The Audacity to Embody Trans Joy: Creative Healing for Liberation is a trans-led, trauma-informed, consent-based Zoom workshop for trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive folks (and those who love us). In hard times, the body can feel like a battleground. This session offers practical tools to help your nervous system settle, reconnect to choice, and remember joy as an embodied form of resistance.

We’ll begin with gentle grounding and sensory-flexible regulation practices (breath, orienting, micro-resourcing), then move into low-pressure expressive arts: guided visualization, image/gesture work, and short writing prompts. You’re welcome to participate quietly with camera off, while resting, stretching, stimming, or taking breaks. No performance experience is needed, and personal disclosure is never required.

You’ll leave with repeatable practices you can use during stress, burnout, grief, or transition—plus a personal “future anchor” to return to when things feel intense.

Scope note: skills-based creative wellness facilitation (not psychotherapy or crisis services).

About the Facilitator: Dr. Axel Renée Winget (they/he) is a queer, transmasculine drama therapist (RDT), theatre artist, and educator. Founder of Queer Healing Space, Axel facilitates trauma-informed, consent-based somatic and expressive arts workshops for queer and trans communities. Axel has supported LGBTQI+ refugees through RFSL Stockholm and has taught at universities including LMU and USC.

In this workshop we'll use techniques developed by Rain Valdez & Jase Alan to help actors quickly get into character for auditions with a quick turnaround. Through a series of exercises actor will go from cold read to virtually off book in the span of 15-20 minutes. This is for working actors wanting to improve their auditions.

About your instructor: Jase Alan(they/them) is a writer/actor & also the Director of Operations at ActNOW (@actnowla), a queer-centered, trans-led acting & creative arts training studio where they also teach Scene Study for film/tv. They hold a BA in Theatre from CSULB. Jase has trained with Alexandra Billings, Rain Valdez, Jamie Clayton, Brian Michael Smith, Jett Garrison, & more. In addition to training at Groudlings, Steppenwolf, & UCB. They love to build community & create space for their TGI2S+ family to grow in their creativity.

Are you stymied about what makes a good pilot script for a television show? Are you terrified of pitching projects, because we writers just want to sit in a dark coffee cave to write our stories in peace? Then you’re in luck, because I'm here to help! With experience in television, animation, film, comics, podcasts, games, and more, we’ll discuss what executives and producers are looking for, and how to deliver those things on a professional level. Because we need more queer creators to get our projects made! Max enrollment of ten super fab trans/nonbinary/gnc/queer folks!

About your instructor: Tilly Bridges, as part of a team with her wife Susan, wrote Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming at IDW, six episodes of Monster High (for which their Monster Fest special won an inaugural Velma Award for LGBTQIA+ representation in children’s media), consulted on Star Trek Prodigy, and their YA queer trans romcom graphic novel Just Another Summer releases this summer. Their award-winning short film, Long Away, is presently playing film festivals around the world. Tilly’s book Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix is available now, and you can find Tilly’s weekly essays on trans life at TillysTransTuesdays.com.

Is the performance of gender in your everyday life weighing you down? Shake up gender, mock gender, flaunt gender, & fulfill your greatest gender euphoria desires with the FACE you see in the mirror! In this Drag 101 workshop, drag prince Vik Floyd will facilitate a safe, brave space for us to create drag personas together. We will play around with drag make-up, costume, & backstory to bring light to our shadow selves. In queer punk fashion, we will liberate our shadows to enlighten ourselves on how we bring our everyday gender presentations forward in the world.

About your instructor: Vik Floyd (he/they) is East LA's drag prince of madness. Chaotic rockstar at stage entrance, tender vulnerability at eye contact - Vik Floyd inspires all to be fearless facing the darkside of their moon. Vik joined drag kings, queens, & things in October 2018 to tackle their gender dysphoria being born two-spirit and gender fluid. Honest about the madness that comes from sorrow, many of their drag performances also serve as an ode to losing their personal king, their rockstar dad Mickey Floyd. Vik firmly believes in the power of drag to release, empower, and connect.

This workshop takes place over two dates:

• Friday, April 24th from 6pm to 8pm

• Friday, May 1st from 6pm to 8pm

Everyone has a story worth telling. Through storytelling, we practice using our voices as a tool for self-understanding, connection, and empowerment. Students will practice identifying their true voice, as opposed to the voices and opinions of others we carry in our own heads. Students will write and perform their own story over two sessions.

About the instructor: Natalie Nicole Dressel is a transgender actress/writer currently living in North Hollywood, CA. In 2019, she attained her MFA in writing for the Stage and Screen from Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA, and in 2013 she earned her BFA in Theater from Michigan State University. She is a graduate of the UCB LA improv program, and her play There is Evil in This House was a 2019 O'Neill NPC finalist and the winner of Best Ensemble in the SheLA festival.

She has 10+ years of stand up comedy experience and in 2012 was named "Funniest Mouth of the South" in Chattanooga, TN. She's worked on two projects that are currently available on HBOMAX (Veneno, The Lady and The Dale) and in 2021, she is the recipient of an artist grant from West Hollywood and put up an exhibition of her work in 2022.

A hands-on workshop for crafty queer nerds who want to learn to make a simple miniature house using techniques from theatre model making and mini construction used on wildly popular D&D liveplay show, Dimension 20.

About your instructor: KC McGeorge has a degree in theatrical set design which taught them miniature making and has been the art director of Dimension 20 for several years, where they oversee the production of gaming model terrain. They have taught this workshop at the Twenty Sided Store and Dungeons & Draughts in New York City