minor·ity
By francisca da silveira
Directed by Shariffa Ali
art, business, same thing
CAST:
Ato essandoh (cheikh)
Nedra Marie Taylor (Céza)
Nimene Sierra Wureh (Sami)
In a world plagued with scarcity, minor•ity is a powerful three-hander that interrogates Black identity, the plurality of the African diaspora, and what it means to be a sought-after artist of color.
As an international African arts conference, Diaspora Now!, celebrates its Diamond Jubilee in Paris, the panel line-up causes quite a stir. Newcomer Sami Monroe, a go-getting directing prodigy from America, joins jaded veteran painter Céza Depina and formerly banned storyteller, Cheikh Malick Diallo. As they prepare for each panel discussion, generational and cultural differences lead to clashes and a fierce competition emerges between the three artists.
CREATIVE TEAM
scenic design: Brittany Vasta
costume design: Celeste Jennings
lighting design: Daisy Long
sound design: Tosin Olufolabi
hair designer: Amber Jasmin Morrow
prop supervisor: Samantha Tutasi
dramaturgy: Eunice Ferreira, Jack Phillips Moore
dialect coach: Barbara Rubin
PRODUCTION TEAM:
production stage manager: Caren Celine Morris
assistant stage manager: Siobhan Petersen
casting director: Destiny Lilly, CSA
Press agent: Vivacity Media
For group sales contact tickets@wptheater.org.
Recommended for ages 12+.
Want to sponsor free and/or subsidized tickets?
Email Outreach.CoCo@gmail.com to learn more.
Special thanks to the Venturous Theater Fund and the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.
THIS PROGRAM IS SUPPORTED, IN PART, BY PUBLIC FUNDS FROM THE NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE CITY COUNCIL
CAST & CREATIVE TEAM BIOS
Ato Essandoh
Ato Essandoh (Cheikh Malick Diallo) can currently be seen as a lead in the hit Netflix series The Diplomat opposite Keri Russell. Prior, he was seen as a series regular in the Netflix series Away opposite Hillary Swank for Matt Reeves, Jason Katims and Ed Zwick and in the Netflix feature Reptile opposite Benicio del Toro and Justin Timberlake which premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.
In film, Ato can been seen in Jason Bourne for Paul Greengrass and Django Unchained for Quentin Tarantino. Other credits include X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Get Him To The Greek, Blood Diamond and Hitch.
On the television front, Ato recurs as Dr. Isidore Latham on the NBC series Chicago Med. He was also seen as a series regular in the CBS series The Code, the Netflix series Altered Carbon and the HBO series Vinyl. Other credits include Tales From The Loop, Elementary, Copper and Blue Bloods.
Nedra Marie Taylor
Nedra Marie Taylor (Céza) holds an MFA from the Actors Studio Drama School. Broadway: The Book of Mormon (Eugene O’Neill), Marvin’s Room (Roundabout). Off-Broadway: Good Bones (The Public), The House that Will Not Stand (NYTW), The Underlying Chris (2nd Stage), Mr. Burns, and A Life (Playwrights Horizons), Lost Lake (MTC). TV: Rose Callaway on Invasion (Apple TV+), Brilliant Minds, Elsbeth, NCIS: New Orleans, Orange is The New Black, Random Acts of Flyness, Jessica Jones and more. @nedramarietaylor
Nimene Sierra Wureh
Nimene Sierra Wureh (Sami) is an NYU Tisch Drama grad and professional auntie. She speaks 4 languages (can you guess which ones?), has always known how to pose, and was a casting intern for the medical drama New Amsterdam on NBC. She has studied and performed improv at UCB Theater & Groundlings. She is a Story Pirate, who transforms stories written by kids, and turns them into sketch comedy and songs. As a Story Pirate, she is a producer, songwriter, and main cast member on ‘The Story Pirates podcast.” They have won many awards at Webby, iheartradio, and more for Best Kids and Family Podcast. She is the host of the new iHeartRadio podcast Historical Records produced by Questlove and Jonathon Glickman. nimene.com @nimenesierrawureh
P.S.- it’s pronounced “NIM-IN-KNEE” *insert Finding Nemo Joke here*
Broadway: Our Town, Mary Jane. Off-Broadway: The Apiary (Second Stage) TV: FBI: Most Wanted (CBS), That Damn Michael Che (MAX), Inside Amy Schumer (Hulu).
