Place Lab

Quenna Lené Barrett serves as Education Programs Manager at UChicago’s Arts + Public Life, where she founded the Community Actors Program. Quenna received her BFA from NYU Tisch Drama, and her MA in Applied Theatre from the University of Southern California. She’s a working actress, teaching artist, cultural fieldworker, organizer, and Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) practitioner, blending TO techniques with acting skills to amplify teens’ voices; and hold space to rehearse, tell, and change the stories of their lives.

She recently participated in education and social justice programs at Jane Addams Hull House, and Chicago Freedom School, and organizes with Black Youth Project 100, and the #LetUsBreathe Collective. Quenna is now in the process of developing a practice of poetic performance that merges monologue, and the aesthetics of spoken word.

If music is a universal language, then Madrid Perry is its global linguist. With one of the first mixes he recorded, Perry captured the coveted position of Resident DJ for Virgin Megastore Chicago, a position he occupied for 6 years.  While there, he endlessly explored the vast and eclectic Virgin Music library, pulling in music from around the world.  His wide ranging tastes flourished and matured exponentially, as he crisscrossed the spectrums of music by decades, genres, and rhythms.

Other brands approached him and engaged his help in expanding, enhancing, and diversifying the marketability of their own brand identities. Perry’s own trademark is his talent. He plays music that makes people feel cool; it embraces, excites, and unites people of every age, interest, and background all around the world.

Whether he is playing at a private palace in Istanbul, an exclusive event in Buenos Aires, The World DJ Conference in Korea, or an intimate lounge in Paris, Madrid’s exceptional talents, sophisticated style, and contagious excitement are exactly what has attracted his many clients.

A few of these are Louis Vuitton, Ferrari, Bentley, Vogue Magazine, GQ Magazine, Virgin, YSL, DVF, The Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Menil Collection Houston, Michelle Obama, and Oprah Winfrey.

Perry welcomes the worldwide travels he has shared with his clients as opportunities to discover and study the music and history of the places he visits.  What he finds on these important journeys is fascinating and unforgettable sound, and the rich mixes he creates as a result, are distinctly and unmistakably DJ Madrid.