AND PERSPECTIVES ON THE PLAY, PLAYWRIGHT, AND PRODUCTION
THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE Polonsky Shakespeare Center
Jeffrey Horowitz FOUNDING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Robert E. Buckholz BOARD CHAIR
Present an Off-Broadway Premiere
Dorothy Ryan MANAGING DIRECTOR
by WOLE SOYINKA
directed by AWOYE TIMPO
On the Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage Featuring
ATO BLANKSON-WOOD, LEON ADDISON BROWN, JOSHUA ECHEBIRI, BENTON GREENE, JENNY JULES, JASON MAINA, CHIKÉ OKONKWO, OLAWALE OYENOLA
Scenic Designer JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST
Voice Director ANDREW WADE
Costume Designer QWEEN JEAN
Properties Supervisor LAUREN PAGE RUSSELL
Production Stage Manager
CHARLIE LOVEJOY
Casting JACK DOULIN
Lighting Designer SETH REISER
Music Supervisor / Composer CHIEF AYANDA CLARKE
Press Representative BLAKE ZIDELL & ASSOCIATES
First preview March 30, 2025
Opening night April 10, 2025
Sound Designer RENA ANAKWE
Production Dramaturg ARMINDA THOMAS
General Manager CHLOE KNIGHT
Deloitte and Bloomberg Philanthropies are Theatre for a New Audience’s 2024-2025 Season Sponsors. Principal support for Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs is provided by the Bay and Paul Foundations, Alan Beller and Stephanie Neville, The Jerome and Marlène Brody Foundation, Robert E. Buckholz and Lizanne Fontaine, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Jerome L. Greene Foundation Fund at the New York Community Trust, The Hearst Foundations, The Polonsky Foundation, The SHS Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and The Thompson Family Foundation.
Major season support is provided by The Arnow Family Fund, Sally Brody, Constance Christensen, The Hearst Corporation, The DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP, Audrey Heffernan Meyer and Danny Meyer, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, The Starry Night Fund, Stockel Family Foundation, Anne and William Tatlock, The Tow Foundation, Kathleen Walsh and Gene Bernstein, and The White Cedar Fund.
Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs are also made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Open captioning is provided, in part, by a grant from NYSCA/TDF TAP Plus.
(in alphabetical order)
Attendant to Kadiye.........................................................................................................................................JASON
Understudies never substitute for the listed players unless a specific announcement is made at the time of the appearance.
For Makuri Benton Greene
Production Stage Manager.......................................................................................................................CHARLIE LOVEJOY
Assistant Stage Manager............................................................................................................KELLEY LYNNE MONCRIEF
TIME: The late 1950s pre–Nigerian Independence PLACE: A village in the swamps of the Niger Delta
Please be advised this production includes haze effects. THE SWAMP DWELLERS is presented without an intermission.
This Theatre operates under an agreement between the League of Resident Theatres and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
The stage managers employed in this production are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States.
The scenic, costume, lighting, and sound designers in LORT Theatres are represented by United Scenic Artists, Local USA829 of the IATSE.
The Director is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, Inc., an independent national labor union. Igwezu...........................................................................................................................................ATO
5 Timeline: Wole Soyinka and The Swamp Dwellers
7 Interview: "I Want to Paddle As I Go"
Jeffrey Horowitz, Awoye Timpo, and Arminda Thomas in conversation with Jonathan Kalb
13 Dialogues: "The Swamp Dwellers Revisited" by Wole Soyinka
15 Interview: "The Designers Behind the Swamp Dwellers"
Qween Jean, Chief Ayanda Ifadara Clarke, Rena Anakwe, Seth Reiser, and Jason Ardizzone-West in conversation with Zoe Donovan
29 Bios: Cast and Creative Team
35 About Theatre For a New Audience
Notes
Front Cover: Design by Paul Davis/Photo by Hollis King
This Viewfinder will be periodically updated with additional information. Last updated April 2, 2025.
Credits
The Swamp Dwellers 360° | Edited by Zoe Donovan
Resident Dramaturg: Jonathan Kalb | Council of Scholars Chair: Tanya Pollard | Designed by: Milton Glaser, Inc.
Publisher: Theatre for a New Audience, Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director
THE SWAMP DWELLERS 360° Copyright 2025 by Theatre for a New Audience. All rights reserve d.
With the exception of classroom use by teachers and individual personal use, no part of this Viewfinder may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electr onic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Some materials herein are written especially for our guide. Others are reprinted with permission of their authors or publishers.
Jason Maina, Leon Addison Brown, Olawale Oyenola, Ato Blankson-Wood, Jenny Jules, Chiké Okonkwo, Joshua Echebiri. First rehearsal, TFANA production of THE SWAMP DWELLERS by Wole Soyinka. Photo by Hollis King.
1934
Akonwande Oluwole “Wole” Soyinka was born July 13 in Abeokuta in Western Nigeria, which at the time was under British colonial rule. Soyinka’s father, Samuel Ayodelo, was headmaster at St. Peter’s Primary School; his mother, Grace Eniola, a shopkeeper and trader, was active within the women's liberation movement. His family belongs to the Yoruba people, whose culture has influenced Soyinka's works.
The Royal Dutch/Shell Group founds Shell D'Arcy, and is granted a license for oil exploration. 1936
1946
Soyinka wins a scholarship to Government College, an elite boarding school in Ibadan, where he begins writing and performing in school plays.
After graduation, Soyinka moves to Lagos and works as an inventory clerk at an uncle’s pharmaceutical store. 1950
1952
Soyinka attends the University College at Ibadan. While there, he and six friends found the Pyrates Confraternity (or National Association of Seadogs), an anti-elitist organization dedicated to social justice in Nigeria.
1954
Soyinka wins scholarship to attend the University of Leeds in England, where he becomes a member of the school’s Theatre Group. Receives B.A. with honors in 1957.
Shell Darcy discovers oil in Oloibiri, a small community in the Niger Delta region. 1956
1958
Soyinka works as a play reader for London’s Royal Court Theatre. On December 31, The Swamp Dwellers is first produced at the University of London’s Annual Drama Festival.
In February, The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel are produced in Ibadan November 1, The Invention is presented in The Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre. 1959
1960
Soyinka receives a Rockefeller Foundation grant to research traditional performance practices in Africa. Soyinka joins the English faculty at the University of Ibadan. He also forms a theater company, 1960 Masks, to produce topical plays, employing traditional performance techniques to dramatize the many issues arising from Nigerian independence. His play The Trials of Jero is produced in Ibadan. On October 1, Nigeria becomes independent from Britain and Soyinka’s play A Dance of the Forest, another satire of the colonial elite, is chosen to be performed during the independence festivities.
The following is an edited version of a conversation on March 15, 2025 with TFANA artistic director Jeffrey Horowitz, director Awoye Timpo, production dramaturg Arminda Thomas, and TFANA resident dramaturg Jonathan Kalb.
JONATHAN KALB Jeffrey, can we begin with an explanation of how this production began? I’ll quickly add that I remember you sending me this play shortly after we first started working together, about fifteen years ago. I told you I loved it then.
JEFFREY HOROWITZ Adrienne Kennedy sent it to me. When we were doing Ohio State Murders she said to me, “I teach this play, and I think Soyinka is a giant of humanity who understands the mystery of human beings. I love this play, and you should do this play.” It was the highest form of recommendation. We were doing a season with Oroonoko, Antony and Cleopatra, and Ohio State Murders—three plays in which Africa figured. We did a public reading of Swamp Dwellers then, and it was very powerful. I have always wanted to do the play since then, but different things have happened to prevent it. Part of it was that I wanted to find a director who really loved the play. That turned out to be Awoye.
AWOYE TIMPO Jeffrey reached out to me around 2018 and said, “I have this great play. I would love for you to read it and get your thoughts.” So I read it and told him I thought it was beautiful and that I was a huge fan of Wole Soyinka’s work. But . . . I also said, while I have you on the phone, I have another play I’d like you to consider. I told him about this collective called Classix I’m part of that was doing a reading series of plays by Black writers and asked if he’d be interested in potentially hosting. Jeffrey graciously asked me to tell him more about that, and we began a whole other strain of conversation.
JEFFREY Around numerous classic plays.
AWOYE Including Wedding Band by Alice Childress.
JEFFREY It was Trouble in Mind before that, which we both knew.
AWOYE Yes.
JEFFREY But then the conversation quickly segued because we found out that Roundabout was doing Trouble in Mind.
“I
JONATHAN Interesting. discussion with Awoye predates the one about Alice Childress.
JEFFREY I had been looking for ten years for various ways to do The Swamp Dwellers. The essential thing was someone who was really passionate about directing it.
JONATHAN So then what happened?
AWOYE We did a reading of Wedding Band and then the pandemic happened. TFANA produced Wedding Band in 2022, and in 2023 Jeffrey started writing me again about The Swamp Dwellers.
JONATHAN Now it’s 2025. What particularly connects The Swamp Dwellers to the present time and place, do you think? Arminda, maybe you want to weigh in on this.
ARMINDA THOMAS The Swamp Dwellers deals in relationships and undercurrents and major changes where people are just trying to survive. They’re either denying or adapting, figuring out what to do in the face of catastrophic change. There’s catastrophic social and cultural change lived out in the personal, in these relationships and the different ways the people have adapted their lives. The Beggar, for
instance, has had a crisis of faith on some level and has decided to believe in a new thing. He runs into a man who suddenly has no idea what he believes anymore, and they come to have some kind of relationship even in the face of their traditions holding on by a thread. What do you do when the bottom has fallen out of your world? That’s a question a lot of us are contending with now. It’s helpful to meditate on a piece that deals with that in very direct and beautiful ways.
AWOYE The thing that’s really interesting to me is that everybody in the play has their own perspective about what the nature of the change is. For Igwezu, as Arminda is saying, it is catastrophic. He needed to come home and find his farm intact, and the changing climate destroyed it. He basically put down his life for this farm, so that’s a catastrophe. Then you have someone like The Beggar who has been displaced from the north because of the drought and the locusts. For him, it’s more about adaptation. How do you adapt to both the benefits and pitfalls of change?
Also you have a character like Igwezu’s brother who goes to the town and sees new opportunities and is ruthlessly taking advantage of what all that change offers up. So everybody is finding their own relationship to change. How are you going to endure it, overcome it, exist within it? Will you accept it? Work against it? Everybody is negotiating what to do while dealing with changes disrupting life as they know it.
JONATHAN It’s remarkable that this play was written by a 24-year-old in 1958, when he was a student at Leeds University in England.
JEFFREY It’s his second play. He wrote only one before it in 1957. And you know, one of his professors at Leeds was G. Wilson Knight, the Shakespeare scholar. Soyinka was drawn to Knight’s teaching about myth, magic, and ritual.
JONATHAN I know that he and Knight became friends. Knight was very proud to have had him as a student. Another thing that strikes me is that this play was written before Nigerian independence. It anticipated dangers in Soyinka’s homeland, upheavals that hadn’t played out yet, such as the consequences of finding oil reserves in Nigeria.
AWOYE It’s interesting how he’s engaging with the cycles of history. My family is from Ghana, and Ghana had its independence in 1957, so this is a time of immense global transformation and also upheavals and revolutions. There are so many questions about what the future will be and an articulation of plans based on what people want to manifest.
“I
Who’s gonna be in charge? Are those people going to serve the betterment of the people, or work against the people? So Soyinka had examples of that before writing the play. He’s pulling from the past in order to write the present, and part of the brilliance of the play is the way he foresees the future. Soyinka understands humanity. He knows people, understands corruption, and understands love. All those things he put in the pocket of this play.
JONATHAN I’d like to ask each of you what you consider the play’s core or center. It contains a brotherly betrayal story, a religious confrontation, a generational conflict, and an arrival and departure tale.
AWOYE I feel the heartbeat of the play is how people navigate change. Every single character is doing this. Igwezu is the heart and he is saying, “Things are changing but do I have to accept the way they’re changing? Or can I have a hand at disrupting the nature of the change?” To me, that’s what makes the play so exciting for us in this present moment as we think about where we will accept things and where we will fight. Igwezu is saying, “I’ve seen the life in the city, and I’ve seen the ways that it has corrupted my brother. I see the life in the village, and I see the ways that the Kadiye is taking advantage of the people.” But he doesn’t just go with the flow as other people do. He says, “I’m gonna stand up and disrupt the way things are done.”
JEFFREY It’s hard for me to say there’s a heart of the play. To me it’s more like a poem with stanzas that have their own hearts. I do agree with how Awoye talked about this. There are multiple forces of change. One is the floods, which cause change even though the village knows they’re gonna happen. Another is mortality. The sons have moved away, so what’s going to happen in this place? The young want to know, am I going to have a life? Am I going to make money?
And mixed into all this is the force of authority from the past and tradition—the tradition of a religion that is like fundamentalism and is corrupt. It’s the biggest corruption in the play. It’s worse than what Igwezu’s brother did, because it’s about someone saying, “I have a pipeline to God. I know the truth, and this is what you have to do.” Kadiye is a liar, and people believe his lie. But if you give that up, as Igwezu does, where are you? So I think the play is like a force field. It’s like a poem where there are stanzas with different centers.
ARMINDA In the play we have this couple—Alu and Makuri—and what they’re responding to is the uncertainty of a person, Igwezu, who up until he left had been certain, had been the good son, the dutiful son. The son who goes
and sends back the barber chair and does exactly what he says he’s going to do. He has come back and walked out without really speaking to them, which has suddenly turned their world into something unstable. How they try to navigate the space of waiting to understand what it means is what sets the plot in motion.