francisca da silveira
francisca da silveira (playwright) is a Cape Verdean-American playwright, dramaturg and TV writer. Current WP Theater TOW Playwright in Residence. Fellowships/Residencies: 2020-2021 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow, The Public Theater’s 2020-2023 Emerging Writers Group, 2022-2023 Jerome Fellow with the Playwrights’ Center, The Apollo Theater’s New Works initiative 2023 Cohort, Winter 2024 MacDowell Fellow, 2024 Banff Playwrights Lab participant, 2024-2025 Tow Playwright-in-Residence at WP Theater. Plays : NOT-FOR-PROFIT (OR THE EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION PLAY) (La Jolla Playhouse 2021 DNA New Works Series); CAN I TOUCH IT? (2022/2023 Rolling World Premiere at Company One Theatre, Cleveland Public Theatre, Rogue Machine Theatre); PAY NO WORSHIP (2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Finalist); MINOR·ITY (Colt Coeur Commission). TV: HBO’s Industry Season 3. BFA: New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. MSc: University of Edinburgh.
Shariffa Ali
Shariffa Ali (Director) is an international creative leader committed to advancing radical change through the power of art & activism. She works across disciplines directing and producing films, virtual reality experiences & 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 been a New York resident since 2013 where she has worked primarily as a director, community organizer and administrator at The Public Theater and The New Group among others. She is currently on faculty at Princeton University.
As a filmmaker, Shariffa’s works have been featured at acclaimed film/VR festivals & institutions worldwide including Sundance Film Festival (USA); Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (South Africa); Brooklyn Film Festival (USA); Pan African Film Festival (USA); Electric Africa VR festival (South Africa) and DOK Neuland (Germany). Select theatre credits include Mies Julie (Classic Stage Company), School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play (Pittsburgh Public Theatre), The Copper Children, (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Mlima’s Tale (St Louis Rep) Film/VR: “Ash Land”, “Atomu” (Official Selection at Sundance Festival 2020), “Sink Sank Sunk, You Go Girl!” (Official Selection at Sundance Festival 2022), “O-Dogg” (Oregon Shakespeare Festival) Honors: New Frontier Fellow, Sundance Institute Lab, and the Royal National Theater (UK); POV/PBS Spark Grant. Education: BA with honors, Theatre and Performance, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Brittany Vasta
Brittany Vasta (Set Designer) Some recent projects include the Off Broadway premier of Kate Hamill’s new play The Light and the Dark (Primary Stages); Julia May Jonas’s A Woman Among Women (Bushwick Starr) and the live tour Insidious, The Further You Fear (based on the Sony film franchise). Other work: Dave Malloy’s Octet (Signature Theatre/Berkeley Rep); Phillip Howze’s Self Portraits (Bushwick Starr/Jack); Bill Irwin’s Harlequin & Pantalone (NY City Center); Happy Birthday Wanda June (The Duke); I thought I would die but I didn’t (The Tank); Choir Boy, the ripple, the wave that carried me home and Redwood (Portland Center Stage); Welcome to Fear City (KCRep); Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill (Syracuse Stage); August: Osage County (Resident Ensemble Players, Delaware). Long time associate collaborator of Mimi Lien: Uncle Vanya (Broadway, Lincoln Center), The Green (Lincoln Center public art installation); The Lifespan of a Fact (Broadway, Studio 54). Drama Desk Nomination for Octet. MFA, NYU. USA 829 member. brittanyvasta.com
Celeste Jennings
