515 Clues

June 8, 2014
515 Clues: A Kabbalistic Collabaret
AAACC
7pm

Tickets: $12-20
Brown Paper Tickets Link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/670097

515 Clues is a fairy tale for grown-ups, an experimental novel by Nomy Lamm that links stories across centuries and continents through the migrations of ethereal bird-girls who appear in moments of trauma and transformation.  The Kabbalistic Collabaret explores experiences of longing, survival, and bodily disruption that spiral us into each other’s worlds, weaving a web of queer mysticism through storytelling, puppetry, video, music, dance, spoken word and ritual.  We strive to encompass the fullness of our histories, connections, and futures, breathing new life into the dreams of our ancestors, witnessing each other as we wish to be seen.  Mythic birds on the edge of the water hark back to ancestral survival stories.  Children in a hospital grow wings to protect each other and spread messages of healing.  Queer youth write letters of advice to a teenage runaway.  An on-site video booth asks:  Where does your magic come from?

For more information visit: nomylamm.com

LEAD ARTIST:

Nomy Lamm is a writer, performer, musician and voice teacher whose experimental novel, 515 Clues, is finally making its way out of her imagination and into the world.  Nomy has co-written, co-produced and performed in original queer musicals including The Transfused in 2000, Dr. Frockrocket’s Menagerie and Medicine Show in 2001, and last year’s White Lies at the NQAF. She performs regularly with Sins Invalid, an organization that creates work about disability, sexuality and social justice, and played Pansy in DavEnd’s Fabulous Artistic Guys Get Overtly Traumatized Sometimes aka F.A.G.G.O.T.S.: The Musical!  Nomy is passionate about helping people access their authentic voice through Singing As Social Justice workshops, private voice lessons, creative coaching, and writing workshops.  She directed the Stonewall Youth drag cabaret in 2007 and the Sins Invalid Artists In Resident Program in 2009, and has been a voice teacher at Bay Area Girls Rock Camp and a creative writing teacher at the San Francisco County Jail. She writes a regular advice column for Make/Shift magazine, and has been published in anthologies including Fist of the Spiderwoman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire, Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution, and Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation.  She received an MFA in Creative Writing: Fiction from San Francisco State University in 2012, and is a recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Grant in literature for 2013-2014.  Visit nomylamm.com for more info.

COLLABARET-ERS:

Anna Elena Torres is from the Bronx and is currently a doctoral student in the Jewish Studies department at UC Berkeley.  She earned her BA at Swarthmore College and her Masters of Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School.  Her research interests include Yiddish literature, the history of the press, and feminist and gender studies.  She has organized community murals in Roxbury (Boston), MA and in Chester, PA, where she founded the Chester Mural Collective.  She has also designed sets for Yiddish theater productions at Harvard University, including a full production of the opera Shulamis.  She thanks Nomy for inviting her to join this collabaret.

 

Ben McCoy is a writer and performance artist. McCoy has toured the States & Canada performing her own original material, including with the legendary Sister Spit. Ben has contributed to the Ironing Board Collective, a thinking-person’s style site, as well as two anthologies (Persistence: All Ways Butch & Femme, as well as a collection of stories from the road of the Sister Spit tour, edited by Michelle Tea). Recently Ben joined an all-star cast in DavEnd’s award-winning musical F.A.G.G.O.T.S. with a sold-out run at Counterpulse Theatre.  McCoy has starred in several short films, and is currently starring in her own original comedy series on-line (Youtube her wildly acclaimed web series starting with HOW A LADY EATS A BURRITO, so you can say you saw it before it went viral!). Miss McCoy can be seen MC-ing and performing every other Saturday alongside the HOT BOXXX GIRLS at San Francisco’s very own Aunt Charlie’s lounge, in what is one of the city’s longest-living cabaret shows. Ben is an unrepentant quadruple Scorpio and gives tarot readings once a month for Sunday Prayers, an evening hosted by the Lexington Club. McCoy has over 15 years of experience in reading tarot cards, both for venues, events, and private one-on-one sessions.

 

Celeste Chan creates work born from Queer Diaspora through wit, words, and film. A Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) literary fellow, her writing is published in As/Us Journal and Feminist Wire. Her films have screened at Vancouver (B.C.) Queer Film Festival, MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival, Frameline/SF International LGBT Film Festival, Queer Women of Color Film Festival, CAAMFest (formerly SF International Asian American Film Festival), and National Queer Arts Festival, among others. She’s honored to be the co-founder of Queer Rebels (a queer of color arts company), with her partner, KB Boyce. For more info: www.celestechan.com and www.queerrebels.com.

Chane Gilbert has been spending much of their free time on Petfinder looking at kittens.  Chane comes from a life long love and practice of movement and dance, and has newly taken up singing as another love.  By day, Chane is creating literacy corners and by night hopefully catching a dance class or enjoying a rehearsal.  In the Bay Area for 4 1/2 years, Chane started their life in New Mexico, followed by Colorado, Portland, OR, Ida (Tennessee) and finally here.

 

Irene McCalphin aka Magnoliah Black  has a touch of class to match her crass and is every bit as spicy as the New Orleans dishes she was raised on. She has been promoting body positivity, fat sexuality and marginalized communities though kink, dance and public speaking for the past 5 years. As a certified massage therapist, core member of internationally traveled troupe Rubenesque Burlesque, Full Figure Entertainment (FFE) Model and solo performer she believes in passionately embracing exploration with all of the senses. When she is not jiggling her bits or giggling while being strapped to a cross you can find her at missadventuresofanungratefulphatbitch.com or rubenesqueburlesque.com.

