BIOGRAPHIES for the LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project Participants
FIVE LESBIAN BROTHERS
“Commercially Viable; Enchantingly Homosexual”
For more than 30 years, the Five Lesbian Brothers have created provocative lesbian theater for the masses through the fine feminist art of collaboration. Consisting of Moe Angelos, Babs Davy, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey, and Lisa Kron, the Brothers emerged from the bosom of New York City’s WOW Cafe Theatre in 1989. Their repertoire includes five full-length plays, Voyage to Lesbos, Brave Smiles, The Secretaries, Brides of the Moon, and Oedipus at Palm Springs, as well as numerous event-specific original works. Their work has been produced off-Broadway and off-off Broadway and beyond by New York Theatre Workshop, The Joseph Papp Public Theatre, the WOW Cafe Theatre, Downtown Art Company, Performance Space 122, Dixon Place, La MaMa, The Kitchen, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Brothers toured extensively during the glorious queer and queer-friendly performance circuit that flourished in the 1990s and they have performed their work in London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Houston, Columbus, Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston and the deep woods of Michigan. Their plays have also been produced by other companies throughout the United States and, believe it or not, in Zagreb, Croatia. An anthology of the Brothers’ plays entitled Five Lesbian Brothers/Four Plays was published in 2000 by Theatre Communications Group. Brave Smiles, The Secretaries, and Oedipus at Palm Springs are also published and individually-wrapped by Samuel French, in acting editions. The Brothers are the recipients of a Village Voice Obie Award, a Bessie, a New York Press Award for Best Performance Group, and a New York Innovative Theatre Award. Oedipus at Palm Springs won a 2006 GLAAD Media Award for best New York Play (Broadway or Off-Broadway) and their participation trophies are too numerous to list.
AIN GORDON is a three-time Obie Award-winning writer/director/actor, Creative Capital awardee, and a Guggenheim Fellow. Gordon’s work often frames marginalized/forgotten history. Recent projects: Relics and Their Humans with Josh Quillen, tributing an Ohio couple navigating ALS, at Krannert (IL), Wexner (OH), Arizona Arts Live, and La MaMa (NY); These Don’t Easily Scatter, honoring the first five years of the AIDS crisis in Philadelphia, in partnership with the William Way LGBT Community Center (PA); Radicals In Miniature with Quillen, collected requiems for personal icons at Baryshnikov Arts (NY); Festival of Arts & Ideas, Quick Center, Connecticut College (all CT); Williams College and The Yard (both MA); 217 Boxes of Dr. Henry Anonymous, in collaboration with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, inspired by Dr. John Fryer who in 1972 donned a mask to become Dr. Henry Anonymous and confront the American Psychiatric Association’s classification of homosexuality as mental disease with these words, “I am a homosexual, I am a psychiatrist,” at Painted Bride (PA), Baryshnikov Arts (NY), Transylvania University (KY), and CAP UCLA. Pick Up Performance Co Director since 1992.
ISHMAEL HOUSTON-JONES
Ishmael Houston-Jones is choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed in New York, across the US, and in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Latin America. Drawn to collaboration as a way to move beyond boundaries and the known, Houston-Jones celebrates the political aspect of cooperation. He and Fred Holland shared a 1984 Bessie Award for Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders, which reintroduced the erased narrative of the Black cowboy back into the mythology of the American west. He was awarded his second Bessie Award for the 2010 revival of THEM, his 1985/86 collaboration with writer Dennis Cooper and composer Chris Cochrane. In 2017 he received a third Bessie for Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other Works by John Bernd. Houston-Jones received a fourth Bessie in 2020 for Service to the Field of Dance. As an author Houston-Jones’ essays, fiction, interviews, and performance texts have been published in several anthologies. His work has also appeared in the magazines: PAJ, Movement Research Performance Journal, Bomb, and Contact Quarterly. His first book, Fat and Other Stories was published in 2018 by Yonkers International Press. Houston- Jones curated Platform 2012: Parallels, which focused on choreographers from the African diaspora, and postmodernism and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found, dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, then and now. He has received a 2022 the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2020 USArtists, a 2016 Herb Alpert, a 2015 Doris Duke Impact and a 2013 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Artists Awards.
