FELLOWSHIP FAM
2023 FELLOWS
Alex Carson (she/her) is a writer and podcast producer. Originally from Michigan, she currently lives in Washington State after a decade in Portland, Oregon. Alex earned her BA in acting from Columbia College Chicago, and completed most of an MFA at the Actors Studio in NYC. After obtaining a yoga teacher certification and working as a senior writer for YogaCityNYC, she lived in Berlin for a year on an artist visa. There she was chosen to represent her adopted city and write for a global craft summit in Copenhagen with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
After moving to Portland, she wrote her first feature-length screenplay, Pocket Girl, and directed its proof-of-concept movie trailer. The screenplay won two awards, and she’s currently turning it into a novel.
She wrote and produced the Pocket Girl Podcast with Robert Ouimet, and writes and produces My Acronym Life, a podcast about healing from complex trauma (CPTSD). She’s also writing a memoir on CPTSD.
During the work week, Alex writes and designs in the tech world. Her favorite projects are chatbots and voice AI, and she’s passionate about making digital tools that are accessible, inclusive, and ethical.
More than anything, she wants to create work that helps people with CPTSD find their voice and learn to thrive.
Alex Rubin (she/her) is the kind of person that wants a coffee chat to last three hours and listens to true crime podcasts before bed.
She began her career in theater, taking a gap year after high school to serve as an apprentice for The New 42nd Street Project/New Victory Theatre. She earned her BFA in Theatre Direction from Hofstra University and, upon graduating, put herself through an unofficial secondary BFA by taking playwriting classes all over New York City and winning a spot in BMI’s Lehman Engle Musical Theatre Workshop as a lyricist. She’s the recipient of the 85th Annual Writers Digest Award in Playwriting, the Big Vision Empty Wallet Playwriting Fellowship, and residencies at SPACE on Ryder and HBMG’s National Winter Playwrights Retreat. Her plays and musicals have been produced across the US, Canada, Mexico, and the UK.
Alex completed her MFA in Writing for Film & Television at The University of Southern California’s School for Cinematic Arts where she received the Harold Lloyd Scholarship and Annenberg Graduate Fellowship. During that time, she wrote for iHeart Radio’s “Solve” and PEG’s “Jackie Cox Variety Show.” She’s placed in competitions including Final Draft Big Break, Austin Film Festival, and ScreenCraft.
She was selected for the 2021 WIF/Blacklist Episodic Lab with her pilot “Lost Hope Hotel” and is one of ISA’s 25 Screenwriters to watch in 2023.
Alex was the Showrunner’s Assistant/Script Coordinator for Amazon’s upcoming series “The Horror of Dolores Roach” and is the current Writers Room Assistant on Netflix’s “Sweet Magnolias.”
Photograph by Michael Hull
Ayana Ayo (she/they) is an independent art & cultural worker whose New York City upbringing has heavily inspired & motivated her career path. She believes in the transformative power of art to impact the socio-emotional and intellectual development of individuals and society, and has remained committed to spreading and fostering these ideas and values.
Since 2016, Ayana Ayo has carved out a niche for herself bringing her art administrative experience to the street art sphere to produce and coordinate initiatives for various organizations & corporations whether it be a nomadic nonprofit to an international street art focused human rights campaign. Other prominent clients have included Lyft, TIAA and the US Census Bureau.
She has an BA in American Studies & Organizational Management from Claremont McKenna College, is a graduate of the UPENN & National Art Strategies Executive Program in Arts & Culture and was a 2018 Singapore International Foundation Arts for Good Fellow. In 2020, she founded Let’s Paint in August to launch her own curatorial public art initiatives and partnered with urban arts nonprofit, Hi-ARTS to co-create The One Wall Movement – the only mural initiative of its kind centering the voices of BIPOC & women muralists & street artists.
Photograph by Laurie Markiewicz
Brandon Rumaker (they/them) is a Non-Binary, Queer playwright based in New York City, born and raised in the Hudson Valley. Their work explores how to make the epic intimate and the intimate epic, often touching on themes of sexuality, mental health, shame, and reckoning with the past through a fantastical lens.
They have developed work as part of the DTA Draft One Festival (2022), Exquisite Corpse Company’s Writing Lab (2022) and Broadviews on Broadway (2019). Recipient of the Stillwright Retreat (2022).
Their work has been shown at Prime Produce, The Rochester Fringe, and the historic leather bar, The Eagle, produced by National Queer Theatre. Semi-finalist: Pipeline PlayLab (2022). Beyond writing, Brandon can be found reading tarot or volunteering as a peer counselor for Identity House, a service for LGBTQIA2S+ peoples. Proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Photograph by Maya Louis
Camila Galaz (she/her) is an Australian artist of Chilean descent based in New York. Working in video, text, and drawing, her multimodal research-based practice looks to understand how intimate connections to history exist through personal narratives, social media, collective memory, and cultural texts. She often plays with the perceived intimacy of direct speech, journal entries, correspondence, ephemera, and annotations, alongside elements such mistranslation and reenactment to create slippages between fact and fiction, past and present.
Recent projects include: a reenactment of “Crocodile Dundee III” through Instagram for Outback Arthouse, Los Angeles (“Dead End. Brilliant.”); a meta-analysis of Camus’ “The Plague” (“Unwelcome Visitant”); and an interactive web-based documentary on Chilean socialist computer histories for External Pages, London (“REDES: bread and justice, peaches and bananas”). Her experimental documentary “Vecino Vecino” exploring intergenerational legacies of the Chilean dictatorship and developed through a residency at EMPAC, New York, has screened at festivals in New York, Chile, Peru, and Argentina. She is a contributing editor of the Millennium Film Journal and co-hosts the technology history podcast Our Friend the Computer supported by the Media Archaeology Lab, University of Colorado.
