In Residence June 11 – June 28, 2024
As 2024 Guild Hall William P. Rayner Artists-in-Residence, Whitney White and Maxim Pozdorovkin will work with a collective of performing arts, and new media artists to develop their multi-media performance piece, The Case of the Stranger.
The Case of the Stranger combines Shakespeare’s words with White’s original text and music. The title, taken from a passage attributed to Shakespeare, is one of the earliest known and most impassioned defenses of a compassionate refugee policy. The performance explores themes of immigration, borders, and crossings, and the celebration that unexpected human connections can ultimately bring.
While in-residence, White and Pozdorovkin will work with curator and 2024 GH WPR AiR Thought Partner, Monique Long.
ABOUT WHITNEY WHITE
Whitney White is an Obie and Lily award winning director, writer and musician based in New York. Recent directing: Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (Broadway), The Secret Life of Bees (The Almeida), Soft (Lucille Lortel nomination for Outstanding Direction), On Sugarland (Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Direction), What to Send Up When it Goes Down (The Public, Playwrights Horizons, BAM, Woolly Mammoth, America Repertory Theatre), The Amen Corner (Shakespeare DC), Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (Second Stage/WP Theater), For All The Women Who Thought They Were Mad (Soho Rep).
Original works include: Semblance (NYTW), Definition (Bushwick Starr), and Macbeth in Stride for which she won an Eliot Norton Award for Best Musical Performance (American Repertory Theatre, Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theatre).
Fellowships include: Sundance Theatre Lab, NYTW 2050 Fellowship, Drama League Next Wave, Jerome Fellowship, Colt Coeur, Roundabout Directing Fellowship. Whitney is a Rolex Arts Initiative Protegee, an Associate Artist at the Roundabout, and an Associate Director at Shakespeare DC. Recently she was also a writer on Boots Riley’s upcoming show I’m A Virgo (Amazon / Media Res). MFA Brown Trinity Rep, BA Northwestern.
ABOUT MAXIM POZDOROVKIN
Maxim Pozdorovkin is an award-winning writer and director based in New York. Most recently, Maxim wrote and directed The Conspiracy, a 2023 animated feature for Story Syndicate (starring Liev Schreiber, Lake Bell, Ben Shenkman and Jason Alexander) that traces the connection between conspiracy theories and antisemitism and stars. Pozdorovkin’s The Truth About Killer Robots for HBOMax was hailed as “a terrifying work of science nonfiction,” premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, and has won multiple awards at festivals around the world. Additionally, his film Our New President, made entirely of Russian propaganda covering the Trump presidency, premiered at Sundance 2018, where it won a Special Jury Award. Pozdorovkin’s other films include: Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (Emmy winner), The Notorious Mr. Bout (Sundance 2014), and Clinica de Migrantes (HBOMax). Maxim holds a PhD from Harvard University for a dissertation on early Soviet propaganda. He was an artist fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows and is a frequent commentator on media and Russian politics.
Maxim Pozdorovkin, Fedra Ramirez, Bisserat Tseggai, and Whitney White. Photo: Bekah Phoenix