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. 

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.

This week, we invite you to get to know Nambi E. Kelley:

What was your first experience with theater?

My first experience in the theatre was being in a production of The Mouse That Roared in high school. I played the secretary. I wanted to play the general. I understood completely why they cast a boy in that part, and I was mad as hell about it. 

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 became a writer when I was about 8 years old. I spent half my childhood in places where children were not valued. I wrote to understand the world around me because it was never explained to me why things were so hard for some people. 

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

My work stages a character’s interior thoughts. Other writers do that through subtext or immediate action. I am fascinated with seeing how someone arrives at a thought and staging that.

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

The fellowship play I’m developing is an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Jazz.  I have chosen to structure the play like Rashomon, so it is structured into 5 different perspectives based on a singular event of a young girl being murdered in 1920s Harlem by her lover. 

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

I saw a lot of suffering as a young person.  What’s most rewarding for me as a writer is to be able to illuminate those dark spaces for others who may be in similar spaces. If I am not writing to make someone’s world better, or at least for someone to see a piece of their own experience in a character and provide perspective and context on their sufferings, I am not in a space of joy around creating work. My goal is to tell as many truths as I can, it helps me to know the suffering I’ve endured in my life was not in vain, but in service of others. And that gives me great peace. 

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.

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.

This week, we are thrilled to introduce you to Mathilde Dratwa.

What was your first experience with theater?

When I was a teenager, I was cast as Juliet in the school play. I had to wear an off-white flapper dress – because obviously Juliet wears white. (I now know that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the character: she’s a spunky teenager who makes the first move and can’t wait to get laid! She is thirteen and she is unafraid to lust and she dares to disappoint her parents and she would have had so much to teach me if only I had known then how to listen.)

Anyone who menstruates will tell you that there is no other way; if a director makes you wear a light-colored costume you will inevitably be on your period on performance night, this is a given. So I was on stage wearing a sanitary pad and a tampon beneath the off-white flapper dress, just in case. I remember my mother explaining the anatomy of my body through a closed door earlier in the day: push it back, not straight up, and trying her best to convince me that an applicator would make this whole endeavor so much easier. The good news is that at the end of the play I cried real tears — thank you, teenage hormones.

After the show I remember the curtain call: holding hands with other students in other grades that I would otherwise not know. I did not know to smile; my mother, watching anxiously from the audience, was worried that something was wrong. But nothing was wrong; this all felt wonderfully Serious and Important. People were clapping! For us! (“For me,” I remember thinking, because I was young and self-centered and also a little bit correct, and because the world hadn’t yet taught me that a woman – a girl! – shouldn’t think that way. In the car, on the way home, horror of horrors, I think I said it aloud, to my mother, with glee: “everyone clapped – for me!” and I think I remember that my mother nodded, because she was, indeed, clapping for me.)

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 tried really hard not to become a writer. I tried really hard to become an actress. I didn’t write, because I knew, deep down, that I’d be better at writing than I was at acting; I feared that once I started, writing would become my focus. But one day, I met the wonderful Mary Bacon, who invited me to join a group she’d created with Heidi Armbruster: Dorset Theater Festival’s Women Artists Writing group. It consists of female-identifying actresses who also write. That was my gateway drug; I felt like I could write among actresses… Pretty soon, I was hooked, and I haven’t looked back (or auditioned) since. 

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

Irreverence and theatricality. 

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

A Play about David Mamet Writing a Play about Harvey Weinstein. It’s basically what it sounds like. And also, not at all.

Francesca, a playwright, has several Reasons to be Pretty… Angry. Among them: David Mamet has actually, in real life, written a play about Harvey Weinstein. Francesca thinks that’s bonkers. So this is her play about David Mamet. He’s in it, and so are a bunch of other dudes named David who definitely shouldn’t even think about writing a play about Harvey Weinstein.

It’s really a play about women. About Francesca. About Francine, who can do it all (parent, act, sing, fly, castrate, kill)… until she can’t. About Zoe, who shows up to audition and can’t stop talking.

Turns out there’s a lot to say.

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

I like writing roles that I think my actor friends would love to play. And making people laugh despite themselves. 

DGF Announces New Fellows and Program Chairs Dramatists Guild Foundation would like to formally announce a new 2019-2020 class of DGF Fellows, as well as new Chairs to the program.

The new Fellows class includes Melis Aker, Nolan Doran and Avi Amon, Kate Douglas, Elliah Heifetz and Jessica Kahkoska, Nikhil Mahapatra, Kyoung H. Park, Andrew Rincón, Andy Roninson, and Paulo Tiról. Each of these writers and writing teams has proven themselves to be of exceptional talent and promise. These writers will spend the year developing full-length shows with the guidance of the Program Chairs. In addition, Fellows receive a stipend, access to guest artists, and an additional opportunity with one of DGF’s partner organizations to further develop their piece. The program will culminate in a presentation of their work at an Off-Broadway theater.

