Breaking the Binary Theatre Names ruth tang as First Recipient of BTB Commissioning Program

Breaking the Binary Theatre has revealed that ruth tang (they/them) is the inaugural recipient of BTB’s Commissioning Program, a newly launched initiative working to create and develop original full-length pieces written by transgender, non-binary and Two-Spirit+ (TNB2S+) theatre artists. ruth, whose piece Work Hard Have Fun Make History was workshopped in the inaugural Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival last fall and received a subsequent world premiere production in Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks series earlier this summer, will receive $10,000 to develop a new work with the company.

 

ruth tang writes plays and makes weird internet experiments. Their work includes Work Hard Have Fun Make History (Clubbed Thumb, Summerworks 2023), Future Wife (Theatertreffen Stückemarkt 2022), and Party in A Google Sheet (New Georges). They’re under commission from NAATCO + Long Wharf Theatre, a recipient of The Sundance Institute Interdisciplinary Program Grant, and a finalist for the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship 2023/4. Currently, they are part of Ars Nova's Play Group and the New Georges Jam, and an alum of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers' Group and NYTW’s 2050 Fellowship. They grew up in Singapore and presently live in Brooklyn, NY. To learn more about their work, please visit: ruthtang.com.

 

All 2022 Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival artist alumni were eligible to submit a proposal for the $10,000 commission earlier this spring. "We received a large number of impassioned commission proposals from our BTB alumni, so while the decision was not an easy one, all of us at Breaking the Binary Theatre could not be more thrilled to continue our relationship with ruth and work to develop a new piece with them over the course of the next year,” said George Strus.

 

Currently, Breaking the Binary Theatre is a company-in-residence at Williamstown Theatre Festival, where they will develop Liliana Padilla’s (they/them, How to Defend Yourself) play TWITCH with director Jack Ferver (they/them, Good Night).

 

They will also be a company-in-residence at New York Stage and Film, where they will develop Dominique Rider's (Bernarda’s Daughters) RACIAL BONUS with direction by Garrett Allen (they/them, Esme) in July.

 

As a part of Breaking the Binary Theatre's 2023 Falco and Steinman Residency Program, Azure D. Osborne-Lee (he/they, Crooked Parts) and Mara Vélez Meléndez (she/her, Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members) attended New Roots, a Queer Artist Residency at Walhalla Farm. As a part of their New Works Program, Breaking the Binary Theatre presented developmental presentations of Roger Q. Mason's (they/them, The White Dress) THE PINK and Molly Bicks' (they/them,Lily) MISS ATOMIC POWER earlier this year. Throughout the remainder of the year via this program, BTB is also developing works with the following TNB2S+ artists: A.A. Brenner (they/them/he, Emily Driver’s Great Race Through Space and Time), Ashley Lauren Rogers (she/they, Sounds of Madness), cara hinh (they/she, Little Women), Dominique Rider, Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin (they/she, Tiger Beat), Maxwell Friedman (they/them, Bigger? Sugar? Figure?), Nissy Aya (Nissy, she/ze/we, righteous kill: a requiem), ruth tang (they/them), Sarah Einspanier (they/them, Lunch Bunch), and Tẹmídayọ Amay (they/them/he, black odyssey).  

 

More information on the second annual Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival, taking place in the Fall of 2023, will be announced later this summer.

 

Breaking the Binary Theatre defines a “TNB2S+ artist” as any artist who does not correspond with the male and female binary and is transgender, non-binary, Two-Spirit, gender non-conforming, genderqueer, agender, gender expansive, bigender, gender fluid, or otherwise lives outside of the cisnormative gender binary. For more information on BTB's usage of "TNB2S+,” please visit: www.btb-nyc.com/overview.

 

Breaking the Binary Theatre remains counseled by their Core Community, a voluntary advisory board of prominent TNB2S+ theater artists assembled in their first year working to further BTB Theatre’s outreach and impact. The board includes Tony Award-nominated designer Adam Rigg (they/them, The Skin of Our Teeth), Kleban Prize and Jonathan Larson Award-winning writer César Alvarez (they/them, Futurity), New York Stage and Film’s Former Artistic DirectorChris Burney (he/they), Princess Grace Award Honoraria recipient and director David Mendizábal (they/he, Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Board Members), Guggenheim Fellow and writer Jen Silverman (they/them+, The Moors), Tony and Obie Award-winning actor and writer John Cameron Mitchell (he/they, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), Tony Award-winning multi-hyphenate KO who was formerly known as Karen Olivo (they/them, In the Heights), Kleban Prize and Jonathan Larson Award-winning poet Kit Yan (they/he/she, Interstate), Tony Award nominee L Morgan Lee(she/her, A Strange Loop), Jane Chambers Prize and Helen Merrill Award-winning writer MJ Kaufman (he/they, A Transparent Musical), Antonyo Award-nominated costume designer and activist Qween Jean (she/her, The Seagull/Woodstock, NY), Co-Director of A.R.T./New York Risa Shoup (they/them), Tomás Matos (they/them, “Fire Island”), Grammy Award-winning interdisciplinary storyteller Ty Defoe (he/we/ty, Straight White Men), and Princeton Arts Fellow and Helen Hayes Award-winning director Will Davis (he/him, California).

 

Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival is powered by fiscal sponsor Producer Hub and supported by a number of non-profit Admin Allies including Manhattan Theatre Club, MCC Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Public Theater, Roundabout Theatre Company, Soho Rep, and WP Theater.

 

For more information, visit www.btb-nyc.com. Follow the company on Instagram at @breakingthebinarytheatre.