2021-2022

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 Phoebe Corde, 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.

____________________________________________________________

Applications are NOW OPEN for the 2022-23 R&D Group.

Are you an artist looking to develop an investigative project with the help of a supportive community?

The Civilians’ R&D Group is a lab for artists from various disciplines (writers, directors, composers, performers, etc.) who have an idea for a new play, musical or performance piece. The project can be at any stage of development.

The group meets about a dozen times over the course of a season to share their developing projects, exchange feedback, and discuss process. At the end of the season, each project will be given a brief rehearsal process and a presentation in the annual FINDINGS Series. Don’t wait, send in your applications now!

Click here to APPLY NOW.

LITTLE PALESTINE

Little Palestine is a new play developed through a series of community-based investigations in Little Palestine (Bay Ridge, Brooklyn). The project explores one of the most ethnically diverse immigrant communities in America and aims to illuminate how a neighborhood becomes part of one’s identity. The project will center characters and storylines that have been historically excluded and strives to illuminate the complexity and nuance of immigrant family narratives while also embracing the joy and humor inherent in that struggle. The research also explores the essential archetype of the immigrant transcending race or religion: how do we face that which is foreign? Little Palestine chronicles the heartbeat of a community and will hold space for people to meet their neighbors in a new way. The project will amplify the voices of this thriving American community through an inclusive, celebratory, and affirming process.

Denmo Ibrahim

MIRIAM

Is birth an act of hope? Or a deflection from a dying world?

Miriam is a project about reproduction in crisis. Inspired by my sister's pregnancy and my IUD, this play will explore fertility for women, drawing on YERMA, interviews, and dramatizations. Conceived with Dina Vovsi. Developed at Rattlestick (TheaterJam) and Xavier University.

Liba Vaynberg

SOMEONE ELSE’S BULLET

What happens when we relegate a place and its people to a moment in history they had no say in? What does this conflation do to its citizens—culturally, politically, socioeconomically, even psychologically? Someone Else’s Bullet considers what happens to American cities where violence has left an irreparable stain that its citizens can’t quite repair. The piece will focus namely on Memphis, TN--the site of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination--and those who have been touched by the city, the assassination, or (more likely) both. It will use interviews of both native Memphians and non-Memphians of all generations to investigate trauma, place, and collective memory of what has become Memphis's unwanted legacy.

Calley N. Anderson

THE SUNCATCHERS OF SAHEL: AN ANCESTRAL TALE TOLD TO TODAY’S GRIOT

PART I: THE CRUMBLE UNDER THE CRESCENT
PART II: UNTITLED

The first in a five cycle play chronicling war and spirituality, this two-part medieval West African saga, investigates the cultural impact the transatlantic and Arabian slave trades had on the region’s society. Told though an unapologetically Afro-queer lens by ancestral witnesses from the MOTHER land, this cinematically theatrical experience examines the social dynamics associated with an empire on the precipices of the white gaze – heavily pregnant with colonial and imperialistic twins, but yet reigned defiantly and culturally free from its curious clutches. An epic work of historical fiction inspired by historical fact, this lyrical love letter reveres its divine deities, ancestors and nature, catapulting audiences on a fantastic crusade, cascading across rediscovered narratives that boldly center people of the global majority, while celebrating the complexity of their storied humanity.

Asè.

Phillip Gregory Burke

UNTITLED JEWISH PIRATE PLAY

In the sixteenth century, Jews who had been expelled from Spain began working with Muslim governments as pirates to attack Spanish vessels – partially as revenge for the Inquisition. UNTITLED JEWISH PIRATE PLAY is a pirate adventure epic about this chapter of history, taking inspiration from historical sources as well as Hollywood swashbuckling movies.

Eric Marlin

Lila Rachel Becker

WAIT NO LONGER

Nearly a century ago, Clifford Odets' play Waiting for Lefty wrestled with the state of American labor, inspired by a 40-day New York taxi driver strike of 1935. Today, in this moment of severe social and economic inequality and revitalized labor action, its themes continue to reverberate. What has changed since that Depression-era play, and what has stayed the same? What is the worker in a tech-dominated "gig economy" and what is their relationship to the means of production? Through research and interviews, this project seeks to create a Waiting for Lefty for this particular moment, rekindling its fire and transcending its relative limitations.

R&D Groups

Current 2021-2022