Sarah Benson

Sarah Benson is an Obie award-winning theater director based in New York City. Recent credits include: Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview (Soho Rep, TFANA & Berkeley Rep) the play won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Benson was nominated for a Drama Desk for direction; Suzan-Lori Parks’ In The Blood (Signature Theater). At Soho Rep: Richard Maxwell’s Samara with music by Steve Earle; César Alvarez and The Lisps’ Futurity (ART, Walker Arts Center and in New York with Ars Nova) Callaway Award; Lortel Award for Best Musical; Branden Jacobs-Jenkins An Octoroon (Soho Rep & TFANA); Lucas Hnath’s A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney;  Sarah Kane’s Blasted (OBIE award, Drama Desk nomination); David Adjmi’s Elective Affinities featuring Zoe Caldwell (site-specific). Benson also directed the award-winning Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical (Townhall) for the 2019 Super bowl. Upcoming: César Alvarez’s Noise. Benson is a Vilcek Foundation awardee and moved to New York from London on a Fulbright. She has been a Director of Soho Rep since 2008 and is currently serving her last season. During Benson’s tenure the theater has garnered fifteen OBIE awards and the Drama Desk Award for Sustained Artistic Excellence.

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).

• “TEETH feels like the musical equivalent of driving a spike-covered Mad Max car across the desert while getting chased by war boys on their way to Valhalla. It’s a rush — and it’s also a pitch-dark examination of the very real chokehold of Christofascist ideology in America.”

  — Sara Holdren, Vulture | Read Full Article

• “A brazen, CACKLE-WORTHY musical. All RAUCOUS, CAMPY fun.”

  — Brittani Samuel, The Washington Post | Read Full Article