Martine Gutierrez, an interdisciplinary performance artist, whose transformative work was recently recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, is a Warren native and Harwood graduate. She opens Phantom Theater’s 40th season July 11 and 12 with an original show.
Now a New Yorker, Gutierrez said she is excited to be invited back to Vermont. “It sounds like bugs and birds. And it looks like privacy. To make something, I have to lock myself away.”
The things that she’s done have gained her an international following. Her breakout role as Vanesja in HBO’s “Fantasmas” (2024) garnered industry buzz from New York to Los Angeles.
In 2018 she published “Indigenous Woman,” a magazine featuring herself in every image and word – as model, stylist, photographer, essayist, and editor. Hailed as a landmark for its sensational exploration of race, gender, sexuality, and shifting identity, it has been showcased in multiple venues.
“The success of it scared me,” Martine said. Not quite 30 when the tsunami of sudden fame hit, she “didn’t understand that it would be this moment. I don’t think most people do when something takes on a life of its own.”
After many turns on red carpets, Martine is returning to her roots for the Phantom show. “I want to play. I want to get back into imagination. I want to open up the journals and jewel boxes and play.” She won’t be alone. Her fellow creators hail from the New York arts scene and include filmmakers Jose Cavazos and Fern Cerezo, Dara Allen and Sonny Molina, musician Sam Wilkes, and visual artist Juan Antonio Diaz.
Gutierrez attended The Warren School and graduated from Harwood Union High School in 2008. It wasn’t always a comfortable fit. “I definitely felt out of place. I was always looking for my people. Where are my people?” Fortunately, she found allies. Arts teachers like Wendy Peterson Rand and Diane Phillips, and gay-rights activists like Jean Berthiaume, encouraged and supported her at Harwood.
Montpelier’s Contemporary Dance and Fitness Studio gave her an after-school tribe. Peter Boynton’s musical theater productions in Waitsfield, with its cast of New York professionals, buoyed her summers. And, of course, there was Phantom. “Tracy,” Gutierrez said referring to Tracy Martin, Phantom’s artistic director and longtime teacher at Contemporary Dance, “is my fairy godmother.”
Blending the two worlds of an artist’s present with their past isn’t always easy, but Gutierrez has a plan for integrating her new friends with her old home: “I will bring them to the Fourth of July Parade. It’s unmissable. It’s so wholesome. And I’ll get them into one of the rivers. Jump off a bridge.”
Phantom Theater presents Martine and The Innocents, Friday and Saturday, July 11 and 12, 8 p.m. For more information and advance tickets, visit phantomtheater.org.
