816 - The DGF Fellows (April 12, 2018)

In this episode, we talk with four people in the Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship program. DGF Fellows is a year-long development intensive led by esteemed writers. Participants spend a year honing their craft while developing full-length pieces, culminating in an industry presentation at an Off-Broadway theater. The program is highly sought after for its successful format of bringing playwrights and musical theater writers together in the learning process. Keelay Gipson is a multi-disciplinary artist including work as an activist, teaching artist, and award-winning playwright. He is the recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship (2016-2018) at New Dramatists and recently finished work as a Public Artist in Residence for the City of New York’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Administration of Children’s Services working with LGBTQ foster youth. Janine McGuire and Arri Lawton Simon are musical theatre fellows as well as members of the BMI Advanced Musical Theatre Workshop. They have collectively written and produced concerts, stage musicals, plays, film scores, orchestral pieces, choral works, and custom songs in addition to teaching musical theatre and performing arts outreach in the community. Riti Sachdeva is an alum of the The Public’s Emerging Writers Group and the Women’s Project. A theater maker and cultural worker, Riti has been creating art in some form for over 25 years. Incorporating text, installation, and dance into her writing and performance, she straddles the conventions of U.S. theater, performance art, and international approaches to theater. All this, inside!