Trans and Gender Nonconforming People have always Existed Across all cultures.
Now we tell our stories.
The Trans History Project is a revolutionary national initiative. Created by Bo Frazier, Baltimore Center Stage’s Artist-in-Residence, and led by Baltimore Center Stage and Breaking the Binary Theatre, this project aims to commission, develop, and publish 10 new plays about the real history of gender non-conformity which has existed across all cultures since the beginning of time. There will be 10 Trans and Gender Nonconforming playwrights (TGNC) commissioned by BCS who will subsequently be placed into 2-year development residencies at theaters across the country in 2 cohorts. Cohort 1 will begin Fall 2025 and Cohort 2 will begin Fall 2026.
Inaugural Cohort:
Dane Edidi Figueroa
DANE EDIDI FIGUEROA (she/her) Dubbed the Ancient Jazz Priestess of Mother Africa, Lady Dane is a Black Nigerian, Cuban, Indigenous, American Performance Artist, Author, Poet, Educator, Advocate, producer, a Helen Hayes Award winning Playwright (Klytmnestra: An Epic Slam Poem), a 2021 Helen Merrill Award Winner, Film Maker, Advocate, Dramaturg, a 3x Helen Hayes Award nominated choreographer (2016, 2018, 2023), and a Princess Grace Honoria Award winner. She is the co-founder and Co-director of the Black Trans Prayer Book. She is the curator and associate producer of Long Wharf Theatre’s Black Trans Women At The Center: An Evening of Short Plays and is an artistic ensemble member of the company as well.
A Continent of ForgetWhen a new man walks into her life, Lucy, a widow, does not know if she is ready to open herself to love again. As her culinary business blooms and her food gains notoriety, elders and ancestors alike rally around her as she learns how to let go. Steeped in Magical Realism and historical realities, A Continent of Forget is loosely based on and pays homage to the incredible life of Lucy Hicks Anderson (1886- 1954), an American Socialite, Chef and Philanthropist. A Continent of Forget will be developed in residence with Long Wharf Theatre.
(Lucy Hicks Anderson) |
Bree Lowdermilk
BREE LOWDERMILK (she/they) is an award-winning theatre writer, composer, lyricist and orchestrator. Off-Broadway: The Mad Ones, Henry and Mudge. Nat’l Tour: Ada Twist Scientist & Friends, Henry and Mudge. Regional: Justice (Arizona Theatre Co, Marin Theatre Co), Earthrise (Kennedy Center), Dr. Wonderful (Kennedy Center), ERNXST, or the Importance of Being (Concord Theatricals), and The Bad Years, an immersive house party musical. Awards: Jonathan Larson, Alan Menken, Richard Rodgers. Concerts: Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center, Lincoln Center. Residencies: MacDowell, Mercer. Albums: Kerrigan-Lowdermilk Live, Our First Mistake (#1 Singer/Songwriter chart), The Mad Ones (+30 million streams; thousands of fan videos). Founder of NewMusicalTheatre.com, board member of Applied Mechanics. Bree is a non-binary trans woman, Mama to her energetic three-year-old, and an advocate for queer voices and stories. @breelowdermilk breelowdermilk.com
Days of AweYom Kippur dinner erupts into absurdity and chaos when a daughter comes out as trans to her Jewish family. After her family insists that her identity is “too newfangled,” we hurtle backwards chronologically through history, revealing the enduring presence and erasure of trans people across centuries and borders. In the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, today at this family’s suburban home and thousands of years ago, Days of Awe invites us to look back—with humor, ritual, grief and reverence—in order to step forward. Days of Awe will be developed in residence at Round House Theatre |
Roger Q. Mason
ROGER Q. MASON (they/them) is an award-winning writer, performer, and thought leader whose work uses history as a lens to challenge systems of exclusion and uplift marginalized voices. Named “one of the most significant playwrights of the decade” by The Brooklyn Rail, Mason creates bold, genre-defying blending the poetic and the political with unapologetic power. Their theatrical work has been seen on Broadway at Circle in the Square (Circle Reading Series) and The 24 Hour Plays; Off- and Off-Off-Broadway at New Group, New York Theatre Workshop, The Flea, Dixon Place, P73, Breaking the Binary, and National Queer Theatre; and at regional and national venues including Philadelphia Theatre Company, Carnegie Hall, Center Theatre Group, McCarter Theatre, Victory Gardens, and Skylight Theatre Company. Roger’s plays are theatrical mythologies for the marginalized, especially those who are