Photograph by Mandee Johnson
Cris Eli Blak (he/him) is an emerging playwright whose work has been produced Off-Broadway and around the country; on university stages (Columbia University, Northwestern University, New York University); as well as in London, Australia, Ireland, and Canada.
He is the winner of the Black Broadway Men Playwriting Initiative, the artist in residence at the State University of New York - Oswego, the recipient of the Emerging Playwrights Fellowship from The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre and a resident playwright with Yonder Window Theatre Company and Pipeline Theatre Company. He was a resident playwright with Fosters Theatrical Artists Residency, Paterson Performing Arts Development Council and La Lengua Teatro en Español/AlterTheater Ensemble; the recipient of the Michael Bradford Residency from Quick Silver Theatre Company; was in the inaugural class of fellows for the Black Theatre Coalition, and is currently a commissioned artist developing work for We Hear You: A Climate Archive with the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden, the Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival, and the Pikeville City Commission . His work has been published by Smith & Kraus, Inc., Applause Books, New World Theatre, Breath of Fire Latina Theater Ensemble, and in the Black Theatre Review.
Danny Rocco (née Mitarotondo) (he/him) is an LA-based playwright with the sole ambition to push the craft of playwriting forward. Born in New Jersey to his single, indefatigable mother and raised by the wonderful, overlapping tongue of his Italian family the Rocco’s, he was inspired to write by his former mentor Edward Albee. His work has been developed and produced in New York, Los Angeles, Cape Cod, Colorado, Romania, at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and most recently at the Irondale Theater Center.
In 2013, Danny and director Shannon Fillion formed Brontosaurus Haircut Productions, a company devoted to producing plays written in “the Score,” a sheet music-inspired format that allows for acrobatic and layered dialogue with large casts. This work has defined his career for the past decade and was the subject of a residency at the Atlantic Acting School from 2015 to 2020, where Danny was commissioned to write new plays annually. His play What the Sparrow Said is now a short film, directed by Tim Guinee, executive produced by Anson Mount (@SparrowTheMovie). Danny received a grant from the Arctic Circle and the Jeffrey L. Simons Foundation to further develop the Score in the high Arctic this April 2023. He is a Yaddo resident artist, an Edward F. Albee Fellow and a graduate of NYU’s Gallatin School and Columbia University’s School of the Arts with an MFA in playwriting. He works on the creative team of screenwriters Joshua John Miller and M.A. Fortin in LA. Follow him @dwrocco617.
Photograph by Monica Vilela
EGD Collective
By day, Kyra Wills-Umdenstock (any) is the Center of Excellence Administrator and Industry Liaison for NYU Game Center at Tisch School of the Arts - and by night, they run the EGD Collective as board chair and CEO. They are a games industry nomad, having been involved in games education, events, QA, sound design, esports, and marketing for 10 years. They worked with Games for Change, the Paley Center for Media, BrookLAN, Super League Gaming, Game Builders Academy, the Brooklyn Children's Museum, and many more - but their favorite gig was being a professional Jackbox Party Pack player for NYXL, and their most notable achievement was getting to pet SonicFox's dog while working East Coast Throwdown: The Pit. They were honored in 2021 by the Game Awards as a part of Future Class, are also a recipient of the JBL Quantum Grant, AnyKey Changemakers Grant, and Girl Scout Gold Award. Kyra currently serves on Mayor Adams's NYC Game Development Industry Council, created to advise the city's policies and programs in the games development sector alongside executives from Microsoft, Zynga, Rockstar, and Take-Two. They are also the Chair of the International Game Developers Association Student SIG. Kyra’s most recent publication is Just Esports, a handbook on diversity, equity, and inclusion in collegiate gaming for university administrators, student leaders, and esports directors that they co-authored.
Skye Guan (he/they) is an artist, educator, and storyteller that manifests worlds infused with the unending depths of thought and love through visual art and games. Born in Guangzhou but raised in New York City, he grew up seeing and feeling the differences actual and constructed between people and pondered the philosophies of self and others, which make their way into his writing and games. As a queer immigrant and the first of their family to attend college, he grew to enjoy both the pursuit of knowledge in academia and the pursuit of soul in art. Based in New York, they earned a Bachelor's in Game Studies from CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies. Skye joined the EGD Collective as an undergraduate student before developing and committing to game development as a medium for art and human experience. He is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Game Design from Lindenwood University while teaching undergraduate students about game design and development as the Program Manager at the EGD Collective.
Daquan Griffith (he/him) is a game design student who specializes in programming, design, and music/SFX. He is currently studying through CUNY Baccalaureate for Interdisciplinary Studies, as a part of EGD Collective's Game Studio Program Fellowship. He also serves as Development Coordinator for EGD. Daquan is also an Assistant Teaching Artist for Urban Arts' School of Interactive Arts. Previously, he was a design intern for the MTA, as well as part of the 2020 cohort of NYU Tisch School of the Arts' Future Game Designers Program.
Jaimes Mayhew (he/they) is a transgender artist who makes participatory, interdisciplinary work that addresses identity and how it is expressed through land use, speculation and ecology. From installation, photography and video to fiber art and performance, Mayhew’s work is conceptually tied together through experimentations of queering relationships between humans, places and things.
Jaimes’ collaborative and solo work has been shown at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Eyebeam (New York City), Mass MoCa (Massachusetts), Conflux Festival (Brooklyn), The Chapel of St. Cecilia (Brooklyn, NY), This Is Not a Gateway (London), 808 Gallery (Boston), The Transmodern Festival (Baltimore, MD), Goucher College (Baltimore, MD), George Mason University (Fairfax, VA), Hoffmannsgallerí (Reykjavík, Iceland) among others. He has received grants and fellowships from The Fulbright Commission of Iceland, Maryland State Arts Council, Rubys Artist Grants, The Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund and Provisions Library, among others.
