Julian Goldhagen, Ryan J. Haddad & Ife Olujobi Receive Creatives Rebuild NY AEP Grants to Work With The Public Theater

The Public Theater has has received an Artist Employment Program grant from Creatives Rebuild New York. Designed to support employment opportunities for artists, the program is funding 98 collaborations involving a dynamic group of 300 artists employed by community-based organizations, municipalities, and tribal governments across New York State. CRNY has awarded a total of $49.9M in funding to support artists' salaries and benefits, with an additional $11.7M in funding provided to the organizations holding employment.

Julian Goldhagen, Ryan J. Haddad, and Ife Olujobi will collaborate with The Public Theater on the creation of new art and the co-creation of community practice over the next two years. The Public will receive $589,200 to support the collaboration, including artists' salaries and benefits.

"We are so grateful to CRNY for allowing us to bring these extraordinary artist-activists on staff for two years," said Artistic Director Oskar Eustis. "Bringing artists directly into the institutional leadership is the best possible way to ensure that The Public is truly serving our artists and our mission. These three brilliant additions to our staff will change us, for the better."

Artist Employment Program recipients were selected through a two-stage process by a group of twenty external peer reviewers alongside CRNY staff. From an initial pool of over 2,700 written applications, 167 were shortlisted for interviews with reviewers. To view the list of 98 Artist Employment Program participants, visit creativesrebuildny.org/participants.

"If we are to truly rebuild our amazing state, we must celebrate artists' contributions, not only to the economy, but to what makes us human," said Creatives Rebuild New York's Executive Director Sarah Calderon. "The incredible work being funded through CRNY's Artist Employment Program underscores the importance of direct support for both individual artists and the organizations that hold their employment."

For more information about Creatives Rebuild New York's Artist Employment Program, please visit creativesrebuildny.org.

JULIAN GOLDHAGEN

(they/them) is a theater artist, storyteller, and social worker. Their community-based practice utilizes performing arts and storytelling as tools to promote reflection, connection, and action. Through their work at the intersection of community organizing and the arts, Julian has collaborated with organizations including The Gates Foundation, The Innocence Network, and The Moth. They are a co-founder of The Story Workers, a collective bringing narrative strategy techniques to change-makers working on the frontlines of various justice movements. Julian's original performance work has been featured at The New York International Fringe Festival, the United Nations' Palais des Nations, and on National Public Radio. In their clinical practice, Julian works as a psychotherapist for queer youth and adults. Julian holds a Masters in Social Work from Hunter College and a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Theater from New York University/Tisch School of the Arts.

RYAN J. HADDAD

(he/him) is an actor and playwright. His acclaimed solo play Hi, Are You Single? was presented in The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival and subsequently produced at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, in association with IAMA Theatre Company. His new autobiographical play Dark Disabled Stories will premiere this season at The Public, co-produced by The Bushwick Starr. Off-Broadway: The Watering Hole, created by Lynn Nottage and Miranda Haymon (Signature Theatre) and the upcoming american (tele)visions by Victor I. Cazares (NYTW). Cabaret: Falling for Make Believe (Joe's Pub/Under the Radar). He recently finished filming the FX limited series "Retreat" and recurs as Andrew on the Netflix series "The Politician." He is a recipient of Vineyard Theatre's Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, IAMA Theatre Company's Shonda Rhimes Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission, and Rising Phoenix Repertory's Cornelia Street American Playwriting Award. His essays have been published in the New York Times, Out Magazine, and American Theatre. He is an alum of The Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group, a 2020 Disability Futures Fellow, and a former Queer|Art Performance and Playwriting Fellow, under the mentorship of Moe Angelos. @ryanjhaddad and ryanjhaddad.com

IFE OLUJOBI

(she/they) is a Brooklyn-based Nigerian American playwright, screenwriter, and editor from Columbia, Maryland. She is a 2020-22 Resident Artist at Ars Nova and a member of the Obie-winning Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theatre. She was a 2019-20 New Voices Fellow at The Lark, an alumnus of the 2018-19 Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater and the 2020 Sundance Institute Theater Lab, an inaugural Project Number One artist-in-residence at Soho Rep, and the recipient of a 2020 Sloan Foundation commission from Manhattan Theatre Club. Their play Jordans won a special commendation from the 2021 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and they received a 2021 Steinberg Playwright Award. Their work has been seen at The Public, Bushwick Starr, HERE Arts Center, and more. She conceived and edited the book No Play, is the managing editor of The Supplements at Soho Rep, and was an assistant editor at the Criterion Collection. BFA: NYU Tisch, 2016.

ABOUT The Public Theater:

THE PUBLIC continues the work of its visionary founder Joe Papp as a civic institution engaging, both on-stage and off, with some of the most important ideas and social issues of today. Conceived over 60 years ago as one of the nation's first nonprofit theaters, The Public has long operated on the principles that theater is an essential cultural force and that art and culture belong to everyone. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Patrick Willingham, The Public's wide breadth of programming includes an annual season of new work at its landmark home at Astor Place, Free Shakespeare in the Park at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, the Mobile Unit touring throughout New York City's five boroughs, Public Forum, Under the Radar, Public Lab, Public Works, Public Shakespeare Initiative, and Joe's Pub. Since premiering HAIR in 1967, The Public continues to create the canon of American Theater and is currently represented on Broadway by the Tony Award-winning musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Their programs and productions can also be seen regionally across the country and around the world. The Public has received 60 Tony Awards, 184 Obie Awards, 56 Drama Desk Awards, 59 Lortel Awards, 34 Outer Critic Circle Awards, 13 New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards, 58 AUDELCO Awards, 6 Antonyo Awards, and 6 Pulitzer Prizes. publictheater.org

The Public Theater stands in honor of the first inhabitants and our ancestors. We acknowledge the land on which The Public and its theaters stand-the original homeland of the Lenape people. We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this territory. We honor the generations of stewards and we pay our respects to the many diverse indigenous peoples still connected to this land.

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