The Civilians Announces Twelfth Annual R&D Group

The Civilians is presenting the newest members of The R&D Group, marking the Group's 12th season. The R&D Group is comprised of playwrights, composers, and directors who work together as a writing group for nine months to develop new plays and musicals. The season culminates in the Findings, a works-in-progress reading series, anticipated taking place in June 2023. The artists were selected from a competitive application process that included 144 submissions.

The members of The Civilians' 2022-23 R&D Group are Clare Fuyuko Bierman, Adam Chanler-Berat, Xandra Nur Clark, Brandy Hoang Collier, Julian Hornik, Julia Izumi, Erika Ji, Divya Mangwani, and Andrew Saito.

Led by The Civilians' Resident Dramaturg Phoebe Corde, the artists share work as it develops, discuss their creative processes, and provide a community of support for one another. Each project develops according to its unique methods of creative inquiry, offering new approaches to the idea of "investigative theater." Methods may include interviews, community engagement, research, or other experimental methods of inquiry. The artists will meet twice a month.

Corde says, "The artists in this year's R&D Group are curious, inventive, and clever. They approach their work with humor and heart, and we are thrilled to return to in-person meetings with them."

Artistic Director Steve Cosson added, "During the theater shutdown, we were glad to have sustained The R&D Group as a fully active, albeit virtual, program. As we gradually move back into the real world, I am thrilled to do so with this exceptional group of artists. I was deeply inspired by each of their proposed projects, and I am eager to see how their work evolves over the course of this season."

The 2022-23 R&D Group projects are as follows.

Yoko's Husband's Killer's Japanese Wife, Gloria

Book by Brandy Hoang Collier

Lyrics by Clare Fuyuko Bierman

Music by Erika Ji `

Did Yoko Ono really break up The Beatles? Was Gloria Abe Chapman somehow responsible for John Lennon's murder? Why do all these egotistical white guys have Asian wives? That's weird, right? These are the questions that keep Ruby Okamoto up at night-literally. She wants answers, and she's gonna find them. Even if she has to summon every Asian woman she's ever met in a lawless, insomniatic fever dream. Yoko's Husband's Killer's Japanese Wife, Gloria is a musical about the invisible connections between human beings of a shared identity. Spurred by Ruby's sleeplessness, a group of Asian American women from all different backgrounds find themselves in a fantastical dreamscape where their hopes, fears, insecurities, and questions manifest as real-life rockstars and movie monsters. They push and pull each other through the enchanting, treacherous territory of their collective subconscious in hopes of understanding their own hard-to-define-but-definitely-there connection to other Asians in America.

Untitled Nursing Home Project

Written by Adam Chanler-Berat

Music by Julian Hornik

An artist enters a nursing home, tasked with devising a work for the home's residents. As their project progresses, destabilizing truths are revealed. This meta-theatrical interview-based musical will explore memory, usefulness, and fantasy as palliative care.

Ursa Major

Written by Xandra Nur Clark
It is simultaneously present-day New York and Stalin-era Soviet Russia and Ukraine. A mother writes a book on crystallography while her daughter explores genderqueerness. A scientist studies properties of clay minerals while falling in love with her female colleague's girlfriend. Inspired by the stories of three real Soviet women and with a live soundtrack of Russian and Ukrainian folk songs, Ursa Major is a story of heritage, perspective, defiant love, and the work that often gets overlooked in the historical record. Commissioned by The Ensemble Studio Theatre / Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project.

Blasia

Written by Andrew Saito

Directed by Amy Marie Haven
"If dating were an assortment of Halloween candy, Black women and Asian men would be the Tootsie Rolls and candy corn-the last to be eaten, if even at all." We are the rejects. The unwanteds. The hypersexualized and the desexualized. The cheap thrills and the cheapskates. Blasia will explore racial disparities in dating and the potential of Black-Asian love, celebrate the beauty and power of Black women and Asian men, sing the blues of our perpetual aloneness, and envision the potential of, as Issa Rae writes, "Black women and Asian men join[ing] forces in love, marriage, and procreation." 

