La MaMa’s Squirts: Generations of Queer Performance

Posted on November 26, 2020 by LaAdmin

December 18 - December 19, 2020

Friday and Saturday at 8PM EST

Free Admission; Suggested Donation

Each year, La MaMa’s Squirts gathers the most exciting voices from New York City’s queer performance world, across the generations. In this year's live-streaming Squirts event, emerging artist Alexander Paris curates Reflections 2020--a weekend of queer introspection at a moment of global precarity.

On the first evening--Friday, December 18th--Paris will present reflections from a wildly diverse mix of 20 queer artists of multiple generations, genres and aesthetics, including Ty Defoe, K8 Hardy, Jeremy O. Harris, Lorelei Ramirez and Pamela Sneed. Each of them will reflect upon who they are at this historical crossroads, as global fascism attempts to consolidate its grasp, as neoliberalism attempts to reclaim its dominance and as domestic movements for liberation are reshaping the cultural landscape.

The following night will reflect upon those reflections, as Paris engages Guggenheim Award-winning performing artist Daniel Alexander Jones in an evening-length, hybrid dialogue/performance about what it means to look within when the outside world brings so much chaos to our doorsteps.

To watch the full performances, become a supporter on Patreon!

Featuring Performances By:

Basit is a non-binary Brooklyn based Performance Artist, musician, and Actor. Basit made their television debut in MTV’s first queer dating show Are You The One. Basit is a co-founder of Legacy: A Black Queer Production Collective LLC

Starr Busby (she/they) is an artist. You may have seen Starr playing solo shows or fronting Brooklyn-based band People’s Champs. Starr has also supported artists such as The Gorillaz, Esperanza Spalding, X Ambassadors, Kimbra, and Alice Smith. Selected appearances include: Moby Dick (American Repertory Theatre; Starbuck); Octet (Signature Theatre; Paula - Drama Desk Award Winner); Where Love Lies Fallow (The Shed; Nia 1); La Mama Cantata (La Mama ETC, La Mama Umbria, and all tours and workshops); Apollo Cafe Live: Soul Cypher; Mikrokosmos (Steirischer Herbst, Graz and Nottingham Contemporary). Starr also enjoys working as an arts facilitator and educator through Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project and Long Island University. Their music is available via Bandcamp.

Anne Cuntyham was born in a small town called the Upper West Side. Cuntyham is not a man or a woman. When the nurse held their giggling jello cup body she gladly exclaimed, “Congratulations, it’s a girl.” Cuntyham then cricked their baby neck and screamed, “YA WANNA MAKE A BET, BARBARA?” Speaking of their parents, their mother is John Waters and their father is a Bichon Frise. They are not afraid of the world right now. For it is finally the time of monsters.

Ena Da is a Brooklyn based cinematographer, writer, comedian, and actor. Originally from Ghana, Ena studied Languages and Theater Performance at the University of Delaware. Upon graduating, Ena moved to Brooklyn, NY to pursue her artistic dreams. Ena would like to thank her friend and family for their constant support.

Ty Defoe (Giizhig), Oneida and Ojibwe Nations, An interdisciplinary artist, actor/writer, and Grammy Award winner. Hair for days. Indigi-Queer. Scorpio. Trans Lab Fellow. Author and creator of works. allmyrelations.earth, tydefoe.com @tydefoe

Dan Fishback is a playwright and performing songwriter. Fishback's plays include "The Material World" ("Top Ten Plays of 2012" - Time Out New York) and "You Will Experience Silence" ("sassier and more fun than 'Angels in America' - The Village Voice). Fishback has released several albums, both solo and with his band Cheese On Bread. As founding director of the Helix Queer Performance Network, Fishback created La MaMa Experimental Theatre's annual series "La MaMa's Squirts: Generations of Queer Performance." He is developing a new musical, "Rubble Rubble," which was the focus of public controversy in 2017, when a Zionist institution canceled the play’s first reading in response to Fishback’s support for Palestinian human rights. Fishback has had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for 12 years.

K8 Hardy is a punk rock artist who works across a motley array of mediums, including video, photography, painting, and sculpture. Through her art practice, she unwittingly becomes a brand, intentionally exploiting persona and pop culture. Long before the ubiquity of the selfie, Hardy was experimenting in documenting her looks and various fictional selves. Her work takes us to the edge of “good taste” and makes us question those parameters. Hardy came up through the Riot Grrrl scene. She has participated avidly in collaborations, activism, and collectives, like W.A.G.E. and LTTR. Her work is in the collection of The MoMA, The Guggenheim, and Whitney Museum of American Art. She has exhibited at such notable institutions as The Tate Modern, Kunsthaus Zurich, Artists Space, PS1, SFMOMA, Dallas Contemporary. amongst others.

