Words Matter "Renewal"
Monday, June 5th at 7:00pm - Please join us for a pre-show reception starting at 6pm.
Fort Washington Collegiate Church
729 West 181st St.
New York, NY 10033
Corner of 181st St and Fort Washington Ave (181st St stop on A Train)
Four world premiere plays working from the word "Renewal" written by four groundbreaking American playwrights: Kia Corthron, Franky D. Gonzalez, Gwydion Suilebhan, and Melisa Tien.
Each play will be performed in a concert reading, and in a unique twist, will feature one formerly incarcerated actor. Each playwright created their piece in response to the prompt word "Renewal", which was inspired by the work of Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a remarkable non-profit helping people in prison develop critical life skills through the arts, modeling an approach to the justice system based on human dignity rather than punishment.
Window by Kia Corthron
with Dunasha Payne and April Matthis
When Shayla was paroled five months ago, she knew there would be challenges on the outside, but the shocking event of last night was something she was not prepared for.
Scratch-Off Sunday by Gwydion Suilebahn
with Jermaine Archer and Amber Gray
A young married couple living under the veil of the pandemic in a cramped studio apartment find good fortune in an unexpected way.
Loraina by Melisa Tien
with Tyrone Taylor and Jordan Boatman
A father and a daughter meet after many years apart and find out how little they knew about each other to begin with.
When This Is Over by Franky D. Gonzalez
with José A. Pérez and Reynaldo Piniella
A young inmate in solitary is offered to have one wish granted by the inmate one cell over in exchange for some conversation.
About RTA...
The US prison system is based on punishment. The problem is, it doesn’t work – more than half of people released from prison are back within three years. This revolving door breaks down families and communities and costs taxpayers billions.
RTA offers a better approach. Founded at Sing Sing in 1996, RTA works with professional teaching artists to lead year-round workshops in theatre, dance, music, creative writing, and visual arts. The RTA model provides an intensive, comprehensive arts program that builds critical life skills so that people can meet the challenges of connecting with family and community when released.
RTA demonstrates that an approach based on human dignity is vastly more successful than one based on punishment. Less than 5% of RTA members return to prison, compared to the national recidivism rate of 60%.
Benefiting Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a non-profit helping people in prison develop critical life skills through the arts, modeling an approach to the justice system based on human dignity rather than punishment.
We wish to express our gratitude to the Performers’ Unions:
ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION
AMERICAN GUILD OF MUSICAL ARTISTS
AMERICAN GUILD OF VARIETY ARTISTS
SAG-AFTRA
through Theatre Authority, Inc. for their cooperation in permitting the Artists to appear in this program.
WINDOW
Playwright and Cast
Kia Corthron is a playwright and novelist. Arena Stage will produce her commissioned Tempestuous Elements in February 2024. Awards for her body of work for the stage include the Windham Campbell Prize, Horton Foote Award, Flora Roberts Award, United States Artists Jane Addams Fellowship, Simon Great Plains Playwright Award, McKnight National Residency, Lee Reynolds Award, and others. Other plays, including Breath, Boom and Force Continuum, have been produced in New York by Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Atlantic Theater Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club; regionally by Yale Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Center Stage, Hartford Stage, Children’s Theatre Company, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, New York Stage and Film; in London by the Royal Court Theatre and Donmar Warehouse; and elsewhere. She was the 2017 resident playwright of Chicago’s Eclipse Theatre which produced three of her plays, including the premiere of Megastasis. Her debut novel The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and the winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her second novel Moon and the Mars was published in August 2021. Edgar and Writers Guild Outstanding Series awards for David Simon's The Wire. She serves on the Dramatists Guild Council, is a New Dramatists alumnus, and is a member of the Authors Guild.
Dunasha Payne currently studies at Columbia University JIE scholars program and she is an alumni with Rehabilitation through the Arts RTA which led her to continue her career path in Arts and justice reform. Dunasha currently works with Center for Justice Innovation where she tries to help justice impacted people navigate through the justice system. She has facilitated different workshops such as Storyteller Lab with BAC and theatre motivated groups. Dunasha continues to mentor young people and she demonstrates this through teaching and giving back to the community. Dunasha has such a passion for this work because of her lived experience, insight and clarity within the justice system. She is able to relate deeply to the population that she serves in multiple communities. Dunasha helps break the barriers and move towards higher learning and skill set for the future of our young generation.
April Matthis is an Obie Award-winning actor and company member of Elevator Repair Service. Broadway: The Piano Lesson (Tony Nomination for Best Revival); Off-Broadway: Primary Trust, Toni Stone (Obie Award for Outstanding Performance—Roundabout); Fairview, LEAR (Soho Rep); Signature Plays—Funnyhouse of a Negro (Signature Theatre); IOWA, Antlia Pneumatica (Playwrights Horizons); On the Levee (LCT3). With Elevator Repair Service: Baldwin/Buckley at Cambridge (Festival d’ Avignon), The Sound & the Fury; Fondly, Collette Richland (NYTW); Measure for Measure (The Public); Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf (Abrons Art Center); GATZ (Perth Festival). TV: “Life & Beth (Hulu); “Evil” , “The Good Fight” (Paramount Plus), “The Blacklist”, “New Amsterdam” (NBC), Film: “Fugitive Dreams”, “Ramona at Midlife”.
