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Bizzy Barefoot
Bizzy Barefoot is a radical queer, gender-flux artist, activist, communitarian, and RadFaerie. Their 30 year artistic career has been evenly divided between performance and visual art. They have performed on hundreds of stages all around the United States, in Canada and Europe, and have served as Artistic Director for the Pittsburgh Queer Theater Festival, and for two successful theater companies in Pittsburgh and NYC, of which they were also a co-founder. In addition they’re a longtime member of the critically acclaimed experimental performance group, The Nerve Tank in NYC. As visual artist and activist, they have spent 9 years working with MIX NYC, and for the last 6 of them, as an in-house venue designer. They’ve also co-designed and built installations and puppets for the likes of Green Peace, Gawker Magazine, Pace University, and The People's Climate March, and have been featured in Vice and I.D. Magazines as well as in the Visuals AIDS Anniversary exhibition at LaMama Galleria. They have worked as stage/costume and media designer, window designer, and portrait artist. Their present focus is the powerful confluence of art making and community building, manifesting in the making of elaborate and immersive, community built T.A.Z.s (Temporary Autonomous Zones) in which queer community can deeply and bravely and in relative safety explore itself in post AIDS CRISIS community outsidethe often punative eye of hetero culture and the law. They hold degrees in theatre and music. Jason and Shirley is their first major film project.
Bizzy Barefoot is fixture among the “downtown “/Brooklyn radical queer art set, dynamically combining interdisciplinary multi media forms of performance and design with large scale community organizing of creative political action serving radical social movements. Her career as a performer has spanned close to 40 years performing everything from Broadway musicals to experimental performance both in ensemble and solo hundreds of stages around the U.S. in Canada and Europe including starring as Molina in Hal Prince’s Kiss of the Spider Woman The Musical and an 11 year run with the critically acclaimed, award winning experimental performance company The Nerve Tank respectively. Other notable performances include Alsemero in Dog Face directed by Dan Jemmet for Quantum Theater and the Festival D’Otono in Madrid, The horrifying 2nd Messenger in Oedipus the King at the Pittsburgh Public Theater directed by Ted Pappas, and headlining the 2012 Black Party playing mutant Major Domo to Acid Betty’s Mutant Queen,and her monologue performance of Salome: A Veiled Threat based on the play by Chuck Mee at LePetit Versailles, Dixon Place, and at the Living Theater for the Hot Festival.. She is currently in production playing multiple roles in a new Queer fantasy series, The Fae which has been previewing in film festivals over the past several months as well as being in workshop for the role of Lucifer Morningstar in Paradise Lost in Space, a new sci-fi musical of biblical proportion. In addition to performance she has had a robust run of directorial gigs in the U.S. as well as having served as Co and assistant artistic director for two successful but now defunct theater companies in Pittsburgh and NYC in the 90s and early aughts, as well as having served briefly as the Artistic Director of the Pittsburgh Queer Theater Festival. She has studied theater with some of the great masters from John Kander to Cecily Berry, and has taught a wide array of theater performance courses to kids from 10 to 80 in primary schools and universities and taught acting at the National Theater Workshop for the Handicapped.
Bizzy has spent almost equally as much time straddling strata of design as she has in performance. She spent 11 years as in-house venue designer for MIX NYC, Queer Experimental Film Festival, and has served as designer and maker of costumes, puppets, props, sets, makeup and over all production for and with a wide array of companies and artists including Greenpeace, Pace University, Gawker Magazine, ID magazine. Other notable design direction includes Production design for The underground runaway cult hit Jason and Shirley for which she conceived the film’s original concept as well as serving as acting coach to the films two stars, as well as production design for Of Montreal’s music video It’s Different for Girls. She spearheaded the puppet design and community art build of the Queer Planet contingent for the People’s Climate March in 2014, as well as serving as Art Coordinator designer for The Forest of the Future: a sanctuary at the end of the world , Reclaim Pride Coalition’s epic Queer Liberation march and 50th anniversary observance of the Stonewall Rebellion, as well as designing costumes and puppets for Jack Waters’ Pestilence Part 1: Generator at La Mama.
