OUR MISSION
Experimental Bitch (ExB) is a fiscally-sponsored feminist arts company based in New York City that creates, develops, and produces badly behaved, genre-defying performances by emerging TGNC, queer and women artists.
ExB is unique because it supports artists whose work is not (yet) legible to mainstream theaters and audiences due to its groundbreaking content, mode of storytelling, and the communities for whom the work is created. ExB supports artists in the creation of innovative work that shakes audiences’ sensibilities, jostles their senses, engages them as active participants, and, in so doing, reconfigures our collective imagination of what theater is, where it happens and who it is for.
ExB has three primary programs: production, development, and community programming. Each reflects ExB’s core commitment to supporting emerging and underrepresented artists in the creation of urgent, dynamic, genre-bending work.
By re-claiming the title of “bitch” and blowing up the barriers surrounding femininity, feminism and the hierarchies within sexuality and gender, ExB celebrates the bitch in each of you. Face your fear. Face the bitch. Love the bitch.
Experimental
because we willingly put ourselves at the center of controversial questioning
Bitch
because we are femme, queer, loud and proud!
OUR ETHICAL GUIDELINES
Note about use:
These guidelines are meant to be read aloud with the entire company at the beginning of a process. They may be changed or added to, as the present company sees fit. They should begin with a land acknowledgment, or digital land acknowledgment.
Note on authorship:
These guidelines were originally created by Tatiana Baccari, Wednesday Derrico, Aliyah Hakim, Hannah Goldman, Sophia V. Heinecke, Gabriel Rodriguez & Madeline Wall in 2019. These guidelines have since been updated based on feedback from Alisha Espinosa and other artists involved in an EBP Production in January of 2020.
Land Acknowledgment Addition:
Adrienne Wong’s Digital Land Acknowledgement
“Since our activities are shared digitally to the internet, let's take a moment to consider the legacy of colonization embedded within the technology, structures, and ways of thinking we use every day. We are using equipment and high-speed internet, not available in many Indigenous communities. Even the technologies that are central to much of the art we make, leaves significant carbon footprints, contributing to changing climates that disproportionately affect Indigenous people worldwide. I invite you to join us in acknowledging all this, as well as our shared responsibility to make good of this time and for each of us to consider our roles in reconciliation, decolonization, and ally-ship.”
Be Awake
We develop and practice the empowered will, clear mind, and open heart required to wakefully, non-judgmentally encounter both the known and the unknown with strength, softness, and curiosity.
We acknowledge that wakefulness requires wellness. We care for ourselves and each other.
Be Aware
We acknowledge that sexism, societal-patriarchy, white supremacy, racism, anti-semitism, anti-Blackness, colonization and discrimination are just some of the violences that inflict trauma that each person carries. Each of us in a unique form according to our context and personal intersection of oppression and privilege.
We practice curiosity about and appreciation of each other. We seek to continuously learn about each other, always renewing and deepening our perceptions and conceptions of each other and allowing this to strengthen our work.
We practice intersectionality. We acknowledge that the labor to be present in a room is different for every person.
Be Alternative
We practice transparency in leadership.
We prioritize, centralize, give and hold space for those most marginalized by our world — within our membership, our audiences, and artists we choose to associate with.
We refuse to be complicit in an oppressor’s pattern of abuse and seek to upend imperialist, patriarchal, cis-heteronormative, white-centered dominance.
We collectively seek out and participate in workshop and training programs to expand our understanding of how inequity works and allow for better and more equitable art practices in our company.
We actively seek to support and collaborate with like-minded, like-hearted artists, collectives, and companies whose mission aligns with our own.
Be Good
We learn, cultivate and practice deep listening, which will form the basis of all our communication within the context of our work.
We practice the assumption that our fellow members have good intent and acknowledge that conscious communication must invite a context of openness, vulnerability and trust.
We practice conscious communication that is discerning, wise, and critical, while remembering that even the most intense criticism must still hold within it compassion and the desire for greater wholeness.
We encounter conflict with compassion and a desire for understanding, healing, resolution and compromise.
We acknowledge that sometimes people with integrity can disagree and remain loving collaborators.
When conflict is born, we express ourselves with honesty and consistency. We do not let difficult, uncomfortable feelings build to breaking points before we choose to communicate them.
We cultivate an environment of forgiveness. Mistakes are essential to our artistic process. They are acknowledged and seen clearly, but not condemned.
Be Free
We acknowledge that behaving well in every single moment is very close to impossible.
We understand that in order for our work to be devoted and serious and efficacious, it must be playful.
We allow ourselves to…