SEE/UNSEE | PRISM FESTIVAL
We’ll be sharing a work-in-progress concert version of SEE/UNSEE in PRISM Festival at The Brick, June 18-22. Ticket link coming soon!
Lila Blue and their ten-piece band conjure a grief ritual from the work and imagined life of artist Hilma af Klint. Surfacing where Blue’s life overlaps with that of the pioneering painter and mystic – in queerness, in love, and in loss – SEE/UNSEE invites you (and any ghosts who might tag along) into a ferocious song cycle séance.
Book, Music, & Lyrics by Lila Blue, Directed & Developed by Jillian Jetton, Dramaturgy & Additional Text by Ren Dara Santiago, Music Direction & Additional Orchestration by Noga Cabo
SEE/UNSEE | Z Space
SEE/UNSEE, a song cycle séance inspired by the work and life of painter & mystic Hilma af Klint, will be in residence at Z Space in San Francisco for two weeks in May. I’ve been directing and developing this piece for the last few years with folk musician/playwright Lila Blue, and dramaturg Ren Dara Santiago, and an evolving team of performers and musicians. We’ll have an invited sharing at Z Space on Saturday, May 31st.
SalOn! at Brick Aux
The next SalOn! will be Saturday, June 7th at 7:30pm. Sign up here to get a reminder & RSVP link for future SalOn!s, and if you want to get involved, let us know.
SalOn! is a quarterly gathering that brings together performance artists, comedians, chefs, scientists, theologians – anyone with something to share in a DIY, low-stakes setting – in one delightfully unpredictable night. Hatched at Silent Barn in 2014 by Founding Artistic Director Theresa Buccheister, I am delighted to be stewarding this series as Artistic Director, and to be joined by co-curator Matthew Antoci.
my utopias by Jay Stull
I am currently developing my utopias by Jay Stull, a play that dramatizes the politics of world-building. Set in a version of the East Village, my utopias asks: Can we ever begin again? And is it not the intrinsic fanaticism of utopianism to think not only that it’s possible, but that we should?
March 2025 workshop at La Mama: Andrés Chaves, Ugo Chukwu, Melissa Hurst, Maria-Christina Oliveras, McLean Peterson, Jon Norman Schneider, and Julyana Soelistyo
October 2024 workshop at Brick Aux: Dalia Davi, Fernando Gonzalez, Melissa Hurst, Mari Lee, Anna O’Donoghue, Austin Purnell, Jon Norman Schneider, and Julyana Soelistyo
Liturgical Workshops | Sunnyside episcopal
This summer I collaborated with Fr. Carl Adair of The Episcopal Mission in Sunnyside on the site-specific, interactive, iterative performance that is a Eucharistic Mass. Over three “liturgical workshops,” we considered what values get upheld by all of the agreements one makes, implicitly and explicitly, when walking into a church, and how to shift those agreements in pursuit of a genuinely loving and liberating space.
SEE/UNSEE | LAKE LUCILLE PROJECT
In June 2024 we returned to the Lake Lucille Project for a dramaturgical workshop of SEE/UNSEE, a queer folk musical inspired by the work and life of Hilma af Klint, composed and co-written by Lila Blue. Co-writer/dramaturg Ren Dara Santiago joined us, along with performers/musicians Adam Cabo, Noga Cabo, Jennifer Ikeda, Saskia Lane, Gunnar Manchester, Mia Pak, Lucia Rogerson, and Han van Sciver.
SM: Ella Lieberman / Producer: Emily Gabler / Chef: Cam Pileggi / Sous Chef & PA: Joyah Dominique / Program Directors: Brian Mertes & Melissa Kievman
mercury store directing LAB
In Spring 2024 I experimented with staging temporal dislocation through the Mercury Store Directing Lab, facilitated by Claudia Zelensky and Manuel Ortiz, and with advising from Aya Ogawa.
SEE/UNSEE | LAKE LUCILLE PROJECT
In July 2023 I co-directed with Brian Mertes a workshop of a new musical by Lila Blue. Inspired by the life and work of radical Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, this project conjures a story of grief, queerness, love, and the divine.
Performers: Lila Blue, Jo Lampert, Maude Mitchell, Kai Thomani Tshikosi, Gabriel Ebert, Julian Crouch, Vicky Finney, Gunnar Manchester, Phil Roebuck, Saskia Lane, Luna Porta-Lane, Mariana Quinn-Makwaia, Noga Cabo, Adam Cabo / Co-producers: Melissa Kievman + Trevor Wang / Sound: Daniel Baker / Lights: Betsy Chester / SM: Lisa McGinn