2007/08 Artists of Color Fellows

Current Emerging Artist Fellows

Saheem Ali (Directing Fellow) is a native of Nairobi, Kenya. Directing credits: LaChiusa’s The Wild Party, One Hundred Years of Solitude, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, The Seagull (Columbia University), Romeo & Juliet (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company), Spring Awakening, The Hairy Ape (Northeastern University). Assistant directing - theatre: Romania, Kiss Me (The Play Company), The Miser (American Repertory Theatre), The Ballroom (Theatre de la Jeune Lune), Henry V, Macbeth (CSC). Assistant directing - opera: Peter Eotvos’ Angels in America, Thomas Ades’ Powder Her Face (Boston Opera Project). Directing intern: Wintertime (Guthrie Theater). Awards: Shubert Fellowship (Columbia), Presidential Scholarship (Northeastern). MFA in Directing from Columbia University.

Lydia Fort (Directing Fellow) New York directing credits include: Paper Cuts for the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Enclosed Spaces for the works-in-progress series at Collaborative Arts Project 21, and the solo show girls from the goddess womb. Lydia also produced and directed Wines in the Wilderness and a workshop of her own play, Welcome to My Body. For the Classical Theatre of Harlem, she served as assistant director for Marat/Sade and King Lear and also directed a reading of Katori Hall's Hurt Village for their Future Classics Series. For the Ethnic Cultural Theatre in Seattle, where she served as Artistic Coordinator, she has directed Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, Harvest and a staged reading of SongCatcher: A Native Interpretation of the Story of Frances Densmore. She also directed MouthPiece: An Authentic American Idol hosted by the Washington Ensemble Theatre. Recently, Lydia was the SDCF Observer for the Broadway production of Spring Awakening. Her interest in traditional Japanese theatre led her to Japan where she studied Bunraku and performed in the Iida Puppetry Festival. Additional training includes Viewpoints with Mary Overlie and Suzuki with Pacific Performance Project. Lydia has a certificate in Arts Management for the Performing Arts and received her MFA from the University of Washington. Her directing credits at UW include: The Good Woman of Setzuan, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Stop Kiss, The Bald Soprano, Antigone, The Mystery at Twicknam Vicarage, and The Heiress. She assisted Jon Jory on Ingmar Bergman's Nora and assisted KJ Sanchez on Panaphobia. Lydia is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.

Rafael Gallegos (Directing Fellow) is co-founder and captain of ConLab, a Bushwick/Brooklyn-based team of theatre nerds. Directing credits for ConLab include the original creations Songs Our Mothers Taught Us, a theatrical quartet in five movements, and Going, Going, Gone!, a play about Barry Bonds and the steroid scandal in baseball. Opera credits include: directing Strauss's Ariadne Auf Naxos at Merkin Hall and assistant directing Chuck Hudson's production of Massenet's Cendrillon at Manhattan School of Music. Rafael served as assistant director for John Jesurun on his productions of Philoktetes (which traveled to the Kai Theatre in Brussels) and Firefall at The New School, and will work on Jesurun's staging of Harry Partch's opera Delusion of the Fury at Japan Society in December 2007. Upcoming projects include: Stravinsky's L’Histoire du Soldat with Gotham Chamber Ensemble, and a new ConLab piece about obsession and Glenn Gould. Born in Lubbock, TX, Rafael trained at The University of New Mexico and is the son of Susan Schoenfeld and Joseph Gallegos.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Playwriting Fellow) is a playwright and performance writer originally from Washington, DC but now living in New York. His past work includes: Content, Columbina Confronts Pierrot About the Baby Inside Her, Heart!!!, and Thirst, or Getting to Know Me, which he recently performed at the PS122 Avant-Garde-Arama. He recently received in Master's in Performance Studies from NYU.

Current Resident Fellows

Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas (Creative Resident Fellow in Playwriting) has received many awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Helen Merrill Award, “Playwright of the Year” in El Nuevo Herald’s 1999 year-end list, and the Robert Chesley Award. His first play Maleta Mulata was produced by Campo Santo + Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. His second play Sleepwalkers was produced by the Area Stage in 1999, where it was awarded a Carbonell Award for Best New Work given by the South Florida Critics Circle. Sleepwalkers was further developed and remounted by the Alliance Theatre in 2002. Tight Embrace was produced by INTAR in New York. Blind Mouth Singing was produced by the National Asian American Theater Company in New York in the fall of 2007, after appearing at Chicago's Teatro Vista (a production the Chicago Tribune praised as having "visionary wit"). His most recent play, Bird in the Hand, was developed at last year's Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference, and will be produced by INTAR in New York in spring of 2008. He has been commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Repertory, and Hartford Stage. He is a Usual Suspect at NYTW, and is a member of New Dramatists and the Playwrights Coalition at MCC.

Odessa “Niki” Spruill (Production/Stage Management Fellow) worked on Horizon, All the Wrong Reasons, All That I Will Ever Be, and Kaos at NYTW during the first year of her Resident Fellowship and served as the production coordinator for NYTW’s 2007 summer residency at Dartmouth College. She is assisting with Beckett Shorts and Liberty City during her second year. Other credits include: the West Coast premiere of In the Blood by Suzan-Lori Parks at the Roy and Edna Disney Modular Theater, Tribute to Nina Simone at the Disney Redcat New Center for Performing Arts, and Messalina at the EviDeNce Room. Her New York credits include: Medea, Macbeth (both at Classical Theatre of Harlem), and BadBoy Entertainment and BET's All Access Granted: Vote or Die. Niki holds her BFA in Theatre Management from Clark Atlanta University and her MFA in Stage and Production Management from the California Institute of the Arts.

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