viBeSolos

Production Photo from "reDefined"

viBeSolos is an advanced program for independent, courageous young women interested in writing and performing a solo show.

Four to six girls, individually, create their own “one-girl-show” workshopped and guided in collaboration with a professional dramaturg/director and the other participants. viBeSolos express each girl’s unique vision of her world. Since 2004, viBe has produced the extraordinary solo performances of over 30 young women.

Renee Watson, viBeSolos Program Director

Renée Watson is the author of the children’s picture book, A Place Where Hurricanes Happen (Random House, June 2010). Her middle grade novel, What Momma Left Me (Bloomsbury, July 2010) debuted as the New Voice for 2010 in middle grade fiction by The Independent Children’s Booksellers Association.

Renée’s one woman show, Roses are Red, Women are Blue, premiered at New York City’s Lincoln Center at a showcase for emerging artists. Her articles on using poetry to address social justice issues have been published in Rethinking Schools. When Renée is not writing and performing, she is teaching. Renée has worked in public schools and community organizations as an artist-in-residence for more than ten years, teaching poetry, fiction, and theater.
One of Renée’s passions is using the arts to help youth cope with trauma. She has facilitated poetry and theatre workshops with young girls coping with sexual and physical abuse, children who have witnessed violence, children coping with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and children who relocated to New York City after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Renée graduated from The New School, where she studied Creative Writing and earned a certificate in Drama Therapy.

Renée currently lives in New York City.