Help: A New Play by Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine is the author of five books of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; four plays including The White Card, which premiered in February 2018 (ArtsEmerson / American Repertory Theater) and was published by Graywolf Press in 2019; as well as numerous video collaborations. Her recent collection of essays, Just Us: An American Conversation, was published by Graywolf Press in 2020. She is also the co-editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. In 2016, Rankine co-founded the Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, United States Artists, and the National Endowment of the Arts. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Claudia Rankine is a professor of creative writing at New York University.

Taibi Magar’s New York credits include Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 (Signature Theatre), Capsule by Whitney White and Peter Mark Kendall (Under the RadarFestival/The Public Theater, co-directed with Tyler Dobrowsky), Blue Ridge, starring Marin Ireland, The Great Leap starring BD Wong (AtlanticTheatre Company), Is God Is (Soho Rep, 2018 Obie Award), Master (TheFoundry, NYT Critics Pick), and Underground Railroad Game (Ars Nova, NYT Critics Pick). Regional credits include A.R.T., CTG, Baltimore Center Stage, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, the Guthrie Theater, and Seattle Repertory Theatre among others. International credits include Hamburg Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Malthouse Theatre (Melbourne), and Soho Theatre (London). Magar received a MFA from Brown University.

April Matthis is an Obie Award–winning actor and company member of Elevator Repair Service. Her credits include, Off-Broadway: Toni Stone (Roundabout; Lortel, Drama League, Drama Desk nominations, Outer Critics Circle, and OBIE Awards for Outstanding Performance); Fairview, LEAR (Soho Rep); Signature Plays: Funnyhouse of a Negro (Signature Theatre); Iowa and Antlia Pneumatica (Playwrights Horizons); and On the Levee (LCT3). With ERS: The Sound & the Fury and Fondly, Collette Richland (NYTW); Measure for Measure (The Public); Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf (Abrons Art Center); GATZ (Perth Festival); and Baldwin/Buckley at Cambridge (Philadelphia Fringe). Regional: Little Bunny Foo Foo (Actors Theater of Louisville) and A Streetcar Named Desire (Yale Rep). TV: EVIL, The Good Fight (Paramount +), New Amsterdam, and The Blacklist (NBC). Film: Black Card (HBO, Showtime) and Fugitive Dreams (Cinequest).

Shamel Pitts is a performance artist, choreographer, conceptual artist, dancer, spoken word artist, and teacher. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Pitts began his dance training at LaGuardia High School for Music & Art and the Performing Arts and, simultaneously, at The Ailey School. He is a 2003 YoungArts Finalist and a first prize (level 1)–winner of the YoungArts competition. Pitts then went on to receive his BFA in dance from The Juilliard School and was awarded the Martha Hill Award for excellence in dance. He began his dance career in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hell’s Kitchen Dance and BJM_Danse Montreal. Pitts danced with Batsheva Dance Company for seven years, under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin and is a certified teacher of Gaga movement language. He is an adjunct at The Juilliard School and has been an artist in residence at Harvard University. He is the recipient of a 2018 Princess Grace Award in Choreography, a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Award winner in Choreography, a 2020 Jacob’s Pillow artist-in-residence, and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Pitts is the artistic director/founder of TRIBE, a New York based multidisciplinary arts collective.

JJJJJerome Ellis is an animal, stutterer, and artist. He was raised by Jamaican and Grenadian immigrants in Tidewater, Virginia, where he prays, gardens, and resides among the egrets and asters. He dreams of building a sonic bath house!

Monaco (original composition) is a storyteller, writer, composer, and musician. He’s one half of the music-storytelling duo James & Jerome. Recent James & Jerome projects include The Conversationalists (The Bushwick Starr), Ink (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Under The Radar), and Piano Tales (Lincoln Center, MASS MoCA, La MaMa, etc.). Other storytelling projects include Tales for Telling (Ars Nova) and Reception (HERE Arts, The New Ohio). Composition work includes Marvel Entertainment’s podcast Hawkeye (with JJJJJerome Ellis), the TEAM’s Reconstruction…, and work for upcoming commissions from Ars Nova and The Momentary. He’s also a translator of Spanish and Italian.

