Mullet Deer is a collective of artists dedicated to reaching communities across New York through multimedia projects that provide new ways of seeing Queer, urban, and immigrant histories and experiences. Our theatrical productions playfully enliven historical narratives and family stories in a quest to find truth through fiction.
Sophia Rothman is a Bulgarian-American musician, writer, filmmaker and performing artist from Queens. In the theater, Sophia can be found acting, directing, sound designing, or puppeteering on her quest to breathe fresh life/bring a new perspective to the American play. Sophia’s work in film ranges from narrative to documentary film making, and in 2025 she travelled to Memphis to begin work on a documentary about the International Blues Challenge and women in blues. Sophia also directed the film Flightless Birds, which is a contender in the 2025 Queens World Film Festival. Sophia is the lead vocalist and rhythm guitar player for The Edukators, a Jackson-Heights based band. In 2022, The Edukators were featured on 90.7 WFUV’s NY Slice. With a particular interest in developing community-based art projects that span genres and generations, Sophia has worked or volunteered to support public programming at MASS MoCA, Culture Lab LIC, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and Images Cinema.
Jessica Jiang is a poet, novelist, and theatre-maker. Outside of Mullet Deer, she is currently editing her most recent work: a fantasy novel that attempts to allegorically grapple with fraught familial relationships in the context of Asian-American immigrant families, especially mother-daughter relationships. She is also interested in corporeal — what does the mortal body go through in time, in trauma, and in love? How does the body oscillate between joy and devastation? She wrote Everything Beautiful Here, a full-length play that explores domestic violence, queerness, and sisterhood. She co-directed Everything Beautiful Here with Sophia Rothman with Cap & Bells Productions. She won the 2022 Bullock Poetry Prize of the Academy for American Poets. Her poem, “March,” has been published in the Poetry Foundation. She is a native New Yorker.
Charlie Smith is an educator, writer, theatre maker and visual artist based in New York City. They graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in English, and as a creative writing thesis, they completed the novella Same Face Syndrome, which they are currently expanding into a novel. As a visual artist, their media include linocut, oil, gouache, and pastel. Their linocuts use the harmony and dissonance between colors as a symbolic language to explore trans bodies, queer possibilities, and Zen philosophy. They are a film and theatre actor who has starred in the Queens World Film Festival nominated short film Flightless Birds. Along with Sophia Rothman, they directed a form-breaking production of Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando that incorporated elements of vogue and ballroom culture. Before coming to Urban Dove, Charlie has worked in youth development through Matriculate and Horizons, and they are passionate about expanding young people’s access to art and using creative writing as a youth development tool.