Scratch-Off Sunday
Playwright and Cast
Gwydion Suilebhan is a cultural critic, journalist, and playwright. With co-author Steven Gimbel, he writes about comedy, politics, and philosophy for Salon, Moment, 3 Quarks Daily, and JewTh!nk, among other publications. Together, they are currently working on a social history of Jewish American comedy. As a playwright, Suilebhan’s writing has been noted for its “dexterous theatricality and unexpected pleasure” (Washington Post). His plays have been commissioned, developed, and produced by Centerstage, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Gulfshore Playhouse, Forum Theatre, Theater J, and Theater Alliance, among others. His plays include The Butcher, Reals, Abstract Nude, Let X, and the Helen Hayes Award-nominated Transmission, among others. A lifelong arts advocate, he serves as both the Executive Director of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and the Project Director of the New Play Exchange for the National New Play Network.
Jermaine Archer combines education, passion and lived experience to bring the voices of the voiceless to life. Spoken word, one of his most powerful tools, is his instrument of choice in his quest for equality and empowerment of all People. By incorporating raw reality with unconditional love, he verbally creates pictures of spoken truths that break down centuries of lies and deception.
Amber Gray has originated roles in numerous productions over the years including: Persephone in Hadestown at New York Theatre Workshop, Edmonton's Citadel, London's National, and Broadway (Tony nomination, Grammy); Hélène in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 at Ars Nova, Kazino, and Broadway (Theatre World Award); Laurey in Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma! at Bard SummerScape; and Zoe in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' An Octoroon at PS 122, Soho Rep, and TFANA (Obie). Other theatre gems include Sam Gold's Macbeth on Broadway and Taylor Mac’s A 24 Decade History of Popular Music at New York Live Arts/Under the Radar and BRIC's Celebrate Brooklyn! Gray is a company member of The TEAM and has codeveloped and performed in their Mission Drift, Primer for a Failed Superpower, and the upcoming Reconstruction. Check 'em out at theteamplays.org. Gray can always be found with radical performance community Reverend Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping. Check 'em out at revbilly.com. Recent and Upcoming TV/Film: Ben Stiller's “Escape at Dannemora,” Barry Jenkins' “Underground Railroad,” Broadway cult favorites “Submissions Only” and "The Gilded Age," Gabe Braden's Where There’s Smoke, Mariama Diallo's Master, and The Arens' Heartworm. MFA: NYU.
Loraina
Playwright and Cast
Melisa Tien is a playwright, lyricist, and librettist invested in making formally unconventional, socially relevant, and emotionally evocative work. A resident of New Dramatists, she is the author of the plays BEST LIFE (JACK, 2021), YELLOW CARD RED CARD (ICE FACTORY, 2017), THE BOYD SHOW, and FAMILIUM VULGARE; co-author of the operas THE BIG SWIM (Asia Society Texas Center/Houston Grand Opera, 2024), SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE (On Site Opera, 2023), THE BEEHIVE (University of Northern Iowa, 2023), and FAMILY HEIRLOOM (Experiments in Opera, 2023), co-author of the music-theater works SWELL (HERE, 2021), DAYLIGHT SAVING, and MARY, co-creator of the podcast/auditory experience ACTIVE LISTENING, and creator of the theatrical experiences UNTITLED LANDSCAPE and COMMUNITY FOREST. She has been published in the anthology Theater Artists Making Theatre With No Theater (Tripwire Harlot Press, 2020) and in the anthology Modern Music for New Singers: 21st Century American Art Songs (2021), and has authored essays for New Music USA and Innovations in Socially Distant Performance. She is currently a member of Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, and was a member of Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s 2022 Ground Floor Residency Lab, Experiments in Opera’s 2022 Writers’ Room, The Assembly Theater Project’s 2021 Deceleration Lab, a recipient of a 2020-2021 grant from the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music, and Theatre, a recipient of a 2019 EST/Sloan commission, a 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Playwriting/Screenwriting, and a member of the 2010-2012 Women’s Project Lab. She has presented work at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Women Playwrights International Conference, and the National Asian American Theatre Conference and Festival. BA, UCLA; MFA, Columbia University. More at www.melisatien.com.
Tyrone Taylor (Ty) is a trained theater actor and been acting for sixteen years. He joined the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) Theater Company in 2007. Tyrone took classes in Shakespeare, Physical Theater, Clowning, Theater for the Oppressed, Playwriting, Dramatic Structure, Improv, and The Sonnets. Some credits include Of Mice & Men (George), 12 Angry Men (Juror #8), Julius Ceasar: The Remix, The Incomplete Works of The Shakespeare Sonnets. He appeared in Lulu, I HEAR YOU (RTA) readings from the inside during COVID-19 Pandemic on YOUTUBE. Tyrone performed in FREEDOM FEATHER (RTA) & OFFICER SAM DOESN'T WORK HERE ANYMORE (RTA) at PEN America Brooklyn Bookfest event, HEAR THEM ROAR: THE FIGHT FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS (NYU) at New York University (NYU) and at COLLABORACTION PEACEBOOK in Chicago, Illinois alongside actor and rapper GQ from the hip hop musical theater group Q BROTHERS in his own powerful story, 17 to NEW Life.
