natyna bean is…

a multidisciplinary artist and educator who celebrates Blk queer folks navigating and interrogating the presence and impact of American carceral systems. Combining their/her upbringing in Philadelphia, multiethnic background, and experience as a community worker & theatre artist, natyna confronts internalized behaviors of harm through storytelling, curricula, and song, exploring the possibility of self-sovereignty and asserting hope in hardship. natyna’s work has been produced, published, and/or developed with Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, The Great Plains Theatre Conference, The Playground Experiment, The Fire This Time Festival, Moving Arts Theatre, 24 Hour Plays Nationals, Theatre L’Acadie, University of Nebraska Omaha, and more. natyna was awarded the 2020 Lorraine Hansberry Lilly Award and the KCACTF National Undergraduate Playwriting Award. A finalist for the NYSAF Founders’ Award and a creative resident of SPACE on Ryder Farm, natyna is an NYU Tisch alum and holds an MFA in Playwriting from the New School for Drama. In addition to their/her dramatic work, natyna is a lead teacher for the Octavia Project, a co-host of the podcast to whom this may affirm, and is a producer for the NPR-syndicated radio show and podcast, Our Body Politic, a media platform that centers the impact and experience of women of color in politics and the news.