For the fifth consecutive year, Colt Coeur has welcomed a select group of emerging playwrights and directors to be CoCo Residents. This year’s cohort is comprised of playwrights Lily Gonzales (they/them) and Lizzie Stern (she/her), and directors Borna Barzin (he/him) and Sarah Blush (she/her). The residency program is facilitated by Colt Coeur Artistic Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt and provides an intimate group of playwrights & directors with the invaluable resources of community, space to work, and a stipend. Rather than focusing on a specific piece of theater or output, the residency’s intention is to forge deep and authentic relationships which will foster future collaborations as well as greater understanding and appreciation for a variety of artistic perspectives and approaches. Alumni of the program include Will Arbery, Jeremy O. Harris, Danya Taymor and Whitney White.
On the heels of an ambitious year of virtual programming (seven different shows!), as well as a return to live performance (world premiere of Xandra Nur Clark’s Polylogues), Colt Coeur is also thrilled to announce the awarding of two new commissions, and a director partnership on its ongoing commission with playwright Francisca Da Silveira (she/her).
Playwright Kareem Fahmy (he/him) is currently developing Dodi & Diana which finds a couple revisiting a certain Paris hotel room 25 years after a horrible tragedy transpired there, and explores what it takes to make a marriage work. Playwright Natalie Margolin is working on Bed, Bath & Beyond which was inspired by Margolin’s experience of sharing a home with her 100 year old grandmother for the past year and a half. The play is about a young woman and her grandma, who teeters between life and death, while each search for steady ground on which to stand and some hope about what’s ahead. Both Margolin and Fahmy are developing their projects with Colt Coeur Artistic Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt.
Da Silveira, who was awarded a Toulmin Fellowship last winter, has recently brought on director Shariffa Ali. Da Silveira’s project, minor·ity, interrogates the relationship between Africanness, Blackness and Black Americanness, and questions the sustainability of a Black artists' success attained through the white gaze.
BIOS
Shariffa Chelimo Ali is an international creative leader committed to advancing radical change through the power of art and activism.She works across disciplines directing and producing films, virtual reality experiences, and plays and moves her audiences to engage with timely issues touching upon Black, Afropolitan, and African-American identities. Originally from Kenya and raised in South Africa, Shariffa has lectured and directed at NYU, Brooklyn College, Yale University and is currently on faculty at Princeton University. In 2020 Shariffa was the Artist in Residence at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival where she helmed the world premier of Karen Zacarias’s The Copper Children earlier in the year. Previously she served as Assistant Director to mentor Cynthia Nixon for Rasheeda Speaking, Steve (The New Group) and Motherstruck! (Culture Project). Shariffa’s debut Virtual Reality short ATOMU was part of the official selection at the Sundance Festival 2020. Shariffa currently serves as the Director of Artistic Projects at The New Group. Select Honors: New Frontier Fellowship at Sundance Institute (2018), Royal National Theater (UK) (2019), Berlind Playwright in Residence (2019), winner : POV/PBS Spark Grant (2020), Winner: OregonMade Film Grant (2020).
Borna Barzin is a Brooklyn-based theater director of Iranian heritage hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area. His work uses satire and multimedia to expose and reveal injustice and intimacy. Recent directing credits include <<when we write with ashes>> (National Queer Theater/Lincoln Center), Pinching Pennies with Penny Marshall (New York Theatre Workshop), The Mad Dog Blues (The Hive), and How I Learned to Drive (Sibiu International Theatre Festival, Pace University). Borna is a former Casting Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop and Associate Casting Director for the National Tour of Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma! He is also a Resident Artist at Colt Coeur and a member of the Leon Levy Foundation Director’s Group at Roundabout Theater Company.
Sarah Blush directs and develops plays & other experiments. Recent: Future Wife: Party in a Spreadsheet w/ ruth tang (New Georges), Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s Do You Feel Anger? (AADA), Fefu and Her Friends (NYU), The Little Foxes (NYU Grad Acting), Bailey Williams’ I thought I would die... (The Tank; Time Out Critics Pick), Sehnsucht (JACK; NY Times Critics Pick). Play development: Clubbed Thumb, The Playwrights' Center, New Georges, Bushwick Starr, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Ars Nova, The Atlantic Acting School, HERE, Dixon Place, etc. An alum of the Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellowship and The Habitat Directors Playground, she has been awarded a New Georges Audrey Residency and New York Society Library's Emerging Female Artist Grant. Currently: Colt Coeur Resident Artist.
Francisca Da Silveira is a Cape Verdean-American playwright and Boston native who holds a BFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MSc in Playwriting from the University of Edinburgh. She has been featured in ArtsBoston, The LA Times and American Theatre Magazine. Her plays have been developed with Theatre503 (London), The Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh), Company One Theatre (Boston), The Fire This Time Festival (New York), The Playwrights Realm (New York), The Public Theater (New York) and La Jolla Playhouse (San Diego). Fran’s play NOT-FOR-PROFIT (OR THE EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION PLAY) was featured in The Playwrights’ Realm’s INK’D Festival in April 2021 as part of the 2020-2021 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship and in La Jolla Playhouse’s DNA New Works Series in July 2021. Her play CAN I TOUCH IT? was featured in the National New Play Network’s 2020 National Showcase of New Plays in November 2020 and will receive a World Premiere production at Company One Theatre in July 2022. She is currently a member of The Public Theater’s 2020-2023 Emerging Writers Group and is under commission from Colt Coeur Theatre in Brooklyn.
