Story-maker
Jovani Lugo (they/Elle/she/ella) is a performance artist, director, Writer, and DiaspoRican deviant. Their body of work is characterized by an ethereal aesthetic that both haunts and heals, often through the exploration of queer latinidad and gender.
Her methodology is rooted in embodied storytelling of othered experiences, antiracism and decolonization practices, and the joy of pleasure activism. Recent works: Associate Director, Puffs, Good Luck Macbeth Theatre Co.; Guest Director, Play at Home, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co.; Co-Director, Project/Project 2020, NYU Tisch School of the Arts; Associate Director, Esai’s Table, Cherry Lane Theatre Off-Broadway; Associate Director/Dramaturg, Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, Fairview, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co.; Writer/Director, Quare (Cosmic to Corporeal: Contemporary Queer Performance Practices Exhibition), The MAC; Interim Artistic Producer, Tony Award-winning Dallas Theater Center; Performer, Kate Gilmore’s Only in Your Way, DiverseWorks; Writer/Performer, Perdido Y, Dallas Museum of Art; Co-Author, "Still Here, Still Enraged: A Manifesto", Howl Round Theater Commons. Jovani is a 2021 NALAC Leadership Institute Fellow, Cum Laude graduate of UNT (B.A. and M.A. in Performance Studies) and is a recipient of the “Horizon Award”, "Thesis of the Year", and "Outstanding Performance by a Graduate Student" for their germinal work.
DiaspoRican Deviant
A Note on Antiracism and Decolonization Practices:
A certain resilience is required by a mother urging her child to lie on a language exam to remain in bilingual classes; knowing too much English would disqualify the child from this bicultural opportunity. Though normally stigmatized, this mother equips herself with the art of deceit because it is the difference between preserving their culture or eradicating the possibility altogether.
Within my own body of work I endeavor to uncover “that dark shining thing” that Anzaldúa conveys, that same reckoning of culture my mother once navigated. I use the term “body” intentionally, as my art is corporeal in nature. Through embodiment, I engage in a process of suturing identities that exist through a person. It is a practice of unbecoming the oppressor that exists in my racial passing, decolonizing to make space for my own and othered bodies, and reversing assimilation for the hope of cultural preservation. It is a reckoning with the question, “How can I exist in the fullness of who I am, despite the complexities and horrors of my colonized origins as a Puerto Rican?”
This lens informs my artistic and cultural work.
Much of the intent, but also the challenge, of this work is divesting from typical standards that reinscribe white supremacy. The push for perfectionism, a sense of urgency, and individualism are standards that typically define success in art and that often represent failure when they are not met. The quest for perfectionism ultimately limits why and how art works—what art can do or undo. Thus, I endeavor to continue to cast off those limits in my work, to implement my method in every step of a production as an act of decolonization, and to use performance as a vehicle to share untold stories and hidden histories. I commit to producing works, zero-dollar to Broadway budget, with the same holistic lens and to challenge myself in my approach to craft and artistic growth. When I sit in the uncomfortable praxis of identity exploration, ethical storytelling, and the abolition of systemic oppression, I center my own healing and thereby invoke the healing of the world.
Where success truly resides is in process, not product: it begins in those moments when I can make space for others to grow and heal, when each individual is empowered to have a stake in the life of the art, when their voice is integral to collaboration, evolution, and change. It’s in crafting details that contribute to the larger vision of a work, the pieces that move people to a greater understanding of the self and of the other. The art works—the process, which is the art, achieves actualization—when I feel most grounded in who I am.
I long to embody my ancestors’ wildest dreams, and I believe story-making is a step in that kind of liberation.