Up-and-Coming Playwright Phillip Howze Awarded Prestigious Residency With Lincoln Center Theatre's New Writers Program

Contemporary playwright Phillip Howze uses the age old medium of storytelling to hold a magnifying glass up to our current culture. It's this astute talent that earned the emerging playwright a spot in the prestigious New Writers residency with New York City's Lincoln Center Theatre. It was announced early last week that Howze will be one of only eight in the inaugural group of resident artists for the program. This marks his second fellowship with the famed theatre, as previously he was a 2015-16 Lincoln Center Education Artist Fellow.

The news comes off the heels of his world debut of All of what you love and none of what you hate, which recently wrapped at the San Francisco Playhouse. Keenly channeling the multifaceted culture of millennials, the play's biting commentary landed Howze one of only three spots in the Yale School of Drama, where he received an MFA in 2015. Prior to the program, he worked in Southeast Asia in philanthropy and international human rights. This work, along with his childhood spent with his four sisters, heavily informs the sensitivity and compassionate nature of his writing.

On the surface, All of what you love and none of what you hate is a story about youth in America. It's a world we've all at least partially experienced -- social media, single parents, Drake videos, and cleverly woven ebonics pouring out of the mouths of teens who haven't yet learned the weight of their words or the consequences of their decisions. Through a series of abstract sequences, audiences are cued to piece together a narrative about the decline of emotional intelligence and narcissism in a culture of noise, personal branding, online personas, and the 24-hour news cycle that celebrates stories of terror. It's darkly funny, it's sad, it's all too familiar.

But beneath his sharp one-liners and quirky tableaus, his writing forms a portrait of that elusive essence of youth, that feeling when the world is still confusing, exciting, and lonely. The actual plotline is almost secondary, as if the story isn't so much the point as it is a vessel to transport audiences back to the days when we were more likely to asked ourselves: If we are all connected, if we all share the same fundamental core, why is it so impossible for us to truly understand those around us? Perhaps most importantly, this question is delivered through an entirely African American cast. In an age when racial perceptions shape our interactions in unbelievable, often terrible ways, to see a story of such universal humanness told through black bodies is more than important, it's vital.

In March 2017, Howze will debut his next play Frontiéres san Frontières at The Bushwick Star in Brooklyn. While the play focuses on fictional refugee youths, Howze again uses theatre as a way of delving into the poetry of what it is to be young.

Howze plans to continue this work during his residency with the Lincoln Center Theatre's New Writers program. To speak with Phillip Howze about his past plays, upcoming work, or residency, please contact Danielle Smith or Kimberly Verde.