R&D Groups
Current 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.
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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!
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
Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a tower of strength in the Bay Area theatre scene,” Denmo is an American playwright, actor, author, and entrepreneur of Egyptian descent. A Sundance Theatre Lab and Rainin Fellowship Finalist, her work has toured to international festivals in Cairo, Berlin, and Loire Valley, and to parks, black box theaters, and universities throughout the U.S. Her children’s book Zaynab’s Night of Destiny will be published by Fons Vitae in late 2021. Her next writing project is a ten-part historical drama for Audible. Denmo holds an MFA from Naropa University. denmoibrahim.com
Writer
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
Liba Vaynberg is a first generation American writer and actor. Bilingual in English & Russian, she studied Molecular Biology & International Studies at Yale before receiving her MFA from Columbia. Plays include The Gett: A Young Wife's Tale (Rattlestick/CBE), Round Table (59E59/Fault Line Theater), Scheiss Book (Theater Row), The Russian & The Jew (with Emily Perksin, The Tank), and The Oxford Comma (Xavier). She contribute to Lilith Magazine and the CANVAS Compendium. Performance highlights include Annie Blumberg opposite Ed Asner in the PBS broadcast of The Soap Myth, Madam Secretary (CBS), New Amsterdam (NBC), The Deuce (HBO), The Oregon Trail (WP/Fault Line) and The Golem of Havana (La Mama). Regional include Yale, Williamstown Theater Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Hartford Stage, CATF, Huntington, Penguin Rep, Miami New Drama. libavaynberg.com
Writer
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
CALLEY N. ANDERSON is a Southern Black woman and Brooklyn-based playwright from Memphis, TN. Her work has been staged at several colleges and 10-minute play festivals around the country, including recent commissions by the Davidson College Theatre Department and the University of Memphis Department of Theatre and Dance. Anderson is a member of American Theatre Group PlayLab, Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group, and The Civilians’ R&D Group and a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellows alum. Beyond her writing, she is one of eighteen Memphis Hub fellows of the Salzburg Global Seminar's Cultural Innovators Forum and serves as a Program Manager for NY Writers Coalition. BA: Davidson College | MFA: New School for Drama. calleynanderson.com
Writer
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
American born and classically trained in the United Kingdom, Phillip Gregory Burke’s writing chronicles the sociology of the African Diaspora experience. His plays have been developed/workshopped at The Arches Theatre Company, 24 Hour Pride Fest, The National Black Theatre, Salon NYC, The Classical Theatre of Harlem. His play, A Holy Her, received a podcast recording at The Parsnip Ship and was a Semi-Finalist for the Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship Award. He works in every medium as an actor, most recently in commercials: CBS Sports “A Girl Named Raven,” Citi Bike, Tyson Foods, Now This/Visible. His ad with Veteran’s Home Commitment, is displayed at your local Walmart. MA Classical and Contemporary Text-The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland; BFA Drama & BS Sociology-Syracuse University; Shakespeare’s Globe Education, The Alexander Gibson School of Opera. Proud member of Actors’ Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, The New York SAG-AFTRA Film Society, The Latinx Playwrights Circle. For Sally Ann Jones. Follow him @PhillipGBurke
Writer
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
Eric Marlin has been produced and developed by the Public Theater, Ars Nova ANT Fest, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The Tank, Dixon Place, Samuel French, HOT! Festival, Exquisite Corpse Company, PTP/NYC, Tennessee Williams Festival, Play Date @ Pete's, and Wildclaw Theatre. Winner of the Samuel French OOB Short Play Festival and shortlisted for the Berliner Festspiele Stuckemarkt. Finalist for SPACE at Ryder Farm, the Jewish Plays Project, and two-time finalist for the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. Former Resident Artist at Montclair's New Works Initiative. He is one half of theatre collective Portmanteau. MFA: Iowa Playwrights Workshop. BA: Bennington College.
Writer
Lila Rachel Becker
Lila Rachel Becker is a DC-born, NYC-based director and one half of the theatre collective Portmanteau. She has directed and developed work with theaters all over the country, including Actors Theatre of Louisville, Woolly Mammoth, Portland Stage Company, The Tank, Folger Theatre, and the Source Festival. Recent productions: and come apart by Eric Marlin (Portmanteau + The Tank); THREE SISTERS by Anton Chekhov (University of Iowa); bad things happen here by Eric Marlin (Portmanteau + Edinburgh Festival Fringe); CLARABELLE, 86 by Anna Fox (Cloud City). Member, LCT Directors Lab. BA Wesleyan University. MFA University of Iowa. Associate Member, SDC. lilarachelbecker.com
Director
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.
Aeneas Sagar Hemphill
Aeneas Sagar Hemphill (he/him) is an Indian-American playwright and screenwriter based in NYC and DC. Weaving through genres, his work builds new worlds to illuminate our own, using passion, pathos, and humor to investigate the ghosts that haunt our lives and communities. His plays include: Karma Sutra Chai Tea Latte (Gingold Speakers' Corner), Black Hollow (Argo Collective, Dreamscape Theatre), The Troll King (Pipeline), Childhood Songs (Monson Arts), The Republic of Janet & Arthur(Amios), The Red Balloon (Noor Theatre), A Stitch Here or There (DarkHorse Dramatists, Slingshot Theatre), A Horse and a Housecat (Slingshot Theatre). MFA Playwriting, Columbia University.
Writer
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