The
Whitney
Album

Jillian Walker

Jillian :: Gogo comes from a lineage of teachers, healers and community builders and is rooted in her midwestern US upbringing, followed from the red-dirt-South of great-great and 3rd great grandparents, and the ancient ancestors of Southern Africa who called her to initiate and reclaim the medicines and Songs of her people. She blesses the honor of her lineages through performance and practice. Her most acclaimed work, SKiNFoLK: An American Show (The Bushwick Starr/National Black Theatre: NY Times Critics Pick, Kilroys List, Lilly Award) is forthcoming from 53rd State Press. Her other plays and projects have received numerous honors and include Songs of Speculation (JACK, 2020 Third Coast Audio Unbound Award) and Sarah’s Salt.(Winner Columbia@Roundabout, Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist, Relentless Award honorable mention). One of Jillian :: Gogo’s favorite descriptions of her onstage work comes from Poet and Prophet Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who described her Joe’s Pub concert, Blue Ink, as “Transformational, Black feminist, ancestral-portal-opening, love-centered musical work.” With her multifaceted training and education in traditional academic spaces (BA: The University of Michigan, MFA: Columbia University) and ancient afro-indigenous traditions (Chief teachers, Makhosi Himi Gogo Thule Ngane, Queen Baba Solstice Kha Ekhaya Esima, Makhosi Foundation), Jillian :: Gogo holds a unique combination of intellectual curiosity, spiritual rigor and an incredible capacity for deep listening and collaboration with people, built and natural worlds, time/space, Ancestors and all of the unseen. Some of Jillian :: Gogo’s favorite collaborations include: writing/performing and serving as Process Director with The TEAM (Reconstructing), creating Move, Meditate, Make with Libby King, working as a setlist dramaturg on Common’s Let Love tour, serving as dramaturg of divinity on the second season of Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness (HBO), holding prompt-based performance classes with the students at The University of Washington and Harvard, holding circle with the women in Nisha Moodley’s Soul of Leadership, and sitting in prayer, song and healing space with her spiritual family at the Makhosi Foundation. BLK GRK (or, hiding in plain sight), a multiversal, poetic exploration of the history of Black Greek Letter Organizations, is a deep upcoming collaboration with co-conceivers, Rachel Chavkin and Eric Berryman, and has expanded Jillian into its screenwriter, composer and star, alongside Eric Berryman.  From a heartspace that flows out of The Love of the Ancestors, she incites and inspires sublime new forms of art, structures, and communal systems that break the brutal boundaries of the colonial imagination. Connect with Jillian :: Gogo and her practice as an artistic and ancestral healer, here.

Stephanie Weeks

Stephanie Weeks is an award winning actor and director. She has performed at renowned theaters including The Public, Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, La Jolla Playhouse among others. With Target Margin Theater she was awarded for her years of dedication, the OBIE for Recognition of Artistic Achievement and Commitment to Excellence in Theater as an Associate Artist. Stephanie also starred in the film Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted-Mutha, Official Selection of the Tribeca Film Festival directed by acclaimed director Melvin Van Peebles. Television Credits include: Tales of The City starring Laura Linney on Netflix, The Good Fight (CBS) and Law & Order (NBC). She has voiced numerous audio books and is a 2023 Audie Award Award Nominee for her work on the non-fiction novel, Sex Lives of African Women by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah She holds an MFA from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and has a certificate of study from London Academy of Music and Drama.

Ben Jalosa Williams

Ben Jalosa Williams is an actor, sound designer, and director in New York City. He has worked in experimental theater for 20 years. He is a member of Elevator Repair Service and a founding member of Minor Theater with Julia Jarcho. Awards for sound design: OBIE, Lucille Lortel, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, and the inaugural Third Coast International Audio Festival “Audio Unbound” Award. Ben produces and curates category : other, an award-winning platform for experimental audio. He freelances as an audio consultant (clients include the NBA, Storycorps, Harvard) and teaches sound design at The New School. benwilliamsdotcom.com