JOHN KELLY
Director, choreographer, vocalist, writer, and artist John Kelly has received major honors including a 2013 USA Artists Award Fellowship and the 2007 Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome. His character-driven dance-theater works range from solo to large group, focusing on autobiographical, cultural, and political issues; challenges faced by social outsiders, and the nature of creative genius. Subjects include the history of gay persecution, 20th-century tattoo culture, the Berlin Wall, the AIDS epidemic, mythology, expressionistic film, and character studies based on Egon Schiele, Caravaggio, Antonin Artaud, Joni Mitchell, and Jean Cocteau. These works have been commissioned by MET Live Arts, The Kitchen, Lincoln Center, Warhol Museum, Whitney Biennial, NY Live Arts, REDCAT, and London’s Tate Modern. He is creating a new work in conjunction with a Kaatsbaan Cultural Park Residency and Baryshnikov Arts. As a teen he was interested invisual art, but exposure to dance led to a scholarship at the American Ballet Theatre School, and a training with the Harkness Ballet. He danced with modern pioneer Charles Weidman before pivoting to his initial visual art calling, studying painting and drawing at Parsons School of Design and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts School. He returned to performing in the early 1980’s flourishing East Village club scene, developing short works that evolved into larger multi-media productions commissioned by venues ranging from La MaMa to BAM’s Next Wave Festival. Kelly has created over 70 performance works, the subject matter generally based either on cultural icons (Schiele, Caravaggio, Barbette, Mitchell), or more personal autobiographical works . His latest group work, “Underneath the Skin,” is based on 20th-century novelist and tattoo artist Samuel Steward. Kelly has received two Bessie Awards, two Obie Awards, two NEA American Masterpieces Awards, CalArts/Alpert Award, Visual AIDS Vanguard Award, Ethyl Eichelberger Award, and a Mabou Mines ‘Ruthie’ Award. Fellowships include Radcliffe Institute, Guggenheim Foundation, Sundance Theatre Institute, Jerome Robbins Foundation, NY Foundation for the Arts, Art Matters, Inc. Creative residencies include Yaddo, MacDowell, Park Avenue Armory, Civitella Ranieri, Bogliasco, and the LMCC Process Space Residence Program. He was Guest Lecturer at Harvard and Visiting Artist in Residence at Bard. Mentorship includes the Queer Art Mentorship program and Helix Queer Performance Network. Kelly’s visual artwork involves self-portraiture, including drawing and painting, photography and video; two of his films (“The Dagmar Onassis Story” and “The Mona Lisa”) are in MoMA’s permanent collection. His recent solo exhibition “Sideways into the Shadows” included 54 hand-drawn memorial portraits of friends and lovers lost to AIDS. He just completed his first graphic novel, “A Friend Gave Me A Book.”
RICHARD MOVE, PhD, MFA, is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, TED Global Oxford Fellow, New York Public Library Dance Research Fellow, Artistic Director of MoveOpolis!, and assistant arts professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Move has choreographed commissions for Mikhail Baryshnikov/ White Oak Dance Project, Martha Graham Dance Company, a solo for New York City Ballet principal Heléne Alexopoulos, and PARADIGM (Carmen De Lavallade, Gus Solomons Jr. and Dudley Williams). Site- specific work includes creations for Cannes Film Festival, European Capital of Culture/France, Guggenheim Museum/New York, Asian Civilizations Museum/Singapore, Parrish Art Museum, and a bus station in São Paolo, Brazil. Move’s Herstory of the Universe@Governors Island was named “Best Dance of 2021” by The New York Times. Herstory of the Universe@Dartmouth, commissioned by Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center for the Arts, premiered in September of 2023. In 2022, Move choreographed Snow White with director Giandomenico Sale for the incarcerated actors of Larino Prison in Italy. Move is collaborating with Sale on a new production, The Seven Sisters, which will premiere in Italy in 2024. While resident artist at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia 2018), Move collaborated with astronaut/artist Dr. Sarah Jane Pell on Stellar Corpus and LunAres, uniting the extreme performance of human spaceflight training with VR, immersive data visualizations, interactive 3D, and live motion capture exhibited in 360°. MoveOpolis!, whose collaborators include Charles Atlas, Debbie Harry, and Hilton Als, has been presented by New York Live Arts, DTW Workshop, The Kitchen, LMCC’s Sitelines, Jacobs Pillow, MASS MoCA, and on tour internationally. Move’s films include: Bardo; BloodWork: The Ana Mendieta Story (National Board of Review Award); GhostLight, and GIMP - The Documentary. Martha@..., Move’s performances as icon Martha Graham, received two Bessie Awards and tours globally. Recent performances: Martha@Ravello in Italy and the Gardner Museum (Boston) in 2017 commissioned Move’s restaging and performance of Graham’s once-lost 1928 solo, Immigrant. Move’s publications include chapters for Border Crossings: Exile and American Dance; The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment; Ally: Janine Antoni, Anna Halprin and Stephen Petronio, and Rhythm Field—The Dance of Molissa Fenley. At NYU, Move curated Where is Ana Mendieta? Donde esta Ana Mendieta? 25 Years Later – An Exhibition and Symposium. Move earned their PhD, MPhil, and MA in Performance Studies at NYU after an MFA in Media Arts Production from CUNY/City College and a BFA in Dance from VCU.move-itproductions.com
