Fearless Collaborations: Developing Theatrical Innovation

Jordan Harrison was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Marjorie Prime, which had its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons after premiering at the Mark Taper Forum. Other plays include The Amateurs (Vineyard Theatre), Maple and Vine, Log Cabin, and Doris to Darlene (all at Playwrights Horizons), The Grown-Up (Humana Festival), Amazons and their Men (Clubbed Thumb), Futura (NAATCO), Act a Lady (Humana Festival), and Finn in the Underworld (Berkeley Rep). Jordan is the recipient of the Horton Foote Prize for Best New American Play, the Kesselring Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. TV: Three seasons as writer-producer on the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black,” as well as Netflix’s “GLOW” and AMC’s “Dispatches from Elsewhere.” A print collection of Jordan’s work, Maple and Vine & Other Plays, will be published later this year by TCG.

Sarah Lunnie is an interdisciplinary new-works dramaturg and the Senior Dramaturg of the
Public Theater. Significant theater collaborations include the first productions of Shayok Misha
Chowdhury’s Public Obscenities (Soho Rep/NAATCO, Woolly Mammoth, TFANA); Heidi
Schreck’s What The Constitution Means to Me (Clubbed Thumb, NYTW, Broadway); Lucas
Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2 (Broadway) and The Christians (Humana Festival, Playwrights
Horizons); Jeff Augustin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Sea, featuring original music by The
Bengsons (Humana, MTC); Charles Mee’s Under Construction, made with SITI Company
(Humana); and, with The Mad Ones, Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie (Ars Nova) and Miles for Mary
(Bushwick Starr, Playwrights Horizons), among others. She has produced a number of projects
for Audible, including Christopher Chen’s The Podcaster. She frequently supports emerging
choreographers at the New York Choreographic Institute at New York City Ballet. Sarah was
previously the Literary Manager at Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Literary Director at
Playwrights Horizons, and an Associate Artistic Director of the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis.
sarahlunnie.com.

Nazareth Hassan is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, writing, music, video, and photography. Recent performance works include Untitled (1-5) at The Shed (text published by 3 Hole Press), VANTABLACK at Theatretreffen Stuckemarkt in Berlin, Slow Mania 009 at Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, and Memory A at Museo Universitario del Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City. Their first collection of poetry and photography Slow Mania will be published in 2025 by Futurepoem. They have released 4 singles, available on all platforms. They were the 2022 resident dramaturg at the Royal Court Theatre in London. They are a 2023-25 Jerome Hill artist fellow and the Tow Playwright in Residence at The Vineyard Theatre. They make work about love, anger, ambivalence, shame, and surveillance.

Joe Morton is an Emmy® Award winner and recipient of multiple NAACP Image Awards for his role as Rowan/Eli Pope in Shonda Rhimes’ critically acclaimed series Scandal. He was last seen in the FOX drama, Our Kind of People, CBS’s feel-good, Sunday night series, God Friended Me, and Netflix’s The Politician. Morton recently expanded his TV presence as executive co-producer and co-host on Inside The Black Box, an interactive interview show, which explores the experiences of black artists within the world of entertainment.

In film, Morton is widely known as the mute alien in the title role of John Sayle’s The Brother From Another Planet, and as the ill-fated scientist, Miles Dyson, in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Other notable film credits include Speed, Of Mice and Men, Ali, Blues Brothers 2000, HBO’s star-studded special Between the World and Me, and as Cyborg’s dad, Dr. Silas Stone, in Batman vs. Superman and Zack Snyder’s Cut of Justice League.

Morton debuted on Broadway in Hair, and received a Tony® nomination and Theatre World Award for his portrayal of Walter Lee Younger in Raisin. For his Off-Broadway portrayal of comedian/civil-rights activist, Dick Gregory, in Turn Me Loose, Morton received the Lucille Lortel Award, the Off-Broadway Alliance Award, and the AUDELCO for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play. Mr Morton is also the recipient of an Audie, the Audible Award, for his reading of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Water Dancer.

Additionally, Morton directs for the stage. Most recently, he directed a Zoom production of Cornelius Eady’s Brutal Imagination for Vineyard Theatre, a play about Susan Smith, the woman who drowned her children and accused a non-existent black man of kidnapping them.

Morton’s TV directing credits include episodes of Scandal, God Friended Me, Bull, and Our Kind Of People.

Morton released “Wake Up America” in 2020, a song and lyric video that promotes unity and hope in a time of deep political and racial tribalism. He’s also written music for feature films Lifelines and Badland, and for Syfy’s Eureka, and most recently co-composed music for Inside The Black Box.

Martha Clarke is an American theater director and choreographer noted for her multi-disciplinary approach to theater, dance, and opera. A graduate of Juilliard, she danced with the Anna Sokolow Company before becoming a founding member of Pilobolus Dance Theatre. She has choreographed for Nederlans Dans Theater, American Ballet Theatre, Rambert Dance Company, and The Martha Graham Company, among others. As a director, Ms. Clarke’s original productions include Garden of Earthly Delights, Vienna: Lusthaus, The Metamorphosis, Miracolo d’Amore, Endangered Species, An Uncertain Hour, The Hunger Artist, Belle Epoque, Vers La Flame, and Kaos She directed Alice’s Adventures Underground, a collaboration with Christopher Hampton for the Royal National Theater UK, and A Midsummer’s Night Dream for A.R.T. Opera productions include Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Cosi Fan Tutti for Glimmerglass, and Tan Dun’s Marco Polo and Gluck’s Orfeo and Eurydice for New York City Opera, among many others. She created L’Altra Meta del Cielo for La Scala Ballet (2012). Her production of The Threepenny Opera (2014) was at the Atlantic Theater Co. She is a resident artist at the Signature Theater where she directed and choreographed Chéri, based on the novel by Colette (2013) and Angel Reapers (2016), a collaboration about the Shakers, with Alfred Uhry. Most recently “God’s Fool” a song cycle, based on the life of St Francis was presented by La Mama in New York City (2022). Awards: Ms. Clarke is the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, a Drama Desk Award, two Obie Awards, two Joe A. Callaway awards, the Dance Magazine Award, the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement,  two Lucille Lortel awards and the Flora Roberts award from the Dramatists Guild.

Arthur Solari is an award-winning composer and sound designer living in Jackson Heights, New York. As a multidisciplinary artist, Mr. Solari has appeared domestically and internationally at more than 80 venues. From Broadway theaters and concert halls at Lincoln Center to podcast and post-production studios, his work has led to many strong industry relationships as well as individual and collaborative successes. He is a dedicated practitioner of the auditory arts and sciences with a career spanning 25 years. Mr. Solari holds a B.M., Contemporary Performance in Percussion from Manhattan School of Music and an M.F.A., Music Composition from Vermont School of Fine Arts. Recent Work: Martha Clarke’s God’s Fool (La Mama Experimental Theater); Angel Reapers (Signature Theater) – Most Unique Theatrical Experience & Hewes Design Award, Sound Design; Tamburlaine the Great (Polonsky Theater) (Drama Desk Award “Outstanding Music in a Play”); The Tempest (Public Theater/Shakespeare in the Park); Chéri (Signature Theater); The Piano Upstairs (Spoleto Festival, Italy); Dorian C. (Cannes Film Festival); Garden of Earthly Delights (Minetta Lane Theater); Frequency Opera (Rome, Italy).