About the 2024-25 Petri Projects:
Eric Emauni: SWEET CAANAN
Inspired by true events, Sweet Canaan explores the legacy of Grace Olivier, a Black woman who acquired land in 1934 Arkansas and used it to empower her family. Drawing on archival research and personal connection to the land, this new musical examines and reclaims suppressed histories of Black ownership, autonomy, and resilience while challenging ongoing erasure of Black American narratives.
Leo Lion: TROUBLE FEATURE, A LIVE HORROR RPG
A live show where a rotating cast of improv performers, actors, comedians, and drag artists create an original Horror Movie in real time. This experimental show format fuses improv and roleplaying game show elements to create a raucous, bawdy, spooky atmosphere where audiences never know what’s coming next, because the actors don’t either.
Amyra León: BLOOD & THIRST
BLOOD AND THIRST is a poetic symphony written through the lens of León’s personal experience with chronic illness and institutional racism – chronicling a harrowing experience with endometriosis. This piece aims to explore the nuance and chaos of the capitalist systems that structure our society and the cycles of exploitation and bloodshed that stem from them.
Curtis Holland: THE GARAGE
An exploration of tap dance as the main form of storytelling, communication, and expression, in the story of three tap dancers consecutively warming up for an eight-show week at a Broadway show.
Libby King: MOM DANCE PRACTICE
Co-created by Amber Gray, Gaby Hoffman and myself, with videography by Adam Fontana, Mom Dance Practice is a movement-based meditation on the art of being a mom. I am interested in capturing quotidian and abstract movements of our MOM bodies both zoomed in and out and both indoors and outside. Through movement, interaction with nature and monologue, we explore the Holiness and mundanity of Mothering, all in pursuit of the question: “How do we give the daily dance of motherhood a voice?”
Ato Blankson-Wood: THE UNTITLED DIONYSUS PROJECT
The Untitled Dionysus Project reimagines Euripides’ The Bacchae as a ritual of liberation, using Dionysus as a symbol of divine retribution against white supremacist systems. Developed in response to the racial reckoning of 2020, it explores how oppression afflicts the mind, soul, and body, and seeks to exorcise these forces through theory, spiritual ritual, and performance. The piece aims to process rage and envision healing through immersive, transformative theatrical experience.
About the 2024-25 Petri Cohort:
Ato Blankson-Wood (he/him) is a multidisciplinary performance artist and theater maker whose work has been seen on Film/TV as well as on and off-Broadway. As an actor, Ato most recently starred in the off-Broadway premiere of Wole Soyinka’s The Swamp Dwellers at TFANA. Prior to this, he played Clifford Bradshaw in Cabaret on Broadway. Ato also played the titular role of Hamlet in Shakespeare in the Park’s 2023 production. He is best known for his starring role in Slave Play, for which he was nominated for a 2021 Tony Award. Ato is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Yale School of Drama.
Eric Emauni is a Tony nominated Producer and multi-hyphenate artist from Milwaukee, WI. He has been fortunate to work with esteemed cultural institutions such as Harlem Stage, The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, LAByrinth Theater Company, The TEAM, National Black Theatre, And PAC NYC. Eric is an alum of TEDxBroadway Young Professionals, Theater Producers of Color, and Beth Morrison Producers Academy. He is also the recipient of the AKA 500 Hour Producers of Color Initiative, the I AM SOUL Producer in Residence at National Black Theatre, and the Prince Fellowship. Credits: Associate Producer – Is This A Room, Dana H (2 Tony Awards®️), Co-Producer Kinky Boots (Off-Broadway), A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical (Broadway), FAT HAM (Broadway). @iconicvizion https://iconicvizion.com
Curtis Holland is a tap dancer, choreographer, teacher and Broadway performer. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, Holland’s interest in the arts was facilitated by his parents, who owned a dance studio, and his middle school drama teacher. Holland is currently focused on dance as language, its history, and its expression.
Libby is a maker of things, actor, writer, teacher, and mom who has been working professionally in New York and abroad for almost 25 years. A member of The TEAM since 2006, Libby has co-authored and performed in several of their award-winning published works. Libby has worked in a lot of special places: the Public Theater, BAM, PS 122, The Bushwick Starr, The Vineyard, Judson Church, St. Mark’s Church, Royal Court, National Theatre, Almeida, Barbican, Traverse, Royal Lyceum, ART, ACT, the Walker, and more. Libby also loves to teach; she has mentored students at NYU, Playwright’s Horizons and the University of Washington and recently guided an amazing group of youth in an afterschool devising program at PS 20 in Brooklyn.
Amyra León is a musician, author, director and Harlem native, seamlessly transcending genre and medium. She believes the art of listening and honest conversation are the primary tools for lasting change. Her aim is to empower communities to believe in the significance of their individual stories. She has performed everywhere from the back corners of bars in New York and London to being on the frontlines of marches against injustice. She has toured throughout the United States and Europe countless times and has performed at Lincoln Center, BAM, Brooklyn Public Library, The Apollo Cafe, TEDx and more. She has shared stages with Chief Adjuah, Common, Nikki Giovanni, Carrie Mae Weems, Brian Jackson, and more – and performed her original compositions with orchestras including Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Orchestra, the Montpellier National Opera, and the Paris Chamber Orchestra. https://www.amyraleon.com/ / @amyraleon
Leo Lion is a queer Russian theatre director and game creator from Brooklyn, NY who specializes in playful, interactive, and immersive experiences. Recent projects include Scandalton: LIVE! (a dice-based regency romance improv show), METAMORPHOSIS (an immersive corporate retelling of Kafka’s novel with personalized headphone-audio guides), and Insomnia (a 6-hour sleepover theater at JetLag music festival, blurring the line between performance and real dreams). Leo will next appear in HELP ME!!!! (a charades-based mime seance at Edinburgh Fringe). They are the founding Artistic Director of The Firebird Project, a theatre company that revives, remixes, and queers classic stories, and runs year-round arts education programs for all ages. leolion.com / @whosleolion
ABOUT THE PETRI PROJECTS
Launched in 2017, Petri Projects seek to support the development of new work by artists in the TEAM community and to decentralize project leadership within the organization. The program’s guiding values are artist autonomy; unique support for early-stage work; budget transparency and education; and anti-oppression (including anti-racism). Petri provides funding, rehearsal space, and producing support to seedlings of new theatrical work. Past Petri Projects have gone on to full production at Ars Nova, BAM, the Bushwick Starr, and more.
Support for the Petri Projects Program is provided by the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts.