JAG TALKS: KEELAY GIPSON & STACEY ROSE

 

Friday, June 12th at 3PM

LIVE on FACEBOOK

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Our programming is free and open to the public, just make sure to register in advance! All artists who contribute to these important online gatherings are compensated. If you're in the position to make a gift to support our work, we hope you'll consider doing so—even $5, $10, $25 makes a big difference.

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ABOUT THIS EVENT:

Join us for a conversation on the condition of Black life and Black art during a time of death, betrayal, and global pandemic. Jarvis Green, producing artistic director at JAG Productions, will lead a discussion with award-winning playwrights Keelay Gipson and Stacey Rose.

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ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS

Keelay Gipson is the author of imagine sisyphus happy (Finalist; Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, P73 Summer Residency at Yale University), #NEWSLAVES (Finalist; Princess Grace Award, Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Seven Devils Playwright Conference), CRH, or the placenta play (Semi-Finalist; The O’Neill, Bay Area Playwrights Conference, AADA Main Stage Live!), Nigger/Faggot (Downtown Urban Theater Festival), The Lost, Or How to Just B, What I Tell You in the Dark (Finalist; Premiere Stages), and Mary/Stuart, a dramatic queering of friedrich schiller's classic play (BAM Next Wave Festival, partnership with Wendy’s Subway and Lambda Literary). He earned the New York Stage and Film’s Founders’ Award, the Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists, as well as writing fellowships with Lambda Literary, The Amoralists, Page 73, Dramatist Guild Foundation and Playwrights’ Realm.

 

Stacey Rose is a 2019–2020 McKnight Fellow, 2020-22 Playwrights’ Center Core Writer, 2018-2019 Goodman Theatre’s Playwrights Unit writer, and member of The Civilians R&D Group. She was a 2018 Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow, 20170–2018 Playwrights’ Center Many Voices Fellow, and 2015–2016 Dramatist Guild Fellow. Her plays include Legacy Land, AMERICA v 2.1, and As Is (the latter two both featured on the 2019 Kilroys list). She served as Writers Assistant and Script Coordinator for Season 1 of the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It. Rose is the recipient of a 2019 Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Womens Commissioning Grant in partnership with Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre. While at NYU earning her MFA, she received an AAUW Career Development Grant, Future Screenwriting Fellowship, and The Goldberg Prize for her play The Danger: A Homage to Strange Fruit. She recently received a Sloan Grant from MTC and is the winner of the Burman’s New Play Prize from Barrington Stage.

 

ABOUT JAG TALKS

JAG TALKS is a bi monthly one-hour LIVE online conversation with national artists to discuss Black theatre, Black art, Black organizing, Black joy, Black critical thought, Black fantasy, Black history, and more during a time of death, betrayal, and a global pandemic 

 

THE JAG TEAM

Producing Artistic Director: Jarvis Green

Company Manager: Tamara Waraschinski

Operations Manager: Serena Nelson

 

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Co- Chairs: Jackie Fischer & Vincent Mack

Treasurer: Nancy Grant

Alka Dev

Marcela Di Blasi

Jameson Davis

Felicia Swoope

 

ABOUT JAG

JAG Productions was formed in 2015 with the mission to produce classic and contemporary African- American theatre; to serve as an incubator of new work that excites broad intellectual engagement; and thereby, to catalyze compassion, empathy, love, and community through shared understandings of the humankind through the lens of the African-American experience.

 

HISTORY 

JAG Productions was born in 2015 in the small town of White River Junction, VT with the mission to produce classic and contemporary African-American theatre; to serve as an incubator of new work that excites broad intellectual engagement; and thereby, to catalyze compassion, empathy, love, and community by connecting with the full breadth of the human experience.

 

Our fourth season opened with the world premiere of Nathan Yungerberg's play Esai's Table; a dream that was born in 2018 at JAGfest, our new works festival, where the play received a staged reading. This beautiful show transports audience and characters on a mystical journey in which we experience the lives of three young Black men, and redefine what it means to be human. The vision to do a world premiere in the Upper Valley for the community that nurtured and supported its development will came to life in October 2019 at Briggs Opera House in White River. The play will subsequently transfer Off-Broadway to the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City. Esai's Table marks a pivotal moment for JAG as it's first world premiere, first Off-Broadway transfer, and first co-production.

 

What does it mean to create a space for African American theatre in rural New England?

JAG has become an incubator for the vulnerability we need to access individual and collective transformation. JAG has meant as much to the Black artists who come to the Upper Valley to share and develop their craft, talents and insights on stage as it has to our community that is consistently moved, stretched, and inspired - and continues to return for more exceptional performances. Serving as a vehicle for change, JAG has used theatre to catalyze community dialogue around critical issues of race, gender, sexuality, and identity and has played a central role in carving spaces for Black folks and people of color in the predominantly white town of White River Junction, Vermont.

 

Beyond theatrical productions and events, JAG works to bring its mission and values to the public through outreach programs such as a free student matinee program, educational support materials, and guest speaking engagements. JAG partners with Dartmouth College, Lebanon High School, Cherry Lane Theater, White River Indie Festival, and other area organizations to bring artists for workshops and public panel discussions. Topics have ranged from discussing the limitations and possibilities of curating Black experiences in white institutions, to reflecting on the afterlives and the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade through the lens of Black theatre artists and Black queer and feminist artists, and most recently reveling in Aretha Franklin's legacy and her pursuit and love of opera.

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This event is made possible by Vermont Humanities Council & the Vermont Arts Council