Jillian Walker

Playwright

Jillian :: Gogo comes from a lineage of teachers, healers and community builders and is rooted in her midwestern US upbringing, followed from the red-dirt-South of great-great and 3rd great grandparents, and the ancient ancestors of Southern Africa who called her to initiate and reclaim the medicines and Songs of her people.She blesses the honor of her lineages through performance and practice. Her most acclaimed work, SKiNFoLK: An American Show (The Bushwick Starr/National Black Theatre: NY Times Critics Pick, Kilroys List, Lilly Award) is forthcoming from 53rd State Press. Her other plays and projects have received numerous honors and include Songs of Speculation (JACK, 2020 Third Coast Audio Unbound Award) and Sarah’s Salt.(Winner Columbia@Roundabout, Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist, Relentless Award honorable mention). One of Jillian :: Gogo’s favorite descriptions of her onstage work comes from Poet and Prophet Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who described her Joe’s Pub concert, Blue Ink, as “Transformational, Black feminist, ancestral-portal-opening, love-centered musical work.” With her multifaceted training and education in traditional academic spaces (BA: The University of Michigan, MFA: Columbia University) and ancient afro-indigenous traditions (Chief teachers, Makhosi Himi Gogo Thule Ngane, Queen Baba Solstice Kha Ekhaya Esima, Makhosi Foundation), Jillian :: Gogo holds a unique combination of intellectual curiosity, spiritual rigor and an incredible capacity for deep listening and collaboration with people, built and natural worlds, time/space, Ancestors and all of the unseen. Some of Jillian :: Gogo’s favorite collaborations include: writing/performing and serving as Process Director with The TEAM (Reconstructing), creating Move, Meditate, Make with Libby King, working as a setlist dramaturg on Common’s Let Love tour, serving as dramaturg of divinity on the second season of Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness (HBO), holding prompt-based performance classes with the students at The University of Washington and Harvard, holding circle with the women in Nisha Moodley’s Soul of Leadership, and sitting in prayer, song and healing space with her spiritual family at the Makhosi Foundation. BLK GRK (or, hiding in plain sight), a multiversal, poetic exploration of the history of Black Greek Letter Organizations, is a deep upcoming collaboration with co-conceivers, Rachel Chavkin and Eric Berryman, and has expanded Jillian into its screenwriter, composer and star, alongside Eric Berryman.  From a heartspace that flows out of The Love of the Ancestors, she incites and inspires sublime new forms of art, structures, and communal systems that break the brutal boundaries of the colonial imagination. Connect with Jillian :: Gogo and her practice as an artistic and ancestral healer, here.

Jenny Koons

Director

Jenny Koons (she/her) is a director and organizer. Projects: Head Over Heels (Pasadena Playhouse), Hurricane Diane (Huntington Theatre), Now Becomes Then (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Men on Boats (Baltimore Center Stage), Speechless (New Blue Man Group North American Tour), The Tempest (The Juilliard School), Between Us: The Deck of Cards (Denver Center for the Performing Arts), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Public Theater Mobile Unit), Burn All Night (American Repertory Theatre), Theatre for One: In This Moment (Pershing Square Signature Center), Gimme Shelter (Why Not Theatre, Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games commission), Theatre for One: I’m Not the Stranger You Think I Am (Arts Brookfield), A Sucker Emcee (National Black Theatre, LAByrinth Theater Company, SPKRBOX Festival, Norway), Queen of the Night (Diamond Horseshoe Nightclub, Drama Desk Award), The Odyssey Project 2012 (site-specific NYC). Jenny was a 2021 Vision Resident at Ars Nova and has developed new work at Steppenwolf, Roundabout, and New Black Fest, among others. She was the 2017 curator of New York City Center’s Encores! Off-Center Lobby Project, co-curator of the 2016 Toronto ThisGen Conference, and co-founder of Artists 4 Change NYC (National Black Theatre). She has been a facilitator and educator in creating anti-racist spaces and engaging in conversations around race and equity for over a decade, in both non-profit and artistic spaces. Jenny is a Lilly Award recipient and proud member of the SDC.

