Solos
My Allowance
A Midwestern teenager's queer fantasia of the 1990s. Embodying the spaces where these intimate events occurred and how objects collected during this time impact my adult life.
A User's Manual
The body and movement's relationship to architecture. Premiered February 2017.
The improvisational movement score. Performance Video.
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Hopelessness
Electronic theater performance as visceral protest song. Inspired by the album by musical genius Anohni, "Hopelessness" comments on numerous worldly issues: drone warfare, climate change, racism, surveillance.
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Turnstile
First installed through the Center for Architecture's Philly Parking Day 2015. Experimentation in my movement practice in relation to a single object.
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Magnitude
A nine-hour long performance that was only viewable through a peephole in downtown Greensboro.
View the video time-lapse.
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Thomas is Titanic
An autobiographical coming of age story about my childhood obsession with the disaster ship and Kate Winslet.
View a clip.
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Album
Created while an artist-in-residence in Tallinn, Estonia, this conceptual piece used a record album as a soundtrack.
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Substance
An immersive work throughout a South Philadelphia apartment.
Asher Gray is recently famous installation artist. Welcome to his small South Philadelphia apartment. As journalists to his celebrity Asher guides you through his day, as you learn about his roller coaster rise to fame and the relationships that shaped the artist he became. Partake in the substances he abuses in this intimate performance for 5 audience members at a time.
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Dance:31
31 days of dancing in a different public location.
What began as a create project, launched into a month of public performances. Thomas selected 31 dance tracks, each on their own CD. Each song was randomly selected and armed with his boombox he spent each day of May 2009 dancing to the surprise song in public. Each day was videotaped and archived on YouTube. Over the course of the month Thomas performed in or on the subway, a fountain, Reading Terminal Market, a baseball field, the Lincoln Memorial, among others.
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The Hour
Conceptual and audience participatory piece in which everyone is invited to create art within a while canvased room.
This avant-garde performance occurred only once for sixty minutes. With this exploration the audience was invited within the every changing environment of performance by being able to manipulate and transform the space itself. Full of a variety of art supplies, every action and step traced a unique experiential theatre happening.
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Collaborative
Off the Chain
Merging theatre and movement Off the Chain transforms Thomas’ true story of a life changing bicycle accident. The night the Phillies won the World Series leads to painful and messy memories. Physically and emotionally broken into many pieces or selves the audience’s perspective is morphed along with the storyline.
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F & Z
"He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again."
Welcome to the living room of Bessie Glass. See how she with her two youngest children are haunted by the ghosts of their family. Inspired by JD Salinger's writing.
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Beaut
Staged as two simultaneous one-man shows the true stories overlap, interweave, and compete to allow the audience to experience the individuality and intersections of the two performers Thomas Choinacky and John Jarboe. Both gay men were raised in Catholic, Midwestern households. Each tell a subtle dance of their upbringing, which battle with relationships of father and son. The piece found inspiration in B.H. Fairchild’s poem “Beauty.”
Visual
Equilibria
The first collaboration with visual artist and his sister Lisa Choinacky. Together in EQUILIBRIA at Terminal 136 they are creating a reflective environment that provides space for self-reflection,solace, and connection. Each piece represents a pathway or map—literal and metaphorical— and how the lines we draw connect us together.
Applied Mechanics
More info on the Applied Mechanics website.
Feed
Three different time periods in the same geographical location play out simultaneously. Exploring the fields where we grow crops and the tables where we break bread, FEED serves up a meal’s worth of food to its audience while inviting them to question the various intersecting systems around the food they eat and the way these systems hold stories that affect our shared future and our view of the past. Seeds are time capsules, recipes are histories, and food unlocks rituals for communing with the dead.
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We are Bandits
“How is it possible to affect change in our contemporary American present?” We Are Bandits is a raucous call to arms, a celebratory punk prayer, a wild adventure fueled by the radical spirit. Thomas wrote and performed the character Lucas Ulrichs, a gay urban planner stuck in the repetition of big business and capitalist structures. Ulrichs' battles numerous radical decisions within his life, work, and city. With cameo appearances by famous dead feminists, original music by the ensemble, a real live punk concert, and a cityscape that literally shape-shifts around the audience as the story unfolds.
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Vainglorious
In 1795 Beethoven completes his first major public performance. Propelling him to the forefront of the Vienna community he seeks patronage and fame that will stretch across the continent. This 26 performer cast envelopes 20 years of epic European history and featured the parallel rises to stardom of both Napoleon Bonaparte and Ludwig van Beethoven as he looses his hearing, which he can only dream of truly experiencing.
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Overseers
Within the post apocalyptic land of Sector K Tristan Schwa is struggling to develop a new artistic work that will impact the community on a major scale. He will not fit in the norm and breaks the strict rules of the sector. In the moment Tristan plans a celebratory dance party and becomes a radical figure to numerous townspeople. Who can he trust as he battles for power and control in this dangerous society?
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Some Other Mettle
Tesam is in training. He is the only beast of his kind, has been given all the supplies, that is preparing for a dangerous journey to the Barrens. But only when the dirt tastes different. In an unusual world, when Tesam treks to the unknown, his future will be forever changed by four other creatures’ decisions. As each character faces their fears, their bravery is measures as their fates are decided.
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Portmanteau
This play was built to unpack out of suitcases, and play in any room it entered; it has invaded over a dozen rooms/spaces from Maine to Texas, each time molding its story into new architecture.