Reviews of their work have appeared in Hyperallergic, Art Papers, and The Creators Project, among others. An article about Mayhew’s work titled “Performing Trans Ontology: The Body (and Body of Work) of Jaimes Mayhew” was published in the academic journal Feminist Frontiers in late 2020. In the the Fall of 2021, a book chapter of Mayhew’s was published in “Out of Place: Artists Pedagogy and Practice”, edited by Zoë Charlton and Tim Doud.
Mayhew holds an MFA in Intermedia and Digital Art from University of Maryland Baltimore County. Mayhew is a Lecturer at University of Vermont.
Photograph by Mike Morgan
Mar Hwa Wei (Marlynn Wei, MD, JD) (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, board-certified psychiatrist, certified yoga teacher, and author. She is an expert contributor to UX Magazine, Psychology Today, Huffington Post, and Harvard Health and is the coauthor of The Harvard Medical School Guide to Yoga.
Her interactive immersive performance Elixir: Digital Immortality has been developed at Pipeline Theatre’s Playspace artist residency in 2020 and presented at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge in 2021.
Her research interests include human-AI collaboration, empathic design, existential tech, and emerging neurotechnology. Inspired by her studies in philosophy, medical ethics, and the intersection of science and technology, she aims to create “thought experiences” that expand our notions of mortality, legacy-making, self-actualization, and authenticity.
Her work explores existential questions, ancient rituals, and spirituality through the lens of technology. How does one find authenticity, mindful connection, and meaning in today’s world? She has a holistic psychotherapy private practice in New York City.
Photograph by David Wei
Orode Faka (she/her) is a community artist, theatre maker and writer. Director of R.O.C.K.S! International Arts (Responsibility, Ownership, Community and Sustainability), an interdisciplinary artist collective committed to using their crafts to spark new ideas and innovate proactive and sustainable actions in the practice of arts for social change.
Orode is passionate about bringing creativity, innovation and enjoyment in learning and used this approach to work in a diverse range of mainstream and alternative education settings and community groups.
She is currently a resident Teaching Artist at a local primary school as well as establishing Roehampton R.O.C.K.S, a community arts space on her housing estate that provides creative arts programs to children and the local community.
So Mak (they/them) cuts hair.
They are a queer, gender non-conforming, Hong Kong Chinese American interdisciplinary artist and educator who graduated from Arrojo Barbering Academy in 2021, and has been cutting professionally as “Cuts by So” since then. On the surface, hair is just hair… but when someone sits in a salon chair, the barber becomes part of their journey to look the way that they want to look, which for queer and trans people of color, can feel like the longest path. So takes on the spirit of a confidante, a guide, an architect, supporting their community in navigating the trickiness of “feeling good about how you look”, in all its pain and joy. In this FORGE fellowship, they are working to combine the functionality of the cut with their background in education, where they also provide gender coaching and hair care education to individuals, as well as gender expansive training to salons and shops. Outside of hair cutting, So holds an MA in Art and Public Policy from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and has over 15 years of teaching and facilitation experience in nonprofits, schools, universities, and collectives. So’s creative performance practice is rooted in the body as a site of knowledge and infinite awakenings, in which they investigate gender, sexuality, race, intergenerational trauma, and family/ancestry, drawing from their own life experiences. They are currently one half of the performance duo So + Bex. Learn more about So’s artistic practice at somak.work and soandbex.com
Photograph by Carlos David
T. Carlis Roberts (he/him) is an artist and scholar who engages sound as a tool for transformation and liberation. His professional work has straddled theater, film, television, dance, performance art, music, and education. As a composer, sound designer, and music director, T has worked around the U.S. at theaters including Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, About Face Theatre, San Jose Repertory Theater, California Shakespeare Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. As a songwriter and performer, T appeared on the Grammy-nominated album THE LOVE by Alphabet Rockers, wrote original music for the Starz series VIDA, and toured the country in A QUEER STORY OF THE BOY BAND, a theatrical concert he co-created with QTPOC boy band The Singing Bois.
T is co-founder of the Spiritual Technologies Project, a research and performance consortium that explores the metaphysical dimensions of African diasporic music, and author of multiple books and articles on music, identity, and cultural politics. T is also a teacher, most recently serving as Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at UC Berkeley.
Photograph by Catrina Marchetti
Vickie Yu-ping Wang (she/her) is a translator-turned-writer and model-turned-standup-comedian from Taipei, Taiwan. She just moved to New York after nearly 10 years in Shanghai, China with her 3 cats, Tigger, Nutella, and the Abyss. She worked as a writer and editor for Disney, LEGO, and Gensler, and is working on a book on Taiwanese identity and creativity under censorship. Or a comedy special. It can really go either way.
2022 FELLOWS
Burly Babes Union (all her/she like the chocolate) are first & foremost black womxn performers. We all stepped into Burlesques from a wide variety of experiences.
RSK, risk, comes from the organizing, herbalist & poetry world. She is our Harriet (Tubman), guiding us through the underground art & movement scene to find our abundant future.
Bleu Pearl is a pole dancer, chef, and herbalist that pursues creative entrepreneurship for her children to experience a new world. She is “A Man of the People '' and an oracle guiding us in principled struggle.
Cocoa Kitt is our next-door neighbor turned showgirl. She grounds the collective in the historical and cultural relevance for burlesque. Cocoa Kitt is our guiding star that has been waiting her whole life to have her name in lights. We create a network of meridians that allow a natural relationship between performers and the entertainment community to flow, develop, and support one another.
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Daura Campos (she/her) is a Latinx, self-taught, lens-based artist based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Her photographic practice challenges traditional image-making processes, revealing itself as more than a meta-commentary with a subtext that prompts broader conversations on the implications of existing in a dissident body.
