These Are the Voyages of Artists, Around the Globe, Celebrating the Women of “Star Trek” Who Inspire Them.
Where No Artwork Has Gone Before…
Discover Amazing Artwork & How These Artists Have Been Inspired by the Strong Women Characters of the “Star Trek” Franchise. Please support these Artists on their channels & keep the journey going.
Actress Spotlight:
Mary Chieffo
Mary Chieffo is known internationally as the Klingon Commander turned Chancellor L’Rell on the award-winning CBS: All Access series Star Trek: Discovery, most recently returning as her iconic character for the highly popular Star Trek Online.
When she wasn’t covered in prosthetics and speaking Klingon, Mary produced, wrote, and starred as Iago in Operation Othello — a feminist, gender, and color conscious Virtual Reality adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello alongside Viola Davis and Julius Tennon’s JuVee Productions in the spring of 2018 (Official Cannes XR and Raindance XR Selection).
Chieffo received her BFA from Juilliard in 2015, flourishing in her passion for classic text and reveling in the opportunity to take on strong female and male roles in Shakespeare canon, including King Lear, Queen Elizabeth, and the title role in Erica Schmidt's all-female Macbeth. For her exceptional work in the four year program, Juilliard presented Mary with the prestigious Elizabeth Smith Voice and Speech Prize and the Saint-Denis Prize for "Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Drama."
After graduation, she reprised her role in Schmidt's Macbeth for Seattle Repertory Theatre's The Other Season and explored the role of Iago for the first time in Harlem Shakespeare Festival's all-female Othello. She also participated in workshops of Lover, Beloved: An Evening With Carson McCullers — a one-woman show written by Grammy Award-winning Suzanne Vega and Tony- and Grammy Award-winning Duncan Sheik. She performed the piece at The Sherry Theatre in Los Angeles and The Alley Theatre in Houston, TX.
In 2019, Chieffo returned to the LA stage starring in a workshopped reading of Analogue by esteemed writer Christine Boylan (The Punisher, Cloak & Dagger) as well as the XR stage for Peter Flaherty’s Empire at Sea, an Augmented Reality project produced by Intel (Tribeca Film Festival Official Selection). She was also featured as a special guest star in Ripley Improv’s GLAM and the most recent season of The Improvised Generation at Impro Studio in Los Feliz, where she is now an active member of their Conservatory program.
In the spring of 2020, Mary developed and directed Closed Circuit, a new play premiering at the NYC Frigid Festival (WINNER Best Original Script). In the fall, Chieffo produced, hosted and guest starred on Ripley Improv’s Heartbeats “a fully improvised medical dramedy” streaming live on Twitch for eight weeks in a row. Chieffo continues to produce the show in 2021 with new episodes premiering every Friday during the months of February and March.
She lives in Los Angeles.
Our Mission:
Created by Laz Marquez & Heather Rae, “Women Make Trek” was born from a mutual love of the “Star Trek” Universe, art & design and the incredible wealth of artistic talent working today who you may or may not be aware of. We are explorers & curators of a legacy that has been beaming for 55 Years and counting.
Our main goal is to highlight the strength and contributions of the Women who have made “Star Trek”, in all of it’s iterations, what it is. This isn’t just a post of artwork on social media, these pieces of art are accompanied with honest and emotional stories on how these Women/Actresses have impacted the artists’ lives. Behind every piece of artwork is a spark that leads to wonder, and we look to share that in a deeper way. Be gone character counts, you don’t belong here.
As we hit warp-speed on this initiative, we will also expand and build new ideas that will bring fans & talent together in new & exciting ways. In the meantime, explore the amazing talent and their artwork and hopefully get inspired by their work!
“When I was nine years old, Star Trek came on, I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, ‘Come here, mum, everbody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she aint’ no maid!’. I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.”