On Marsha’s birthday, August 24, 2023, we held our Starship Artist Fellowship Showcase Panel. This event marked the culmination of months of hard work by artists, Äscen X Ë11VËN, Azzan Quick, Dami Spain, Sweet Corey-Bey, and Utē Petit, who collaborated closely with their mentors. The night was filled with enlightenment, beauty, artistry, testimony, and the vibrant celebration of BLACK trans joy. We are delighted to showcase the event here.

Fellows

Azzan Quick is a filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist based out of Durham, NC, a graduate of North Carolina Central University, and a certificate recipient at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Quick focuses his creative abilities to tell stories mainly surrounding the LGBTQIA+ community as well as the stories of people of color. He believes that art sits at the heart of our preservation and helps us not only iterate our realities but allows these stories to echo throughout generations to come.

He/They is a 26-year-old NYC native. Born in the South Bronx, raised in Brooklyn, East New York, he is a multidisciplinary performing Artist, Human Rights Activist and Advocate with a centralized focus on the preservation of Black and Brown communities globally and consulting and collaborating with several grassroots orgs such as Point Source Youth, The Esoteric House of Transcendence, and U.R.G.E reproductive Justice. His art centers healing as each piece of work is an invitation to revisit, reclaim and restore self through compassion and curiosity.

Sweet Corey-Bey (they/them/theirs) is a transgender musician and cultural organizer based in Philadelphia, PA. As a performer and storyteller, Sweet’s practice is based in the fundamental Black music traditions of Blues, Jazz, Funk, Gospel and Soul. They create subversive, liberatory cultural

experiences through their music and shows, a practice informed by their study of gender variant performers and world builders. Sweet is here to carry on the legacy of their ancestors. Sweet is a founding member and bandleader of the genre- and gender-bending artist collaborative Black Folks Don’t Swim? Across various mediums such as content creation, poetry, graphic design, illustration and filmmaking, Sweet’s artistic practice calls audiences to joy, reflection and liberation. Employing Jazz and Neo Soul aesthetics as tools of Black queer ideation and identity, their work shifts cultural narratives to reflect on how gender variant people of the diaspora make meaning, space and places to thrive.

Davia Spain is a performance artist, musician, and filmmaker born and raised in California. She harnesses afro-futurist themes of time travel, multi-dimensionality, and circular time theory to imagine new possibilities for this physical plane. Her education and training in music, dance, acting, and filmmaking started in high school and continued on through college. In 2017, Spain received her Bachelor’s Degree in Experimental Documentary Making (Visual Anthropology) from San Francisco State University. During her time in college, she began working professionally as a performing artist and writer, continuing to hone her skills to date.

Utē works ancestrally, inheriting her grandmothers’ roles as quilters, educators, and farmers. She grew up spending time on farms from watermelon patches with her Paw Paw, to a yam farm in Japan. She is called to integrate her interests in farming and ecology with her artistic practices. She is stewarding her Great Grandmother’s and three neighbors’ lots in New Orleans. Here she is exploring the creation of the young and ancient nation called “Ailantha.” Named after the “Ghetto Palm” or “Tree of Heaven,” the Ailanthus Altissima tree is an invasive tree native to China. With the ability to clone itself when threatened, it can be found growing in any condition, on roofs, in toxic soils, in forests, with great rigor. This being is a cousin to Black folks of the “Western” Hemisphere and makes her wonder what it might mean to find home in a nation of heavenly beings.

Mentors

Dubbed the Ancient Jazz Priestess of Mother Africa, Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi is a Black Nigerian, Cuban, Indigenous, American Performance Artist, Author, Educator, a Helen Hayes Award-winning Playwright (Klytmnestra: An Epic Slam Poem), a 2021 Helen Merrill Award Winner, Advocate, Dramaturg, a 2x Helen Hayes Award Nominated choreographer (2016, 2018), and a Princess Grace Honoria Award winner.