She was a convener of the 2021 Hemi Convergence at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics of the New York University and the University of Chicago. Recently, she was an artist in residence at the Roundtable Residency and was awarded the CuratorSpace Artist Bursary #13 and the Heather B. Mattera Opportunity Scholarship by StrudelmediaLive.
Her most recent project "Secret Visibility" has been exhibited at Whippersnapper Gallery, Angelica Kauffman Gallery, Geis Gallery and in 2022 will be shown at Gallery 44. Daura's "What the Luck" series was awarded by Adolescent and exhibited in Experimental Photo Festival, Humble Arts Foundation and was displayed on billboards in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Toronto. Earlier works have been published globally on Curated by Girls, Container Love, The Soon Project, and others.
Photograph by Rafaela Urbanin
Amy Conway (she/her) is an artist, writer, comedian, and farmer who lives in Portland, Or with her spouse, two kids, two cats and four ducks. She is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work tends towards reflections of the personal. Amy earned her MFA in Applied Craft & Design from Oregon College of Art and Craft and Pacific Northwest College of Art 2013.
In 2020 she and her family moved to a half acre space in SE Portland and started building Ramona Street Art Farm, a space that seeks to be a food source for their neighborhood and community as well as a performance and residency space for artists and creators. Amy started studying and performing improv comedy in 2015 both as an effort to help ease her social anxiety and to help her learn to speak more easily and freely.
In 2017 and 2018 began producing both comedy shows and creating a city-wide, comedy-focused fundraising platform called Comedy Really Cares raising funds for local non-profits. Amy usually attends one residency per year as an opportunity to focus on new work, learn new skills, engage with other artists, explore new places and to break the patterns of daily parenthood while truly sitting in the creative parts of her brain.
Nicole Hill (she/her/goddess) is a classically trained actress (and all around clown) who has worked on Broadway and Off, both off-stage and on. In addition to numerous NY credits she has toured regionally, most notably as standby for “Da Singer '' in the First National Tour of Savion Glover’s “Bring in Da Noise Bring Da Funk”. Nicole’s work touring abroad has spanned from Europe to Africa, where she debuted her one woman show, “All Up in a White Woman’s Closet” as part of the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe. Nicole has also entertained audiences in Zimbabwe and Johannesburg, with stops in Mauritius and Zambia along the way, as the holiday favorite “Miss Saucy Claus.” Rounding out her time in Africa Nicole was fortunate enough to utilize her background in the arts to create programming for the Rockefeller Foundation and to work with Oprah Winfrey's Angel Network via the NGO Africa Loves Babies. Nicole is a member of the NY Neo Futurists and the recipient of the 2014 New York Innovative Theater Award for outstanding innovative design for her work in shadow puppetry. Current projects as writer/producer/lyricist include the musical podcast: “The Misadventures of Clown ZerO '' and the web series: “Escape From Boo-Boo-Ville (a child-like show for grown-ass folk!)” For more visit www.Clown-Hero.com
Photo by Lorikay Photography
Katrina Majkut (she/they) (pronounced: My’kut), a visual artist and writer, is dedicated to understanding how social traditions impact civil and social rights. She uniquely pushes the boundaries of observational painting by using embroidery as a painting medium to create form or challenge its inherent social bias and history. Majkut exhibits nationally in both commercial and college galleries, where she lectures on gender issues, art activism, and textile arts.
In 2022, she will be a Wassaic Projects Family Fellow, an Emmanuel College Social Practice art resident, with a solo show at Delta State University (MS). In 2021, she exhibited in the Bronx Museum Biennial, Every Women NFT Biennial, Dorksy Museum, Museum of Craft and Design (SF), Alma College (solo) (MI), Untitled Space Gallery, and Kleinert/James Center for the Arts in Woodstock, NY. She also curated her first booth at Spring Break Art Show. In 2020, she curated at Dinner Gallery, exhibited at Smack Mellon (NY) and the Abortion is Normal exhibit at Eva Presenhuber/Arsenal Gallery (NY). Her residencies include the Bronx Museum AIM Fellowship, Feminist Incubator Residency at Project for Empty Space (NJ), Jentel, and Mass MoCA. She has exhibited in over 30 college galleries. Majkut published her first non-fiction book, The Adventures and Discoveries of A Feminist Bride (2018), which aims to make weddings more egalitarian. Majkut earned her BA from Babson College and her MFA from SMFA at Tufts University. She lives and works in New York.
Cameron Peagler (he/him) is a photographer from Dayton, Ohio and is currently based in Japan. Originally he worked as a seasoned registered nurse specializing in surgery and psychology. He now works towards serving others with photography. Through the power of visual images, his goal is to reveal social disparities, create inspiration, and illuminate individuals' truths to do the maximum good in an ever changing world.
Cameron also has experience with event coordination and public speaking as a former Gilman Ambassador, fencing on a national level in both America and Japan, editing as the former head community editor for AJET's CONNECT magazine, and teaching English as a secondary language on the JET Program. When he isn't busy taking photos, you can find him lost figuring out why his Pikachu still hasn't evolved or learning how to make the best hand brewed coffee.
Jules Rosskam (he/him) is an internationally award-winning filmmaker, educator and 2021 Creative Capital Awardee. His interdisciplinary practice works to induce a perceptual shift in our understanding of how and what bodies mean, toward an apprehension of multiplicities. His most recent feature-length documentary, Paternal Rites (2018), premiered at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight and went on to win several festival awards. He is also the director of Dance, Dance, Evolution (2019), Something to Cry About (2018), Thick Relations (2012), against a trans narrative (2009), and transparent (2005).
