Leah C. Gardiner

Playwrights debut. Off-Broadway: Born Bad, Generations (Soho Rep.); The Ruins of Civilization (MTC); Wit (Union Square Theater); The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Atlantic); Fidelis (The Public); Pitbulls (Rattlestick); Bulrusher (Urban Stages); Dead Are My People (NYTW/Noor). Select Regional: Sheepdog, Blue Door (South Coast Repertory); Bread (WaterTower Theatre); Antony and Cleopatra, Othello (Houston Shakespeare Festival); The Normal Heart (ACT); Notes From the Field (Baltimore Center Stage/Berkeley Rep); Fences (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (Alliance Theatre); Sucker Punch (Studio Theatre, DC). Leah has directed in both London and Japan and has acted as herself in the feature film Little Men. Obie Award for Born Bad. MFA: Yale School of Drama. LeahCGardiner.com

(Updated Feb 2019)

Raja Feather Kelly

Raja Feather Kelly is a choreographer and director, and the Artistic Director of the feath3r theory (TF3T), a dance-theatre-media company. Kelly has created 18 evening-length premieres with the feath3r theory, most recently UGLY Part 3: BLUE at Chelsea Factory. The company’s latest work, The Absolute Future, premieres in 2024. His choreography can currently be seen in White Girl in Danger at the Second Stage Kiser Theater, written by Michael R. Jackson and directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz. He choreographed the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical A Strange Loop (Lyceum Theatre, premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizon), and is also a choreographer for Off-Broadway theatre with frequent collaborators like Jackson, Blain-Cruz, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Sarah Benson. Recent works include Bunny Bunny (UC San Diego), We're Gonna Die (Second Stage Theater), SUFFS (The Public Theater), Lempicka (La Jolla Playhouse), and Scenes for an Ending for the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. He has received numerous accolades, including a Princeton Arts Fellowship (2023-2025), three Princess Grace Awards, an Obie Award, an Outer Critics Circle honor for choreography for the Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony Award-winning musical A Strange Loop, a Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, a Creative Capital award, a Breakout Award for choreography from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SCDF), the Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography, Dance Magazine's Harkness Promise Award, and the SDCF Joe A. Callaway Award finalist for outstanding choreography of Fairview (Soho Rep, Berkeley Rep, TFANA, and winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama).

• “Critic’s Pick! ‘Beauty, Blackness, and Beyoncé. Tori Sampson’s delicious new play is an auspicious professional playwriting debut.’”

  — Jesse Green, The New York Times

• “If Pretty Hurts is full of winking whimsy and frightening recognitions — it’s got teeth.”

  — Sara Holdren, New York Magazine