The 2023 New Georges Jam

Raquel Almazan is an interdisciplinary artist, facilitator and activist whose eclectic career spans performance, playwriting, devising and dramaturgy.  Her work has been featured in New York City, including Off-Broadway, throughout the United States, and internationally in Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Colombia, Chile, Guatemala and Sweden; including several of her plays within the Latin is America (play cycle), writing bi-lingual plays in dedication to Latin American countries. Professional Development residencies with Eugene O’Neill Center Playwrights Conference and The Playwrights’ Center. Recipient of the Map Fund, NYC Women’s Fund, Doris Duke, NYSCA, National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Grant, Kennedy Center’s Latinidad Award, the Kate Neal Kinley Playwriting Fellowship and the LGBTQ Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Playwriting Prize. Almazan has taught playwriting at Augsburg University through The Playwrights Center and Marymount Manhattan College. She is Artistic Director of La Lucha Arts, dedicated to producing works in collaboration with social movements. Their play LA PALOMA PRISONER will have its world premiere Fall of 2023. M.F.A. Playwriting: Columbia University. she/they

Liz Appel’s play BELLS LIKE HOOVES was featured in the 2022 Roundabout Underground Reading Series. She’s a 2022 Ucross Fellow, 2022 Tofte Lake artist resident, and a 2021-2022 5th Floor Groundbreaker Grant recipient with Lia Romeo. She’s been a Finalist for the Princess Grace Award, Leah Ryan FEWW Prize, PlayPenn, BAPF, and the Ashland New Plays Festival. She was a winner of the Henley Rose Playwright Competition for Women, an Honorable Mention for the Annual Parity Commission (Parity Productions), and The Hearth Theater’s Virtual Retreat. Her short play SNOW was produced at the Old Red Lion Theatre in London, and her play MOONSHINE received a staged reading at the Cherry Lane. Her play REMEMBER is published in Blackbird. MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College where she was awarded a Roberts Foundation Fellowship (Dec ’21). Liz is a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and interviews playwrights and directors for Vogue.com. she/her

Lydia Blaisdell holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and is an alumnus of the OBIE-award winning playwright’s group Youngblood at EST. She collaborated with Ashley Olivea Teague on a New London workshop of gerstl took the easy way out in 2022. Her solo piece about her great-grandmother, SHE BURIED THE PISTOLE, was part of the WOW Festival at La Jolla Playhouse in October 2019 produced by The Hearth. Lydia received a Visionary Playwright Commission from Theater Masters in 2018. BEAR EATS BEAR, her immersive apocalyptic audio piece, has toured to Toronto, Brooklyn, Charlotte, Minneapolis, and Austin, TX. Lydia has been granted residencies at Yaddo, Marble House Project, and Ucross. When not gardening or dreaming up theatrical works, Lydia is the director of programming at Ball & Socket Arts and a commissioner for the New London Cultural District. she/her

Lyndsey Bourne is a queer Canadian writer, teacher and a birth/abortion doula. Her plays have been developed with The Tank, Dixon Place, La MaMa, Judson, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Brooklyn College, Williams College, The Hearth, Playwrights Horizons, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Ojai Playwrights Conference, New York Stage and Film and Ars Nova. They have been a resident artist at The Barn Arts Collective, Stillwright, Judson and SPACE on Ryder Farm. Lyndsey currently teaches at Playwrights Horizons Theater School (NYU) and practices beekeeping at her community garden in Flatbush, Brooklyn. They are a New Georges affiliated artist, a member of the New Georges Jam, a 2022 New Georges Audrey Resident, A 2022 Writer in Residence at The Ojai Playwrights Conference, a member of the Obie award winning writers group EST/Youngblood, a member of Ars Nova’s PlayGroup and the recipient of a 2020 NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theater Grant.  she/they

EllaRose Chary is a Richard Rodgers Award Winner, Drama League Award Nominee, Dramatists Guild Fellow, O’Neill NMTC, Kleban, NYFA and Kernodle Finalist, Doric Wilson Award Semi-Finalist and Relentless Award HM. Residencies: Rhinebeck Writers Retreat Triple R, Ars Nova, Roundabout Theatre / Bucks County Playhouse, Millikin University, Catwalk Institute and as a Harvard University Guest Lecturer. Her work has been featured at the NAMT Festival and by The Civilians (Joe’s Pub), Encores! Off-Center, Diversionary Theater, GPTC, The Rose Theater, Theater C & UArts Polyphone Festival. Her play THE SÉANCE MACHINE was part of the Tank’s 2019 Obie-Award winning season. As part of her advocacy, she has written for The Lilly Awards Blog, HowlRound, and Musical Theater Today (contributing editor) and been featured in American Theatre Magazine. Her Grammy-considered debut album Place & Time is available everywhere you get your music. She believes the future of the American theater is universal healthcare. Dramatists Guild, ASCAP, New Georges affiliated artist. MFA: NYU Tisch, BA: Brown University.  she/her

