The Trans Conversation Project is a community event series that began with intergenerational interviews in the spring of 2024; participants agreed to meet up and mutually interview one another about their lives and experiences across generations, gender and culture. These conversations illuminated commonalities—like being a “super ally” for a few years, or being awestruck by a trans figure in the public eye; having a first important conversation with another nonbinary person or navigating changing relationships as they grow closer or fall away with transitioning.
A THIRD SPACE is a collage of those conversations, set in liminal spaces like waiting rooms and lines for the bathroom, with a diverse all-trans/nonbinary ensemble cast that connects performers from their twenties into their seventies.
Written by playwright Maddox Pennington (Love Chicken, Annex) and directed by Elisawon Etidorhpa (Annex, Keep in Mind) A THIRD SPACE is produced by an all-trans and nonbinary creative team of theater artists.
A note for audience members and reviewers: Please pay careful attention to the creative team and actors’ pronouns and respect their gender identity when you talk or write about the show!
Production art by Orion Fern (they/them) and Claire Dicker (they/them).
Supported by the West Hollywood Transgender Arts Initiative and a Netflix Accelerator Grant through the Native American Media Alliance.
Show Schedule*: After-show events and gatherings TBA!
Preview: Saturday, June 8th @ 8pm (Pay What You’d Like)
Opening: Sunday, June 16th @ 11:30am
Friday, June 21st @ 5:15pm
Sunday, June 23rd @ 7pm
Closing: Friday, Jun 28th @ 9:45pm
Director
Elisawon Etidorhpa (they/she) Coming from a competitive theatre background in Texas and obtaining their BFA from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, Elisawon has recently appeared in Annex at the 2023 Hollywood Fringe Festival; Texas For Four More Years, in KeyTv’s Production of Keep Me in Mind’ produced by Keke Palmer, the Hantext Play Reading Festival, and UCLA’s I’m Here Now.
Playwright:
Maddox Pennington (he/they) is a nonbinary comedian, professor, and playwright; a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, he is originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University, and their debut bibliomemoir, A Girl Walks Into a Book: What the Brontës Taught Me About Life, Love, and Women’s Work was published by Hachette Books in 2017. After teaching college and creative writing in New York and Washington DC, they moved to Los Angeles to join the writing faculty at the University of Southern California. Their work for the stage has been developed with the Native Voices series at the Autry Museum of the American West and the La Jolla Playhouse, NYC’s FRIGID Queerly Festival Off-Off Broadway, the Theatre Viscera Podcast, in LA’s Moving Arts MADLab, and the 2023 T/GNC Reading Festival. At the Hollywood Fringe, they’ve written, directed and produced two award-winning plays with majority nonbinary/trans casts—Love Chicken and Annex. They recently completed a post-apocalyptic workplace comedy pilot with the Native American Media Alliance TV Writer’s Lab. You can find them online at MaddoxKPennington.com and @MKPinLA.
The Trans Conversation Project is a multi-faceted event series that includes intergenerational interviews, writing & performance workshops, and a newly devised theater project for the 2024 Hollywood Fringe. Follow along at @CampGayBonesProd on Instagram.
Production Team