She is the co-editor/co-founder of the Black Trans Prayer Book.

She is the curator and associate producer of Long Wharf Theatre’s Black Trans Women At The Center: An Evening of Short Plays, as well as an artistic ensemble member of the theater.

She wrote episode 1 of Untitled Mockumentary Project and acted on the series as well and wrote episode 9 (Refuge) of Round House Theater’s web series Homebound.

She was recently featured as Dr. Grace Grace in the webseries i need space and narrated The Netflix docuseries Visions of Us.

Linda La is an international, multidisciplinary SAG-AFTRA performer, recording artist, writer, teacher, host and model from the Boogie Down Bronx, New York. Her work infuses elements of music, movement, and spoken word poetry through theater performances and community workshops. Her self-biographical work has helped provide communities with greater knowledge and awareness around trans issues while challenging gender norms.

Born out of the Mainstream & Kiki Vogue Ballroom Scene, her sound has been articled in both AFROPUNK, The Fader, and she has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, W Magazine, and more. She has curated performances with The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, La Mama Experimental Theater, New York Live Arts and VICE. Last year, she made her film television debut in the role of Swan in the hit series finale of POSE on FX and received the New York State Proclamation Award at NYC’s 2nd Annual Juneteenth Jubilee. Currently, she resides on Munsee-Lenape land, finalizing her first studio recording project set to include original music and poetry. Her recording work can be found on all streaming platforms and archived at the Brooklyn Museum in the “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall” exhibit. Find out more at Lindala.world. Tip or donate via Cash App or Venmo @LindaLaFM.

Pop recording artivist, Broadway Muse & Trans superstar MILA JAM is a force with unforgettable stage performances & one-of-a-kind music videos. Most known for her pop single “It’s Raining Them” (Spotify, Deezer), Mila has appeared in campaigns for the FX groundbreaking series POSE, Sephora & The Phluid Project. She’s toured internationally with Broadway’s musical RENT and performed alongside Chaka Khan, Laverne Cox, MJ Rodriguez, James Brown, Tom Ellis, Mark Ronson, Jody Watley, Lady Kier (Deee-Lite) and more. Features include BCEFA’s Broadway Bares, TEDxTalk, Daily Blast Live, BBC’s The Lily Allen Show, MTV & MTV NEWS with special features in Billboard, The Daily Mail, UNILAD, Them, Paper, Huffington Post, Shondaland, NewNowNext & Out magazine. Follow her on all platforms: @themilajam

Roger Q. Mason (they/them) was dubbed by Theatre Mania as “a major voice in the theatrical vanguard.” Their playwriting has been seen on Broadway (Circle in the Square Reading Series), Off and Off-Off-Broadway, and regionally. Mason’s critically-acclaimed world premiere of LAVENDER MEN was recently lauded by The Los Angeles Times as “a daring theatrical talent on display…evoking the mingled visions of Suzan-Lori Parks, Jeremy O. Harris and Michael R. Jackson.”

As a filmmaker, Mason has been recognized by the British Film Institute, Lonely Wolf International Film Festival, SCAD Film Festival, AT&T Film Award and Atlanta International Film Festival. Their films have screened in the US, UK, Poland, Brazil, and Asia. Mason holds degrees from Princeton University, Middlebury College, and Northwestern University. They are a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group, and Primary Stages Writing Cohort; the co-host of Sister Roger’s Gayborhood podcast; the host of This Way Out Radio’s Queerly Yours: Portraits in Courage; and lead mentor of the Shay Foundation Fellowship and the New Visions Fellowship.

Born and raised in New York City, Ava Tuitt is a visual artist and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Purchase College with a B.F.A. in Painting + Drawing, her work focuses on the intersections of race, gender, religion, and pop culture. Constructing what she calls “gender creation stories,” her practice inserts and asserts the black trans body as a perpetual entity and explores the formation of both personal and collective identity, ultimately seeking to both deify and humanize the black trans experience.