Fellows Spotlight is our blog series that invites you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our Fellows program.

We’ll be hearing from all our 2018-2019 Fellows: Jay Adana, Rae Binstock, Zeniba Britt, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Mathilde Dratwa, Aryanna Garber, Charles Gershman, Nambi E. Kelley, Melissa Li, Benjamin Velez, Kit Yan, and Zack Zadek.

Each of the Fellows/teams were asked the same 5 questions, exploring where these writers have been, are now, and are journeying towards. Our Fellows took this gentle structure and ran, each submitting responses as unique and creative as they are.

Enjoy the final edition of the 2018/2019 Fellows Spotlight series, as we present Zack Zadek!

What was your first experience with theater?

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with two VHS tapes: The Sound of Music, and Mary Poppins (I was also  with a cassette tape of the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Fiddler on The Roof).  I started getting in trouble around first or second grade for singing disruptively during the school day (not kidding), so my parents and teachers had a conference to figure out a musical outlet to address the problem.  That led to me auditioning for the local JCC production of The Wizard of Oz (I played a munchkin, naturally) and the lifelong love affair with musical theatre was solidified.

I should mention that I really became a “theatre kid” for the rest of my childhood/teenage years – I spent hours my library organizing cast recordings, went to theatre camp, played through the scores of all of my favorite musicals on the piano.  I was that guy in my school who was like, the hardcore theatre kid amongst the just normal theatre kids.

When did you decide to become a writer?

I was always making up my own stories as a kid, and wrote a bunch of terrible short stories growing up.  I also wrote a bunch of slightly less terrible songs instead of practicing classical piano, which was what my very strict teacher wanted from me.   Sometime before high school, it clicked that Guys and Dolls and Fiddler didn’t just descend from the heavens, that they were written by actual people – and from that moment on, I knew I had to be a musical theatre writer.  Sometime after that, my friends and I staged an evening of my work in someones backyard during the summer.  It poured and all the equipment got ruined.  I was hooked.

Is there a writer, show, or piece of writing that was particularly influential on your path?

I would say there were a few pieces of writing that were that formative for me.

The first would probably be Spring Awakening – I remember seeing it right after it opened on Broadway which was at the very beginning of my own adolescence , and I had this electric sensation in seeing a show that felt so immediately relatable to my own life in a theatre like that.  And the bigger takeaway was that music that felt so deeply contemporary in a true sense of the word could be used to tell an emotional story in a theatre.  Not like faux-contemporary.  This was music that was f**cking cool.  I went back several times.

The work of Jason Robert Brown was very influential for me, as it was/is for many writers of my generation – I was a pianist first growing up, so the way that he approached the piano definitely changed how I thought about my own instrument.  And I effectively did a “close reading” of his work over those early years – so as I grew in my own understanding of craft, it rewarded that with layers of hyper-specific character writing in the lyrics, and just as powerfully, a deep sense of dramaturgy in the music.

But bar none, the most important piece of writing for me was LOST (yes, the TV show).  I started watching LOST sort of casually at the recommendation of a friend, and it quickly became not casual at all.  I would listen to a podcast with the showrunners religiously after every episode, dissecting the latest turns – and by the time I caught up to Season Three, I realized this was the exact kind of storytelling I wanted to do.  All of Damon Lindelof’s work has become that impactful for me, but LOST is very much a reason I’m a writer.

Also Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

How do you describe your work overall? What sets your work apart?

In general, I think I’m really interested in exploring the “big questions” in my work- Why are we here?  What does it mean to be alive?  How do we figure out our place in the Universe?  It sounds pretentious, but those are very much the things (and fears) I’m interested in exploring in my writing.  More specifically, I often use high concept worlds as a lens against very small character beats to look at some of those aspects of the human condition.

Musically I am a strong proponent of the idea that “musical theatre” is a medium and not a genre, and I always want the scores of my shows to have a unified sound, to be in conversation with the music of our time, and to be hooky.

I want to write musicals that a person walking off the street who thinks musicals all sound lame might think is cool (but also, screw that guy).

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been developing as a Fellow?

I, regrettably, cannot.  It’s kind of secret.  All I’ll share is that it’s a commission for Ars Nova and Jill Furman, and that I’m ridiculously excited about it.

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a writer?

I get to tell stories in a medium that is the ultimate synthesis of so many disparate forms  – I get to engage with music on a deep level, and story structure, and character writing, and lyric craft – all while writing about the ideas and interests that would preoccupy me all day anyway.

And then when it’s all said and done, I get to stop being all alone in it – and pass it off to a whole group of talented artists who start bringing it to life, and teaching me about a thing that I made, and create a communal experience – that we hopefully get to share with an audience of actual human beings.

Could there be anything better?

Fellows Spotlight is our blog series that invites you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our Fellows program.