We’ve already discussed his dilemmas and what he’s facing, but then we meet The Beggar who has taken steps to find something new. He has already decided on that and is searching for a partner, and perhaps also for a new faith or an expansion of what he had. He hasn’t exactly given up his own but he’s endlessly reinterpreting. He adjusts and adapts. I think the play is prodding us to ask ourselves what we do in our world. It’s asking us to look and see what’s resonating. What are the vibrations in us while watching these people do this? Who do we connect with? Who scares us? Where do we stand?
JEFFREY Another important word for me with this play is agency. Because before the play begins, Makuri and Alu believe that they have to give sacrifices to appease the
Serpent. That is not predictable or controllable. They don’t have agency in that. The Kadiye is the one who by some miracle has agency. But in the play Igwezu acquires agency. Even if he doesn’t know where he is going, he can leave. So the play presents different characters with different relationships to agency, even the ones who aren’t seen. The brother in the city who betrays Igwezu has had agency and so has the wife. Those people have made choices and left. So I think Soyinka is capturing this.
AWOYE I want to add one thing to that. Kadiye has agency too. That’s the thing that’s so interesting about his character. There are plenty of other people living in the villages all across the country who are doing their jobs purposefully, meaningfully, and correctly, and priests like Kadiye are taking their sacrifices. They’re speaking with the gods in order to serve the people of their communities. But this Kadiye has become an exploiter. He has made the choice to take from the people in a way that does not serve them.
JONATHAN Do you see Kadiye as the catalyst of change in the others, or at least in Igwezu? Is he forcing a new kind of selfawareness and agency on Igwezu because of his own corruption?
JEFFREY Yes.
JONATHAN Can I ask how each of you sees the Beggar? He’s a Muslim but Soyinka endows him with Christ-like qualities. His feet are washed and anointed. He’s indifferent to wealth and deeply invested in integrity. He senses the fatness and corruption of Kadiye without being able to see him, and he senses the honorableness of the house and of Igwezu without seeing them. Should he be regarded as a holy or saintly character?
ARMINDA I would say that saintliness is a box that other people put the Beggar in. They see him and say, “you must have second sight. Those who don’t see have other gifts, the gifts of the afflicted.” But I think he is actually rebelling against that. He’s rebelling against this idea of himself as somebody who is to be separate from work, from humanity and the way that humanity operates. He’s decided he’s not gonna sit on the road and take the coins and give the blessings that don’t really mean anything to him. In the play he confesses that they don’t mean anything to him. He’s found something that does, and it got taken away, and he wants to find it again.That thing is work. He wants to take
the soil in his hand and nurse it and make things grow. He thinks he can. He thinks he has a gift or a calling for this. Along his way, he gets greeted by people who want to tell him what he’s supposed to be, and he fights that. When he meets Igwezu, he hears somebody who is having the same dilemma on some level, and who also understands the love of soil and toil and harvest and what it is to have faith in those things. What it means to have it all taken away, and persevere. I think he operates on a very human level. He listens and tries to figure out what’s going on.
JEFFREY He also loves growing things, which I think is not saintly. He is like the Kadiye in that the society is set up to give him awe, but he doesn’t want it. He wants to work. Instead of saying, “Please take care of me,” he wants to touch, to make things grow.
AWOYE I think the thing that’s interesting is, Nigeria itself is a confluence of faiths. You have the Muslims and Islam from the north and a seeping Christianity from the south. Then you have all the indigenous and traditional spiritualities and beliefs. When I think about the Beggar and the blindness and the foot washing in light of all this, it feels as much like an ancient reference as something belonging to the time of the play. The foot washing is a gesture of hospitality. It’s an ancient gesture towards the people who come into this house. We have discussed this question in rehearsal: how prescient is the Beggar? Is he a divine figure? Is he someone above the other characters? I agree with what Arminda is saying. He’s a human who has lived a particular life and is not above anybody else or preordained in any other kind of way. But I also think that he taps collective images in the global imagination that include the stamp of Christianity and even predate Christianity.
JONATHAN My last question is about Igwezu’s fate. What do you think is in store for him after the play ends? He walks off after the confrontation with Kadiye, supposedly to leave the village, but it’s night and there are no ferries and he refuses the Beggar’s company. As you know, there is a Yoruba myth that has been cited in connection with this play that points to suicide. The myth tells of a king named Sango, who is a favorite of the god Obatala, who loses everything, including his wife and wealth, and is replaced on the throne by his brother. Thrown off on his own and betrayed by everybody, he tells his servant, “I’ll be back,” and walks off into the forest. The servant waits and waits, then goes to find him and discovers he has hanged himself. Then he returns to the city to bear witness. The last line in The Swamp Dwellers is the Beggar’s: “I shall be here to give account.”
AWOYE I think that the unknowingness of where Igwezu is going is the point. He doesn’t know where he’s going to go, but he will make a choice. It’s not the end of something. It’s the beginning of something. It think the play is leaving us with that question: what is he doing to do? Where is he gonna find new opportunities? That’s the question we’re left with. I have my own theories about where he goes and what he does, but none involve a downfall. Soyinka said to us, when he visited, that he thinks the play is hopeful, and I think that comes from the spirit of what choice is possible for Igwezu.
JEFFREY He’s free, in a way.
AWOYE You know, there’s another version of that myth that says that the king does not hang. He lives, and can return, and there’s a sense of possibility. The Beggar’s final speech is about cycles and what it means to return to things. He says, “The swallows find their nests again when the cold is over.” Things depart but then they return. I think that’s what the Beggar leaves us with.
JONATHAN What’s your take on this, Arminda?
ARMINDA I also think that Igwezu does not know, and that’s a scary place to be in. As with the Beggar and second sight, people will feel an inclination to put Igwezu in a tragic box. Death or endless walking, or whatever—they’ll want to go there. But I don’t think that’s why the Beggar is there, to be the voice of doom. He says he’s there to give account, and I believe that means there will be somebody to give account to.
AWOYE Yes! And again, I feel like this sense of not knowing is where so many people find themselves today. They feel at a crossroads. Which way am I going to go? That connects with what Jeffrey was saying about agency. We have agency to choose and Igwezu has to make a choice. Which way is he gonna turn?
ARMINDA And he says something near the end that I think is interesting. He says, “I want to paddle as I go.” Now, unless that’s being said cynically—and I don’t think there’s a lot of deep cynicism in this piece—it sounds like he has a goal.
AWOYE Yeah. It’s a step to wherever he might go.
JONATHAN Can each of you say a word or two more about the note of hope you see in the piece? Is it all in the
flicker of new agency or independence in Igwezu?
JEFFREY I think the hope is that he doesn’t have to go back. He could go back to the city. He could go confront his brother. I mean, a lot of plays do that, show confrontations that come from new consciousness. But he’s doing something new and is not going backwards. He’s discovering. That’s what’s hopeful.
ARMINDA It’s a little old-school existentialist.
JONATHAN What do you mean?
ARMINDA I mean, he’s condemned to be free. He understands the reality. He’s been shown a glimpse of something that’s real, and the myths around him have fallen away. He has to figure out what his life is going to be.
JEFFREY He’s been stripped of everything, including his father.
AWOYE And I find hope in that too. His father says, “This is your home, Igwezu, and I would not drive you from it for all the world. But it might be best for you if you went back to the city until this is forgotten.” That is such a profound act of protection and love for his son.
BY WOLE SOYINKA
"The Swamp Dwellers Revisiteed" was originally published in The New York Times on December 2, 2010. Wole Soyinka has generously given Theatre for a New Audience permission to redistribute this piece in the 360 Viewfinder.
The year of belated global oil awareness, 2010, reminded me that I have been in the oil business for quite a while. It all began in the years before Nigerian independence, when I happened on a small news item revealing that oil had been found in some hitherto obscure village with the appropriate name of Oloibiri.
I was a student in Britain—that is, living in a country that was exploring the natural resources of other places, especially its former colonies. This did not mean I had the slightest inkling of the search for energy resources by rich industrialized nations. What that would mean for the poor developing countries bequeathed the gift of oil, commencing the race to control such treasures, was not on my radar.
The news affected me in a thoroughly non-industrial, non-commercial way. I mused on what sort of transformation could follow as the basic trading commodity changed from palm oil to crude oil.
I had never been to the Niger Delta, certainly not before my sojourn abroad to college in 1954. I knew of it only from my secondary-school geography lessons: a place of dense mangrove swamps and the folkloric Mami Wata—the half-human, half-fish seductress, our local mermaid! My imagination swept to the reinsertion of an alien presence in the ancient rhythms of life there: first, missionaries, traders and colonial powers, now oil exploration.
My play The Swamp Dwellers had little to do with what had triggered the idea. My compulsive dialogue with nature took over. The economic consequences, the impact of a global scramble for our wealth, hovered only dimly in the background.
Those consequences would require a few more decades to be felt. It would take longer to demonstrate that the corporate irresponsibility of bounty hunters in one obscure corner of the world has a way of spreading, like an oil slick, to the very shores of the originating, industrialized nations.
On my return to Nigeria, I began to traverse the country, researching traditional drama. The extraction phase—drilling—was under way, and its flickering signature across the skies was the oil flare.
I had the fortune of flying across the southeast, courtesy of a road-construction company. These flares signaled at the time nothing more than the mission of the company—to open the land to industrialization. Oil was only the facilitator.
Slowly, however, the news seeped and then began to gush out as the other face of oil. The earth of the swamp dwellers was under siege.
Eviction; land takeovers; home demolitions; environmental degradation; lost livelihoods: The oil flares were no longer harmless sky-writings but the fires of improvidence and indifference.
In 1975, long before the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989, another tanker, the Pacific Colocotronis, fractured its hull off the Dutch coast. Now the resulting spill could be regarded as a warning. For me, the name Colocotronis echoed, in an eerie way, Oloibiri.
When the environmental devastation in the Delta began to be known, I obtained a copy of the Colocotronis court proceedings—the verdict had come down against the shipping company. The attention to detail was staggering; it was the first time I’d seen the value of a bird, an insect or a square foot of arable land assessed in dollars-andcents. The itemization of flora and fauna killed was routine record-keeping in the case of oil spills, I realized—except, it seemed, if the event affected Africa or other Third World countries.
When a feisty friend and fellow writer knocked on my door, arriving from the region of the swamp dwellers, I was more than primed. His name was Ken Saro-Wiwa, and he came armed with an agenda of reforms addressed to the government and the oil companies. There, on behalf of his people, the Ogoni, his crusade would lead to his martyrdom. Before that devastating end, however, he succeeded in arousing the conscience of the world.
In return for being the pot of plenty into which every part of the nation dipped its ladle, the Delta locals’ ancient ways of generating their livelihood had been destroyed. Through Ken, the cause of the environment became the cause of indigenous peoples and minorities all over the world; they wanted their lives back and their voices heard.
I assured Ken he could take my support for granted.
Fast-forward to April 20, 2010, and news of a massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. This prompted the fury of U.S. lawmakers and catapulted their short-sleeved president to the scene. A Congressional hearing gathered oil executives to mumble excuses. News of all this dominated the media worldwide.
When I read a confirmation of the obvious—that the oil lost into the Gulf of Mexico was but a fraction of the quantity that had drenched the land of the swamp dwellers for more than half a century—when I listened to expressions of remorse from BP’s chief executive, my mind reverted to Saro-Wiwa, that stumpy man with an unlit pipe between his teeth.
His mind had always been fixed on the land of the swamp dwellers, the fragile ecosystem. He had long experience with the collaboration of oil companies and past Nigerian governments, which eventually aroused people to resistance, having first made sacrificial lambs of ninehuman beings—the Ogoni Nine. Would he, I wondered, have experienced—as I dared to on his behalf—a sense of vindication? Or, perhaps, something akin to closure?
The week of March 17, during rehearsals for The Swamp Dwellers, TFANA Humanities Coordinator Zoe Donovan met with Qween Jean, Rena Anakwe, Chief Ayanda Ifadara Clarke, Seth Reiser, and Jason ArdizzoneWest, the production's designers, for conversations about collaboration, research, and the transformation of design elements throughout the course of this production.These conversations have been edited for clarity.
ZOE DONOVAN How did you come to costume design?
QWEEN JEAN My mother was a bridal dressmaker, and so was my grandmother, in Haiti. And I feel like I witnessed how she would change people's lives—the way that people's eyes and entire beings would shift, being dressed by her. And I felt like, oh, “maybe I can make other people happy and proud.” And so for me, the role of a costume designer, a visual architect, became extremely—I don't know—it felt like it was in unison with the way that I see the world and the way that I hope to make other people feel. And costume design really was the answer for me. Being in school and seeing how productions were being developed was very new and exciting and a very thrilling thing to see. Even if you have a vast closet, there's so much intentionality into what a character would wear.
I feel I say this often: I love clothes as much as I love my freedom. I feel that it's always been a beautiful relationship, right? A harmony in terms of figuring out that clothes really do serve as a piece of armor for each individual. And so for me, my process around character work, design, dramaturgy, is around really having a point of view around the characters in the story. I think that it's a very personal thing. So I feel like even for myself, I've had to navigate what that means. And even in a story like The Swamp Dwellers, and particularly thinking about how this family really helps us to understand the current tone, but also about the huge shift that's about to come, that there's a huge shift that happens even in the house that night. So this is something that I just really wanted to share, but also to give a really beautiful light to everyone's armor.
