Artistic Team for stateless

  • Ryan Oliveira (he/him)

    PLAYWRIGHT

    Ryan Oliveira is a playwright, dramaturg, songwriter, and performer. His work has been produced with Pride Films and Plays and Nothing Without a Company, and has also developed his work with El Semillero, Prop Thtr, and Teatro Vivo. A Disquiet Luso-American Fellowship finalist, his play, Take Care, was a finalist for the O’Neill Theatre Conference and New Harmony Project. Finally, Ryan would like to sincerely thank DCASE for their financial support to develop this play, his collaborators, Mom, Dad, Chris, Ricky, and Daphnie.

  • Topher Leon (he/they)

    DIRECTOR

    Topher Leon is an ALTA Award-nominated director. Selected directing credits include: Desire in a Tinier House (Pride Arts); Go Tonight (Mad Ones Lab); Swallow (Refracted Theatre). Topher has worked with American Theater Company, The New Coordinates, The Factory Theater, Redtwist Theatre, and more.

  • Krystal Ortiz (any)

    DRAMATURG

    Krystal Ortiz is a Cuban-American playwright, performer, and producer. Krystal was recently under commission for the Goodman Theatre’s 2024-2025 New Stages Residency. Krystal’s historical punk rock musical, frikiNation, has had four workshops this year, including a script workshop and a concert at the Chicago Cultural Center, produced by DCASE and UrbanTheater Company. @frikination.musical

  • Gaby Labotka (they/she/anything respectful)

    INTIMACY AND FIGHT DIRECTOR

    Gaby Labotka is a Puerto Rican-American, Chicago-based, multi-disciplinary artist who works as an actor, director, intimacy director, fight director, playwright and choreographer across the country. Selected Recent Credits include: SANCTUARY CITY, ALMOST, MAINE (Next Act, Intimacy and Fight Director); FAT HAM (Goodman, Intimacy and Fight Director); A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE (Shattered Globe Theatre, Intimacy and Fight Director). Training: Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, Society of American Fight Directors, Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), Pig Iron Advanced Performer Training, Illinois State University (BA, Acting and Directing with Exceptional Merit in the Arts).

  • Lauren Littlejohn (she/her)

    STAGE MANAGER

    Lauren Littlejohn is an actor, stage manager, director, and lover of movement. Originally from Detroit, Michigan, she is proud to call Chicago her artistic home. Lauren is thrilled to share stories that awaken her need for collective support through artistry.

  • Nelson A. Rodriguez (he/him)

    TRAVELER

    Nelson A. Rodriguez is a two-time Jeff Award nominee whose credits include Steppenwolf, Lookingglass, Oak Park Festival, Raven, Visión Latino, Subtext Studio and many more. On-camera credits include the feature films En Algun Lugar and Soul Sessions. Mr. Rodriguez is represented by Grossman & Jack Talent. @nelstar_rodriguez

  • Felipe Carrasco (he/him)

    DOCTOR

    Felipe Carrasco is a Chicago-based theatre maker. He has acted with theatres including, not limited to: A Red Orchid Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Teatro Vista, Lookingglass Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Indianapolis Repertory Theatre, St Louis Rep, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, Dallas Theatre Company, National Theatre of Scotland. Co-founder of DaughterBoy Collective with Camilla Frontain.

  • Clara Byczkowski (she/they)

    MOTHER

    Clara Byczkowski is a Chicago kid with roots in Brazil. Credits include Chicago Cop Macbeth (The Conspirators), Duchess of Malfi (BWBTC), I Build Giants and more with The Plagiarists, Idle Muse, Theatre Y, and other storefront companies. A UIUC BFA graduate, they are an Arts Administrator at OPEN Center for the Arts. “bread for all, and roses too.”