Black, Filipinx, TGNC, plus-sized, and previously erased from the classical canon. They walk in the legacy of Suzan-Lori Parks, George C. Wolfe, and Taylor Mac, blending historical excavation with avant-garde theatrical form. Mason holds degrees from Princeton University, Middlebury College, and Northwestern University. They received the Playwrights’ Center McKnight National Playwright Commission, the inaugural Dramatists Guild Foundation Catalyst Grant Award, a Lucille Lortel commission, a Kilroys List nod, and the Chuck Rowland Pioneer Award. Mason is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and an alum of the Ma-Yi’s Writing Lab, Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group the Fire This Time Festival, and Primary Stages Writing Cohort. As an educator, Roger has served as a mentor for Lambda Literary, Workshop Theatre, the Marsha P. Johnson Institute’s Starship Fellowship, the New Visions Fellowship and the Shay Foundation Fellowship. They are currently on faculty at CalArts. Instagram: @rogerq.mason
The Gladys Bentley ProjectIt is 1952 Harlem’s most (in)famous drag king — Gladys Bentley — has hung up her gender-bending/queer affirming act, married a short order cook in Los Angeles and decided to write her life story. Join Gladys as she pitches us (the audience) her new biography. We’ll travel with her to the clubs that made her, the night Prohibition ended an era in her career, the doctor’s office where she sought sexual conversion “treatment”, and—all the while—we’ll ponder, “How does a vibrant dreamer like Gladys Bentley thrive in a world that limits her dreams?” The Gladys Bentley Project will be developed in residence at Diversionary Theatre.
(Gladys Bentley) |
Yona Moises Olivares
YONA MOISES OLIVARES (they/she/he) is a GenderQueer artist based in Chicago. Proudly queer and proudly Latine, their work seeks to center voices left in the gaps. As an actor, designer, and storyteller, Yona strives to create altar for their communities by mixing different mediums in irreverent ways. Their work utilizes stream-of-consciousness poetry, journalistic interview, and camp in ways that seek to confront what is and isn’t theater. Their work brings to question what is the responsibility of the audience and storyteller – to inspire, to activate, to haunt? As a performer, they have performed at Steppenwolf, Actors Theatre of Louisville, American Players Theatre and more. Yona is represented by Gray Talent Group.
miss EMERICAShe is beauty, she is grace, she is undocumented? Congratulations and welcome to America, where you get the amazing opportunity to compete and earn your spot as a Real American Woman™! Part farce, part docu-theater, all bullsh*t, miss EMERICA, follows a group of historical Trans/GenderNB folks as they compete in a pageant that will grant only ONE participant citizenship. We the people, follow these contestants on and off stage as they seek to prove their “womanhood” and ultimately win their place in America, land of the beautiful. miss EMERICA will be developed in residence at Baltimore Center Stage.
(Juliana Martinez) |
Mirage Auto Depot
MIRAGE AUTO DEPOT is a trans-experimental incubator and performance [art] collective obsessed with the processes of queer creative community, making and unmaking, the normalization of failure, hybridity, and the feverish development of hyper contemporary live arts: theatre, dance, music, puppetry, and video. We are developing new methods of collaborating, of being together, of being raucously gay, and of inverting narrative diagonally and upside-down. Led by Raychel Ceciro, Logan Gabrielle Schulman, with devising by Alexandra Neuman and Murphy Severtson, we are friends and lovers and idiots paving our own road.
LES BI(T)CHESLES BI(T)CHES is a trans-historical experiment spiraling around the simultaneous and divergent lives and creative practices of gender-nonconforming lesbian artists Claude Cahun and Romaine Brooks amidst the rising fascism of early 20th century Europe. Set against the backdrop of Parisian artist salons, LES BI(T)CHES examines queer community, resistance, and fracture in the face of oppression and splintering alliances and values. Adapted from the early 20th century ballet Les Biches choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska, and blending historical fiction with archival text, artworks, and speculative encounters, LES BI(T)CHES holds a warbled mirror to our present moment, searching through the detritus of the past to understand what holds queer communities together—and what divides us. LES BI(T)CHES will be developed in residence at Rattlestick Theater.