ZOE You spoke a little bit to the transition that's about to happen in Nigeria, where this play is taking place. I'm curious about what your research process looked like for this production. Were there any particular resources that you used, and is there anything from your research that surprised you?
QWEEN This is a brilliant question. My work really, you know, feels dramaturgically based. But in particular, for The Swamp Dwellers, it is looking at supporting textile work. There's so much beautiful reference to the work
that Alu, our mother character in the story, and her husband, Makuri—there's so much work that they're doing at home that they then go and sell.
So starting there, which was really powerful. How is clothing manufactured? How are clothes being dyed at that time? That really helped me to contextualize where they are in this moment. The research then continues…a lot of vivid photography, different periodicals about industry, about oil development, and how that was started. Nigeria is such a phenomenal and vast and very intricate nation. So really looking at the cultures that are present within our story is something that I had the gift of being able to really pull from that we could share with our characters. And to really help to develop them.
I'll also say, too, Dr. Wole Soyinka is a gift. I mean, I feel like this is a gift of a lifetime to be able to collaborate on this production. And I think that for the process, working really intimately and closely with our incredible design team that's directed by Awoye Timpo—I love the
way that my director's mind works and the way that she considers and cares and has such a deep reverence for humanity. So that has always been in all of our conversations for each character along the journey. Something about the process that was unique and absolutely riveting was to have Dr. Soyinka join us for our exploration the first week. His mind illuminated so many things in the text that caused us to go back and then re-research.
ZOE I can't imagine what it was like to have Dr. Soyinka in the room with you all. Is there anything in particular that changed your perspective about the text after speaking with him?
QWEEN There were a multitude of things. One in particular that comes to mind right now is just about the extremeness of a rainy season and thinking about how the family, and particularly the young son, Igwezu, is devastated that he's returned home from the city and everything that he's planted has been ruined by the flood. And so thinking really about how detrimental this is to the family, but also that it's not just the one thing that happens, it's a whole season, it doesn't stop. So that was really helpful to then consider the way that people have to respond in order to still create, in order to still have a means of survival.
ZOE And it's interesting that it's cyclical as well. It's a season, so this kind of hardship is always going to come back in a way.
QWEEN Which then speaks to the beautiful correlation and relationship, to the serpent. How everyone is like, okay, “Let us abide.” You know? “Let us conduct ourselves so that we may be blessed, pardoned, and shown grace during this time.” So it's really powerful.
ZOE You mentioned this before about clothing being like armor—I read an article about you working on the production of Cats: The Jellicle Ball and you had a similar language of clothing as armor for actors. What does that relationship look like to you in this specific production? How is clothing armor for these characters?
QWEEN For me, what became really clear, the unifying principle around humanity is that there are different tiers, right? So, there are characters we’re introduced to that are coming all the way up from the north, Bukanji, right? So, we were looking at cultures and societies of folks from Hausa. Really looking at even just
the cultural shifts but also the delineations through garment, through textile, and how that obviously is different from the folks all the way down the south, living near the water. In the story, our character, the Beggar, you know, has been experiencing the complete opposite, right? [Their home] is barren, and so, you know, they've been forced onto this pilgrimage down south. And then we have other characters who are, again, the complete opposite from the Beggar, right?
The Kadiye, a well-respected, renowned, and profound priest; this figure of faith that is also connected to the collections, right, of the propriety of faith. So [the Beggar and the Kadiye] are the complete opposite. And we get that different extreme perspective.
And I'll say too, I think that with our Makuri and with Alu, you know, they are a lovely, humble people who are making things so that they can provide for other people. So there's something there too, like you were saying earlier about the cycle, and how that even translates into what they're wearing themselves. I think that that is something we really want to share with our audiences. Then with Igwezu, who has returned from the city, there's something there as well that we're seeing, right? So, we have a point of view as well about “What does it mean to return home?” And everyone has sort of, you know, created or built or imagined all of these variations or outcomes for him, which reveal something completely different, something completely vulnerable. How do we show that visually to an audience? So yeah, those are the things I've been working towards. I'm excited to be able to visualize that in this world that we've created. And Jason Ardizzone-West has created a very powerful home for us, so we'll be in conversation with that as well.
ZOE I'm so excited for our audience to be able to read a little bit about your process and your approach to everything. Final question: is there anything in particular that you're excited for audiences to notice in your work and the design of the production as a whole?
QWEEN Yeah, for me, I can't wait for people to be transported. I think that, you know, in this current climate, as it may be…I'll say this, I feel like people tend to really squeeze the content of Africa into something that is digestible and—babe—it’s an entire continent that truly, truly, truly contains hundreds and thousands of stories and lineages. And so we are really sitting with this entire family for an hour and a half, and we will undeniably have
to sit with their humanity. We will have to wrestle with the complexities of greed, of power, of corruption. We'll have to sit with, you know, the importance of matriarchs, but also the way that these characters and these archetypes aren't always favored or aren't always held, and this is the brilliance of what Dr. Wole Soyinka is doing: it’s holding up the mirror, and that is very hard to do. And I think that there are people that need this production, like we do. So, I'm excited about that.
And then I'll say, my first impression of this monumental offering from Soyinka was the courage, and maybe even the defiance of people who are able, willing, and can exist with nature. We are meeting people and families who are living on the swamp, that are navigating the ebbs and the flows and the different personalities that it takes on. And yet, somehow, we cannot coexist and live and respect the very neighbor next to us, the person sitting across from us on the train, the very people that we interact with daily. I cannot wait to share this with the world. So, thank you.
ZOE Since this play is so rooted in a specific time and space, I was curious what research looked like for both of you. What sorts of resources did you use?
CHIEF AYANDA I think the biggest thing for me is drawing on accurate representations of culture because to me, you can't look at art without considering the people and the culture from which it comes, right? And so, we have to understand what is happening and who are the people involved in the story in the Niger Delta, the traditions that come from the area, and make sure that musically, we're being consistent with Mr. Soyinka’s vision, and then being consistent with the choices that we're making. And that's easy to do when you're around people who are thinking along those same lines. So it was really just connecting and drawing on each other's experiences; we have a really diverse group of artists that have personal experience in Nigeria and artistic experiences in West Africa and its diaspora. And then, in the composition, I really wanted to find some artists that were reflective of music from the Niger Delta. One of the
big inspirations for me was Chief Omokomoko; he was a pioneer of Uhrobo music emanating from the Delta. And so, I was kind of making sure that the music that we were creating, while it is new, I wanted to make sure that it was consistent with the spirit and the style that emanated from the Delta. So I think people are going to find some of themselves—it’s going to be Yoruba, some Yoruba Fuji music that's in there, there's going to be some Uhrobo traditional music that's in there. And then, there's going to be some contemporary expressions also in the music. And working with Rena, I know that it's going to be set in a proper world, so it's going to be a whole theatrical experience. It's going to be dope.
RENA ANAKWE So, I think stemming off what Chief Ayanda said, just being able to center this in the world is where my mind is at. Yes, I'm designing the sound, but I’m also thinking about how that affects the whole environment, and then how the music can sit in the space. So, a lot of my research to start was just trying to understand what this area of Nigeria looked like and sounded like in the 1950s. I'm kind of an audio-visual person, obviously audio, but also very visual in even thinking about what type of vegetation is around there, because the sound of a rainforest is different than the sound of a
mangrove forest. I would love to get sounds that are specifically from Nigeria but in my search, I found that there aren't really many suitable field recordings that have been done in Nigeria, which to me, is a great disservice to everyone. But there have been field recordings done in other parts of West Africa, luckily, some with similar temperatures and climates. So just thinking about what that sounds like and also having to really comb through things. You know, you aren't having planes go above like that; they’re not having a generator at that time, right? I'm Nigerian from the Igbo tribe, and I was back in Nigeria just earlier this year. So I spent some time in the village and was taking note—I think I always take note of the sound environments that I'm in. And there was a point in the village where it got quiet. It was a moment when the generator hadn't cut on yet and I was very startled by the way that it sounded because, you know, it's not the absence of sound but it's a really specific sound that is enveloping you. And then, the generator cut on. And there are always the same sounds, you know? In the morning, there's going to be a rooster somewhere.
But in this world [ The Swamp Dwellers ] we’re in such a specific time. It's late afternoon going into the night. And so, it's a period of time that is passing, but the wildlife sounds change, because of the sleeping of different animals at this point. Like, what birds are out from this time to this time? Are there insects? You know, when you're creating sounds for an environment, there's actually something happening all the time. So thinking about how to communicate that, but then also not have it to be too intrusive where it takes over. But we're very much in an outdoor, natural, almost preserved place, which I think is very integral to this story. We’re in this preserved place that is now unfortunately about to be corrupted capitalism, and colonialism is rearing its ugly head. We're kind of in this pivotal moment that's happening in this house where that confrontation is occurring, so how can I lend to this story by creating a sound world that supports that and puts not only the audience inside of this flooding swamp, but helps the cast also be inside this world?
ZOE That's incredible to think that you're zooming in to the point of thinking about which animals are present at different times of day. I'm really curious about the collaborative process between the two of you. And I'm
wondering, what was your sort of first conversation about this project like and how has that changed throughout the rehearsal process?
CHIEF AYANDA I think that our first conversation and the conversation that we're having today is the same. Right? It's been the easiest, most aligned collaboration I think you could imagine. One thing about me, I always learned that art is supposed to be functional and practical, right? That there's creative process, but it's also purposeful. And so traditionally, music is always a part of the storytelling. It's not ancillary. And when I heard Rena speak about how she thinks of sound, what I gathered from that was that sound and the soundscape are equally as integral a part of the process. And while we haven't always been in the same space at the same time doing the same thing, I know and I feel confident that when I go back and say, “Oh, Rena, this is what I was thinking,” it's like, “Oh, yeah, of course.” And if she tells me something, it’s like “Oh, yeah, of course!” So for me, it's been super, super smooth, super easy.
RENA Yeah, I feel the same way. I'm like, oh, you took all the words! It's definitely been just a blessing, I would say. Because, you know, as Chief Ayanda was noting, I definitely think the sound and the nature are characters in the play as much as the protagonists are. And so it's really important to be able to have the opportunity to be involved from the beginning. Which is why I always love working with Awoye because Awoye is like, “Oh my goodness, how can we make this world?” And I'm like, “I know how we can make this world!” And [that thing was] that water needs to be in the world. And I think that it's not only the water that's really a part of this, but you know, there's something that happens when you're in Nigeria: there's always music. And I think that lends to Nigerians as a people—we come from an oral tradition, right? So, even in language, language can also be sing-songy. Specifically, they kind of make fun of one of the villages that—I think the village that my mom is from—they sing when they talk, and that’s how [they’re described]. So I think that being able to work with Chief Ayanda is just so wonderful because, you know, these drums that they're using specifically are talking drums too. So these are also ways of communicating.
ZOE Can you tell me a little bit about the recording session that happened recently?
CHIEF AYANDA This project is super cool because even thinking of the world of The Swamp Dwellers, we learned that Mr. Soyinka was very intentional in making this a minimalist, play, right? There are not a lot of people, there are not a lot of characters that have lines in words that we understand, but there's a lot of subtext that tells everything, that tells the story.
And so what we learned is that, although it’s minimalist, there's an opportunity here that we have to exploit to give people an understanding of what the world around this particular family on this particular night might look like. For example, there's a single drummer written into the play, and I clutched my pearls. I was like, “A single drummer? That doesn't usually happen!” You would have a drum ensemble that would accompany someone like Kadiye. Like Rena said, there's always music in the background. So, how can we acknowledge the minimalist ideology and the perspective that Mr. Soyinka is bringing for an audience that is unaware of what [usually] happens in this space. We thought it would be important to give a glimpse of what a full ensemble would look like. So, preshow, when the audience enters the space, they're going to hear a full ensemble, consistent with those of the Niger Delta in the 1950s. This is where the research and the inspiration of Chief Omokomoko's music came in, he started recording and playing and performing in 1933, so the music that we're drawing from would have
been played around the time of the fifties by this amazing musician. So, we've recorded a drum ensemble that our percussionist, Wale, is going to play solo over. So [the audience] will get some recorded music with live music that's happening that will give a sense of the musical landscape that a person might have heard in the Niger Delta. Not on this night because this particular night is something very different. But it gives a frame of reference so that when the play starts, we zoom into this very singular voice.
So in the recording session that we had yesterday, we recorded the ensemble and Wale came to join us. I needed him to be there, so I knew how he would respond, and we could build the music around him as if he was playing with a live ensemble, right? It was a little complicated because we had to have him playing and not record him but then record the rest of the ensemble around him, with two people overdubbing everything. So it's kind of complex, but I'm really happy with what we came up with.
I'm just super excited once we hand this to Rena and then put it in the environment, and for us to feel like the ensemble is communicating and responding to the natural sounds around us. I think then the audience is going to have a good starting point from which to get into the story that Mr. Soyinka intended.
ZOE Rena, anything else about the recording session? I know you weren't there, but are you excited to kind of get your hands on that recording?