Adrian Einspanier’s recent plays include LUNCH BUNCH (upcoming in 2023 with The Play Company & Clubbed Thumb; last seen in Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks; New York Times & Time Out Critic’s Picks; in development for television with A24) and HOUSE PLANT (New York Theatre Workshop’s Next Door; “highbrow / brilliant” in New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix; Lambda Literary Award Finalist). You can read their short something, I Forgot to Tell You, in the Brooklyn Rail’s June 2021 Issue. They teach at NYU Tisch, HB Studios, and the National Theater Institute and are writing a novel. they/them

Deepali Gupta is a composer, performance artist, and theater practitioner. Her work circulates ideas around madness in relation to the colonized and feminized body. She works in (dis)order to upheave and unravel. Her practice has been supported by the Brooklyn Arts Council, NYSCA, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, and the NYC Women’s Fund. Past collaborations include MINOR CHARACTER, SKI END, and MADONNA COL BAMBINO.  Current projects include UNITED STATES v. GUPTA (upcoming at JACK) and I LOVE YOU STRANGER (in development with Ars Nova). New York Magazine called her “one part ASMR fantasy” and they’re not wrong. She is on the Board of Directors of The Poetry Project; and an Affiliated Artist with Target Margin Theater, La MaMa, and The Civilians. When she’s not up to something, she likes to cook, dance, and hang out with her dog. B.A. Brown University, M.F.A. New York University. she/they

Amina Henry’s productions include: THE ANIMALS, DUCKLINGS, HUNTER JOHN AND JANE and THE JOHNSONS, all at JACK, P.S.at Ars Nova, LITTLE RAPES at Long Island University, TROY at HERO Theatre, THE GREAT NOVEL at New Light Theater, HAPPILY EVER at Brooklyn College, BULLY at Interrobang Theater, Clubbed Thumb’s Winterworks, among others, AN AMERICAN FAMILY TAKES A LOVER, at The Cell: a 21st Century Salon and Theatre for the New City, WATER and RENT PARTY at Drama of Works, CINDY and SLEEPING BEAUTY at Project Y Theatre. Her work has also been developed by/presented at: The New Group, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, The Flea, Page 73, National Black Theater, Little Theater at Dixon Place, The Brooklyn Generator, The Brick, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Kitchen Dog Theater, HERE Arts Center. Her work has been featured on The Kilroys List. She has been a member of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers Group, Page73’s writers group, and the Ars Nova writers group and is an affiliated artist of New Georges.

Kimille Howard is a director, deviser, writer and filmmaker. She’s an Assistant Stage Director at the Metropolitan Opera, Artistic Director of the Lucille Lortel Theatre’s NYC Public High School Playwriting Fellowship and co-founder of the Black Classical Music Archive. Select directing credits: The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson (Glimmerglass/Washington National Opera), Songs in Flight (Sparks and Wiry Cries/Met Live) The Italian Girl (Tulsa Opera), American Apollo (Des Moines Metro Opera), B.R.O.K.E.N Code B.I.R.D Switching (Berkshire Theatre Group), and Quamino’s Map (Chicago Opera Theater). Her work has also been seen at Playwrights’ Horizons, 59E59, Wolf Trap Opera, Cherry Lane Theatre, Juilliard, among others. Broadway: AIN’T TOO PROUD (Assistant Director) Met Opera: Porgy And Bess and Tosca (Assistant Stage Director) Recent Fellowships: NYTW 2050 Fellowship, MTC Jonathan Alper Directing Fellowship, and a participant in New York Stage and Film’s inaugural NYSAF NEXUS project. She and her design team are 2023 recipients of OPERA America’s Robert L. B. Tobin Director-Designer Prize, generously funded by the Tobin Theatre Arts Fund.

