June 20, 2023
Graduate students Mateo Hernandez, Allen Porterie and Deen Rawlins-Harris were selected as Point Foundation BIPOC scholars, earning financial and community support for their studies during the 2023-2024 academic year.
The Point Foundation serves as the largest scholarship-granting non-profit focused on supporting LGBTQ students' academic success. Their BIPOC scholarship program seeks to empower Black, Indigenous and People of Color students, offering holistic support through professional development in addition to financial and community resources. The 2023/2024 cohort of BIPOC Scholars features 280 students from across the United States, including multiple graduate students from the Department of Theatre and Dance.
Meet the Point Foundation BIPOC Scholars from the Department of Theatre and Dance
Mateo Hernandez (they/he) is a queer, Latinx theatre maker, applied theatre practitioner, pedagogue and scholar currently residing on the ancestral lands of the Tonkawa, Lipan-Apache, Karankawa, Comanche, and Coahuiltecan people, also known as central Texas. They are an M.F.A. in Theatre candidate with a specialization in drama and theatre for youth and communities at The University of Texas at Austin where their research interests include queering pedagogies and performance through transgender epistemologies and queer feminist abolitionist practices in art making.
They have worked with companies including Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Filament Theatre, UrbanTheatre Company, Teatro Vivo, Cara Mía Theatre and Chicago Children’s Theatre, among others. As a playwright, their plays have been selected for readings with the INGENIO 2020 (Milagro Theatre) and Austin Latinx New Play Festival (Teatro Vivo). Hernandez is also a company member with FYI (For Youth Inquiry), a performance company in Chicago, Illinois making participatory theatre around issues of reproductive justice. They hold a B.F.A. in Theatre Studies from The University of Texas at Austin.
Allen Porterie (he/they) is an actor, singer, writer and scholar based in Austin, Texas. They are a third-year M.F.A. in Theatre candidate with a specialization in performance as public practice at The University of Texas at Austin. Porterie spent his formative years in Forney, Texas. He then went on to pursue B.A.s in English and Theatre at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. At Cornell, Porterie performed in a play nearly every semester while conducting research as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, as well as a summer research fellow at Louisiana State University and the University of Notre Dame. These experiences led Porterie to pursue being an artist-scholar.
Post-graduation in 2020, Porterie began acting professionally in commercials, theatre and films. He recently completed filming on his first feature, Party O’Clock, directed by Joey LePage. New York: Jubilee 11213: The Keeping by Ebony Noelle Golden at Weeksville Heritage Center. Regional: Kinky Boots (Angel) at Uptown Players, Fire in Dreamland (Lance) at The Filigree Theatre, Bright Mother: An Invitation to Being and Public Property with Salvage Vanguard Theatre. Porterie can be seen in national commercial campaigns and has been featured on The Late Late Show with James Corden. As an artist-scholar, Porterie is invested in cultivating safe spaces of vulnerability for Black men. Porterie is represented by Collier Talent.
Deen Rawlins-Harris is an educator, community organizer and theatre-maker who believes that theatre can be used to imagine radically liberated worlds. Their approach to creating theatre is multidisciplinary and pulls from their experience as a special education teacher and LGBTQIA+ facilitator for youth. Whether organizing queer affirming city-wide youth art events or teaching theatre in public schools, Rawlins-Harris partners with young people to empower them as change-makers.
Rawlins-Harris co-instructs the Collective Liberation and Performance for Students of Color Workshop and Applying Collective Liberation for BIPOC Artist Workshop to help artists identify liberating practices for creating art. Currently, Rawlins-Harris is developing Traces/Remain: Contagious Healing, a public intervention that explores the importance of joyful intergenerational connections and building deep celebratory relationships in public spaces to encourage communal healing. Rawlins-Harris is a M.F.A. in Theatre candidate in the Department of Theatre and Dance at The University of Texas at Austin with a focus in drama and theatre for youth and communities. At UT Austin, Rawlins-Harris will work with youth artists to create youth-led theatre festivals and examine how art programs prepare youth to be community leaders.