TQ Live!

TQ Live! presents a queer evening of dazzling performance, dance, poetry, comedy, resplendent fantasies, music, and more. This fifth annual performance series features artists and performers from the many LGBTQIA communities in the Pittsburgh region and is produced by Scott Andrew, Joseph Hall, and Suzie Silver. Hosted by Joseph Hall, this year’s line-up includes performances by Mrs. Kasha Davis of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Vanessa German, Rickey Laurentiis, Ryan M. McKelvey, MICHIYAYA Dance, Theodore Rexx, theatriQ and a video work by Atom Atkinson + Scott Andrew.  

Please note this performance contains adult subject matter and strong language.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.

This project is supported in part by the Carnegie Mellon University School of Art, the Center for the Arts in Society, and the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and the Sylvia and David Steiner Speaker Series.

Artist Bios

Scott Andrew

Scott Andrew is a multimedia artist, working in video, installation, performance, and new media. He creates speculative fantasies that peer into otherworldly portals and voids and has most notably exhibited with the Institute for New Feeling at MoMA’s PopRally (New York City), Recess (New York City), Ballroom Marfa (Marfa, Texas), Whitechapel Gallery (London), Black Cube (Denver, Colorado), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), and the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles).

Atom Atkinson

Atom Atkinson is a poet living in Western New York, a doctoral student at University of Utah, the Director of Literary Arts at Chautauqua Institution, and 1/6 of the poetry collective Line Assembly.

Mrs. Kasha Davis

Mrs. Kasha Davis (MKD) is the alter ego of Ed Popil, season 7 contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race. A “lady,” an international celebrity housewife, and that maternal-like character that’s just a hoot and a holler at all family functions. MKD grew up in Scranton, PA, graduated from Marywood University with a BA in Theatre, and was a principal dancer in the Ballet Theatre of Scranton. She can be heard in her one woman show There’s Always Time for a Cocktail.

Vanessa German

Vanessa German makes art that calls in to reckoning, the submerged narratives that bridge the intersections of intellectual, physical and spiritual space. Her work considers the living ricochet of racism and its attendant traumas on the body, spirit, and earth in the simultaneity of time. She is a 2018 USA artists fellow, and winner of the 2017 American Academy of Arts and Letters Jacob Lawrence Prize.

Joseph Hall

Joseph Hall is a black, queer, transracial adoptee, podcast lover, creator, critic, and youngest of five. He is Deputy Director at BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance as well as a producer, curator, and performer working in New York City and Pittsburgh. As a performer, he has worked with choreographers Staycee Pearl, Maree ReMalia, Lida Winfield, and Jasmine Hearn, and video artist Suzie Silver.

Rickey Laurentiis

Lannan Fellow and Whiting Award winner, Rickey Laurentiis is the author of Boy with Thorn, winner of the Cave Canem Prize and the Levis Reading Prize, among other honors. He is currently the inaugural Fellow in Creative Writing at the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, University of Pittsburgh.

Ryan M. McKelvey

Ryan M. McKelvey’s performances are usually one-to-one encounters or public interventions. Alter egos occasionally get slipped on, too. Formative years in poetry and theater brought him to collaboration, drag, and live art. He has shown work in Seoul, Brighton, Bath, and Pittsburgh. McKelvey also collaboratively devises projects as Home Soil.

MICHIYAYA Dance

MICHIYAYA Dance is an all-women contemporary dance theater company co-founded by Anya Clarke and Mitsuko Verdery. Clarke and Verdery are an award-winning, multimedia duo from New York City that synthesize dance and visual art. Their work has been featured by Yale University, the Brooklyn Museum, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Opportunity Fund, THINX, Baruch Performing Arts Center, Gibney, and more.

Suzie Silver

Suzie Silver creates art that alludes to the capacity for desire to disrupt social boundaries and imagine new futures. Her well-known early videos, Freebird and A Spy are canonical works of queer video art. Silver’s videos have been screened at over 100 festivals on five continents. Her ongoing collaboration, Fairy Fantastic! a fairy and folk tale video series for gender non-conforming kids of all ages, has screened at festivals in Belarus, London, Portugal, Romania and Australia.

theatriQ

theatriQ is an LGBTQA+ youth ensemble with Dreams of Hope, a arts organization supporting young queer and trans people in the Pittsburgh region. The ensemble creates original work addressing LGBTQA+ themes including a full length play every year. The music group writes, composes, and performs music for all theatriQ productions. The group released their first album, Home, is 2016.

Theodore Rexx

Baltimore-based DJ Theodore Rexx’s dynamic fusion of pop music with global and club beats frequently results in many unexpected twists and turns on the dance floor. As a multi-instrumentalist, he has also laid down the rhythm for numerous artists and bands, most notably as a percussionist with the Baltimore Ravens Marching Band.