 

Ivy Paige is a thirty-three year old queer trans woman who was born in Moscow and immigrated to the US when she was nine.  She moved to the Bay Area because she thought she might not have to face as many problems as a trans woman here, and she was mostly right.  She’s met many people here and made some friends, almost all of them trans women, but would not say she’s part of a community. She’s currently unemployed and basically just trying to get by, but this is still the best her life has ever been. She enjoys sewing and playing music.

 

Jennifer Justice is an artist, writer, and disability rights activist living in Oakland. Her work explores the significant contributions of disabled artists to film history. She works as a historical landscape and portrait artist of animals and the humans who love them. Jennifer holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. jenniferjustice.net

 

Jezebel Delilah X is a queer, fat, Black femme performance artist, writer, filmmaker, educator, and Faerie Queen Mermaid Gangsta for the revolution. She is the senior editor for Black Girl Dangerous, co-host of East Bay Open Mic, Culture Fuck, a member of the story telling performance troupe, Griot Noir, an English instructor at several local community colleges, one of the founding members of Deviant Type Press, and on the artistic core of Peacock Rebellion. She has been published in As/Us Journal, The Womynist, Full of Crow, and Black Girl Dangerous, has written/directed/produced two films that have screened in the Queer Women Of Color Film Festival, performed in a wide variety of Queer and Queer People Of Color theatre projects and cabarets, and been a featured reader at literary events all over the Bay Area. She uses a combination of performative memoir, theatrical poetry, and feminist storytelling to advance her politix of radical love, socioeconomic justice, anti-racism, community accountability, and liberation. She was recently awarded a fellowship with the Bay Area Writers Project, and holds a MFA Degree in Creative Writing from Mills College where she focused on Young Adult Fiction and Creative Non Fiction. Please read the following articles/interviews that have featured her:  http://www.wearyourvoicemag.com/oaklands-inspirational-women/ and http://elixher.com/inspihered-by-vanessa-rochelle-lewis/.

 

Julie Thi Underhill is a writer, photographer, artist, filmmaker, historian, and performer with work in Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, Embodying Asian/American Sexualities, Takin’ It to the Streets: A Sixties Reader, ColorLines, Hayden’s Ferry Review, positions: asia critique, and Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora. In 2013, she performed with Lucy Ellison at Forest Fringe SF in San Francisco. She has received fellowships from University of Massachusetts Boston/Rockefeller Foundation, and UC Berkeley’s Chancellor. Julie attended The Evergreen State College (B.A.) and UC Berkeley (M.A.), where she is currently a lecturer and doctoral student. Her website is jthiunderhill.com.

 

Kim Druziako is a queer chef and Bay Area local, and a newcomer to performing. Formerly a part of the Big Gay Warehouse, she shows her love for her community by feeding hungry queers and trans folk, and has cooked for events such as Bay Area Girls Rock Camp.

 

 

Lisa Ganser is an artist, activist and odd jobber who recently transplanted from Minneapolis to San Francisco for true love and art.  She founded and directed the Flaming Film Festival in Minneapolis from 1999-2007, which was an internationally-known experimental film festival highlighting work by- and of-interest-to queer community.  Ganser has been a curator, juror, facilitator and panelist with Twin Cities Public Television, Independent Feature Project/North, Intermedia Arts, and Walker Art Center.  She served as a board member of Sound Unseen Music and Film Festival., and worked with District 202 (a Minneapolis queer youth center) and Kulture Klub Collaborative (and organization that brings art and the arts to at-risk and homeless youth).  She has been a producer and guest curator at various international film festivals including Frameline, Mix Brasil, Mix Mexico, Homo-a-GoGo, and Queeruption Festivals in New York, Vancouver BC, and Berlin.  She was the lead singer in a number of bands including Punky Bruiser, Central Standard and Hey There Cowboy, and ran Homocore Minneapolis for a number of years.  She is currently working with Periwinkle Cinema, a monthly queer film screening at Artists’ Television Access, and is organizing a Periwinkle screening of sexplicit work for the NQAF called Un(dis)sing Our Abilities.

 

Meredith Fenton, who also performs under the names Starr 69 and Corky St. Flair has been bringing glitter, laughter, political savvy and jazz squares to stages in the Bay Area and beyond for more than a decade. She’s performed as a solo artist and with such groups as Titland, The Transformers, Burlesque-Esque and Sparkle Motion. Last year she helped write, direct and appeared in White Lies for the NQAF and previously co-wrote and co-directed Hogwarts Express! The Musical. By day she helps organizations and foundations use communications and media for social good. By night she is an avid reader, Boggle champion, reluctant foodie and aspiring gardener who dreams of collective liberation and sparkles.

 

Gentry McShane is a queer underground sagiterrorist filmmaker. He was raised a dirty hippie child in Tucson, Arizona. He has directed several short films and music videos including horror/comedy “Riot Ghoul” which was an official selection of SF Frameline, Boston LGBT Film Festival, Austin’s Polari Film Festival, and Portland’s Not Enough Queer Music and Arts fest. He is also a curator, organizer, digital archivist, student, and teacher. He currently lives in Oakland, California with his social worker boo, Nico and their rascally schnauzer, Penny.

Erin Daly is currently living in Olympia WA, where she spends her time making music with her voice as well as a variety of other stringed instruments, painting, and getting to know the local flora as friend, food, and medicine. She has been collaborating artistically with her beloved friend and soul family member Nomy Lamm for over a decade – including the musical projects Tricrotic and ((Double Hug)). She is honored to be a part of 515 Clues and is excited for this opportunity to expand into her long held interest in puppeteering.

 

Our Space creates safe and affirming space where LGBTQ youth can socialize, build community, develop leadership skills and access culturally relevant mental health services. Our Space holds the experiences, strengths and needs of youth impacted by poverty, homelessness and the child welfare and juvenile justice systems at its core, and recognizes these youth as fierce and fabulous change-agents in our communities.