Peiyi Wong

Set Designer

Peiyi Wong is a Bessie Award-winning scenographer and interdisciplinary artist. Based in Brooklyn, NY, she designs sets, installations, and costumes for performance and film. Recent scenic design credits include: Weightless (WP Theater), A Delicate Balance (Transport Group | NAATCO), The Vicksburg Project (Mabou Mines), SPEECH (Lightning Rod Special), HOUSECONCERT (Object Collection), Song About Trains (Working Theater | Radical Evolution), Memoirs of a…Unicorn (NYLA, 2018 Bessie Outstanding Design), scenic + costume design: A Hunger Artist (Sinking Ship), The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Transport Group), MukhAgni (The Public UTR), TiQ: The Seventh Voyage (Sinking Ship) and All the Different Ways Commodore Matthew Perry Could Have Died But Didn’t (New Georges), costume design: Namour (ARRAY feature film, Netflix). In 2023 her design work has been awarded support from the Edith Lutyens & Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Fund and NYSCA Support for Artists Grant. Faculty at Playwrights Horizons Theater School, NYU Tisch. MFA, CalArts. www.peiyiameliawong.com 

Jojo Siu

Costume Designer

Jojo Siu’s work spans film, opera, theater and dance. Her work has been featured both nationally and internationally in New York, California, New Mexico, Hawaii, Alaska, Singapore and more. She is an advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion and values storytelling above all else. She is particularly interested in new and devised work or re-imaginings of traditional work. Her more recognized projects include, but are not limited to: North (National Tour); The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (World Premiere), Hello, Goodbye (Singapore Repertory Theatre World Premiere), Caucasian Chalk Circle (Singapore Repertory Theatre), The Madres (Skylight Theater); Sanctuary City (Pasadena Playhouse); Oedipus (Deaf West); King of the Yees, Joy Luck Club (Sierra Madre Playhouse); The Ferryman (New Village Arts West Coast Premiere), Desert Rock Garden (New Village Arts World Premiere), Intimate Apparel (New Village Arts), Mad Madge (Counterbalance Theatre World Premiere), Into the Woods (Maui Performing Arts Center); Fun Home (Perseverance Theater), Kim’s Convenience (Laguna Playhouse); A Grand Night for Singing (Musical Theater West); Striking 12 (Chance Theatre), Kvetcher in the Wry, Celtic Knot, Night Moths on the Wing (O.C. Centric New Play Festival World Premieres), The Tempest (OC Shakespeare Festival), In the Heights, Spring Awakening, Bright Star, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (Fullerton College), Native Gardens, Vinegar Tom (Chapman University).

Oona Curley

Lighting Designer

Oona Curley is a lighting and scenic designer. Frequent and favorite collaborators include: Knud Adams, Tara Ahmadinejad, John Anselmo+Crew, Ngozi Anyanwu, Jason Ardizzone-West, Alex Bechtel, Eliza Bent, Liza Birkenmeier, Montana Levi Blanco, Oana Botez, Martha Graham Cracker, Will Davis, Machine Dazzle, Stacey DeRosier, Jordan Fein, Loretta Greco, Morgan Green, Emma Griffin, Trish Harnetiaux, Sam Helfrich, Ásta Bennie Hostetter, John Jarboe, Qween Jean, Jenn Kidwell, Jes Levine, Taibi Magar, Peter Mills Weiss, Gunnar Montana, Stowe Nelson, Kimie Nishikawa, Meredith Ries, James Rutherford, Scott R. Sheppard, Stoli Stolnack, Mikaal Sulaimaan, Ashley Teague, Awoye Timpo, Annie Tippe, Alex Torra, Masha Tsimring, Mfoniso Udofia, Whitney White, Jenna Worsham, and Alice Yorke. Oona is a proud company member of Lightning Rod Special (creators of Underground Railroad Game and The Appointment), Associate Artist with Bearded Ladies Cabaret, and member USA829. MFA NYU/Tisch. www.oonacurley.com

Ben Jalosa Williams

Sound Designer

Ben Jalosa Williams is an actor, sound designer, and director in New York City. He has worked in experimental theater for 20 years. He is a member of Elevator Repair Service and a founding member of Minor Theater with Julia Jarcho. Awards for sound design: OBIE, Lucille Lortel, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, and the inaugural Third Coast International Audio Festival “Audio Unbound” Award. Ben produces and curates category : other, an award-winning platform for experimental audio. He freelances as an audio consultant (clients include the NBA, Storycorps, Harvard) and teaches sound design at The New School. benwilliamsdotcom.com

Rhys Roffey

Props Designer

Rhys Roffey is a trans-masculine prop master and designer based out of NYC. Previous props credits include Weightless (Women’s Project), Events (The Brick), Fidelio Tour (Heartbeat Opera), and No One is Forgotten (Rattlestick Theatre).

amani meliyah

Associate Director

amani meliyah is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She is a Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner and facilitates with TONYC where she works with queer youth in transitional living. amani is a co-founder of Blue Lilith Productions and is currently in production for the film ROOFTOP JESUS (writer/director). Education: Coastal Carolina University BFA in Acting.

