2022 - 2023 Season
Esto No Tiene Nombre is a new poetic and sonic one-woman show that uplifts the oral histories of Latina lesbian elders and women over 50. Told through a series of vignettes, the show places Denice Frohman in conversation with her elders to trace lineages of love, desire and identity. Guided by these first person stories from pre-Stonewall police raids in Philadelphia to first kisses, Esto No Tiene Nombre embraces a powerful living history to chart a path of belonging for the future.
meet the artists
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meet the artists •
Denice Frohman is a poet, performer, and educator from New York City, based in Philadelphia. A Pew Fellow and Baldwin-Emerson Fellow, she has received support from Headlands Center for the Arts, CantoMundo, the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures (NALAC), Leeway Foundation, and Millay Colony.
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The BreakBeat Poets: LatiNext, Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, ESPNW and elsewhere. A former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, she has been featured on hundreds of national and international stages from The Apollo to The White House.
Alex Torra is a Miami-born, Philadelphia-based director, performer, producer, and educator. He is the Co-Founder and Resident Director of Team Sunshine Performance Corporation, where he serves as one of the company’s primary administrators and has directed all of the company’s full-length works. Alex has received fellowships from the Independence Foundation, the Princess Grace Foundation (the Grace Le Vine Theatre Award), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and NY's Drama League. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. in Directing from Brown University. Alex currently serves a Assistant Professor of Theatre at Swarthmore College, where he directs often and teaches Solo Performance and Acting.
Nic Rodriguez Villafañe (Sound Designer) is a nonbinary, Florida raised, Philly based Boricua. They are a writer, educator, DJ and brujx. For more than a decade they have served the community as a social justice organizer and researcher. A former Leeway Foundation Arts & Change grant recipient, their writing has been featured in The Gordian Review, Philadelphia Inquirer and N.A.S.W. Journal. Nic holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University and is currently a PHD candidate at University California at San Diego in Theatre and Drama Department. They are a co-editor for Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing & Justice which will be published by Common Notions Press in the Spring of 2023. As a true Scorpio sun/Aries moon, Nic has a million passion projects, but their main love is rooted in deep, watery poems.
Nia Benjamin (Production Designer) is a Black agender, queer performer, filmmaker, set and installation designer, video artist, director and producer of experimental theatre. Their work uses the synthesis of dance, poetry, live music, theatre and video arts to create live performances and media about the sovereignty, liberation and interiority of Black and Brown, queer and trans* people. Nia is the Co-Artistic Director of Ninth Planet, a Philadelphia based experimental dance-theatre company that makes original works of performance that centers people of color, women, queer and trans* people.