PERFORMANCE RESIDENCY
The Performance Residency at the Green Line Performing Arts Center is an excellent opportunity for local performers and cultural producers to showcase their work and develop new projects.
The ten-month residency from March to December 2024 provides three residents with access to top-notch facilities for rehearsals, workshops, and performances.
The program prioritizes Chicago-based artists and collectives, particularly those whose work is relevant to the South Side, promoting cultural transformation and change through community participation.
This residency prioritizes Chicago-based artists and organizations especially those whose work:
Encourages open, ongoing, and active community participation in culture-based collective transformation and change
Explores issues relevant to the South Side
Resident artists and organizations receive access to APL’s facilities and resources at no cost if their programming is free to the public.
May 23
8pm | Green Line Performing Arts Center
Re-Writing the Declaration
Part ritual, part performance, Re-Writing the Declaration invites the audience into an evolving conversation about freedom, belonging, and who gets to write history.
Guided by 2024/25 Performance resident Quenna Lené Barrett, we journey through past iterations of the work, weaving together memory, movement, and collective dreaming. Rooted in the Movement for Black Lives, this participatory performance centers Black women, femmes, nonbinary, and trans people of color to imagine a future where we are all truly free.
Expect to build something together: a table, a poem, a playlist, a vision. Colonial wigs might come out. So might your voice. Through video, sound, and live interaction, the past folds into the present to ask urgent questions about the stories we’ve inherited—and the ones we need now. You won’t just witness the show; you’ll shape it. Come ready to listen, reflect, speak, and create. Because this declaration isn't just being rewritten. It's being reclaimed.
The Legacy Project
At its core, Dandelions: Gods Don’t Cry is about resilience, transformation, and self-acceptance. The dandelion, often dismissed as a weed, symbolizes Blackness, queerness, and survival—thriving in places where it wasn’t meant to, adapting, and still standing tall.
Through the 13-track journey, the album explores:
Personal and collective Black histories, linking past and present struggles to the beauty of endurance.
Queer identity and self-reclamation, navigating the world as both marginalized and divinely powerful.
Family, grief, and healing, with storytelling that honors legacy while challenging systemic erasure.
Musically, the album is immersive and cinematic, weaving together hip-hop, soul, and spoken word. It is meant to be experienced as a living, breathing piece of literature, aligned with Roy's mission to elevate rap as a literary art form.
June 27
8pm | Green Line Performing Arts Center
2024 Performance Residents
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Quenna Lené Barrett
Re-Writing the Declaration
Chicago native Quenna Lené Barrett is a dynamic theater artist, director, performer, and educator. Rooted in Black radical wisdom, her work amplifies marginalized voices, fostering collective dreams for bold action. As an Associate Professor of Applied Theatre at Governors State University, Quenna shapes participatory, theater-based programs at prestigious institutions like the University of Chicago and Goodman Theatre. Adept in devised and social justice theater, she conceived and directed "Re-writing the Declaration," a groundbreaking play interrogating the nation’s founding by centering Black, queer femmes. A versatile collaborator, Quenna has contributed to projects with Paramount Theatre, NYU Steinhardt, and For Youth Inquiry, among others.
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Sea Michell Miller
Blackberry Blues Cabaret
Sea M. Miller is a cultural writer, educator, and theater-maker based in Chicago, IL. Their scholarly & artistic work is rooted in the performance traditions of Zora Neale Hurston, August Wilson, and Ntozake Shange. Drawing inspiration from these sources, as well as their own experience growing up in the Black charismatic church, they approach performance as a mode of embodied research and as a spiritual technology—for ancestral veneration, time travel, and social change. Originally from the Jersey Shore, Sea received a B.A. in English Literature & Language with a concentration in Poetry Writing from the University of Virginia. They also hold an A.M. in Theatre and Performance Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. They have directed, produced, and devised performances for audiences in St. Louis, MO, Chicago, IL, and Brooklyn, NY. Currently, Sea is translating their passion for theater and performance through the lens of burlesque.
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Roy Kinsey
The Legacy Project
Born and raised in Chicago, Roy Kinsey defies tradition as a black, queer-identified rapper and librarian. Unapologetically non-conformist, his albums, including "Blackie: A Story by Roy Kinsey" and "Kinsey: A Memoir," explore his life with potent musical performances. His upcoming release, "A Westside Story: The Legacy Project" (September 2024), promises more autobiographical depth. Shaped by witnessing threats to Black and queer bodies in Chicago and beyond, Kinsey's works meditate on his experiences coming of age. Featured on major publications like Chicago Reader and Billboard, his storytelling prowess solidifies his place in black music and literature. As a librarian for 11 years, his profession fuels self-examination, reflected in his impactful rhymes. He believes his heartfelt creations will resonate widely.
This 2023 residency cohort’s theme, Pilot, signifies experimentation and new beginnings. The resident artists were incubating, developing, and presenting new works, each charting a bold new course in their creative practice. Their collective work, and APL’s collaboration with the artists, set the tone and standard for the Performance Residency. We invite our neighbors and audiences to celebrate each resident’s creativity, imagination, and bravery at this special series of programs at Green Line Performing Arts Center throughout the year.
photo by Joel Maisonet
2022-23 Performance Residents
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Alyssa Gregory
presents
”The Process” -
Rika Lin and Tatsu Aoki with Asian Improv Arts Midwest
presents
”Asian American Jazz Festival” -
Cam Be and Neak
present
”a film called black” -
Chris "Mad Dog" Thomas with Kummba Lynx
presents
”Footwork Through Trauma” and ”Juke for Liberation” -
Mike Atcherson, Marcus Banks, Chloe Mikala, and Justin Walker
presents
”My Best Friend is Black - A Live Comedy Series” -
Rachel Gadson with the ILA Creative Studio
presents
”Dear Black Artists” featuring the Seventy Sevens -
Rocio "Chio" Cabrera
presents “Juana and the Missing Mayan Book”
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Sharyon Culberson
presents
”Black Joy Always Wins”