Nilan
i am a...
CREATOR
Nilan holds many hats. He personally considers myself a creator which allows him to express his artistic self by taking on various roles in an artistic process. His work as a performer/creator has been seen nationally and internationally at theaters and film festivals as the Madrid International Film Festival, Queer X, Harlem International Film Festival, Sicily Web Fest, Alt Fest, Miami Web Series Fest, QFlix, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Downtown Art, Dixon Place, The Bay Area Playwright Festival, The Parsnip Ship, Madrid International Film Festival, Recklinghausen Ruhr Festival, Bedlam MadLab, Red Fern Theatre, Playback Berlin, 48 Hours in Harlem, Pridefest, 1MPF, New York Shakespeare Exchange, The New American Theatre Co., & others.
He has produced work nationally and internationally. He loves to collaborate with auteurs and visionaries to usher in new work that uses the space and language in non-traditional ways. He is a member and co-founder of the content creation company A Certain Something. He has produced films, plays, promenades, visual installations, concerts, haunted houses including PURE, THE DIGITAL SERIES (The Drama League), “POPSICLES”, “COVERD”, “HEYBABE”, “THE DAMNABLE DEPRIVATION OF DMITRI”, “EXTRA ROOM”, How to Mourn An American, And Then I Woke: A Vicarious Cataclysmic (A Certain Something), and “Consent is Sexy” (Affirmative Consent).
as a producer...
He is deeply entrenched with bringing unrepresented historical moments to the stage, Black mythology & folklore, and writing queer and Black characters beyond the movement of respectability politics. His play Shadow in the Corner is published in the 3rd volume of Obie Award-winning Harlem 9's 48 Hours in Harlem: 10 Minute play anthology. His work includes A Rock and a Hard Place, Endangered Species, “Extra Room”, “Popsicles”, “Renaissance”, FOLKtales, Blood Promises, We Like To Party, The Spectrum Plays, Our Precedent, Willie Richard Johnson, And Then I Woke: A Vicarious Cataclysmic Event (co-wrote), and others.
as a writer...
He is drawn to stories thick in language that lend themselves to be told through the lens of realism or magic realism. Language and sound are the tools I use to enter a story regardless of the medium. He has directed and developed new work through Dixon Place, The Parsnip Ship, The Working Theater, The Drama League, The Orchard Project, Affirmative Consent, 13th Street Repertory, Santos Manual Theatre, California State University, San Bernardino, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Between Us Productions, Pazz Festival, and others.
