Karyn Warren-Gregory

= Biography =

Karyn Louise Warren-Gregory is a multimedia performance artist, activist, and a graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. As a white, lower middle class, non-binary, queer, femme—as well as a plethora of other self-signifiers—her work places primacy on presenting privilege alongside of struggle. All the while reminding her audience that, though these intersecting identities cause complications, the resulting pain has transformational properties. This pain has the power to do work. This work, her work, strives—not for the phallic notion of “answers”, but for a constant and steadfast complication of the questions themselves. Her preferred method for complication is using performance, video art, sound design, and sculpture to create immersive installation atmospheres. Her current work deals with questions of heartbreak, heartache, excess, lack, self, selfless, empathy, apathy, camp, satire, comedy, and self-loathing.

= Academics =

Division I
Advisor: Will Ryan

Fall 2010


 * CS-0148: Other Minds w/ Laura Sizer
 * NS-0158: Brain Mechanisms w/ Cindy Gill
 * CSI-137T: Camelot & Crisis w/ Will Ryan
 * JAPA-01: Intro to Japanese w/ Ikumi Kayama

Spring 2011


 * HACU-0142: Literature of Kleist and Kafka w/ Alicia Ellis
 * HACU-0269: Japanese Cinema w/ Abraham Ravett
 * IA-0115: Everyone's a Critic! w/ Talya Kingston
 * JAPA-04: Beyond Basic Japanese w/ Ikumi Kayama

Division II
Title: Inspiration Through Experimentation: A Performative Exploration of an Audience's Emotional Reciprocation Chair: Talya Kingston Member: Elly Donkin

Fall 2011


 * HACU-0122: Dancing Modern w/ Daphne Lowell
 * HACU-0222: Modernism and Modernity w/ Karen Kohler
 * IA-0131: Playwriting w/ Elly Donkin
 * IA-0291: Opening the Instrument w/ Djola Branner

Jan 2012


 * IA-0222: Theatre of the Oppressed: Foundations and Techniques w/ Natalie Sowell

Spring 2012


 * FLMST-290: Feminist and Queer Theory w/ Christian Gundermann
 * IA-0215: Hip Hop Theatre w/ Djola Branner
 * IA-0217: Radical Youth Theatre w/ Natalie Sowell
 * IA-0225: Dramaturgy w/ Talya Kingston

Fall 2012


 * THDA-111: The Language of Movement w/ Wendy Woodson
 * HACU-0268: Women Filmmakers w/ Joan Braderman
 * IA-0256-1 Money Play: Theatre Workshop w/ Will MacAdams

Spring 2013


 * IA-0245: Devising the Jazz Aesthetic w/ Djola Branner and Will MacAdams
 * THE-261: Writing for Theatre w/ Len Berkman
 * HACU-0301: No Place: Utopian Visions in Film and Video w/ Jules Rosskam
 * Babes with Band Saws w/ Anna Niles

Division III
Title: THEATRE OF EMOTIONAL TRANSFERENCE: A Performative Study of Multimedia Approaches to Queer Autoethnography Chair: Talya Kingston Member: Djola Branner

For my Division III, I will be crafting pieces of immersive theatre centered around stories from my life, drawing from my training in: playwriting, devising, performance, video production, sculpture and sound design. I will use these varied disciplines as a platform for the exploration of the questions that I have around the transformational properties of autobiographical performance. I believe that immersive theatre creates space for moments of intense emotional transference between performer and audience, and in my Division III, I wish to revel in those moments.

During the Fall 2013 semester, I’m going to be working on writing a semi-autobiographical play titled, Rabbit and Rudy, Or How to Tell A Sunset to Fuck Off. This work will be exploring the effects of the loss of my father on my sister, mother, and I. This play follows two sisters, Rabbit and Rudy, as they attempt to run away from home after their mother, Pepper, informs them that their father, Red, has left. This piece is about childhood, rebellion, addiction, survivorship, and how people relate to one another during times of great emotional turmoil. I want this piece to be fully realized in text, developed as much as it possibly can be through drafts and workshops, and performed as a staged reading with minimal tech at the end of the Fall 2013 semester.

Jan-term into the Spring 2014 semester is when I will be beginning the devising process of a large-scale multimedia performance installation in collaboration with my dearest friend and most active and intimate collaborator, Devyn Manibo. It is a glance forward and a gaze backward. It is an attempt to communicate my love for love and hopelessness. It is an offering to the goddesses of love foolery. This installation will use video, sound, construction, and performance installation to explain the nature of my identity as a hopeless romantic. I will be crafting altars to past lovers. These altars will serve as immersive performance environments that I will be filling with textures, sounds, reflections, and refractions. I will utilize humor, camp, drag, satire, folly, farce, and moments of intense joy, melancholy, euphoria, dysphoria, and all of the spaces left in-between.