RENA I'm really excited. I've been spending my time building this natural environment, you know, because we have this pre-show moment that is occurring and then we have the play. And, you know, part of our process too, is that we do sound and music scripting together, which has been really helpful, so that we can be on the same page about the sound world and things that need to need to occur. I mean, it's realistic, and then also, to me, it also gives some glimmers of magical realism, but it's not necessarily set in that tradition. But then there's parts of it that connect to that, because I think that form of storytelling really lends to, especially for non-Western cultures, the aspects that Western culture can't really explain in a literal sense. So I think that those parts of it are things that I'm excited to play with. And I'm working with a really incredible sound design associate, Chris Darbassie, who is bringing their wealth of experience and creativity to this. You know, I really come from a more experimental performance or background, so stepping into theater is always interesting—I'm like, “Oh, this is a different world,” you know?
CHIEF AYANDA To that point, everything is so intentional and purposeful, right? So we chose a studio that I work with all the time, with an engineer who understands the music that we're making. The specificity leads us to find people who understand the language, who understand how we're going about the process. And that means we gotta travel to Connecticut to find an engineer who knows how to mic the drums properly in order for us to get things done.
RENA Life! And I just wanted touch on that intentional part, too, because it is so true. Even to the point that I was checking research—I was like, “If I found a cloud forest or this forest in South America, is it the same?” And I look it up and, no, they're actually different. You know what I mean? Conveniently, there are a lot of field recordings from South America. But then the access to the field recordings from Africa is also a lot of times from specific places. And I can't use a field recording that has lions in the background from the Savanna. I was even looking up, “Do they have hippos?” Apparently, they do have pygmy hippos in the Niger Delta—didn't know that! So maybe we could get away with a couple hippos in the background. But these interesting things are occurring. I'm even looking at different types of rain! And you gotta stop yourself at
a point too because you can create a feeling with a sound that might not necessarily be the exact sound. It doesn't need to be [rain] only falling on palm trees, I could have something that's falling on wet fabric. I was able to locate sounds falling on a boathouse because this is something I wanna talk to Awoye about tomorrow: “Are we gonna be inside the house or are we always outside of the house?”
So, I know this isn't a normal thought process for a lot of people. [Laughs]
CHIEF AYANDA Rena, you should have seen it—to your point, yesterday I came with a carload of instruments, right? I had two bags with different bells in it. And the reason is because they play—the music that Omokomoko is famous for using bottles. So, I have all of these glass bottles in my house that I was trying to tap on, but the challenge is that nobody makes glass the same way.
RENA Yes! It’s a thick bottle that they use. Because in Nigeria and in Africa, and in a lot of other places, they recycle the bottles, so you’d have to get the old-school Coke bottles.
CHIEF AYANDA So, I look for the old school Coke bottles—like Mexican Coke bottles? But the problem was that the sound was too small.
RENA Yes! Because they’re little! Yeah, no, I know exactly what you're talking about.
CHIEF AYANDA So I need the trophy bottles. I need the bottles from Nigeria!
RENA Like all the Fanta bottles! You know, it's funny you said that because when we went back this time to Nigeria, I was like, “So much plastic is here.” But the first time I went to Nigeria in the nineties—I remember the bottles we used to get, and then you put them back in the crate to get new ones. And they're thick and they sterilize them and everything so that they’re reusable.
CHIEF AYANDA And so what we had to do was—I used this myriad of bells, right? So, I used bells that were from Ghana, I used bells that were from Nigeria. I used the bells that I use on the Sangban and Kenikeni from Guinea because they're just a flat piece of metal. But then I had to tape them. I used gaffers’ tape to deaden the ringing. If people could see what it was—It looked bananas! It's like, “What are these people doing with all these taped up pieces of metal and things?”
ZOE I could listen to you two talk about this forever. And
I’m so excited to see the show now that I know all these things and can listen for them, and I'm excited that our audience will be able to do the same thing.
I’m also wondering how the tension that builds throughout the play is translated through sound and how you approached providing this temperature check of what’s going on in the story? Chief Ayanda, I know you talked about how there are certain proverbs that are played on the drums and for you, Rena, the soundscape changes based on time [passing].
RENA Yeah, I think that that's something that we're constantly working on. So, tomorrow we have our designer run and we’re going to see what they've been working on because that is part of crafting the story. You know, even though you have this natural element going, there's times that we've all experienced, where you're experiencing a moment of heightened anxiety or stress or fear or anger, and it's like the sound gets sucked out of the room, right?
So, how can we then use sound to shift so that you're right there with the person? Because maybe everything just drops out and you're just in this room tone with these people, or it dies down because you know, it's always there. But there are those moments where a sound can really be an interlocutor of creating a moment. And I won't speak specifically on the drums, but the drums do that.
CHIEF AYANDA Yes, and to that point, that’s something that we’re tinkering every step of the way, right? So there are the proverbs that are being spoken on the drum throughout the piece that will translate to the listener as rhythm. On the surface it will feel like, like Rena said, there's always drumming in a village at a distance. But for a trained listener, there's actually commentary that's being made through the proverb. So, Soyinka reminded us of a very specific proverb that we use. So Kángun kàngun kángun yio kángun si bi kan kind of means “We’re headed toward a problem.” And it's resolved when we reach that moment, and we get O ti kángun si bi kan which means “okay, we've reached that point.” So the listener will hear that rhythm, that proverb being spoken on the drum, but they won't understand it. And so what we're having Wale do is kind of toy with just the musicality of the rhythm. So even aside from the language, just being able to play it in a way that will [be understood] because of the repetition, because of the frequency. And then when we get to that point, there'll be a dead silence, right? Whether the audience understands or not, they will feel the tension being built and that snap that comes when tension is released.
ZOE And that's similar to what Rena said, where there's moments of tension where all the sound is gone and that's how you can feel it, the absence. That's incredible. And last question, is there anything that you're really hoping that audiences take away from this production, either related to sound or just the production as a whole?
CHIEF AYANDA I hope that people experience a different way that stories are being told and can recognize the very intentional choices that have been made by this team in order to tell stories. We're here in New York, right? But the way that we're telling the story is aligned with the way that people in Nigeria and people in Western Africa and people in non-Western cultures have been telling stories and weaving those elements in. And, you know, one of my teachers always said that, and Rena touched on it before, regardless of whether we are conscious of it or not, there's always something happening. We're always being connected to nature. We're always being connected to the wisdom. And if we can align with it, then we'll understand. If not, we'll just feel it. So, I hope that people feel things that inspire them to maybe think about the way that they relate to the natural world around us because when we pay attention, then we can start to make some change.
RENA You know, this world that Wole Soyinka created through this text is also something that is very timely. And I think for people to not think of it as something that has happened in the past but as something also occurring in the present is really important. I wish that this were something that was just a historical happening that occurred once. But at present, there's a road being built for COP30 through the Amazonian rainforest, which is the lungs of the world. And there are people who are excited because they think it’s going to bring business. You know, in this play, I'm sure Igwezu was like, “Oh, great, I'm going to get business, just like my brother, Awuchike, did.” And then you return and destruction is happening at the hands of those who are selling you out because they want to make a buck. And unfortunately, these things are still occurring in Nigeria. I mean, we're literally experiencing a rapid expansion of fascism in this country, right? And it's at the hands of people who don't believe in climate science. And, you know, this world is on the verge of changing because of the commodification of natural resources, and these things have been happening and occurring in waves and layers and cycles that keep repeating themselves. So I do hope that this play also serves to empower people about the confrontations that are necessary with those who are seen as being in control or those who are seen as being the exploiters of the populace.
ZOE The first question I’ve been asking everyone is what did research look like for you for this production? What kind of resources did you use? Did anything surprise you?
SETH REISER You know, research on this project has been mostly about familiarizing ourselves with the place of the play. You know, it's not a place I've ever been to, and [I’m] sort of familiarizing myself with what it looks like and what the homes look like and what, not so much what the lighting looks like, but how it feels. I think that's kind of what lighting is all about it helps us decode how a place feels. One of the things that Rena and I have been talking a lot about has been the smell of the swamp and the humidity of the place, especially since we're at the end of a long, hot day and it's raining, and that feeling is important.
ZOE When you say that you've been talking a lot about smell and the feeling of humidity with Rena, how does that translate into lighting?
SETH We’ve talked about using infusers in the show. We're collaborating on what that smells like. But from an environmental perspective, when it comes to lighting,
one of the things that I've thought about a lot is what the air looks like overhead. We're going to fill the room with a haze; we're going to have moonlight that's shining through that haze. It's not going to rain, but it's going to feel like it's raining. It's also pretty dark, it doesn't begin with a beautiful sunset. It begins with a rainy, cloudy, evening that turns into a dark, hot, wet, musty night. There isn't sunshine, and if there's anything shining, it's the moon. So we're dealing with super diffused light that's coming through clouds and through haze. And I think that haze instinctually tells us that we're dealing with a place where water is in the air.
ZOE I spoke with Rena and Chief Ayanda about how tension throughout the play and how the soundscape kind of helps translate that tension. I'm curious from a lighting standpoint when going from dusk to late evening, how that transition aligns with the emotional points of the show.
SETH Oh for sure. When we the play begins, we're seeing sort of a kitchen sink drama between two old people who we love. There's a lot of love there. It’s a secure place it should feel safe and familiar, but Igwezu changes that emotional
dynamic. He’s angry, he’s dissatisfied, and he's frustrated and the leaders around him are not helping, they're making things worse. When he comes in, the world changes. Alu drops that water and she's shocked to see him because he sort of sneaks in in the dark; there's a ghost story there. Is his brother alive or dead? I don't really think we know. I was speaking with Awoye yesterday about what changes when he comes in, we transition into a more violent emotional landscape. The lighting is going to become sharper, the shadows are going to become more singular. I plan on that being a really long transition and it breaks when Kadiye leaves at the end of the play. As soon as he gets his anger out on the Kadiye, that's when that sharpness sort of leaves, and that tension starts to evaporate.
We also have to open the audience up to the visual language of the play. It’s not just a naturalistic drama. We need to be able to justify moving into big ceremonial moments where the lighting gets more intense, and builds to feel connected to the loud drums and to a ceremonial blessing of everybody in the house when Kadiye comes in. So we have to justify those moments by finding opportunities to sort of expand the lighting language, because it can't just come out of nowhere, you know? We want to go to lots of emotional places. We're trying to join multiple emotional ideas that go from soft, diffuse, sweet, old couple bickering into violence, violence, violence. So it's a little like the weather. It's coming and going.
ZOE And you said, when Igwezu enters, it immediately becomes sharper, right? And then when Kadiye enters, does that sharpness sort of intensify?
SETH I think the difference between something like Kadiye’s entrance, which needs to be grandiose and bright and kind of joyful—we need to trick the audience into thinking that this guy's not bad. Or at least we aremeant to sort of like him at first because we don't know Igwezu yet. I think it's for us to sort of go like, “Hmm, this is an interesting guy,” we do something big and bold and bright and warm and open so that we can sort of see all of that. From a lighting perspective, the project is all about intensity. It's about the difference between sharpness and softness. Sort of like dry mud and wet mud. There's a big difference between those two things, right? When mud is all wet, it's all squished together, it's like clay, it moves around easily. But when it's all dry, it's got cracks in it, it's sharp. I think that's a good metaphor for the lighting, mud.
ZOE Were you able to be in the room with Wole Soyinka when he came into rehearsal?
SETH No. I was really sad. I got too busy with another thing that day.
ZOE Oh no! I wanted to ask because that conversation must adjust how you see the production, but I'm sure you've heard incredible stories from that day.
SETH Reading what he's written—I was just talking to a colleague about the way he's written this play, it follows these, for lack of a better term, rules—they're old-fashioned rules about making theatre. The play takes the amount of time that it takes in real time. We aren’t jumping back and forth in time; we're not jumping back and forth between different places.There's stillness, there are words, it's poetic, and we understand it. And it's so much more human for us to see plays like that. And I really appreciate that about what he's made. I also really love what he has to say about ritual, and the human ritual of making theatre and storytelling.
ZOE You’ve talked a little bit about collaborating with Rena, and I wanted to ask what your collaboration with Jason has looked like. I know you haven’t gotten to tech yet, but how have those conversations evolved throughout the process?
Lighting plot for The Swamp Dwellers by Seth Reiser.
SETH I think Jason and I have been on the same page since day one.What’s important to know about our team in general is, when we speak to each other, we're all together. I find that to be really useful, because it makes the dialogue something that is less lighting centric, or set centric,or costume centric, or sound; it's not about those objects. We’re all just part of a team. So I can have ideas about sound, smell, and humidity. I can also think about the costumes, and I can also think about the set. But my part in that process—later on—is when I'm doing the lighting. My collaboration with Jason has been sort of like, again, understanding what the world feels like, less about the practical concerns of designing scenery and lighting. I added some big walls of lights way upstage because I want to do big lights from really far away, big gesture, end of the day raininess. So we had to talk about that a bunch because it's a humongous visual element.We needed to talk about which angle these lights are going to be at. Are they going to be on the angle of the set, which is on a bias? Or, is it at the angle of the building, which is rectilinear? And we sort of split the difference on that. So the lights themselves are responding to the architecture of the space, but they're asymmetrical. So I'm still getting angular light coming from them. But the position, the lighting positions themselves are responding to architecture. So that's kind of cool.
