Andre Lancaster, Artistic & Managing Director

Andre Lancaster is a stage director and founder of Freedom Train Productions who places his work firmly in the traditions of black arts aesthetics in theatre, movements for social justice, and black queer artists and ancestors. His direction has been seen at Freedom Train Productions, HERE Arts Center, WOW Cafe Theatre, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Hyde Park Theatre, Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, and the Juilliard School. He has trained in theatre at the Department of Theatre & Dance/University of Texas at Austin, SITI Company (Viewpoints/Suzuki), Movement Research, Freedom Train Productions, and The Missoula Oblongata. He has studied under renowned theatre artists Sharon Bridgforth, Ed Cardona Jr, Erik Ehn, Steven Gerald, Amparo Garcia-Crow, Ruth Margraff, Gordon Peacock, and Suzan Zeder. He is an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and an OSI Foundation NYC Social Justice Fellow.

As a producing artist at Freedom Train Productions, he has developed new work by Jesse Cameron Alick, Sharon Bridgforth, Andrea E. Davis, Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene, Patricia Ione Lloyd, Ayanna Maia, Derek Lee McPhatter, Nick Mwaluko, Harrison David Rivers, Aurin Squire and other established and emerging black playwrights.

PANELS: Production, Performance, and Product (Black Lavender Conference, Brown University); Who Needs A Black Queer Hero (Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, CUNY Graduate Center); Canaries in the Mine: Black Queer Protagonists Save the World, and you too (Fire & Ink: Cotillion), and Alternative Models for Grassroots Fundraising (Brecht Forum).

He is on the Artist and Community Council for The Laundromat Project and he is working on a forthcoming play anthology that will also explore the larger social implications and applications of Freedom Train Productions' black queer protagonist struggles. Andre is a reviewer for nytheatre.com and a 2008 distinguished visitor at Rites and Reason Theatre (Brown University).

Contact:
andre[AT]freedomtrainproductions.org

Photo Credit: Terri Brathwaite

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