Nia O. Witherspoon

Process Priestess

Nia O. Witherspoon(Smith BA/Stanford PhD) is a Black queer multidisciplinary artist + healing justice practitioner investigating the metaphysics of black liberation, desire, and diaspora, as they track across the space-time continuum. A forever student and practitioner of African cosmologies, and combining Black feminism, eco-feminism, and auto-critogrophy with mediums in writing, performance, sound, and installation, Witherspoon creates portals for communion, witnessing, and healing into the ancient future. Current and recent works include: Priestess of Twerk: A Black Femme Temple to Pleasure + Wisdom School (HERE Art Center/Musical Theatre Factory, 2024), Chronicle X: The Dark Girl Chronicles (The Shed, 2021), and MESSIAH (La Mama, 2019). She is a recipient of NEFA/NTP, NPN Creation + Touring Fund, and NYSCA, as well as having been a Creative Capital Awardee, a Jerome New Artist Fellow, a current artist in residence at HERE Art Center and Musical Theatre Factory, and former resident at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange + New York Theatre Workshop. Her work has been or will be featured by The Shed, BRIC, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Joe’s Pub, HERE, JACK, La Mama ETC, Playwright’s Realm, Links Hall, National Black Theatre, Brava Theatre, BAAD, Movement Research, BAX, Dixon Place, Painted Bride, 651 Arts, and elsewhere. Her writing is published in the Journal of Popular Culture; Imagined Theatres; Women and Collective Creation; and IMANIMAN: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands. She has held academic appointments at Williams College, Fordham University, University of Massachusetts, Florida State University, and Arizona State University.

abigail jean-baptiste

Dramaturg/Archivist

abigail jean-baptiste (any pronouns) is a theater maker, director, and writer born & based in New York City with familial roots in Haiti and the American South. Guided by questions about blackness and femininity and kinship, her work uses images, fragmented language, repeatable gestures, and tangible objects in a search to build unconventional and nonsensical ways of being. Currently: I Am Soul Directing Residency at National Black Theater and The New Georges Jam. Past Directing Projects Include: Angela Davis’s School For Girls With Big Eyes by Thalia Sablon (Rutgers School of the Arts), The House That Will Not Stand (Le Petit Theatre in New Orleans), The Story of A Circle by David Ryan Smith (Soho Rep.) and the salt women by Audley Puglisi (Playwrights Realm, INK’D). Previously: Project Number One Artist at Soho Repertory Theater, Roundabout Theater Directors Group, Bushwick Starr Reading Series, Resident Lead Artist at The Mercury Store. abigail has also worked as associate/assistant director to Lileana Blain-Cruz, Saheem Ali, Diane Paulus, Sam Gold, and John Doyle. In 2020, she was named one of the “Powerhouse Women Directors Theatre Fans and Industry Pros Alike Need to Know” by Playbill. Most recently, she directed ‘Bov Water by Celeste Jennings at Northern Stage, workshopped The Womb Abyss (a new work) with Nicole Acheampong, and associate directed Create Dangerously by Lileana Blain-Cruz at Miami New Drama. A 2018 Lilly Award Winner and New Georges Affiliated Artist. B.A. Princeton University. www.abigailjeanbaptiste.org . Eternal gratitude to JW for inviting me into the water.

shiku thuo

Stage Manager

shiku thuo is a stage Manager, actor and director hailing from Southern California, but taking residency in New York. Their most recent works include: On that Day in Amsterdam (Primary Stages) Mercury Store Residences Confederates ( Signature) Thoughts of a Colored Man (SM Fellow) The Latrell Show (PSM – IAMA Theater) The Shipment (Director) To all the women who raised me, thank you for your DIVINE medicine.

