Special Presentation Tracks

Every year, a small number of artists are selected to present bold, groundbreaking new work in our Special Presentation Tracks at the festival. These are curated pathways that celebrate vision, voice, and virtuosity across identity, form, and experience. The 2025 tracks are shaped by a powerhouse panel of artists, producers, and field-shifting cultural leaders. Their selections are in. The artists have been chosen. Explore their shows below, as well as the panelists who selected them!

BIPOC New Work Award

  • Cierra Woods

    sis.tem | gateways to safehouses exposes the weight of societal objectification on the spiritual body of black femmes. Lifting and enlivening movement and melodic rituals that call into question, how can we ignite century-long spells cast upon us as protection in eras of refinement and reformation?

  • Ishmael Walker

    The Boo Hag- The Boo Hag is a cautionary tale of home-making and home-breaking. Haints, or evil spirits, show up when you least expect it. A widowed woman and her house cleaner must survive the haunting nightmare at the hands of the breathtaking Boo Hag.

  • pauli reese

    Starfish and the Weighted Blanket: a comedy thing about grief- what does grief look like? smell like? taste like? sound like? starfish the clown explores these questions in a improvised one-person show where some brave audience members will be invited into the experience. 

  • Lucia Bedoya

    El idioma de lo silenciado- An experimental tragedy unfolding through bodies, voices, and silences. This piece reimagines the ancient tragic chorus in a contemporary setting to embody the collective voice of a generation silenced, displaced, and disillusioned.

  • ANKOLE

    NFRW/T- a BIPOC Queer Circus Arts production honoring our Ancestors' Spirituality where the duality of feminine + masculine energies presents itself in elements of nature, originating in Egypt since 3150 BC before European colonization sought to eradicate & discredit our culture.

New Work by Circus Artists of Color (CSAW Award)

  • Joi Cox

    The Death Circus, is an artistic exploration of universal end-of-life themes and rituals that connect us. Aerialists, movement artists, and musicians invite the audience to reflect on some of the complexities surrounding loss, decay, grief, fear, and peace.

Performances for Young Audiences Development Cohort

  • Selena Rook

    A cardboard box to explore? And why A non-verbal show for audiences of all ages, Mon Carton uses physical theater, object manipulation and magic to evocatively transform materials and create improbable surprises.


  • Ava Kepple

    OverWorld! Bring the family on a zany, surreal, puppet-filled adventure through a world, not so different that of a popular block based mining game, as we explore technology and learn different perspectives of perceiving the world.



  • Daisie Cardona

    Ashes and Iron is a solo aerial show that tells the story of a community that refuses to be erased. Set in Kensington, Philadelphia—one of the most resilient but misrepresented neighborhoods in the city—this powerful piece combines aerial silks, hammock, and Lyra to explore themes of struggle, survival, and collective strength.

SWANA Award

  • Fargo Nissim Tbakhi

    An Evening With Complicity Huffman is a haunted solo performance in poetry-drag, satirizing an invented Israeli-American poet named Complicity Huffman on the eve of her newest collection’s release.

  • Sepehr Pirasteh

    White Room is an interdisciplinary performance installation in which the audience's presence actively shapes the experience. As the audience moves through the arranged objects, they become a dynamic part of the installation.

Immersive Award

  • Jack McManus

    Join your fellow judges in witnessing Jack attempt to illustrate their perfection through a series of demonstrations, lectures, and challenges. Only you have the qualifications to determine their success, and your assessment will be integral to their fate in this competition. Equal parts comedic and incisive, Traffic Cam invites its audience to examine their complicity in processes of self-automation and asks the question: how do we discover our truest selves?

Philadelphia Theater Company Text and Dramaturgy Cohort

  • Rayne

    new heaven, new earth is an Afrocentric adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra by Rayne (On Buried Ground, Comet). In this genre-defying epic of love, power, and legacy, Cleopatra confronts war, betrayal, and a crocodile. In an empire not unlike America, what is the true cost of sovereignty?

  • August Hakvaag

    A physics lab has worked for years to bring to life a theoretical superconductor that would change the face of physics, and on the day of a pivotal union vote, they push through to the impossible. The Superconductor is about scientific progress, worker's rights, and how they go hand in hand.

  • Taj Rauch

    This is a story about you, an immersive excavation of who you’ve always been. After Worlds is an experimental narrative told through second person soundscapes and projected data clouds, bringing audiences into an archival rabbit hole growing ever deeper.

  • AZ Espinoza

    Caribbean King is a de-colonial, trans-gressive, adaptive confrontation with Shakespeare’s King Lear in which Cord(elia) fights to survive against a catastrophic hurricane barreling towards his family’s resort, and his hotelier father’s unshakeable belief that he is a daughter, not a son.

  • Alexis Howland

    A Journey of Hardship & Suffering- A clowny comedy of errors inspired by a true 19th-century wilderness expedition into the interior of Alaska - impertinent mules, relentless mosquitoes, sabotage, and mutiny!


2025 Special Presentation Tracks Panelists

The 2025 tracks were shaped by a powerhouse panel of artists, producers, and field-shifting cultural leaders. Explore the panelists below!

  • Lisa Volta
    Myriam Ali

  • Wi-Moto Nyoka
    Joyce Chung
    Nia Benjamin

  • Nathan Alford Tate
    Orianna Lee
    Queen Ravenden

  • Taibi Magar
    Tyler Dobrosky

  • Sam Tower
    Ganiah Bracy
    Ben Grinberg

  • Angel Edwards
    Taj Rauch
    Yannick Trapman-O’Brien