Basil Kreimendahl Named 2023-26 Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence

Rattlestick Theater has named playwright Basil Kreimendahl as its 2023-26 Mellon Foundation Playwright in residence. 

The Mellon Foundation and HowlRound Theatre Commons first established the National Playwright Residency Program (NPRP) in 2013. More than a standard fellowship, this residency was conceived as an intervention into the traditional relationships between artists and institutions, to reimagine what institutions might look like when an artist’s voice is at the core. 
 
The Mellon Foundation’s Playwright in Residence Basil Kreimendahl will be the renewed recipient of three years of salary, benefits, and a flexible research and development fund for his production of Sadie River’s Drag Ball on the Lawn. The Mellon Residency presents the unique opportunity for theater companies to invite artists into the fold by incorporating them into their staff and the process of arts administration. Throughout these next three years, in addition to the workshop and production of Sadie River's Drag Ball on the Lawn, Basil will work alongside the playwrights in Rattlestick’s Terrence McNally New Work Incubator and Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, and will continue his long-time collaboration with Rattlestick’s incoming Artistic Director Will Davis in new works production. This renewed commitment will provide Basil with the stability to continue working as a playwright while parenting two young children, supporting Basil as an individual artist, Rattlestick as a civic institution, and the West Village as a historic neighborhood for the LGBTQ community.
 
“Rattlestick is a West Village Theatre in the heart of one of NYC’s oldest queer communities and is the perfect collaborator for myself and Sadie River’s Drag Ball on the Lawn. It has, for decades, championed queer work and artists. I’m fortunate enough to be one of those artists.”   
- Basil Kreimendahl, Playwright

Sadie River’s Drag Ball on the Lawn is a great example of what makes Basil a unique and powerful writer. Basil centers queerness in his world-building. His narrative structures push against the idea that a story’s plot must produce a product. Instead, he focuses on the interior journey of his characters and creates worlds in which they can explore, express, and discover themselves. His plays are not just about being queer, trans, or working class. Instead, these themes are imbued in the style, shape, and structure of his plays. With the renewal of the Mellon residency, Basil will have the opportunity to build this piece not just for, but with and in the communities it represents, the marginalized queer artists traditionally excluded from the professional theater industry. 
 
“Part of my impetus for joining Rattlestick is to lead the development and production of new plays like Sadie River’s that offer creative cultural models for the next generation. I see myself in Sadie, helping younger queer and trans folks feel a sense of belonging and a chance to decide who they are on their own terms. I also believe it is my personal responsibility to add work to the canon that models theatrical expansion and narrative diversity. As a director and now Artistic Director, I believe my job is to pave the way for audiences to encounter something new and strange and to learn to show up just as they are – unique and powerful in their difference.”   
      - Will Davis, Artistic Director, Rattlestick Theater
 
 
Basil Kreimendahl is a resident playwright at New Dramatists. He is a working-class, transgender artist, whose work often explores the intersection of language, class, gender and sexuality. He is currently in development with FX and A24. His plays have won several awards, including the Rella Lossy Playwright Award and a National Science Award from the Kennedy Center. Basil Kreimendahl has been commissioned by Yale Rep., Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s American Revolutions Program, and by Actors Theatre of Louisville. We’re Gonna Be Okay had its world premiere at the 2017 Humana Festival. Basil's play Orange Julius was developed at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and had its New York premiere at Rattlestick Theater, in a co-production with P73. Basil’s plays have also been produced or developed by New York Theatre Workshop, American Theater Company, Victory Gardens Theater, Ryder Farm, The Lark, La Jolla Playhouse, and Labyrinth Theater Company among others around the country. Basil has been a McKnight Fellow, Minneapolis Playwrights’ Center and a Jerome Fellow. He’s received an Art Meets Activism Grant for work with the trans community in Kentucky. Basil’s work has been published by Dramatic Publishing and HowlRound. He received his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 2013.
 

About the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation 

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, The Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org
 

About Rattlestick Theater

Founded in 1994 by David Van Asselt and Gary Bonasorte, Rattlestick Theater has been steadfast in producing diverse, challenging, and provocative plays while fostering the future voices of the American theater. Now led by Artistic Director Will Davis, the first transgender person to run an off-Broadway theater, we are proud to make Rattlestick a place that is focused on energetic theater that responds to the complexities of our culture in conversation with community partners. Our mission is to produce ambitious plays to inspire empathy and provoke conversation that will lead to positive social change.

From our historic West Village theater, Rattlestick has produced the first plays and early works of some of today’s leading voices, including Martyna Majok (Ironbound), Diana Oh (mylingerieplay), and Heidi Schreck (There Are No More Big Secrets). We are proud to make Rattlestick a place where some of our nation’s most celebrated playwrights feel safe to test their boldest ideas, including Dael Orlandersmith (Until the Flood), José Rivera (Massacre, Sing to Your Children), and Sam Hunter (Lewiston/ Clarkston, nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play and the Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play).