Award-winning writer, director, and performer, Brian Freeman, is publicly known more for his featured roles in two boundary-breaking classic films that are now National Film Registry Inductees: The Watermelon Woman by Spirit Award nominated filmmaker, Cheryl Dunye and L.A. Film Critics Association-winning documentary, TONGUES UNTIED by the late Marlon Riggs, with whom Freeman collaborated on many films, both as a performer and in production.

 

That said, within the world of innovative theater and performing arts, Freeman is an icon. By training a playwright, theatre director and performer, he was a member of the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe in the early '80s.  He became resident director with San Francisco’s Cultural Odyssey, and in the late '80s he co-founded, Pomo Afro Homos, the groundbreaking '90s Black queer performance troupe.

 

Along with his work as a director and dramaturg, his subsequent plays and solo performances have been presented at such renowned venues as: Off-Broadway's historic multi-Tony Award-winning, Public Theater in NYC; the Tony Award-winning Woolly Mammoth Theatre in D.C.; Outstanding Regional Theatre Tony winner, Berkeley Repertory Theatre (Berkeley Rep); L.A.'s famed Mark Taper Forum; acclaimed Bay area-based, The Marsh; the AfroSolo Theatre Company; the legendary Magic Theatre; the Oakland Ensemble Theatre in the San Francisco/Bay area, and many others nationally and internationally. Among those projects is his legendary award-winning solo play, Civil Sex, about Civil Rights Movement/LGBTQ+ icon, Bayard Rustin.

 

He has taught playwriting, directing and the history of contemporary theatre and performance at UCLA, CalArts, San Francisco Art Institute, Art Institute of Chicago and pioneering intensive learning institution, Colorado College.

 

His awards include: the coveted Will Glickman Playwriting Award; a prestigious Bessie Award (New York Dance and Performance Award); a  Creative Capital Award and the CalArts/Herb Alpert Award in Theatre.

 

He is currently developing a series of short experimental videos combining performance with archival images and footage.