Queen Drea Born on the Fourth of July: From Mississippi to Minnesota

Makers Series Artist Queen Drea

Born on the Fourth of July: From Mississippi to Minnesota

A new interdisciplinary sound performance and installation project

Presented as part of INSIDE OUT 5

Saturday, July 25, 2026

Live Performances: 2 PM, 3 PM, and 4 PM
Sound + Artifact Installation: Open throughout the day
Runtime: Approximately 30 minutes

Pillsbury Creative Commons & Parking Lots
3529 Chicago Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN

FREE EVENT
No reservations required. Seating is first come, first served.

For questions or accessibility accommodations, please contact info@pillsburyhousetheatre.org.

About the Work

Join Queen Drea for Born on the Fourth of July: From Mississippi to Minnesota, an immersive interdisciplinary sound performance and installation exploring family archive, oral history, and Black cultural memory.

Through original music, poetry, oral history recordings, improvisation, and layered sound design, the work traces the journey of Queen Drea’s mother from Mississippi to Chicago and Minnesota. Rooted in personal history, the project reflects on Black womanhood, migration, caregiving, memory, and family legacy across generations.

Blending experimental sound practice, archival storytelling, and live performance, Born on the Fourth of July: From Mississippi to Minnesota creates an intimate meditation on history, identity, and freedom.

Movement Artist: Ryan – Olivia Lundy

Vocalists/Loop Artists: Sarah Greer And Kashimana Ahua

Illustrations: Myc Dazzle

Commissioned through the American Composers Forum’s Recomposing America initiative.

About INSIDE OUT 5

INSIDE OUT 5 is a free community block party presented by Pillsbury House + Theatre, celebrating creativity, healing, wellness, and connection through performance, food, art, and community gathering.

Throughout the afternoon, audiences can enjoy:

Live music and DJs from KRSM
Community healing and wellness activities
An artist marketplace and community organizations
Nourishing food by Cooks of Hope
Games, family activities, and creative workshops
Peace lantern making and interactive community spaces
Block Party Bingo with a chance to win a bicycle from Full Cycle and other raffle prizes

Come spend the day with neighbors, artists, and community members as we celebrate creativity, culture, and collective joy.

Queen Drea

Queen Drea is a sound alchemist, mixing sonic potions laced with looped vocals, jagged rhythms, and found sounds. She has designed sonic worlds for PH+T’s productions of What to Send Up, When it Goes Down, The Great Divide 3&4, Penumbra Theater’s For Colored Girls…, Spittin Seeds, Minnesota Children’s Theater’s Locomotion, and dance companies, BrotherHood Dance, and Ananya Dance Theater. She has created work about depression in the Black community, African creator goddess Mawu, and an exploration of what life comes From Black Wombs. Queen is a 2022 McKnight Composer Fellow, 2019 PH+T Naked Stages Fellow, 2019 Jerome Finalist, and 2017 ACF Emerging Composer awardee.

ABOUT AMERICAN COMPOSERS FORUM

ACF’s mission is to support and advocate for individuals and groups creating music today by demonstrating the vitality and relevance of their art. We do this by empowering composers, modeling creative partnerships, and advocating for new music through storytelling and connections. Working with an ecosystem of artists, programmers, presenters, teachers, funders, and audiences, we frame all of our work with a commitment to anti-racism, believing that creating a fairer world for artists benefits all of us.

Founded in 1973 by composers Libby Larsen and Stephen Paulus as the Minnesota Composers Forum, the organization continues to invest in its Minnesota home while connecting artists and advocates across the United States, its territories, and beyond. ACF frames our work with a focus on anti-racism and includes within that scope (but does not limit it to) equitable engagement of diverse gender identities, musical approaches and perspectives, religions, ages, (dis)abilities, cultures, backgrounds, sexual orientations, and broad definitions of “American.” Visit www.composersforum.org for more information.

Part of the 2026 Makers Series

Queen Drea is part of Pillsbury House + Theatre’s 2026 Makers Series, a residency program supporting boundary-pushing performances at the intersection of arts and social justice.

PH+T’s Makers Series invites visionary activist-artists to create while in residence within our space and community, developing original work that opens pathways for stories that decolonize, democratize, and liberate.