The second cohort has been chosen for the Trans History Project, a national initiative created by Baltimore Center Stage Artist-in-Residence Bo Frazier.
The Trans History Project is a ground-breaking project commissioning and developing 10 new plays by 10 transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) writers. The first cohort contained four TGNC playwrights and one TGNC theatre ensemble. The second cohort includes five plays by five TGNC playwrights: Ty Defoe, Justice Jamal Jones, Youri Kim, Nico Pang, and K.T. Peterson.
“At a moment when trans and gender non-conforming people are being targeted, erased, and forced to fight for the right to exist openly and safely, telling our stories is an act of resistance,” Frazier said. “The Trans History Project is about more than representation. It’s about reclaiming the history that has always been ours, honoring the artists who are shaping our present, and ensuring that future generations know we have always been here. By investing in trans and gender non-conforming artists, we are insisting that our stories belong in the American story—and that our voices deserve to be heard, celebrated, and remembered on stages across this country.”
There were 100 submissions for this cohort, with 12 finalists from whom the group of five was chosen. Each playwright in the cohort receives a $10,000 commission and developmental support from a coalition of regional theaters, including Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky, About Face Theatre in Chicago, East West Players in Los Angeles, and Native Voices in Los Angeles.
THE SECOND TRANS HISTORY PROJECT COHORT
Defoe (giizhig) (he/we/ty) is a Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer citizen of the Oneida Nation and Anishinaabe Tribe. A playwright and sovereign story trickster, Defoe’s work centers gender sovereignty, Indigenous futurity, and the transformative power of storytelling. They are a Grammy Award-winning artist and 2026 United States Artists Fellow. Iconic venues like Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Human Achievement, The Guthrie Theater, and many more have showcased Defoe’s work.
Defoe’s “Trans World Chapter 0 – Obsidian” will be developed at Native Voices. Set in 1976 Philadelphia during the nation’s Bicentennial celebration, Yarrow, a two-spirit transsexual artist, discovers that art and obsidian can open portals into erased trancestor histories. Yarrow moves between queer nightlife, colonial pageantry, and ancestral memory, unearthing stories the nation has tried to bury, and Yarrow is faced with painful choices and truths.
Jones (they/she) is a New York City-based filmmaker, theatermaker and actor whose award-winning films “How to Raise a Black Boy” and “Notes on a Siren” have earned international acclaim. They have been commissioned to direct work for MTV, Calvin Klein, Converse, and ARRI. They are a 2021 Sundance Ignite Fellow, 2026 Explorers Club inductee, and 2026 Sundance Trans Possibilities Fellow.
Jones’ “La Prophétesse” will be developed at About Face Theatre. The play is based on “The Priest and the Prophetess,” an award-winning book by Terry Rey. Jones’ work, described as “a blur of possession and performance,” is an examination of the life of gender-queer Haitian revolutionary and mystic Romaine La Prophétesse.
Kim (they/she) is a Korean playwright, director and teaching artist based in the DMV. Their work, like “SABANGJI.EXE” and “BAAL,” examines how systems of power shape and regulate bodies. They are the founding artistic director of Jaemi Theatre Company, an AAPI theater company in the DMV. Kim also is the inaugural recipient of the 2025 SDCF Lynnette Barkley Fund and a member of the TPOC Broadway Cohort.
Kim’s “SABANGJI.EXE” will be developed at Baltimore Center Stage Theatre. The play is work of fiction built from a single line written six centuries ago in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty that records a person named Sabangji. It explores questions like who gets to write a person into the record, who gets to erase them, and what it costs to be consumed by systems never built to hold you. Comparisons to today’s world are inevitable.
Pang (they/he) is a Cantonese writer and director exploring diasporic belonging, ancestral memory, and queerness as possibility. They won the 2026 Parity Development Award and the 2025 recipient of the Artists at Play Emerging Playwright Commission. They are a member of Geffen Playhouse’s 2026–2027 Writers’ Room and director of Trans Lineage, a trans-centered new work development program at Celebration Theatre. Pang also co-founded Passion of the Cut Sleeve, a queer multidisciplinary collective that reimagines Chinese folklore.
Pang’s “Stone Maiden” will be developed at East West Players. In 1851 Qing Dynasty China, Liao Zhanggu is labeled a “stone maiden” for being unable to reproduce and is exiled to a Daoist monastery. Two hundred years later in the United States, a trans Chinese musician finds Zhanggu’s buried court record. As music jumps off the page and the archive cracks, they are pulled through time and wake up inside Zhanggu’s body. Within the monastery, where the ideal self is androgynous and ritual kinship offers new ways of belonging, they begin piecing together a lost history from within. But this spiritual refuge is threatened as imperial investigations loom. They face a choice: fight to return to 2051 or stay and alter the fate of someone who may be an ancestor, a mirror, or both.
Peterson (she/he) is a Women Works Playwright winner, Jerome Fellowship finalist and recipient of the Musical Theatre Award at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. She is a graduate of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and Towson University, where she taught acting and rhetoric. Her play Love Bird has been produced at the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre and Off-Central Players in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Peterson’s “Everybody’s Total Pal!” will be developed at Actors Theatre of Louisville. “Everybody’s Total Pal!” is part public access show, part cabaret aboard the ship ENDURANCE!, where a frostbitten sailor from Shackleton’s crew puts on a show to keep himself from going mad. The sailor, however, is not who he seems. The shape-shifting solo performance is inspired by historic TGNC figures like gender-queer prophet Public Universal Friend, trans doctor Alan L. Hart, and Shaker founder Ann Lee. The play asks what happens when we reclaim the divine, the creative, the queer, and the joyful from the boxes we’ve inherited.
The inaugural Trans History Project cohort’s work includes “A Continent of Forget” by Dane Edidi Figueroa, developed at Long Wharf Theatre; “Days of Awe” by Bree Lowdermilk, developed at Round House Theatre; “The Gladys Bentley Project” by Roger Q. Mason, developed at Diversionary Theatre; “miss EMERICA” by Yona Moises Olivares, developed at BCS; and “LES BI(T)CHES” by Mirage Auto Depot, developed at Rattlestick Theater. The second cohort will continue the Trans History Project’s mission of developing new plays that center TGNC histories, experiences and perspectives.
