Mariana Newhard is a Filipina-American creator/writer/performer specializing in hybrid/devised new work. While in residence at NACL she will be working on the libretto for Queen of the Nile, a hybrid opera about women’s sexualization in media culture, politics and mythology. The piece explores the collective processing of trauma and the struggle for truthful representation.

Queen of the Nile was workshopped In September 2021 during a residency at Rogers Art Loft in Las Vegas. The opera also received two workshops with HERE Arts Center in New York: in person, in July 2021, and as part of the livestream series #STILLHERE in Summer 2020. It was first presented in 2019 by the Dorset Theater Festival Women Artists Writing Group, of which she has been a member since 2017.

Her first production, Assembled Identity (a co-creation with Kristin Marting and Purva Bedi) premiered at HERE Arts Center in Spring 2018, and received support from DTF WAW, Drop Forge and Tool, the NACL Deep Space Performance Residency Program, and the 2017 Artist Residency Program of The Drama League of New York.

Mariana premiered her shorts BIg Leap, Alone, and Perfect in 50 Ways at the Capital Fringe in D.C. in July 2018. Other plays include Andromache at the Edge of the World, Zenith, Otherworld (all in development with DTF WAW), and Da Food is Da Food, developed with Packawallop Productions.

Photo by Paula Court