DWELLERS

a.k. payne (she/they) is a playwright, artist-theorist, and theatermaker with roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their plays love on and engage the interdependencies of Black pasts, presents and futures and seek to find/remember language that might move us towards our collective liberation(s). They hold a B.A. in English and African-American Studies from Yale College and an MFA in Playwriting under Tarell Alvin McCraney from the Yale School of Drama. Their work has been a finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and a 2x finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is the current recipient of the Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, National Black Theatre’s I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency, the Kemp Powers Commission Fund for Black Playwrights and Atlantic Theater Company’s Judith Champion Launch Commission. Their work has been developed with the National Playwrights Conference, The New Harmony Project, Great Plains Theater Conference, and Manhattan Theater Club’s “Groundworks Lab.” They are a proud graduate of Pittsburgh Public Schools; grandchild of the Great Migration; descendant of a music teacher and a carpenter, who both march every year with their unions in Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade; a queer & non-binary abolitionist affected in community by the ‘New Jim Crow;” and of a great lineage of Black women storytellers and living-room archivists; all of which deeply informs, uplifts and amplifies their work as a playwright, community organizer and spacemaker.

Josiah Davis (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary artist. A director, choreographer, designer and actor, his work intersects expressive movement, live music, emerging technology, and ritual to breathe new life into storytelling. Asking, how do we create space for people to be in alignment while being pulled apart by invisible systems? He is a graduate from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, Television and Brown/Trinity MFA Directing 2020. He is a NYTW 2050 fellow, National Black Theatre Soul Directing Resident, Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow, Susan Stroman Directing Award recipient, and Associate Artistic Director of On The Verge Theatre Festival in Santa Barbara. Selected credits: Mary Gets Hers (Playwrights Realm/MCC) Omar Offrendum’s Little Syria (BAM), Lessons in Survival (Vineyard Theatre), Amani (Rattlestick/NBT), Clyde’s (Alabama Shakespeare Festival/Arkansas Rep), Mr. Saturday Night (Broadway).