Poetry Electric: Seriously Though

ARTISTS

Una Aya Osato a.k.a. exHOTic other was born and raised in the East Village, New York City, where she works as a performer, writer, and educator, continually merging her art and politics. Since graduating Wesleyan University, she has written critically acclaimed and award winning one-woman and three person shows that she performs nationally and internationally in theaters, festivals, classrooms, community organizations, universities, and prisons. Una’s love for fully embodying her politics in her art has also led her to Brown Girls Burlesque, where she is a company member. For her upcoming happenings or to book a show, please visit: www.unaosato.com. Michi Ilona Osato a.k.a. sister selva is a native New Yorker from the East Village. She has studied dance with Loco-Motion Dance Theater for Children from age four on, theater at the LaGuardia High School for Performing Arts and Music & Art, and then later history, language, and the African dance diaspora at Oberlin College where she received her BA in 2008. She is a core company member of Brown Girls Burlesque and performs in her family clown show with her sister and father, LOL: The End. She also teaches contemporary dance, hip- hop, and Capoeira Angola to youth ages 5-17, as well as facilitates creation of their own choreography. In addition she has worked with young people as a food justice educator investigating the current food system as well as socially just alternatives. Morgan Bassichis is a NYC-based writer and performer whose plays include When the Baba Yaga Eats You Alive and The Witch House. Morgan has performed at Dixon Place, the MIX Festival, the HOT! Festival, the Wild Project, Recess, and the Garage (San Francisco), and in films by Dia Felix and Maria Breaux. Morgan’s essays have appeared in the Radical History Review, Captive Genders, and other anthologies. Morgan is a graduate of Brown University, and is a practitioner of Generative Somatics. Julia Steele Allen is an award-winning playwright and performance activist. Her rock-theater show “A Boy Called Noise” about the murder of a gay teenager in small town Texas, toured festivals and theaters across the U.S. and won the “Best Short Play Award” at the Downtown Urban Theater Festival in NYC in 2009. Her autobiographical show “Little Tainted Blood” won “Best Experimental Performance” Award at the SF Fringe Festival in 2011. She is part of the queer-country band: My Gay Banjo, which recently released its third album. She is co-producing a documentary film about the burning of the Bronx in the 1970’s: “Decade of Fire.” She recently published a book of poems: “The Good Left In Us” and is at work on a radical fantasy/science fiction trilogy. For more info: www.juliasteeleallen.com, www.mygaybanjo.com, www.decadeoffire.com Noelle Ghoussaini is an American-Lebanese playwright, director and arts educator. She holds an M.A. in Arts Politics from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a B.A. in Performance Studies, French and African Studies from Northwestern University. She has lived, traveled, performed and taught throughout the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Her work is dedicated to using arts to examine and re-imagine our society within a political, social and historical context. (www.noelleghoussaini.com/bio)

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