JACK Artist Residencies
2024/2025 JACKLabs Resident Artist: Camille Simone Thomas
Camille Simone Thomas is a Detroit-born Jamaican-American multi-hyphenate playwright, screenwriter, slam poet, producer, performer, and educator. She was a 2023 Broadway Advocacy Coalition Artivism fellow where her play “What We Deserve” premiered as a staged reading at MCC Theatre. Her plays have been workshopped at New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Sanguine Theatre Company, and featured with The Obie Award-winning Harlem9 and Detroit Public Theatre Company, Dixon Place, Workshop Theatre, The Road Theatre Company, Barter Theatre Company, The National Women's Theatre Festival, Lime Arts Theatre Company, American Slavery Project, and Blackboard Playwriting Series. Her web series “Gro Up” premiered at the Academy Award-qualifying Reel Sisters Film Festival and was also shown at the PanAfrican Film Festival and Martha’s Vineyard Virtual Film Festival. She was a 2023 New Harmony Project finalist, a 2023 Catskills Creative Residency finalist, a 2023 Van Lier New Voices Fellowship Semi-finalist, and a 2022 Art House Inkubator Finalist. She’s an associate artist with the Sanguine Theatre Company. She’s had fellowships with The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute’s DEAR Fellowship and The Theatre Producers of Color.
During her residency with JACK, she is developing her play “Sweetblood”. In “Sweetblood” three free Black Maroon/Taino women in Jamaica 1727 struggle to thrive in a world that will soon endure hundreds of years of chattel slavery due to the emerging sugar revolution. They must decide what they are willing to do to survive the encroaching British invasion of their land, how far they are willing to go to fight against the disease of colonialism, and what it really means to be a revolutionary.
2024 JACKLabs Resident Artist: Carolina Đỗ
Carolina Đỗ is a multi-dimensional artist and proud descendant of Vietnamese freedom fighters and refugees. An alum of Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Fresh Ground Pepper Playground Playgroup, and The Orchard Project Greenhouse Lab, Carolina’s writing has been supported by residencies/fellowships at MacDowell, JACK, The Hearth, Fault Line Theatre, Piper Theater, and Naked Angels. Carolina’s works have also been finalists for the Leah Ryan Fund, BricLab, and Bushwick Starr; and semifinalists for Playwrights Realm, Space on Ryder, and Princess Grace. Co-Founding Producing Artistic Leader — The Sống Collective. Creative Director —Mai House Studio. Associate Director for Community Engagement — PlayCo. BFA: Brooklyn College.
Their residency supported the development of their latest work entitled “ExtraO1dinary Aliens! (Exit Route I-485)” as four humans walk into an immigration facility...and three walk out as aliens. Exploring when going up against a money-hungry and remorseless bureaucratic immigration system that’s designed for you to fail, are you willing to gamble your life, your sanity, your self-worth, and your humanity for a chance? A chance at what?
Previous Residencies…
JACK Artist Residencies at 20 Putnam
JACK is thrilled to announce the artists selected for JACK Artist Residencies running March-August 2021 at our home at 20 Putnam Avenue. These nine exceptional artists were chosen in the disciplines of performance, design, music, and dance, to receive two weeks in the space in addition to a $500 stipend:
Multidisciplinary artists Carolina Đỗ, Kedian Keohan, Drew Drake and Jadele McPherson, designers Itohan Edoloyi and Tuçe Yasak, composers Jaime Lozano and Sugar Vendil, and dance artist Nora Alami. Learn more about the artists HERE.
Artist Residencies at Governors Island
Announcing the artists selected for the Governors Island Summer JACK Artist Residencies running June-August 2021. Our friends at Beam Center have generously offered to share space with us on Governors Island. Nine artists from our previous Open Call were invited to deepen their craft and experiment for with 1-3 weeks in a historic house on Colonels Row. These extraordinary artists include Lia Bautista, Julia Cavagna, Kai Custodio, The Dragon Sisters, Shayna and Nava Dunkelman (NOMON), Iris McCloughan & Marcus Scott. Learn more about the artists HERE.
These residencies are supported through the generosity of Jody Falco & Jeffrey Steinman.