Earon Chew Nealey

Wig and Makeup Designer

Broadway: Fat Ham; The Public: shadow/land, The Harder They Come, Baldwin & Buckley…, Fat Ham, cullud wattah, Mojada. Other design: Dames at Sea, Kinky Boots, The Last Supper, Twelfth Night, On Killing, Little Girl Blue, …Meet Vera Stark, Matilda, On Sugarland, Nina Simone: Four Women, Little Women, Cadillac Crew. IG: @earonnealey

Ebony M. Burton

Associate Lighting Designer

Ebony M. Burton (she/her) is an Oakland-born, Brooklyn-based lighting designer and artist. Credits include The Book of Lucy (Brown/Trinity), BĀS: The Harmony Between Me and You (JACK), Julia Jarcho’s Marie It’s Time (HERE Arts Center, Minor Theater), Cabaret (CAP21), Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play (Brown/Trinity), Soul Tapes (Brown/Trinity), Stephanie Swirsky’s Don’t Do This To Us, Blaze Ferrer’s Gusher, In the Blood (NYU Grad Acting), Target Margin Theater’s Electric Feeling Maybe, Voyeur: The Windows of Toulouse-Lautrec, and New Phase Collective’s Phase One: The Underbrush, a multi-media/multi-platform experience. Assistant credits include Wolf Play (MCC Theater, LD: Barbara Samuels), Manhattan School of Music’s French Triple Bill (LD: Reza Behjat), and Glimmerglass Festival’s 2022 Double Bill (LD: ML Geiger). MFA in Design for Stage & Film, NYU Tisch. BA in Psychology, Oberlin College. website: ebonyburton.com, IG: @thecolorcarmine

Sera Bourgeau

Associate Costume Designer

Selected Design Credits include Misconceptions, Chasing the Tides, Battle of Angels (Blessed Unrest), Refuge (Blessed Unrest/Teatri ODA), Monstress (Hunger & Thirst Theatre), Nickel Mines (New York Musical Theatre Festival, ACT of Connecticut), Something Happens for Joe (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Still Life With Iris (Long Wharf Theatre), Pete(Her) Pan, Jr. (Northern Stage), Honky Tonk Angels (Artistree Music Theatre Festival), #yourmemorial (Pigeonholed Theatre Co), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (New York Shakespeare Exchange), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Capital Repertory Theatre), Spring Awakening (The Lounge Theatre – Los Angeles), Sound of Music, Intimate Apparel (Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center). Some Lovers, Nikola Tesla Drops the Beat, Knights of the Sales Office (Adirondack Theatre Festival). Dial M For Murder, Turn of the Screw (Theater at Monmouth). The Lion in Winter, Chapter Two, Outside Mullingar, The Taming, Murder for Two: Holiday Edition, The Shuck (Cape May Stage). Associate/Assistant Designer credits on over 20 Off Broadway and Regional Productions. MFA: University of California, Irvine. BA: University of New Hampshire. @serabourgeau www.serabourgeau.com

Shaina Yang

Assistant Set Designer

Shaina Yang is a queer asian american visual artist based in Brooklyn. www.moonmansion.club

Maya T. Weed

Assistant Set Designer

Maya T. Weed is an interdisciplinary artist, working as a scenic designer, actor, writer, and illustrator in NYC. Select design credits include This is Our Youth (Pale Fire Theater), Victor/Victoria (Cotuit Center for the Arts), Jackie (Barnard College), When I Consider Everything that Grew (NOMADS, Columbia), Waiting for Godot (Pale Fire), and Disco Pigs (Barnard College). As an assistant set designer, she recently worked on María Irene Fornés’ Evelyn Brown (A Diary) at La MaMa ETC (Assistant to Donald Eastman) and Layer the Walls II for Grand Pistachio (Assistant to Peiyi Wong). Other production roles and performances have included collaborations with Clubbed Thumb (Actor), SoHo Playhouse (Actor), and New York Theatre Workshop (PA, over hire). Maya earned her BA at Columbia University, majoring in Drama and Theatre Arts alongside studies in English Literature. She’s delighted to extend her immense gratitude to Peiyi, SoHo Rep, Sandra Goldmark, Elizabeth Jackson, and to you! Welcome to The Whitney Album! For more info about Maya’s design, illustration, and performance work, visit www.mayatweed.com.