Furthermore, after seven years of service as the Playwriting Chair of the Fellows program, Diana Son (Stop Kiss) will be stepping down from the position, and Migdalia Cruz (El Grito Del Bronx) and Lucy Thurber (The Hill Town Plays) will be the new Playwriting Chairs. Cruz and Thurber will join Musical Theater Chairs Laurence O’Keefe (Heathers) and Michael Korie (Grey Gardens) in stewarding the program. On the announcement of the new chairs, DGF Program Manager Tessa Raden Gregory said, “DGF is grateful to welcome Migdalia and Lucy into the position of Fellows Program Chairs. As artists whose work resonates with audiences across the country, they embody DGF’s commitment to serving the national theater community. We are excited for them to continue Diana’s legacy of education and artistic excellence.”

The Fellows program is a selective, year-long opportunity for playwrights, composers, lyricists, and bookwriters to develop full-length pieces. The Fellows program is highly sought after for its uniquely successful format of partnering playwrights and musical theater writers together in the learning process, with the musical theater writers working particularly closely with the Musical Theater Chairs, and the playwrights working more closely with the Playwriting Chairs. On her enthusiasm with the new crop of Fellows, Cruz added: “I am excited to continue a journey begun by Diana Son with patience and beauty, alongside my fierce colleague Lucy Thurber. We will tell the truth and keep it real. Looking forward to begin working with five brave and talented writers. Mentor, n. Someone who tortures you into becoming who you were always meant to be.”

Former Fellows include Kristen Anderson-Lopez (Frozen), Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop), Antoinette Nwandu (Pass Over), Lauren Yee (King of the Yees), Stacey Rose (Legacy Land), Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dear Evan Hansen) and many more.

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

Last week we introduced the series with a spotlight on Kit Yan and Melissa Li.

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.

This week, we are thrilled to introduce you to Rae Binstock.

What was your first experience with theater?

This is the experience that immediately comes to mind, though it was far from my first. Growing up in Cambridge, MA, my parents started taking me to shows at the American Repertory Theater when I was very very young. (Potentially too young, but I’d say it all worked out.) One of those plays was The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter. I was around 10 years old. I had never seen Pinter before, and my father didn’t give me any context before the show started (he never did). I just remember the feeling in my stomach while I watched that play, like the first drop on a rollercoaster stretched out over two hours. I understood so little of it but I was transported by the sheer theatricality. It was that moment of realization that theater is nothing like anything else. It’s not movies, it’s not TV, it’s not reading, it’s not an exciting conversation. It’s an alchemical reaction in real time that happens to and with you, and as a child I remember being utterly obsessed with the how and why of that experience. 

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

My father is a novelist. He raised my sister and I to love first reading and then writing. I must have started at least fifty “novels” as a kid, but I never quite knew how to finish them. I was always so scared of “messing it up.” My mother, on the other hand, works in homeless housing, and she raised my sister and I to value planning and action over easily-exhausted fervor. I knew there was something to writing that made me feel strong and capable, but I couldn’t find it in the density of prose. When I got to high school, I was already a theater kid, but the tipping point was reading Angels in America. You know that feeling when you return to your childhood home as an adult and notice something – a room, a window, even a lamp – that had been there the whole time but never registered in the specifics of what you considered your habitat? That’s what it felt like reading Angels. Everything I knew suddenly appeared a little off, a little sudden and unexpected, because I had been presented with an entirely new way of thinking and talking about them. The language and scope of that play connected me with the power that I had been trying to find in writing since I was a little kid. I’ve never looked back.

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

My work is about tension between the identity and the individual. Every society requires the people within to sort themselves into different groups, if only for the sake of organization. That “sorting” is the source of some of humanity’s worst tendencies, but the solidarity within the sorted groups is the source of some of our best tendencies. I have found in my own life that the more people rely on their category, the more strength they derive from it and the more fear they have of any threat to it. My plays explore the inevitable struggle that everyone faces when forced to confront their “sorting.” Race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, education – we are all eager to be defined in some way, but we are also borne out of molds with infinitely undefined shape. I write to try and, if not solve, then make peace with some of that contradiction.

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

That Heaven’s Vault Should Crack is a cycle of five short plays that reimagine stories from the Bible and the Qu’ran in terms of modern-day climate change. Each play transports a narrative like Noah’s Ark or the Crucifixion to the present day and overlays the moral lessons and strictures onto our seemingly more complicated modern system. I find myself fascinated by how resistant the human race is to the idea of climate change, despite how readily and deeply most of us ascribe to the idea of divine forces governing our reality. I think the two of them have to have something in common, and that we can only handle one of them at the time.