The other thing: Jason is super creative and his renderings of the set are beautiful. He spent a lot of time making them. So I'm going to grab as much of that as I can and use those ideas because that's what we're all looking at. I think part of my job is to look at what he's producing and respond and try to make those things happen in addition to my own ideas. For
instance: I want my shadows to fall in certain places. I don't want them to fall against the lines of the set. Otherwise, it looks like the lighting and the set are disjointed. If the shadows don't agree with what's going on upstage, it looks foreign.
ZOE You touched on this a bit, but what do you hope audiences notice about this production? Obviously, there's so much thought going into it but is there anything in particular that you hope audiences will take away?
SETH I think the play has a sort of resonance with what we're experiencing globally: frustration with leadership, frustration with our environment, conflict between our elders and our youngers. Becauseeverything is so dualistic right now. Everything is just black and white. And the anger/frustration that a lot of us are feeling is what Igwezu represents. And his parents are there to remind us that in life there are seasons. And approaching with care and love is the only way to move forward. Although one of the things that I think is a little frustrating is that they fall on the side of Kadiye and they fall on the side of, not conservatism so much, but in keeping the pecking order intact. And then of course, of course the Beggar is the one who tells us the way, right?! And so what I hope people take away from the play is that important resonance with Igwezu and resonance with our current world. And I hope they take away the Beggar's words, the Beggar's humility, and the Beggar's willingness to give up his life to help people so that he can—get what he wants, what I think the beggar wants is to be helpful. And he wants to work here and now.
I think I want people to take away the Beggar's words. And to listen to our prophets and listen to others and question authority, listen to those that live in the here and now.
ZOE What did research look like for you for this production? Are there any specific resources that you used or anything that surprised you?
JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST Research was hard for this production because, you know, the time period it takes place in, the 1950s, and the distance away from here it takes place makes it hard to find photographs of what the structure would really have looked like. You know, it's sort of routinely difficult for designers, I think, to find really good research on residential spaces, particularly from the past, because we tend to not document and publish photographs of everyday, normal residential spaces throughout history. So the research project was challenging in that way. And at the same time, there actually is wealth of information. My team and I, Awoye, and the rest of the creative team found some really interesting YouTubers going on tours of various parts of Nigeria and the Niger River Delta areas and some of the concurrent existing structures that exist in the lakes and in the swamps, which was very helpful. But of course, it's contemporary, and so you kind of have to reverse time and imagine what technology would have been like. The research process for me typically involves a kind of first pass of if we were making a naturalistic movie version of this and wanted to get it right, what was the world, what were the structures, what were the objects, colors,
textures? And that's the first pass. And then there is a more conceptual pass of research that's less about naturalistic accuracy and much more about, well, what are the themes of the play, and how do those themes express themselves visually? So some of that was about the fact that this is a very isolated house. The characters describe it as being sort of the end. It's like the end of civilization before it just becomes swamp and water and eventually the ocean. And then the intersection of the oil industry and the extraction of crude oil and the effect on the land and the water, which is touched on a little bit in the script. You know, it's not a huge component of the script, but also it is a kind of huge component of the script, having to do with just the toxic nature of the swamp in relation to the failure of Igwezu’s crops. So yeah, the research phase was pretty robust and a full range of historical research, dramaturgical research, and pretty conceptual research.
ZOE You kind of answered this already, but I took a look at your website, and I saw all of these incredible photos that you use for inspiration for your designs. And I know you weren't able to actually visit the Niger Delta, but have there been any just moments throughout life that you've been able to sort of apply to this particular set? You seem to have done that a lot in your past work.
JASON Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm always kind of fascinated just in general by humans’ relationships to nature. And, you know, in this case, the water level, the ground plane and the water plane are such an important part of the story and of the character's relationship to the earth. And,
you know, where they live in the swamp and the fact that the house structure needs to be up on stilts, sort of raised above this variable water level that floods and recedes and changes over time. And so, a lot of the photographic work I just do on my own has to do with reflections and a relationship to water. And so, I found myself pulling a little bit from that as well, just, like, really thinking about how the world of this house, this home, and these people relate to a reflective surface, you know, a sort of grounding.
ZOE I just spoke with Seth, actually, and he mentioned that there were three different iterations of this set. And I was wondering if you could sort of speak to those three different versions and what stuck and what you had to let go of.
JASON Well, Awoye and I started with this thought that, given what I just said about the relationship of humans to water, the ground plane to the water plane, the original version of, I would say, a blue sky version of this design really was dependent on having physical water in the space and, not flooding the theatre of TFANA, but having a significant kind of oily, slicky, tangible water plane out of which the structure emerges. And in order to do that, in theory, the whole structure and stage had to be on the side of the theater that is over the trap room. And so that configuration was an end-stage relationship. The audience is sort of looking at the structure and the water for a variety of reasons.
We had to move on from actual water, mostly having to do with money, because it's very, very, very expensive to use real water. And, of course, it's very risky, you know, you don't want it to actually flood. And when we realized that we were not going to be using real water, we were no longer limited by needing to keep the set on one side of the theater. And so the way I had been talking a lot about how isolated the structure is and how sort of, you know, we wanted to accentuate its isolation, somehow, spatially. And so not using water freed us up to move the structure kind of out into the middle of the theater. And now we're in a thrust configuration, and the structure got smaller, and it's really sort of floating in the middle of the space, you know, kind of surrounded just by air. And to get to the house, you have to walk across this crooked, raised walkway. And so it is sort of literally isolated from the rest of the architecture of the theater. And we still have a symbolic representation of water. The kind of subfloor below the house structure is this very, very reflective black material that still gives us that reflection and kind of symbolically
stands in for the water. So we're still playing with the idea of water as an element, just not quite so literally.
ZOE This is a little bit of a nitty gritty question, but the material of the fake water—how did you land on that? Did you already know what would be super reflective or is that something you had to find?
JASON A few years ago, I designed Shadowland at the Public Theater, which is a play that took place during Hurricane Katrina. In that design, we had real water and then we also had this extended kind of surround of a reflective expression of water. So I had already gone through the process of testing out various materials and found this very shiny dance floor. It's basically like a highly reflective black Marley dance floor that you can just roll down and it looks like oily water.
ZOE In my conversation with Seth, he mentioned that in the first iteration of the design, the house structure was sort of more straight on and now it's at an angle. And I remember during the meet-and-greet that was sort of the first thing that struck me about the set. Can you tell me a little bit about deciding on that structure?
JASON Part of it was a subconscious choice of just like, it feels better. It actually was the very, very first thing that I did, even before we did the water version and everything, the very first rendering, I think, that I showed Awoye was this rotated structure, rotated in relationship to the theater. And then we moved on and we straightened it, and we did a lot of work, and then we came back and decided to go use the thrust configuration, and it was still straight. And then at the last minute, we realized, we need to rotate it again, because conceptually, I think there's something about wanting the house structure to be organically shifted from the plan of the theater itself, to be following different rules than the theater seating and theater architecture is following, so that the house really feels like it's a, in relationship to an organic order, as opposed to the theater, which is in relationship to a kind of Brooklyn, New York City grid.
ZOE Since I've been able to speak to all of you individually, I’ve learned how collaborative process has been, as I’m sure a lot of design teams are. But is there anything that has felt unique to you about working with this design team? I know you work with Awoye a lot, so maybe it's something that she brings to the table. Someone mentioned that it's almost like she sends up a "bat signal" and everybody responds.
JASON Yeah, as I said, I've worked with Awoye a lot. And what I really love about how she works is that she creates a really open, generous room, whether that's the rehearsal room or the theater room or the kind of virtual design room that happens mostly on Zoom and email. But as a director, she's really, really good at creating a kind of beautiful space for the team to all be invited to. And so as much as possible, we always meet together as opposed to Awoye and I meeting separately, and then Awoye meeting separately with Qween, and then Awoye meeting separately with Seth and Rena. And Awoye is always inviting designers to think broadly outside of their lane and to just think kind of holistically about the piece. And it's just a really beautiful thing. We haven't made it yet, but I think it will come across after we get to the theater and all the elements come back together. I think it's going to hopefully be a beautifully fuzzy edge between, what's the idea about scenic design versus lighting design versus sound design versus costume design? Like there's cloth in the clothing, there's cloth in the scenery. Qween and I have been talking about that with Lauren, the props supervisor. And it's like all this kind of beautifully nebulous collaborative overlap.
ZOE That’s incredible. Is there a specific conversation that came up in a design team meeting that was from a different designer and that inspired you or folded into your design?
JASON Yeah, you know, sound and space, I think, are more related than most people realize. And I think it was Rena who was talking about pretty early on, it's sort of written in the script, the sound of the drummer who's traveling with Kadiye, and you're kind of meant to hear that from far away. And there's this lengthy approach of hearing this drum in the distance, and then as the drum gets closer, eventually they make it to the threshold and enter the space. And one of the beautiful things about the TFANA theater is that it's got this really interesting backstage area that can really kind of open up. And Rena was encouraging us to try to not simulate that journey through sound design, but sort of be as physical and tangible about that journey by trying to start it as far away physically from the house as possible. And so that walkway that connects the house to someplace that we can't see because it sort of disappears all the way upstage, that's as long as we can possibly make it. And I'm pretty sure Rena's putting microphones into the boardwalk, as it were, so that that physical journey becomes a soundscape, and the soundscape morphs into a physical design
element. So those two worlds really kind of came together there, and that was a beautiful, pretty early discovery of how those two departments that are usually pretty separate really kind of blended together.
ZOE That's so neat, the fact that the audience will be able to potentially see him at some points, and also just really feel it slowly approaching. The last question I've been asking everyone is what do you hope audiences notice and take away from this production? It can be related specifically to the set or really anything.
JASON I hope the audience stops thinking about the set, and I hope that the design really allows the audience to kind of get pulled into the intimacy of the space, and really just feel and hear the language, and get to know the characters. That's always the goal, is to try to support the play through design, not distract from the play. So that's my hope, is that the design elements, all of us, all the designers working together can really help focus and connect the humans in the audience to the humans on our stage, and really make it feel like one space.
ATO BLANKSON-WOOD (Igwezu) (he/him) Broadway: Cabaret, Slave Play (Tony Award Nomination), Hair, Lysistrata Jones Selected Theatre: Slave Play at NYTW (Drama League Awards Nomination, Lortel Nomination), The Total Bent at the Public (Drama League and Lucille Lortel Award nomination) The Rolling Stone at Lincoln Center (Drama League Award nomination) Hamlet at Shakespeare in the Park and Long Day’s Journey Into Night for Audible. Films include Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit, Spike Lee’s BlacKKKlansman, Worth opposite Michael Keaton, and Peter Hedge’s The Same Storm. Television includes “Monster: Dahmer,” “The Good Fight,” “She’s Gotta Have It,” and Ava DuVernay’s “When They See Us.” Ato is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Yale School of Drama.
LEON ADDISON BROWN (Makuri). Broadway: Misery and The Trip to Bountiful, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, On the Waterfront, Prelude To A Kiss. Off-Broadway: Soft Transfers (MCC), Painted Rocks of Revolver Creek, The Train Driver, Master Harold, Two Trains Running (Signature); As You Like It (TFANA). Television: “The Penguin”, “Chicago Med”, “Evil”, “Law & Order” and series regular on “The Breaks” and “The Knick”. Film: Paris is in Harlem, 40 Winks, The Whirly Girl, A Walk Amongst the Tombstones, The Surrogate, Ben Is Back and the upcoming Atrabilious, Boss (HBO) and “American Rust” Season 2 (Prime). He has a Drama Desk Award; he is a three-time recipient of the Connecticut Critic Circle Award and has been nominated for ADELCO Awards and Drama League Awards. Leon lives in Bloomfield NJ with his wife and their daughter and teaches 2nd year acting at SUNY Purchase.
JOSHUA ECHEBIRI (Beggar). Theatre: King James (Old Globe), Partnership (Mint Theater Company), We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War (Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse), Henry V (Old Globe), Lizardly (Media Art Exploration/ New York Live Arts), Merry Wives (The Public Theater/Shakespeare in the Park), Romeo N Juliet (Pittsburgh Public Theater), A Raisin in the Sun/Something Happens for Joe/Soft (Williamstown Theatre Festival). Television: “Elsbeth” (CBS), “Brilliant Minds” (NBC), “Bob Hearts Abishola” (CBS), “Dear Edward” (Apple TV), “The Good Fight” (Paramount+). Education: B.A. from Dartmouth College, M.F.A. from NYU Graduate Acting. joshuaechebiri.com
BENTON GREENE (Understudy for Makuri) Broadway: Sweat. Select Theater: Sweat (Public Theater National Tour), Esai’s Table (Cherry Lane), Father Comes Home From The Wars (A.R.T./Public Theater), Art (Westport Country Playhouse),The Seven (New York Theatre Workshop), Dream On Monkey Mountain (Classical Theater of Harlem), This Is How It Goes (The Studio Theatre), Funnyhouse Of A Negro (Bay Area Critic’s Circle Award), Berta, Berta, Comedy Of Errors, Cyrano, Romeo& Juliet, Two Gentlemen Of Verona. Television: Pretty Little Liars, Power Book II: Ghost, FBI, The Blacklist, The Following, Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods, White Collar. Film: Gaslight, Last Night (Best Supporting Actor), Broken City.
Jenny Jules, Alu; Leon Addison Brown, Makuri; Awoye Timpo, director, at first rehearsal. Photo by Hollis King.
