Julia Steele Allen is an activist, community organizer, performer and poet living and working in New York City. She is a graduate of the Experimental Performance Institute of the New College of California with a focus in Performance Activism. She has written and performed six different one-woman shows, all featuring original songs and either fictional or autobiographical characters. She has performed these shows in a variety of venues mainly in San Francisco and New York City.
She is currently performing her rock theater show with Ray Rizzo: “A Boy Called Noise” about the murder of a small-town gay teenager and his family’s struggle to respond. In it she plays Noise’s mother, father, sister, lover and best friend, and performs six original songs. A Boy Called Noise recently won the “Best Short Play” Award in the 2009 Downtown Urban Theater Festival. Look out for future show dates as well as the upcoming CD soundtrack which will be available on this website!
Julia has recently completed her first book of writing entitled: The Good Left in Us. It is a collection of ten years of personal poetry, political writing and story-poems. It will be available through this website later this summer. There will be a book release party event in NYC which you are invited to!
She is also part of a two-person band with Owen Taylor called My Gay Banjo. Playing original songs on the guitar, banjo and violin, My Gay Banjo is a country-rock-folk duo singing heartfelt gay anthems, love songs, and occasionally rocking out. Check this website for dates and places where My Gay Banjo will be playing. Also check back here for purchasing their first CD of songs.
Julia currently works as a community organizer on educational justice issues in the south Bronx. She also does solidarity work with women prisoners, American Indian community organizers, participates in Anti-Zionist Jewish activism in support of the people of Palestine, and is co-producing a documentary film about the burning of the Bronx with filmmaker Gretchen Hildebran set to go into production Fall 2009.