Donna Oblongata
Donna Oblongata is a critically-acclaimed performer, social practice artist, and award-winning writer. Her work has been described as, "big, bold, and endlessly impressive" - Baltimore City Paper and, “balancing on the thrilling precipice of pleasure and danger” – New Orleans Box Office. She has performed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Ars Nova (NY), and shared the stage with Mikhail Baryshnikov in Slava’s Snow Show. As a writer, she has received a MacDowell Fellowship and won awards for her short fiction. Her protest art in support of Gaza was recently acquired by the Jewish Museum in Washington D.C. Her social practice project Vote By Pal can be seen at VoteByPal.com. As a performer, she has toured her own work extensively throughout North America, Europe and New Zealand for almost two decades.
Donna came up through punk rock and anarchist circles, which continues to drive and inform each of her projects. In her early days, she built a loyal following through years of touring (and breaking down) in old vans, bringing radical, original performance to basements, squats and vacant lots across the US. She now holds an MFA from Towson University and regularly collaborates with grassroots activists to bring aesthetically ambitious visuals and spectacle to their protests and campaigns.
Currently, Donna continues to run Vote By Pal and tour her latest evening-length solo performance, The Van Gogh Shogh. In August, her collaboration with Patrick Costello, Privy Privy will open at 601 Artspace in New York. Development of her immersive musical about the Earth First! movement, (EF! A New Musical) is ongoing.
Awarded Grants
2024
Window of Opportunity Grant (WOO)
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Overview
Donna Oblongata’s project, Privy Privy, has been invited to take over 601 ArtSpace, a gallery in lower Manhattan, for four days in August. Privy Privy is an immersive, participatory installation that interrogates questions of morality and pleasure by simulating a public restroom in a queer nightclub and features a soundtrack of mixtapes played by DJs in gay nightclubs during the height of the AIDS epidemic in New York. Open to the public, the absurdist installation challenges the dominant culture’s homophobic definition of obscenity and creates space for a future where we might realize the liberatory potential of communal pleasure.
The WOO Grant will assist Donna with finishing fund costs associated with the installation of the exhibition.
2023
Window of Opportunity Grant (WOO)
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Overview
Donna Oblongata (ACG ‘14, ‘16; WOO ‘18, ‘22, ‘23) has been invited by the White River Natural Resources Conservation District to present a workshop production of her environmental musical, “EF!”, outdoors in a forest within their district. The musical shares the story of the Earth First! movement and environmental direct-action protest more broadly, and works in the service of increasing public awareness of the native hickory forests and their ecological importance. The cast – which features diverse actors, the majority of whom are from Philadelphia – will be rehearsing in Philadelphia, and then traveling to Vermont in August, during which they will have several days of tech rehearsals in the forest and a weekend of public performances, which will be free of charge. The WOO grant will support with video documentation of the musical production.
2022
Window of Opportunity Grant (WOO)
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Overview
Donna Oblongata (ACG ‘14, ‘16; WOO ‘18, ‘22) has been nominated for a fellowship and needs to remount and professionally document her full-length solo performance piece, “All 100 Fires.” Even if she does not receive the fellowship, excellent documentation of this work would allow her to pursue other opportunities. This grant will support with documentation costs for a director, videographer, and designer.
2018
Window of Opportunity Grant (WOO)
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Overview
Donna’s play, The 7 Person Chair Pyramid High Wire Act, has been accepted to participate in ANT FEST at Ars Nova in New York City. The highly selective festival presents work by "all new talent" (ANT) for one-night-only performances each June. With the WOO grant, Donna will travel to and from NYC, cover artists' fees and set repairs.
Directed by Sarah Lowry (ACG ’09, ’08), the play stars Donna and her collaborator Patrick Costello, and centers around questions of solitude versus working in a group, and the complications of both. This is the first time Donna’s work will be seen at an off-Broadway theater, and she hopes this opportunity will be a stepping stone toward visibility and professional relationships with presenters and producers in New York and beyond, ultimately bolstering support for the work she’s doing in Philadelphia.
2016
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
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Overview
Throughout the summer of 2016, Donna will offer a series of free improvisational and clowning performance workshops, open exclusively to women and trans people. This safe and supportive performance training will empower people to speak up within a creative process and explore ways of telling their own stories. Donna hopes to provide an alternative type of performance training that honors the individual and works to counter how patriarchy, ableism, homophobia, cis-sexism, and white supremacy affect our ability to be our whole selves on stage.
Partner
2014
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
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Overview
Donna will offer a free performance workshop in Clown Through Mask, a complete introductory course that uses the Pochinko Clowning technique created by visionary master teacher Richard Pochinko. Not only will Donna’s workshop be open to the public, but it will also be the first time that this often-expensive training has been offered for free within the United States. As a performance art that holds potential for inclusivity, this workshop will expand the types of bodies and stories we see on the mainstream stage as well as celebrate personal histories, rather than ignore them, within the creative process. The workshop will culminate with a public showing of student work.
