"The future deserves a present where our truths were spoken." - Mangos With Chili artist Alexis Pauline Gumbs, on Audre Lorde
Dear beautiful community,
We are writing you with some really good news: Mangos
With Chili, North America's queer and trans people of color cabaret, is going on OUR FIRST TOUR SINCE 2009!
Yep,
you heard it right. We are taking 8 artists in a van from Vancouver
to New Orleans, telling tales of how queer and trans people of color and
Two Spirit love, sex and desire is a force for healing and
transformation. We are spinning life saving, world changing stories that
people remember forever. We are going back to our roots: to where we
first began, when in 2007 we stuck 7 QTPOC performing artists in a 6-seater
minivan and took the Northeast by storm.
And we could use a little money. For things like
accessible hotel rooms and gas. For per diems and airfare and renting
venues. For making sure we are safe and have enough cash to take us
from unceded Coast Salish territories, otherwise known as Vancouver, to
New Orleans, city of beautiful
resistance. We're proud that one of our co-directors and half our tour
performers identify as disabled, and making sure we have wheelchair
accessible housing and that our venues are accessible comes from both
our overall commitment to disability justice and our responsibility to
ensure that our tour is accessible to our performers. Booking both takes
some cash.
To give you a breakdown:
$3,000 pays for van rental
$1,500 pays for gas for the whole tour
$1,200 is the amount of plane tickets we put on a credit card and need to pay off
$500 pays per diem for the cast and crew for two days
$250 feeds the cast and crew for a day
$100 pays a tech person
$50 is half of one hotel room
$25 feeds one performer for one day
$10 is three gallons of gas
And every single dollar helps.
Why is this so important? Read on.
Who we are: The Mangos With Chili story (the short version)
8 years, 150 artists, 4 tours, 100+ productions, 2 countries plus
Aztlan. 44 indigenous territories. One pre-Kickstarter Paypal
fundraising campaign when we both literally had $47 in the bank. one
pre-GPS 125 mile all night roadtrip through the backroads of northern
New Mexico on no gas. One three hour ICE stop and search filled with
sexual and racial harassment, one 24 hour straight drive home from
Denver to Oakland through the Rockies, 20,000 donated hours, over 125
volunteers, and many many many memorable curtain calls to Prince's
"˜Let's Go Crazy' later, we see how our labor has changed the world.
Mangos With Chili is a North American touring, Bay Area
based arts incubator committed to showcasing high quality performance of
life saving importance by queer and trans artists of color to audiences
in the Bay Area and beyond. Our goal is to produce high-quality
multi-genre performances reflecting the lives and stories of queer and
trans people of color (QTPOC) and speaking out in resistance to the
daily struggles around silence, isolation, homophobia and violence that
QTPOC face.
Founded in 2006 by Cherry Galette and Leah
Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, two trailblazing artists with significant
performance experience and honors to their names. Mangos With Chili
began as an annual touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color
performance artists, with the goal of creating a cultural institution
that would build the careers and visibility of QTPOC artists. Our tours have performed to sold out houses across North America,
wowing audiences in world class theaters, underground performance
spaces, bars, and campus halls, with high intensity, breathtaking
performance, politics, and storytelling craft, reflecting the lives and
stories of queer and trans people of color.
More than a performance incubator, we are also a ritual space for
queer and trans communities of color to come together in love,
conversation and transformation. Our goal is to present high quality
performance art by QTPOC, but so much of our work is also about creating
healing and transformative space through performances that are
gathering places for QTPOC community.
We've featured at Brown University, (feature for
the Black Lavender Experience Theatre Symposium 2011), Oberlin,
Swathmore, Amherst, Smith, American University, Georgetown,
U.C. Berkeley, Mt. Holyoke, Humboldt State University, UT Austin. We are
equally proud of our performances in queer community centers, queer of
color bars, living rooms and Indigenous run infoshops. We've received
positive media coverage from the SF Bay Guardian, the SF Chronicle, The SF Appeal, Bitch, Feminist Review, Hip Mama, Aorta, and Make/Shift
We started this work in 2006, inspired by second wave queer feminist
of color institutions like Kitchen Table Press that had given us life,
and had ended. 8 years later, we know so much more than we did about
both what a struggle it is to sustain QTPOC arts institutions, and just
how important it is.
The 2014 Whipped Tour:
During late January and February 2014, we'll take 8 artists on the road to tour Whipped: QTPOC Recipes for Love, Sex, and Disaster to
audiences along the West Coast, Southwest, and Gulf Coast.
Mangos
With Chili knows that queer and trans* folks of color
do love, sex and total disaster like none other! In this special
Valentine's themed production, queer and trans* folks of color will
tell
their true life stories of love, desire and disaster through music,
spoken word, theater, dance, drag, film, and video diaries. Our show
will explore the complexities of love, sex and desire- how they are a
complicated, rich force for healing and transformation in our
communities. Bring a
trinket for the altar we'll build to the loves we've lost, known, and
are praying for, and come prepared to hear truths you've never heard
spoken before but have always needed.
Featuring:
Kay Ulanday Barrett
Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghere
Askari González
Beast Ly
Monica McIntyre
Julio Salgado
Cherry Galette
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
For detailed artist bios: http://mangoswithchili.com/
Why you?
We've always said that
capitalism doesn't love us, but our communities do. We are deeply thankful for our beloved community members, who have
filled passed hats and Paypals, given us venues, videography and places
to sleep, given us hugs and encouragement when we felt like giving up,
and been our most consistent source of support.
We
know how deeply many people getting this email have benefiting from
our work and presence in the world- from the artwork we've made big
stages for, to the QTPOC art and cultural communities we've been a
part of building together. For all of these reasons, we ask you to
support us on this next amazing journey.
Thank you again for your love and your resistance. Let's keep both going together.
In love, lipstick and revolution,
Cherry Galette and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Co-founders and co-directors, Mangos With Chili.
mangoswithchili.com