Petri Projects
About Petri Projects
Launched in 2017, Petri Projects seek to support the development of new work by artists in the TEAM community and to decentralize project leadership within the organization. The program’s guiding values are artist autonomy; unique support for early-stage work; budget transparency and education; and anti-oppression (including anti-racism). Petri provides funding, rehearsal space, and producing support to seedlings of new theatrical work.
Current Petri Cycle
The 2023-2024 Petri Project Cohort includes artists: Eric Emauni, Brisa Areli Muñoz, Orion Johnstone with Nehemiah Luckett, Jermaine Rowe, Ahmad Simmons, and SB Tennent. Read more about current projects below.
Memories in Leaves, led by Eric Emauni
A new Afrofuturist Musical based on the life of Rachel Ross, a woman who, despite her circumstances (age, wealth, gender, race, and time), used the land she was gifted to lift up her family and her descendants. Memories in Leaves is an investigation of her will, the ancestral knowledge she carried and planted, and the future she dreamed of.
RISK HALLELUJAH, led by Orion Johnstone with Nehemiah Luckett
An unapologetically Queer musical about Jesus!! // A ritual of healing-in-action through the stories and teachings of this radical anti-capitalist immigrant // A love song to Trans and Queer divinity in brazen defiance of Christian Supremacy and the Christian Right’s co-opting of the teachings of Christ
Light Codes, led by Brisa Areli Muñoz
Light Codes is an immersive spiritual performance with music that follows a Latine artist and their shaman as they traverse dimensions and timelines to decode intergalactic messages and reconnect with their soul’s purpose.
The Legend of the Rolling Calf: A Duppy Story, led by Jermaine Rowe
In this new play with music devised from a Jamaican mythology, the recent death of D’sa could open up a portal for the souls of formerly enslaved people to access a new life. But the portal will only open if D’sa is transformed into a beast version of humanity: the rolling calf—the manifestation of unhealed family trauma. As D’sa attempts to stop this painful transformation, The Legend of the Rolling Calf asks the question: “Who deserves access to life?”
Bubbles and Gershwin, led by Ahmad Simmons
John Bubbles, the godfather of tap, and George Gershwin, the great composer, build the world premiere of Porgy & Bess through a series of private rehearsals. In this play with dance, we tell the unexamined story of how two great American masters of time, cut from different walks of life, forged a legacy that would long outlive either man.
U + ME @ THE EDGE OF THE EARTH, led by SB Tennent
A multimedia love story that traces America’s violent pursuit of happiness as memories of historical events, constructed/reconstructed by our collective psyche(s), come together to try and answer the question: What is true in love and history?
Support for the Petri Projects Program is provided by the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts.