Brent Thomas Whiteside (they/he) is a Chicago-born poet, playwright, and performing artist based in New York City. Raised in the Midwest and born queer into three generations of pastors, their work is deeply shaped by inherited faith, fractured morality, and the lingering architectures of the supernatural. Across poetry, theatre, performance, and visual media, Brent Thomas builds dark, surreal worlds where the sacred and the profane blur—where what has been cast out is often reimagined as divine. Brent Thomas’ poetry has received support from institutions including Brooklyn Poets, Cave Canem, The Poetry Project, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts.

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As a performing artist, their practice is rooted in excavation: of memory, of space, and of the body as archive. Through site-responsive and found-space performance, Brent Thomas investigates how poetry and memoir can become embodied experiences, activating environments not designed for performance and transforming them into living, unstable stages. This approach is central to works like Tempest & The Black Madonna, a performance piece described as a “myth masquerading as a band,” which transforms the stage into a temporary archive of Black queer memory.

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Their work in playwriting and dramaturgy spans both independent writing and collaborative theatrical processes. They served as a 2025–26 Theatre Ambassador for Playwrights Horizons, and have worked in dramaturgical capacities alongside playwrights including a.k. payne and within productions under the direction of Irvin Mason Jr. (Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet). In Spring 2026, they had the first public reading of their play Quadria: South of What We Mean When We Say Rush Gardens, a work recognized with the Louis Goodman Creative Writing Award.

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Brent Thomas’s work as a photographer and documentarian is grounded in a commitment to reclaiming untold histories and amplifying the voices and lived experiences of marginalized communities, particularly Black, Brown, Queer, and TGNC people. Through an approach rooted in social practice, observational storytelling, and portraiture, their work moves between intimate image-making and long-form documentary, treating the camera as both witness and archive. Their professional practice spans documentary and media production across major film and cultural platforms including HBO, VICE, Freeform, BuzzFeed, and theGRIO, where they have worked in a wide range of roles. Notably, they field-produced the eight-episode docuseries 'The Come Up' for Disney, Freeform, and Hulu, as well as 'My House' for VICE, further expanding their engagement with youth culture, identity, and contemporary Black and queer experience on screen. In addition to editorial and broadcast work, Brent Thomas has collaborated on branded and commercial projects with clients including Pinterest, General Motors, Hugo Boss, and Unilever.

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Most recently, Brent Thomas was named a 2026 Rosen Fellow, supporting the development of their first feature documentary. The project is an excavation of personal and ancestral geography, tracing a journey from New York City through Memphis, Jackson, Mississippi, and Arkansas, engaging memory, place, and lineage as living cinematic material.

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Brent Thomas Whiteside is the embodiment of a multidisciplinary artist. When they are not creating, they are laying low in Bed-Stuy, NYC, with their puppy, Birkin.

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