Booking Manager: Vivienne Diawara Tan
Writers: Jill Aguado, jennifer cendaña armas, Kay Barrett, Emily C. Chang, Vanessa De Guia, Anida Yoeu Esguerra, Sharmili Majmudar, Lani T. Montreal, , Amy Paul, Juliana Pegues, Sarwat Rumi, marian yalini thambynayagam, Varuni Tiruchelvam, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai
Video Artists: Ann Poochareon, San Tong, Anida Yoeu Esguerra
Performers and Bios:
Amy Treesa Paul seeks a world outside 9-5s and 501c(3)s.. beyond rent checks and identity claims and exclusive spaces and practicality and processed food.. she seeks revolution as music as poetry.. as conversations that happen on the streets as much as in the intimate and difficult spaces of home and family and community.. through her creative work, she seeks to locate the beginnings of memories, stories, and histories- their intersections and their truths- while trying to imagine and sometimes reinvent endings. she is inspired by what has been told and spinned and also what has been silenced among various places she has called home, including florida, chicago, new york, india and dreamland.. she seeks a world where imagination and freedom take precedent rather than luxuries of the privileged.. in her day-to-day, she is entrenched in academia and nonprofit life and fighting the white man and occasional temptations for fast food.. and other struggles she seeks escape..
Kay Barrett is one of the most involved women in Chicago’s spoken word and
activist community. Her work explores the intricacies of political economy
and mother-daughter relationships as well as tackling LGBTQ existence,
power constructions, and emerging identities that create complicated and
empowering poems. She has worked as an organizer for Ladyfest Midwest,
Beyondmedia, the Queer as Folk Fest, The Lesbian Theater Initiative, the
Batey Urbano, the Asian Artists Collective, and Chicago’s Dyke March.
Stages and venues where she has performed include the Guild Complex and
Hot house. In 2003 she opened for Anna Fermin and her band, Trigger
Gospel. Kay has worked with youth in various organizations and continues
to teach poetry as a means of political change and resistance. Kay is a
recent escapee of the academy with a B.A. in Political Science &
Gender/Women’s Studies from DePaul University. In addition, She has
showcased her work via drag performance and spoken word in Ireland’s 2004
Lesbian Arts Festival. She is also published in the anthology, Mother
Tongues. Check out her work at her very own fancy smancy website:
www.kay.printedmatter.net
jennifer cendaña armas is a pangaean actor, singer, dancer, writer, violinist, and community worker from corona/jackson heights, queens. her poetry has been featured throughout the states, england, and vancouver including the nuyorican poets cafe, sistahood festival, lincoln center's la casita, and bristol's ladyfest. publications include awol, aesthetica, x, monsoon, and nyu’s review of law and social change. theatre credits include skinimin12 (playwright, actor), njpac’s planet hip hop, are we democracy? with urban bush women, and queens theatre in the park’s black theatre festival. she works with youth in the lower east side and teaches arts/activism/politics workshops in schools, prisons, and community centers across the country. she is a member of the blackout arts collective and mango tribe families.
Jill Aguado is a Chicago Mango currently building with her Tribe sisters as a road/stage manager and performer. She has been blessed to have grown in so many ways since becoming a part of the collective. She believes in the strength of family and the power of voice. Jill is currently working for a leadership program, interested in teamwork and creating cross-cultural dialogue.
Born in Taipei, and raised in Alaska, Juliana Pegues is a writer, performer, and community organizer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work has been published in various journals and anthologies, and she appears regularly in Twin Cities’ theater productions and at spoken word venues. Her one-woman shows include Made in Taiwan (Walker Art Center), First the Forest (Jerome Foundation Performance Art Commission), and Fifteen (Intermedia Arts Absolute Originals Series). Most recently, she was a co-playwright and actor in the Mama Mosaic production Bride/price, and a collaborating playwright in Mizna’s production With Love from Ramallah.
Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai is a Chinese/Taiwanese American spoken word artist who strengthens cultural pride and survival through how she lives and how she spits. She has been featured at over 100 performances across the country including venues like the Nuyorican Poets Café, the House of Blues, the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and two seasons of “Russell Simmons Presents HBO Def Poetry.” Splitting her homes between Chicago and New York, In addition to her solor work, Kelly also tours nationally with Mango Tribe and “We Got Issues!” She is the author of two chapbooks Inside Outside Outside Inside and Thought Crimes. Her first full-length play, “Murder the Machine.” will be excerpted at Chicago’s first Hip Hop Theater Festival. For more info, go to http://www.yellowgurl.com.
marian yalini thambynayagam is a Queer Sri Lankan Tamil British-born American-raised Woman living in Brooklyn by way of Texas. Marian's work centers interdisciplinary collaboration. With Mango Tribe, Blood Memory, and other performance groups she works to create non-competitive spaces for marginalized communities to claim their voices, bodies, and stories using performance. Through experimental collective collaboration she seeks to build artistic work that reflects the strength of communities while cherishing difference. While through interdisciplinary collaboration she attempts to challenge boundaries between individuals as well as mediums --reflecting in artistic form the desire to dismantle the boundaries that box our bodies, lands, and dreams: “Sick of bouncing between in betweens, I live in the borderlands where poetry is theater is love is movement is song is prayer is rebellion. I look to reshape reality seeking peace through justice in the lands of earth, psyche, spirit, and dream.” Marian is a teaching artist who has worked with youth at Youth Solidarity Summer, Freedom Academy Highschool, and the Asian Arts Initiative. In addition to co-directing Mango Tribe’s NYC run of Sisters in the Smoke and Creation Myth Project, she was the co-founder of University of Texas's theater company of color Drive By Players and the movement director for the NYC run of Descendants of Freedom: A Futuristic Queer Hip Hop Odyssey. She is currently working on Blood Memory: A Sri Lankan Storytelling Project.
Sarwat Rumi is a bilingual Bengali American Muslim who has been writing since she could read. She has a B.A. in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. Sarwat works toward social justice as a vigilante poet, teaching artist, and performance activist. Sarwat’s features include the Asian American Jazz Festival (2004), Women OutLoud (2003, 2004), and the Guild Complex, where she humbly shared the stage with Adrienne Rich (2003). Sarwat’s craft as solo artist, sister in Mango Tribe, and vocalist for the experimental music duo, Serpent Feline, takes her far from Chicago on a regular basis, but her words can always be found in the Wicked Alice Poetry Journal and in the upcoming anthology, North American Muslim Women Re-Define War.
Sharmili Majmudar is a queer Chicago-based South Asian artist, social justice worker and daughter of Gujarati Indian immigrants. Sharmili makes trouble and finds community as a member of Mango Tribe as well as doing some poetic rabble rousing of her own on stages and in alleyways and living rooms in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Honolulu, Minneapolis and Chicago. Her poetry has appeared in Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America, Shakti Kee Awaaz: Voices of Strength and Riksha and she is a past resident at the Norcroft Writing Retreat for Women. Sharmili is a founding member of Khuli Zaban, a West Asian/South Asian lesbian, bisexual, transgender women's network. She has twice participated in Transforming Silence Into Action, a gathering of APIA queer anti-violence activists and allies, most recently in September 2004. Currently Sharmili serves as Women's Program Director at Sarah's Inn, a domestic violence organization based in Oak Park, Illinois.
Varuni Tiruchelvam is a Tamil Sri Lankan American Queer Woman cellist and educator for social change who hopes to grow healthy systems and to share nourishment and nurturing with many people and the land. Her favorite recent moments have involved playing the cello while students and co-teachers free-styled and leading sexual identity workshops with youth.
San Tong navigates her existence thru subways, highways, and byways thru her submergence into the city she calls home, NYC. Besides Mango Tribe, she’s also been an active member of the Ohms Media, a Collective that is currently producing a documentary called “Divided We Stand” about two people’s lives who have been inextricably involved with War with Iraq. The documentary follows the lives of a conservative marine and an anti-war photojournalist. San’s visual art includes an origami mobile and video/film installations for different artshows. She has also done various projects with a film group called Reel Sweet Betty and was the literary manager for 5th Night Screenplay and Short Film Series at the Nuyorican Poets Café. By day she is a media planner and The History Channel and IKEA accounts take up most of her time. She likes fiery dragons.
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