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My People: A QTPOC Festival of the Arts

KST Presents

KST’s Alloy Studios
5530 Penn Ave

Kelly Strayhorn Theater
5941 Penn Ave

Curated by Adil Mansoor 

my people my people I can’t be lost
when I see you my compass
is brown & gold & blood
– Fatimah Asghar, If They Come For Us

Hi Folks! Adil here! I am thrilled to invite you to My People 2019. It has been an honor to organize this program centering Queer and Trans people of color and I hope you will come! My People 2019 is questioning, challenging, and pushing forward our understanding of family, home, community, and preservation. Join us as we ask “What does kinship mean when living under Trump’s dystopia? In what ways are we shifting how we relate to one another? (Frances S. Lee, Kin Aesthetic) 

We begin our consideration on Thursday, November 14th with Finding Kin, an evening of short music, poetry, and film from Queer and Trans artists of color. Hosted by Pittsburgh drag artist Mahogany La PiranHa, the showcase includes Sharlene Bamboat’s Video Home System, a short film using autobiography, memory, and mimicry to play with ‘queer’ reconstructions of ‘90s pop culture; Oli Rodriguez and Victoria Stob’s Lyndale, a documentary exploring how one family navigates childhood neglect, queer identities, and mental illness; a musical performance from Rose and Sara Savage, the twin siblings behind the music duo Half Spring; and poet Jari Bradley sharing multiple poems including Monstrous Intimacy, a powerful examination of blood, childhood, and masculinity. This collection of artists reframes the family portrait and invites us all to the table. 

On Friday and Saturday, November 15th and 16th, we welcome Brooklyn-based dance artist Mariana Valencia who shares her original performance ALBUM. In her attempt to offer her future biographers a very honest, very funny crib sheet, Valencia imagines and dictates a legacy. This forward-looking intervention imagines a future beyond dystopia. Don’t miss Valencia’s workshop for performance makers, see hear here, on Saturday Morning. 

Saturday afternoon features Making Home, a community gathering featuring food and dialogue. In partnership with Black Unicorn, Bekezela Mguni and Oliver Pinder offer food and ritual as methods to connect to their culinary heritage, each other, and us. Following our edible overture, please join us for a dialogue led by Celeste Scott, the Affordable Housing Organizer at Pittsburgh United and the Housing Chair with SisTers PGH. Scott is deeply integral to the housing justice movement in Pittsburgh and a staunch advocate for queer and trans communities of color. For Making Home, she gathers a panel of artists and activists to investigate, question, and dream together about housing, neighborhoods, and communities. 

Join me as we center the experiences of Queer and Trans people of color and illuminate, question, and challenge the many ways in which we relate to one another. It is with deep gratitude that I welcome you to My People 2019.

Adil Mansoor
Curator, My People, 2019

Full festival program below!

TICKETS

Pay What Makes You Happy! Tickets for these events are available at any price. Simply choose the level that makes you happy—or name your own! All seats are general admission.

Tickets for ALBUM, A Performance by Mariana Valencia are on sale NOW!
All other My People 2019 events on sale soon!

Finding Kin
Short Works from Queer and Trans Artists of Color

Thursday, November 14
8:00pm Performance & Film

Kelly Strayhorn Theater

Finding Kin presents a program of music, poetry and short films hosted by Pittsburgh-based drag artist, Mahogany La PiranHa. Featured artists include video and installation artist Sharlene Bamboat; interdisciplinary artist Oli Rodriguez and licensed clinical social worker Victoria Stob; Half Spring, a Pittsburgh-based music duo helmed my twin siblings Rose and Sara Savage; and poet Jari Bradley. From food to film, the evening translates nostalgia and trauma into methods of queering childhood, family, and kinship.

ALBUM
A Performance by Mariana Valencia

Friday November 15
Saturday, November 16
7:30pm Lobby Open with Wine Reception
8:30pm Performance

KST’s Alloy Studio

With observations both humorous and grave, Mariana Valencia unites text, song, and dance inside the content of her ALBUM. Valencia’s body becomes an archive—a photo album, a record album, a herstorical album—in her effort to frame, to preserve, and perform her self. Valencia’s relationship to urbanity, vampires, love, and marginality come into play, through story, song, and movement as she orbits around her question: Who will write herstory? ALBUM is one woman’s attempt to start this process of self preservation—and to offer her future biographers a very honest, very funny crib sheet.

This presentation of ALBUM is made possible with support from Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama John Wells Directing Program

see hear here
A Workshop with Mariana Valencia

Saturday, November 16
11:00pm – 1:00pm, KST’s Alloy Studios

In this workshop, participants investigate choreographic structures within movement and language/text explorations. We will engage in movement exercises that expand upon our creative hubs, finding commonalities within our different artistic forms. Choreographic scores and structures will reveal our movement and language expressions through solo and group work. These small experiments will reveal new ways to make deeply layered contexts for performance. All makers welcome, be prepared to move about the space, write and converse with each other.

see hear here is made possible with support from Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama John Wells Directing Program

Making Home
Queer and Trans Creative Placemakers and Housing Activists

Saturday, November 16
1:30pm – 2:30pm Community Gathering
2:30pm – 4:30pm Dialogue

KST’s Alloy Studios

Join us for an afternoon of food and dialogue interrogating notions of home. Organizer Celeste Scott facilitates a conversation asking QTPOC artists and activists about equitable housing. Celeste is a frontline advocate for the Queer and Trans communities of color. For this conversation, she assembles a panel to discuss gentrification and the pushing out of Black and Brown QTPOC. The panelists together will tackle the following questions: Who is Pittsburgh most livable for? How important is culture in a neighborhood? What needs to change for QTPOC community to feel at home in Pittsburgh?

Black Unicorn’s Bekezela Mguni opens the dialogue with a family-style meal in collaboration with Chef Oliver Pinder. The lunch menu will include Coconut Rice, Trini Style Stewed Beef & Trini Style Stewed Tofu with Mushrooms, Arugula Salad with Acorn Squash and Toasted Walnuts and Homemade Spiced Sorrel.