DGF Fellows Program Playwriting Chair

José Rivera’s 26 full-length plays have been seen nationally and internationally and translated into a dozen languages.  His Obie Award-winning Marisol and References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, both produced by The Public Theatre, NY, are taught at universities around the country.  Other plays include Cloud Tectonics, Sueño, Sonnets for an Old Century, Boleros for the Disenchanted, Brainpeople, Massacre (Sing to Your Children), The Last Book of Homer, Adoration of the Old Woman, Lovesong (Imperfect) and Your Name Means Dream.  His screenplay “The Motorcycle Diaries,” was nominated for 2005 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar (making him the first Puerto Rican writer so honored), a BAFTA and WGA Awards.   “On the Road” premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.  “Trade” was the first film to premiere at the United Nations.  Rivera co-created and produced “Eerie, Indiana,” (NBC) and was a staff writer on “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels” (Showtime) 2019.  He has written, produced and directed the award-winning short films “The Fall of a Sparrow” and “The Civet,” seen in festivals around the country.  He has served on the boards of Theatre Communication Group and the Sundance Institute and mentored at Sundance Screenwriting Labs in Utah, Jordan, and India and has written all 16 episodes of the TV adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude for Netflix.

DGF Fellows Program Playwriting Chair

Hailed by Variety as “thoroughly convincing”, Los Angeles-born, OBIE Award-winning actress and writer Nikkole Salter arrived onto the professional scene with her co-authorship and co-performance (with Danai Gurira) of the Pulitzer Prize nominated play, In The Continuum (ITC). For its Off-Broadway run at Primary Stages and the Perry Street Theatre and for its US State Department and Bloomberg sponsored international tour, Ms. Salter received an OBIE Award, and the NY Outer Critics Circle’s John Gassner Award for Best New American Play, the Seldes-Kanin fellowship from the Theatre Hall of Fame, and the Global Tolerance Award from the Friends of the United Nations to name a few. Ms. Salter also received Helen Hayes and Black Theatre Alliance nominations for Best Actress for her performance. ITC, published by Samuel French, was pro-nounced – by New York Times, Newsday and New York Magazine – as one of the best plays of 2005 and was featured in numerous esteemed media outlets including Essence Magazine, American Theatre Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and NPR’s Leonard Lopate Show.  ITC has received over 20 productions across the world to date.

As an actress, Ms. Salter can be seen in Gavin O’Connors feature film “Pride & Glory” starring Ed Norton, Colin Farrell and Jon Voight, and heard as the voice of ‘Laticia’ in Rockstar Games’ video game release, Midnight Club: Los Angeles. Ms. Salter has received an Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) award nomination for Best Actress for her performance in TONY winner Kenny Leon’s production of Stick Fly co-produced by Arena Stage (Washington, DC) and the Huntington Theatre (Boston), starred in the role of ‘Cookie’ in the West Coast Premiere of OSCAR winner Tarell McCraney’s play Head of Passes at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (dir. Tina Landau), was featured in Harold Jackson, III’s independent film Last Night (winner of the Audience Award for Best Film and the Grand Jury Prize for best Screenplay in the 2015 American Black Film Festival), starred as Lady Macbeth in TONY-nominated Liesl Tommy’s controversial production of Macbeth at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC, and in a recurring role in Forest Whitaker’s new series, Godfather of Harlem.  Ms. Salter was most recently seen originating a starring role in McArthur Genius Award, TONY nominated playwright Dominique Morisseau’s new play Mud Row, as ‘Sally Childress’ (a fictional character based on the real Geraldine Whittington) and Coretta Scott King in the Broadway production of Robert Schenkkan’s play The Great Society, and starred in the 3rd season of ‘New Amsterdam’ as Isabel Sarasa, the hospital’s Chief Equity Officer. Once COVID is contained, she will return to the Huntington Theatre to originate the role of ‘LaVinia Shaw Williams’ in the world premiere production of Kirsten Greenidge’s Our Daughters, Like Pillars.

As a dramatist, Ms. Salter has written 8 full-length plays, been commissioned for full-length work by 6 institutions, been produced on 3 continents in 5 countries, and been published in 12 international publications.  Her work has appeared in over 20 Off-Broadway, regional and international theatres, and the Crossroads Theatre production of her play Repairing A Nation (directed by Marshall Jones, III) was regionally aired during the second season of the WNET program “Theatre Close-Up”on NYC’s channel THIRTEEN, WLIC, NJTV.  The National Black Theatre production of her play Carnaval was nominated for 7 AUDELCO awards including Best Playwright and Best Production and won for Best Ensemble Performance. Ms. Salter is a 2014 MAP Fund Grant recipient, a Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference semi-finalist, USA Fellowship nominee, a two time Playwright’s of New York (PoNY) Fellowship nominee, is currently working on a commission from Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

