JAG Productions Announces 2022/2023 Season

JAG Productions, a Vermont and New York City-based company serving as an artistic sanctuary for Black creatives in the American theatre, announced its 2022/2023 line-up this week. JAG's exciting seventh season, including new play and musical development, a residency at New York Theatre Workshop, the return of the wildly popular Theatre on the Hill, and a fully realized production of a new Afro-surrealist dark comedy presented in Vermont and New York City, centers around themes of freedom and healing. The season is titled The Freedom Practice.

"We are committed to practicing liberation through the creativity we produce and the community we foster here at JAG Productions," says JAG Producing Artistic Director Jarvis Green. "JAG is making space for theatre artists to bring their varying Black cultures, queer expressions, and intersectional identities to the work for deep transformations to occur."

JAG begins the season with the highly anticipated Theatre on the Hill, featuring Tony Award winner Britton Smith and his funk liberation band Britton and The Sting. The JAG team will then travel to New York City for the first part of its groundbreaking residency at New York Theatre Workshop, where JAG will create new meaning and perspective for a well-known musical through decentralizing white aesthetics, approaches, and methods in the musical theatre process.

In the fall, JAG Juke Joint returns with a gorgeous feast featuring southern home cooking and performances by JAG artists. Then JAG will warm up the winter months with its seventh new works development festival, JAGfest 7.0, where emerging playwrights will be given the opportunity to develop their works and present staged readings in Vermont and New York City.

In the spring, JAG will wrap up its season with Keelay Gipson's dark surrealist comedy demons. directed by Steph Paul, which Gipson developed at a previous JAGfest and at New York Stage and Film. JAG Productions, co-producing with New York's The Bushwick Starr, will be mounting a fully realized production of demons. in both Vermont and New York City.

As JAG's seventh season begins, they are thrilled to be working with talented new team members, including Associate Artistic Director Sideeq Heard and Development Associate Parker Silver. Heard, an emerging multi-hyphenate theatre artist with national and international experience, will bring his keen aesthetic sensibilities to the creative team. Silver's many talents and experience as arts administrator, curator, artist and performer will be a great benefit to JAG's development endeavors. Together, their efforts will increase overall capacity for the company, allowing it to expand its programming and offer additional opportunities for Black storytellers to develop their work.

What's more, JAG's Board of Directors has approved an annual budget of $1.1 million for the 2022/2023 fiscal year. This budget doubles JAG's 2021/2022 annual budget. With this significantly larger budget, JAG will continue to grow its staff, expand its programming, and foster the development of theatre that brings a 21st century Black aesthetic to the American stage.

Newest board members Laura Gillespie and William Cheng are bringing even more vibrancy and diversity to JAG. Gillespie joined the Upper Valley Haven in 2016 as its Director Of Development & Communications, after ten years at The Aloha Foundation. She is VP of the Lifecare Board of Alice Peck Day Hospital, and coaches high school rowing with Upper Valley Rowing Foundation. Cheng is an Ethnomusicologist who has contributed op-eds and features to Washington Post, Slate, TIME, Huffington Post, and more. Cheng is also an elected Member of the American Musicological Society's Ethics Committee, and an Ambassador for WISE, an organization seeking to end gender-based violence in the Upper Valley and beyond.

JAG's board chair Vincent Mack remarks about the two new board members, "Laura brings lots of non-profit experience, and will guide us in finance, donor development, and our organizational governance efforts. Will has great energy and enthusiasm and is open to guidance and to being tasked in ways he can contribute. Will further contributes to the diversity of the board, both as a human, as an artist, and as an academic."

More information about JAG's 2022-2023 season and tickets available at www.jagproductionsvt.com.

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