Featuring Johanna Kasimow

Part of Hancher's Infinite Dream festival

The TEAM is a Brooklyn-based ensemble dedicated to creating new work about the experience of living in America today. Currently led by artistic director Rachel Chavkin and producing director Emma Orme, the group was originally founded in 2004 by six NYU alumni and has grown to involve an expanding list of collaborators. Orme and TEAM writer/artist Jillian Walker will discuss their creative process, the thrills and challenges of making theater in the current landscape, and their new, work-in-progress Reconstructing (Still Working but the Devil Might Be Inside).  

Emma Orme is a Brooklyn-based producer with a focus on new theatrical work. She is the Producing Director of The TEAM, a Fellow of WP Theater’s 2022-24 Lab, and producer of the Obie award-winning, Off-Broadway premiere of CIRCLE JERK (Fake Friends). She has produced, performed in, and developed work at NYTW, The Public, Williamstown, LaMama, The Flea, Atlantic Theater, EST, Drama League, and more, and she works ongoingly with CHILD, a performance collective founded by Lisa Fagan. 

Producing credits include: PLEASURE MACHINE, an audio thriller starring Starr Busby and directed by Tara Elliott (Colt Coeur); RUNNING, a short film starring Danny Pudi (Hypokrit); Time Out Critics’ Pick Brief Chronicle: Books 6-8 by Agnes Borinsky (I am a slow tide); NYT Critics’ Pick Red Emma & The Mad Monk; NYT Critics’ Pick AGNES (Lesser America); workshops of new plays by Ruby Rae Spiegel,  Aya Aziz, Sunita Prasad, Justine Gelfman, Gina Femia, Celeste Jennings, Deborah Yarchun, and others; and Xandra Nur Clark’s Polylogues.

Before she started with The TEAM, she worked as Producing Director at Hypokrit Productions, BOLD Associate Producer at Northern Stage, Grants Manager at Williamstown Theatre Festival, a video producer for The New York Times, and an associate producer on the documentary The Kleptocrats.  She recieved her BA from Dartmouth College.

Jillian Walker, also known as Gogo, a name meaning teacher that comes from her Ubungoma training, comes from a lineage of teachers, healers and community builders and is rooted in her Midwestern US upbringing, followed from the red-dirt-South of great-great and 3rd great grandparents, and the ancient ancestors of Southern Africa who called her to initiate and reclaim the medicines and Songs of her people. She blesses the honor of her lineages through performance and practice. Her most recent work is THE WHITNEY ALBUM at Soho Rep, and another recent acclaimed work is SKiNFoLK: An American Show (The Bushwick Starr/National Black Theatre: NY Times Critics Pick, Kilroys List, Lilly Award) is forthcoming from 53rd State Press. Her other plays and projects have received numerous honors and include Songs of Speculation (JACK, 2020 Third Coast Audio Unbound Award) and Sarah’s Salt (Winner Columbia@Roundabout, Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist, Relentless Award honorable mention). 

Some of Gogo’s favorite collaborations include: writing/performing and serving as Process Director with The TEAM (Reconstructing), creating Move, Meditate, Make with Libby King, working as a setlist dramaturg on Common’s Let Love tour, serving as dramaturg of divinity on the second season of Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness (HBO), holding prompt-based performance classes with the students at The University of Washington and Harvard, holding circle with the women in Nisha Moodley’s Soul of Leadership, and sitting in prayer, song and healing space with her spiritual family at the Makhosi Foundation.

FREE and OPEN to the public

Doors open for general admission seating at 4:30 p.m.

The TEAM Website

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