(Claude Cahun) |
Cohort One Finalists:
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ABOUT TRANS HISTORY PROJECT
MISSION:
- Tell the history of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming people across all cultures who have existed since the beginning of time
- Commission and pay 10 TGNC playwrights/creators/writers
- Create a cohort of theaters to develop and program TGNC stories in their seasons
- We hope to publish a TGNC canon/anthology of the 10 plays
- Enable Regional Theaters to engage, uplift and empower their local TGNC Communities
SUMMARY:
TGNC people have existed since the beginning of time across all cultures, yet we never learned this in our history classes. In an effort to teach the world our TGNC history and build a “Trans Canon,” Baltimore Center Stage is partnering with other forward-thinking theatrical institutions across the country to commission, workshop (and hopefully publish and produce) 10 new plays by 10 TGNC writers of differing cultures, allowing them to tell stories of TGNC folks from history/folklore and how it relates to the aggressive legislative attacks seeking to “eradicate” our community from society. Cohort 1 will begin a 2-year residency at a major theatre in the 2025/26 season with Cohort 2 beginning the following 2026/27 season. Starting in 2026, the writers, dramaturgs and artists will come together for an Annual Summer Convening hosted by Baltimore Center Stage.
Each Selected project will receive:
- $10,000 Commission Fee (per project)
- Dramaturgical/Research Support
- A 2-year residency at a theatre that will include:
- 1 Reading in the 2025/26 Season
- 1 Workshop in the 2026/27 Season
- Travel/Housing to our Annual Summer Convening beginning Summer 2026
- Regular Share-Out/Support Zoom Meetings with fellow cohort members throughout 2-year residency
Cohort One Residencies:
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SUBMISSIONS FOR COHORT 1 ARE NOW CLOSED.
Applications for Cohort 2 will begin in Late 2025/Early 2026.
If you have any questions reach out to Creator/Program Director Bo Frazier at transhistoryproject@centerstage.org
TEAM:
Bo Frazier – Creator & Program Director
BO FRAZIER (they/them) is a two-time Jeff Award-nominated theater director. As a trans femme, non-binary, queer and neurodivergent artist, they are interested in new work that tells traditionally excluded narratives in extremely imaginative ways.
DIRECTING/CHOREOGRAPHY: The all-trans production of tick, tick…BOOM! featured in American Theatre Magazine (Jeff Award Noms – Best Director and Best Musical), Botticelli in the Fire by Jordan Tannahill (Jeff Award Noms – Best Director & Best Production) Hit the Wall by Ike Holter, Men on Boats by Jaclyn Backhaus, Love & Information by Caryl Churchill, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Simon Stephens, Bright Star the musical as well as Associate Directing the London premiere of bare: a rock opera. Previously based in Chicago, NYC and London, Bo has worked with companies such as The National Theatre (UK), Birmingham Rep (UK), Greenwich Theatre (UK), Goodman Theatre, NAMT, AMTP, Signature Theatre (NYC), Dixon Place, Rutgers University’s MFA/BFA Acting Program, Theatre167, Heartbeat Opera, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Sideshow Theatre, Rivendell Theatre, Theatre Cedar Rapids, Riverside Theatre and London Theatre Workshop (UK) which they co-founded. In 2022, they were one of the 9 remaining staff members fighting for Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater to stay alive.
TRAINING: MFA in Directing, University of Iowa
MEMBER: SDC Associate and Ring of Keys.
FINALIST: Princess Grace Award and SDC Barbara Whitman Award.
Represented by Bret Adams Ltd.
www.bofrazier.com
BREAKING THE BINARY THEATRE
Breaking the Binary Theatre is an Obie Award-winning new work development and community building hub wherein transgender, non-binary, and Two-Spirit+ (TNB2S+*) artists come together to reclaim our artistic license and liberty through a number of initiatives, including the yearly all-TNB2S+ Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival each October. Founded and led by George Strus (they/them), since Breaking the Binary Theatre’s launch in July 2022, the organization has paid out over $650,000 to over 500 TNB2S+ artists. www.btb-nyc.com
Major Support Provided by:
We are still Fundraising for this Major Project!
If you would like to support this important initiative contact BCS Director of Development Emanuel Figueroa at EFigueroa@centerstage.org or donate online below: