Kirya Traber & Sissi Liu
Kirya Traber (she/her) is a nationally awarded writer, performer, and cultural worker. She is a collaborating artist with Ping Chong + Company and is Curator-in-Residence with Hi-ARTS. She was New York Stage and Film’s 2020 Founders Award recipient. From 2015-2020 she was Lincoln Center’s lead Community Artist in Residence. She is the recipient of a NY Emmy Nomination (First Person PBS), Robert Redford’s Sundance Foundation award for Activism in the Arts, a California Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, and an Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award for Poetry. She has been a commissioned artist of notable New York arts institutions such as the New York Philharmonic, the Morgan Library & Museum, the Orchestra of St Luke's, and La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, among others. Throughout her ambitious performance and writing career, Kirya has continuously utilized her art for social change as a cultural organizer.
kiryatraber.com // Instagram // Twitter
Sissi Liu (she/her) is an award-winning musical theater specialist and multimedia artist who has created works for venues such as Carnegie Hall, Joe’s Pub, the Lincoln Center, Times Square Alliance, and The Juilliard School, where she trained in composition and orchestration. Her writing appears in leading academic journals such as Theatre Topics, Performance Research, Studies in Musical Theatre, and several edited volumes including The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical and iBroadway: Musical Theatre in the Digital Age. She holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and has been a Visiting Scholar at Brown University. A firm believer in art for social change, Dr. Liu is also a RISD-certified designer of jewelry with healing powers.
During their time in residence, Kirya and Sissi will concentrate on If This Be Sin, a musical about Queer Harlem Rennaissance entertainer, Gladys Bentley. They intend to work with a cast and band to record demo tracks for the work-in-development.
“We are a queer of color (Black-and-Asian) writing duo, destined to meet and work together to uplift QPOC radical joy in the most distinctly American form of theatre. Through both the musical score and the written word, we are passionate about bringing QPOC from the margins to the fore of musical theatre. Our most radical desires are to write uproariously entertaining musicals that put the historically exploited at the center of the story. We believe the stage is a key battleground for the future of American culture. Our fight will be waged through tactical wit and scholarly prudence, but most importantly through the unexpected delight of a damn good musical.”
— Kirya Traber & Sissi Liu
Left: Kirya Traber (courtesy); Right: Sissi Liu (courtesy)