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

I talk a lot. My plays have a lot of words. Beyond anything, I treasure the moments I can create in a play where silence makes more of an impact than words ever will.

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

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.

To kick off this series, we are pleased to present Kit Yan and Melissa Li.

(responses submitted by Kit Yan on behalf of the team)

What was your first experience with theater?

We became friends while performing at a Queer Asian cabaret at a divey drag bar in Boston called Jacque’s. Although Melissa had been writing and performing Queer theater with the support of The Theater Offensive, and Kit was already winning awards performing as a slam poet, we’ll never forget the first time we shared the stage together at that cabaret and how important it was to have a space that allowed us to tell our stories on our own terms.

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

Both of us were writers at a young age, whether we were writing songs, poetry, plays, or movies. We always felt the need to share stories and pour our feelings out on the page. But it was at Jacques that we witnessed a kind of theater that was a new experience for us — the art was bold, messy, risky, and unafraid, as were the artists that created it. Today, we try to keep the essence of these formative experiences in our work together.

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

As Queer Chinese-American immigrants with very different but rich histories and identities, our work constantly investigates and explores gender, sexuality, and race. Stylistically, because of our artistic backgrounds, we like to break rules and blend style and form. Our work is often peppered with poetry, sugary pop earworms, experimental percussive soundscapes, and other motifs. We use familiar tools, and tools we discover, to tell stories that reflect our experiences.

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

We’ve been working on Interstate, a new musical that is semi-based on our own experience, and is very personal to us. It’s about two best friends — a transgender spoken word artist and a lesbian singer-songwriter — going on tour together for the first time, and the ways in which their journey changes the life of one South Asian trans teenager living in Kentucky. The show sounds stylistically similar to the work we used to perform together way back at Jacque’s, and is a love letter to our friendship and our community.

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

Being writers is powerful because we get to dream about the worlds to which we want to contribute. We get to bring together communities of people who ache to see themselves represented on stage. We get to ask tough questions, be accountable to each other, center friendship and love, and keep hope alive in a world that systematically erases so many of us. It is rewarding work — to be able to write our futures into existence.

Thanks to @melsaboo and @KitYanPoet for sharing! And be sure to follow @DGFound on Instagram and Twitter for more from Fellows Spotlight! 

This is one of a two-part series. Click here to hear our thoughts on the important legacy of queer writers.

The art of queer writers helps to translate the joy, rage, history, and humanity of the LGBTQI+ community. Hear why these seven artists believe it is crucial that queer writers are given space on the American stage:

“As a trans and yellow American person making theater, I am aware that stories from my communities have been systematically and institutionally silenced so it’s important to get our work out no matter how it is produced or if it is produced, because our folx need to see ourselves onstage in order to feel that same theater magic that makes a person feel alive, possible, and human.”

• Kit Yan, Playwright, Lyricist, and DGF Fellow

“At a time when trans people, and especially black and migrant trans women, are facing so much violence, the humanizing power of authentic trans stories on stage can be lifesaving.”

• Corinna Schulenburg, Playwright and WAG Recipient

“As a queer, black boy in the middle of the country, I looked to the storytellers illuminating our history and our stories through the written word. James Baldwin, Tony Kushner, Robert O’Hara, Paula Vogel, Tarell Alvin McCraney—these writers shaped me as a person and as a dramatist. Their brave work could illuminate for folks like me—not yet out of the closet or sure of their voice, not yet living in a time of radical acceptance—how to build, unapologetically, a life in the theater telling queer stories.”

• Keelay Gipson, Playwright, New Voices Teaching Artist and DGF Fellows Alum

“It’s important to tell many different kinds of Queer stories about many different kinds of Queer people, because our history has so often been forced into the shadows. We’re proud to be Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellows, DG Members and Queer artists who make things that celebrate LGBTQ+ stories and complicate traditional narratives.”

• Brandon James Gwinn and EllaRose Chary, Composers, Lyricists, and DGF Fellows Alumni

“Visibility is survival. The centering of queer narratives validates our right to live, create, succeed, fail and thrive. It is essential now more than ever because queer people are fucking dying all around the world and no one seems to care. Queer visibility is survival.”

• Khiyon Hursey, Composer, Lyricist, and DGF Fellows Alum

“Queer people exist in the world, so when our stories aren’t included, it’s a lie about what the world is. Let’s all enjoy learning about the lives of everyone in our beautifully diverse world.”

• Bill Nelson, Playwright, Lyricist, and DGF Fellows Alum