Everyday Afroplay
By Daaimah Mubashshir
April 27 - 30, 2017
Inspired by Chris Ofili’s series of 181 watercolors, “Afromuses,” playwright Daaimah Mubashshir has fashioned Everyday Afroplay, a collection of tiny plays that stretches the concept of blackness from the political to sublime. Multiple directors, and a cast of 15 taking on several different characters, will collectively shape these tiny plays into an evening of “blackness.”
DATES/TIMES:
Thursday, April 27 at 8 pm
Friday, April 28 at 8 pm
Saturday, April 29 at 8 pm
Sunday, April 30 at 3 pm
DIRECTORS: Anne Cecelia Haney, Raja Feather Kelly, Emilyn Kowaleski, Daaimah Mubashshir, Charles Quittner, Alex Tobey and Kat Yen
CHOREOGRAPHY: Raja Feather Kelly
FEATURING: Gabrielle Beans, Timothy Edward Craig, Waliek Crandall*, Cornelius Davidson*, Tyrone Davis Jr.*, Anton Floyd*, Angelica Gregory*, Acée Francis Laird, Melissa Mickens*, Iliana Paris, J Moliere, Alex Phipps, Kyra Riley, Nicolette Templier and Victoria Wallace
*appears courtesy of Actors' Equity Association, Equity-approved showcase
CREATIVE TEAM: Stephen Christensen, John Del Gaudio, Ann Marie Dorr, Daniela Hart and Megan Lang
Everyday Afroplay has been made possible in part by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
BIOS
Daaimah Mubashshir (Playwright/Director) is a NYC playwright and excited to return to JACK this year. Everyday Afroplay was developed at The Bushwick Starr and The MacDowell Colony. Other plays have been presented by Little Theatre, NY Madness, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Sanctuary at HERE Arts, Going to The River Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Fire This Time Festival, and Rising Circle Theatre Collective. Daaimah is currently a member of the Project Y Playwrights Group and New Georges.
Stephen Christensen. Recent dramaturgy credits: Everyday Afroplay (The Bushwick Starr, July 2016: The Starr Reading Series); Scrapland (Wintercheck Factory, May 2016; Columbia Stages 2015: New Plays Now Festival presented at the Signature Theatre); Happily After Ever (59E59 Theater C, March 2016; Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2015; Columbia Stages 2015: NPN); Rum for Sale (Columbia Stages 2015: NPN). MFA Dramaturgy Columbia University. 2014 Eugene O'Neill National Critics Institute Criticism Fellow.
Anne Cecelia Haney (Director) is a Brooklyn-based director, translator, musician, and aspiring filmmaker. She has made performances for The Bushwick Starr, Dixon Place, JACK, Rising Circle, The Flea, Cloud City/The Freight Project, The Brick, The Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, and Columbia University, among others, and has assistant directed productions for BAM’s Next Wave Festival, St. Ann's Warehouse, the Prototype Festival, and Atlantic Theater Company. BA, Comparative Literature, University of Virginia.
Raja Feather Kelly (Director/Choreography) is a Choreographer, Director, and performer based out of Brooklyn, NY. Kelly currently choreographs, writes, and directs his own work as Artistic Director of the feath3r theory. Recipient of the 2016 Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography, his most recent work includes choreography for Brenden Jacobs Jenkins’ EVERYBODY directed by Lila Neugebauer and Susan-Lori Parks’ The Death of The Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World directed by Lilieana Blain-Cruz. The next installment of Kelly’s ongoing Warhol Series, Another Fucking Warhol Production, will premiere in June 2017 at The Kitchen NYC.
Emilyn Kowaleski (Director) is a Brooklyn-based writer and director of new plays. Her favorite credits include: Director - The Witch of St. Elmora Street (Access Theater), Associate Director - STRAIGHT WHITE MEN (The Public Theater), Writer/Director - WEATHER (University Settlement), Creator - Eversion (or that time my heart flew out of my mouth) (Ars Nova’s ANT Fest, The Bowery Poetry Club). She is a current member of The Habitat Director’s Playground. BFA in Drama from NYU.
Charles Quittner (Director) is a theatre facilitator by way of South Florida. Directing- Corporate Doubleteam (Irondale, Ars Nova), Take Your Fucking Goldendoodle and Go Home (Theatrelab), Bottom of the Scrum (Dixon Place, his backyard), Commercially Unviable Queer Trash Theatre Cycle (Dixon Place), The Heat of the Moment (TinyRhino), Medea (Envelope Ensemble), Charmander the Stray (Jack), and Billy Lloyd at Joes Pub. Charles is on the artistic team of The Loading Dock, the Artistic Director of Envelope Ensemble, an associated artist for ThirdSpace. BA Theatre Studies from Marymount Manhattan College.
Alex Tobey (Director): Past directing credits include Good Girl Gone Bad (HERE Arts Center), Watch Me Burn (Fresh Fruit Festival), Expedition (Fourth Street Theatre), MilkMilkLemonade (Carnegie Mellon), CO-OPERA (Pittsburgh Opera), It’s a Wonderful Life (Bricolage Production Company), and No Exit (bubble:PGH). He served as assistant director on Frontieres sans Frontieres (Bushwick Starr), Tick, Tick…Boom! (Keen Company) and Houseworld (site specific in Greenpoint, Ars Nova ANT Fest, Elements Music Festival). Upcoming: The Oedipus Trilogy (Burning Coal). BFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University.
Kat Yen (Director) is the 2016-2017 Van Lier Directing Fellow at Second Stage, a member of New Georges Jam, and a M.F.A. Directing candidate at Yale School of Drama. She has directed and set-designed at NYTW, New Group, EST, Signature Theatre, Bushwick Starr, New Ohio, INTAR, Harvard/A.R.T., The Flea, Wild Project, HERE Arts, Atlantic Stage 2, Primary Stages, Poetic Theater Productions, Rising Circle, Yangtze Repertory, LAByrinth Theater, Horse Trade, TFNC, Theaterlab, C.O.W., Gene Frankel, and June Havoc. She is an alumnus of Lincoln Center Directors Lab, a former Resident Director at The Flea Theater, and the former Co-Artistic Director of Spookfish Theatre Company.
Photography by Kelly Stuart