the Ruses of Memory (2009). He is at work on a longer project on fabulation and a shorter, collaborative project on wildness. He is also a co-editor of the journal Social Text.

Jeca Rodríguez-Colón

Jeca Rodríguez-Colón is a Puerto Rican dancer and choreographer, she began her contemporary dance training with Petra Bravo and Viveca Vázquez. In 2002 moved to New York City where she completed her B.A. at Hunter College with a double major in Dance and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Jeca is the recipient of Hunter College’s 2005 Choreography Departmental Award. Jeca is pursuing her MFA in Creative Practices at Transart Institute where she began to explore video and objects as a medium. After participating in the EMERGENYC 2013 program at the Hemispheric Institute she began to explore performance arts and public interventions. Her work is connected to different aspects of the maternal kinesthetic language in space and the politics that surrounds it. Her latest work includes a street performance “Mother’s Milk is Free”, an installation performance “I ____ Creatures” and object based pieces “Because… I” and “Because… II”.  jecarodriguezcolon.carbonmade.com

Peggy Shaw (*cannot teach in 2014 due to injury)

Peggy Shaw is an independent performance artist, painter and poet who believes in new images, and rejects old ideas. She challenges established practices in theatre, prisons, gender, relationships and humor. Her work is firmly rooted in a queer feminist perspective, with an unceasing quest for global equality in writing, spoken word and performance. With Lois Weaver and Deb Margolin, she co-founded the Split Britches Company in 1981.

Kirya Traber

Kirya Traber is a nationally awarded writer, performing artist, and educator. She is the recipient of the California Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts,Robert Redford's Sundance foundation award for Environmental Activism in the Arts from,an Honorable Mention in Poetry from the 2011 Astrea Lesbian Writers Fund, and Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s Certificate of Recognition. She is a two time judge for the LAMDA Literary awards in LGBT Drama, and an alumnus of the 2010 VONA/Voices retreat for writers of color, and the 2012 EmergeNYC intensive at the Hemispheric Institute. Kirya has toured the United States and Canada as a poet and solo performance artist, and has featured at the Living Word Festival at Yerba Beuna Center for the arts in the SF Bay Area, San Francisco's National Queer Arts Festival, and at La Mama's Experimental Theater Club, to name a few. Her work can be found in the pages of, Other Tongues, an anthology by Inana Press, and in her 2009 chap book, black chick. She has worked as an arts educator with youth and adults in both school and community based settings, and within the juvenile justice system. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Acting at the New School for Drama.

Ed Woodham

Ed Woodham is the Founder and Director of Art in Odd Places (AiOP), which presents visual and performance art in unexpected public spaces. AiOP also produces an annual festival along 14th Street in Manhattan, NYC from Avenue C to the Hudson River each October. Art in Odd Places aims to stretch the boundaries of communication in the public realm by presenting artworks in all disciplines outside the confines of traditional public space regulations. AiOP reminds us that public spaces function as the epicenter for diverse social interactions and the unfettered exchange of ideas. Art in Odd Places (AiOP) began as an action by a group of artists led by Ed Woodham to encourage local participation in the Cultural Olympiad of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. In 2005, after moving back to New York City, he re imagined it as a response to the dwindling of public space and personal civil liberties - first in the Lower East Side and East Village, and since 2008, on 14th Street in Manhattan. AiOP has always been a grassroots project fueled by the goodwill and inventiveness of its participants. www.artinoddplaces.org

 Yes Lab 

The Yes Lab is a series of brainstorms and trainings to help activist groups carry out media-garnering creative actions, focused on their own campaign goals. It's a way for social justice organizations to take advantage of all that the Yes Men have learned–not only about our own ways of doing things, but those we've come in contact with over the decade-and-a-half that we've been doing this sort of thing. 

Mary Notari is a multidisciplinary theater artist based in Brooklyn. As an actor, singer, and puppeteer, she has performed in many independent theater productions in NYC and beyond. She is an alum of Hemi’s emerging artists program, EMERGENYC. With the Yes Lab, she works with activists, artists, and organizations to make creative direct actions.