2020-2021

The Civilians’ R&D Group is comprised of writers, composers, and directors who meet throughout a season to develop original pieces of theater through the creative investigation of a pre-selected topic of their choosing. The creative processes may include interviews, community engagement, research, and other experimental methods of inquiry. Led by R&D Program Director Ilana Becker, the Group shares and discusses their methodologies and the resulting work. This year, the Group will be meeting online. The process culminates in the FINDINGS Series, a works-in-progress reading series.

This season marks 10 years for The Civilians’ R&D Group.

SUNWATCHER

SUNWATCHER, a Noh-inspired musical, is the story of astronomer Hisako Koyama (1916-1997) – intertwined with the ancient Japanese myth of the sun goddess Amaterasu, in a retelling inspired by the structure of classical Noh theatre. Hisako was a woman with no formal scientific training – also a survivor of the 1945 US air raid of Tokyo, the deadliest bombing in history – who managed to rise to the stature of Galileo. She did so by drawing the sun in painstaking detail every day for 40 years, a landmark achievement for solar science. SUNWATCHER is a celebration of Hisako’s extraordinary dedication to ordinary observation, reminding us how seemingly small acts can have an immense impact over time and space.

Isabella Dawis

Tidtaya Sinutoke

Nana Dakin

Ikumi Kuronaga

Black Girl in Paris

Black Girl in Paris is a musical about one of the most famous and least known black women in the American historical canon: Sally Hemmings. It hones in on her years spent in Paris, a point in her life where she both had the most access to freedom ever afforded her and the beginnings of the relationship that would forever define her legacy. Black Girl in Paris seeks to explore the inherent contradictions of an enslaved young black woman held in bondage in a city where slavery has been outlawed, under a man widely considered to be one of the architects of one of the greatest articulations of the necessity of freedom in the western world. It also centers an ensemble cast of Ancestors who chide and guide Sally along her journey, interweaving fables and history to craft the nuanced world Sally is forced to grapple with. At the heart of this musical is the question "What does it mean to be free?", a question black Americans have been grappling with since the original kidnapping and enslavement of Africans for the American project.

Jacinth Greywoode

AriDy Nox

Desaparecidas (working title)

Told through the lens of Mexican folklore, our story explores the psychology behind societal suppression and the strategic erasure of female voices in the fight to end gender-based violence and the killing of women and girls. A female ensemble assumes a community of characters in a tapestried play of dramatized accounts, fictionalized scenes and musical sequences to unearth and dismantle the moral behind the ‘myth’ of violence against women.

Jaime Lozano

Rachel M. Stevens

Florencia Cuenca

Dissentary

Tasked with escaping your neighborhood, you inevitably run across environmental hazards that impede your progress. Especially if you’re Black, Indigenous or Latinx. Dissentary takes inspiration from the classic game The Oregon Trail and adds an environmental justice lens; your group can do one of two things - leave in pursuit of clean air, water and healthy food, or stay and defeat the corporations focused only on profits. Dissentary will both be a participatory theatrical piece as well as an accompanying card game that will allow people to play the game off-line themselves, thus giving access to people who normally don’t have access to the arts.

Reynaldo Piniella

Emily Lyon

RESET: RACE and CULTURE CONTACTS in the MODERN WORLD

an investigative work of theatre
about how incidents between police and black Americans
continues to reset race relations in the country.

Tylie Shider

El Cóndor Mágico

El Cóndor Mágico examines the events of Operation Condor, the US-backed campaign of right-wing dictatorships and repressive regimes in South America throughout the 1970s-80s via oral history, research, and satire. It will also explore the American fascination with magical realism, a Latin American narrative tool rooted in history in a region where people have been known to “disappear,” problems miraculously go away, and corruption can serve as a curtain behind which history does tricks. Research will unravel how the political imprisonment of over 400,000 people, varied intimidation/torture tactics taught by the US, and unknown thousands of “disappeared” people set a precedent for relations between the US and Latin America that haunt us today. With an eye on Operation Condor's long shadow and impressive wingspan, it asks: who is the magician behind the “magical realism” when it comes to the relationship between Latin America and the US?

Noelle Viñas

Galia Backal

THE MODERATE

a new play by Ken Urban, directed by Steve Cosson - commissioned by the EST/Sloan Project and developed by the Civilians

ACCEPT. ACCEPT. REJECT. ACCEPT. REJECT. For a minimum of eight hours a day, with a target of at least 2,000 videos a day, Frank evaluates the videos and photos uploaded on the world’s largest social media site. What Frank sees, he can’t un-see, but he soon realizes he has the power to change the world. Playwright Ken Urban and director Steve Cosson will interview scientists, researchers and policymakers in order to dramatize the hidden human cost of the internet, and imagine a future when a free exchange of knowledge and information is possible again. This project is an EST/Alfred P. Sloan Science & Technology Project Commission.

R&D Groups

Past 2020-2021