Jeremy O. Harris is the playwright and creator of the most Tony nominated Broadway play ever, Slave Play (Golden Theatre - Broadway, New York Theatre Workshop, NYT Critics Pick, Winner of the 2018 Kennedy Center Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, and The Lotos Foundation Prize in the Arts and Sciences). Jeremy co-wrote A24’s upcoming film ZOLA with director Janicza Bravo which premiered at Sundance in 2020. He is currently adapting the sci-fi epic THE NEW WORLD by Ales Kot for Warner Bros. Pictures. In television, Harris is in an overall deal with HBO and is a co-producer on their hit series EUPHORIA. He was named "The Queer Black Savior the Theatre World Needs" by Out Magazine, is the HRC's 2020 honoree, was included on both THR's 50 Most Powerful LGBTQ Players in Hollywood and TIME Magazine's 2019 100 NEXT lists, is the 11th recipient of the Vineyard Theatre’s Paula Vogel Playwrighting Award, a 2016 MacDowell Colony Fellow, an Orchard Project Greenhouse artist, a resident playwright with Colt Coeur, and is under commission from Lincoln Center Theater and Playwrights Horizons. Jeremy is a graduate of the Yale MFA Playwrighting Program and currently resides in NYC.

Soo Intoit is a hyperactive, emotional, sexual, and trans-feminine performer, designer, and DJ based in Brooklyn, NY. With a love for the powerful, dark, and chaotic, she expresses her ideal vision of the world through music, makeup, and clothing.

Julie J is a New York City based drag artist, writer, and cultural deviant. Her original work has been presented through La Mama Umbria, The Tank, and New Light Theater Project. Her newest piece FAULTY DEFENSE MECHANISMS will premiere on January 1, 2021. Find her @juliej.nyc or at juliejnyc.com

Kyle Carrero Lopez was born to Cuban parents in New Jersey. He writes poems and is a founding member of LEGACY, a production collective by and for Black queer artists. He lives in Brooklyn.

Junior Mintt is chocolatey in your mouth and minty going down, with an empowered and intersectional message. She is a proud black transwoman, drag artist, life coach, and activist. You can find and support her @juniormintt on instagram, patreon, venmo, cashapp, and @minttjunior on twitter. #blacktranslivesmatter

Alexander Paris is a multidisciplinary performer, writer, and occasional existentialist. The work they create normally lives at some intersection of autofiction and surrealism. They enjoy world building, deep honesty, high camp, and mess. In 2019 they had artistic fellowships with the Performance Project at University Settlement and Clubbed Thumb. A reading of their play Suzanne happened as a part of La Mama's Experiments series. Before the quarantine they were working out new material in the Brooklyn comedy and nightlife scenes. Now, in the middle of the pandemic, they are learning what is most important to them.

Richard Perez is a comedian and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. He primarily works with videos, all of which he shoots, edits, and stars in, which you can find on his Instagram (@richard_perez). His inspirations come from his life, cartoons, madonna, and pop culture to name a few.

Lorelei Ramirez is a Brooklyn-based artist, comedian and writer who wrote, produced and directed the comedy special program “Pervert Everything” for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Ramirez has appeared on the HBO comedy series ‘Random Acts of Flyness’ and in the final season of Comedy Central’s ‘Broad City’. Upcoming projects include a recurring role in the HBO comedy series ‘Los Espookys’ opposite Fred Armisen and another, opposite Glenn Close, in John Cameron Mitchell’s musical anthology podcast ‘Anthem’. Named one of Comedy Central’s ‘Up Next’ Comedians for 2018, Ramirez was featured in the San Francisco ‘Cluster Fest’ comedy festival, and performed at the Public Theater in New York as part of the January, 2019, ‘Under the Radar’ Festival. A regular correspondent on the Viceland channel, Ramirez has performed at Caroline’s, UCB, Ars Nova, The Chris Gethard Show, and the Brooklyn Comedy Festival.

Mthr Trsa is a drag community terrorist, performance artist, photographer, event organizer and a toilet. Most recent production was hole pics, a fundraising variety queer show that took place in a community garden in Brooklyn for femme defense fund. While focusing on her art and her “bag”, She spends time thinking of ways her community can benefit off of her art too. Trsa has intentions of continuing creating a space for queer performers and helping fundraise for organizations within the queer community. Clean ur hole, or don’t! Sponsored by tushy.

For eight years, La MaMa's Squirts: Generations of Queer Performance has been the flagship program of the The Helix Queer Performance Network, and while the festival will continue at La MaMa, Helix reaches its conclusion this year. Founded in 2013 by playwright/performer Dan Fishback, Helix has been a collaboration between La MaMa, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics, with Fishback serving as director. At La MaMa, Helix has previously presented seven annual iterations of La MaMa's Squirts, created by Fishback and featuring hundreds of queer artists over the years. Initially invited by Nicky Paraiso to help bring a new generation of queer artists to La MaMa, Dan Fishback conceived of La MaMa’s Squirts as a healing space to mend fractures in queer community across age, race, gender and class. At the helm of the festival, Fishback ushered in a new chapter of queer abundance at La MaMa, akin to its early years, in which the stage was open to queer artists often overlooked by major institutions. Unlike many other downtown arts festivals, La MaMa’s Squirts placed an emphasis on young artists of color who were developing work outside of the MFA industrial complex, and outside of white-dominant queer art scenes that historically favored the work of thin, white, cisgender men.

While Fishback curated the series through 2017, subsequent curators included Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Linda LaBeija, Shannon Matesky, Cecilia Gentili, Charlene Incarnate and Mizz June.