His work has been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Art Boston, the British Film Institute, Arsenal Berlin, Anthology Film Archives, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, the Queens Museum of Art, the Museum of Moving Images, and hundreds of film festivals worldwide. He has participated in residencies at Yaddo, ISSUE Project Room, Marble House, PLAYA and ACRE. Rosskam is also a fine artist whose paintings, installations, and performances have shown in galleries and venues throughout the U.S. and Europe. Additionally, he is a noted lecturer, speaker, and professor who has held positions at Hampshire College, SUNY Old Westbury, and Indiana University—Purdue, Fort Wayne. He is currently assistant professor of visual arts at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Photo by Jules Rosskam
Amy Lai Zhang (she/her) is a writer, producer, and civically engaged artist hailing from Beijing, Virginia, Hong Kong, and New York City. She served as a producer on Netflix’s Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, where she pitched and produced episodes on Chinese feminists and Indian cricket scandals. Before, she worked in arts education and community engagement at the National Medal of Arts winning documentary theater company Ping Chong + Company.
Amy’s fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Jellyfish Review, Atlas Obscura, and Catapult. Her TV pilot “Black Vinegar” was a 2016 Fox Writer’s Lab Semifinalist. For two years, she worked with emerging writers as the non-fiction editor for Hyphen magazine. In 2021, through a NYC Artist Corps grant, she co-directed, wrote, and performed in “Ascend!” a play sourced from interviews with Asian women in America, which combined storytelling, drumming, and movement.
Amy is passionate about education and has created and taught classes across literature, writing, and documentary at many institutions, including Great Books at Stanford University and Dalton School.
With a team of organizers, Amy led a creative Chinatown fundraising community project that sent $60,000 to NYC’s Chinese small businesses in the early weeks of the pandemic. She then directed the creation of Small Business Hub, an online platform that provided crucial information to Sunset Park’s immigrant businesses, which Councilman Menchaca called the “gold standard in community engagement platforms.”
In 2019, Amy was named one of “25 Under 25 Leaders in U.S.-China Relations” by Yale’s China Hands magazine. She graduated with honors from Wesleyan University.
2021 FELLOWS
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Jen Anaya (they/them) is a theater/music/art/ritual space maker, doula, energy healer and baby whisperer born and raised in the desert of Yavapaiv Apache, Cocopah and O'odham land. A proud jack of all trades, they have performed in rock bands, web series, art installations, plays, operas, films, solo shows, healing rituals and musicals throughout NYC, the country and the world. From La Mama to The Kitchen, Harvard Art Lab to Radio City Music Hall, the mountains of Greece to Harpa in Iceland. A founding member of Constellation Chor, Jen has been weaving music, theater, art, movement and healing together every chance they get. Pre-covid, Jen was honored to inhabit the role of Mariposa in En Garde Arts' Fandango For Butterlies (and Coyotes) at La Mama. A love letter to their immigrant parents and those currently suffering the horrific consequences of a cruel and broken immigration system. Post-covid they've done the zoom dance as an actor, singer, instrumentalist and sound healing practitioner with San Diego REP, San Francisco's PlayGround, Rhinebeck Writer's Retreat, The Tank and Broadway Advocacy Coalition. They are a certified Reiki and 13th Octave La Ho Chi practitioner. Jen is currently working on a script for a children's show, an EP, and an immersive mutli-disciplinary piece that focuses on the possibilities of healing intergenerational trauma. AEA SAG-AFTRA jenanaya.com
Photo by Tia Byington
Esteban Bailey (he/him) is a Puerto Rican filmmaker and NYU Tisch graduate. In 2019 he was chosen to be apart of NYU’s Production Lab Development Studio, where he wrote a Puerto Rican horror film titled “The Maboya” that received an 8 from a Black List evaluator and subsequently trended on the platform. He has been as an associate producer/script consultant on several feature length documentaries, while also working in the digital media space as a freelance video editor. He has also worked for Martin Scorsese and Darren Aronofsky as an intern in their respective production companies.
Zeelie Brown’s first art museum was the pine woods in Alabama. She makes Black, queer refuges called "soulscapes", borne from this sense of wilderness. Soulscapes are a gumbo melding sound, cello performance, installation, electronic, culinary, textile, process and performance art. These media, these soul-foods simmer together with the Alabama folk arts they learned as a child on their rural homestead to, somewhere deep within the viewer, lay a road down home.
Soulscapes are refuge: refuge from centuries of state ordained theft and genocide sculpting, financing, and informing the very concept of art; refuge expressly for Black, queer people; refuge from hatred and ignorance that threatens to drown the land her ancestors are buried on; refuge from those whose wallets grow fat from selling black communities downriver; refuge.
Soulscapes live in-between the river and the sea, in rage, in salvation, in domesticity, in the blues, in creoles, in sweet lies told with a smile and crooked teeth, in gris-gris and mojo hands. Soulscapes live at dangerous, shifting crossroads because when you are born Black in America you are born nailed to the cross.
Soulscapes do a whole lotta shit cuz they have to.
Soulscapes live in the break.
Zeelie makes music that lives in the break, too.
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Cooperativa Cultural 19 de Enero (CC 1/19) is a wandering art and oral transmissions collaboration committed to generating spaces that document and circulate the voices at the margins of colonial grammar. As a multidisciplinary project, our call is to intervene spaces through memories that are born in orality and seldom make it to circulation beyond geopolitical, epistemic, ontological, and embodied borders. We recognize the different ways of communication that were oppressed and excluded by and in favor of the colonial enterprise. To us, that means centering the experience, knowledge, and ways of those navigating from the margins as a result of these historic injustices, circulating perspectives of those moving through rural to urban spaces, and from the global south to the global north.
Raul Ayala (he/him) is a visual artist and educator working primarily in public spaces and usually aiming for collaborative and co-creative processes. Since 2006 Ayala has been drawing, painting, creating installations and public art with an array of different materials and mediums, reflecting and questioning hegemonic regimes of history and colonialism. Ayala is the recipient of the 2013 Create Change Fellowship of The Laundromat Project, the 2014 NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program and had a full merit scholarship in the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, where he was awarded a Master of Fine Art degree in 2020 and continues to teach. As part of his process as an artist/educator, Ayala has been part and co-founded collectives in Ecuador and the US. With those collective efforts Ayala have been the recipient of the 2015 Create Change Commissions Artist award of The Laundromat Project, the 2016 Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Grant and Residency and the 2020 MDOCS Storyteller Institute Residency.