Celeste Jennings (Costume Designer) (she/hers) is a passionate costume designer and playwright who is really proud to collaborate on Minor.ity with The Women’s Project. Most recently, she designed Oh Happy Day and Pride and Prejudice at Baltimore Center Stage, Memnon with The Classical Theatre of Harlem, Rough Crossing wtiht eh Resident Ensemble Players, and the summer season at The Arkansas Reparatory Theatre and two of her plays, Citrus and ‘Bov Water, were fully produced at Northern Stage. Upcoming projects include Appropriate at The Old Globe, Furlough’s Paradise at the Geffen, and a reading of her new play Potliqka at the Spotlight Series at the Public Theatre. Jennings holds an MFA in costume design from NYU Tish School of the Arts and recently finished her tenure as a 2050 fellow at New York Theatre Workshop. She’s a current member of the Emerging Writer’s Group of the Public Theatre. IG: celestejenn_ Website: celestejenndesigns.com
Daisy Long
Daisy Long (Lighting Design) is a lighting designer for theater, opera, concert and dance. New York credits include: The Shed, Keen Company, BAM, Atlantic, The Barrow Group Primary Stages, Abingdon Theater Company, Mason Holdings, HERE Arts Center, LaMaMa, NYU, AMERINDA, TADA! Youth Theater (National Youth Arts Award for Outstanding Lighting for The Perfect Monster), Manhattan School of Music. Regional credits include: Everyman Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, the Alliance, Speakeasy Stage Company (IRNE Award for Best Lighting for The Scottsboro Boys), Kitchen Theatre Company, Yale, Connecticut College, Middlebury, Smith, Interlochen. She is the lighting director for Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana, a Roundabout teaching artist, and a USA 829 member. She also writes gentle fantasy stories about farming, teaching and tavern-keeping under the name “James Falcon”.
Tosin Olufolabi
Tosin Olufolabi (Sound Designer)(she/her) is excited to be at WP Theater again. NYC: Dirty Laundry, Bite Me (WP Theater); Stargazers (Page 73). REGIONAL: The Thanksgiving Play (Steppenwolf Theatre); Gloria (2018 Helen Hayes Nomination for Outstanding Sound Design for a Hayes Production); There’s Always the Hudson and Hi, Are You Single?; Incendiary; The Sensational Sea Mink-ettes (Woolly Mammoth); Ain’t No Mo (Woolly Mammoth/Baltimore Center Stage); Life is a Dream (Baltimore Center Stage); Crying on Television, Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, The Sound Inside, The Chinese Lady, Crumbs from the Table of Joy (Everyman Theater); School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play; it’s not a trip it’s a journey (Round House Theatre); A Wind in the Door (Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences).
Samantha Tutasi
Samantha Tutasi (Properties Supervisor) Ecuadorian-American theater artist, most recent collaborations include: Properties Design – Dirty Laundry, Munich Medea: Happy Family (WP Theater), Coping Mechanism (Wild Project); Scenic Design – La Musica Deuxième (A/Park Productions). Authorial Intent; Exit, Pursued By A Bear; The Laramie Project (ASDS Rep Theater). Captain Courageous; The Secret Garden (Powerhouse Theater Collaborative). Virgin, Mother, Whore (Boundless Theater Co.). Film – Egg Timer (dir. Annie Tippe). She frequently works with the American Theater Wing on their educational program, Springboard To Design. BFA: State University of New York at Purchase, 2022. samanthatutasidesign.myportfolio.com
Caren Celine Morris
Caren Celine Morris (Production Stage Manager)(she/her/hers) is a multidisciplinary theatre artist from The Bronx. She aims to promote inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in all of her projects. Caren has worked on projects with WP Theater, The Shed, Ping Chong & Company, HERE Arts Center, Audible @ Minetta Lane Theatre, NYC Civic Engagement Commission, Colt Coeur, The Public, Perelman Arts Center, and The Bushwick Starr. Colt Coeur Company Member.
