Want to book the “Heels on Wheels Glitter Roadshow†performance tour and workshop series?
WHAT
We offer an opportunity to book this dynamic combination of a multimedia, cabaret-style performance event paired with interactive workshops and/or lectures by each artist — both of which are given in a social-justice framework. The Heels on Wheels Glitter Roadshow has been to over 35 cities and schools since 2010. We’ve been featured at institutions such as Duke University, Hampshire College, University of Maryland, Southwestern University in Texas, Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY, and Concordia University in Montreal. The generous support of institutions allows us to share critically important LGBTQ stories and build communities via performances at accessible community spaces and events throughout the United States.
Heels on Wheels is a group of interdisciplinary performing artists who create performance-based cultural works and community events produced from sites of femme/inine-positive queer embodiment to reveal power in under-represented communities. We produce an annual inter/national tour, a monthly queer artists’ salon in Brooklyn, and facilitate workshops at colleges, conferences and youth-based organizations. Our mission is to use art to incite wonder, joy, critique, and dialogue; to bring visibility and complexity to diverse experiences; and to strengthen LGBTQ cultural communities. As a multiracial, all-ages, and working-class led queer organization, we commit to anti-oppression, liberatory frameworks, and transformative justice. We work professionally in a variety of media including theatre and performance, film/video, puppetry, dance, literature, music, print and web media, healing arts and community organizing. Members of our troupe have studied with the SITI Company, Bread and Puppet Theatre, and Augusto Boal, and are involved in subcultures like DIY punk and the underground arts scenes in our respective cities.
WHY
Because people of all genders and sexualities are often silenced, survive violence, or are disparaged when and because they show femininity, our artists’ voices are crucial to gender-justice and anti-oppression. We bring visibility and complexity to femme-inine spectrum experiences by using performance to incite wonder, joy, critique, and dialogue. Our show actively complicates and celebrates femininity, confronts misogyny, and offers many visions of what thriving and surviving as femme folks can be.
PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTION
The performance event uses a cabaret-style format to create an evening (or afternoon) of radical extravagance and thought-provoking glamor by co-curators Damien Luxe, Heather M. Acs and a rotating tour crew [see previous years touring artists here].
Heels on Wheels is a queer performance-art cabaret of radical extravagance and thought-provoking glamour. Our fearless performers rampage across the femme-inine spectrum serving up poetic theatre, hilarious performance art, stellar spoken word, and rocknroll you can sink your heels into!
WORKSHOPS
Workshop topics include: construction of identity, gender and sexuality through feminist and LGBTQ lenses; LGBTQ histories; the practice of art as a tool for social change; using Boal and Friere to build movements; and studio classes on craft and technique in our specific disciplines.
By pairing our performances with “how-to” interactive workshops and/or lectures that offer practical, hands-on techniques, participants are encouraged to deepen their critical analyses of cultural production, and will walk away with a collection of techniques, tools and technology necessary to create artistic work and sustainable projects in their own communities. Topics include, but are not limited to: the construction of identity, gender and sexuality through feminist and LGBTQ lenses, LGBTQ histories, the practice of art as a tool for social change, and studio classes on craft and technique in our specific disciplines, such as songwriting, spoken word, audio production, solo performance, and memoir. Some titles include, “Stories on the Fringe: LGBTQ Histories through Performance,†“DIY New Media: Creating and Maintaining a Viable Internet Presence,†and “Interconnections: Gender Liberation and Social Justice.†For a full list of workshops and descriptions, please go to: http://www.
ABOUT US
We are New York City-based, multi-disciplinary, queer performing artists & activists who work professionally in a variety of media including theatre and performance, film/video, literature, music, print and web media, healing arts and community organizing. Members of our troupe have studied with the SITI Company, Bread and Puppet Theatre, and Augusto Boal, and are involved in subcultures like DIY punk and the downtown arts scene in NYC.
Over the last four seasons HOW produced four major annual and six one-off arts events from Montreal to Minneapolis, engaging over one hundred artists and several thousand audience members with over 30 performances, three panels, 10 workshops, and five community events.
“Touring with multi-disciplinary artists who work professionally in a variety of media means that we can share strategies from Theatre of the Oppressed to DIY, from zine writing to community forums, in order to bring a combination of glitter, gender justice and engaged art. We’ve got folks representing Australia to Bolivia to Appalachia; people who grew up working class, poor, and middle class; folks with graduate-level education and people who are self-taught; people who identify as trans, genderqueer, immigrant, multi-racial; survivors, organizers, and educators. Getting to shake up all this experience and celebrate the creativity that comes out is what storytelling and community art is about.â€
— Heather Acs, Co-producer, Theatre Performance Artist, and NYC Teaching Artist
WHERE
We are available for entertainment events throughout the year, such as Performance/Cabaret series, Women’s Month programming, LGBTQ arts festivals, and other pertinent diversity and cultural events. We are also available for booking as visiting artists with our own programming. Please see workshop descriptions here: http://www.
