Featured Q-STAGE Collaborator: Hannah Stein

Part of the mission of 20% Theatre Company is to provide opportunities to new and emerging artists. Q-STAGE is the perfect vehicle to create such opportunity. So, as we finish out our second installment of the Q-STAGE New Works Series, we’d like to introduce you to one more artist you may not have met. Hannah Stein has been the production assistant for Andrea Jenkins’ piece Body Parts: Intersectionality.

Production Assistant: Hannah Stein
Production Assistant: Hannah Stein

Who are you and what do you do (in life? in the world? in the arts?)?

My name is Hannah Stein and I am from Athens, Georgia. I graduated from Lawrence University with a B.A. in Theatre Arts and moved to the Twin Cities to pursue stage work. You can often find me helping to run two cool consignment shops in uptown Minneapolis and on Grand Avenue in St Paul (My Sister’s Closet) or hanging out with my two adorable chinchillas!

Tell us about your artistic background?

The very last term of my high school senior year, my friend talked me into my first audition for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The production was so wonderful that I immersed myself in theatre once I got to college! Trying my hand at everything from light operation and set design to performance and directing, my senior project was performing in a two-person show in which I also did sound design. I also interned at American Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois and at LOST Theatre in London, England.

Tell us a little bit about the Q-STAGE piece or pieces you are working on?

I am working with Andrea Jenkins to tell her story and demonstrate how her experiences at the crossroads of race, identity, and sexuality illuminate further questions and common goals for many people. A collage artist as well as poet, Andrea incorporates many different elements into this piece, and it has been wonderful to work with her!

What themes do you pursue in your work?

I am fascinated by cultural simultaneity, obligations within different social systems, unexpected challenges faced by Queer people, and the drama within everyday spaces.

Tell us about an artist or performance that has inspired you?

My role as a stagehand in 20% Theatre’s Rapture Blister Burn was particularly formative because I had the chance to think over the ideas within that amazing show each night. Regarding inspiring performances, I was particularly blown away by Mark Rylance’s incredible role in Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth.