We are delighted to welcome two new talented individuals to New Dramatists' board of directors this fiscal year: Chisa Hutchinson, recent New Dramatists alumni playwright and Ian Calderon, who brings robust experience from Sundance Institute and many other institutions. In addition, we welcome Andrea Stolowitz, who fills a rotating current resident playwright seat on the board which was recently vacated by outgoing playwright, Cori Thomas.
Chisa Hutchinson (B.A. Vassar College; M.F.A NYU - Tisch School of the Arts) is a New York-based playwright and screenwriter. Most recently, her radio drama, Proof of Love, was presented by Audible and New York Theatre Workshop at the Minetta Lane Theater in NYC and can now be found on Audible's digital platform. Chisa’s happily presented her other plays, which include Dirt Rich, She Like Girls, This Is Not The Play, Sex On Sunday, Tunde’s Trumpet, The Subject, Somebody’s Daughter, Alondra Was Here, Surely Goodness And Mercy, From The Author Of, Amerikin and Dead & Breathing at such venues as the Lark Theater, SummerStage, Atlantic Theater Company, Mad Dog Theater Company, Rattlestick Theater, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the Contemporary American Theater Festival, the National Black Theatre, Writers’ Theatre of New Jersey, Delaware REP, Second Stage Theater and Arch 468 in London. She has been a Dramatists Guild Fellow, a Lark Fellow, a Resident at Second Stage Theater, a Humanitas Fellow, a New York NeoFuturist, and a staƯ writer for the Blue Man Group. Chisa has won a GLAAD Award, a Lilly Award, a New York Innovative Theatre Award, the Paul Green Award, a Helen Merrill Award, the Lanford Wilson Award, and has been a finalist for the highly coveted PoNY Fellowship. Currently, in addition to being a Fellow at Primary Stages and a recent alumna of New Dramatists, Chisa is working on a bigger, blacker, better musical adaptation of Oliver Twist with Disney and muhfuggin' Ice Cube. To learn more, visit www.chisahutchinson.com.
As a founding trustee Ian Calderon collaborated on the creation of Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. By initiating alliances with Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Adobe, and HP, he introduced innovative technologies at the creative Labs and led the transition to an all-Digital Festival. He also served on the board of the Sundance Group and the Sundance Channel, for independent film. He currently serves on the board of The Way of The Rain, an arts and environment not for profit founded by the artist Sibylle Szaggars Redford. In that role he engaged the creative team of Barco Digital Cinema’s to project the installation images of Ms. Szaggars art for the Carnegie Hall concert, Voices of Hope. Calderon is the president of The Hartman Foundation, he manages the Baker Theatre Fund at CUNY’s Hunter College, his alma mater where he lectures. He also serves on the board of DCTV, a New York based cultural center for filmmakers. He served as an advisor to, American Playhouse, for the creation of Playhouse International Pictures, the NYC Cultural Affairs Department, the MIT Media Lab, and the Government of Jamaica’s Ward Theatre. He previously served on the board of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center and the Museum of The City of NY, Theatre Collection where he produced televised interviews with Katherine Hepburn, Helen Hayes, and Ethel Merman. In 1984, as a guest of the People’s Republic of China he was a member of the U.S. design delegation along with Ming Cho Lee and Patrica Zipprodt, for a production of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie in Beijing. He began his career at Ellen Stewart’s La Mama, then worked extensively for Joseph Papp at the Public Theatre, Lincoln Center and Broadway, with Lloyd Richards at the O’Neill Center, on Broadway, London’s West End, on the PBS specials with James Earl Jones as Nelson Mandella in Now Easy Walk to Freedom and the televised presentation of Paul Robeson. He is a graduate of Hunter College and the Yale School of Drama, and a recipient of two Tony Award nominations for his design work on Broadway. His wife Karen Karpowich is the president of the English-Speaking Union of the United States. They reside in New York and Connecticut.