MUSE • Musicians United for Social Equity

Biography

ayla xuân chi sullivan (they/them) is a Black and Vietnamese, non-binary, performance artist from the lands of the Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Nuche colonially known as Denver Colorado.They are an actor, a playwright, a director, a poet, an educator, and a co-founder of Shift 23 Media. Sullivan’s work is often referred to as “love poems addressed to people in our community we are conditioned to forget”: Black, Indigenous, Asian, Queer and Trans People of Color, those experiencing homelessness, immigrants, and anyone who is (or has been) incarcerated. Harlem based, Sullivan is the inaugural New Visions Fellow of National Queer Theatre and the Dramatists Guild. Their work has been showcased at Theatre Row, MCC Theatre, The Other Side of Silence, throughout the Denver Metro Area, and briefly in Dakar, Senegal. They have been published in American Theatre, The Dramatist, Playbill, Westword, and  303Magazine. In Television, they are a 2021 Screenwriter’s Episodic Colony alum and developing a series with SMAC Entertainment. In opera, they’ve written librettos with composer Jack Frerer for the Albany Symphony and Arapahoe Philharmonic. From 2016-2019, Sullivan served the Denver Metro Area as your second Denver Youth Poet Laureate. 

Stage Credits: Hide and Hide, OVERHEARD, Jubilee for a New Vision

Screen Credits: Girls5Eva, me and my gun, You, Me, and the FAFSA,

BFA: University of Colorado Boulder MFA: Columbia University