We’ll be hearing from all our 2018-2019 Fellows: Jay Adana, Rae Binstock, Zeniba Britt, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Mathilde Dratwa, Aryanna Garber, Charles Gershman, Nambi E. Kelley, Melissa Li, Benjamin Velez, Kit Yan, and Zack Zadek.

Each of the Fellows/teams were asked the same 5 questions, exploring where these writers have been, are now, and are journeying towards. Our Fellows took this gentle structure and ran, each submitting responses as unique and creative as they are.

We are thrilled to present Charles Gershman!

What was your first experience with theater?

When I was young, my parents regularly took me and my siblings to The Muny, a huge open-air theater in Forest Park, the big city park in St. Louis. I remember seeing Peter Pan, Gypsy, and South Pacific. It was so exciting seeing Peter Pan fly! And I can still vividly see Gypsy Rose Lee’s boobs being lit up with electric lights and it felt so naughty and wrong and great, and I think that was the closest I’ve ever come to being straight.

When did you decide to become a writer? Is there a writer, show, or piece of writing that was particularly influential on your path?

A few years ago Tina Howe invited me to join her MFA playwriting class at Hunter College. She had us read Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Facesand Carl Jung’s autobiography and Diana Son’s extraordinary Stop Kiss. She took us to see plays and introduced us to people like John Patrick Shanley and Chuck Mee. I remember sitting alone with her in her apartment going over a new first draft I’d written. She told me to rewrite almost the whole thing. I was keeping my characters on too tight a leash. “Write in bold primary colors!” I finished that year understanding that being a playwright would take a lot of work and commitment. It’s because of her that I made the commitment.

How do you describe your work overall? What sets your work apart?

A number of my plays are queer-themed. I wrote a play last year called Free & Proud, which is a spare two-hander that captures the entirety of a relationship between two men, a white American and a black Nigerian. It was published by Oberon Books in concert with a UK production, and it recently won the Chesley/Bumbalo Playwriting Award. But my work varies a lot. I’m also working on a monologue-based solo piece called IvankaPlay, which imagines Ivanka Trump breaking the pattern and acting on her better impulses, and exploring what it would take for her to actually become heroic.

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been developing as a Fellow?

I’ve been working on a play called Stopover, about a gay married couple who take in a foster teen. The two dads come from different backgrounds and parenting cultures, and the play looks at why we become parents and what we’re really in it for. I wrote this play because I am terrified atthe idea of being a parent and wanted to explore that fear. It’s been a challenging and gratifying play to write.

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a writer?

There are some really rewarding solitary moments—when you suddenly break through some wall in the story that’s been a source of agony, or when some new thrilling idea hits you and it feels like a flash of brilliance and you can only see the good in it. But the most rewarding moments are when the work speaks to people—and they tell me so. That says to me that there’s maybe something universal in the story, that it’s many people’s story, that maybe it has a good reason for being told.

Fellows Spotlight is our blog series that invites you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our Fellows program.

We’ll be hearing from all our 2018-2019 Fellows: Jay Adana, Rae Binstock, Zeniba Britt, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Mathilde Dratwa, Aryanna Garber, Charles Gershman, Nambi E. Kelley, Melissa Li, Benjamin Velez, Kit Yan, and Zack Zadek.

Each of the Fellows/teams were asked the same 5 questions, exploring where these writers have been, are now, and are journeying towards. Our Fellows took this gentle structure and ran, each submitting responses as unique and creative as they are.

This week, meet Erika Dickerson-Despenza!

What was your first experience with theater?

I cannot remember exactly, if we’re talking about theater in the traditional sense. The most accurate answer, however, is my Black Baptist church on the westside of Chicago, five blocks from Fred Hampton’s home (where he was murdered by CPD). This was the sociopolitical backdrop of the folk sermons emphatically delivered behind the sacred pulpit-turned-stage. I was enthralled by the deeply rooted Black liturgies, the stained-glass windows, holy ghost choreography and pentecostal breathing–the theatricality of that which was holy ground. 

The first time I remember seeing Black people in a professional production was sophomore year of high school at Goodman Theater’s production of Radio Gold by August Wilson. My American Literature class took a field trip to see the production after reading the play. I remember being amazed and wanting more of Mame Wilks, because Black women’s stories were more complex and under-explored, even then. 

When did you decide to become a writer? Is there a writer, show, or piece of writing that was particularly influential on your path?

I was always a writer. Language was the most natural and challenging way to undermine systems of oppression. I was trying to understand the world I was in and write my way into something else, something freer. In middle school, I encountered Nikki Giovanni’s poem “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)” and was enthralled by the speaker’s brash celebration of herself. I went to the library and checked out every book Giovanni had published at the time. I read them from cover to cover, but found myself most drawn to Black Feeling, Black Talk/ Black Judgement. Giovanni was unapologetically Black and female, fierce in her language and her critique of our political landscape. If Giovanni could do that just with words, I wanted to wield, wound and revive words like that. Then I was introduced to my literary mother, Ntozake Shange, and I quickly learned the importance of rupturing language and bending it to my will. I was a poet first. I studied Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, June Jordan, Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Nikky Finney, Patricia Smith, Elizabeth Alexander, Krista Franklin and way too many white women poets (whom I won’t name because their names are overstated and I want to give deliberate space to the Black women who are the reason I am possible). And when poems proved too small a form for the stories I wanted to tell, I (re)turned to the work of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Toni Cade Bambara, Saidiya Hartman and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. But I wanted to create experiences about Black women with audiences in a live environment. So I looked back to Shange, early Suzan-Lori Parks and Katori Hall. Because my people’s work & resistance have never been safely historical, theatre serves as a literary and live documentation of how Blk womyn practice sci-fi living. t’s is intimate, unflinchingly honest (when done right), and real time immediacy calls us to create a moment together; to witness and be witnessed.

How do you describe your work overall? What sets your work apart?

As an interdisciplinary theatremaker, my work converges literary, visual and musical worlds. I investigate, dismantle, critique and reconstruct mass media images of iconic, commonplace and invisibilized figures within the African Diaspora. My thematic obsessions deliberately center Black women’s land legacies, stored body knowledge of ancestral memory, girlhood trauma, maternal bonds, ritual, religion and distinct experiences of environmental racism. These themes point toward my central fixation: Black women’s literal and figurative dismemberment and corporeal restitution as a means of belonging–to ourselves, our families, dominant culture and our world. Afrosurrealism, magic realism, narrative re/memory and emergent strategy are conceptual preoccupations of my work. Through my artistic practice, I aim to resist Black feminine erasure and endeavor to re/imagine a world where a kaleidoscope of Black womanhood is lavishly welcomed and affirmed. Currently, the body of work I’m creating requires casts exclusively Black women and Black women directors. 

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been developing as a Fellow?

During my time as DGF Fellow, I’ve been working on shadow/land and [hieroglyph]. These plays are the first two works in my 10-play Katrina Cycle, focused on the effects of Hurricane Katrina & its state-sanctioned man-made disaster. Taking up epic space, these plays traverse the Black Katrina diaspora in an examination of the ongoing effects of displacement rippling in & beyond New Orleans. Together, the ten works underscore colonialism, environmental racism & the erasure of Black land legacies through the distress of disaster, evacuation, displacement & urban renewal.

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a writer?

I am most grateful for how my writing operates as cultural work. I get to practice the notion of sci-fi living: using my radical imagination to do what has never been done before in theatre as a means of advancing a more just and compassionate world and write toward a future in which Black people exist and are free. 

Fellows Spotlight is our blog series that invites you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our Fellows program.

In recent weeks, we’ve introduced you to Rae Binstock, Kit Yan and Melissa Li, Mathilde Dratwa, Zeniba Britt, Jay Adana, and Nambi E Kelley.

We’ll be hearing from all our 2018-2019 Fellows: Jay Adana, Rae Binstock, Zeniba Britt, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Mathilde Dratwa, Aryanna Garber, Charles Gershman, Nambi E. Kelley, Melissa Li, Benjamin Velez, Kit Yan, and Zack Zadek.

Each of the Fellows/teams were asked the same 5 questions, exploring where these writers have been, are now, and are journeying towards. Our Fellows took this gentle structure and ran, each submitting responses as unique and creative as they are.

This week we are proud to introduce Benjamin Velez.

What was your first experience with theater?

My mother forced me to audition for a local community theater production of Oliver when I was six years old. The director was only seeing kids aged nine and up, but my mom lied to get me in and I eventually got cast as Oliver! It was a magical experience where I caught the theater bug and it’s never let up since.

When did you decide to become a writer? Is there a writer, show, or piece of writing that was particularly influential on your path?

The first CD I ever bought was John Williams’ movie score for Spielberg’s Hook. It was a transcendent moment that led me down the path of a film score obsession and a love affair with musical storytelling. 

How do you describe your work overall? What sets your work apart?

I’ve always found it hard to describe my work, mostly because the music I write is a fusion of a lot of different styles, similar to my influences. I don’t believe any of us are singular in how we exist; every character is a mixture of experiences, upbringings, flaws, and passions, and the music I write reflects that. Pop, funk, folk, rock, blues, blended together with a cinematic scope of world building to make the audience feel like they aren’t just hearing a collection of songs, but that they are entering another world. This cinematic approach to genre and musical storytelling is drives my work.

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been developing as a Fellow?

[Aryanna Garber and I are] working on a musical called Borderline about Anna, a girl who gets diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and struggles to understand what that diagnosis means for every aspect of her life. [We] are trying to navigate both the light and dark side of mental illness in a way that both challenges and invites our audience to understand a full nuanced picture of something often portrayed in the extreme. The fellows program has helped us hone in on the story we want to tell in terms of stakes and character so that we can create the most compelling story possible.

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a writer

I love the ability to connect with stories and experiences other than my own through the language of music. In my mind, the human experience is all about empathy and understanding, and as a writer I try to find the most creative and effective ways to help others do just that. If something I write can help humanize a person usually seen as “other”, or add shades to how someone thinks about previously immutable beliefs, that is the most rewarding feeling. It means I get to use my very specific toolbox to bring empathy to our ever increasingly polarized world.  

Fellows Spotlight is our blog series that invites you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our Fellows program.

In recent weeks, we’ve introduced you to Rae Binstock, Kit Yan and Melissa Li, Mathilde Dratwa, Zeniba Britt, and Nambi E Kelley.

We’ll be hearing from all our 2018-2019 Fellows: Jay Adana, Rae Binstock, Zeniba Britt, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Mathilde Dratwa, Aryanna Garber, Charles Gershman, Nambi E. Kelley, Melissa Li, Benjamin Velez, Kit Yan, and Zack Zadek.

Each of the Fellows/teams were asked the same 5 questions, exploring where these writers have been, are now, and are journeying towards. Our Fellows took this gentle structure and ran, each submitting responses as unique and creative as they are.

This week we invite you to this conversation with Jay Adana.

What was your first experience with theater?

I played Becky in a production of “Gold Dust or Bust” (I’m sure you’ve heard of it) in 4th grade. I was the comic relief and it was the easiest audience I’ll ever get. I got hooked.

When did you decide to become a writer? Is there a writer, show, or piece of writing that was particularly influential on your path?

I set out to be an actor. My mom showed me a copy of “Into The Woods” (of course bow down to the mighty Sondheim) on VHS and when Bernadette Peters followed an imaginary bug on the floor, stomped it, twisted her foot and said “squooosh” I said that’s what I’m doing. I became a writer by accident. I was doing a show with a couple of friends from acting school where the story was told with movement and puppets. We were having trouble communicating what was happening in a more complicated section of the plot so I ducked into the bathroom (we were rehearsing in my living room) and wrote a song to explain what was happening. I loved that process and just kept doing it. That show was called “The Woodsman”.

How do you describe your work overall? What sets your work apart?

I like to blend old sounds with new. I’m most interested when you can take a little bit of both. For example I made a trap beat out of pieces of “The Battlecry of Freedom” or I’ll use rap rhythms on a folk song. 

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been developing as a Fellow?

My writing partner Zeniba Britt and I have been developing a musical alternative history of the American Civil War with a dash of magic. Our protagonist is Polly, a brilliant black biracial mapmaker hiding just outside Atlanta.

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a writer?

There’s the moment when something clicks and it’s just exactly right and I’m not sure how I got there and it feels like I have a line dialed straight into the cosmos. That’s magic. 

Fellows Spotlight is our summer blog series that invites you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our Fellows program.

In recent weeks, we’ve introduced you to Rae Binstock, Kit Yan and Melissa Li, and Mathilde Dratwa.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be hearing from all our 2018-2019 Fellows: Jay Adana, Rae Binstock, Zeniba Britt, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Mathilde Dratwa, Aryanna Garber, Charles Gershman, Nambi E. Kelley, Melissa Li, Benjamin Velez, Kit Yan, and Zack Zadek.

Each of the Fellows/teams were asked the same 5 questions, exploring where these writers have been, are now, and are journeying towards. Our Fellows took this gentle structure and ran, each submitting responses as unique and creative as they are.

Allow us to introduce you to Zeniba Britt:

What was your first experience with theater?

We did theatre in preschool at The YMCA in Culver City. I recall immigrants, turkeys, and indigenous peoples, it was alternate history called The First Thanksgiving. 

When did you decide to become a writer? 

I don’t recall ever making a decision, it is something I just do, cyclically. Suddenly a character or situation is talking to me and I can’t hear the person I’m with anymore. 

Is there a writer, show, or piece of writing that was particularly influential on your path?

Passing Strange was one of those shows that said don’t give up, there is space for you here. 

How do you describe your work overall? 

Absurd, esoteric, and funny. 

What sets your work apart?

I think it’s me, my experiences and my unique place in society. 

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been developing as a Fellow?

Yes, I’ve been working on an epic adventure musical called The Loophole with Jay Adana, it’s an alternate history of the civil war about revolution and love centered around a Black Regiment of The Union Army and an integrated house in rural Georgia. We use rap, verse, folk, rock, body percussion, and magic to tell the story. 

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a writer?

Employing actors, hands down.