plural (love)
May 5-8 By Haruna Lee & Jen Goma
Directed by Sophiyaa Nayar
Produced by B.J. Evans
With the short film plural (love), Jen Goma and Haruna Lee flirt with the boundaries of desire, power and responsibility, building an environment that feels akin to stepping into a soft BDSM roleplay. Originally inspired by auto-theorists such as Audre Lorde, Maggie Nelson and Roland Barthes, Goma and Lee layer political, cultural, and social theory with their own autobiographical stories, and their own experiences of desire and being desired. Their musings are a pastiche of intricate styles that include pop songs with lyrics by Sartre, femme rituals, live podcast, intimate humor, radical truth-telling, and community engagement.
Jen Goma
(they/them) is a performer and maker of music, video and live shows, and collaboration is a vital part of their process. A member of the bands A Sunny Day in Glasgow and Roman à Clef, Goma also works in partnership with Obie Award winning writer Haruna Lee. Recently the duo brought their iterative performance piece plural (love) to the Soho Rep. Writer/Director Lab and Goma worked as a composer for Haruna Lee’s Suicide Forest directed by Aya Ogawa (Ma-Yi Theater Company, Bushwick Starr). A frequent collaborator with Ziwe, the two create live performances and are currently working on Ziwe’s eponymous television show. Goma’s 2017 album Smiley Face, released under the moniker Showtime Goma, made with Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier and A Sunny Day in Glasgow bandmates, was placed on Rolling Stone’s list of “Albums to Stream Now” and Showtime Goma’s music and videos have appeared on Playboy, NPR and Pitchfork. Goma has toured frequently, opening for acts like of Montreal, in a piece made with Lou Tides (Teeny Lieberson of the band TEEN.) Goma has been featured in recorded and live collaborations with musicians like Jherek Bischoff and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. As a member of People Get Ready, Goma worked with Steven Reker, James Rickman and Luke Fasano to mount shows at The Kitchen and New York Live Arts. P.G.R. have also provided live, original music for Jodi Melnick in the Fall For Dance festival and performed at the Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Festival.
Haruna Lee
(they/them) is a non-binary Taiwanese/Japanese/American theater maker, screenwriter, educator and community steward whose work is rooted in a liberation-based healing practice. Recent plays include Suicide Forest published by 53rd State Press (Ma-Yi Theater Company and The Bushwick Starr), plural (love) (Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab; New Georges), and Memory Retrograde (UTR; Ars Nova; BAX). Lee is a recipient of an Obie Award for Playwriting and Conception of Suicide Forest, the Ollie New Play Award, FCA Grants to Artists Award, the Mohr Visiting Artist Fellowship at Stanford University, a MacDowell Fellowship, the Map Fund Grant, and Lotos Foundation Prize for Directing. They were a member of the 2019 artEquity cohort, and is a co-founder and lead facilitator for the Women-Trans-Femme-Non Binary Asian Diasporic Performance Makers Potluck. They are currently writing for HBO Max’s “The Flight Attendant”, as well as teaching the Brooklyn College M.F.A Playwriting Program. Harunalee.com
Sophiyaa Nayar
(DIRECTOR, she/her) is from New Delhi, India. She is an ensemble member with Definition Theatre, member of Director’s Lab Chicago 2017, and was a resident in Milwaukee Rep’s 2017/18 season. She is part of the SDC Foundation’s Observership Class, through which she worked on Soft Power by Jeanine Tesori and David Henry Hwang at The Public. Recent work includes: Good Years by Ada Alozie (Definition Theatre), Being Julia Roberts by Omer Abbas Salem (Jackalope Theatre), MLK Project by Yolanda Androzzo (Writers Theatre), EthiopianAmerica by Sam Kabede (Definition Theatre) which won BTA Awards for Best Play, Featured Actor and Actress and a Jeff award for Fight Choreography. Most recently she directed Shakuntala by Lavina Jadhwani (Future Labs, Goodman Theatre). Currently, she is workshopping a screenplay with Sundance Collab under Jessica Sharzer. Learn more about her on sophiyaanayar.net
B.J. Evans
(PRODUCER, she/her) is the Senior Producer for Performing Arts at BRIC in Brooklyn where she is the manager of the BRIClab Residency Program and producer for BRIC’s theater and dance programs and short-term and long-term performing arts residencies. She has worked with 80+ artists at BRIC across a spectrum of disciplines; from theater and dance, to poetry, non-fiction and visual art. Her creative producing career spans nearly a decade and includes producing and serving in the artistic departments at The Dallas Theater Center, Working Theater, The Public Theater, Our Town (off-Broadway), and Sleep No More. B.J. is also a freelance dramaturg specializing in participatory, experimental, and devised performance, and holds an M.A. in Applied Theatre.
Katherine Freer
(Editor She/Her) Katherine Freer is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, organizer, and educator. Her artistic practice lives at the intersection of story, technology, and civic engagement. It is rooted in joy, curiosity, mutual learning, and the pursuit of justice for all living beings. She is core collaborator with All My Relations Collective, Projections Design Instructor at University of the Arts (Philadelphia), and a Teaching Artist with Roundabout Education. She is a proud member of Wingspace Theatrical Design and United Scenic Artists Local 829. katherinefreer.com
Deilis Curiel (Production Design)
From her earliest memories, Deilis recalls enjoying anything and everything that involved creating something out of nothing. Stemming from watching her Dominican grandmother sew together outfits for her and cousins, she has always been infatuated with the ability to think up ideas and bring them to life in tangible forms. Her studies of Fashion Merchandising as an undergrad set the way for her career with top fashion brands. After almost a decade in fashion production, she decided to switch gears and pursue her place in the creative world, honing in on her true passion of art, photography, and set design. This led her to work as production assistant under Apple TV, NFL Films, FX, and Showtime. Independently, she has taken on roles as a set decorator, creative director, and production designer for short films, music videos, and short plays of up and coming indie production and well established theater companies such as MCC & WP Theater. Ultimately, this multifaceted artist wants to leave her mark on the industry and set waves in the culture showing the world what an immigrant from Queens is capable of.
Karen Boyer (Costume Design)
is a costume designer based in New York City. She holds a BFA in Fiber and Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and recent collaborators include choreographers Catherine Galasso, nicHi douglas, Sarah Dahnke, and Sunny Hitt; theater makers harunalee, Flux Theatre Ensemble, Object Collection, MetaPhysEd, Target Margin Theater, Little Lord, Pan Asian Repertory; and filmmakers Imelda O’Reilly, Ben Finer and Aaron Schimberg. karenrachelboyer.com.
Lauren La Melle (First Assistant Director)
is a producer and writer based in the Bronx by way of North Carolina. She received her Master’s in Media Studies from Pratt Institute, where she studied the intersections of race, gender, and class in horror films. She has worked on documentary and narrative projects, including Break: The Musical, A Peculiar Silence, and most recently, Artist Unknown, a feature-length action rom-com.
