My Barbarian

My Barbarian is a Los Angeles based collaborative theatrical group consisting of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade. The trio makes site-responsive performances and video installations that use theatrical play to draw allegorical narratives out of historical dilemmas, mythical conflicts, and current political crises. Key collaborators Malik Gaines (b. 1973, Visalia, California) Gaines received a B.A. in History from UCLA (1996), an MFA in Writing from Cal Arts' School of Critical Studies (1999) and a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies from UCLA (2011). Gaines is the author of Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible, which analyzes black art and music in the 1960s to trace out how performances of blackness rescripts and retools dominant discourses which constrain and contain black life. Reading artists through three registers—blackness (which he calls the "vanguard of negativity, the avant-garde of difference"), the period of the 1960s, and the transnational routes between the United States, West Africa, and Western Europe—Gaines explores how the "destabilizing excess of difference" challenge visual representation across sexual, racial, and political lines. Jade Gordon (b. 1975, Santa Rosa, California). Gordon received a BA in Theater at USC (2008) and teaches at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in Los Angeles. Alex Segade (b. 1973, San Diego, California). Segade received a BA in English from UCLA (1996), studied in the School of Film and Television at USC (1997–1998), received an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Art from UCLA (2009), and also currently works as a solo artist. Segade is a professor of Studio Art at Hunter College. Other collaborators Norwood Cheek (2001–2004) Andy Ouchi (2001–2006) Lara Schnitger (2004-9) Pearl C. Hsiung (2002–2010) Scott Martin (2004–2008) Matthew Monahan (2004) Giles Miller (2004–2009) Richard Lee 2011