The following checklist was gathered for this system of TCG’s “Our Stories” Gala honoring Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson Jackson on Jan. 9. If you want to advocate a theatre artist for a future Role Call, fill out our open Google Form right here.
Candrice Jones (she/her)
Profession: Playwright
Hometown: Dermott, Ark.
Current Home: Little Rock, Ark.
Known for: Her play Flex, about highschool women basketball within the rural American South, had its official premiere at Fayetteville, Ark.’s TheatreSquared in summer time 2022, two years after a manufacturing on the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of New Plays was cancelled mid-rehearsal resulting from COVID. Flex is slated for a manufacturing at Lincoln Center Theater this spring.
What’s subsequent: She’s at the moment engaged on a commissioned musical with composer Randy Preston, effusing, “I’m super excited about this, as it sheds light on an issue very close to my heart and personal history: public education.”
What makes her particular: Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, who directed Flex each in Louisville and in Fayetteville, characterised Jones’s writing as “bold, with rich characters. Her use of language is beautiful and poetic, even when it’s in everyday vernacular. Her sense of rhythm is like magic. Words I would use to describe her work: fierce, brave, honest, poetic, funny, sexy.”
Tell the tales: Growing up within the rural South, Jones discovered her “first sanctuary” in basketball, and later felt an identical welcome within the theatre, the place she noticed “people tell personal stories, seemingly careless of the judgment of others.” That’s an power she sustains not solely in making her personal work however by serving on panels to pick performs for awards or different alternatives, which exposes her to new writing; she named Anchuli Felicia King, Zola Dee, Minghao Tu, and Lester Eugene Mayers as writers whose work she has discovered particularly thrilling.
Christopher Rudd (he/him)
Profession: Choreographer
Hometown: Born in Kingston, Jamaica, raised in Miami
Current Home: New York City
Known for: A 2019 Guggenheim Choreography Fellow and the inaugural New Victory Theater LabWorks Launch Artist, Rudd can also be the founder, and inventive director of RudduR Dance. A dance-maker who blends up to date ballet with up to date circus to talk to related social points, he’s greatest recognized for creating the groundbreaking Touché and Lifted for American Ballet Theatre (ABT), each of which premiered at Lincoln Center. Touché was ABT’s first explicitly gay work, and Lifted made historical past by that includes a completely Black solid and Black inventive staff, together with a Black conductor.
What’s subsequent: Rudd is at the moment engaged on discovering the sources to finish and tour his three-part ballet Witness, which is impressed by the murders of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, and numerous different African Americans.
What makes him particular: According to instructing artist Rachael Holmes, Rudd’s Witness has confronted challenges with potential programmers who thought-about its themes “burdensome.” Even so, Holmes believes that Rudd “is set to forever change the way families interact with art and build and cherish community in response. His work is like nothing before. It is astonishing in its humility. Anyone who experiences his work will without question leave forever changed.”
Humane and necessary: As Rudd put it, “The responsibility I have to my artists and the mission of RudduR Dance to better the world through dance gets me up in the morning and keeps me up at night. I am constantly thinking of how to make important and relevant work in the most humane way possible.”
James R. Dixon (he/they)
Profession: Youth suicide prevention program specialist, actor, director
Hometown: Goldsboro, N.C.
Current dwelling: Portland, Ore.
Known for: Dixon directed Bootycandy at OUTWright Theatre Festival, and Matter with Many Hats and Portland Playhouse. Matter may be seen on jamesrdixon.com, together with a couple of different tasks.
What’s subsequent: Dixon will direct Ronald Reagan Murdered My Mentors by C. Julian Jiménez for BlaQ OUT and Fuse Theatre Festival, which can be their first staged efficiency, in February 2023. Dixon is producing inventive director of BlaQ OUT, a producing engine of Fuse Theatre Ensemble, which facilities works created on the intersection of Blackness and queerness.
What makes them particular: Rusty Tennant, inventive director of Fuse Theatre Ensemble, known as Dixon “a vigilant social activist who works diligently to create a rehearsal room that is a safe space for all artists, especially queer, Black, and brown artists. Their work in social justice has led them to developing a trauma-informed process that places the safety and concerns of the performer at its core, allowing them to present provocative and challenging works while still caring for the artists they invite into the process.”
Opportunity out of necessity: “I started acting, directing, and now producing out of pure necessity,” Dixon stated. “I am one of many participants in the Black experience waiting for the chance to tell their own stories. The goal is to get the right voices at the table at every step of the process. And I hope to continue to provide access and foster lateral mentorship with other creatives.”
