EDUCATION PROGRAMS
NEW VISIONS FELLOWSHIP
In Spring of 2021, National Queer Theater and the Dramatists Guild launched the New Visions Fellowship, an innovative new program for Black trans and gender non-conforming playwrights. The New Visions Fellowship is a rigorous year-long professional development initiative aimed at celebrating the brilliance of and uplifting Black TGNC writers in the face of the systemic exclusion that Black TGNC writers have endured within American theater.
THE INAUGURAL FELLOWS
This fellowship was awarded to Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko (he/they) and Ayla Xuan Chi Sullivan (they/them). The program will be helmed by Black and Filipinx playwright Roger Q. Mason (they/them) along with Project Manager Jordan Stovall (they/them).
In February of 2022, National Queer Theater, in partnership with the Dramatists Guild, produced JUBILEE FOR A NEW VISION, a showcase for the New Visions Fellowship to share new works amplifying the TGNC experience in scene, song, and performance. JUBILEE FOR A NEW VISION was part of Carnegie Hall's Afrofuturism Festival.
SUPPORT THIS PROGRAM
The New Visions Fellowship is an investment in the future – not only the future of the American theater but also the future of the writers whose lives it will change irrevocably. Your donations will help to ensure opportunity and access for the next generation of playwrights for the American Theatre.
“What excites me the most about this fellowship is that Black and Transgender creativity is at the forefront and heart of New Visions,” said playwright Ayla Xuan Chi Sullivan (They/Them). “I never want my Blackness and my Transness to be a fun fact about me: my identity is not a product to be bartered or questioned, it is integral to my creative life because my specific experience as a Black and Transgender person is inherently creative when I have to navigate how to ensure the expression and protection of my livelihood. To truly have that welcomed and celebrated in a professional landscape is a gift of resistance."
“I believe in the power of queer storytelling to liberate all of humanity,” said playwright Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko (He/They). “To tell the full queer Black truth; to birth justice from queer realities. The New Visions Fellowship marries the power of queer Black storytelling to theatrical performance and, in so doing, champions the two greatest loves of my life.”
National Queer Theater's New Visions Fellowship program is sponsored, in part, with funds from the NYSCA-A.R.T./New York Creative Opportunity Fund (A Statewide Theatre Regrant Program) and the Gilead Foundation.
