CPT Announces 2020/2021 Nord Family Foundation Playwright Fellow

Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT)'s Executive Artistic Director Raymond Bobgan has announced John Dayo-Aliya as the 2020/2021 Nord Family Foundation Playwright Fellow.

Inside of CPT's commitment to cultivating new voices and providing new work development platforms for both experienced and emerging local artists, the theatre has initiated a series of special programs that focus on the individual artist. Fellowships include mentorship by CPT's Executive Artistic Director and a financial award.

Through this fellowship, John Dayo-Aliya will develop Our Lady of Common Sorrows, a play about a Black family whose faith is tested when their youngest member, a 14-year-old virgin, becomes pregnant.

The Nord Family Foundation Playwright Fellowship is a program for playwrights and creators from Northeast Ohio that offers opportunities to develop work through readings, staged readings, and workshop productions. Now in its seventh year, the Nord Family Foundation Playwright Fellows program is funded by a multi-year grant from the Nord Family Foundation. This fellowship is awarded to playwrights and creators alongside participation in Catapult, a CPT New Play Development program, and is about striving to advance a project up to the point of being production-ready. Catapult is intended to engage with projects that are at different stages of creation-from early concept to completed script, and while developing their work, the artists play an active role in the life of the theatre.

John Dayo-Aliya is an Akron Arts Alive and Knight Arts Challenge Award-winning playwright, actor, and musician. He studied Theatre Arts at Kent State University and Pan-African Studies at the University of Akron. He is Artistic Director of the nationally-recognized theatre company, Ma'Sue Productions. With Ma'Sue, Dayo-Aliya has produced eight plays in the past nine years that have received numerous accolades and press in local media such as The Devil Strip, Akron Beacon Journal, The Plain Dealer, Akronlife Magazine, and many other locally and regionally published media outlets. His work has been produced at Balch Street Theatre, Cleveland Public Theatre, and Akron Civic Theatre. His work explores various aspects of the Black experience and is specifically interested in Black modern lives and the questions arising out of the challenge of holding on to faith, love, community, and familial ties while living against a backdrop of structural racism. He creates work that provokes audiences to call out to their higher humanity in order to face social and cultural issues with intelligence, clarity, and empathy.

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