Board

JACK BOard of Directors

Lance Fensterman serves as the chair of the board of JACK and has been a long time participant and supporter of the arts. Fensterman is the President of ReedPOP, the largest producer of pop culture events in the world, a company he also founded. ReedPOP is responsible for events such as New York Comic Con, Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), ComplexCon and in total 44 events in 12 countries. ReedPOP has long supported free speech, education and literacy causes. Lance has known JACK founder Alec Duffy for nearly 20 years since they met in high school. When not up in the air, Lance splits his time between Westchester County NY and West Palm Beach FL with his very tolerant wife, two young daughters, 3 dogs, a cat, a horse, a goldfish and 1800 pounds of LEGO’s.

DeeArah Wright is a Brooklyn-based mama, artist, mover, and collaborative leader. DeeArah is a former Co-Director of JACK, and her approach to activism, facilitation, leadership, and partnerships are informed by over 20 years of experiences and experiments in diverse fields, such as: education, dance and performance, social entrepreneurship, and community engagement. She is currently Director of Education at Brooklyn Children’s Museum and guides the strategy for innovative programming, collaborating with the BCM team and community to power a vision for inclusive and interactive learning experiences rooted in exploration, inquiry, and play. DeeArah's current adventures also include writing, cooperative initiatives, and development of revolutionary educational framework and philosophy.

Dave Malloy is a composer/writer/performer. His shows include Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 (12 Tony nominations, including Best Musical, Score, Book, and Orchestrations); Octet, a chamber choir musical about internet addiction; Ghost Quartet; Preludes; Black Wizard/Blue Wizard; Three Pianos; All Hands; Beardo; Beowulf - A Thousand Years of Baggage; The Sewers; Sandwich; Clown Bible; and (The 99-cent) Miss Saigon. He is the winner of two Obie Awards, a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, a Theater World Award, the Richard Rodgers Award, an ASCAP New Horizons Award, and a Jonathan Larson Grant, and is a playwright-in-residence at the Signature Theater. Future projects include an adaptation of Moby-Dick. He lives in Brooklyn. davemalloy.com

Thomas F. DeFrantz directs SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology, a group explores emerging technology in live performance. DeFrantz received a 2017 Outstanding Research in Dance award from the Dance Studies Association. DeFrantz believes in our shared capacity to do better, and engage our creative spirit for a collective good that is anti-racist, anti-homophobic, proto-feminist, and queer affirming. For the Smithsonian Museum of African American Life, DeFrantz contributed concept and voice-over for permanent installation on Black Social Dance. Recent teaching: University of the Arts Mobile MFA in Dance; Lion’s Jaw Festival; Movement Research MELT; ImPulsTanz; New Waves Institute; faculty at Hampshire College, Stanford, Yale, MIT, NYU, Duke, University of Nice. Founding member, Collegium for African Diaspora Dance.

Mimi Lien is a designer of sets/environments for theater, dance, and opera. Arriving at set design from a background in architecture, her work often focuses on the interaction between audience/environment and object/performer. In 2017, Mimi won the Tony Award for her design of Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812. In 2015, she was named a MacArthur Fellow, and is the first stage designer ever to achieve this distinction. Mimi is a company member of Pig Iron Theatre Company, and co-founder of JACK, a performance/art space in Brooklyn. In addition to her work on the stage, she also creates large-scale public artworks, and sculptural/performance installations. She is a recipient of the Cullman Award for Extraordinary Creativity at Lincoln Center Theater, a Bessie Award, Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award, American Theatre Wing Hewes Design Award, LA Drama Critics Circle Award, and an OBIE Award for sustained excellence.

Gail Rivers is a long-time Brooklyn resident and came to know JACK through activities at the Grace Agard senior center. She writes plays and is a part of a few Senior Centers
and is on the AARP Chapter 180 Board. She is a part of JACK's Reparations365 People's Think Tank, a small working group focused on generating solid proposals for distributive justice efforts on the local level.

Steven Leffue is a sound designer and musician who probes the fringes of sonic expression. He currently teaches sound and music at Ohio University. Steven has worked with JACK Co-Director Alec Duffy on multiple Hoi Polloi productions and, with Duffy, Julian Rozzell Jr. and Jason Quarles, formed the band The Georges. He is a Co-Founder of JACK and curated music at JACK for two years before his move out of the city. Steven is a member of the International Computer Music Association and a little league baseball coach.

Brittany Williams is an international dancer, choreographer, and organizer originally from Homestead, Florida. Brittany is 2017 Dancing While Black Fellow and an Artist in Resident at the Restoration Plaza in Brooklyn New York. She is a 2016 Jacob’s Pillow Scholarship recipient for the Program, Dance & Improv Traditions; a principal dancer with Olujimi Dance; the founder of Dancing for Justice and Obika Dance Projects. Brittany has worked with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Yon Tande, Makeda Thomas, Chris Walker, Michelle Grant-Murray, Urban Bush Women, Forces of Nature and more.

Alec Duffy moved to New York in 2000 and, inspired by the work of performance artists Linda Montano and Tehching Shieh, began to create projects that blended art and life. He eventually formed a theater company, Hoi Polloi, and created work often involving large masses of performers singing together or some sort of melding of music and theater. These pieces were produced mostly at The Ontological-Hysteric Theater, including Three Pianos, a paean to Franz Schubert’s Winterreise song cycle that he created with Dave Malloy and Rick Burkhardt and which won an OBIE. In 2012, he started JACK (named after his grandfather) with his wife Mimi Lien and several co-founders, in an attempt to build a microcosm of an ideal city, with music, theater, dance and conversation serving a larger political project of putting art to work towards liberation.