JENNY JULES (Alu). Broadway: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Hermione Granger), The Crucible (Tituba). Off-Broadway: Julius Caesar, Henry IV (St Ann’s Warehouse), Father Comes Home From The Wars, Sweat (Public & Tour), Ruined (Arena), Her Portmanteau (NYTW). London: Way of The World (Donmar), Ruined (Critics Circle Best Actress), The Homecoming, King Lear, Big White Fog (Almeida), Moon On A Rainbow Shawl, Death & The King’s Horseman (National), A Raisin In The Sun (Royal Exchange), Born Bad (Hampstead), Fabulation, Gem of the Ocean, Wine In The Wilderness, Pecong, (Tricycle), Vagina Monologues (West End). Film: The Man Inside, SW9, Up’n’Under. TV: “Death In Paradise” (BBC), “Skins” (E4), “New Amsterdam” (NBC).
JASON MAINA (Attendant) is elated to be making his Off-Broadway debut at TFANA. Born and raised in Louisville, KY, Jason began his journey in performance with local theater companies Kentucky Black Repetory Theater and Actors Theatre of Louisville before attending Fordham University--of which he is a recent graduate. You may have recently seen him as Osei in Culture Shock at Powerhouse Theater Festival, There Goes the Neighborhood as Ulysess at the Brick Aux Theater, or as Timon in The Elif Collective’s production of Timon of Athens.
CHIKÉ OKONKWO (Kadiye) . New York: Julius Caesar - Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at the BAM Harvey Theater. UK Theater includes: Multiple seasons at the RSC in Stratford Upon Avon, and London including Midsummer Night’s Dream (RST). A Matter of Life and Death, His Dark Materials Parts I & II (National Theatre), Singer (Tricycle), As You Like It (New Vic), Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare’s Globe), All My Sons (Royal Exchange) In Time, Walking Waterfall - Tiata Delights (Almeida), Patrick Marber’s Old Street (Nabako). Television includes: La Brea (NBC & Peacock), Wondla (Apple TV+), Being Mary Jane (BET) Banshee (Cinemax), Paradox, New Tricks (BBC). Film Includes: The Birth of a Nation (Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner) Death Saved My Life, Blindfire, Burning Sands, The Program. Chiké plays the lead character of Sgt Arthur Kingsley, in the popular video game, Call of Duty: Vanguard.
OLAWALE OYENOLA (Drummer). My name is Michael Olawale Oyenola. Born in Brooklyn and shaped by the rhythms of Nigeria, I spent my childhood immersed in the culture before returning to the U.S. as a teenager. In Abeokuta, Ogun State, I got my first talking drum, sparking a lifelong journey to discovering ancestral wisdom. My love for music runs deep—Apala, Juju, and Fuji were the soundtracks to my childhood, with legends like Musiliu Haruna Ishola, King Sunny Adé, and Ebenezer Obey influencing my appreciation for rhythm and storytelling. Their music taught me the power of tradition, movement, and the deep connection between sound and identity.
Jenny Jules, Alu; Wole Soyinka, author, at first rehearsal. Photo by Hollis King.
WOLE SOYINKA (Playwright). Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, Wole Soyinka has published more than thirty works, and continues to be active on various international artistic and Human Rights organizations such as the International Theatre Institute, the UN Commision on Human Rights and the International Parliament of Writers of which he was the immediate past President. A Yoruba born in Western Nigeria and educated in Ibadan, Wole Soyinka continued his studies at the University of Leeds, England, earning an Honours degree in English, then joined the Royal Court Theatre, London, as a play-reader. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller grant and returned to Nigeria, where he researched theatre, and founded a theatre company.
Soyinka’s first plays, The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel, were written in Leeds and London, first performed at Ibadan in 1959, with The Lion and the Jewel receiving its London premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London in the sixties. His later play, Death and the King's Horseman has been produced all over the world, including at the National Theater in London in 2009, at Lincoln Center in New York City and in 2022 at the Stratford Festival in Canada. Other works for theater have included The Trials of Brother Jero, Jero’s Metamorphosis, A Dance of the Forests, Kongi’s Harvest, Madmen and Specialists, The Strong Breed, The Road, A Play of Giants, Requiem for a Futurologist. He has adapted The Bacchae for the British National Theatre where it was performed under the title The Bacchae of Euripides, Opera Wonyosi from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera and Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, set in an African context, and King Baabu from Alfred Jarry’s King Ubu. His adaptation has been described as taking Ubu’s savage satire to the limits of the grotesque.
Soyinka has written three novels, The Interpreters, Season of Anomy, and Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth was published in 2023, listed as a NY Times Notable Book of the Year. Autobiographical works include The Man Died: Prison Notes and Aké: The Years of Childhood and IBADAN, The Penkelemes Years. Literary essays are collected in, among others, Myth, Literature and the African World and Art, Dialogue and Outrage while his political and other thematic writings are contained in The Open Sore of a Continent and The Burden of Memory, Muse of Forgiveness. His poems are collected in Idanre and Other Poems, Poems from Prison, A Shuttle in the Crypt, Ogun Abibiman, Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems, SAMARKAND and Other Markets I have Known. Wole Soyinka has held several university positions and still lectures extensively.
AWOYE TIMPO (Director) is a Brooklyn-based Director and Producer. Recent directing credits include Leroy & Lucy (Steppenwolf), Syncing Ink (Apollo Theater), and Elyria (Atlantic Theater), Wedding Band (TFANA), In Old Age (NYTW), Carnaval (Vineyard Theatre, Audible), and The Homecoming Queen (Atlantic Theater). She has also directed at the Huntington, Studio Theatre, Berkeley Rep, and more. Other projects include Ndebele Funeral (59E59, Edinburgh, South African Tour), "Black Picture Show" (Artists Space/Metrograph), and Bluebird Memories (Audible). Awoye is a Creative Arts Consultant for the African American Policy Forum and the Founding Producer of Classix, a collective exploring Black plays and performance history. For more, visit theclassix.org [theclassix.org].
JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST (Scenic Designer) is is an Emmy Award-winning set and production designer whose work spans live theater, television/film, concerts, dance, architecture, and more. Broadway: Redwood. Off Broadway: Syncing Ink (Apollo); shadow/land, The Michaels, Illyria, Women of a Certain Age, What Did You Expect?, Hungry (The Public); Monsoon Wedding (St Ann’s); Wedding Band (TFANA); Elyria (Atlantic); Good Grief (Vineyard). Regional: Nobody Loves You (ACT), The Grove, Sojourners, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, The Bluest Eye (Huntington); Redwood (La Jolla); I Am Delivered’t (Dallas / Louisville); The Importance of Being Earnest (Pittsburgh / Baltimore); Bliss (5th Avenue); School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play (Berkeley); Once On This Island (Cincinnati / Louisville); Uncle Vanya (Old Globe); Native Gardens, The Royale (Cleveland Play House). Concerts & touring: Dua Lipa (global tour); Phish (MSG); Usher (Paris); Hikaru Utada, Florence + The Machine, Pentatonix, Lana Del Rey, Dermot Kennedy (arena tours). TV: Jesus Christ Superstar Live (NBC), Blue Man Group (NETworks). www.jawstudiony.com [jawstudiony.com] @jasonardizzonewest
QWEEN JEAN (Costume Designer) is an NYC-based costume designer who has fully committed her voice to the advocacy of marginalized communities. She is thrilled to return to TFANA to collaborate on The Swamp Dwellers. Awoye Timpo is an infinite gift. Qween founded Black Trans Liberation, which aims to provide access and housing resources for the TGNC community. Jean is the author of Revolution is Love: A Year of Black Trans Liberation (Aperture). In 2023, she joined the Board for TCG. Awards: Obie for Excellence in Costume Design; finalist for NYC David Prize. MFA from NYU Tisch. Learn more at blacktransliberation.com
SETH REISER (Lighting Designer) is a designer for theatre, opera, dance, and music, whose work has been seen throughout the United States and internationally. Seth is thrilled to collaborate with Awoye and the whole team on this wonderful production.NYC credits include: Matthew Passion at the Park Avenue Armory (dir. Peter Sellars), Kagami by Ryuichi Sakamoto at The Shed (dir. Todd Eckert), Merchant of Venice at CSC (dir. Igor Golyak), Somebody’s Daughter at Second Stage (dir. May Adrales), The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs by Mike Daisey at The Public Theater, The Mysteries at The Flea (dir. Ed Iskandar), Radio Play by Reggie Watts and Tommy Smith at PS 122 (dir. Kip Fagan), and Taylor Mac’s Obie Award-winning production of The Lily’s Revenge at HERE Arts. Regional highlights include designs for: Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare Theatre DC, Dallas Theatre Center, Two River Theater Company, GeVA, Portland Center Stage, Trinity Repertory, Berkeley Repertory, Seattle Repertory, The Denver Center Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth, American Repertory Theatre, and Playmakers Repertory. Seth holds a BA from Ohio Wesleyan University and an MFA from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. For more, visit www.sethreiserdesign.com.
RENA ANAKWE (Sound Designer) (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, poet and healer working primarily with sound, visuals, and scent. Exploring intersections between traditional healing practices, spirituality and performance, she creates works focused on sensory-based, experiential interactions using creative technology. Most recently, she was a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow for Interdisciplinary Arts, a 2024 artist-in-residence in The Kitchen’s DAP (Dance and Process), a 2023-2024 Lincoln Center Social Sculpture Cohort artist and a 20212022 MacDowell Fellow for Interdisciplinary Arts. She is based in Brooklyn, New York, by way of Nigeria and Canada. www.aspaceforsound.com
CHIEF AYANDA (Music Supervisor and Composer). Respected globally, Chief Ayanda Ifadara Clarke, Ajibilu Awo of Osogboland, is an educator, creative consultant, and GRAMMY® Award-winning musician. His work reflects his embrace of African and African Diasporic traditions, focusing on the intersections of art, culture, and spirit. The Brooklyn native has traveled several continents sharing the stage with luminaries such as Harry Belafonte, Michael Jackson, Doug E. Fresh, and other greats from most genres of music. Chief Ayanda’s original music has been recorded, performed, and licensed for television, film, and Off-Broadway productions. He founded THE FADARA GROUP to house his various artistic, community, and spiritual health programs.
JANE GUYER FUJITA (Dialect Coach) is a New York City-based voice and dialect specialist who helps performers, productions, and professionals find voices that are resonant and connected. She is excited to make her TFANA debut, collaborating with this talented cast and creative team. Jane has coached productions on and Off-Broadway, regionally, and internationally, with work spanning film, TV, and streaming. She studied Voice and Speech Pedagogy at the Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University, in partnership with the Moscow Art Theater School, and serves as Head of Voice at NYU Grad Acting.
ARMINDA THOMAS (Production Dramaturg). Broadway: The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Death of a Salesman. Off Broadway: Wine in the Wilderness (Classic Stage Company); The Great Privation (Soho Rep); Mirrors (Parity Productions); Wedding Band (Theatre for a New Audience); Black History Museum...According to the United States of America (HERE Arts Center); The First Noel (Classical Theatre of Harlem). Regional: Leroy and Lucy (Steppenwolf); Trouble in Mind (Hartford Stage); Wedding Band (Stratford Theatre Festival); Jazz (Marin Theatre Co.). Arminda is resident dramaturg and a producing member of CLASSIX, and a 2025 New Georges Audrey Resident.
JONATHAN KALB (Resident Dramaturg) is a professor of theatre at Hunter College, CUNY and is TFANA’s resident dramaturg. The author of five books on theatre, he has worked for more than three decades as a theatre scholar, critic, journalist and dramaturg. He has twice won The George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism and has also won the George Freedley Award for an outstanding theatre book from the Theatre Library Association. He often writes about theatre on his TheaterMatters blog at jonathankalb.com
ANDREW WADE (Resident Voice Director). Broadway: Harry Potter and The Cursed Child Parts One and Two (U.S. Head of Voice and Dialect), King Lear with Glenda Jackson (Voice Coach), Matilda the Musical (Director of Voice) and national tour. Royal Shakespeare Company: Head of Voice (1990-2003). The Public Theater: Director of Voice. NYTW: Othello with Daniel Craig. The Guthrie Theater: since 2002. Teaching: Juilliard (Adjunct Faculty Drama Division), Stella Adler Studio (Master Teacher Voice and Speech). Film: Shakespeare in Love. Workshops and Lectures: Worldwide. Fellow: Rose Bruford College.
CHARLIE LOVEJOY (Production Stage Manager). Off-Broadway: Henry IV (TFANA); Hold On To Me Darling (WJP/ Seaview); Kimberly Akimbo (Atlantic Theater Company); Seagull (Elevator Repair Service). Regional: 2024 WTF Cabaret (Williamstown Theatre Festival); Escaped Alone, The Brightest Thing in the World, Between Two Knees (Yale Repertory Theatre); The Santaland Diaries, Incendiary, graveyard shift (Goodman Theatre); Pericles, As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Elm Shakespeare); Rossini's Otello, Kiss Me Kate (Central City Opera). Academic: Moe's a D*ck, littleboy/littleman, Romeo and Juliet, Bodas de sangre (David Geffen School of Drama). B.A., University of Chicago. M.F.A., David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.
