Poetry Electric: Witch Hunt | Fire Up the Stakes

MAYBE BURKE  is a New York based director, choreographer, writer, performer and trans advocate interested in telling the stories that haven’t been told. They are excited by new material that can honestly and realistically portray marginalized groups of people. Their work has been seen at Joe’s Pub, Cherry Lane Theatre, Ars Nova, HERE Arts Center, New Dramatists, NYMadness, The Flea, The Duplex, and more. Maybe is a co-curator of the Trans Theatre Festival at The Brick and a Directing Fellow for the first Trans Lab cohort supported by WP Theater and The Public. Artistic Associate, Honest Accomplice Theatre. BA Directing, Pace University. maybeburke.com @believeinmaybe

MAGGIE CINO is a director and playwright.  Her production of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters Three Sisters won two 2017 Innovative Theater Awards and was nominated for two more, including Outstanding Revival of a Play.  She directed the world premiere of Bonedive Scrounger at the Brick Theater, and Elisa Korenne’s musical solo show The Tenth Muse at the Minnesota Fringe Festival.  Her plays are published by Indie Theater Now and excerpts appear in the Smith & Krause Best Men’s and Best Women’s Monologue series.  She is a winner of the   FringeNYC Overall Excellence Award for Playwrighting, a Brick Theater Master Mason and an Indie Theater Person of the Year.A former Senior Producer for the Peabody and MACEI award-winning organization, The Moth, she directed storytelling shows nationally and internationally at venues including BAM, Lincoln Center, and the mainstage of the Sydney Opera House. The hundreds of stories she discovered and developed are featured on the Moth Radio Hour.

OPHIRA EISENBERG is a staple of the New York standup comedy scene, a writer, and host of NPR’s trivia comedy show, Ask Me Another where she has interviewed and played silly games with Sir Patrick Stewart, Connie Britton, Roxanne Gay, Mozhan Marno, Josh Groban, George Takei, Ethan Hawke, Julia Stiles, Big Freeda, Lewis Black, Uzo Aruba, Jason Mraz and more. She has appeared on HBO’s Girls, Gotham Live, The Late Late Show, The Today Show, The Nightly Show, Comedy Central, and VH-1. Selected as one of New York Magazine’s Top 10 Comics that Funny People Find Funny, and featured in the New York Times as a skilled comedian and storyteller with a “bleakly stylish” sense of humor, Ophira’s debut memoir, Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy was optioned for a feature film with Zucker Productions. She is also a regular host and teller with The Moth, her stories are part of their award winning radio show, podcast, and NYT best-selling book. Her comedy special Inside Joke was recently released by New Wave Entertainment and available on Amazon and iTunes.

PATRICE MILLER is director-choreographer best known for her interdisciplinary performance making that is deeply rooted in a praxis of social research and questions of performativity. Recently, she directed This Joint is Jumpin (featuring Lillias White) at The Other Palace, London. Some of her critically acclaimed collaborations include directing Mad Jenny’s Love und Greed (Pangea; Dixon Place), choreographing Paul Auster’s City of Glass (dir. Edward Einhorn, New Ohio), choreographing and co-developing Vaclav Havel’s The Pig, or Valcav Havel’s Hunt for a Pig (dir. Henry Akona/3-Legged Dog), and co-creating with Edward Einhorn Money Lab which featured her dance-theater piece Dead Cat Bounce with Edward Einhorn (The Brick, HERE Arts Center). Her installation work includes a number of projects with the Institute of Psychogeographic Adventure including work for The Brooklyn Museum, Prelude/CUNY Grad Center, and SUNY Stonybrook; Steve Valk and Michael Klein’s COIL 2016 piece Excavation: Martha Graham Company at Westbeth; couture performances for NYC Fashionweek 2008 and 2009. She was the director of performance for 571 Projects Arts Gallery and was recently the PASS Artist in Residence at Snug Harbor Cultural Arts Center.

NATALIA ROUMELIOTI, is a designer and artist with background in architecture. She is the founder of NTILIT,  that stands for “until the light”, a design studio dedicated to the creation of wearable sculptures, site specific mixed media installations and loom made textiles, aiming to untackle preconceived norms around the notion of body and space. She is also the co-founder of RUHO Design, that stands for body, carcass & attire in different languages, a furniture design studio focusing on ways of reclaiming and repurposing old furniture into new compositions with the addition of concrete and on occasions even hair. Her work has been noted through competitions, publications and exhibitions at venues such as the PS-1 MoMA, Queens Museum, SiTE:LAB, BHQF, Reverse, Chashama, Watermill Center, Carnegie Hall. She studied architecture at NTUA of Athens (1999-2005), then she pursued a Master in Design/Space/Culture at the NTUA (2008), and later on a Master on Advanced Architectural Design at Columbia University in NY (2009).

KRISHNA CHRISTINE WASHBURN is a VI/Blind dancer based in Harlem, NYC. She has performed with Heidi Latsky Dance, Infinity Dance Theater, Marked Dance Project, ‎LEIMAY, Vangeline, Patrice Miller, Antonio Marino, and will be making her debut with Jill Sigman’s Thinkdance this year. She has an ongoing collaboration with wearables artist, Natalia Roumelioti, (ntilit). She is also artistic director of The Darkroom, a dance education and performance-based project with fellow VI dancer, Kayla Hamilton (Nearly Sighted) and choreographer Marissa Perel.

‍