Seeking Applicants for the next Our Stage / Our Voices Artist-In-Residence
The UIS Performing Arts Center seeks applicants for the Our Stage / Our Voices Artist-in-Residency program. The duration of the residency is one year. The selected artist will be personally contracted for $12,000 for their work on the program and will have access to a budget of up to $12,000 for additional expenses related to the project.
Our Stage / Our Voices (OS/OV) exists to provide opportunities for performing artists who are members of historically underrepresented communities to address the issues of inequality in the regional performing arts with the goal of achieving diversity and inclusion. These historically underrepresented communities include but are not limited to BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and persons with disabilities.
The OS/OV Artist-in-Residency Program is a program that provides an opportunity for a selected artist to serve as an activist to readily advance a specific project that can help to raise underrepresented voices in the performing arts. Applicants will be considered based on their artist and/or activist credentials as well as the strength of their proposed project.
Read more about the program and find the application here.
Outraged: Terror in Springfield 1908
By Tim Crawford
An Our Stage / Our Voices play-in-progress
You are invited to be a part of an exciting, evolving theatre experience where your reactions and comments will help shape this play-in-progress by Our Stage / Our Voices Artist-in-Residence Tim Crawford. Join us for an evening of theatre that will begin with a selection of short plays written by participants in Tim’s recently completed Writing for the Stage Workshop, then experience a staged reading of Tim’s 1908 play-in-progress. The evening will culminate in a talkback session with the audience.
About the play:
In Outraged: Terror in Springfield 1908, we meet Bonaparte Baker, ten years after he survived a horrific attack on the Black community in Wilmington, N. C., in the previous century. On his way West, he steps off the train in Springfield, where he was born. Renowned as the hometown of Abraham Lincoln, Baker’s estranged brother-in-law tells him Springfield’s Black community feels protected, by Lincoln’s legacy, from the pogroms Black people are plagued with throughout the southern United States. In August 1908, Springfield is a place where terror and tragedy loom.
Thank you for supporting Our Stage / Our Voices, a program of the UIS Performing Arts Center in which the voices of historically underrepresented communities in the performing arts are amplified, with a goal of achieving diversity and inclusion.
Click here for ticket information!
Our Stage / Our Voices is a new program developed and sponsored by the UIS Performing Arts Center in which members of historically underrepresented communities address the issues of inequality in the regional performing arts with a goal of achieving diversity and inclusion. The artist-in-residence position will rotate annually as Our Stage / Our Voices works to amplify voices and stories throughout the community and create spaces for opportunity, understanding and originality.
Area playwright, actor, and director Tim Crawford will serve as the 2023 Our Stage / Our Voices artist-in-residence. During his residency, Mr. Crawford intends to write a play about the 1908 Springfield race riots and offer public events showcasing the progress of the piece. He will also spend time coaching local individuals to find their playwrighting voice through a series of learning sessions.
Sign up here to keep informed about Our Stage / Our Voices.
Past Artist-in-Residence
2022 Artist-in-Residence Reggie Guyton
Black Futurez: Mixtape
Culminating Residency Performance
February 3 & 4, 2023
Click here for archival recording.
Ragtime Panel Discussion
hosted by OSOV Artist-in-Residence and Ragtime Director Reggie Guyton
May 19, 2022, 6:30pm
Click here for recorded stream.
Creativity, Collaboration, and Community
April 15, 2022
Click here for recorded stream.