A Re-Enactment of the (Imagined) Trial of Daisy the Cow, who (Allegedly) Caused the Great Chicago Fire

Written by Julia Izumi
A Re-Enactment of the (Imagined) Trial of Daisy the Cow, who (Allegedly) Caused the Great Chicago Fire is a theatrical presentation of a completely fabricated trial where it is debated whether or not Mrs. O'Leary's cow, Daisy, is guilty of causing the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and thereby killing 300 people, as the "legend" says she is. The trial itself will be a deep interrogation of our legal and criminal justice systems and what truth, justice, and accountability actually mean.

Inshallah

Written by Divya Mangwani

Diwali, the festival of lights, started with a dice game; the Partition of India and the arbitrary drawing of a line was a game of chance; medieval politics was intertwined with games of Pachisi as depicted by the paintings in the Ajanta caves (480 CE) - what are the ripple effects of these gambles? Inshallah explores how games of chance have influenced historical and mythological events from the Mahabharata to the Mughal era and the Partition in South Asia.

About the 2022-2023 R&D Artists

Clare Fuyuko Bierman

is a playwright and lyricist raised in a Japanese-Jewish home with some rabbits, a snake, and a bunch of finches. Current commissions include Yoko's Husband's Killer's Japanese Wife, Gloria (Book by Brandy Hoang Collier, Music by Erika Ji, Winner of 5th Avenue Theater's First Draft Commission), and Theseus and the Minotaur and the Other Six (Music by Joshua Vranas, Youth Theater Northwest). She has participated in the Johnny Mercer Songwriting Project, Broadway's Future Songbook Series, and the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Play Festival. Originally from Los Angeles, she received her MFA from New York University. clarebierman.com

Adam Chanler-Berat

is known for his performances in the original companies of Broadway's Next to Normal and Peter and the Starcatcher as well as Off-Broadway in Assassins, Rent, Fly By Night and Fortress of Solitude among others. Most recently, he was a writer in residence at the 2022 New York Stage and Film festival. His play with music, Contra, has been workshopped at Ars Nova, was a finalist for Space on Ryder Farm 2018, and a semi-finalist for the 2020 O'Neill Festival New Music Theater Conference. Adam has developed other pieces at Barrington Stage and the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat (where he met his Civilian's R&D collaborator, Julian Hornik).

Xandra Nur Clark

is a playwright, performer, journalist, and community-builder. Their plays include POLYLOGUES (2021 Colt Coeur Production, 2020 Kilroys List); EVERYTHING YOU'RE TOLD (2021 Chesley/Bumbalo Award, 2019 La MaMa Reading); SEPARATED (2021 O'Neill NPC Semi-Finalist); and ANTHOLOGY: CROWN HEIGHTS (2016 Weeksville Heritage Center Production). They've received funding from NYSCA/Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn Community Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and Stanford Arts; and residencies from MASS MoCA, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and Blue Mountain Center. Xandra is a 2018-19 Queer|Art Fellow, a Member Artist of Ensemble Studio Theatre, a singer with Ukrainian Village Voices, and a certified volunteer counselor for the Anti-Violence Project's LGBTQ hotline. BA Theater, MA Journalism: Stanford University. www.xandraclark.com

Brandy Hoang Collier

is a queer Vietnamese-American writer from San Antonio, TX. Selected works include The Blazing World (Polyphone Festival of New and Emerging Musicals 2021) with music by Sean Eads and Yoko's Husband's Killer's Japanese Wife, Gloria (The 5th Avenue Theatre "First Draft" Commission 2021) with lyrics by Clare Fuyuko Bierman and music by Erika Ji. Collier also runs Root Beer Occasion Theatre Company with co-founder Jessie Field and works as a professional properties master. Off-Broadway credits include Mrs. Warren's Profession (Gingold Theatrical Group), The Panic of '29 (Less Than Rent Theatre), and Belfast Girls (Irish Repertory Theatre). brandyhoangcollier.com

Julian Hornik

is a composer/lyricist and librettist whose work has been performed at, amongst others, the Kennedy Center, New York City Center, Ars Nova, Symphony Space, Carnegie Hall, the Yale School of Drama, and every Gay Men's Chorus in the country. He has developed shows at Rhinebeck Writer's Retreat, Vineyard Arts, Orchard Project, Johnny Mercer Songwriter's Project, and the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop. Film and TV include Share (HBO), and animated series Helluva Boss. Recipient of the 2017 Lucille and Jack Yellen Award and the 2018 Sammy Cahn Award from the ASCAP Foundation; 2020 Jonathan Larson Grant finalist.

