Maxe Crandall and Cate Giordano approach the strange maze of cultural detritus that constitutes the American popular imagination – the icons and celebrities, daytime soaps and advertisements, legacies of violence and love – and transform that rubble into deeply complex, heartbreaking, hilarious performances. Please join us for a screening of Cate Giordano’s After the fire is gone, and a performance from The Nancy Reagan Collection by Maxe Crandall, in collaboration with C. Michael Chin and Hope Mohr, starring Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad, Aldrin Valdez, Diana Cage, Kay Gabriel, and Stephen Ira, with Miranda Brown and Noa Weiss.
Maxe Crandall is a poet, playwright, and director who works on and through poets theater, dance, and trans queer affect. His performance novel The Nancy Reagan Collection (Futurepoem) made the New York Public Library's Best Poetry Books of 2020, Lit Hub‘s 65 Favorite Books of 2020, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry. Maxe is Associate Director of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stanford University.
Cate Giordano shoots films, makes sculptures, and performs in various states of cross dress. Giordano’s work has been exhibited at Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Postmasters Gallery, Microscope Gallery, Spectacle Theater, Anthology Film Archives, Spring Break Art Show, The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, and others. Cate Giordano was a Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program recipient in 2016-2017 and a resident at Onassis AiR in Athens in 2019 and at La Résidence – Le Tremblay in Orgères, France in 2021.
This is tentatively planned as a live indoor event at St. Mark's Church. To keep our community safe, The Poetry Project implements the following at all live events: limiting the number of attendees; requiring proof of vaccination be shown at the door upon arrival; and requiring and providing face masks, as well as hand sanitizer stations. Before each event, we will also be conducting rapid tests for all performers and event staff. Attendees are required to register in advance, and contact information is collected at the point of registration in the event that we need to support any public health efforts around contact tracing. We are committed to the safety of our performers, audience, and event staff, and will be fully prepared to update any of these plans and protocols as circumstances continue to evolve. We are grateful to attendees for helping us maintain safety within our present public health context, and look forward to holding meaningful shared listening space together.