Fernanda Espinosa (she/her) is an oral history-based practitioner, independent oral historian, and cultural organizer based in the New York area and in Ecuador. She approaches storytelling as one of the many ways of transmitting knowledge and her analysis and practice are deeply embedded in interrogating colonial standards, including story forms and language. Since 2014 she has been generating, listening to, and interpreting oral histories to inform creative public interventions that aspire to act as platforms for resistance and dialogue. Fernanda holds a degree in Oral History from Columbia University, where her thesis was awarded the 2018 Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Award, she has worked leading community partnerships with StoryCorps, and interviewing for projects at the Smithsonian and at Columbia University. Fernanda is the co-founder and coordinator of Cooperativa Cultural 19 de enero (CC 1/19), a wandering art and oral transmissions collaboration, recipient of a 2015 commission and a 2020 Creative Fund Award by The Laundromat Project, and of the 2020 MDOC Storyteller's Institute Fellowship.
Photos by Fernanda Espinosa
Abdul Goler (he/him), sometimes referred to as Abdul Michael Goler (AMG) is an educator and life-long learner, trained museum professional, writer and critical thinker, and certified Project Management Professional. Above all else AMG is a storyteller and collector of ephemera with a deep interest in historical processes and digging through archives. As a curriculum designer the materials collected act as a means to creatively tackle difficult subject matter in concrete form and is often used to actually create the works of art. Most of the collaborative work done in schools used primary materials as the fulcrum to investigate historical events.
Britt Elizabeth Verstegen (she/her) is a creator, a translator, an integrator, and an explainer. Currently, she works as an online ESL teacher to adult students around the world while completing a master’s degree in addiction counseling. Britt enjoys taking the stories and concerns of others and crafting them into forms that can be easily understood by people of dissimilar backgrounds. In her process, Britt uses poetry, prose, interviews, graphic design, photography, drama, music, humor, and role-playing. She values the contributions of others and she is passionate about helping people find their voice. Her life mission is to help people unveil their own innate capacity and contribute to the greater conversation.
Esco Jouléy is an actor, singer, dancer, clown, movement artist, and creator located in New York City. Esco is a Penn State University graduate with a BA in Integrative Arts and a minor in Dance. Esco also graduated from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in NYC. Esco was awarded the Robert J. Prindle and Doris P. Prindle Memorial Award and the Lauren M. Becker Memorial Award in creative art. Esco was a resident actor at the historic Barter Theater for three and a half years. Since moving back to New York in 2015, some of Esco's credits include: Sundance TV (State Of The Union), Starz (BlindSpotting), McDonalds National Commercial, HBO (High Maintenance), Netflix (Inventing Anna,) Bravo (In A Mans World- Movement Coach, ABC (Showcase NYC), Interstate (Carly), Runaways (Esco), Galatea (Chorus), The Demise (Magic Theater Player), Beowolf (Warrior). As a movement artist, Esco is the creator and performer of “One”, a mute character that lives in the same world as the great artists Charlie Chaplin, Burt Williams, and Harpo Marx. Esco has used this character to explore the language of movement and how one would communicate with people if one could not speak. More information about Esco and their work can be found at escojouley.com, @escojouley, onezlife.com, and @onezlife.
Photo by Iris Aperture
Born in India, brought up in New York, Barkha Patel (she/her) stays deeply connected to her cultural roots through her artistic practice as a kathak dancer, choreographer, educator, and the Artistic Director of Barkha Dance Company. She has trained in kathak both in India and New Jersey for over two decades with renowned kathak maestros and has a Master’s in Performing Arts from Kalidasa Sanskrit University.
A touring artist, Barkha has performed at dance festivals in India to the U.S. Barkha recently created an ensemble work called Mukta, A Woman Liberated, which was in residency at the Center for Flamenco Arts and has presented at numerous festivals in NYC. She has been nationally recognized for her work: she completed a choreographic fellowship with the N.J.P.A.C., received a 2020 Fellow with the N.J. Council on the Arts, and is Dance/USA Institute for Leadership mentee.
Barkha teaches young and adult students. Acknowledging the lack of community for kathak dancers in NYC, Barkha co-founded a kathak meetup group. The meetup started in January 2020 as an inclusive space for kathak dancers to practice and discuss crucial topics to the art form.
Amanda Wenger (she/her) is a Houston-based writer, comedian, and oral storyteller with a background in critical care nursing. Pre-COVID, she was a fixture at The Moth Live: StorySLAM and a guest storyteller on local KPFT radio program “So What’s Your Story?” She has performed standup comedy sets at the Houston Fringe Festival and the Queer Narratives Festival hosted by No Divide Kansas City. Amanda has attended creative residencies at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences and the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods to work on her first young adult novel; she will attend upcoming residencies at Greywood Arts, Wildacres Retreat, and In Cahoots. Her accolades include the Gulf Coast Community Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), the Yuyi Morales Diversity Scholarship from the Children’s Book Academy, and a Joan Lowery Nixon Award nomination. She is a current Writers’ League of Texas Fellow and a graduate of both Artist INC and The Writing Barn’s Rainbow Weekend Workshop. Her novel manuscript was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest. Connect with her at amandawenger.com or via @wengerwrites on Twitter and Instagram.
