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Performance collaborative SuperGroup is working on PEOPLE I KNOW: a new multiphase performance project exploring the relationship between identity, biography, and self that will premiere this November. As a part of the first phase of this project we are presenting PEOPLE I KNOW: in the Theater. Cast members Deborah Jinza Thayer, Derek Phillips, and Venus DeMars will perform solos created with SuperGroup alongside a few other special guest solo performances!
SuperGroup is the Minneapolis based performance collaboration of Erin Search-Wells, Sam Johnson, and Jeffrey Wells. SuperGroup began in the Red Eye Theaters Works-in-Progress program 2008 and since has shown work at venues across the Twin Cities including the BLB, the Red Eye, Bedlam Theatre, the Ritz, and the Walker Art Center, as well as nationally at the Invisible Dog Art Center (NYC, presented by the Joyce Theater), Velocity Dance Center (Seattle), Temple University (Philadelphia), and ODC (San Francisco). Along with full-length performances, SuperGroup also creates short dances, cabaret performances, durational structured improvisations, dance films, and tea parties. Their most recent project, In Which _______ and Others Discover the End, a collaboration with playwright Rachel Jendrzejewski, art rock band Brute Heart, and installation artist Liz Miller premiered at Public Functionary in Minneapolis, March 2015.
Deborah Jinza Thayer. After spending the first six years in Japan and Southeast Asia, Deborah Jinza Thayer grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University and received an MFA in Dance from George Mason University. She has been performing and choreographing for about three decades, which is a really long time. Usually you see her choreographing. From time to time she performs. She has performed in the works of Rosy Simas, Heidi Geier, and is honored to be working with SuperGroup for the first time.
Venus DeMars is a multidisciplinary artist and musician, best known as a singer-songwriting transgender rock star and leader of the band All the Pretty Horses. Venus is also one of the foundational artists for Rifle Sport Alternative Art Gallery. A chance tax audit transformed her into a champion of artists tax rights, after which the Venus de Mars Fund with Springboard for the Arts was established. Venus came out as transgender at a time when identifying as trans meant being classified as mentally ill and living as an outcast. Her refusal to live a shadow existence, instead embracing her uniqueness, complicated her musical and artistic career paths. She is now mid-process in writing a memoir reflecting on her twenty-plus year trans journey and place in this fast changing, trans-embracing world where we now find ourselves. Venus is the recipient of multiple grants and awards, among them a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, a Bush Fellowship, a Minnesota Music Award, and is the subject of the award-winning documentary "Venus of Mars." She recently completed a tour with Laura Jane Grace and Against Me. Her newest release, an acoustic album produced by longtime collaborator Barb Morrison (Debbie Harry, Rufus Wainwright, Scissor Sisters, etc.), is called Flesh and Wire.
Derek Phillips is a native of Kansas City, Missouri and a 1977 graduate of Carleton College. He began his dance career with the Nancy Hauser Dance Company and later toured nationally with the Childrens Theatre Company. Derek has been a roster artist for the Minnesota State Arts Boards Artists-in-Education Program and conducted annual residencies for the Montevideo, Minnesota public schools for over twenty years. He has taught as part of the Dance/Math program at Whittier Community School for the Arts in Minneapolis and instructed and performed for the City Childrens Nutcracker Project. He has also served as Development Assistant for Intermedia Arts capital campaign and Adjunct Dance Education Coordinator for the Perpich Center for Arts Education. Currently, Derek is a teaching artist for both the Childrens Theatre Company and the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts. He tours internationally with Katha Dance Theatre and performs English country dances with Minnesota Traditional Morris.
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LocationBryant-Lake Bowl Cabaret Theater (View)
810 W Lake Street
Minneapolis, MN 55408
United States
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