Bio
Carmelita Tropicana’s performances and plays have been presented/produced in theaters, museums, alternative performance spaces, and galleries including: Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Sevilla, Hebbel am Ufer Theater, Berlin, Kirk Douglas Theater-Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, Performance Space NY (formerly PS 122) and INTAR theater, NY. She has received a United States Artists Fellowship (2021), CLAGS, Center for Lesbian and Gays Studies José Muñoz Award (2021), Guggenheim Fellowship (2017), Creative Capital (2016) Anonymous Was A Woman (2005), and an Obie (1999). Her writing has appeared in many anthologies, most recently in Animal Acts, Performing Species Today ((University of Michigan Press, 2015). A collection of scripts, short stories and essay appear in her book I, Carmelita Tropicana, Performing Between Cultures was published by Beacon Press. She co-edited with Holly Hughes and Jill Dolan the Lambda Award-nominated book Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the Wow Café Theater (University of Michigan Press, 2015). She has served on the Board of Directors of Performance Space New York (PS 122), and presently serves on the New York Foundation for the Arts Board of Directors. She is a member of Actors Equity Association and the Dramatist Guild.
Artist Statement
As a writer and performer, I have straddled the worlds of performance art and theater. I use irreverent humor and fantasy as subversive tools to challenge cultural stereotypes and rewrite history from multiple perspectives. By performing hyperbolic feminine and masculine personas, as well as numerous animals, insects, and fantasy creatures, I challenge historical and narrative authority. My work addresses political issues and looks at the intersections that exist between ethnicity, sexuality, gender, race and class.