Production Staff
Dede Ayite is a costume designer whose Broadway credits include A Soldier’s Play, Slave Play, American Son, and Children of a Lesser God. Select Off-Broadway credits include Secret Life of Bees, FireFlies, Marie and Rosetta, Tell Hector I Miss Him (Atlantic); By The Way, Meet Vera Stark, JHAT (Signature); BLKS, Collective Rage…, School Girls… (MCC); Slave Play (NYTW); Sugar in Our Wounds (MTC); If Pretty Hurts…, Mankind, Bella: An American Tall Tale (Playwrights Horizons); The Royale (Lincoln Center); Ugly Lies the Bone (Roundabout); and brownsville song [b-side for tray] (LCT3). Regionally, Ayite’s works has appeared at Oregon Shakespeare Festival; ... read more
LCT: Pass Over (LCT3), Pipeline, Other Desert Cities. Off-Broadway: Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie (Ars Nova); The House That Will Not Stand, Fetch Clay Make Man (New York Theatre Workshop); He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, The Winter’s Tale (TFANA). Additional theater: Father Comes Home From the Wars, How to Catch Creation, Until The Flood (Goodman); Familiar (Steppenwolf); Ink (Kennedy Center); The Comedy of Errors (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); As You Like It (Stratford Shakespeare Festival); The American Clock (The Old Vic). Awards include Grammy, ASCAP and Obie awards.
Broadway: Clybourne Park, Having Our Say; Mule Bone; and Once on this Island, (Tony nomination); K2 (Tony nomination, Outer Critics Circle Award, Maharam Award); Strange Interlude (Tony nomination); Accidental Death of an Anarchist; Quilters. NY and Off-Broadway: NYSF/Public, Roundabout, Playwright’s Horizons, others. Regional: Kennedy Center, Steppenwolf, Arena Stage, Guthrie, McCarter, Seattle Rep, Long Wharf, Goodman, Center Stage, Intiman, others. Dance: Eliot Feld’s Ballet Tech, NYCB, ABT, others. Associate Professor: NYU Tisch
Kenny Leon is a Tony Award-winning Broadway and television director. His Broadway credits include the Tupac musical Holler If You Hear Me, A Raisin in the Sun starring Denzel Washington (Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play and Best Revival of a Play), The Mountaintop starring Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett, Stick Fly, August Wilson’s Fences (which garnered ten Tony nominations and won three Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Play), Gem of the Ocean and Radio Golf. He also directed Smart People for Second Stage. Leon's recent television work includes "Hairspray Live!", and "The Wiz Live!" ... read more
Broadway: Trouble in Mind (Roundabout). Off-Broadway: Shhhh (Atlantic); one in two (The New Group); Nollywood Dreams, School Girls… (MCC); Sugar in Our Wounds (MTC, Lucille Lortel Award); A Strange Loop (Special Citation Obie), Selling Kabul, Dance Nation (Playwrights Horizons); To My Girls (Second Stage); Fires in the Mirror (Signature). Regional: Alley Theatre, Berkeley Rep, CTG, Guthrie, Steppenwolf, Woolly Mammoth. International Tour: The Magnetic Fields: 50 Song Memoir. 2020 Obie Sustained Excellence in Set Design, Princess Grace Fabergé Theater Award, Henry Hewes Design Award nominee. For Brian.
Nikiya Mathis is an actress and Hair/wig designer. She is the recipient of the 2024 Special Tony Award for her recent work on Jaja's African Hair Braiding, the first Wig designer to ever receive a special Tony award for a specific work. And one of two wig designers to ever recieve the highest honor in theater. She has received 2 Henry Hewes Design Awards, a Drama Desk Award, the Kathleen Perkins Behind the Curtain Award from Black Women on Broadway, and is one of only 2 African American wig designers to win Obie Awards.
Nikiya is also a ... read more
Broadway: The Real Thing. Off-Broadway: A Funny Thing... (MCC); Lazarus (NYTW); Significant Other (Roundabout); Posterity, Our New Girl, The Jammer (Atlantic); Taking Care of Baby (MTC); Rimbaud In New York (BAM). MFA, UC San Diego.
Awards and Nominations
2025 Drama League Awards
DISTINGUISHED PERFORMANCE: Stori Ayers was nominated but did not win.