Photo by Payton Hartsell
Courtney Young (she/her) is a writer and entrepreneur from Southwest Louisiana. Her work has been published in the Jellyfish Review, The American Prospect and the Nation. She is the founder of Think Young Media Group, a boutique firm that creates film, TV and documentary projects. She is also the founder of the Mae Fellowship, a virtual accelerator, incubator and residency that provides financial and professional support to women seeking to publish their first book. She is a graduate of Spelman College and New York University. She is highly proficient in French.
Website: www.thinkyoungmedia.com
Twitter: @cocacy. @thinkyoungmedia
Instagram: @ccarlissyoung
Newsletter: themood.substack.com
Trevor Zhou (he/him) is a writer/director/actor living in LA. Made in China and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he found solace in the arts and rebelled against his parent’s stereotypical encouragement toward medicine. He studied Chinese Studies, Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Michigan. It didn’t make his parents proud but it did arm him with the foundational tools of storytelling and the curiosity to examine the world around him.
He got into acting when he was serendipitously cast as a "real person" in a national commercial saying the word "trains." Reviews of his performance were favorable. Having successfully avoided fame and fortune thus far, he’s instead found a love of storytelling and has been using his own experiences to create very personal stories.
His most recent short thriller/horror, Out of Order, is currently on the festival circuit, enjoying its world premiere in Bali and selected as a semi-finalist at the Burbank International Film Festival. He's also the cinematographer for the documentary, Charivari: A Fashion Uproar. Trevor is currently working his directorial feature debut, Ann Arbor, a bittersweet love letter to his home town.
Other things he's gotten into during the quarantine: coffee roasting, writing letters with fountain pens, developing photos in the darkroom, solo dance parties, collecting houseplants and coming up with great dad jokes like the one below:
Q: Why do cows have big butts? A: Because of the dairy air.
Photo by Jamie McCarthy (Getty Images)
SELECTION PANelists
Vicky Blume (she/her) is usually biking, writing, or making art somewhere in New Haven, Connecticut. After moving to the city to study sculpture and psychology at Yale, Blume lit up communications for a community arts school and a contemporary arts gallery. During the pandemic, she apprenticed at a sculptural design studio that provides installation and fabrication services to artists across the tristate area. Most recently, she served as Creative-in-Residence at the New Haven Library's Tinker Lab, where she developed an entrepreneurial curriculum for artists. Now, Blume is on a new adventure, creating educational content for an online audience of over 250k arts workers. Her employer, Fractured Atlas, supports artists in accessing capital through fiscal sponsorship, educational resources, fundraising platforms, and more.
Joanna Carpenter (she/her) is an Asian-American actor, educator, and organizer based in New York City, with twenty years in hospitality helping shape who she has been and who she wants to be next. She is (*takes deep breath*): the co-founder of hospitality advocacy group Save NYC Bars, the founder of 86 the Barrier, the creator of "Our Vote, Our New York", a classically trained soprano, the voice of too many commercials to count, and she does her own stunts. Her love languages are homemade dumplings, fighting back against systems of oppression, and teaching others about the indisputable value of their own voice. Find her at @thejoannac for cat content and probably motorcycles.
Brea Clemons (they/them) decided to pursue a career in theater and graduated with distinction from the University of Oklahoma with a BFA in stage management with an emphasis in nonprofit administration. In 2014, she began her professional career in the arts and started as an assistant stage manager on a production of A Year with Frog & Toad at the Coterie Theater in Kansas City. After discovering a love for theater, she went on to stage manage over 40 productions all over the Midwest. Some of the companies she's worked for include The Oklahoma City Philharmonic, The Beijing Normal Experimental Dance Company, and Music Theatre Kansas City. Brea relocated to New York City and began a career in administration that included being the Assistant Director of Operations at Abramson Brothers Inc, a commercial real estate investments firm, the Development Coordinator for Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the Programs Manager at IndieSpace. Brea recently joined the team at Spiegelworld, a live entertainment and hospitality company, as the Internal Events Manager. Here she supports the People & Culture team by spearheading internal events and developing EDIA policies and practices. Brea continues her work in the indie theater community through service on the IndieSpace board and the Curation Team at Theater In Asylum. In her free time, you can find her redecorating her apartment, cheering on the Kansas City Chiefs, or cuddling with her schnoodle, Harriet Tubman.
Harrow Sansom Choi (they/them) is a theatre administrator and Operations Director of Theatre of the Oppressed NYC where they oversee finances, HR, facilities, volunteers, event planning, and more. They are also co-host and co-producer of Thesis on Joan, a podcast that amplifies LBGTQ+ voices in the NY theatre scene, a Steering Committee member of Artspool, and an Artist Ambassador with the NY Civil Liberties Union. Previous experience includes General Manager and Ensemble member of Honest Accomplice Theatre, Production Supervisor of the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Roundabout Theatre Company, and Epic Theatre Ensemble.
Lue Morgan Douthit (she/her) is the CEO/Creative Director of Play on Shakespeare. Prior to that, she spent 25 seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival where she was director of new play development and dramaturgy. She also was the Production Dramaturg for more than 50 productions, including 15 world premieres. She has worked on over a dozen Shakespeare productions, including co-adapting a six-actor Macbeth and seven-actor Measure for Measure, which were both produced at OSF and elsewhere. She was the co-producer and founder of the Black Swan Lab (2009) at OSF and subsequently produced the Lab until 2016. Lue is the recipient of the 1999 Literary Manager & Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) Prize in Dramaturgy and The Elliott Hayes Award. She received her PhD at the University of Washington, her MFA from Trinity University, and her MA from University of Arizona.
