RENNAISANCE
Logline
Renaissance: A Harlem community of artists, activists, and Black LGBTQI+ is alarmed when they learn that their building will be demolished and will do anything they can to stop the destruction and keep their home.
Why Now?
We are in a time of awakening. The United States is struggling to change its narrative. Its people, just like the tenets of 1500 Amsterdam, know that rewriting the past only stalls the future. Gentrification, immigration, the allure of chasing the American dream are all byproducts of a system that is broken and in desperate need of repair. Yet life continues. We walk over broken glass. We snuggle close in heatless rooms. We stretch a dollar ten ways before it leaves our pocket. There are joy and resilience amongst this class of people that goes unnoticed. That is only shown through strife and strength, instead of romance and resourcefulness. We are interested in giving agency to people that feel they only have it when they are walking the streets of the neighborhood they call home.
Model - Tatiana Houdegbe, Photographer - Daria Huxley
Season 1
Over the season, each character has to choose to join the long fight for the neighborhood’s future or the immediate fight for their tomorrows. The question, should we have allegiance to ourselves or our community, ourselves or our country has been a constant theme of the pandemic and our most recent presidential election. RENAISSANCE doesn’t seek to answer that question, but documents people who are choosing to make that decision. We as artists are curious if an audience judges these characters for the decisions they make for themselves or for their community? Is there a right or wrong choice?
The construction of our show is in conversation with the episodic genre-bending of LOVECRAFT COUNTRY, the nuanced investigation into worlds untapped as POSE, the familial political warfare of YEARS AND YEARS, and the sensual romance of human connection of QUEEN SUGAR.
Voices of the RENAISSANCE series
Creators
Writing partners, Travis LeMont Ballenger and Nilan, create art that exaggerates form and genre to create a dreamscape of inclusivity for communities and people that need ample space to be seen and heard. Semantics and morphology have been the weapons of the oppressed and the oppressor. This writing duo finds a spark in this line as their stories navigate such issues as interracial dating, gentrification, and cancel culture to name a few.
NILAN
is an award-winning creator/performer/arts leader. He is the Associate Artistic Director of The Drama League of New York. He is the co-host and producer of the podcast TA(L)KING DIRECTION. He is a member and co-founder of the award-winning creative content company A Certain Something (ACS), whose mission is to tell intersectional focused stories. His plays include A Rock and a Hard Place, Endangered Species, FOLKtales, Blood Promises, We Like To Party, The Spectrum Plays (a series of plays that chronicle queer life across the U.S. post-AIDS epidemic), Our Precedent, Willie Richard Johnson, and others. His work as a performer/creator has been seen nationally and internationally at theaters and film festivals as the Harlem International Film Festival, PlayMakers Repertory, Downtown Art, Dixon Place, The Bay Area Playwright Festival, The Parsnip Ship, Madrid International Film Festival, Recklinghausen Ruhr Festival, Red Fern Theatre, Playback Berlin, Pridefest, 1MPF, New York Shakespeare Exchange, The New American Theatre Co., and others. He co-created/directed CONSENT IS SEXY, the viral four-episode PSA campaign about creating positive reinforcement around asking for consensual sexual behavior (YouTube).nilan.me | acertainsomething.org
TRAVIS BALLENGER
is a generative artist. As a producer, he has worked with a number of artists, including: Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Sarah Treem, Pearl Cleage, Lydia R. Diamond, and Radha Blank. While at Arena Stage, he line-produced a number of shows including the pre-Broadway run of Lydia R. Diamond's STICK FLY, Travis then served as the Associate Producer for the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, where he produced both D.C. and New York Festivals and a co-production with the Classical Theater of Harlem. Travis worked as Associate Producer for Market Road Films, a documentary film company, creating films for National Geographic and independent documentaries. At Market Road, Travis field-produced Lynn Nottage’s The Reading Project, from which she wrote her Pulitzer-winning play SWEAT. Travis served as Associate Producer and Casting Director at Dallas Theater Center and Associate Producer of The Drama League of New York, producing both in New York and internationally. Recently, Travis had the honor to serve as the Associate Artistic Director at The Globe Theater in San Diego, CA. Travis is currently a producer at Lia Vollack Productions (MJ, The Musical; Almost Famous)
CONTACT
To learn more about the project email the creators directly or contact Fourwind Films for more info:
Travis Ballinger - Travisballenger@gmail.com
Nilan - nilan@nilan.me
Fourwind Films - info@fourwindfilms.com