Julia Izumi

Izumi's works include Regretfully, So the Birds Are (upcoming at Playwrights Horizons/WP Theater), miku, and the gods. (ArtsWest), Sometimes the Rain, Sometimes the Sea (upcoming at Rorschach Theatre), and others. Her work has been developed at MTC, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Bushwick Starr, Berkeley Rep, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ojai Playwrights Conference, and more. Honors for her work include the OPC Dr. Kerry English Award, O'Neill Finalist, Kilroys List Honorable Mention, and KCACTF's Darrell Ayers Playwriting Award. Current New Dramatists Resident. Current commissions: True Love Productions, MTC/Sloan, Playwrights Horizons, Seattle Rep. MFA: Brown University.

Erika Ji

is a cross-genre composer-storyteller who loves soaring melodies, dream worlds, and stories that challenge our preconceptions about what is true, good, right, or worth wanting. Her works, including Yoko's Husband's Killer's Japanese Wife, Gloria (5th Avenue Theatre First Draft Commission) and VISARE (immersive circus fantasia, 2021 New Voices Project Winner), have been featured Off-Broadway and around the world at Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and the Nadia Boulanger Institute. The proud daughter of Chinese immigrants, Erika studied computer science & philosophy at Stanford and built products at Dropbox before deciding to follow the music. MFA: NYU Tisch. erikaji.com

Divya Mangwani

is a theatre artist from Pune, based in New York. She creates reimaginings that question our perception of global narrative truths and shared mythologies. Divya was the founder and Artistic Director of Moonbeam Factory Theatre and wrote, directed, and produced plays in India, Singapore and the UK. In New York, she has developed work with UNICEF, Soho Rep, NYTW, Rattlestick, Mabou Mines, GTG, Hypokrit, The Flea, APAC, Project Y, Pipeline, Rising Sun, LMCC and Governors Island. Divya is a recent fellow of Soho Rep's Writer/Director Lab and Gingold Speakers Corner and was a NYTW 2050 Artistic Fellow, Hypokrit Theatre Tamasha playwright, Project Y Writers Group playwright and Playlab fellow at Pipeline Theatre.

Andrew Saito

was a Fulbright Scholar in Papua New Guinea and Andrew W. Mellon Resident Playwright at the Cutting Ball Theater, which produced his plays Krispy Kritters in the Scarlett Night, Mount Misery, and his translation of Life is a Dream. Other productions: El Río (Brava/BACCE), Stegosaurus (or) Three Cheers for Climate Change (FaultLine), Men of Rab'inal (El Teatro Campesino/La Peña), and Br'er Peach (AlterTheatre/Parsnip Ship). He teaches at SUNY Purchase, was a member of the ViacomCBS 2020-21 Writers Mentoring Program, and a staff writer on The Lost Symbol (Peacock). Residencies: Montalvo, Blue Mountain Center, Djerassi, Arquetopia. MFA: Iowa.

About The Civilians

Founded in 2001, The Civilians is dedicated to ambitious and exuberant new theater that creatively interrogates our lived experience; questions and tests the stories that shape our world; and awakens new thinking and perceptions. Its signature work is "investigative theater"-projects created through field research, community collaborations, and other methods of in-depth inquiry. Shows originated with The Civilians include Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns, a post-electric play, cited by The New York Times as the "4th Best Play of the Past 25 Years," and Lucas Hnath's Dana H., recently on Broadway and included in Top 10 of 2021 lists by The New York Times and Time magazine. Other shows include José Rivera's Another Word for Beauty, and many works with composer Michael Friedman: Gone Missing, Pretty Filthy, Paris Commune and more.

The Civilians has participated in several BAM Next Wave Festivals, has been produced at many major regional and Off-Broadway theaters, and was the first theater company to be Artist-in-Residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. With Ghostlight Records, The Michael Friedman Recording Project is creating nine albums of our founding member's works. The company sustains a number of artistic programs including new work development, a cabaret series for new musicals, the R&D Group new work lab, the online journal Extended Play, and more.

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