Ricardo Bracho Named Inaugural Abrams Artist-in-Residence

Ricardo A. Bracho has been named the first Abrams Artist-in-Residence in Penn Arts & Sciences, in the Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. Artists-in-residence are outstanding visual artists, musicians, writers, and other creative practitioners who work with students and faculty.

Bracho is a writer, editor, and teacher who has worked in community and university, theater and video/film, politics and aesthetics for the past 29 years. His other academic appointments include Visiting Multicultural Faculty at The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago and Artist-Scholar in Residence at the Center for Chicano Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Bracho’s award-winning plays, including The Sweetest Hangover, Sissy, Puto, and Mexican Psychotic, have been produced in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, as well as workshopped and staged nationwide. He focuses on community issues including social justice, public health, and the arts with queer and trans youth of color, Latina/o/x high-risk populations, queer men of color, and incarcerated men. He has been a participant in the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group residency program and with Mabou Mines, a long-running experimental theater group. He is currently compiling his selected plays for publication, as well as at working on Operation Space Maize, an intergalactic queer comedy and love story about Los Angeles and Galaxy 1-B.

“Art is central to humanistic inquiry and a liberal arts education that prepares students to live in a complex and interconnected world,” says Steven J. Fluharty, Dean of Penn Arts & Sciences and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience. “The Abrams Artists-in-Residence program allows us to bring important voices to campus to act as mentors and collaborators.”

David C. Abrams, C’83, PAR’12, PAR’15, and Amy L. Abrams, PAR’12, PAR’15, established the Abrams Artists-in-Residence Fund at Penn Arts & Sciences in 2018. David is Managing Partner of Abrams Capital, LLC, an investment firm. He served as a Penn Arts & Sciences Overseer from 2010 until this year. David and Amy have generously supported Penn Arts & Sciences priorities over the years.