Morgan Bassichis and Friends: An evening of comedy, music, and burlesque

Join us for an evening of comedy hosted by exhibiting artist Morgan Basschis. Basschis will facilitate an evening with  comedians and performance artists River L. Ramirez, Una Osato and Michi Osato. The evening will focus on politics, education, absurdity, sex, and failure.

* Disclaimer: Adult content, must be 18+ to attend.

About the Artists

Morgan Bassichis (b. 1983, Newton, MA) is based in New York City. Their work has been presented in New York by Abrons Arts Center, Danspace Project, The Kitchen and New Museum of Contemporary Art and in Portland, OR at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA). Bassichis’s first solo exhibition, Questions to Ask Beforehand, opened at Bridget Donahue in New York City in March 2022. They were included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and the 2015 edition of Greater New York at MoMA PS1. Their book “The Odd Years” was published by Wendy’s Subway in 2020. Bassichis has released two album-length recordings: March is for Marches with Ethan Philbrick (2019) and More Protest Songs! Live From St. Mark’s Church (2018.

River L. Ramirez (they/them) is a NYC based experimental performance artist, comedian, musician, storyteller and writer who wrote, produced and directed the comedy special program “Pervert Everything” for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim (2018) . Ramirez currently appears alongside Fred Armisen on HBO’s Los Espookys (2020-2022), and does character voice over work for Adult Swim’s BIRDGIRL as the character Charlie (2020-2022), and Teenage Euthanasia as AI Operator and Shelley #3 (2022).

Ramirez’s performance practice extends beyond the limits of television and comedy, their live performance practice being integral to their art. They have been commissioned for original musical and dance based performances by Baryshnikov Arts Center (2021), Gibney (2022), Ars Nova Vision Residency program(2022), and Moma PS1 (2019). In 2022 they toured their latest music/storytelling, experimental comedy show “GHOSTFOLK” at the Wiesbaden Biennale in Germany and toured solo as an opening act for Will Butler. They have written for High Maintenance (2019)  and The National Lampoon Radio Hour (2019). Named one of Comedy Central’s Up Next Comedians for 2018, Ramirez was featured in the San Francisco ClusterFest comedy festival, and performed at the Public Theater in New York as part of the January, 2019, Under the Radar Festival. They have been featured on Forbes 30 under 30, The New York Times, Art in America, SSense, and more. You can follow them everywhere online @pileoftears
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Una Aya Osato was born and raised in the East Village of New York City, where she currently works as a performer, writer, and educator who dynamically merges her art and politics.  Una began her performance career at the age of seven, dancing with the world renowned José Limon Dance Company which toured in the U.S. and Europe, and worked on television shows such as Sesame Street, Ghost Writer, and Nickelodian PSA’s.  She also appeared on network television as a repertory member of CityKids, before going on to graduate from LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts, where she was awarded the level one prize in theater by the U.S. Arts Recognition Talent Search (now known as YoungArts), and named a finalist for the Presidential Scholar in the Arts award. She was invited to participate in the Sundance Theater Laboratory, where she performed in Julia Cho’s 99 Histories, and has since gone on to collaborate with award-winning playwrights, performers, and companies such as Taylor Mac (2009, 2016, 2018) and the Mettawee River Theater Company (2013). Una and her sister MIchi Ilona Osato have a chapter in adrienne maree brown’s newest NY Times Best Selling book Pleasure Activism, their chapter is called “Burlesque and Liberation”. Una is also part of a collective that has work in the Brooklyn Museum’s current show “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: 50 Years After Stonewall”, their piece is called “The Lavender Hill Historical Society”.

Since graduating from Wesleyan University with a degree in American Studies, Una has been writing, performing, and producing her award-winning original work, touring for over 15 years both nationally and internationally at theaters, festivals, schools, community organizations, and prisons.

Una’s love for fully embodying her politics in her art has also led her to burlesque, where she goes by the names exHOTic other and Norms, and has performed in theaters and nightclubs from NYC’s iconic Slipper Room to the bright lights of Vegas for the Miss Exotic World/Burlesque Hall of Fame competition. She is also a co-founding member of the new burlesque super troupe, brASS: Brown RadicalAss Burlesque. 

She facilitates workshops and trainings in correlation with the themes raised in her theater and burlesque shows, (such as “Full-bodied Storytelling: Loving Your Body & Finding Your Story”; “Political Performance: Sharing Stories That Matter to Us All”; and “A One Woman Show: The In’s & Out’s of Creating, Performing & Self-Producing Your Work”). She has taught for over 15 years at every level of educational institution throughout the U.S. and South Africa. In the U.S., these have included: Yale, Princeton, Wesleyan, Oberlin, Brown, Cornell, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Laney, Sarah Lawrence, Rutgers, Brandeis, NYU, Rutgers, the CUNY Grad Center, Queens College, Brooklyn College, California State: Monterey Bay, University of San Francisco, Laney College, Mount Holyoke, and Carlton College.

Una’s foundation in performance and popular education provides a framework that allows her to create uniquely engaging spaces for students to experience learning, where they often find new understanding of themselves and the world. Una’s work as an educator is an extension of her artistic work, all of which explores and addresses social justice issues through embodying knowledge, performance and storytelling.

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Michi Ilona Osato aka sister selva is a queer anti-Zionist Japanese Jewish burlesque & drag performer and acupuncturist, born and raised in the East Village, NYC. Her work explores the intersections of sensuality, nature, gender and race. Since age three she has performed across NYC at Lincoln Center Out Of Doors, the Joyce Theater, at the New Museum and Brooklyn Museum with performance collective Lavender Hill Historical Society, on television shows Sesame Street and High Maintenance, and her writing can be found with sister Una in adrienne maree brown’s bestselling book Pleasure Activism. As a central producing member of Mariposa & the Saint, a groundbreaking performance about solitary confinement, and as co-founder of queer-POC performance company brASS Burlesque, her work has been featured in the New York Times, Teen Vogue, MSNBC, NowThis, and NPR’s CodeSwitch.