Brava is Hiring!

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Brava’s youth program Mission Academy of Performing Arts is seeking a teaching artist to work with the San Francisco Running Crew during the 2021/22 school year. Potential Candidates must have the following qualifications:


Teaching Artist: Set Design

QUALIFICATIONS:

  • Experience teaching Set Design to Middle and High School students

  • Ability to create a curriculum for in person and virtual sessions

  • Must have building and set construction skills

  • Knowledge of power tools and safety protocols

  • Knowledge in Theater etiquette 

  • Experience working and collaborating with an artistic team and students

  • Degree in Set Design preferable

  • Updated artistic portfolio

  • Must pass a background check

  • Own vehicle highly preferred but not required

  • Applicants must have a valid proof of Covid19 Vaccination and must be willing to complete a weekly Covid19 test


HOURS OF EMPLOYMENT

Availability on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 3pm-7pm; and some Saturdays, including spring performance tech week  

PLEASE NOTE: All Fall Semester classes will take place virtually on Zoom.


COMPENSATION

The rate of pay is $30 per hour


HOW TO APPLY

Interested candidates should email their resume, online portfolio, and two professional references to Brava’s Education Director Melvign Badiola at mapa@brava.org.

Brava! for Women in the Arts is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ applicants are strongly encouraged to apply.


Tuning in: MAPA students master the audio drama

Like youth programs across the world, Mission Academy of Performing Arts @ Brava (MAPA) migrated online back in March 2020. The once hands-on, in-person learning experience became one in which students navigated theatre performance and production screen-to-screen.

Looking for new ways to engage, grow creatively, and express themselves, the students of MAPA’s Young Thespians Theatre Lab and San Francisco Running Crew came together virtually to present three student written, performed, and produced audio dramas.

In the creation of the audio dramas, the students asked themselves: “In the midst of a global health crisis and social unrest, what makes a story? Is it a beginning, middle, and end? Does it need to have some grand message or is it just something someone tells you?” These questions led the students on a journey in which along the way they questioned their own ideas about the world, themselves, and their relationships.

We’re thrilled to be able to share the completed projects with you! Listen below!

Mural Artist Agana joins Brava Artists in Residence

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Known to the world as Agana, internationally acclaimed artist Vanessa Solari Espinoza is a multi-dimensional contemporary mural artist.

Of Venezuelan descent and hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area, Agana gives public walls vibrant life with her iconic pictorial imagery, bold aesthetics, bursting colors, textual calligraphic gestures and form. At the intersection of graffiti and fine art practices she communicates common social threads via monumental vision.

Rooted in her Latinx identity as part of the larger American experience, AGANA also translates the artistic mural process into fruitful community-building strategies. She cultivates new leaders in the field via workshop and mentoring with the tools to transform lives through intentional, relevant art.

Her layered storytelling style bridges thought provoking visibility to otherwise marginalized experiences while stimulating transformative conceptualism for diverse viewers through visual linguistics via spray patterns, gradients, drips, and blended mixed medium.

With a background in graphic design and jewelry metal arts, AGANA received a BAS in Visual Effects from Ex’pression College for Digital Art in 2008 working in the film, animation and video game production industries. Prolific in her production, AGANA creates platforms for successful global art projects found on city buildings across the Americas and worldwide from Switzerland to Senegal.

All the walls built around us are made to separate us, but when we tell our stories – speak our truths – they bring us together and make us sacred and connected.
— Agana

Agana, “Madre Tierra de mi Corazon,” 2018

Agana, “Madre Tierra de mi Corazon,” 2018

Agana’s art first appeared at Brava back in 2018, when Brava commissioned her to create the mural “Madre Tierra de mi Corazon” on the east-side gate of our newly opened storefront. The work appeared in our 2018 Baile en la Calle: The Mural Dances, and has become beloved by Brava and the neighborhood alike. This past July Brava had the opportunity to engage Agana again, in the creation of “Brava Breaths Palabra.” Commissioned by Brava! for Women in the Arts with support from our neighborhood partner, Acción Latina, for the July 16, 2020 Paseo Artístico: Art is Collective Action, “Brava Breaths Palabra” honors our nation’s ancestral heritage and the generations of Black and Indigenous women who have given heart, breath, and life to this land. 

At the mural’s unveiling on September 7, Agana read an artistic statement she had prepared for the event. The whole of which can be read here.

Several special guest artists contributed to the creation of “Brava Breaths Palabra,” including Shishi Madriz, Toons One, Sonia G, and Josue Rojas Art. They and their work are included in the slideshow below (Photos by Agana).


 

Building New Commissions During Covid

This month, SF Arts Monthly’s, Heather Desaulniers, interviewed several of the recent Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions awardees, including Brava Artist in Residence, Vanessa Sanchez. Sanchez received the commissioning award for Ghostly Labor, a new project in development at Brava. Desaulniers spoke to the artists about the challenges in building new commissions during Covid, and found that, “[i]f there’s one thing that dancers know how to do well, it’s pivot.”

Read Desaulners full article in the most recent issue of SF Arts Monthly here.

Vanessa Sanchez and La Mezcla perform in front of House of Brakes.

Vanessa Sanchez and La Mezcla perform in front of House of Brakes.

Brava Welcomes Rosine Garcia

Brava is excited to welcome Rosine Garcia to our small but mighty staff! Rosine came to Brava through her connection with Carnaval San Francisco, where she is currently (and will continue to be) the Festival’s Vendor Coordinator and Social Media Coordinator. Rosine’s immense talent as an event coordinator and social media guru will be put to great use here at Brava. Rosine will be putting out fresh new content across all of our platforms, so stay tuned. Welcome to Brava Rosine!

Rosine is a current student at the University of San Francisco where she majors in Hospitality Management (with an emphasis on events) and minors in Chicanx-Latinx Studies. In her free time, you can find Rosine reading books, decorating her planner, and eating cinnamon rolls.

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Two Projects at Brava Receive "New and Experimental Works" Award

Yesterday, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation announced the award of over $580,000 to 33 small and mid-sized arts organizations through their New and Experimental Works (NEW) Program. “Funded projects explore urgent issues our country is grappling with, such as African American male identity, the mental health and well-being of Asian and Asian American communities, the formation of queer identity, and homelessness.”

Two of the awarded projects, Vanessa Sanchez’s Ghostly Labor and Kat Evasco’s Be Like Water, will be developed at Brava next year. You can read about these projects and all those that were funded, here. Congratulations to all of the artists and organizations on their awards!

Vanessa Sanchez in Pachuquísmo, October 2019.

Vanessa Sanchez in Pachuquísmo, October 2019.


Resident Theatre Company, SFBATCO, live from Brava's Cabaret

Co-founders of the TBA-winning company SFBATCO, Rodney Earl Jackson, Jr and Marcelo Javier Pereira, present a virtual variety show SFBATCO Live with Rod and Marce, streaming July 9, 2020 at 6 pm (PST) on the platform Twitch.

SFBATCO Live with Rod and Marce features songs from a variety of genres, including an original piece, as well as personal stories and banter that make for an engaging, funny, and deeply heartfelt evening of virtual theatre. The event features San Francisco cabaret favorite G. Scott Lacy on the keys. More information here.

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