ESTO NO TIENE NOMBRE

Photo by Neal Santos, courtesy of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage

Thursday, June 8 at 7:30PM

Friday, June 9 at 7:30PM

Saturday, June 10 at 7:30PM

Christ Church Neighborhood House, 4th Floor Theater

20 N. American St, Philadelphia, PA

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.

Performed by Denice Frohman

Directed/Co-Created by Alex Torra

Music and Sound by Nic Rodriguez Villafañe

Production Design by Nia Benjamin

  • Through interviews with Latina lesbian elders and women over 50 —writers, chefs, artists, lawyers, lovers, parents, and leaders—Denice will listen to and create a poetic tapestry from these stories of love, family, and sexuality. Trained by Columbia University's Center for Oral History through her work as a Baldwin-Emerson Fellow, Denice will also work with archival collections to research queer Latina history.

    The title Esto No Tiene Nombre honors that history by taking on the name of a revolutionary Latina lesbian magazine created by the bicultural writer tatiana de la tierra in the 1990's. Mindful of the lessons of pandemic—that life is fragile and that our survival depends on the collective—Denice hopes to build meaningful relationships with these beloved women, adding their memories and insights to a larger human archive which far too often leaves Latinx queer elders out.

    Denice is partnering with queer Latino theater-maker Alex Torra (director/co-creator) to synthesize the remembrances and histories of these women and elders with her own discoveries, developing a story arc and weaving them into a one-person show. Trans Puerto Rican sound artist Nic Rodriguez Villafañe (musical collaborator) will score the piece, bringing the stories to life in a moving portrait where sound meets verse.

  • 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.

MEET THE ARTISTIC TEAM

​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 including PUNCHKAPOW, JAPANAMERICA WONDERWAVE, HENRY IV: YOUR PRINCE AND MINE, and THE SINCERITY PROJECT (parts 1 and 2), and ¡BIENVENIDOS BLANCOS! OR WELCOME WHITE PEOPLE!. Alex is also an Associate Artist and former Associate Artistic Director of Pig Iron Theatre Company, where he has worked as Performer/Creator and Creative Producer on many of the company’s works over the last 10 years. Alex has received fellowships from the Independence Foundation, the Philadelphia Live Arts Brewery, 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 Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre at Swarthmore College, where he directs often and teaches Solo Performance and Acting.

Nic Rodriguez Villafañe 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.

A note of welcome

For all patrons who need or desire accessible accommodations, please reach out to info(at)interculturaljourneys.org with the subject line: Accessible Accommodations.

Esto No Tiene Nombre is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The project is also supported in part by the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Southwest Airlines, and the Surdna Foundation through a grant from the NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant Program.

Additional support has been provided by Independence Public Media Foundation, Silicon Valley Bank Foundation, and the Charlotte Cushman Foundation.

The archival interviews featured in Esto No Tiene Nombre come from the project: I See My Light Shining: Oral Histories of Our Elders by acclaimed author and 2020 MacArthur Fellow Jacqueline Woodson.