  • Carlos Andrés Mai (he/they)

    LOVER

    Carlos Andrés Mai is delighted to work on stateless! Previous credits include The Unseen (Tin Drum Theatre Company), The Duchess of Malfi (BWBTC), The Winter’s Tale (Oak Park Festival Theatre), and Desire in a Tinier House (Pride Films and Plays). Carlos is represented by Talent X Alexander. Instagram handle: @oops.mai.bad

  • Jennifer Ledesma (she/her)

    STAGE DIRECTIONS

    Jennifer Ledesma is a multi-disciplinary artist currently based in Chicago. Favorite theatre credits: American Mariachi (TheatreSquared), The Marvelous Wonderettes (Oil Lamp Theatre), Shrek (Drury Lane), Spongebob the Musical (Kokandy Productions), and West Side Story (Morris PAC). Originally from California, Jennifer has a Bachelor of Arts in Musical Theatre from Columbia College Chicago. Represented by Big Mouth. Talent. www.jennifer-ledesma.com

Playwright’s Notes

Every Monday evening at the University of Iowa, there’s a course that takes place in the acting studio of the theatre building. There are chairs, music stands, actors, maybe a director or two, the entire playwriting cohort, and the workshop instructors.

Playwrights Workshop. The flagship course where all the graduate student playwrights gather to listen to a colleague’s new work, then subsequently move to a seminar room where everyone wrestles with what they’ve seen for an hour or more.

And this Monday night in December, it’s my pages on the stage.

I’ve brought pão de queijo – Brazilian cheese bread – as an offering to the audience, or perhaps a bribe for what they are about to witness. What is on tonight’s menu is another weird, undercooked play I’ve baked for them: Several characters debating the Brazilian identity of the playwright who’s written this play they’re all in.

The details aren’t important. What is important is afterward when we gather again in the seminar room. There’s the applause for actually writing a thing. There’s contextual questions asked of the playwright. And then: Insights. Curiosities. Glistens.

But tonight, there’s silence.

And then, one. By one. By one and one. And maybe two to one, the voices come.

For the next hour, I’m pelted with questions not about my play, but about me: My identity as both American and Brazilian. My masculinity. My hypocrisy. For the next hour, the playwrights wonder if they care about him. For the next hour, they wonder if he exists at all. And finally, the professor looks at me and says: “I’m sorry, I just don’t understand.”

And then I wake up.

 I’ll wake up from this dream again, and once more. Three nights of the same dream in the room is the Universe’s code for: Start writing.

********

First-generation American, long-removed Brazilian, lapsed Christian, gifted kid, millennial gay man, theatre artist – and there’s more Brazilian and American than I can and can’t speak of, but always still: Not quite right. What’s left of me after all this? Or forget about me, think of the children: What continues with others like me? Or maybe it’s just me?

Over the past year, I’ve been exploring those questions in the context of how I fit into my own cultural identity. And whether you’re Brazilian, American, Mexican, Caribbean – I’m going to tell you that this isn’t your usual story about Brazilians, or even Latine folks in the United States. Maybe it’s something you’ll recognize. Maybe it’s something you’ll rebuke.

It’s sometimes hard to know what the Brazilian-American diaspora is since our language is often mistaken for Spanish. Time was, you would have to go to Boston, Newark, or West Palm Beach and even in those places, you would think we weren’t all that different from your standard American fare – just with a stronger accent you couldn’t place. Time now? We’re more than you think. We live in Miami, New York, Iowa, Chicago - we are in more places than you think. In Miami, there will be Brazilian immigrant families throwing birthday parties in apartment building basements. There are networks of pamoinha vendors about the Atlanta area. You can take a samba class in Iowa City or see a Brazilian film festival in Chicago.

My ears still perk up when I hear Portuguese and I’ll say, “I hear the song of my people.”

And yet, I will be the most scared about speaking it to anyone.

Some of us hold our places in Brasil and the United States harder than others.

********

I wish I could tell you everyone’s stories but sadly, I am only one writer. And sadly still, I’m still figuring out my own diaspora between the two countries. And saddest of all: In this current timeline of the American experience, there’s not much time to figure it out.

You see: Now more than ever, even the playwright must wrestle with his own existence.

Special Thanks

DCASE, The Edge Theater, Bramble Arts Loft, Michael Nies, Ricky Smith, The University of Chicago Writing Program, Daphnie Sicre, Michael Mallory, Coluna Illinois, CLATA, Matt Harris, Gaga, Camilla Chapman, the Wacky Ancestors

stateless is partially supported by an Individual Artists Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. For more information about the department as well as programs and upcoming events, please click this link to the DCASE website.