KELLEY LYNNE MONCRIEF (Assistant Stage Manager) (she/her/hers). Broadway: Some Like It Hot, An Enemy of the People, Doubt, Moulin Rouge. Off Broadway: Teeth, Our Class, The Christine Jorgensen Show. TV/Film: “Gossip Girl”, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” MFA from Columbia University and BA from Goldsmiths, University of London. @kelleylynnem
BLAKE ZIDELL & ASSOCIATES (Press Representative) is a Brooklyn-based public relations firm representing arts organizations and cultural institutions. Clients include St. Ann’s Warehouse, Playwrights Horizons, Signature Theatre, Soho Rep, National Sawdust, The Kitchen, Performance Space New York, PEN America, StoryCorps, Symphony Space, the Fisher Center at Bard, Peak Performances, Irish Arts Center, the Merce Cunningham Trust, the Onassis Foundation, Taylor Mac, Page 73, The Playwrights Realm, PlayCo and more.
THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE. Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, and led by Horowitz and Managing Director Dorothy Ryan, TFANA is a home for Shakespeare and other contemporary playwrights. TFANA explores the everchanging forms of world theatre and creates a dialogue between the language and ideas of Shakespeare and diverse authors, past and present. TFANA also builds associations with artists from around the world and supports their development through commissions, translations, and residencies.
In 2001, TFANA became the first American theatre invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the Royal Shakespeare Company, and in 2007, TFANA returned to the RSC. In 2025, TFANA tours its production of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice starring John Douglas Thompson as Shylock and directed by Arin Arbus to the Royal Lyceum Theatre of Edinburgh, Scotland.
TFANA performs for audiences of all ages and backgrounds; is devoted to economically accessible tickets and promotes humanities and education programs. TFANA has played on Broadway, Off Broadway and toured internationally and nationally. In 2013, It opened its first permanent home, Polonsky Shakespeare Center (PSC), Brooklyn, with the 299seat Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage and the 50-seat Theodore Rogers Studio.
EQUITY
(“Equity”) , founded in 1913, is the U.S. labor union that represents more than 50,000 actors and stage managers. Equity seeks to foster the art of live theatre as an essential component of society and advances the careers of its members by negotiating wages and working conditions and providing a wide range of benefits including health and pension plans. Actors’ Equity is a member of the AFL-CIO and is affiliated with FIA, an international organization of performing arts unions. #EquityWorks
row: Leon Addison Brown, Samantha Estrella,
Armas,
Okonkwo, Awoye Timpo, Qween Jean, Rena Anakwe, Chief Ayanda Clarke, Jeffrey Horowitz. Bottom row: Kelley Lynne Moncrief, Joshua Echebiri, Ato Blankson-Wood, Regge Allan Bruce, Olawale Oyenola. First rehearsal. Photo by Hollis King.
Associate Scenic Designer.............................Sean Sanford
Assistant Scenic Designer............................Mehula Singh
Assistant Lighting Designer...........................Sophie Lynd
Associate Costume Designer......................Amelia Camilo
Assistant Costume Designer..........................Ryan Wilbat
Associate Sound Designer.........................Chris Darbassie
Dialect Coach..................................................Jane Fujita
Yoruba Consultant..................................Adedoba Afolabi
Lead Carpenter..............................................Tobias Segal
Scenic Carpenters...............Corey Asinofsky, Ellie Engstrom, Helen Hylton, Frann McCrann, James Blydenburgh, Jules Conlon, Mia Wilson, Morgan Southwell,Amanda Chisholm, Kevin Bickwermert, Haley Crawford, Terry Chun, Emmy Boisvert
Production Electrician...............................Michael Cahill
Electricians...........................Luke Wilson, Sawyer Smith, Jonah Bobilin, Tony Mulanix, Adam Gabel, Erin Bulman, Cassandra Gutterman-Johns, Alex Nemfakos, Elizabeth Camacho, Robert Cott
Audio Supervisor....................................Geoff Grimwood
Production Audio.......................................Jonathan Stutz
Assistant Production Audio..................Daniel Santamaria
Audio Technicians..............Will Bennett, Matthew Good, Kevin Perea, Patrick Blair, Pedro Lima, Steven Waggoner, Joshua Weidenbaum, Joseph Parisi, Rudy Bearden, Nick Montalbano
Wardrobe Supervisor.........................Nicole Montgomery
Stitcher.....................................................Keith Schneider
Costume Production Assistant..............Adrienne Johnson
Deck Carpenter.................................Tristan Viner-Brown
Lighting Programmer and Operator............Paul Kennedy
Costumes built by Talla Dia, Kilimanjaro Fashion and G&M Tailoring
Headpieces built by Arnold Levine Millinery and Heather Anderson
Distressing by Hochi Asiatico
Scenery provided by Daedalus Design & Production.
Special Thanks:
Harouna Mahamat, MA, Joachim Quainoo, Damilola adeyemo, Jim Ingalls
The Swamp Dwellers was rehearsed at MARK MORRIS DANCE CENTER
JEFFREY HOROWITZ (Founding Artistic Director) began his career in theatre as an actor and appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in regional theatre. In 1979, he founded Theatre for a New Audience. Horowitz has served on the panel of the New York State Council on the Arts, on the board of directors of Theatre Communications Group, the advisory board of the Shakespeare Society and the artistic directorate of London’s Globe Theatre. Awards: 2003 John Houseman Award from The Acting Company, 2004 Gaudium Award from Breukelein Institute, 2019 Obie Lifetime Achievement and TFANA’s 2020 Samuel H. Scripps.
DOROTHY RYAN (Managing Director) joined Theatre for a New Audience in 2003 after a ten-year fundraising career with the 92nd Street Y and Brooklyn Museum. Ryan began her career in classical music artist management and also served as company manager and managing leader for several regional opera companies. She is a Brooklyn Women of Distinction honoree and was a founding member of the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance.
CHLOE KNIGHT (General Manager) is a graduate of the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale’s Theater Management program, and recipient of Yale’s 2024 Morris J. Kaplan Prize in Theater Management. Knight has served as Associate Managing Director of the Yale Repertory Theatre, assistant to the president of LORT, CoManaging Director of the Yale Summer Cabaret, Company Manager at Yale Rep, and Management Fellow at Lincoln Center Theater. Before earning her MFA, she held myriad fundraising positions at Page 73, consulting firm Advance NYC, and The Lark.
Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, and led by Horowitz and Managing Director Dorothy Ryan, TFANA is a home for Shakespeare and other contemporary playwrights. TFANA explores the ever-changing forms of world theatre and creates a dialogue between the language and ideas of Shakespeare and diverse authors, past and present. TFANA also builds associations with artists from around the world and supports their development through commissions, translations, and residencies.
Founding Artistic Director
Jeffrey Horowitz
Managing Director Dorothy Ryan
General Manager Chloe Knight
Director of Institutional Advancement
James J. Lynes
Finance Director Mary Sormeley
Education Director Lindsay Tanner
Director of Marketing & Communications
Eddie Carlson
Facilities Director Rashawn Caldwell
Director of Production Jeff Harris
Technical Director Raymond Huth
Associate Director of Development
Sara Billeaux
Artistic Associate Peter Cook
Associate Producer Allison Benko
Company Manager Molly Burdick
Theatre Manager Lawrence Dial
Box Office Manager Allison Byrum
Marketing Manager Angela Renzi
Education Manager Emma Griffone
Coordinator, Administration & Humanities/Studio Programs
Zoe Donovan
New Deal Program Coordinator Zhe Pan
Institutional Giving Associate Madison Wetzell
Finance Associate Harmony Fiori
Development Associate Suzanne Lenz
Development Associate Gavin McKenzie
Facilities Associate Tim Tyson
Archivist Shannon Resser
TFANA Teaching Artists
Matthew Dunivan, Melanie Goodreaux, Albert Iturregui-Elias, Margaret Ivey, Elizabeth London, Erin McCready, Marissa Stewart, Kea Trevett
House Managers
Nancy Gill Sanchez, Denise Ivanoff, Jasmine Louis
Press Representative Blake Zidell & Associates
Resident Director Arin Arbus
Resident Casting Director Jack Doulin
Resident Dramaturg Jonathan Kalb
Resident Distinguished Artist
John Douglas Thompson
Resident Voice and Text Director
Andrew Wade
TFANA Council of Scholars
Tanya Pollard, Chair
Jonathan Kalb, Alisa Solomon, Ayanna Thompson
Concessions Sweet Hospitality Group
Legal Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton
Accounting: Sax LLP
In 2001, TFANA became the first American theatre invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the Royal Shakespeare Company, and in 2007, TFANA returned to the RSC. In 2025, TFANA will tour its production of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice starring John Douglas Thompson as Shylock and directed by Arin Arbus to the Royal Lyceum Theatre of Edinburgh, Scotland.
TFANA performs for audiences of all ages and backgrounds; is devoted to economically accessible tickets and promotes humanities and education programs. TFANA has played on Broadway, Off Broadway and toured internationally and nationally. In 2013, It opened its first permanent home, Polonsky Shakespeare Center (PSC), Brooklyn, with the 299-seat Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage and the 50-seat Theodore Rogers Studio.
for a
Theatre for a New Audience’s education programs introduce students to Shakespeare and other classics with the same artistic integrity that we apply to our productions. Through our unique and exciting methodology, students engage in hands-on learning that involves all aspects of literacy set in the context of theatre education. Our residencies are structured to address City and State Learning Standards both in English Language Arts and the Arts, the New York City DOE’s Curriculum Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Theater, and the New York State Common Core Learning Standards for English Language Arts. Begun in 1984, our programs have served more than 140,000 students, ages 9 through 18, in New York City Public Schools city-wide.
Home in Brooklyn: Polonsky Shakespeare Center
Theatre for a New Audience’s home, Polonsky Shakespeare Center, is a centerpiece of the Brooklyn Cultural District.
Designed by celebrated architect Hugh Hardy, Polonsky Shakespeare Center is the first New York City theatre conceived and built for classic drama since Lincoln Center’s 1965 Vivian Beaumont. The 27,500-square-foot facility is a uniquely flexible performance space. The 299-seat Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage, inspired by the Cottesloe at London’s National Theatre, combines an Elizabethan courtyard theatre with modern theatre technology. It allows the stage and seating to be reconfigured for each production. The facility also includes the Theodore C. Rogers Studio (a 50-seat rehearsal/performance studio), and theatrical support spaces. The City of New York-developed Arts Plaza, designed by landscape architect Ken Smith, creates a natural gathering place around the building. In addition, Polonsky Shakespeare Center is also one of the few sustainable (green) theatres in the country, with LEED-NC Silver rating from the United States Green Building Council.
Now with a home of its own, Theatre for a New Audience is contributing to the continued renaissance of Downtown Brooklyn. In addition to its season of plays, the Theatre has expanded its Humanities offerings to include lectures, seminars, workshops, and other activities for artists, scholars, and the general public. When not in use by the Theatre, its new facility is available for rental, bringing much needed affordable performing and rehearsal space to the community.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Board Chair
Robert E. Buckholz
Vice Chair
Kathleen C. Walsh
President
Jeffrey Horowitz
Founding Artistic Director
Vice President and Secretary
Dorothy Ryan
Managing Director
Executive Committee
Alan Beller
Robert E. Buckholz
Constance Christensen
Jeffrey Horowitz
Seymour H. Lesser
Larry M. Loeb
Philip R. Rotner
Kathleen C. Walsh
Josh Weisberg
Members
Arin Arbus*
John Berendt*
Bianca Vivion Brooks*
Ben Campbell
Robert A. Caro*
Jonathan R. Donnellan
Sharon Dunn*
Matthew E. Fishbein
Riccardo Hernandez*
Kathryn Hunter*
Dana Ivey*
Tom Kirdahy*
John Lahr*
Harry J. Lennix*
Catherine Maciariello*
Marie Maignan*
Lindsay H. Mantell*
Audrey Heffernan Meyer*
Alan Polonsky
J.T. Rogers*
Dorothy Ryan
Joseph Samulski*
Doug Steiner
Michael Stranahan
John Douglas Thompson*
John Turturro*
Frederick Wiseman*
*Artistic Council
Emeritus
Francine Ballan
Sally Brody
William H. Burgess III
Caroline Niemczyk
Janet C. Olshansky
Theodore C. Rogers
Mark Rylance*
Daryl D. Smith
Susan Stockel
Monica G.S. Wambold
Jane Wells
September 1, 2023 – March 1, 2025
Even with capacity audiences, ticket sales account for a small portion of our operating costs. Theatre for a New Audience thanks the following donors for their generous support toward our Annual Campaign. For a list of donors $250 and above, go to www.tfana.org/annualdonors
PRINCIPAL BENEFACTORS
($100,000 and up)
The Bay and Paul Foundations
City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs
The Ford Foundation
The Hearst Corporation
The Hearst Foundations
Jerome L. Greene Foundation Fund at The New York Community Trust
The Polonsky Foundation
National Endowment for the Humanities
The SHS Foundation
The Shubert Foundation, Inc.
The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc.
LEADING BENEFACTORS
($50,000 and up)
Bloomberg Philanthropies
Robert E. Buckholz and Lizanne Fontaine
Constance Christensen
Deloitte & Touche LLP
The DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund
The Howard Gilman Foundation, Inc.