Adrienne Campbell-Holt is the Founding Artistic Director of Colt Coeur and the recipient of the 2018 Lucille Lortel Visionary Director Award. Up next: world premieres of Other World by Hunter Bell, Jeff Bowen, and Ann McNamee (Delaware Theater Company) & Afterwords by Zoe Sarnak and Emily Kaczmarek (5th Avenue Theater). Recent world premiere/NY premiere productions: Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector (Colt Coeur), We are Among Us by Stephen Belber (City Theater, Pittsburgh), Hatef**k by Rehana Lew Mirza (WP/Colt Coeur), Joan, by Stephen Belber, starring Johanna Day (Colt Coeur), Downstairs, by Theresa Rebeck starring Tyne Daly and Tim Daly (Primary Stages), Thirst, by C. A. Johnson (Contemporary American Theater Festival), Zürich, by Amelia Roper (Colt Coeur/NYTW), What We’re Up Against by Theresa Rebeck (WP Theater), Empathitrax by Ana Nogueira (Colt Coeur), Cal in Camo (Rattlestick/Colt Coeur), Chiara Atik’s 52nd to Bowery (EST Marathon), Dry Land by Ruby Rae Spiegel (Colt Coeur), Reunion by Greg Moss (South Coast Rep), Recall by Eliza Clark (Colt Coeur), and Seven Minutes in Heaven by Steven Levenson (Colt Coeur). She has developed work with Playwrights Horizons, The Public, New Georges, Roundabout, New York Stage & Film, Williamstown Theatre Festival (Sagal Fellowship), La Jolla Playhouse, the Huntington, American Repertory Theater, and many more. BA Barnard College, Columbia University. adriennecampbellholt.com
Kareem Fahmy is a Canadian-born playwright and director of Egyptian descent. His plays, which include American Fast, A Distinct Society, The Triumphant, Pareidolia, The In-Between, and an adaptation of the acclaimed Egyptian novel The Yacoubian Building, have been developed at the Atlantic Theatre Company, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Northlight Theatre, Citadel Theatre of Edmonton, Capital Repertory Theatre, New York Stage & Film, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Target Margin Theater, The Lark, Noor Theater, and more. He is currently under commission by Artist Repertory Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and Colt Coeur. Fellowships/Residencies: Sundance Theatre Lab, Yaddo Literature Fellow, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Phil Killian Directing Fellow), The O’Neill (National Directors Fellow), Second Stage (Van Lier Directing Fellow), Soho Rep (Writer/Director Lab), Lincoln Center (Directors Lab), New York Theater Workshop (Emerging Artist Fellow & Usual Suspect). Kareem is co-founder and chair of the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at The Lark. MFA in Theatre Directing: Columbia University. www.kareemfahmy.com
lily gonzales is a playwright from Texas, based in NYC. Their work has been developed or read at The John F. Kennedy Center, Teatro Vivo, Repertorio Español, Stages, San Diego REP, AlterTheater Ensemble, The Workshop Theater, and Latinx Playwrights Circle. Their play (trans)formada was runner-up for three Kennedy Center awards, as well as a finalist for the Miranda Family ‘Voces Latinx’ Competition, and Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Currently, they are a National Young Playwright in Residence with Echo Theater Company and Colt Coeur Resident Artist. B.A: UT Austin, Theater & Dance / English.
Natalie Margolin was listed by Playbill as one of twenty playwrights to "put on your radar in 2019." Her first play, The Power Of Punctuation, premiered Off-Broadway. The New York Times called it a "smart and incisive... oasis of entertainment." It was a New York Stage and Film Founders Award finalist, and recipient of Kenyon College's James E. Michael Playwriting Award. She was a resident playwright at Colt Coeur (artistic director Adrienne Campbell-Holt) and has continued on as a company member. Natalie was a part of Fault Line Theatre's "irons in the fire" with her play, All Nighter. Currently, All Nighter is in development with Broadway Video. She was the recipient of the inaugural New Play Residency from SheNYC. Her play, The Day The Butcher Shop Closed, was awarded “Best Production” at the SheNYC Summer Theater Festival. In Fall of 2020 Natalie wrote a play specifically for zoom called The Party Hop. The play, published by Dramatist Play Service, was produced in high schools and colleges throughout the country during the pandemic. Dramatist Play Service additionally presented a reading of the piece starring Beanie Feldstein, Catherine Cohen, Ayo Edebiri, Ashley Park, Ben Platt, and Kaitlyn Dever, directed by Josh Margolin (available on YouTube).
Lizzie Stern is a playwright in New York, as well as the Literary Director at Playwrights Horizons. She is currently a playwright in EST/Youngblood, a Colt Coeur 2021-22 Resident Artist, and a member of Beehive Dramaturgy. Her plays have been developed with Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writer’s Group and SPACE on Ryder Farm, and produced by The Tank, Two Headed Rep, and New Brooklyn Theatre in Istanbul. She holds a BA from Williams College.