Our Mission and Vision

MISSION
Radical Evolution is a producing collective committed to creating artistic events that seek to understand the complexities of our multicultural existence in the 21st Century.

VISION
We use an ensemble-based approach to create aesthetically and formally rigorous events that bring together people from disparate backgrounds, to break down barriers between cultures and creative practices. We collaborate with people from many different identities with whom we build capacity to relate to each other across difference, with a focus on people of color, to seed the field of performance with practitioners that celebrate the intersectionality of perspectives and aesthetics of the city around us. Through this approach, we work to assert a vision for cultural and social equity in our field, city, and nation.

WORKING PHILOSOPHY 
With each collaborative project, we aim to ask the question: What if we built something beautiful together that was more ongoing and ever-evolving than a few days or weeks of performances?  We aim to struggle together to build a piece of performance and use that as a way to authentically relate to each other. We push against perceived truths, popular assumptions and structures of oppression by celebrating affinity between artists of different cultural backgrounds (and often different artistic specializations). 

With each new work, we are inspired to re-focus Radical Evolution’s process around these more long-term ideas and strategies, in an effort to create relationships that resonate during the artistic process, but also radiate out into the world beyond. 

As our works begin to take shape, we regularly gather with audiences to share in our process. The folks we are making this work for - people of color whose histories and life experiences are rarely authentically reflected onstage - are an important part of our process, and we work to stay in regular communication with our community. We’re accountable to and in relationship with our audiences, many of whom are makers of art and social movements, and we relish the opportunity to put our artistic practice in front of these glorious humans. 

We hope the impact of our work will raise the visibility of multiethnic stories in the field of live performance in New York City and beyond, and we strive to model a more just and equitable society through our ongoing artistic practice.

HISTORY
Radical Evolution was founded in 2011 by Beto O’Byrne and Meropi Peponides, theatre makers who create cross-disciplinary performance works. We contribute to the conversation in NYC and beyond with works that seek to understand the complexities of modern, multiethnic, mixed-identity existence. 

Radical Evolution is an instigator of original performance works from inception to completion, and a large portion of our time is spent on developing new works in a long-term, intentional and iterative process. To date, we have developed and/or produced four original works: The Golden Drum Year: a story in poetry and prose, Loving and Loving, The Corrido of the San Patricios, and Songs About Trains. 

We have collaborated with numerous organizations on the production and development of our work, and are proud that our collaborators have included: El Teatro Campesino, Stages Rep, Pregones PRTT, The Movement Theatre Company, Rough Draft Festival @ LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, The New Ohio Theatre, IRT Theatre, The Harold Clurman Lab Theatre, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and The Performance Project @University Settlement, among others. 

Major funders of our work include The MAP Fund, Network of Ensemble Theatres, The Puffin Foundation, and numerous generous individual supporters.   

The Team

Beto O’Byrne (co-founder) hails from East Texas and is the co-founder of Radical Evolution, a multi-ethnic, multi-disciplinary producing collective based in Brooklyn, NY.  The author of 20 plays, screenplays, and original tv pilots, his works have been produced and developed in New York City, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Louisville, Portland, and San Antonio. He was the 2017 playwright-in-residence at the Stella Adler School of Acting and a 2050 Playwriting Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, and his works have received residencies at the New Ohio Theatre, Pregones Theater, Sol Project, Tofte Lake Arts Center, Kitchen Dog Theater, and more. In addition to his work in the theatre, Beto is a musician and the creator of A Revolutionary Chorus, a punk choral project, and the creative visionary and lead writer of the World of Kir fantasy series. Beto teaches classes and workshops on creative writing, theatre, and activist/political performing arts theory and practices at universities, colleges, and community spaces across the country. MFA, Dramatic Writing: University of Southern California.  www.betoobyrne.com  

Andrew Belcher (board chair) Andrew Belcher (board chair) is the founder of Middle Way Wellness. He is a social worker, educator, theater artist, and sailor. His practice focuses on the curious, playful exploration of the mind and body through talk and trance therapy, yoga, and meditation. Andrew has worked in schools, hospitals, and mental health clinics in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York including Women and Infants Hospital, Community Care Alliance, The Jewish Board, Maimonides Medical Center, YogaWorks, thirdroot Community Health Center, Berkshire Theater Group, and ENACT. In 2009, Andrew launched MassBliss, which produced events and live experiences that promoted presence across our personal, professional, and playful lives. Andrew studied yoga and meditation with Kripalu, Yogaworks, and Shambhala Meditation Center. He graduated from Tulane University with a BA in English and Spanish and a minor in theater. He completed his clinical social work MSW at Hunter College.