After months of consulting, committee meetings, value setting, and discussing what we see for the future of our theater and the Bay Area theater industry, Cutting Ball has officially chosen an artistic lead to complete the newly launched Collective Leadership Team. Reflecting on our reshaped purpose statement with a commitment to producing stories from historically underrepresented and marginalized communities, we decided it is imperative that we create a term limit for the artistic leadership position and will rotate who holds this position every two seasons. This term limit will ensure our productions continually make space for new artistic voices. When choosing an artist from the pool of 25 applicants for the first Curation Director term, we looked for an artist who has a deep understanding of the Bay Area Theater climate and the needs of Bay Area artists, has a strong artistic vision informed by our values for leading CBT into the future of sustainable arts practices, is inspired by experimental theater, values our Tenderloin neighborhood, and wonderfully fits our newly formed collective. With Chris Steele, we feel we have accomplished this and more!

ABOUT THE NEW CURATION DIRECTOR
Chris Steele (they/she) is a queer transfemme nonbinary performance artist, writer, and activist. Their work centers on highlighting queer narratives throughout history and combating bigotry and white supremacy through subversive performance art. As an actor, she's performed with companies across the Bay including We Players, NCTC, Cutting Ball Theater, Z Space, SF Shakespeare Festival, and SF Playwrights Festival. As a writer they premiered adaptations of Angel Street (or Gaslight), Miss Julie, Troilus and Cressida, and Dracula with queer collective Poltergeist Theatre Project; had short plays produced by The Pear, PlayGround, and Cutting Ball Theater; and debuted their solo drag shows The Bride and My Grandmother Wore Pants with PlayGround Solofest. Her award-winning drag persona Polly Amber Ross can be found on instagram @pollyamberross.

CHRIS’ JOURNEY WITH CUTTING BALL
Chris’ and Cutting Ball’s relationship dates back a while, with them first appearing in our 2018 production of Timon of Athens and taking it all the way to a sold out run of the world premiere solo drag performance just this past winter named Gaslit. With such a fruitful, ongoing relationship, along with a hefty theater background, applying for the Curation Director position just seemed like the next logical step in Chris’ career. When asked why they wanted to join the Cutting Ball team, they explained, “I'm an experimental artist at heart, always pushing at the boundaries of the norm and the expected. Cutting Ball has long been a bastion of art that examines where our culture has come from, posing deep complex questions about what that has led to in our current culture, and imagining what a world beyond the constraints of our own limitations might look like. Blackbox theatre is where I've seen some of the most adventurous and immersive work in San Francisco, and I'm excited to continue that legacy with Cutting Ball.”

Inspired also by our location, “working in the historical Tenderloin Trans District excites me”, expresses Chris, they plan to highlight the work of local Trans and Queer artists within our community. Being the first openly trans artistic lead at a Bay Area Theater, Chris honors the community from which they hail in the work they create. “The culture of San Francisco, and American culture at large, owes so much to Trans pioneers, and I want to continue to celebrate the wealth of Queer talent in San Francisco.”

Knowing we are at a crucial time in the Bay Area Theater landscape with closures, Cutting Ball Theater feels it's more important than ever to rely and connect with fellow theaters and art organizations to help support one another. A framework that Chris primarily works through already, echoing the path we plan to take as a company. “I want to foster inter-company relationships.” explains Chris. “Under a profit-based hierarchical model, Theatre has often grappled with the myth of the zero-sum-game. Art should be in service to our communities, and we are stronger when we innovate together. As we face so many uncertainties in the Bay Area arts scene, it's crucial for theater organizations of all sizes to resource share and uplift each other.” And we couldn’t agree more.

COMPLETING THE COLLECTIVE
Cutting Ball is thrilled to finally complete our company’s Collective Leadership Team with the addition of Chris as our Curation Director, recently hired Development Director, Lorraine VanRod, and Production Director, Emma Stirling. Recognizing the way we previously were functioning, (a traditional top-down model) was not sustainable or equitable, we shifted to splitting our previous Artistic Director role into three positions; Curation Director, Developmental Director, and Production Director. Wanting to amplify our values of EDI, creating these new roles allowed us to better suit the needs of our newly formed collective leadership structure. Thus allowing us all to thrive in our own sectores while also coming together to create beautiful experimental theater and services for our communities.

We plan to continue this love of collaboration and experimentation and are beyond thrilled to be doing so with Chris as our new Curation Director!