Sauda Aziza Jackson, a writer/performer originally from Chicago, has been based in NYC since 1997 and has performed in many theater productions over the years: NOW IS THE TIME with Little Lord, IONA FLIES AWAY with Tanisha Christie, EXPENSE OF SPIRIT & LIMITLESS JOY with International Wow (Josh Fox), & Sponsored by Nobody’s THE ARTS & BEHIND THE BULLSEYE. Her project I DIGRESS: THE INTIMATE INSIGHTS OF A CHILDHOOD WEIRDO, a four-episode transmedia performance memoir, has been in development at various venues over the past five years and has been accepted to the New Ohio NYC Indie Theater Festival 2023. Sauda studied theater at Eastern Illinois University (Go Panthers!) and continued to the MFA program in acting at Brooklyn College.  she/her

Charlene Jean is a Haitian-American Queer playwright of BRICKS (A 20-YEAR MUSIC TOUR OF REPARATIONS), KING AFUA, SHIT IN THE BLOOD: A BIOMYTHOGRAPHY OF RECIPES (co-devised with Bryanna Bradley and Courtney Bryan Devon), and upcoming part-film, part-interactive installation featuring soundscapes by Myles E. Johnson, BLACK PLANET. As a playwright, performer, and producer of her works, Charlene is a 2022 MAP Grant Fund awardee, 2023/2024 Creative Capital WILD FUTURES finalist, Jonathan Larson Grant finalist and an O’Neill National Musical Theatre Conference finalist with multidisciplinary works presented at Weeksville Heritage Center, Harlem Film House, Mother New York, International Society of Curational Programming, and JACK Arts Radical Acts Festival. Next: Brick Theatre’s ?! New Works Festival, Manhattan School of Music Musical Theatre lab culminating in a BRICKS listening party. “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” @psalmsofchar/@bricksthemusical on IG. vimeo.com/psalmsofchar @psalmsofchar/@bricksthemusical on IG.    they/them

abigail jean-baptiste is a theater maker, director, and writer born & based in New York City with familial roots in Haiti and the American South. Her work intersects with critical race theory to reimagine understandings of the past. Guided by questions about blackness and femininity and kinship, her work uses images, fragmented language, repeatable gestures, and tangible objects in a search to build unconventional and nonsensical ways of being. Currently: I Am Soul Directing Residency at National Black Theater, Classic Stage Company Associate Board. Previously: Project Number One Artist at Soho Repertory Theater, Roundabout Theater Directors Group, Bushwick Starr Reading Series, Resident Lead Artist at The Mercury Store. A Proud Lilly Award Winner and New Georges Affiliated Artist. B.A. Princeton University. all pronouns

Alex Keegan is a director and writer of new work, adaptations, and devised pieces. Recent directing includes AFFINITY, co-adapted with Rebecca Adelsheim based on Sarah Waters’ novel, MANNING by Benjamin Benne, UHURU by Gloria Majule, Shakespeare’s MEASURE FOR MEASURE (Yale Drama), BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA by Anna Ouyang Moench (Chester Theatre), AUNTIE VANYA by Reed Northrup (Ars Nova ANT Fest), TOUGH by Margot Connolly, SELKIE by Krista Knight (Williamstown PTP), new work in development with Primary Stages, Signature Theatre, NYTW, The Drama League, MCC FreshPlay, The O’Neill YPF. Alex is the 2022/2023 Directing Fellow at Rattlestick Theater, an EST/Sloan Project Commission recipient, and a former Artistic Director of Yale Summer Cabaret. Alum: Roundabout Directors Group, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, The Civilians R&D Group, Geva Directing Fellowship, Williamstown Directing Corps. BA: Brown. MFA: Yale School of Drama, where she received the Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize for Directing.  she/her

Katelynn Kenney is a mixed-race Filipina-American artist last from South Dakota. Her plays have been produced and developed by The Tank, Primary Stages’ Einhorn School of Performing Arts, the Skeleton Rep, FEAST at Under St. Marks, the Baltimore Asian Pasifika Arts Collective, Cohesion Theatre Company, Prospect Theater Company, and others. She studied at Primary Stages, Augustana University, and Brooklyn College (MFA in Playwriting). Kenney was a finalist for the 2021 Sundance Uprise Grant and was awarded a 2021 Ma-Yi Micro Grant and a 2021 Himan Brown Award. She ran The Tank’s TV-writing group, the Pilot Program, and her pilot 86’D was named a quarterfinalist for The Script Lab’s Free Screenplay Contest 2021. Kenney is a member of the ’22-’23 Clubbed Thumb Early-Career Writers’ Group and the New Georges Jam. She is currently writing screenplay coverage, learning to manage her chronic illness, and researching Filipino monsters for her next project. she/her

