Our 2024 Reading Series
THE PERFECT WAY TO REOPEN
When we decided to reopen our doors, we knew the best way to do so was to welcome as many new artists into the Checkmark fold as possible. That’s why we’ll be producing a reading series in the fall of 2024 of three new plays by La Daniella, Francisca da Silveira, and Nkenna Akunna.
Each piece will be provided with 29 hours of rehearsal culminating in a public, industry presentation, and every artist involved will be paid the New York City Living Wage of $26/hour.
Support the reading series by donating here!
The Writers
Nkenna Akunna (she/they) is an Igbo playwright, performer and lecturer from London whose work primarily explores friendship, time, labour, and power. Her debut play cheeky little brown recently opened at Bristol Old Vic to critical acclaim. She is a member of the 2022/23 Soho Repertory Theater Writer Director Lab, where her play Woo Woo Child was presented in September; 2023/24 Ars Nova Play Group, and a recipient of a 2022 MTC Sloan commission. She is winner of the 2021 Papatango Playwriting Prize, and the Rosa Parks Playwriting award and Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting award from the Kennedy Center. She was a 2021 Playwriting Fellow at Sewanee Writers’ Conference, 2022/23 Dramatist Guild Fellow finalist, 2023 Hedgebrook Writer-in-Residence, and a 2023 MacDowell Fellow. Her BA in Economics and African Diaspora Studies is from Dartmouth College and MFA in Playwriting from Brown University, where she was recipient of the Lucille Lortel Playwriting Fellowship. Akunna is also Editor at Large at Skin Deep Media, a collective that makes space for Black creatives and creatives of colour through cultural production. nkennaakunna.com
La DANIELLA (she/her) is a performer, playwright, story consultant and model falling back in love with herself. A native of Bushwick, Brooklyn, her work is focused on New York City’s history, environmentalism, generational trauma, science fiction, surrealism/absurdism and genre-blended epics with large ensembles that center queer Black/Latine women and femmes.
As a playwright, her work has been supported by The Public Theater, Bushwick Starr, New York Theater Workshop, The New Group Offstage, Barrington Stage Company and San Diego Repertory Theater. Her play Get Your Pink Hands Off Me Sucka and Give Me Back (FKA Columbus Play) won the 2020 Burman New Play Award and was a finalist for the 2022 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She's a member of The Public Theater’s 2018-19 Emerging Writers Group, a staff writer on the upcoming narrative podcast FLIPPED! (produced by echoverse and Neal Baer) and acts as a story consultant on the upcoming one-man show, The Illio Snow Story (written and performed by rapper Civil). As an actress, she is best known for her role as Zirconia on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black.
Currently, La Daniella is experimenting with puppetry and burlesque while working in retail on the weekends and teaching playwriting at the Harbor School with Big Green Theater/ SuperHero Clubhouse. She is a graduate of Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Drama. https://danielladejesus.com
Francisca da Silveira (she/her) is a Cape Verdean-American playwright and Boston native whose work has been featured in ArtsBoston, The LA Times, The Boston Globe and American Theatre Magazine. Her play CAN I TOUCH IT? was featured in the National New Play Network’s 2020 National Showcase of New Plays and enjoyed a Rolling World Premiere at Company One Theatre (Boston), Rogue Machine Theatre (Los Angeles), and Cleveland Public Theatre (Cleveland) in 2023. Her play PAY NO WORSHIP is a 2023 Finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and received a World Premiere at InterAct Theatre Company (Philadelphia) in April 2023. Her play NOT-FOR-PROFIT (OR THE EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION PLAY) was featured in The Playwrights’ Realm’s INK’D Festival in April 2021 and in La Jolla Playhouse’s DNA New Works Series in July 2021. da silveira was a 2020-2021 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow, a member of The Public Theater’s 2020-2023 Emerging Writers Group, a 2022-2023 Jerome Fellow with the Playwrights’ Center and is currently a member of The Apollo Theater’s 2023 New Works Initiative Cohort. She is working on commissions from the University of Virginia’s Drama Department, the Brooklyn-based theater Colt Coeur, and Grammy Award-winner Christopher Lennertz. In TV land, da silveira was in the writers’ room for HBO's Season 3 of INDUSTRY and is in development with HBO. She holds a BFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MSc in Playwriting from the University of Edinburgh. https://frandasilveira.com/