Peppered into these projects are monthly performance salons that will be curated by the legendary mixtresses of ceremony, Mx. and Mx. Sumptuous Fabrixxx and Lavender Swayde (myself and Devyn, respectively). These are open events that will showcase short works in progress of any ready and wiling queer performance artists. These spaces are being created in order to foster performance community, allow students immersed in their work to showcase things from disciplines they don’t otherwise work within, provide an audience for works in progress, create a space to develop divisional work, and most importantly: entertain. Sumptouous Fabrix has risen from the ashes of the queer performers of yesteryear, an embodied archive who only lives to throw fabulous parties, promote artists, and throw feathers in the air and catch them with her teeth. She revels in the decadence of failure and gives herself to fantasy in order to ignore the impossibility of her existence in this white supremacist, ableist, mentalist, heteropatriarchy we call the United States of America. She is a fantastical character and an extension of myself as a collaborator and performance artist.

My work struggles with the impossibility of family, love, and self. But, how can my stories inspire moments of emotional reciprocation with an audience? How can multimedia performance create immersive theatrical environments? How can I create a space where an audience can share feelings of unrequited love, nostalgia, grief, and loss? To answer these questions, I will lay myself bare. I will work towards creating a performative space where euphoria and dysphoria can exist alongside one another. I will share my life, loves, and loss in order to inspire a performance community of open and honest communication of needs, wants, and desires. I will craft a theatre of emotional transference.

Fall 2013


 * IA-0332: Division III Theatre Seminar w/ Talya Kingston

Spring 2014


 * IA-0288: Feminist Theatre Practices w/ Talya Kingston (Teaching Assistant)

= Projects =

Fall 2011


 * Red Light Winter a play by Adam Rapp, directed by Sam Congdon and starring Ben Calman, Remy Ketzler, and Zen - Stage Manager
 * Burning Down the House of ________, a POC drag spectacular - Stage Manager

Spring 2011


 * New Play Fest, a two night festival of staged readings of new plays - Dramaturg for Better, by Dina Spanbock and author of The Lovers
 * Going Public, Elias Johansson-Miller's devised thesis performance about public education in the United States directed by Andy Paris - Script Wrangler and Moments Recorder

Fall 2012


 * "Swallow, Beauty: you are already inside the body you fear," an erotic dance Div III by Zique Fancy - Production Manager and House Manager
 * THIS IS ABOUT YR NEEDS(3:02) an improvised experimental narrative film tackling ableism, communication, (in)visibility, and the way(s) we love - Performer and Collaborator
 * Penny's Big 21: Queer Rites of Passage and Pleasure, a site specific performance spectacular curated by Aaron Richmond-Havel - Performer and Collaborator in the Teen Esteem workshop with Lila Rose
 * so crazy//so lonely(4:39) a video sacrifice to the femme goddess(es) for Women Filmmakers - Director, Performer, Editor, and Collaborator
 * pick me(1:57) a bodily exploration of the word "choice" for Women Filmmakers - Director, Performer, and Editor
 * BETCH(10:48) a farce/a folly/a period piece examining what it means to be a betch/a final for Women Filmmakers - Director, Performer, Editor, and Collaborator

Spring 2013


 * "Let the Body Speak," a multimedia devised performance about the relationship between self and body - Crew
 * MOM-BABY-GOD Madeline Burrows Div III performance on the topic of abortion, adolescence, media, and self - Stage Manager, Dramaturg, and Collaborator
 * PUBLIC ACCESS PARTY: queer show & tell -- LEZLIE ANN A sensual adventure to the see saw babaaaAAaaay, part of a queer show and tell performance series by Aaron Richmond-Havel - Singer and Actress

Fall 2013


 * Sumptuous Fabrixxx and Lavender Swayde present :: a rise from the ashes A monthly queer performance salon showcasing works in progress of queer artists - Host and Performer

Spring 2014


 * Rabbit & Rudy, or How to Tell a Sunrise to Fuck Off A multimedia presentation of a semi-autobiographical play - Playwright, Director, and Actor
 * FORMATION A multimedia installation, a ritual offering, altars to my former lovers, an active museum of heartache, joy, and melancholy & an embodied archive of my failed attempts to locate identity through a romantic other - Curator, Singer, Actor, and Director

= Student Groups and Academic Involvement =

QCA (Queer Community Alliance) • Signer (F12-S13)

Five College Queer Sexuality and Gender Conference • Organizer (2011-2014)