NEW YORK CITY: Over the past two weeks, the Play Company (PlayCo) has been presenting the culminating events of its 2021 Residency for Black Women Theatre Makers, with a group panel and individual presentations. The public, free, online events, which began on Sept. 17 and continue with one more session tomorrow, Sept. 30, give resident artists the ability to tailor their work after presenting it to an audience. The artists involved are playwright and theatremaker Daaimah Mubashshir; scholar, playwright, and portrait photographer Zainabu Jallo; Katlego Kai Kolanyane-Kesupile, an award-winning Botswana-born interdisciplinary artist, activist, and founding director of the Queer Shorts Showcase Festival; and Brazilian playwright, screenwriter, actress, and curator Dione Carlos.
The residency program launched earlier this year, aiming to provide financial support, development, and connection with fellow artists and PlayCo‘s local and international networks. Selected by an invite-to-apply process in collaboration with curatorial consultant Kathy Perkins, the artists receive an $8,000 stipend and a $4,500 project budget. The residency comprised biweekly virtual meeting, and frequent communication with the PlayCo artistic team. PlayCo also organized further interactions, such as coffee dates, group meetings, teach-ins, Q&As, feedback sessions, and more.
“This new residency project is a wonderful opportunity for PlayCo to further our mission of supporting extraordinary artists to create bold new work and build new connections between our local and global communities,” said founding producer Kate Loewald in a statement.
“Daaimah, Dione, Katlego, and Zainabu are accomplished artists whose varied perspectives, backgrounds, and creative energies we are thrilled to bring together, especially as they all live in different countries,” said PlayCo artistic associate Charlene Adhiambo in a statement. “We’ve been honored to host this one-of-a-kind cohort.”
All events have been or will be recorded and available for a limited time via PlayCo‘s website. To RSVP for Dione Carlos’s session on Sept. 30, go here.
Carlos is a Brazilian playwright, screenwriter, actress, and curator who has staged 17 plays both nationally and internationally in countries like Mexico, Colombia, Belgium, and Portugal. Zainabu Jallo’s academic and creative work has been created through fellowships at the Sundance Theater Institute, the Institute for World Literature, Harvard University, the Mellon School of Theater and Performance at Harvard (Migrations session), Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin, ResidenzTheater Munich, Château de Lavigny, House of Writers in Switzerland. Katlego Kai Kolanyane-Kesupile is an international award-winning cultural architect, development practitioner and interdisciplinary artist from Botswana. And Daaimah Mubashshir is a playwright and theatremaker whose work has been commissioned by the Guthrie Theater and 3 Hole Press. She is the artistic director of {EDAP}, which produces moving image work, text and performance to give audiences a kinetic experience of Black bodies freeing themselves from the bondage of our past.
