Join us for a participatory online conversation where we’ll explore individual needs / wants / desires for finding the sacred in queer identity and uplift our communities through specifically-Queer ritual.
Participants are invited to imagine a Queer Rite of Passage that centers their identity and celebrates Queerness for societal healing and individual freedom.
We’ll begin with grounding and briefly getting to know each other. There’ll be opportunities to:
Talk in groups small and large,
Respond to prompts with writing / art making
Share ceremonial visions no matter how wild
Embrace Queer Liberation through mutual support
Facilitated by Aviva Arts members Yiyo Ornelas and Pamela Hollings.
Participants in the conversation may choose to join a Queer Rites of Passage process offered later by Spring of Rites.
You can register here!
🤝🏻Suggested donation: $15-35
Joins us via Zoom!
Queer Rites of Passage - Zoom Link
If you have any questions contact springofrites@gmail.com
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Facilitators:
Guillermo “Yiyo'' Ornelas
Member of the Aviva Arts cohort, a Bay Area-based performer, teaching artist, and arts education advocate. As a queer first-generation Mexican-American, they understand the impact that an arts education can have, especially in vulnerable communities.
Yiyo has worked with local communities to encourage youth and their families to foster creative modes of expression, through the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, the Teatro Project, and JumpStart. They have served as Vice-Chair of the Arts Education Alliance of the Bay Area (AEABA) ensuring that arts education is equitable and accessible to all in the community. They currently sit on the board for Aviva Arts, an arts and wellness non-profit with a mission to promote growth and transformation through liberating art modalities. Before coming to the Bay Area, they led a weekly theater workshop at Our House, a runaway and homeless youth shelter in Redlands, California.
As an actor, Yiyo has performed, notably at the Magic Theater (The Travelers, 2023; Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad 2024), Los Angeles Theater Company (The Travelers, 2023), and Brava Theater (Translating Selena, 2020). They have worked with various theater companies to support the creation of new work, including Campo Santo, Fuse Theater, Aviva Arts, and Tradicion Peruana Cultural Center. Since 2019 they have been a dancer with the Afro-Peruvian performance company Jaranon y Bochinche, participating in the Peninsula's Ethnic Dance Festival in 2022 and various other presentations throughout the Bay Area. In 2022, Yiyo received grant funding from the San Francisco Arts Commission to support the production of 'Fantasmitas: Cinco Sueños Regresando al Sur' by Oz Jimenez, which will have its national premiere in August 2024. Yiyo holds a B.A. from UC Berkeley, double majoring in Sociology, Theatre & Performance Studies; where they received the Mark Goodson award for ‘Distinguished Artistic Talent.’
They are a theater nerd who enjoys watching Digimon, Survivor, and mexican novelas! in between attending YouTube University.
Pamela Hollings (she/they)
Member of the Aviva Arts cohort, a theater-maker, working as a director, dramaturg, educator, actor, deviser and writer, depending on the project. She facilitates Rites of Passage through the Spring of Rites project, easing folks' life transitions through creative connection to themselves, nature and their communities. They believe in and have witnessed the power of ritual to transform and ground that transformation in the psychophysical self. Pamela is the Curation & Education Curator at 3Girls Theatre, and an ensemble member of Aviva Arts (formerly foolsFURY). Was the Board Chair (2013-2021), as well as an ensemble member (2018-2022) of foolsFURY Theater and the former Artistic Managing Director of both The Yat/Bentley Centre for Performance, SF Bay Area and Soup Kitchen Theatre, Melbourne, Australia. Pamela was the dramaturg for foolsFURY on (dis)Place[d] by Debórah Eliezer and Dionysus Was Such a Nice Man by Kate Tarker and has directed and been dramaturg on numerous plays in development at 3Girls Theatre and elsewhere. She has directed many plays, including the Australian premiere of Laughing Wild by Christopher Durang. She trained in Theatre Direction at Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) whose distinguished alums include Cate Blanchett, Judy Davis, Baz Luhrmann and many more. She has studied Nature Awareness and Relational Education through Weaving Earth and has strong interests in group process, peacemaking, ritual and storytelling in all its forms.