Faces to Watch in ’92 : These are the people Calendar’s critics and writers think you’ll be hearing about in 1992. In some cases, they’re familiar people who will experience a transitional year. Some are newcomers who could have a breakthrough year. : JOYCE GUY

With performance art’s higher profile these days and the ongoing imperatives of multiculturalism, it will take a staunch--and committed--artist to take this medium to its next level. Funny and incisive, shrewd and intuitive, Joyce Guy can capture a whole world of female and African-American experience in a single gesture. Whether as co-curator of last month’s Black December festival at Highways or in her numerous outings as a writer/performer, she brings a rare combination of passion, intelligence and good old-fashioned performing skills to her work--while calling forcefully into question cultural assumptions about race, gender and inequality. Besides film, TV and stage credits (including the DC Black Repertory Company), Guy has been seen locally in such disparate roles as the lone woman of The Hittite Empire’s “HOWL” and in the seven crystalline portraits of her own solo, “Game I: The Arrival.” A trained dancer and a subtle actress--whether she’s portraying Sojourner Truth, Eartha Kitt or a contemporary Everywoman--Guy mixes message pleasantly with entertainment. The result is a woman’s eye-view of what W.E.B. DuBois called “the souls of Black folk.” Urgent but not didactic, her perfect-pitch tone clears a channel for African-American and other previously marginalized voices to be heard in the ‘90s.