The Tow Foundation
Kathleen Walsh and Gene Bernstein
The Whiting Foundation
MAJOR BENEFACTORS
($20,000 and up)
The Achelis and Bodman Foundation
The Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation
Alan Beller
Sally Brody
Ben Campbell and Yiba Ng
The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation
Matt Fishbein and Gail Stone
The George Link Jr. Foundation
Ashley Garrett and Alan Jones
Agnes Gund
The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust
Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia
Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP
Latham & Watkins LLP
Audrey Heffernan Meyer and Danny Meyer
National Endowment for the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts
New York State Urban Development Corporation
Caroline Niemczyk
The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation
The Starry Night Fund
Douglas C. Steiner
The Stockel Family Foundation
Kimbrough Towles and George Loening
The White Cedar Fund
SUSTAINING BENEFACTORS
($10,000 and up)
Anonymous (2)
The Arnow Family Fund
Arts Consulting Group
Peggy and Keith Anderson
Christine Armstrong and Benjamin Nickoll
Dominique Bravo and Eric Sloan
Jill and Jay Bernstein
Elaine and Norman Brodsky
Carlson Family Fund
Michele and Martin Cohen
M. Salome Galib and Duane McLaughlin
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation
The Howard Bayne Fund
The Jerome and Marlène Brody Foundation
JKW Foundation
The J.M. Kaplan Fund
Nora Wren Kerr and John J. Kerr
King & Spalding LLP
Kirkland & Ellis Foundation
Seymour H. Lesser
Larry and Maria-Luisa Loeb
McDermott Will & Emery
Michael Tuch Foundation, Inc.
K. Ann McDonald
Janet C. Olshansky
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP
Estelle Parsons
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP
Abby Pogrebin and David Shapiro
Sarah I. Schieffelin Residuary Trust
Robert and Cynthia Schaffner
Kerri Scharlin and Peter Klosowicz
Susan Schultz and Thomas Faust
Select Equity Group, Inc.
Daryl and Joy Smith
Laura Speyer and Josef Goodman
The Speyer Family Foundation
Susan Stockel
Tarter Krinsky & Drogin LLP
Anne and William Tatlock
Josh and Jackie Weisberg
PRODUCERS CIRCLE—
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S SOCIETY
($5,000 and up)
Anonymous (2)
Axe-Houghton Foundation
Natalie Bernstein
The Bulova Stetson Fund
Walter Cain and Paulo Ribeiro
The Claire Friedlander Family Foundation
Jane Cooney
Aileen Dresner and Frank R. Drury
Jennifer and Steven Eisenstadt
Kirsten Feldman and Hugh Frater
Debra Fine and Martin I. Schneider
Jenny and Jeff Fleishhacker
Roberta Garza
Cynthia Crossen and James Gleick
Kathy and Steven Guttman
Michael Haggiag
Jennifer and Matt Harris
Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP
Anna and Peter Levin
Vincent Lima
Leah Lipskar
Litowitz Foundation, Inc.
Diane and William F. Lloyd
May and Samuel Rudin Foundation Inc.
Ronay and Richard Menschel
Nancy Meyer and Marc N. Weiss
Philip and Cheryl Milstein
New York City Council
New York City Tourism Foundation
Anne Prost and Olivier Robert
Richenthal Foundation
Pamela Riess
Philip and Janet Rotner
Joseph Samulski
Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles
Sidley Austin LLP
Michael Stranahan
Theatre Development Fund
Ayanna Thompson
The Venable Foundation
Margo and Anthony Viscusi
Earl D. Weiner
PRODUCERS CIRCLE—EXECUTIVE
($2,500 and up)
Anonymous (2)
Elizabeth Beller-Dee and Michael Dee
Nancy Blachman and David desJardins
Hilary Brown and Charles Read
Consolidated Edison Company of New York. Inc.
Dennis M. Corrado
The Barbara Bell Cumming Charitable Trust
Christine Cumming
Katharine and Peter Darrow
DeLaCour Family Foundation
Jodie and Jonathan Donnellan
Sharon Dunn and Harvey Zirofsky
Suzan and Fred Ehrman
Steven Feinsilver
Foley Hoag LLP
Linda Genereux and Timur Galen
Monica Gerard-Sharp
Lauren Glant and Michael Gillespie
Debra Goldsmith Robb
Karoly and Henry Gutman
Jane Hartley and Ralph Schlosstein
Russ Heldman
Vanderbilt University OLLI Instructor
Sophia Hughes
Irving Harris Foundation
The Irwin S. Scherzer Foundation
Maxine Isaacs
Flora and Christoph Kimmich
Andrea Knutson
Sandy and Eric Krasnoff
Cathy and Christopher Lawrence
Lucille Lortel Foundation
Susan Martin and Alan Belzer
Marta Heflin Foundation
Barbara Forster Moore and Richard Wraxall Moore
Catherine Nyarady and Gabriel Riopel
Sarah Paley and Joseph Kerrey
Annie Paulsen and Albert Garner
Ellen Petrino
Ponce Bank
Proskauer Rose LLP
Rajika and Anupam Puri
Leslie and David Puth
The Tony Randall Theatrical Fund
Jill Rosenberg
Robert and Anna Marie Shapiro
Sandra and Steven Schoenbart
Jeremy T. Smith
Lisa and Mitch Solomon
Ellen Sontag-Miller and William C. Miller
Lauren and Jay Springer
Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund
Gayle and Jay Waxenberg
PRODUCERS CIRCLE— ASSOCIATE
($1,000 and up)
Anonymous (5)
Actors’ Equity Foundation
Ann Ash
Jackie and Jacob Baskin
Elizabeth Bass
M.J. and James Berrien
Cece and Lee Black
Molly and Tom Boast
Mary Bockelmann Norris and Floyd Norris
Penny Brandt Jackson and Thomas Campbell Jackson
Christina and John Bransfield
Pamela Brier and Peter Aschkenasy
Deborah Buell and Charles Henry
Janel Callon
Joan and Robert Catell
Susan Cowie
Ian Dickson and Reg Holloway
Ev and Lee
Ryan Fanek
Grace Freedman
Virginia Gliedman
Joyce Gordon and Paul Lubetkin
The Grace R. and Alan D. Marcus
Foundation
Anne and Paul Grand
Alba Greco-Garcia and Roger Garcia
Kathleen and Harvey Guion
Judy and Douglas Hamilton
Grace Harvey
Elizabeth Humes
Laura and Robert Hoguet
Sally and Alfred Jones
Miriam Katowitz and Arthur Radin
Helen Kauder and Barry Nalebuff
Debra Kaye and Steven Horowitz
Jessie McClintock Kelly
Susan Kurz Snyder
Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins
Marion Leydier and Brooks Perlin
Dedee and Steve Lovell
Margaret Lundin
Rebecca and Stephen Madsen
Kathleen Maurer
Jeffrey and Wendy Maurer
Leslie and Jordan Mayer
Allison C. McCullough and Parker L. Krasney
Scott C. McDonald
Marlene Marko and Loren Skeist
Mimi Oka and Jun Makihara
Lori and Lee Parks
Martin Payson
Margaret and Carl Pfeiffer
Carol and Michael Reimers
Susan and Peter Restler
David A.J. Richards
Susan and William Rifkin
Riva and Stephen Rosenfield
Joan H. Ross
Judith Ruiz
Dorothy Ryan and John Leitch
Avi Sharon and Megan Hertzig Sharon
Cynthia and Thomas Sculco
Susan Sommer and Stephen A. Warnke
The Bernard and Anne Spitzer
Charitable Trust
Wendy and Tom Stephenson
Barbara Stimmel
Kathleen and Michael Stringer
Julie Taymor
Donna Zaccaro Ullman and Paul A. Ullman
Cynthia King Vance and Lee Vance
Fran and Barry Weissler
Elena and Louis Werner
Tappan Wilder
Debra Winger
Carol Yorke and Gerard Conn
Barbara and Michael Zimmerman
Audrey Zucker
In honor of Robert E. Buckholz
Steven and Jennifer Eisenstadt
Barbara and Michael Zimmerman
In honor of Georgia Carney
Caroline Carney
In memory of Mildred Feinsilver
Steven Feinsilver
In honor of Brian Florczack
Aaron Donehue
In honor of Michael Kahn
Maxine Isaacs
In memory of Timothy P. McCarthy, Jr.
Katherine Mccarthy
In honor of Audrey Meyer
Laurie Tisch
In memory of Rene G. Milet Jorquera
Rene Milet
In honor of Ned
Patricia McGuire
In honor of Evelyn and Everett Ortner
Deirdre Lawrence and Clem
Labine
In memory of Leonard Polonsky
Lauren Breslow
Rian Masanoff
Daniel Polonsky
Stephen Segaller
Judith Thompson
In honor of Dorothy Ryan
James Lynes
Leslie and Andrew Schultz
In honor of Maggie Siff
David Bickart
In honor of Kathleen Walsh and Gene Bernstein
Natalie Bernstein
In honor of Kathleen Walsh
Gene Bernstein
Sean Walsh
The following companies have contributed through their Matching Gift Programs: If your employer has a matching gift program, please consider making a contribution to Theatre for a New Audience and making your gift go further by participating in your employer’s matching gift program.
Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation
The Hearst Corporation
International Business Machines
JP Morgan Chase
Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs are also made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director of Theatre for a New Audience, will retire at the end of this season. The Jeffrey Horowitz Legacy Fund has been established to celebrate his extraordinary 45 years of visionary leadership and singular accomplishments in American theatre—and especially in American productions of Shakespeare—as well as provide support for the new Artistic Director in their first seasons. For more information, or to make a gift, please contact James Lynes, Director of Institutional Advancement, at jlynes@tfana.org
Alan Beller
Robert E. Buckholz and Lizanne Fontaine
The Jerome and Marlène Brody Foundation
Sally Brody
Ben Campbell and Yiba Ng
Richard Feldman
Matt Fishbein and Gail Stone
Larry and Maria-Luisa Loeb
Nancy Meyer and Marc N. Weiss
The Polonsky Foundation
The SHS Foundation
Kathleen Walsh and Gene Bernstein
Theatre for a New Audience recognizes with gratitude the following donors to Theatre for a New Audience’s Capital Campaign to support ambitious programming, access to affordable tickets and financial resiliency.
Named funds within the Capital Campaign include the Henry Christensen III Artistic Opportunity Fund, the Audrey H. Meyer New Deal Fund and the Merle Debuskey Studio Fund . Other opportunities include the Completing Shakespeare’s Canon Fund, Capital Reserves funds and support for the design and construction of New Office and Studio Spaces
To learn more, or to make a gift to the Capital Campaign, please contact James Lynes at jlynes@tfana.org or by calling 646-553-3886.
$1,000,000 AND ABOVE
Mr.◊ and Mrs. Henry Christensen III
Ford Foundation
The Howard Gilman Foundation
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
The Thompson Family Foundation
$250,000-$999,999
Booth Ferris Foundation
Robert E. Buckholz and Lizanne Fontaine
Merle Debuskey◊
Irving Harris Foundation
The Stairway Fund, Audrey Heffernan Meyer and Danny Meyer
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Kathleen Walsh and Gene Bernstein
◊deceased
$100,000–$249,999
Alan Jones and Ashley Garrett
Carol Sutton Lewis and William M. Lewis, Jr.
Seymour H. Lesser
The Polonsky Foundation
Charlene Magen Weinstein◊
$50,000–$99,999
Bloomberg Philanthropies
Aileen and Frank Drury
Agnes Gund
The Dubose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund
New York State Council on the Arts
Abby Pogrebin and David Shapiro
John and Regina Scully Foundation
Marcia T. Thompson◊
$20,000–$49,999
Peggy and Keith Anderson
Elaine and Norman Brodsky
Kathy and Steve Guttman
Rita & Alex Hillman Foundation
Cynthia and Robert Schaffner
Kerri Scharlin and Peter Klosowicz
Daryl and Joy Smith
Susan Stockel
Anne and William Tatlock
Earl D. Weiner
$10,000–$19,999
Diana Bergquist
Sally R. Brody
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority
Linda and Jay Lapin
Janet Wallach and Robert Menschel◊
Alessandra and Alan Mnuchin
Anne Prost and Robert Olivier
Allison and Neil Rubler
Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch
Michael Tuch Foundation
Jackie and Josh Weisberg
$5,000–$9,999
Alan Beller
Katharine and Peter Darrow
Bipin and Linda Doshi
Marcus Doshi
Downtown Brooklyn Partnership
Susan Schultz and Thomas Faust
Barbara G. Fleischman
Jane Garnett and David Booth
Penny Brandt Jackson and Thomas Jackson
Miriam Katowitz and Arthur Radin
Mary and Howard Kelberg
Kirsten and Peter Kern
Susan Litowitz
Ronay and Richard Menschel
Ann and Conrad Plimpton
Priham Trust/The Green Family
Alejandro Santo Domingo
Marie and Mark Schwartz
Cynthia and Thomas Sculco
Nancy Meyer and Marc N. Weiss
A 2011 Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) established a Humanities endowment fund at Theatre for a New Audience to support in perpetuity the 360° Series: Viewfinders as well as the TFANA Council of Scholars and the free TFANA Talks series. Leading matching gifts to the NEH grant were provided by Joan and Robert Arnow, Norman and Elaine Brodsky, The Durst Organization, Perry and Marty Granoff, Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, John J. Kerr & Nora Wren Kerr, Litowitz Foundation, Inc., Robert and Wendy MacDonald, Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder, The Prospect Hill Foundation, Inc., Theodore C. Rogers, and from purchasers in the Theatre’s Seat for Shakespeare Campaign, 2013-2015.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Viewfinder or the Theatre’s Humanities programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.