Disruptions from Elsewhere

Disruption is intrinsic to everyday life for queer and trans+ people. Legislation shifts constantly, reshaping the conditions of our existence, while the safety, anxiety, and joy of social interaction remain contingent on place, circumstance, and community. Much of this disruption can feel imposed upon us, yet our identities also embody radical potential through resistance to hegemonic norms. We are not only those disrupted, but disruptors ourselves. We cultivate possibility, transformation, and world-making.

Inspired by queer phenomenology, queer futurity, and science fiction, Disruptions from Elsewhere: a transmission of hope is a sonic transmission experienced individually through a pair of headphones. Moving between speculative futures and present realities, the longform poem and sound score invites listeners into a space where rupture becomes a generative site for imagining new ways of relating, surviving, and world-making together.

Through layered sound, voice, and atmosphere, Disruptions from Elsewhere: a transmission of hope channels both the instability and the creative force of queer and trans+ existence, calling for a renewed practice of intentional disruption as resistance, connection, and collective becoming.

Dane Eissler (they/he/it) | Creator & Editor

Dane is a Barrymore Award-nominated theater maker, visual artist, educator, and creative researcher pursuing his PhD at Transart Institute of Creative Research in partnership with Liverpool John Moores University (UK). Dane's research investigates play as disruption within theatrical direction through a phenomenological lens in order to revitalize directorial practice in contemporary theater-making. Working across performance, visual art, puppetry, and design, Dane's creative work examines the formation, fragmentation, and fluidity of identity in contemporary life, blurring disciplinary boundaries to explore how selves and world-perceptions are constructed, undone, and reimagined. Currently based in Philadelphia, PA (USA), Dane has an extensive creative history with EgoPo Classic Theater, where they have directed, designed, performed, curated, and served as Artistic Producer. In Philly, Dane has also worked with Azuka Theatre, Theatre Exile, Upstream Performance Collaborative, On the Rocks, The Strides Collective, Blind Faith Productions, and the late B.R.A.T. Productions. In Chicago, Dane was co-founding Artistic Director of A Dead Whale Productions, where they created original ensemble-driven interdisciplinary performances, and also worked with The Annoyance, Rough House Theatre, Women of the Now, Theatre-Hikes, and SAG- and Emmy-nominated comedian Megan Stalter's Freakfest. As a 2024 Independence Foundation Fellow, they studied puppetry in Indonesia with Papermoon Puppet Theatre, as well as teaching workshops and performing in their international puppetry festival Pesta Boneka. Dane is a proud member of the Trans+ Virtual Centre of Excellence, and currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at Rowan University (his undergraduate alma mater) and Temple University, where they teach classes in Script Analysis, Directing, Avant-Garde Theater, and Queer Theater History. www.daneeissler.com IG: @dmeissler

Rayne (they/all) | Voice Actor (Green Captions)

Named by PhillyVoice as “one of 18 young Philadelphians shaping the future of the city’s creative class,” Rayne is an artist from Southwest Philadelphia and founder of Upstream Performance Collaborative, a Barrymore Award–winning theatre company dedicated to boundary-breaking new works by emerging and underrepresented artists. Their practice is shaped by their life as a hood-raised-private-school-scholarship-kid and centers intimate, intersectional, and historically grounded narratives about Black folx. Across performance, playwriting, directing, design, education, devised, and community-driven processes, Rayne is a forever-student who approaches their work with Toni Cade Bambara’s belief that “the duty of the artist is to make revolution irresistible.” Rayne is an Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts recipient, F. Otto Haas Award finalist, Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grant recipient, Wayne F. Milward ’57 Prize winner, six-time Barrymore Award nominee, and Barrymore Award winner through Upstream. Their work has been supported by Shakespeare in Clark Park, Primary Stages, Azuka Theatre, Theatre Exile, the Museum of the American Revolution, the National Constitution Center, and others, and featured by NPR, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Grid Magazine, Metro Philly, and Philadelphia Gay News. Rayne is a member of Ring of Keys, The Foundry at PlayPenn, New Pages at Azuka Theatre, and the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction. They use all pronouns and are also known as Angela Bey. Learn more at angelabey.com Instagram: @tallblackcreative

Dawn McCall (they/them) | Voice Actor (Pink Captions)

Dawn is a Philadelphia-based performer, writer, director, and dramaturg originally from Fredericksburg, VA. They received their BA in Theatre and Religious Studies, as well as a Certificate of Undergraduate Studies in Queer Theory, from Rowan University in 2025. They have worked as assistant director and dramaturg for EgoPo's Turds in Hell, dramaturg for Upstream Performance Collaborative's staged reading of MASC., and director for EgoPo's readings of Sonia Sanchez's I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't and Natyna Bean's pump ballet. Their past work onstage includes EgoPo's Curse of the Starving Class (Wesley), Les Blancs (Eric), The Ways of White Folks (Jack), and Prince of Parthia (Lysias), as well as their work with PlayPenn in readings of Talking to Og by Zahra Patterson and The Pigeon by Brie Knight. Dawn is currently performing in Hamlet in a co-production with Shakespeare in Clark Park and Revolution Shakespeare.

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