Siobhan Petersen
Siobhan Petersen (Assistant Stage Manager) (They/them) is a Brooklyn based stage manager. Their past credits with WP include Bite Me. They’re so very excited to be back with WP for another production. Thank you Mom and Dad, for guiding me into the world, and thank you to my partner for accompanying me on this journey.
Eunice S. Ferreira
Eunice S. Ferreira (Dramaturg) is a scholar artist whose research, teaching, and artistic practice focus on and amplify global artists. She has produced and directed a variety of plays and musicals, including Black Super Hero Magic Mama, Providence Garden Blues, Once on This Island, Songs for a New World, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Polaroid Stories, and the multilingual premiere of Caridad Svich’s The Orphan Sea. As a dramaturg, she specializes in new works that center Black and global majority lives, most recently with WP Theater, Colt Coeur, Capital Repertory Theater, and Brown University. She also consults on new musical development. She has published in U.S. and international journals, including the first English translation of a play from Cabo Verde, West Africa, and created materials for the last U.S. tour from the longest-running Cabo Verdean theatre troupe. Forthcoming books include Applied Theatre and Racial Justice (Routledge, co-editor Lisa L. Biggs) and Crioulo Performance: Remapping Creole and Mixed Race Theatre (Vanderbilt Press). She served as Black Theatre Association president and is a board member of arts and civic organizations, including The Orchard Project, DNAWORKS Ensemble, MIT Catalyst Collaborative, and Greatest Minds. She is Associate Professor of Theater at Skidmore College where she was selected as a Mellon Periclean Faculty Leader and is an affiliate faculty member in Black Studies, Latin American and Latinx Studies, and Intergroup Relations. Her teaching and research areas include Black theater, multilingual performance, directing, theater history, translation studies, mixed race performance, theater for social justice and change, musical theater, new play development, and theater of Cabo Verde, her ancestral home. She trains students to be innovative theater makers who reflect a greater breadth of the human experience by engaging with the dynamic intersections of race, gender, language, culture, and social justice. She brings her expertise in diversity efforts, cultural competencies, dramaturgy, and antiracist theatre practices to her work in and out of the classroom, often sharing as a guest scholar artist and presenting at national and international conferences. She was honored to be appointed as a MLK Visiting Professor at MIT for the 22-23 academic year. She has a B.A. from Eastern Nazarene College, a M.A. from Emerson College, and a Ph.D. from Tufts University, which honored her with the 2023 Outstanding Service Award. She invites you to follow @BIPOCTheatre, her Instagram teaching account to amplify BIPOC theatre artists and scholars.
Jack Phillips Moore
Jack Phillips Moore (Dramaturg) is a New York-based dramaturg, teacher and theater administrator with a focus on new play development, originally from the District of Columbia. Jack works as the Associate Director of New Work Development at The Public Theater, where he has served the development of dozens of new plays and musicals over the last decade. At the Public, Jack also leads the Emerging Writers Group and other artist-focused programs. Projects Jack has helped develop have premiered at theaters across the country and have received numerous honors including Obie Awards, Tony Award nominations, the Princess Grace Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He has also dramaturged/consulted on new work for Arena Stage, Baltimore Center Stage, Colt Coeur, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, The Lark, Long Wharf Theatre, Ma-Yi Theater, New Dramatists, The Orchard Project, the Playwrights Center, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and WP Theater, to name a few. Recent and upcoming productions include Good Bones by James Ijames (Public Theater), Oh Happy Day! by Jordan E. Cooper (Baltimore Center Stage), The Other Americans by John Leguizamo (Arena Stage), and Let’s Keep Dancing by John Purugganan (Public Theater) as well as new plays by Lisa Sanaye Dring, and Mona Mansour. Jack has taught courses in dramaturgy, theater history and administration at NYU, the Atlantic Theater School, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the Tepper Semester at Syracuse University and has served as a juror/consultant for the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Leah Ryan Prize and the Kilroys, among many others. He is a graduate of New York University and lives in Brooklyn.
COLT COEUR MAKES THEATER THAT PULLS YOU CLOSE AND DOESN'T LET GO.