Kara Young (she/her)
Profession: Actor
Hometown and present dwelling: Harlem, New York City
Known for: Young has blazed a path of indelible performances each Off-Broadway (All the Natalie Portmans at MCC Theater, The New Englanders at Manhattan Theatre Club, The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll’d at Playwrights Realm, Pretty Hunger on the Public Theater, Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven on the Atlantic), and on Broadway in Clyde’s at Second Stage and Cost of Living at Manhattan Theatre Club. TV watchers might have seen her on MTV’s Girl Code or the HBO Max collection The Staircase.
What’s subsequent: In February, Young will reprise her position in Carl Cofield’s manufacturing of Twelfth Night on the Classical Theatre of Harlem, during which she appeared final summer time. She additionally has a task in Boots Riley’s upcoming Amazon collection I’m a Virgo.
What makes her particular: Jo Bonney, who directed Young in Cost of Living, calls her “fearless…completely open to any and every possibility for her character and in her relationship with her scene partners. She’s also beautifully incapable of delivering a dishonest moment.” And Kate Whoriskey, who directed Young in Clyde’s, calls the actor “a triple threat: a generous collaborator, an insightful interpreter of text, and an electrifying performer onstage.”
Opening doorways: “I started acting as a child for fun,” Young recalled. “Doing it as an adult is magic. What gets me up in the morning is feeling like there is humanity to honor, worlds to deepen and expand, unopened doors to explore. What keeps me up at night is when those doors and worlds start to open themselves.”
Marie Cisco (she/her)
Profession: TV, movie, and theatre producer
Hometown and present dwelling: Atlanta
Best recognized for: Cisco was line producer on Ain’t No Mo’ on the Public Theater and a co-producer of The U.S. Vs. Billie Holiday on Hulu. She was additionally the driving power behind “Theatres Not Speaking Out,” a public Google spreadsheet monitoring the statements (and follow-through monitor information) of U.S. theatres within the aftermath of the homicide of George Floyd.
What’s subsequent: Cisco is engaged on a lot of tasks with Stardust Films, the manufacturing firm based by Common, which can also be consulting on the way forward for NSangou Njikam’s play Syncing Ink.
What makes her particular: Garlia Cornelia Jones, who labored as a producer with Cisco each on the National Black Theatre and on the Public Theater, stated that her colleague has “an attentive firmness that allows artists to be supported and seen,” including, “Marie is a problem solver. She listens, and I have found Marie to be an empathetic ear.”
Pivot with love: Cisco loves producing, i.e., creating “spaces for artists to do their best work,” however in recent times she has felt the joys ebbing as the sector “lost sight of the values that brought us to the proscenium in the first place.” The subject she want to construct is one “where the structures and systems we build hold the capacity for compassionate leadership and the bravery to pivot when things simply aren’t working. I envision a field where we experience theatre not to judge and critique but to observe and understand the varied perspectives of others. Until then, we keep doing the work, and in all things lead with love.”
Yvonne Miranda (she/her)
Profession: Costume designer
Hometown: Dallas
Current Home: Chicago
Known for: Her in depth costume work has been featured in Scene Shift journal, proven in an exhibit at Texas’s McNay Art Museum, and garnered such honors as 2019 Black Theatre Network’s Judy Dearing Student Costume Design Competition, 2019 SMU’s Taubman Scholarship, and the 2018 Television Academy Costume Design Internship. In 2019, she additionally designed the “Big Tex” T-shirt for the Texas State Fair.
What’s subsequent: In May she’s going to design for her first Off-Broadway manufacturing, The Knight of the Burning Pestle with Red Bull Theatre and Fiasco Theatre, and in March and April she’s going to design her first August Wilson, a co-production of Seven Guitars by Milwaukee Rep and Cincinnati Playhouse within the Park.
What makes her particular: Kevin Moriarty, who’s directing Into the Woods at Dallas Theater Center within the spring, raved about Miranda, who’s doing the costumes for the present, “Every director in the American theatre should know Yvonne. Her designs can move from exquisite recreations of highly researched times past to bold, fantastical, highly theatrical designs.” Her earlier productions at DTC included her
“breathtakingly beautiful version of Our Town and an all-out creative tour-de-force production of The Odyssey…I am in awe of Yvonne, who can efficiently manage 100 fittings and bring the show in on budget, while also creating work that is witty, creative, and visionary.”
Heard and seen: A veteran of navy and company America, Miranda counts herself fortunate to work within the theatre, the place “my collaborators actually listen and appreciate my voice. I’ve never been so heard or seen before as an individual in my life, and it’s a wonderful sensation to finally find my tribe.”
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