Robert Duffley’s credits include We Hear You—A Climate Archive (Dramaten, the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden/Georgetown University/Swedish Embassy DC), 1776 (dir. Diane Paulus and Jeffrey L. Page, A.R.T./Roundabout), Miranda Rose Hall’s A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction (touring Europe with original direction by Katie Mitchell), LubDub’s The Uncle Geoff Magic Show (Target Margin Theater Lab), The Lazours’ We Live in Cairo (dir. Taibi Magar, A.R.T.), and Celine Song’s Endlings (dir. Sammi Cannold, A.R.T.). Duffley is editor and associate dramaturg at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University, dramaturg for LubDub Theatre Co, and affiliated faculty at Emerson College.

Mimi Lien is a designer of sets/environments for theater, dance, and opera. In 2015, she was named a MacArthur Fellow, and is the first stage designer ever to achieve this distinction. Lien is a co-founder of JACK, a performance/art space in Brooklyn. Selected projects include Natasha and Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway, Tony Award); Fairview and An Octoroon (Soho Rep); Die Zauberflöte (Staatsoper Berlin); and True West (Roundabout). She is a recipient of Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, as well as an American Theatre Wing Hewes Design Award, LA Drama Critics Circle Award, Bessie Award, and an OBIE Award for sustained excellence.

Dede Ayite is a two-time Tony Award–nominated costume designer whose Broadway credits include A Soldier’s Play, Slave Play, American Son, and Children of a Lesser God. Select Off-Broadway credits include Merry Wives (The Public Theater); Secret Life of Bees and Marie and Rosetta (Atlantic); By The Way and Meet Vera Stark (Signature); BLKS and School Girls… (MCC); Bella: An American Tall Tale (Playwrights Horizons); The Royale (Lincoln Center); and Toni Stone (Roundabout). Regionally, Ayite’s work has appeared at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Steppenwolf, Arena Stage, and more. She has worked in television with Netflix, Comedy Central, and FOX Shortcoms. Ayite earned her MFA at the Yale School of Drama and has received Obie, Lucille Lortel, Helen Hayes, Theatre Bay Area, and Jeff Awards, along with four Drama Desk nominations.

John Torres is a New York-based lighting designer working in theater, dance, motion, and print. Recent projects have included: Opera: Turandot (Opera Bastille, Paris), Tristan and Isolde (La Monnaie, Brussels), Atlas (composed by Meredith Monk; Disney Hall, LA Philharmonic), Eden (Joyce DiDonato; Bozar, Brussels), Der Messias (Salzburg Festival). Theater: Twelfth Night and A Bright Room Called Day (The Public, NYC); The Black Clown (A.R.T. Cambridge); Only an Octave Apart and Hamlet (St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn); and Assembly (Park Avenue Armory). TV: Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek Live! and Joni 75 (PBS). Music: Taylor Mac: A 24 Decade… (St. Ann’s Warehouse), Solange Knowles, and Florence and the Machine. Dance: Toss and Rogues (Trisha Brown; Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris); Available Light (Lucinda Childs; Théâtre de La Ville, Paris); Lost Mountain (Bobbi Jene Smith; La Mama, NYC). Fashion: Givenchy, Proenza Schouler, Bottega Veneta Salon 03 Detroit, and Gucci Love Parade (Los Angeles). Exhibitions: Adam Pendleton: Who is Queen? (MoMA New York) and Carl Craig: Party/After Party (Dia: Beacon).

Lee Kinney is a sound and music artist working in theater, film and events. Broadway credits include Is This A Room. Off-Broadway: Prayer for the French Republic and Morning Sun (MTC); Selling Kabul (Playwrights Horizons); Is This a Room (Vineyard); “Daddy” A Melodrama (New Group/Vineyard); Thom Pain (Signature); Sunday (Atlantic); and Gnit (Theatre for a New Audience). Other projects include work with Google, Virgin Voyages, Swing Left, The Dance Cartel, and The Ghostlight Project. Kinney has been awarded Outer Critics Circle Honors for Outstanding Sound Design, nominated for Lucille Lortel Award, Drama Desk Award, and Henry Hewes Design Award. From Lee Kinney: thanks to kris.

