Soho Rep Gala to Honor Berwin Lee Brown New York / London Playwrights & Celebrate Raja Feather Kelly

Soho Rep’s 2024 Spring Fête will honor Berwin Lee Brown New York / London Playwrights. The evening also celebrates Raja Feather Kelly, who was awarded the 2021 Berwin Lee Brown Playwrights Award and was commissioned by Soho Rep. (The result of that commission, Kelly’s play The Fires, makes its world premiere at Soho Rep May 8 – June 16.) The gala is directed by singer, actor, and cabaret artist Cheo Bourne, who co-hosts The Great Gay Dadcast with Kelly, and is hosted by Mary Wiseman (Star Trek; Soho Rep: An Octoroon). The event takes place April 15 at Edison Ballroom, and begins with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres at 6pm, followed by dinner and performances at 7pm.

Performers and presenters include Anthony Alfaro (Off-Broadway: The View Upstairs; US Tour: On Your Feet); composer, lyricist, playwright, and performance maker César Alvarez, whose acclaimed work Futurity Soho Rep presented with Ars Nova in 2015; Lileana Blain-Cruz, director of Soho Rep productions including Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. (2016) by Alice Birch, who went on to win the Berwin Lee Brown Playwrights Award in 2017; composer, lyricist, pianist, and organist Jack Coen; playwright and songwriter Mona Pirnot (I Love You So Much I Could Die at NYTW), who won the Berwin Lee Brown Playwrights Award in 2022; writer, performer, Soho Rep board member and former Soho Rep Project Number One artist Carmelita Tropicana; and composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells, who composed the score for The Fires. Alvarez and Tropicana also present, along with acclaimed playwright and Soho Rep Board Member and Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab Co-Chair Jackie Sibblies Drury, whose Soho Rep world premiere play Fairview won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize (also at Soho Rep: We Are Proud to Present… ), and who received the Berwin Lee Brown Playwrights Award in 2018; Obie Award-winning playwright Lucas Hnath, an advisory board member for Berwin Lee Brown whose play A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney Soho Rep was presented by Soho Rep in 2013, and who directed Pirnot’s I Love You So Much I Could Die. 

Dorothy Berwin and Mark Lee—both lifelong theater lovers—launched their foundation a decade ago and were later joined by James Keith (JK) Brown. The idea emerged from Berwin and Lee noting the lack of financial stability and support for playwrights. They sought to help playwrights by offering them commissioning awards to devote time to focusing on new works for the stage. Potential recipients are identified through recommendations from chosen theater companies in New York, NY and London, UK and recommendations from Berwin Lee Brown’s advisory board, which includes Dominic Cooke, Lucas Hnath, Joyce Hytner, Cherry Jones, Mel Kenyon, Alan Mark, Donna Murphy, and Jon Stokes. At Soho Rep, the foundation has supported commissions for Alice Birch, Jackie Sibblies Drury, and Raja Feather Kelly.

Raja Feather Kelly has a long history of collaboration with Soho Rep, having first worked with the organization in 2017 as a member of the Writer Director Lab, then in 2018 choreographed Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Fairview, directed by Sarah Benson. His surreal new play is set in a South Brooklyn railroad apartment in 1971, 1998, and 2021, and tells the story of three men trying to understand love: what it means, where to find it, and how to experience it.

Mark Lee notes the connection between Berwin Lee Brown and Soho Rep: “The only rule we set is that the playwrights can't have been produced on Broadway or the West End at the time they get the commission, but Dorothy boils it down to: there’s a muscularity in the writing in the kind of plays that we respond to. That’s where we align with Soho Rep, which does such bold, muscular work—an urgency with which the playwright has something they want to say.”  

Dorothy Berwin says of commissioning Kelly, “Raja is exactly the kind of risk-taking playwright we try to support. The Fires—with the way it’s set in one apartment holding these overlapping decades—has such a singular movement to it. This play is the work of an old soul but it’s also so contemporary.” 

JK Brown says, “We tend to support playwrights who stretch themselves: Raja is such a perfect example, from being a choreographer—and catching everyone’s attention with his work in Fairview—to really delving into playwriting. That’s a thread that goes through our work: allowing writers to try new things and experiment.” 

Funds raised at this year’s Spring Fête will directly support the production costs of the World Premiere of Raja Feather Kelly’s The Firesand will enable Soho Rep to keep ticket prices affordable and to provide Raja and his creative collaborators with a living wage. 

The event is music directed by Alex Bechtel, with lighting design by Barbara Samuels, event design by Deb O, and videography by Laura Snow; Cagla Karslioglu is assistant set designer. Aislinn Curry serves as production manager, Liene Camarena Fogele as Gala Producer, Amanda Spooner as stage manager, Arran Bowen as assistant production manager, and Nick Alteri as assistant stage manager. 

About Raja Feather Kelly

Raja Feather Kelly is a choreographer and director, and the Artistic Director of the dance-theater-media company the feath3r theory, for which he has created 18 premieres, most recently UGLY Part 3: BLUE (Chelsea Factory) and the forthcoming The Absolute Future(NYU Skirball). 

Kelly was a member of the 2017 – 2019 Soho Rep Writer Director Lab and choreographed the World Premiere production of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview at Soho Rep, which went on to win the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Kelly’s most recent works outside of TF3T are White Girl in Danger (Second Stage), Bunny Bunny (UC San Diego), and Scenes for an Ending for the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. He choreographed the Broadway musical A Strange Loop (Lyceum Theatre, premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizon), winner of two Tony Awards, including Best Musical. His Off-Broadway collaborators include Lileana Blain-Cruz, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Sarah Benson, and Michael R. Jackson. His work has been seen at Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, and New York Live Arts, among many other venues. He’s worked on two Pulitzer Prize-winning productions and has received a Princeton Arts Fellowship, three Princess Grace Awards, an Obie Award, an Outer Critics Circle honor, and many others. Kelly is the 2023-24 Tow Foundation Playwright in Residence at Soho Rep.

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