Amid an emerging acting/writing career, Ms. Salter’s deep sense of social responsibility led her to co-found (with NSangou Njikam) and serve as Executive Artistic Director of THE CONTINUUM PROJECT, INC., a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that creates innovative artistic programming for community empowerment and enrichment. Their first bi-annual endeavor, The Legacy Program: Residency – an arts education, youth development initiative – launched in 2009 at the William Alexander Middle School in Brooklyn, NY. The Continuum Project, Inc. received the 2010 and 2011 Brooklyn Arts Council Regrant Award (Local Arts), a grant funded by the New York Council on the Arts’ Decentralization Program, in support of the LP: Residency.  Ms. Salter as the Exec. Art. Dir. of the CP and conceiver of the Legacy Program was featured on WBAI 99.5 FM’s “Talkback with Hugh Hamilton”  in NYC and was featured on the nationally broadcast PBS series, “Finding Your Roots,” hosted by Harvard Professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  The Legacy Program was most recently in residence at the Harlem School for the Arts and continues at its flagship site in Brooklyn.

Ms. Salter is an active member of the Actors Equity Association, the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the Actors Center; and sits on the Council of the Dramatists Guild and serves as Chair of the Board of the Theatre Communications Group.  She received her BFA in theatre from Howard University under the instruction of Al Freeman, Jr. and Sybil Roberts; and her MFA from New York University’s Graduate Acting Program under the tutelage of Zelda Fichandler and Ron Van Lieu.  Ms. Salter is currently the Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts within Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts.

DGF Fellows Program Musical Theater Chair

Michael Korie received The Marc Blitzstein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his lyrics in musicals and his librettos in operas. His collaboration with Tom Kitt and James Lapine, Flying Over Sunset, premiered at Lincoln Center Theater this season with a Tony-nominated score. Korie wrote the lyrics to composer Scott Frankel’s music for the Broadway productions of War Paint and Grey Gardens, with books by Doug Wright, the Off- Broadway production of Far From Heaven, book by Richard Greenberg, all directed by Michael Grief, and Happiness with a book by John Weidman, direction by Susan Stroman. Their shows have been nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards, received The Outer Critics Circle Award, and been produced on Broadway, Playwrights Horizons, Lincoln Center Theater, throughout the USA, and internationally. For opera he adapted Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath composed by Ricky Ian Gordon. Also with Gordon, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis premiered this past season at New York City Opera and National Yiddish Folksbiene-Theatre with upcoming productions in Europe. Korie’s original librettos to operas composed by Stewart Wallace include Harvey Milk, Where’s Dick?, Kabbalah, and Hopper’s Wife. Harvey Milk returned in a new version premiered to acclaim this year at Opera Theater of Saint Louis. Korie’s operas have been produced at San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Minnesota Opera, New York City Opera, BAM Next Wave Festival, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, Michigan Opera, and abroad in Germany and Australia. Korie’s lyrics have received the Edward Kleban Prize, Jonathan Larson Award, and the ASCAP Richard Rodgers Award. His songs with composer Scott Frankel were featured at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and at The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage Broadway Today. Korie co-chairs the Dramatists Guild Opera Committee which produced the short film “Credit the Librettist.” He teaches musical-theater writing at Yale University and Columbia University School of the Arts, and leads collaboration seminars for American Opera Project and American Lyric Theater. Korie serves on the advisory committee of The American Theatre Wing.

DGF Fellows Program Musical Theater Chair

Jess McLeod (she/her) is a director & social justice advocate specializing in risky new work about America. BOLD Resident Director (Woolly Mammoth); Artist-In-Residence (NYCLU). Resident Director, Hamilton Chicago. Recent work includes BFRJ Sings: The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill (Little Island); Prepared (EST); There’s Always The Hudson, O-Slice: 19 (Woolly Mammoth); Pride And Prejudice (Long Wharf), The Great Khan (San Diego REP); Hype Man (Actors Theatre of Louisville); Wolf Play, Hang Man (The Gift); Venus (Steppenwolf); Do You Feel Anger?, Fulfillment Center (A Red Orchid); Landladies (Northlight); How We Got On (Haven), Midsummer (CST), Marry Me A Little (Porchlight); and workshops of The Jordan & Avery Show (O’Neill); You Deserve To Be Here (Roundabout), Exotic Deadly, Or The MSG Play (Atlantic); Abortion Road Trip (WTF); Radical (IAMA) and The Deciders (Berkeley Rep Ground Floor). Jess also works frequently at the intersection of art and activism, and has created operas with community groups (Lyric), musicals with incarcerated teen Chicagoans (Storycatchers Theatre), musical walking tours (National Public Housing Museum), the #STOPASIANHATE video campaign for NY Rep. Grace Meng’s 3/26 Day of Action & Healing (co-creator) and co-curated Broadway Advocacy Coalition’s first-ever Arts In Action Festival. Currently under commission at La Jolla Playhouse. MFA, Northwestern. www.jess-mcleod.com | @mcjessmc