The Arboretum Experience

Summer L. Williams (she/her/hers) is an award-winning director and Co-Founder/Associate Artistic Director of Company One Theatre in Boston. Her most recent directing credits include The Arboretum Experience at American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), Daddy Issues at Salt Lake City Acting Company, New Play Sounding Series, and the Digital World Premiere of Downtown Crossing at Company One Theatre. Up next: sandblasted by Charly Evon Simpson with Vineyard Theatre and WP Theater, Off-Broadway.

Kirsten Greenidge’s (she/her) past A.R.T. credits include Greater Good, a collaboration with Company One Theatre. Greenidge creates work that presents African American experiences on stage by examining the nexus of race, class, and gender. Kirsten is currently a Mellon Fellow/Howlround Artist in Residence at Company One Theatre in Boston Massachusetts, where she helps run Company One’s playwriting program, PlayLab. She is the author of Our Daughters, Like Pillars (upcoming at Huntington Theatre Company); Baltimore, a commission from the Big Ten Consortium at the University of Iowa, which toured to the National Black Theatre Conference; Bud, Not Buddy, an adaptation of the children’s novel by Christopher Paul Curtis, with music by Terence Blanchard (Metro Stage Company in St. Louis); The Luck of the Irish (Huntington Theatre Company; LTC3); and Milk Like Sugar (La Jolla Playhouse; Women’s Project Theater; Playwrights Horizons; Huntington Theatre Company; Lucille Lortel Award nomination; Independent Reviewers of New England, San Diego Critics, and Obie Awards).

(he/him) A.R.T.: A.R.T. credits include Live @ OBERON with STL GLD, Clairvoyance, and The Wellspring, and he serves as an A.R.T. Trustee. Hall is a musician and performance poet from Detroit, Michigan, now residing in Boston. His poetry draws inspiration from his lived experiences, charting the nuances of Blackness, masculinity, and the beauties of life. He has performed at Boston’s HUBweek, the Museum of Fine Arts, New Orleans Museum of Art, Outside the Box Festival, Bridgin’ Gaps Festival, and many other venues and poetry slam communities around Boston and Greater Boston. As a musician, Hall has shared stages with recording artists such as the Nappy Roots, Carolyn Malachi, Bilal, Chris Turner, and Aloe Blacc. Hall’s work can be experienced through his spoken-word EP, Colors of My Soul, and self-published book, Trust the Process. An assistant professor in Berklee’s Professional Music Department, Hall was nominated for Session Musician of the Year at the Boston Music Awards (2018–2020), received a 2019 Artist Luminary Award from local youth arts non-profit Zumix, and was honored by WBUR’s The Artery as one of 25 millennials of color impacting arts and culture in Boston.

A.R.T.: In the Body of the World, Crossing, O.P.C. Director of Dance, Senior Lecturer in Music and Theater, Dance & Media; Artistic Director of the Harvard Dance Project, at Harvard University. Graduate of Canada’s National Ballet School; a 28-year veteran of the dance field, Johnson choreographs for film, television, and the stage; has danced in over 50 tours on 5 continents. Was soloist with the National Ballet of Canada and a principal dancer and researcher in William Forsythe’s company Frankfurt Ballet. Stages Forsythe’s work worldwide, including for Paris Opera Ballet, La Scala, Batsheva Dance Company, Norwegian National Ballet, Netherlands Dance Theater, Boston Ballet, and American Ballet Theater. Is a founding collaborator of The Movement Invention Project in New York, and has served on the faculties of and created choreographic work for Princeton University, Columbia University, the Juilliard School and NYU; and has created 12 new works at Harvard since 2011 including Paper Wing, What Moves You?, and dance installations RE: RE: RE: and LOOK UP. Recent collaborations include those with the Harvard Choruses, Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center, Boston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Dries Van Noten/Louvre Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

MJ Kaufman (he/they) is the author of plays produced around the country, as well as in Russia and Australia. Their play Masculinity Max was commissioned by the Public Theater, where it also had a Public Studio production. MJ has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, New Museum, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and currently, New Dramatists. With Kit Yan and Cece Suazo, they founded Trans Lab Fellowship, a program to support emerging transgender theater artists.

Melinda Lopez (she/ella) is the recipient of the 2019 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Achievement, recognizing her twenty-year career in theater. She is a multiple-award-winning playwright and performer. Pandemic work includes the audio series Dream Boston and the Zoom play Black Beans Project (co-created with Joel Perez). Plays include: Mala (available on Audible in Spanish and English), Yerma (adaptation), Becoming Cuba, Sonia Flew, and many others. Lopez also performs on stage, radio, and in film.

