2024 Fellows
Avi Amon
Discipline: Music,Theatre
Avi Amon is a Turkish-American composer, sound artist, and educator. Recent credits include: THE COPPER CHILDREN (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), STEW (Soho REP), THE FISHERMAN (HBO Films), THE BLACK HISTORY MUSEUM (HERE Arts), SALONIKA (Berkeley REP), and several sound installations in a 100-year-old grain silo in Buffalo, New York (Torn Space Theater & Prague Quadrennial). In development: HEROINE’S GUIDE (Spotify/Gimlet), CUPIDS (Tribeca Films), RATED BLACK with Kareem Lucas (Woolly Mammoth), and INSHALLAH/MASHALLAH: a 3-D-audio opera re-imagining of the 1,001 Nights (Target Margin Theater). He is a Jonathan Larson Grant and New Music USA Grant winner, a Dramatists Guild Fellow, and has been an Artist in-residence with: THEatre ACCELERATOR, Goodspeed Musicals, Princeton, Exploring the Metropolis at JCAL, Hi-ARTS, Judson, New Dramatists, and Weston Playhouse. Avi is the resident composer at the 52nd Street Project and teaches at NYU Tisch.
Clare Fuyuko Bierman
Discipline: Theatre
Clare Fuyuko Bierman is a librettist and lyricist raised in a Japanese-Jewish home with some rabbits, a snake, and a bunch of finches. Her writing often involves ecological absurdism, campfire stories, made-up games, unexpected sea shanties, and proscenium-less playspaces. Recent: Yoko’s Husband’s Killer’s Japanese Wife, Gloria (commissioned by 5th Avenue Theater 2021, Civilians R&D 2022, Orchard Project Performance Lab 2023, O’Neill New Musical Theater Conference 2023, NAMT festival 2023, Vivace Award 2023, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat 2024) and Cry, Wolf (Commissioned by Washington National Opera 2024). Immersive work: VISARE (New Voices Winner 2020, Vivace Award Nomination 2021) and [untitled hat project] (NYFA grant 2021). She has participated in the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project, the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Play Festival, and Broadway’s Future Songbook Series. MFA New York University.
Nemuna Ceesay
Discipline: Theatre
Nemuna Ceesay (she/her) is an actor/director/educator based in New York. Select theater credits: New York Theatre Workshop (Here There Are Blueberries), Actors Theatre of Louisville (Loving and Loving), Shakespeare Theatre Company (Here There Are Blueberries), The Shed (Straight Line Crazy), Second Stage (Patience), Two River Theater (Three Sisters), PlayMakers Rep (The Christians and Tartuffe), Woolly Mammoth, A.R.T., The Public Theatre (What To Send Up... tour), Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2015/2016 seasons). Select TV credits: Bull, Broad City, Instinct, Younger, FBI, Prodigal Son, and Katy Keene. Select Directing credits: The Kitchen (Uncle!), Playwrights Horizons (Amusements), 66th Obie Awards, Clubbed Thumb Winterworks (Reply All), Associate Director of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning A Strange Loop on Broadway. 2022 Clubbed Thumb New Play Directing Fellow. Fellow at The Workshop: North America’s first arts fellowship centering the work of JOCISM (Jews of Color, Jewish-Indigenous, Sephardi & Mizrahi) artists & culture-makers. Founder and Creative Director of an all BIPOC training program called The Blueprint. MFA in acting from American Conservatory Theater. Visit her website nemunaceesay.com and follow her on Instagram @nemuna.ceesay and @theblueprintartist.
Alex Chester-Iwata
Discipline: Theatre, Journalism
Alex Chester-Iwata (she/her) is the Founder/CEO of Mixed Asian Media - A website and community for mixed APIs, recognized by the Nielsen Consumer Report. In 2023 MAM hosted the first ever Mixed Asian Day in NYC.
Alex received the 2023 Women of Distinction Award from the Assembly 69th of California, and she was one of the Asian Hustle Network’s top 50 Unsung Heros in their inaugural year. She received her BA in 2021 from St. Mary’s College graduating with honors and received the Dean’s Award for community engagement and academic excellence. Alex is the Chapter President of ACE Next Gen NYC and is on the Board of Directors for American Advertising Federation LA. She is on the advisory board for the Lunar Collective, and her alma mater, St. Mary's LEAP Program. She is part of the Associate Board of New York Asian Film Festival, is a member of Gold House, and part of their inaugural Journalism Program.
