The IHGC is thrilled to host Omi Osun Joni L. Jones and Sharon Bridgeforth for the second annual Queer South(s) artist residency. This year’s Queer South(s) theme focuses on Black Queer Southern performance practices around ancestry, the Great Migration, communal ritual and storytelling, and improvisation. During this interactive artist talk, Jones and Bridgeforth will share their Queer South(s) performances-in-progress and their creative processes, which are rooted in traditions of Theatrical Jazz Aesthetics.
Registration for this artist talk is not required. Guests are encouraged to attend the artists' performances on April 14th and 15th as well!
- April 14, 7pm, Ruth Caplin Theater, "Sittin' in a Saucer," Omi Osun Joni L. Jones and Company
- April 15, 7pm, Drama Education Building, "before you go: an Offering," Sharon Bridgeforth and Company
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Sharon Bridgeforth, a writer and performing artist, is a United States Artists Fellow, winner of Yale's Windham Campbell Prize in Drama, Playwrights’ Center Core Member, McKnight National Fellow, and a New Dramatists alumna. A Doris Duke Performing Artist, she has received support from Creative Capital, MAP Fund, the National Performance Network, and more. Her work is featured in: We Are Each Other's Liberation, Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities; The Yale Review; Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature; Mouths of Rain an Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought; and Feminist Studies. Sharon's bull-jean & dem/dey back and All These Things: A Conversation by Sharon Bridgeforth & Daniel Alexander Jones are published by 53rd State Press. Sharon's new book, Before You Go: An Offering, was released in August 2025 by Tripwire Harlot Press.
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Omi Osun Joni L. Jones’ work is grounded in Black Feminist principles and theatrical jazz aesthetics. Her original performances include sista docta—a critique of academic life; and Sittin’ in a Saucer—a series of readings with audience/witnesses using literature as prompts for engagement. Among her ethnographic works are Searching for Ọ̀ṣun—a performance installation around the Divinity of the River; and Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àṣẹ, and the Power of the Present Moment—a collaborative ethnography of three theatrical jazz luminaries. Her forthcoming essay, “Queer Medicine,” can be found in Transcendence: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy, 1924-2024 (Art Galleries at Black Studies, Austin, TX. Fall 2026). Omi has been shaped by Robbie McCauley’s activist art, Laurie Carlos’s insistence on being present, and Barbara Ann Teer’s overt union of Art and Spirit. She earned her Ph.D. from New York University, and her Embodied Social Justice Certificate from Transformative Change. She is Professor Emerita from and co-creator of the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin, the history of which is featured in the current issue of Callaloo, 43:4.