About Staging Pride: Queer Youth Theater
National Queer Theater is seeking two Teaching Artists to lead Staging Pride: Queer Youth Theater in New York City. Staging Pride is a new free after school theater education program for LGBTQ youth ages 12-18 that focuses on building positive self-esteem and community through the performing arts.
With the support of The Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, NQT Teaching Artists will serve two cohorts of LGBTQ youth each over two semesters in Spring and Fall of 2022. The program will be administered through 24 two-hour in-person workshops, following local and national public health guidelines. Youth will be recruited through NYC public high school GSAs (Gender & Sexuality Alliances); through our partners at LGBTQ+ nonprofits, and our theater partners. Student artists will receive free metrocards, snacks, and field trips.
While building basic theater skills in acting, directing, and playwriting, the content of the program will center around themes of queer history, youth empowerment, and celebrating identity. Each session will focus on a different topic in the LGBTQ+ movement, from Stonewall to HIV/AIDS, using theater as a tool to creatively engage with and access these ideas, and claim their identities. Students will devise short scenes based on these themes, as well as elements of their own personal experiences as queer youth, building towards a final sharing at the end of the semester. Teaching Artists may assign some homework, including landmark LGBTQ plays, and historical movies. Teaching Artists are highly encouraged to be out and vocal about their identity with students.
The program will culminate in a process-oriented final sharing with friends, family, and community partners where students can perform selected pieces developed in the program and offer learnings from their experiences.
Minimum Qualifications
Experience teaching youth ages 12-18
Availability to teach after school at least one day per week Monday-Friday
Experience and passion for working with LGBTQ communities
Knowledge of NYC public school system preferred
Artistic experience as a professional actor, director, or dancer
Ability to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination
Passion for social justice, activism, and anti-racist education
Bilingual preferred
Schedule
Classes will be two hours each, and take place weekly after school over two semesters February-May and October-December. Class days and planning meetings will be scheduled around Teaching Artists’ availability.
Compensation
$40/hr for up to 120 hours ($4,800 total for the year) including, but not limited to: teaching, planning, recruitment, rehearsal, and administration. Any professional development sessions will be paid at the same rate.
Apply
Email a brief cover letter and teaching resume to adam@nationalqueertheater.org no later than September 15, 2021 at 11:59pmEST that demonstrates both interest and experience teaching theater and working with LGBTQ youth.
National Queer Theater is an Equal Opportunity Employer; queer women, TGNC, and people of color are highly encouraged to apply.
Duration
November 15, 2021 - December 16, 2022
Anti-Racism Statement
At National Queer Theater, we explicitly affirm our identity and operations as an anti-racist innovative theater collective and theater education institution. We condemn and admonish all forms of discrimination, racism, and bigotry, holding ourselves accountable to ensure our theater is more accessible to people of color and all underrepresented communities. We employ staff and artists who represent the fabric of our city and prioritize production of racially diverse theater programs and productions. Our work empowers queer artists of color to dismantle systems of oppression, and end the cycle of racism and its self-perpetuating structures within theater culture and practices.
We aspire for theater nationwide to reflect a more just society, to devise new ways of working that prioritize equity, diversity, community care, and inclusion. We stand on the shoulders of pioneers like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, James Baldwin, and Audre Lorde- revolutionaries working at the intersection of racial justice and queer liberation.
National Queer Theater leads initiatives that hold our staff, patrons, artists, and community accountable, creating safe and affirming spaces for people of color. We reject and reprimand all racist innuendo, allusions, slurs and offensive or unwelcome ideologies regarding anyone’s nationality, ancestry, origins, heritage, race and color. We acknowledge that racism perpetuates socio-economic inequalities, oppression and disenfranchisement that generations of Black communities and people of color have endured across America. So we commit to creating social justice work that is radical, unapologetic, and challenging, building community care for all marginalized people, serving a vision of an anti-racist world for equality, human fulfilment and liberation.