Alex is also an Actor. Some acting credits include: Broadway’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Gillian in This Space Between Us Off Broadway’s Keen Company. TV credits include: New Amsterdam, The Good Fight, and The Closer to name a few. @AlexFChester @MixedAsianMedia
Rebecca S'manga Frank
Discipline: Theatre
Rebecca S'manga Frank is an actor, writer and culture-worker based in Brooklyn. Her Black, Jewish, and Swazi roots help inform her intersectional work and commitment to collective liberation via poetry, performance, plays, teaching, ritual leading, music, filmmaking, and as a Story Doula. Most recently she performed in the Berlin Diaries with David Greenspan (59E59th), as Althea Gibson in Love All by Anna Deavere Smith (La Jolla Playhouse), and in At the Wedding by Bryna Turner (LCT3 Lincoln Center). Her writing has been featured in Lilith Magazine, at Lab/Shul, Reboot, Elm Shakespeare, JCC Manhattan, Society Theater (ensemble member), Alter Theatre, and many others. Fellowships: The Workshop, New Jewish Culture Fellowship, LABA New York, B'Yachad Educator (alum), and Rabbinic Arts (current). She received her MFA from NYU Grad Acting and BA in creative writing from Mills College. Her new play Valence is in development with support from NJCF and Studio Tisch this summer.
@smanga_yahart
Anthony Russell
Discipline: Music
Anthony Russell is a multidisciplinary artist specializing in Yiddish culture. His album Convergence, with klezmer trio Veretski Pass, is an exploration of a century of African American and Ashkenazi Jewish music. Kosmopolitn, his recent release with Dmitri Gaskin, features their original settings of Yiddish modernist poetry for string ensemble. A past Hadar Rising Song Fellow (2021-22) and present Mandel Institute Cultural Leadership Fellow (2023-25) Anthony has expanded his work into cultural activism through collaboration with the Workers Circle and as an essayist in a number of publications, including The Forward, Tablet Magazine, JTA, PROTOCOLS, Ayin Press and Jewish Currents.
Sharone Sayegh
Discipline: Theatre
SHARONE SAYEGH (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary theater artist based in NYC. As an actor she has performed on Broadway as Bonnie in Come From Away, originated the role of Anna in The Band’s Visit (OBC) which won 10 Tony Awards, and made her Broadway debut in Mamma Mia! She has performed, written, directed, and produced Off-Broadway and regionally, having worked at some of the most prestigious theaters in the country including The Atlantic, Playwrights Horizons, Ars Nova, La Jolla Playhouse, Prospect Theater Co, and The Muny. She has also appeared on Television in Law & Order (NBC), Instinct (CBS), and Limitless (CBS). She is a 23/24 'The Workshop' fellow, the co-writer of the new musical The Game Boy, and is currently writing The Goldsmith, a play stemming from her family's true stories, across countries, borders, and generations. Syracuse University Alum, www.sharonesayegh.com @sharonesayegh
Daniel Terna
Discipline: Visual Art/Photography
Daniel Terna (b. Brooklyn, 1987) is a Brooklyn-based artist working in photography and video. Terna’s work focuses on family and inherited trauma, blending autobiographical narratives with a tourist’s approach to exploring sites, be they memorials, cities, personal archives, or the body itself. He has exhibited his work in select solo and group shows at the St. Ottilien Archabbey, Bavaria, Germany (2023); the Jewish Museum of Maryland, Baltimore (2023); Jack Barrett, New York (2022 and 2019); Guertin’s Graphics, Red Hook, NY (2020); LY, Los Angeles (2019); Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York (2018); Baxter St. Camera Club of New York (2015); the BRIC Arts Media Biennial, Brooklyn (2014); and the New Wight Biennial, UCLA, Los Angeles (2014). His work has been screened at the Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles (2020); MoMA PS1's film program in Greater New York, Queens (2016); the New York Film Festival’s Convergence Program (2014), the Austrian Cultural Forum, New York (2012) and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge, MA (2011), among others. Terna is a recipient of select fellowships and residencies at The Workshop, New York (2021); the Asylum Arts Small Grant (2019); Asylum Arts’ International Jewish Artist Retreat, Garrison, NY (2018); the New Jewish Cultural Fellowship, Brooklyn (2018); the Cuts and Burns Residency at Outpost Artist Resources, Ridgewood, NY (2013); and the Collaborative Fellowship Program at UnionDocs, Brooklyn (2011). His work has been featured in The New York Times, Apartamento, Pin-Up, Buffalo Zine, Still magazine, and Aint–Bad magazine, among others. Terna founded and co-directed the artist-space 321 Gallery, Brooklyn (2012-20). Terna graduated with a BA in photography from Bard College and received his MFA from the International Center of Photography-Bard.
Luis Mercedes Winter
Discipline: Photography
Luis Mercedes Winter is a Black, Queer, Jewish, Neurodiverse Earthling based on Lenape Land, colonially known as New York City. Born in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and raised between three boroughs, Luis lived in Los Angeles from 2013 to 2018. He learned how to question at Phillips Exeter Academy and how not to question at Bard College. His photography is often based in literature while his writing is visual and sensory. In 2022, NY Jewish Week named him one of the "36 to Watch." (Formerly 36 under 36) That same year, he debuted his first photobook, Moses of the City, which received a stellar review from The Forward.