Sharone Halevy (she/her) sis a NYC based artist. Sharone is primarily a commission based abstract expressionist painter, working from her clients stories and shared experiences. She draws a lot of experience from a background in theater as an actor turned director, as well as an educator. Sharone has helped develop numerous new plays and musicals, in places such as The Atlantic Theatre Company, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Roundabout Theater Co, and the Public Theater. She has taught in various institutions as an acting and directing teacher with students of all ages; from The Professional Performing Arts School, Playwrights Horizons NYU, Marymount Manhattan, and more. She has also worked with many dancers and choreographers on storytelling through movement, as well as been an intimacy choreographer for various productions. Her artwork has been featured in homes and shops around the world and throughout NYC, in places like West Elm, Hosh Yoga, and Joe’s Coffee. Sharone deeply cares about making art accessible to all, as well as creating safe environments, and bringing beauty to anything possible.
Courtney Harge (she/her) is an arts administrator, director, and writer originally from Saginaw, MI who has been working in the service of artists for the last fifteen years. She is the founder and Producing Artistic Director of Colloquy Collective, an emerging theater company in Brooklyn, NY and the Associate Director, Inbound Marketing for Fractured Atlas. Courtney is also a proud member of Women of Color in the Arts, and a 2016 alum of both APAP’s Emerging Leaders Institute and artEquity’s Facilitator Training. You can find more information about her at www.courtneyharge.com.
Yuko Kudo (she/her/hers) is native Japanese multi-dimensional artist based in New York. She uses art and storytelling to create community, while reminding people they are not alone. Through her work as a photographer, she has appeared in Forbes and TIME magazines, among other media outlets. Yuko Kudo was a finalist for the Roger Sturtevant Musical Theatre Award for the Actor's Equity Association. Her latest work includes a one-human-musical show entitled, "I Came Here To Be Love", focused on identity and labels, premiered as a virtual hybrid theatre experience in Feb 2021. She facilitates the creation of collaborative educational spaces focused on the intersection of art and activism. Executive Producer of an award winning documentary series "Untapped Storytellers" and "Love+Live+Life" Podcast. A Board member of Prime Produce Apprentice Cooperative, a member of Artistic Council for People's Theatre Project, Chair of National Conference of Artists NY. www.yukoislovelivelife.com
Zach Morris (he/him) is Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects and co-creator of the immersive theater hits Then She Fell, The Grand Paradise, Sweet & Lucky, and Ghost Light at Lincoln Center Theater’s Claire Tow Theater. Zach's work includes site-specific performance, multimedia installation art and environments, and experiential performance. He has been honored with numerous awards, including two BESSIE awards, a Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Choreography in an Off-Broadway Production, he was named as one of the 100 most influential people in Brooklyn culture by Brooklyn Magazine, and he was honored to collaborate on the Emmy-Award winning Virtual Reality piece Wolves in the Walls. Zach holds a BFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University.
Ashley Shabankareh (she/her) is a musician, music educator, arts administrator, and music education and creative economy advocate. She received her M.M. and B.M.E. from Loyola University, New Orleans, with a concentration on conducting and brass instruments. For the past 14 years, Ashley served as the Director of Programs for Preservation Hall Foundation, working with culture bearers and serving over 35,000 per year in programming in schools, detention centers, and community centers. In 2016, she was named a Top Female Achiever by New Orleans Magazine, a New Orleans Hero by the Times-Picayune, and a Woman of the Year by New Orleans City Business. In 2017, she was named a Top Millennial in Music by the Spears Group and I Heart Media. Today, Ashley currently serves as the Collaborative Action Strategist for Artist Corps New Orleans, and also works as the Director of Learning and Development for Upbeat Academy, and Education Consultant for the New Orleans Jazz Museum. She also serves as the Vice President for the Jazz Education Network, Board Chair for the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans (MaCCNO), and Board Member for Elan Academy Charter School. By night, Ashley performs as both a trombonist and vocalist, performing with notable musicians including Aretha Franklin, Allen Toussaint, Jimmy Buffett, Theresa Andersson, Big Sam’s Funky Nation, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and in her own projects, Marina Orchestra and the Asylum Chorus.
David Shane (they/them) is the Director of Program Services for A.R.T./New York where he sets the strategic vision and goals for a robust suite of programs serving more than 470 of New York’s nonprofit theaters and a growing number of individual members, currently more than 120, who occupy a diverse set of roles within the field. Since joining the organization in early 2019, David has overseen legacy programs such as workshops, roundtables, and a pro-bono consulting program, as well as the development of new adaptive programming such as a theatre-specific Sexual Harassment Prevention Training. Prior to joining A.R.T./New York, David held positions as the Program Director for StageSource in Boston, MA and Associate Artistic Director of the Bristol Valley Theater in Upstate, NY where he oversaw the funding and launch of the BVT New Works Initiative. He is also a freelance director specializing in the development and production of new work for the American stage.
Phillip Christian Smith (he/him) is a 2022 Fire This Time Festival Playwright, a 2022 Tennessee Williams Scholar at Sewanee, 2021 O’Neill (NPC) Finalist, 2020-21 Playwrights Realm Fellow, Lambda Literary Fellow, Winter Playwrights Retreat, two-time Blue Ink Playwriting Award Semi-Finalist, Finalist for The Dramatists Guild Fellowship and New Dramatists, Finalist and Semi-finalist PlayPenn, Two time Semi-finalist for The O’Neill (NPC), and runner- up in The Theatre of Risk Modern Tragedy writing competition for his play The Chechens, fourth production at Pace University directed by the playwright fall 2022. He has been a semi-finalist for Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries (ASC), semifinalist for Barrington Stage’s Burman New Play Award, finalist for Trustus, former Playwright in Residence Exquisite Corpse and founding member of The Playwriting Collective. Current Co-Literary Director of Exquisite Corpse Company. His work has been supported by Quicksilver, Bennington College, Primary Stages (Cherry Lane) ESPA, Fresh Ground Pepper, and the 53rd Street New York Public Library. MFA Yale School of Drama, BFA University of New Mexico. MFA Hunter ’23. Phillip teaches acting at Pace University and is currently working on a Roe Green Commission with The Cleveland Playhouse.