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we create ourselves. we create our belonging. we create our freedom.
Devised Dispersion Theatre: A Collective New Works Incubator develops original theatrical works created by and for the Black Trans and Gender Nonconforming (BTGNC) community and our allies across every Underground Rainbow Experiment (URE) chapter. Through devised theatre and interdisciplinary performance, the incubator creates new works that center community voice, lived experience, and collective authorship.
Emerging theater artists gain hands-on experience creating work for live audiences while collaborating with experienced mentors. Participants build skills in writing, performance, music, design, production, and collaborative creation, taking an original work from development through performance. Every participant leaves with a professional production credit and the experience of bringing a new theatrical work to life.
The incubator follows a structured production timeline with clearly defined milestones. Each cycle begins with a selected story framework, and artists contribute their unique disciplines to collectively develop the final production. Virtual collaboration tools connect artists across chapters, while local partnerships provide on-the-ground rehearsal and production support.
Every cycle culminates in one original production performed simultaneously across participating chapters, allowing local artists to create regionally grounded interpretations while sharing a common artistic vision. As URE expands, the incubator grows alongside it, creating opportunities for more BTGNC artists in more communities and serving as a launchpad for emerging theater professionals while building a sustainable ecosystem for Black Trans-led theater.
The First Time I Saw Me: Stories of Black Trans Emergence (TFTISM)
TFTISM serves as the incubator's beta inaugural production, establishing and refining URE's collaborative theater-making model. This movement-driven theatrical work explores Black Trans self-love, emergence, and community care through poetry, music, dance, and visual storytelling. Bringing together emerging poets, storytellers, performers, musicians, and technical artists, the production demonstrates how interdisciplinary collaboration can transform lived experience into collective performance.
2026 Beta Inaugural Production
TWWF is an original musical theater project that reimagines the story of Mary and Jesus through a Black Trans and Gender Nonconforming liberatory lens. Rather than receiving a divine pregnancy, Mary receives a divine concept; J.E.S.U.S.: Justice, Empathy, Support, Understanding, and Sensuality. Leaving behind a life that denies their humanity, Mary redesigns themself as Mars and begins sharing the teachings of J.E.S.U.S., rooted in the belief that love is freedom through understanding and acceptance of oneself and others. Through kinship, organizing, and resistance, Mars and the disciples cultivate a community grounded in collective liberation.
Developed over a year-long writing, composition, and workshop process, The Word Was Freedom will move through narrative development, rehearsal laboratories, staged readings, and workshop performances before culminating in developmental productions across URE's anchor chapters. The project demonstrates the incubator's long-term vision of producing ambitious, community-authored theatrical works that invest in local creative ecosystems while advancing new models of Black Trans storytelling.
The Word Was Freedom (TWWF)
2027 Development Cycle