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our mission
Beating of Wings is committed to building a community which supports women and other underrepresented artists in their journeys to create, develop, and produce vital, socially conscious work.
a 501(c)(3) organization
our values
Beating of Wings celebrates art that brings forth those voices that have been forgotten, forbidden, and suppressed, and which presents unique interpretations of the world that are fresh, new, and necessary. Beating of Wings prizes innovative storytelling and approaches its work with a true collaborative spirit. While our mission and much of our language emphasizes women as our primary focus, our collective is for every person, female-identifying or otherwise, who has ever felt silenced, in the arts or in life.
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Beating of Wings is dedicated to experimentation and innovation and to exploring not only the production of traditional performance, but also the intersections between different art forms. The collective strives to maintain a diverse roster of ensemble members and programming options, both in terms of artistic fields and the expansive representation of different life experiences.
our history
Beating of Wings flapped itself into existence when founder Anna Miles joined a small artist’s group led by local LA theater artist and singer/songwriter Valerie Larsen. The group became a valuable source of creative inspiration, business advice, accountability, and both professional and personal support- reinforcing the belief Anna already held that a strong artistic community is the most vital ingredient in creating successful artists and meaningful art. Anna combined this belief, her passion for feminist and inclusive theater, and her extensive experience as a producer and director to create the groundwork for Beating of Wings.
Since then, the collective has upheld its community-centered roots by hosting several music and storytelling gathering events such as Phoenix Songs and Divine: Songs for a New Moon, and partnering with other local theater companies such as Noise Now at A Noise Within Theater to workshop A Sad Tale's Best for Winter in Fall 2019, The Wit Theater to create the photo project She Wears Her Rage Gently and Debatable Productions to produce and devise the upcoming site-specific dance show, Our Feet Off the Ground. The collective participated in 12,000 Voices, a nation-wide voting initiative, and during the pandemic Beating of Wings further expanded its accessibility efforts by branching out into film and digital theater, producing the acclaimed short film Zenith and its predecessor, the Instagram experience #NeverAlone.
our name
Our name is inspired by a line from Anne Carson's The Glass Essay:
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"She wanted liberty. Well didn’t she have it? A reasonably satisfactory homelife, A most satisfactory dreamlife- why all this beating of wings?”
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In finding our name, we were attracted to the imagery of birds and flight. Every person is born with wings, which can carry them up into the sky and beyond the limitations of the world. Every person is born with a unique and powerful voice, which they can wield from their place in the sky to affect change both within and without themselves. But as some of these persons grow up in our world - a world which has been defined for eons by the white, cis, heterosexual male majority - their wings shrink and their voices grow high-pitched and quiet, and they believe the majority, that they cannot and should not fly, that they cannot and should not sing. At Beating of Wings, we view art as a powerful tool through which women and other marginalized people, and all of the persons whose voices have been muffled, can once more begin to grow their wings and strengthen their voices, so that they may soar freely through the clouds, shouting their truth from above until the world finally hears it.
