MEET ERIN MARKEY

“I'm interested in being in exchange about risk-taking and it's idiosyncratic differences across media and across time…I'm interested in creating a conversation around making work that is nurturing, challenging, and playful. I have as much to learn as I have to teach.”

Erin Markey, by Amos Mac

Erin Markey is a writer/actor/creator/composer who works across media. In addition to regular literary/comedy/cabaret appearances in NYC, they create full-length music/theater stage works that most recently include Boner Killer (Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater), A Ride On The Irish Cream (Abrons Arts Center), Singlet (Bushwick Starr, Lamda Literary Award Nom) and the in-development First Lady (New York Voices Commission at Joe’s Pub/Public Theater). These works have toured nationally and internationally to Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Spiegeltent (Bard College), ART (Cambridge, MA), The Yard Theater (London, UK), FringeArts (Philadelphia, PA), Luminato Festival (Toronto, ON), PICA’s TBA Festival (Portland, OR), Fierce Festival (Birmingham, UK), Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX), Washington Ensemble Theater (Seattle, WA) San Francisco Film Society and more. Their short play, Siobhan’s Wheel World was recently published in The Brooklyn Rail.

Markey has appeared on High Maintenance (HBO), At Home with Amy Sedaris (TruTV), Girls5Eva (Netflix), Run/On (SXSW), Our Home Out West (Independent, Cole Escola) and the upcoming Fantasmas (Max). They have composed music for Tender Claws VR games The Under Presents and Virtual Virtual Reality 2. As a stage actor, their recent theater credits include Staff Meal (Playwrighs Horizons) Most Happy (Williamstown Theater Festival), Dr. Ride’s American Beach House (Ars Nova), and Assassins (NYCC Encores!).

“It’s impossible to take your eyes off the performance artist Erin Markey, who matches sirenlike self-possession with off-the-wall non-sequitur humor. Imagine Tilda Swinton crossed with Yogi Berra, but weirder.” -Michael Schulman, The New Yorker

“The wolf-eyed Erin Markey wants you to be a little scared in the theater, kind of in the way you’re a little scared when you’re talking to someone attractive and you suddenly experience the weird full-body certainty that you could definitely get laid tonight. Markey is interested in chemistry and power, and in relationships that cross the boundary between stage and life.” -Sarah Holdren, Vulture

Work

Boner Killer at Under the Radar Festival, Joe’s Pub

Singlet (2018) at The Bushwick Starr

A Ride on the Irish Cream (2017) at American Repertory Theater

Queer|Art|Mentorship will be accepting applications from emerging artists across the country. Are you open to working with someone remotely, or would you prefer they are based in the same city as you?

“Either works.”

What interests you about mentoring?

“I came up in a queer art making context that was still ghettoized from mainstream/commercial art and entertainment. Relatively speaking, that has shifted. I'm interested in being in exchange about risk-taking and it's idiosyncratic differences across media and across time. I'm interested in what is meaningful about "live performance" in screen-dependent culture. I'm interested in creating a conversation around making work that is nurturing, challenging, and playful. I have as much to learn as I have to teach.”

Given your experience and interests, what kind of emerging artist do you feel best positioned to support?

“A writer/performer who is rigorous and led by pleasure, obsession and the evasiveness of gut impulse and surprise. (Also, someone who has a good sense of boundaries).”

As a mentor, what would you like to offer an emerging artist? What would you like to receive?

“I would like to offer some sort of scaffolding for discipline and practice, and an expansive approach to imagining work. I would like to receive an open heart and a commitment to practice, and some accountability for maintaining my own practice.”

Have you had mentors of your own? Who have they been?

“Holly Hughes, Kate Bornstein.”