OTV Fellows 2020!

The OTV FELLOWS program identifies and supports promising talent within the OTV community to support the development of a new project. Designed for emerging writers and directors, the Fellows program trains talented artists in the fundamentals of project and career development, preparing them to launch careers in the industry.

Thank you to Pop Culture Collaborative for funding this groundbreaking program!

MEET THE FELLOWS

KRISTIANA RAE COLÓN

KRISTIANA RAE COLÓN (suspension) is a poet, playwright, actor, educator, Cave Canem Fellow, creator of #BlackSexMatters, co-director of the #LetUsBreathe Collective, and inaugural Burrell Fellow in Playwriting at Columbia College. Her play Tilikum was nominated for seven 2019 non-equity Joseph Jefferson Awards, and won three, including Best New Play. In 2017, she was awarded Best Black Playwright by The Black Mall.

Past works include good friday (The Flea Theater NYC - 2019, Oracle Productions - 2016), Octagon (world premiere Arcola Theatre, London, 2015; American premiere Jackalope Theatre, 2016), but i cd only whisper (world premiere Arcola Theatre, London, 2012; American premiere The Flea, New York, 2016).

In 2013, she toured the UK for two months with her collection of poems promised instruments, winner of the inaugural Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize and published by Northwestern University Press.

Kristiana is an alum of the Goodman Theatre's Playwrights Unit where she developed her play florissant & canfield, which debuted at University of Illinois-Chicago in February 2018. Her play Tilikum opened in June 2018 with Sideshow Theater and was the winner of Outstanding New Play at the ALTA Awards. 

She is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and one half of the brother/sister hip-hop duo April Fools. She appeared on the fifth season of HBO's Def Poetry Jam. Kristiana’s writing, producing, and organizing work to radically reimagine power structures, our complicity in them, and visions for liberation.

Kristiana’s current work explores Afrofuturist drama as a catalyst for social change. A foundational premise of her organizing is that artists are the vanguard of revolution, that it is the social duty of creatives to envision, imagine, rehearse, design, and embody our liberated future; we cannot achieve alternatives to the existing harmful, violent systems and institutions if we can’t first imagine them. Liberation is a curatorial act, a creative act; revolution is inherently speculative in nature. Through science fiction, Afrofuturism, and speculative media, we create opportunities to rehearse the future together.

TERRENCE THOMPSON

TERRENCE THOMPSON is a filmmaker and educator, raised on the Southside of Chicago. He credits his family’s home video camera and a digital media after-school program for nurturing his creative spirit at an early age. A passionate advocate for civil and human rights, Terrence hopes to create work that embodies intersectional ideology through the decolonization of Blackness. His latest project, "Drive Slow" (produced by Free Spirit Media, Endangered Peace Productions and Runaway Train Productions) was an official pilot selection at the 2017 New York Television Festival, won best Student Film at the 2017 Gary International Film Festival, and was also nominated for Best Screenplay at the 2017 Midwest Independent Film Awards, and in 2019 he was a finalist in the “WeScreenplay Diverse Voices” writing competition. In addition to co-running Endangered Peace (a local video production company), he is currently freelancing as a Script Supervisor and Production Assistant on features, web series, commercials and television shows across Chicago.

"That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love"

- Rose "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"

GRACE PHUONG THAO TRAN

GRACE PHUONG THAO TRAN is a queer, Vietnamese American writer, artist, and organizer from Chicago, Illinois. She received her B.A. in English, with a focus in contemporary poetry, from Macalester College in 2006 and worked with communities of color in Chicago nonprofit organizations for nine years. In 2007, she co-founded and co-organized the Chicago Youth Community Film Project with Community TV Network and Alternative Schools Network. In 2011, she co-founded and co-organized the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo, now in its ninth year. In 2015, she narrated the audio guide for the Vietnam Women’s Museum in Hanoi and co-founded and organized the Hanoi Artists Book and Zine Project. Between 2009 and 2017, she self-published the comics zine Day trips. After living in Vietnam for three years, Grace returned to Chicago in 2018, where she completed her Master Naturalist certification with the Forest Preserves of Cook County. Currently, she studies oil painting and writes for the screen. 

AQUARIUS ESTER

AQUARIUS ESTER is an experimental/Afro-Surreal artist from Chicago’s Roseland neighborhood. Her preferred mediums are writing, film and freestyle dance. Often communicating with her higher self through movement and self-reflection, she processes elements of the surreal and mundane then places them onto a familiar Chicago landscape, lending mental and spiritual acuity to each piece. Aquarius uses art as a means of trauma recovery and enjoys spending her time studying sidereal astrology and it’s correlation to modern psychology. Her most recent works include vocals/movement/lyrics with the Afro-Surrealist collective, Zo//Ra, movement/vocals with the Participatory Music Coalition, as well as solo works in support of Angel Bat Dawid, Honey Pot Performance, and other Chicago based artists. She worked as a special effects make-up artist on the set of Searching For Isabelle, Bring the Beat Back, FCK Yes, and more. Her experimental dance film, "Ambivert" can be viewed on OTV’s website.