(he/him) A.R.T.: The Arboretum Experience. World Premieres include The Delling Shore at the Humana Festival; The Old Masters at Steppenwolf Theatre Company; The Joke (dir. Sam Gold) at Studio Dante; and Cells at the Huntington Summer Workshop. Additional New York productions include Brack’s Last Bachelor Party at 59 E. 59th; Nelson with Partial Comfort Productions, and Craft at The Flea. For TV, Marks completed a pilot for HBO produced by Steve Buscemi, Stanley Tucci, and Wren Arthur’s Olive Productions.

Mwalim *7) (he/him) is a multi-award-winning playwright, composer, and performer. The Arboretum Experience is his first project with A.R.T. In the summer of 2021, his play Listen to Sipu had a sold-out run at Watertown’s New Repertory Theatre. His critically acclaimed first novel, Land of the Black Squirrels, was published in 2020. Mwalim has been the Playwright-In-Residence with New African Company in Boston since 2004, where his projects include the Among Brothers series of plays depicting the history and development of Prince Hall Freemasonry, and a series of works that explore the “Black Indian” experiences in America. A three-time recipient of the Ira Aldridge Fellowship, his plays and performance pieces have been presented throughout the USA, Canada, the Caribbean, and the UK. He is a tenured professor of English and Black Studies at UMass Dartmouth.

Eliana Pipes (she/her) is a playwright and filmmaker. Her play DREAM HOU$E will be produced at the Alliance Theatre through the Kendeda Prize. She’s also the recipient of the Academy Gold Fellowship for Women, the Leah Ryan Fund Prize for Emerging Women Writers, the National Latinx Playwriting Award, and a member of the Dramatist Guild Foundation Fellowship. She holds a BA in English from Columbia University and a MFA in Playwriting from Boston University.

Peter Chu (he/him) began his training as a competitive gymnast, later nurturing his artistry at Dussich Dance Studio and as a BFA student at The Juilliard School (under the direction of Benjamin Harkarvy), where he was awarded the Hector Zaraspe Prize for Choreography. In Los Angeles in 2008, Chu formed a project-based company, chuthis., which combines innovative lighting and sound with live contemporary movement, dedicated in part to providing movement education programs for the next generation of artists.

Jerron Herman (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist creating through dance, text, and visual storytelling. Based in New York City, Herman was born and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he began his career pursuing performance and playwriting. In 2009, he moved to New York City to study Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Continuing his dream of crafting stories to be performed, he then studied Media, Culture, and the Arts with an emphasis in Art History and Playwriting at The King’s College, from which he graduated in 2013.

A.R.T.: In the Body of the World, Crossing, O.P.C. Director of Dance, Senior Lecturer in Music and Theater, Dance & Media; Artistic Director of the Harvard Dance Project, at Harvard University. Graduate of Canada’s National Ballet School; a 28-year veteran of the dance field, Johnson choreographs for film, television, and the stage; has danced in over 50 tours on 5 continents. Was soloist with the National Ballet of Canada and a principal dancer and researcher in William Forsythe’s company Frankfurt Ballet. Stages Forsythe’s work worldwide, including for Paris Opera Ballet, La Scala, Batsheva Dance Company, Norwegian National Ballet, Netherlands Dance Theater, Boston Ballet, and American Ballet Theater. Is a founding collaborator of The Movement Invention Project in New York, and has served on the faculties of and created choreographic work for Princeton University, Columbia University, the Juilliard School and NYU; and has created 12 new works at Harvard since 2011 including Paper Wing, What Moves You?, and dance installations RE: RE: RE: and LOOK UP. Recent collaborations include those with the Harvard Choruses, Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center, Boston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Dries Van Noten/Louvre Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Nailah Randall-Bellinger (she/her) is a dance educator and scholar. For over thirty-five years, she has taught modern and contemporary classes throughout the United States and abroad at national conventions and universities. She has studied, performed, and lectured in Brazil, Ghana, Haiti, the Czech Republic, and Senegal. She has worked with film director and poet S. Pearl Sharp, and performed as a member of Karen McDonald’s New Age Dance Workshop dance company and Jamie Nichols Fast Feet, Inc.

