OSWALD, SYLVAN, New York, will travel to Birmingham, Alabama, and Chicago, Illinois, to do experiential and archival research for a play on SUN RA in preparation for a fall 2014 production in New York City. As a white trans playwright living in New York, Oswald has had to make enormous imaginative leaps to write about an African-American male who grew up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama and came of age in 1940s and 50s Chicago. He was drawn to write about SUN RA because of his story of personal transformation – of self-production both literally and spiritually, the story of aradical, black, and probably queer and autistic artist in the twentieth century. Oswald will trace Sun Ra’s migratory path, beginning with the site of his childhood home near the Birmingham Amtrak station and traveling to Chicago’s South Side where he first made his name as a bandleader. Oswald will research SUN RA’s life-long collaborator and business partner, Alton Abraham, whose papers are archived at the University of Chicago and at the Experimental Sound Studio in Ravenswood.