Divya Mangwani is a theatre artist from Pune, based in New York. She creates reimaginings that question our perception of narrative truths and shared mythologies. As the granddaughter of Sindhi refugees, she has grown up listening to stories of the Partition and her work focuses on global identity and belonging. Divya was the founder and Artistic Director of Moonbeam Factory Theatre and wrote, directed, and produced plays in India, Singapore and the UK. In New York, she has developed work with UNICEF, Soho Rep, NYTW, Rattlestick, Mabou Mines, GTG, Hypokrit, Flea, APAC, Project Y, Pipeline, Theatre East, Rising Sun, LMCC and Governors Island. Divya is a member of The Civilians’ R&D Group and was a fellow of Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab, Gingold Speakers Corner playwright, NYTW 2050 Artistic Fellow, Hypokrit Theatre Tamasha playwright, Project Y Writers Group playwright and Playlab fellow at Pipeline Theatre. she/her

Eli Nixon builds portals and gives guided tours to places that don’t yet exist. They are a settler-descended transqueer clown, a cardboard constructionist, and a maker of plays, puppets, pageants, parades & low-tech public spectaculah. Eli collaborates with artists, activists, schools, mental health and recovery centers, libraries and the more-than-human world to expand imaginative capacity and build muscles for collective liberation. They are in the midst of parenting a 13-year-old human, frolicking in naturedrag, and proposing a new holiday in homage to horseshoe crabs. They’re a former New Georges Audrey Resident (with Rebecca Martinez), part of artEquity’s 2019 cohort, Company One’s 2019 PlayLab Unit, and a member of The 3rd Thing Press’ 2021 author cohort.  they/them

Thalia Sablon: I was born in Haiti and raised in Queens, I have spent most of my life running around New York trying not to wreak havoc. I am a recent graduate of  Rutgers University where I earned my MFA in Playwriting. Currently, I am the artistic admin fellow at New York Theatre Workshop. I use my writing as a way to bridge the gap between interpersonal (micro) and socio-political theory/systems (macro). Most of my work centers on black people and queer femmes. I do my best to imagine myself and others outside of the systems we know while still living in the world that we are in. I think that the struggle to live a full life looks so different for everyone and showcasing that effort and willingness to live fully creates an expansive understanding of the human experience. she/her

Nadira Simone is the proud daughter of immigrants, of Jamaican and Panamanian descent. Born in Queens and raised in Brentwood, NY. She is a Storyteller, Playwright, Poet and self-taught Illustrator/Graphic Artist. She has studied Film/Theater and Africana Studies at Cornell University. Is a National Theater Institute Alum – Advanced Playwright ‘20. A Semi-Finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (2021, 2018). Henley Rose Playwright Competition – First place Winner. An Austin Film Festival Second Rounder, Broadway Bound Theater Festival Finalist. Brave New Works Finalist (Brave New World Repertory Theatre). A Top 10 finalist Warner Bros./HBO Chase Your Dreams Filmmaker Competition. Her full-length plays include: HERE IN VAIN, THE KILLING OF KINGS (part one), THE BARINGS OF BLOOD (part two). She is currently finishing her 3-part series of Black Tragedies, in addition to her collection of short plays that ‘kinda go together’ – PLAY HERE [some plays]. she/her

Raecine Singletary is a director, photographer, and creative from Baltimore, Maryland, born to a Brooklyn native and a Jamaican expatriate. Her aim as an artist is to cultivate art that puts the shared memories of Black culture, especially women and youth, on stage inviting healing through an honest lens rooted in revolutionary joy. She is currently a 2022-23 Directing Fellow at Playwrights Horizons. She has served as a director at Baltimore Center Stage, Pittsburgh Classic Theatre, Lime Arts Productions, The Hansberry Project, City Theatre, and Point Park University. She has also served as an assistant director under directors: Pam MacKinnon, Nicole Brewer, Awoye Timpo, Will Davis, Whitney White, Justin Emeka, Bianca Laverne Jones, Marya Sea Kaminski, and Shariffa Ali. She received a BA in Theatre Arts with a concentration in Directing and a minor in Photography from Point Park University. she/her