Lonnie Anela O’kalani Neff Stanton (she/her) has been committed to dance education with a somatic focus as well as her contemporary performance career since graduating from the Boston Conservatory (’09).  For a decade she worked with Prometheus Dance. In New York City she performed with Kinesis Project Dance Theatre, focusing on site-specific performance. Stanton is passionate about sharing dance in unconventional outdoor spaces where a broad audience can be reached. She currently performs as a freelance dancer with many groups, including Jean Appolon Expressions and Peter DiMuro/PDM. Stanton has created dances for film or public space for the Somerville Arts Council and Neoscape, among many independent musicians and film artists. She is on faculty at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and The Harvard Dance Center. Bringing dance education into public schools through Notes in Motion, New York City Ballet, and Boston Ballet has been especially rewarding.

(he/him) A.R.T.: The Arboretum Experience. A multimedia artist, filmmaker and designer, Daniel Callahan merges a plethora of mediums to create immersive experiences that explore human resilience and mysticism. A graduate of the UPenn School of Design, and Emerson College, where he received an MFA in Film and Video, Daniel and his work have been featured at the Museum of Fine Art, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Queens Museum, The New Orleans Museum of Art. danielcallahan.com

Jerron Herman (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist creating through dance, text, and visual storytelling. Based in New York City, Herman was born and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he began his career pursuing performance and playwriting. In 2009, he moved to New York City to study Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Continuing his dream of crafting stories to be performed, he then studied Media, Culture, and the Arts with an emphasis in Art History and Playwriting at The King’s College, from which he graduated in 2013.

HipStory is a collective of artists and media production professionals dedicated to centering marginalized identities in media through music and film by creating art through music and film production, audio and video services, and event curation.

(he/him) A.R.T.: A.R.T. credits include Live @ OBERON with STL GLD, Clairvoyance, and The Wellspring, and he serves as an A.R.T. Trustee. Hall is a musician and performance poet from Detroit, Michigan, now residing in Boston. His poetry draws inspiration from his lived experiences, charting the nuances of Blackness, masculinity, and the beauties of life. He has performed at Boston’s HUBweek, the Museum of Fine Arts, New Orleans Museum of Art, Outside the Box Festival, Bridgin’ Gaps Festival, and many other venues and poetry slam communities around Boston and Greater Boston. As a musician, Hall has shared stages with recording artists such as the Nappy Roots, Carolyn Malachi, Bilal, Chris Turner, and Aloe Blacc. Hall’s work can be experienced through his spoken-word EP, Colors of My Soul, and self-published book, Trust the Process. An assistant professor in Berklee’s Professional Music Department, Hall was nominated for Session Musician of the Year at the Boston Music Awards (2018–2020), received a 2019 Artist Luminary Award from local youth arts non-profit Zumix, and was honored by WBUR’s The Artery as one of 25 millennials of color impacting arts and culture in Boston.

Cliff Notez is an award-winning multi-digital media artist, musician, organizer, and filmmaker. Their art is a continuous exploration of the black mind. Rooted in hip hop, their art tackles the political and the personal, exploring the intimate consequences of a society where black bodies are easily ignored, forgotten, or disregarded.

Erich Haygun (he/they/hayyy) is an audio designer, producer, performer, writer and youth arts worker. In addition to serving as Production Manager and Studio Manager for HipStory, Haygun has performed touring and live production duties for clients ranging from The Harlem Globetrotters to Blue Man Group. They are also Program Director for Books Of Hope, a youth writing non-profit based in East Somerville, as well as a National Poetry Slam Champion representing their hometown of Boston.

Eric Seligman is a multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Cambridge, MA and New York City. He frequently collaborates with Cliff Notez as a trumpet player and orchestrator, and he has opened for artists including Talib Kweli, Ja Rule, and Gym Class Heroes. Eric has released indie-classical and indie-rock music with Baby Cleo, Zamin, Fleur de Lune, Mel Hsu, and others. He teaches about the economics of mass incarceration at John Jay College at the City University of New York.

Will Dailey is an acclaimed independent recording artist, performer and artist advocate. His sound has been described as a venn diagram of multiple genres with a rich vintage vibe channeled through his authentic and energetic performances. All inspiring famed rock journalist Dan Aquilante to call him “the real deal”. Dailey’s albums are met with stellar reviews and have over 12 million spins on Spotify, twice charting on the top 20 of the national Billboard Heat Seeker chart. He is the recipient of 8 Boston Music Awards including Album of the Year, Artist of the Year, and Songwriter of the Year.