We are so excited to announce our 2023 Companies-in-Residence and the free public programming within our 2023 Winter Season, which will support overlapping processes for artists developing new stories for the stage and screen.
Join this creative conversation with working directors at multiples points in their career, exploring what it means to be a director in process in today's theater industry.
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Margaret Sanger and Katharine McCormick schemed for decades about a pill that women could swallow like aspirin that would grant total autonomy over their fertility. To achieve this feat, they need to team up with maverick scientist Gregory Pincus and charismatic gynecologist John Rock - and find willing human test subjects from New Hampshire to Puerto Rico. Based on the book by Jonathan Eig, THE BIRTH OF THE PILL depicts the transformation in science, society and possibilities for women that came alongside the invention of the birth control pill, made ever more complex by the link between the pill and the Eugenics movement.
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Join us for drinks and light bites to celebrate the return of our in-person Winter Season. This casual gathering will bring together multiple facets of the NYSAF community, including our Filmmakers' Workshop cohort, 2023 Companies-in-Residence, teammates at Marist, friends and supporters! Pop by at any time.
Dominique Rider is a Brooklyn-based director whose work seeks to answer the question: “What is a world unmade by slavery?” while attempting to analyze the layers of anti-blackness that maintain the world we live in. Deploying theatre and performance as tools of Afropessimism, Dominique has developed and staged work with The Park Avenue Armory, Audible, The New Group, NYTW, Roundabout, The Atlantic, Princeton, Rattlestick, BRIC Arts, Two River, Portland Center Stage, and more. Past fellowships/residencies include Hi-Arts, The National Black Theatre, TheaterWorks Hartford, NYSAF, BRIC Arts, Roundabout, and NAMT. Dominique is a producer with CLASSIX.
Raja Feather Kelly is a choreographer and director, and the Artistic Director of the dance-theatre-media company the feath3r theory–for which Kelly has created 16 premieres, most recently UGLY Part 3: at the Chelsea Factory. Raja Feather Kelly choreographed the Tony-Award winning Broadway musical A Strange Loop. He is a frequent Off-Broadway choreographer whose collaborators include Lileana Blain-Cruz, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Sarah Benson, Rachel Chavkin, and Michael R. Jackson. Recent works include Bunny, Bunny (Poticker Theatre), Lempicka (La Jolla PLayhouse), We're Gonna Die (2st), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning productions Fairview and A Strange Loop. Current projects include Lempicka, White Girl in Danger, and The Listeners. His accolades include three Princess Grace Awards, an Obie Award, an Outer Critics Circle honor, a Creative Capital award, and many others.
NICOLE A. WATSON is the HGB Bold Associate Artistic Director at the McCarter Theatre Center. Prior to this appointment, she served as the AAD at Round House Theatre. On behalf of both theaters, she produced the Adrienne Kennedy Festival, directing a digital version of Kennedy’s She Brought Her Heart Back in a Box. Select credits include: Blues for an Alabama Sky (Guthrie) Passing, (McCarter/Bard at the Gate) School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play (Helen Hayes winner Best Ensemble, and Best Supporting Artist). The world premieres of A Wind in the Door, (The Kennedy Center) The West End (Cincinnati Playhouse) it’s not a trip it’s a journey (Round House). In addition to her work as an arts leader and advocate, Nicole continues to work as a freelance director and educator. A former history teacher, Nicole started directing in 2008 and has worked at theaters and universities across the country, championing new plays and playwrights, especially female playwrights of color. She has worked with New Dramatists, the Lark Play Development Center, the Fire this Time Festival, the New Black Fest, the Women's Project Theater, The 52nd Street Project, Cincinnati, Playhouse in the Park, The Guthrie, Portland Center Stage, Baltimore Center Stage, Signature Theater, Playmakers Repertory Theatre, Center, A.C.T., Asolo Rep, Washington National Opera, Theater Latte Da, The Playwrights Center, The Kennedy Center, The Contemporary American Theater Festival, Working Theater, Smith College, UNCSA, NYU, and LIU. She is a New Georges Affiliated Artist and an alum of the Drama League, the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and the Women’s Project Directors Lab and a member of the SDC. BA: History, Yale. MA: NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. http://www.nicoleawatson.com/
Jessica Huang is a playwright and librettist based in New York, from Minnesota. Her plays include: The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin (History Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, New York Stage and Film Powerhouse Season, Barry and Bernice Stavis Award, Kilroy's List), Mother of Exiles (NNPN Annual Showcase, Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award, Kendeda Prize Finalist) and Transmissions in Advance of the Second Great Dying (2022 EMOS Ecodrama prize). Her audioplay Song of the Northwoods is now available on Audible. She is developing an original television show with WBTV. She has commissions with Manhattan Theatre Club, Timeline Theater, Theater Masters, History Theatre and Theater Mu. Jessica was the inaugural 4 Seasons Resident Playwright, and has received awards from the National Theatre Conference, the Jerome Foundation, The Dramatists Guild, and The Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation. She has developed work at the Hermitage, Hedgebrook, New York Stage and Film, The MacDowell Colony, Space on Ryder Farm, Atlantic Theater Company, Mixed Blood Theatre, The New Group, and The Old Globe, among many others. She is a three-time Playwrights' Center fellow, and has been a member of Ars Nova Play Group, Civilians R&D Group, Two River Theatre's Emerging Writers Group and Page 73's Interstate 73. She is a graduate of the Playwrights Program at Juilliard.
JAKI BRADLEY is a director for theater, TV and film. Recent theater projects include The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin (IRT), How to Load a Musket (LTR) White Noise (Berkeley Rep); Radio Island and Good Men Wanted (NYSAF); House Plant and 1969: The Second Man (NYTW: Next Door); Mama Metallica (Denver Center); and Playing Hot (Ars Nova). She has developed and presented work with The Public, Williamstown, Soho Rep, Clubbed Thumb, the O’Neill, and Arena Stage, among others. She has been a member of the Civilians R&D Group, an artist-in-residence at Ars Nova, a Drama League artist-in-residence and TV/Film Fellow, the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Williamstown Directing Corps, Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, and a U.S. Fulbright Scholar. In TV and film, she has written for Netflix, FX, Chernin, Paramount and is in development with her feature directorial debut.