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Biography - Directing, Producing
DONYA K. WASHINGTON (she/her): the ripple, the wave that carried me home by Christina Anderson (People’s Light); A Simple Herstory, a podcast by Jonathan A Goldberg; Shutter Sisters by Mansa Ra (Old Globe); King Margaret by Tira Palmquist (reading at Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Hometown Boy by Keiko Green (reading, Actor’s Express); The Way North by Tira Palmquist (readings at Seven Devils and Amphibian Theatre). Atlanta: Downstairs by Theresa Rebeck (Actor’s Express); An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Actor’s Express); Beautiful Blackbird (Alliance Theatre, Theatre for the Very Young); NYC: God, Man and Devil (Target Margin Theatre); Now the Cats with Jeweled Claws (Target Margin Theatre); Cold Keener (Target Margin Theatre). 2008/2010 Women's Project Lab. Van Lier Directing Fellow 2009, Second Stage Theatre. MFA, Directing - Brown University/Trinity Rep; BFA, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. |
Artist Statement
Anthropophagy and Verfremdungseffekt describe a great deal of my work. Anthropophagy, in its strict definition, is cannibalism. However, Oswald de Andrade (a Brazilian poet) has appropriated it as a way to understand and create culture - you ingest the influences that surround you, and use that to create your own culture, an anthropophagic one. Verfremdungseffekt was Brecht's term for the alienation effect he strove for in much of his work. Make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. They are two different ways to talk about the same thing. When I create my own work, I find myself drawn to projects that express these ideas. But I also find, when I'm working on a new play or a classic play, thinking like this is helpful. In this way, no one's life experience is totally alien or totally familiar and there is always something I can bring to the table. Years ago, I saw a greeting card that described a person as a blank canvas and the people they met in their lives as paint. At the end of their life, this person was a masterpiece because of the people they met. I am who I am as an artist because of my family, my friends, and my teachers. |