LOLA PASHALINSKI is a founding member of The Ridiculous Theatrical Company, with Charles Ludlam, where she created 17 roles in 13 years, including those in Blue Beard, Stage Blood, and Camille. She received two Obie Awards for her work with the company, in Corn and Der Ring Gott Farblonjet. Since leaving the company in 1980, Pashalinski has worked with the foremost stage directors and writers including: Lee Breuer in The Tempest at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and the gender reversed Lear with Ruth Maleczech; Robert Wilson in Medea at The Kennedy Center; Richard Foreman in Egyptology and Film Is Evil, Radio Is Good; Joanne Akalaitis in The Photographer at BAM’s Next Wave Festival and The Screens at The Guthrie Theatre; Anne Bogart in The Women at Hartford Stage; David Gordon in The Mysteries And What’s So Funny at Lincoln Center’s Serious Fun Festival, The Firebugs at The Guthrie, and Punch And Judy Get Divorced; Neil Bartlett in Twelfth Night at The Goodman Theatre, playing Sir Toby Belch; Art, Life & Show-Biz and Birdseed Bundles by Ain Gordon; Brian Kulick in A Dybbuk, adapted by Tony Kushner; Les Waters in Charles Mee’s Wintertime; and Irene Lewis in The Skin of Our Teeth at NYSF. She co-wrote and performed Gertrude and Alice: A Likeness To Loving, with life partner Linda Chapman, directed by Anne Bogart, receiving her third Obie in 2000. She performed on Broadway in Fortune’s Fool with the late Alan Bates and Frank Langella, directed by Arthur Penn; and has performed in theaters throughout the country including New York Theatre Workshop in Doug Wright’s Quills; The Portland Stage Co. playing Lady Bracknell; and at Playwrights Horizons, Baltimore Center Stage, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, The McCarter Theatre, and Yale Repertory Theatre. Most recently she reprised her role as Gertrude Stein in John Kelly’s Underneath The Skin. Pashalinski appears in numerous films including Mary Harron’s I Shot Andy Warhol, Peter Sellar’s The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez, Ironweed, Godzilla, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close directed by Stephen Daldry. Television appearances include 30 Rock directed by Steve Buscemi.
CARMELITA TROPICANA (Alina Troyano) is a writer and performer who uses humor and fantasy to challenge cultural stereotypes and rewrite history from multiple perspectives. Her work has been presented/produced in venues including, Institute of Contemporary Art (London), Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo (Sevilla), and Intar Theater and Performance Space NY. Select awards include: Latinx Artist Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital, Anonymous Was a Woman, and an Obie award. Her book I, Carmelita Tropicana, Performing Between Cultures was published by Beacon Press and she co-edited with Holly Hughes and Jill Dolan Memories of the Revolution: First Ten Years of the Wow Café Theater.
Project Co-directors
LINDA S. CHAPMAN is Current and Founding President of Youth Arts New York. YANY provides experiences in the arts, science, and civil society to engage youth in building a future of peace, social justice, and sustainability. She recently retired as the associate artistic director of New York Theatre Workshop. Chapman joined the company in 1995 and served as an instrumental curator, advocate, and collaborator. Prior to her time at NYTW, she was managing director of The Wooster Group from 1983—94. She was a co-producer of DYKE TV, a grass roots, public access program, made by and for the lesbian community. For the League of Professional Theatre Women, she is the co-director of the Guilder/Coigney International Theatre Award Program, former chair of the Lortel Award Committee, and former VP of Membership. She is a past panelist of the BOLD Theatre Women’s Leadership Circle, has served on funding panels for TCG, NEA, The Princess Grace Foundation, Mellon Foundation, The Drama League, the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative, the Fox Fellowship, and she is a Lilly Award winner. Chapman is also co-writer and performer of the Obie Award-winning Gertrude and Alice: A Likeness to Loving with her life partner of 40 years Lola Pashalinski, their two-character play about Gertrude Stein and her longtime companion Alice B. Toklas, directed by Anne Bogart. She co-adapted Ann Bannon’s lesbian classics The Beebo Brinker Chronicles for the stage with playwright Kate Moira Ryan. The play was awarded a GLAAD Media Award and nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.
ALYCE DISSETTE is a producer of performing, visual, film, and digital artists who has worked in a wide range of venues and projects from a staff member in the Metropolitan Opera Presentations Department to former executive producer of the PBS national series, Alive from Off Center, and on digital media productions with the Voyager Co. She has produced many works for artists including filmmakers Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, François Girard, Mark Pellington, visual artist James Turrell, author Art Spiegelman, and in the performing arts, Sir Richard Alston, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Karin Coonrod, Ain Gordon, David Gordon, Philip Glass, Nona Hendryx, John Kelly, Urban Bush Women, Robert Wilson, and Arthur Yorinks. In recent years, in partnership with artist David Gordon and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (LPA), she produced a multifaceted archive project for his works Gordon named “Archiveography.” It comprised all of Gordon’s archive materials being placed in LPA’s permanent collection, all video works made available on LPA’s Moving Image website, Gordon’s “Archiveography” installation at LPA’s Astor Gallery, and a website. Dissette has served on the Board of Directors for Dance/USA and Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York. She has been the Producing Director of the Pick Up Performance Co. since 2002.