Julia Sirna-Frest is a performer, director and teaching artist. She fronts Doll Parts, Brooklyn’s premiere Dolly Parton cover band, composes music with Shane Chapman, and is a current member of the WP Lab. She is a founding member of the Obie award winning theater company Half Straddle and has directed many projects by her artistic soul mate Zoë Geltman. she/her

reid tang writes plays & poetry and makes weird internet experiments out of Brooklyn, NY. Their play FUTURE WIFE was selected for the 2022 Theatertreffen Stückemarkt in Berlin. They are a member of Ars Nova’s Play Group, under commission from Long Wharf Theatre + NAATCO, and a recipient of the Sundance Institute Interdisciplinary Program Grant. In the recent past, they’ve been part of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group & NYTW’s 2050 Fellowship. Their past work includes FUTURE WIFE: Party in A Google Sheet (New Georges; Corkscrew Festival 4.0), BAD CHINESE (Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Festival), and BUILDING A CHARACTER (Wild Rice Singapore). MFA: The New School of Drama. they/them

Ashley Olivea Teague is the recipient of the Embark Award for Social Innovation in Entrepreneurship and founder of Notch Theatre Company. Her plays and partnerships have presented at the Children’s Defense Fund Advocacy Conference, National Performance Network Conference, U.S. Department of Arts and Culture’s Creative Strategies for Commemorative Justice Salon, Ubumuntu Festival in Rwanda, Crystal Bridges Museum, Lewis Prize for Music’s Institute, Chautauqua Institute, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, White Heron Theater Company, Trinity Repertory Company, Brown University, Live@Jacks, The Flea, and La Mama among others. As a Creative Content Producer, Teague worked on such films as Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls, Gus VanSant’s Promised Land, and Tina Chism’s Peeples. Current interviews found on Broadway World, Monument Lab and the HB Insight Series. she/her

Dina Vovsi is a New York-based director and theatermaker. Recent projects include EXITS (a New Georges Supported Production and 2021 Brooklyn Arts Council grantee) and LOVE IS…  [Kocham Cię], a 2022 Brooklyn Arts Council SU-CASA collaboration with Pete McGuinness Senior Center in Greenpoint. She has directed and developed new work with The Civilians, Working Theater, Cape Cod Theatre Project, The Motor Company, and more. Dina is a member of the 2022-2024 WP Theater Directors’ Lab, the 2022-2023 Roundabout Directors Group, and is a New Georges Affiliated Artist. A Working Theater 5 Boroughs 1 City Initiative commission recipient, she is co-creating a play about the immigrant communities in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn with playwright Liba Vaynberg. Dina was a Robert Moss Directing Fellow at Playwrights Horizons, a member of The Civilians’ R&D Group, the recipient of an SDCF Observership, and a member of the Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab. she/her

The Jam was founded under New Georges’ auspices in 2010 by playwright Lucy Alibar and directors Jess Chayes and Portia Krieger. Here are all the prior Jammers: Tara Ahmadinejad, Lucy Alibar, Raquel Almazan, Sofia Alvarez, Kathleen Amshoff, Cristina Angeles, Helen Banner, Bleu Beckford-Burrell, Kate Benson, Eliza Bent, Mary Birnbaum, Lydia Blaisdell, Rachel Bonds, Lyndsey Bourne, Katie Brook, Charise Castro Smith, Adrienne Campbell-Holt, Jess Chayes, Jihan Crowther, Kim Davies, LaShea Delaney, Sarah Einspanier, Lee Sunday Evans, Estefanía Fadul, Meghan Finn, Emily Gardner Xu Hall, Tasha Gordon-Solmon, Morgan Gould, Morgan Green, Dipika Guha, Deepali Gupta, Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, Miranda Haymon, Kimille Howard, Sarah Hughes, Romana Isabella, Lindsay Joelle, Julia May Jonas, MJ Kaufman, Krista Knight, Portia Krieger, Sarah Krohn, Abigail Jean-Baptiste, Kedian Keohan, Haruna Lee, Dara Malina, Rebecca Martínez, Caroline V. McGraw, Anna Moench, Daaimah Mubashshir, Eli Nixon, Jolene Noelle, Caitlin Ryan O’Connell, Louisa Proske, Taylor Reynolds, Colette Robert, Celine Rosenthal, Christina Roussos, Mia Rovegno, Caitlin Saylor Stephens, Zarina Shea, Normandy Sherwood, Charly Evon Simpson, Caitlin Sullivan, Lisa Szolovits, ruth tang, Danya Taymor, Ashley Olivea Teague, Nicole A. Watson, Em Weinstein, Kat Yen, and Pirronne Yousefzadeh. 

Jam on!