Brick Wall Theatrical (Laura Stanczyk and Mary Baynard, New York Casting) (casting) include Broadway, Off-Broadway, and tour productions of Encores! Off-Center, Side Show, After Midnight, A Night With Janis Joplin, Follies, Lombardi, Ragtime, Impressionism, Seafarer, Radio Golf, Coram Boy, Translations, Damn Yankees, Dirty Dancing, The Woman in Black, All Our Children, The Glorious Ones, The Cripple of Inishmaan, Urinetown, The Brother Sister Plays, and Fetch Clay Make Man. Other theater credits include Broadway Center Stage at The Kennedy Center, premieres of Make Natasha and Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway, Tony Award); Fairview and An Octoroon (Soho Rep); Die Zauberflöte (Staatsoper Berlin); and True West (Roundabout). She is a recipient of Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, as well as an American Theatre Wing Hewes Design Award, LA Drama Critics Circle Award, Bessie Award, and an OBIE Award for sustained excellence.

The Telsey Office (casting) casts for theater, film, television, and commercials. The Telsey Office is dedicated to creating safe, equitable, and anti-racist spaces through collaboration, artistry, heart, accountability, and advocacy.

Dominique Rider is a Brooklyn-based director whose work seeks to answer the question “What is a world unmade by slavery?” while attempting to analyze the layers of anti-Blackness that maintain the world we live in. Deploying theater and performance as tools of Afropessimism, Rider has developed and staged work with Audible, The New Group, NYTW, Roundabout, and more. Currently Rider is a resident director at The National Black Theatre, a Hi-Arts Critical Breaks resident, and a producer with CLASSIX.

Ashley Pierre-Louis grew up on the lands of the Tequesta, Miccosuki, and Seminole nations. With education from New World School of the Arts and later from Florida State University, Pierre-Louis began to discover her passion for movement, the human form, and arts administration. Pierre-Louis is currently artistic administrator and performer with Shamel Pitts’s multidisciplinary performance collective, TRIBE. She has premiered the play Thoughts of a Colored Man by playwright Keenan Scott II and director Steve Broadnax III at Syracuse Stage and Baltimore Center Stage. She has performed for the premiere of Donna Uchizono’s work March Under an Empty Reign at The Joyce, New York (Quadrille Festival) and has been one of GALLIM’s Moving Women spring artists-in-residence. She has also been a part of Alvin Ailey’s inaugural Choreography Unlocked Festival under the direction of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women, and Robert Battle. Pierre-Louis has attended the School at Jacob’s Pillow, San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, as well as Gaga intensives in Tel Aviv and New York.

Peiyi Wong is an interdisciplinary artist and designer of sets, installations, and costumes based in Brooklyn. Select credits include A Hunger Artist (Sinking Ship), Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Transport Group), You Are Under Our Space Control *(Object Collection), *Memoirs of a…Unicorn (NYLA, Bessie Award), and MukhAgni (The Public Theater). Wong received an MFA from CalArts. Learn more at Peiyi Wong’s website.

Tessa Ann Bookwalter is a NYC-based lighting and scenic designer who works across disciplines including theater, film, fashion, and installation. Recent lighting designs include Machinal (Spence School NYC), Eastman (Little Island), The Perfect Dog (Laguna Playhouse), Two’s A Crowd (59E59, World Premiere at Laguna Playhouse), The War Boys (Columbia University), Proof (University of California, Irvine), and Physical Graffiti Dance Show (UCI). Recent assistant/associate credits are Diana (Broadway), Only an Octave Apart (St. Ann’s Warehouse), A Bright Room Called Day (The Public Theater), Spongebob Squarepants the Musical (first national tour), and Finding Neverland (third national tour).

Evan Cook is a Brooklyn-based sound designer. Previously, he assisted on Prayer for the French Republic, Modelland, and Pip’s Island. Cook is extremely thankful for the efforts of the cast, crew, and creative team of Help. Learn more about Evan Cook’s work at IMissMyCafe.com and his website.

Coral Cohen is a director, writer, and performance deviser. Directing credits include In the Kitchen (Access Theatre, Jewish Museum of Maryland) and Between the Threads (HERE). Assistant directing credits include Fefu and Her Friends (TFANA, dir. Lileana Blain-Cruz), My Heart Is in the East (La MaMa E.T.C, dir. Jen Wineman), and S 16 Luna Nera (La MaMa E.T.C, dir. Gian Marco Lo Forte). She is also an arts manager who has worked at the Park Avenue Armory, TFANA, and Lincoln Center.