Currently Bizzy is engaging in a new form which has for her been a lifelong dream to work as a professional animator. After a couple of years of exploratory dabbling and experimentation, she has officially gone all in acquiring new equipment to see this dream to fruition and has had an auspicious start on this new journey having been commissioned to create pieces for Circle Voting Initiative, The Mariposas Rebeldes Collective in Atlanta, as and several others and is currently in the initial phases of creating pieces with musical monologist and podcast phenom Dane Terry as others which she prefers to keep under wraps for now lest the jinx demons catch wind of her disclosures.
Bizzy is a post trans, gender flux, off-white queer American artist seeking to employ art to its greatest potential which is of course to save lives, restore magic to the planet, and bring some level of awakening and healing to the world within her reach. Truly, as has been said, it is the job of the artist to make the revolution irresistible.
Bizzy Barefoot
Interdisciplinary Multi-Media Artist
Born March 12th, 1974 in Pittsburgh,PA
Graduated Point Park University Theater Conservatory in 1996 with a BFA in Theater and a music/vocal performance minor
Profile:
Education/Training/Skill Share
Ruckus Society 2014, NYC Horizontal leadership of cross-sectional frontline communities for political action
Trevor Project 2016, NYC Crisis counseling for LGBTQ+ youth with suicidal ideation
National Theater Workshop for the Handicapped 2003, ME theater education for differently able students of all ages and ability profiles
Theater Master Class Studies
1990-Monologue studies with David Birney.
Song Interpretation studies with Karen Morrow.
1993-Classical Text and Voice and Speech studies with Cecily Barry (RSC).
1996-Musical Theatre Interpretation/Performance studies with Michael Rupert
1997-Musical Theatre Interpretation/Performance studies with Chita Rivera and John Kander..
Musical Theatre Choreography Audition with Rob Ashford.
Performance and Direction
Caligula: a puppet tragedy
The Fae web series (current)
The Nerve Tank (A Gathering, The Attendants, 10% Nation, Opal, Wyocek) 2009-2019
Confluence Theater asst. Artistic Director (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Durang Vs.Ives. Sex, Marriage, and Roadkill)
The Black Party 2012
Pittsburgh Public Theater (Oedipus the King)
Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theater (School for Scandal, Henry IV)
Pittsburgh Queer Theater Festival, Dir.
National Tour of Kiss of the SpiderWoman the Musical 1996-97
Artscape
Nerve Tank
Salome: A Veiled Threat, Hot Festival
The Black Party
Theater Instructor
Point Park University
Hope Academy,Pittsburgh PA
National Theater Workshop for the Handicapped, Belfast, ME
Art Design and Installation
Caligula: A Puppet Tragedy 202, Chinkapin Craftstead, TN
Art Direction and Design for Reclaim Pride Coalition’s Queer March 2019
Puppet Design and Art Direction for Queer Planet contingent, People’s Climate March
Installations co-ordinator MIX NYC aka Queer Experimental FilmFestival 2017
In-House Venue designer MIX NYC aka Queer Experimental FilmFestival 2008-2014
Event Designer, Greenpeace 2010
Event Designer, Pace University
Queer Pop-Up Museum
Forest of the Future, 2013
Pestilence
Film and Video
The Carmine by Dane Terry, animation,2022
1,000 Hours Outrage, various video/ animation collaborations, The Creative Resistance, 2020
Blame it on Beckett, Feature Editor/Animator, Amateur Comedy Club, 2020
Itzpopalotl, Animator, Mariposas Rebeldes Collective, Atlanta,GA
Circle Voting,Animator, Circle Voting Initiative 2019
Jason and Shirley, Original Concept, Production Design, Acting Coach 2015
It’s Different for Girls, Of Montreal
Flush
Visual/Fine Art
Featured Artist, Day With(out) Art: RADIANT PRESENCE, Visual AIDS 2015(Global)
Featured Artist, HASA Comics, Visual AIDS 35th Anniversary Gallery Show, LaMama Galleria, (NYC)
1000 Hours of Outrage, Creative Resistance
Grace Church
Community and Action
Allied Productions/ Le Petit Versaille
Visual AIDS
Trevor Project
People’s Climate March
Reclaim Pride Coalition
Chinatown Art Brigade
C.A.M.P
Queer House Field Day
Rentboy Action
Earth Bill
Media Coverage
ID Magazine
Vice Magazine