Jordan Boatman is a graduate of The University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She has appeared in “Bull” and “The Good Fight” for CBS All Access as well as Hulu’s “The Path”. Boatman played Elsbeth in Simon Stone’s Medea at The Brooklyn Academy of Music. She originated the role of Zoe in the world premiere of Eleanor Burgess’s The Niceties at Manhattan Theatre Club, McCarter Theatre Center, The Geffen Playhouse & Huntington Theatre Company for which she won an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Actress. Boatman can be seen alongside Chiewetel Ejiofor in his upcoming film Rob Peace.
When This Is Over
Playwright and Cast
Franky D. Gonzalez is a Latino playwright based in Dallas and LA. Appearances include The Lark, the Sundance Institute, Ojai Playwrights Conference, NNPN, Latinx Playwrights Circle, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Goodman Theatre, UC Santa Barbara, The New Harmony Project, Repertorio Español, LAByrinth Theater Company, Ars Nova, Dallas Theater Center, William Inge Theatre Festival, Teatro Vivo, Stages Repertory Theatre, Latino Theatre Company, Latinx Theatre Commons, Seven Devils New Play Foundry, the HBMG Foundation, Tofte Lake Center, Clamour Theatre Company, and Ammunition Theater Company. A 4 Seasons Resident Playwright, Core Writer with the Playwrights Center, and the Bishop Arts Theatre Center Playwright-in-Residence, Franky has also been the recipient of the Charles Rowan Beye New Play Commission, an MTC/Sloan Commission, co-recipient of the MetLife Nuestras Voces Latino Playwriting Award, won the Crossroads Project Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative Award, and the Judith Royer Award for Excellence in Playwriting.
José A. Pérez is a poet, actor, and foster-care reform/abolitionist advocate. A native New Yorker, he grew up in Queens as a systems-impacted person in foster homes, group homes, and other juvenile institutions. For Pérez, the arts have been synonymous with freedom, fostering spaces where relationships are forged under the common love for lyrics and unfettered expression. He especially found writing poetry and acting on stage to be his catalysts not only to survive in those institutions but also to thrive. While incarcerated, Pérez earned an AA from Bard College, a BS from Nyack College through HudsonLink, and capped his academic career with an MPS from the New York Theological Seminary. He has facilitated theater and poetry workshops, including the Harvest Moon Poetry Collective with Beat poet Janine Pommy Vega, and hosted poets like Naomi Shihab Nye and Amiri Baraka. As an actor, Pérez recently performed at the Bushwick Starr Theater in Quince (One Whale’s Tale Productions, 2022). He has also been a servant leader as an alternatives-to-violence facilitator, including working with gang-involved youth at the Center for Alternatives Sentencing and Employment Services as a community Benefits Project Supervisor. Currently, Pérez is a Project Manager of YouthNPower: Transforming Care for the Children’s Defense Fund-New York.
Reynaldo Piniella is an actor, writer, activist and educator from East New York, Brooklyn. In 2021, he was in the acting company of two Broadway shows at the same time – Thoughts of a Colored Man and Trouble in Mind. His Off-Broadway acting credits include The Death of the Last Black Man…, Venus (Signature), The Skin of Our Teeth (TFANA), Lockdown (Rattlestick), The Space Between the Letters (The Public/UTR), Lockdown (Rattlestick) and The Best of Theatreworks (Working Theater). Regional acting credits include work at Baltimore Center Stage, Syracuse Stage, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, O’Neill, Sundance Theatre Lab and Cleveland Play House. As a playwright, his work includes Black Doves (Thomas Barbour award for Playwriting), Real Life RPG (commissioned by Baltimore Center Stage, produced by San Diego Rep, Shakesqueer Theater Company and Pioneer Theater Guild), No Shade (produced by the Lee Strasberg Institute at NYU Tisch), I’m Old School (produced by Single Carrot Theater) and Black and Blue (Ars Nova’s ANT Fest.) He received the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship from Theatre Communications Group to develop a bilingual English-Spanish Hamlet with the Classical Theatre of Harlem. He is a current member of All for One Theater’s Solo Collective and is an alum of the Civilians’ R&D Group. He is the inaugural recipient of the All Stars Project’s Fellowship for Young Artists of Color, a FREEdom Fellow at the Weeksville Heritage Center and has received residencies from the Public Theater’s Shakespeare Initiative and HB Studio.
STAGE DIRECTIONS
Maggie Horan is a NY based actor and a proud company artist with The Workshop Theater as well as a company member with Brave New World Repertory Theatre. She holds a BFA in Theater Performance from VCU and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. You may catch a glimpse of her in the new Hulu/FX series Fleishman is in Trouble. www.maggiehoranactor.com