Shameless Promotion: Fringes-Margins-Borders LGBT show at Highways

OK, I'm going to post the press release, but I want you to know that I personally stand behind this show and proudly, vociferously encourage you to attend. It's a great collection of artists, and I have seen performances by Scott Turner Schofield, Sean Dorsey, and Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa (aka Devil Bunny in Bondage); they are charismatic, intelligent performers who will make this show truly fantastic. If you don't believe me, Schofield and Otálvaro-Hormillosa have great video clips on their websites.

They're even offering tickets at a “pay what you can price” if you make reservations by Friday, February 27 by calling the reservation line – 310-315-1459 and saying “pay what you can.” So hurry and reserve your tickets now before they sell out!

Highways Performance Space Presents
Fringes-Margins-Borders, a Radical New Works Performance Project Designed to Initiate Community Across Artificially and Socially Constructed Identity Divides
Friday and Saturday, March 6 + 7, 2009 at 8:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 3:00 p.m.
Highways Performance Space
at the 18th Street Arts Center
1651 18th Street; Santa Monica, CA 90404

Highways Performance Space Presents the Los Angeles leg of a four-city tour of Fringes-Margins-Borders, an exchange of Queer Artists from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. The show will feature LA artists Deadlee, Ian MacKinnon, Saleem, Scott Turner Schofield and 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. Deadlee quickly earned a position as a key player in music's latest underground movement, gay rap/hip hop. His involvement in the first ever regional tour of GLBT hip hop artists sparked mentions in the press from the New York Daily News, Rolling Stone, Wired Magazine, XXL Magazine, The Advocate, L.A. Weekly, Philadelphia Gay News, Urb, Instinct, and Variety. He was interviewed not once but twice by CNN regarding homophobia and hip hop and the launch of the HomoRevolution Tour 2007. He was also one of the 18 gay hip hop artists featured in the landmark documentary film on gays in hip hop called Pick up the Mic which was picked up by the LOGO network after making the festival circuit. He has performed in several movies including Vengeance and Dead Men Walking, and just completed his first starring role as “Lazy” in the just released film Hoochie Mamma Drama.

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. MacKinnon appeared in the premier episode of the TV show, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and in the short film, "Heart: A Karaoke Fantasia" (Outfest). MacKinnon's musical performance collective The Discount Cruise to Hell was named "#1 Best Indescribable Artist in LA" in Frontiers magazine and "Most Outrageous" at UCLA's 2006 Carnival at The Fowler Museum.

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.” Also equipped with a masters in business administration from Colorado State University, he manages and runs his own events promotion company "club La Zeez " which promotes world music and Mediterranean beats.

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. His performance work spreads empathy and education about gender identity and sexual orientation with shows that are as hilarious as they are touching, thought provoking, and beautifully performed. Almost entirely grassroots supported and the recipient of major mainstream honors, Schofield's is a simple complexity: one that must be engaged to be fully understood.

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. Dorsey has been awarded two Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and the Goldie Award for Performance. He was recently named Best Dance/Performance Company by the SF Weekly, and has also been named one of the Top Ten in Bay Area dance by both the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the Bay Area Reporter. BalletTanz, Europe’s leading dance magazine, named Dorsey one of the international dance scene’s most promising choreographers. Dorsey is the subject of a recent PBS ‘Spark’ episode. Dorsey is also founder and Artistic Director of Fresh Meat Productions, the nation’s first organization that creates and presents year-round transgender arts programs. Fresh Meat’s programs include the outrageously popular Fresh Meat Festival of transgender and queer performance, Sean Dorsey Dance, visual arts exhibitions and co-presenting the annual Tranny Fest film festival.

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. Thisway/Thatway has performed with the National Queer Arts Festival, SF Fringe Festival, Climate Theater, Counterpulse, Voice Factory, Garage Artspace, Femme Conference, Toronto Pride, Great Big,and International Drag King Extravaganza. Thisway/Thatway is currently preparing Laye(red), a show commissioned through the Queer Cultural Center set to debut in the 2009 NQAF. When not on stage, they can be seen as "smarty-pants student" at Mills College pursuing a bachelor's degree in Ethnic Studies. Cooper will continue in the Performance Studies doctoral program at UC Davis this fall.

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." She has worked with non-profit arts organizations and HIV prevention service agencies such as the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center, Proyecto ContraSIDA Por Vida, New Langton Arts, Galería de la Raza, the Queer Cultural Center, Asian American Theater Company and the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center. She has worked on various artistic collaborations under the mentorship and direction of performing artists such as Pearl Ubungen, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Elia Arce and Afia Walking Tree. Her work in performance, video and writing has been presented nationally and internationally. She has received grants from the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art (2000-2001), the San Francisco Art Commission Cultural Equity Grants Program, the Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize and the Zellerbach Family Fund.

Highways Performance Space presents the Los Angeles dates of the tour Friday + Saturday, March 6 + 7 at 8:30pm and Sunday, March 8 at 3:00pm.

“I find that in our LGBTQ community we tend to isolate from the other,” Highways’ artistic director Leo Garcia says. “We find comfort in being with those who are like us. Fringes-Margins-Borders is a new kind of Highways’ performing arts program designed to initiate a creative community-building public dialogue. It’s our ongoing effort to promote understanding and mutual respect across artificially and socially constructed identity divides. The production’s artistic goal is to express and reflect California’s new multicultural social paradigm by commissioning 8 individual artists to create coherent, intelligent and insightful narratives rooted in their observations, complaints, experiences and discoveries. We’re touring four cities with this project, San Francisco, L.A., Claremont and San Diego. We couldn’t do it without the support of the Irvine Foundation and the National Performance Network.”

Fringes-Margins-Borders reflects the contradictory opinions and values generated by California’s profound demographic changes of the past forty years. The artists attempt to capture this complex moment in California’s history, when the state’s social fabric and its cultural landscape are being transformed into something entirely different than they were before the Millennium. Because people of color comprise the majority of California’s population and because the state’s LGBT residents are equally distributed across all demographic groups, the art being created on what were formerly regarded as California’s “margins” is now moving to center stage.

Highways Performance Space is in its 20th year as Southern California’s boldest center for new performance, promoting the development of contemporary, socially involved artists and art forms from diverse local, national and international communities. Artistic Director Leo Garcia continues to affirm Highways mission of developing and presenting innovative performance. For more information, photos or interviews, please contact Leo Garcia, Artistic Director @ 310-453-1755.

The project is sponsored in part by the James Irvine Foundation and is a National Performance Network Creation Fund Project.