OPEN STUDIOS | Curated by Ty Defoe

Ty Defoe brings together Siobhan Juanita Brown, Jolie Cloutier, and Jessica Ranville, Indigenous women/non-binary artists across three generations in a shared space for making, remembering, and becoming. In honor of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) week, the work centers presence over erasure—asking how Indigenous fem bodies carry knowledge, resist patriarchy, and practice survival through art. The evening presents a living conversation across time, where lineage is not inherited alone, but enacted in relation.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Ty Defoe is a citizen of the Anishinaabe and Oneida Nations and a Grammy Award–winning writer and interdisciplinary artist. A sovereign story trickster, Ty creates work at the intersection of performance, land-based practice, technology, and decolonial futurity. Their work moves fluidly between rural and urban communities, Broadway theaters, universities, and the metaverse, fostering relational, Indigenous-centered approaches to storytelling and cultural production. Ty is a recipient of fellowships and awards from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, MacDowell, Sundance Institute, the Pop Culture Collaborative’s Trans Futurist, and was named a 2026 United States Artist Fellow. Their creative practice is rooted in collaboration and care, often blending theater, music, movement, visual design, and emerging technologies to imagine Indigenous and decolonial futures. Ty’s writing has been published by Bloomsbury and in outlets including Casting a Movement, Thorny Locust, and Bloomsbury Publishing, and is currently working on Trans World, a play cycle commissioned by the Binger Center for New Theater at Yale.They hold degrees from the California Institute of the Arts (BFA), Goddard College (MFA), and New York University Tisch School of the Arts (MFA). Ty is a member of All My Relations Collective, Indigenous Direction, an Olga Denison Scholar at CMU, Professor of Practice at ASU, and is currently Writer-in-Residence at PACE. www.tydefoe.com

Siobhan Juanita Brown (Keesuty8ee Elm) is a citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe from Roxbury, MA, and lives on her ancestral homelands on the southern coast of Cape Cod. She holds a BFA in Performing Arts and African American Studies from Emerson College and is a graduate of the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University. Her performance credits include The America Play (A.R.T.), The Emancipation of Valet de Chambre (Cleveland Play House), American Dreams: Lost and Found (The Acting Company), Medea and Antony and Cleopatra (Actors’ Shakespeare Project), and Funnyhouse of a Negro (Brandeis Theatre Company), as well as multiple seasons with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. Siobhan is a playwright and arts educator. Her play A Piece of Silver is based on recorded conversations with her Mashpee Wampanoag and African American grandmothers. She has worked in arts education leadership at Citi Performing Arts Center and Actors’ Shakespeare Project. A student of the Wôpanâak language since 2005, she was a language apprentice and founding teaching team member of Weetumuw Katnuhtôhtâkamuq, the first Wôpanâak language immersion school, and is Montessori certified (ages 3–6). She co-founded Nutahkeemun Artist Collective and is a member of the Wampanoag Nation Singers and Dancers recently premiered .

Jolie Cloutier is a NYC based actor and writer. A member of Onondaga Nation (Wolf Clan) Jolie celebrates her Indigenous identity in every work of art. Jolie has appeared in a variety of Native American theater and film productions. Jolie is currently studying acting at HB Studio in their Uta Hagen Core Conservatory Program.

Jessica Ranville: Off-Broadway: Empire: The Musical New World Stages; Between Two Knees (u/s) PACNYC; Manahatta (u/s) The Public Theater, Stupid F*cking Bird (u/s) The Pearl Theater. Regional: Where We Belong Oregon Shakespeare Festival & Portland Center Stage, Men On Boats Baltimore Center Stage. Jessica is Red River Metis from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She has taught movement at Brooklyn College and has been a recurring teaching artist and resident artist at IRT Theater in Manhattan. MFA: The New School for Drama.

OPEN STUDIOS is a series of work-in-progress showings held regularly throughout the year, organized by guest curators, and serves as an incubator for new work, inviting the public into the artistic process.

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Host or Publisher CPR- Center for Performance Research