Inaugural 2022 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.
aviamon.com
Nemuna Ceesay
Discipline: Theatre
Nemuna Ceesay (she/her/hers) is an actor originally from California and based in New York. She has an MFA in acting from American Conservatory Theater and has been seen onstage at CalShakes, Joe’s Pub, PlayMakers Rep, Woolly Mammoth, A.R.T., The Public Theatre, and spent 2 years at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Favorite TV credits include: Bull, Broad City, Instinct, Younger, FBI, Prodigal Son and Katy Keene. She has performed internationally at Theatre Calgary and the Moscow Art Theatre. Nemuna has been teaching for many years and currently teaches acting at Hunter College, Circle in the Square Theatre School, and Long Island University. She recently launched an all BIPOC training program called The Blueprint and has her own business coaching actors for MFA Auditions. Follow her on Instagram @_nemuna_ @see.say.act and @theblueprintartist. You can also visit her website at www.nemunarceesay.com or learn more about The Blueprint at www.theblueprintartist.com
William DeMeritt
Discipline: Theatre; Film
William DeMeritt (he/him) is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. He can currently be seen in Steph Del Rosso’s The Gradient at Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. He has previously been seen in Lauren Gunderson’s world premiere one-man show, The Catastrophist filmed on stage specifically to be streamed during the pandemic. William was featured at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival starring as William Shakespeare in the U.S. premiere of the stage adaptation of Shakespeare In Love. He has been featured in HBO’s Emmy-winning film The Normal Heart, HBOMax’s The Flight Attendant, the critically acclaimed webseries The Outs, NCIS: New Orleans, Person of Interest, and Law & Order:SVU. Additional theatrical productions of note: the Obie-Award winning production of The Death of The Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World and he is also the creator, writer, and star of the New York Innovative Theatre Award winning solo show, Origin Story. William is also a dialect coach, theatrical and voiceover director, and award-winning audiobook narrator.
@demeritt
www.williamdemeritt.com
Rebecca S’manga Frank
Discipline: Theatre
Rebecca S’manga Frank is an actor, writer, filmmaker, educator, and activist. Most recently she performed in Paula Vogel’s “Indecent” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and on FOX’s Prodigal Son. She’s worked as a director at New York Theatre Workshop, acted with Sundance Theatre Lab in Morocco, and performed at many regional and off-broadway theaters. In 2020 Rebecca penned a "Psalm for Racial Justice" for Hillel International. She has brought her work to the Jewish Theological Seminary, and many theatrical, academic, and religious institutions. Rebecca is a 2021 LABA NY Fellow and a New Jewish Culture Fellow. NYU Grad Acting, MFA.
Benji Kahn
Discipline: Theater/Film
Benji Kahn is a Black/Biracial queer non-binary Jewish New York based playwright and screenwriter. They write towards outsiders yearning for a sense of belonging and underdogs reconciling with trauma… but like in a funny way. Their theatre background includes having written and directed for The Public Theatre, Epic Theatre Ensemble, and Dixon Place among others. They recently were chosen for the Sony TV Writers Fellowship, as well as The Workshop JOC Artist Fellowship and received a Reboot grant for their debut novel. They are currently writing a fantasy adventure feature for Disney based on their Animal Kingdom theme park and developing a half hour comedy for Sony, as well as developing several new plays. Kahn graduated with a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from Columbia University where they graduated with honors.
Lilach Orenstein
Discipline: Dance
Lilach Orenstein is a Choreographer, Performer and Producer best known for combining diverse types of arts from multiple disciplines into poetical synergies. She is an Israeli immigrant with Yemeni-Polish-Romanian roots based in New York City. Lilach earned her B.Dance from The Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, majoring in choreography, in 2017 and her M.F.A in Dance from The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, in 2019. Among her awards are The Presidential Scholarship (U.Arts), Outstanding Dancer from the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Excellence Award by The Jerusalem Foundation.
Lilach's creations "She Will Come on Her Own", "MUS", "Dancing from Others", "Reject – Receive > React!", "Territorium", "White on White", "Cēnsēre" and "Onions" were premiered in Israel's main stages and abroad. Recently, she assisted in choreographing the “The Mother of Us All” opera which presented at the Metropolitan Museum featuring vocal artists from The Julliard School and the NY Philharmonic marking 200 years for women’s suffrage.
She is professionally trained from Aharon Katzir, Kolben dance, Matte Asher, Vertigo, and Batsheva's programs for outstanding students and interned at the Kamea dance company. She was recently invited to residencies in L1dancefest2019 – Budapest, The Center at West Park – NYC, EMERGENYC 2020 – NYC, IMPULSTANZ’s ATLAS program – Vienna, Derida Dance Center – Sofia, Machol Shalem Dance House – Jerusalem and Beam Center at Governor Island - NYC.
Daniel Terna
Discipline: Visual Art/Photography
Daniel Terna is a Brooklyn-based photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on family history and inherited trauma, as well as diverse subjects related to public and private boundaries. In 2020, his work on his family during the quarantine was presented in a solo exhibition at Guertin’s Graphics, New York. In 2019, his work was included in a two-person show at LY, Los Angeles. Select group exhibitions include those held at Jack Barrett, New York (2019), Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York (2018), Baxter St. Camera Club of NY (2015), and the New Wight Biennial, UCLA (2014). His work has also been screened at selected venues, including 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), Eyebeam, New York (2013), the Austrian Cultural Forum, New York (2012), and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge, MA (2011). Terna was a resident in the Collaborative Fellowship Program at UnionDocs, Brooklyn, and was awarded the Cuts and Burns Residency at Outpost Artist Resources in Ridgewood, NY. His work has been featured in Still Magazine, The New York Times, Dazed, Oxford American, Conveyor Magazine, Aint Bad Magazine, and Slate. Terna graduated with a BA in photography from Bard College and received his MFA from the International Center of Photography-Bard.
