About Us
New Brooklyn Theatre aims to democratize the American theatre, to broaden the space for unheard voices and repressed histories, to bring into the theatre those sometimes left out, and to use theatre to provoke much-needed public conversations. Our company is committed to addressing pressing social issues, often in site-specific spaces where we bring theatre directly to the communities it serves.
We are committed to producing challenging work of the highest caliber at little to no expense to our audiences, both at home and in the world. We seek to own and operate a permanent home for the arts in order to achieve these missions and ensure their lasting impact.
We are committed to producing challenging work of the highest caliber at little to no expense to our audiences, both at home and in the world. We seek to own and operate a permanent home for the arts in order to achieve these missions and ensure their lasting impact.
Board of Directors
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Choreographer/Director RAJA FEATHER KELLY is the artistic director of New Brooklyn Theatre. In 2009, he founded the dance-theatre-media company the feath3r theory, which merged with New Brooklyn Theatre in 2018. Raja has been awarded a Creative Capital Award (2019), a Breakout Award from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (2018), Dance Magazine's inaugural Harkness Promise Award (2018), the Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography (2016), and, twice, the Princess Grace Award (2017, 2018). He was born in Fort Hood, Texas and holds a B.A. in Dance and English from Connecticut College.
Raja has been named as the 2019-20 Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts. Raja has also been awarded a New York Dance Performance "Bessie" Award, a Bessie Schonberg Fellowship at The Yard, a DanceWEB Scholarship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, a HERE Arts Fellowship, 2018 Creator-in-Residence at Kickstarter, and a Choreography Fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Over the past decade he has created thirteen evening-length premieres and six short-format works. Professionally, Raja has performed with Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group, Keely Garfield, Kota Yamazaki, David Dorfman Dance, Kyle Abraham|Abraham.In.Motion, Christopher Williams Dance, and zoe | juniper. He has also managed a number of dance companies: Race Dance, Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion, zoe | juniper, and Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group. Since 2016, Raja has choreographed extensively for Off-Broadway theatre in New York City, most notably for Signature Theatre, Soho Rep, and New York Theatre Workshop: The Sandbox, Drowning, Funnyhouse of a Negro, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Everybody, FAIRVIEW, under the directorship of Lila Neugebauer, Lileana Blain-Cruz, and Sarah Benson. Other theatre credits include choreography for Skittles Commercial: The Musical (Town Hall), The Chronicles of Cardigan and Khente (SohoRep), Everyday Afroplay (JACK), GURLS (Princeton University), Electric Lucifer (The Kitchen), Lempicka (Williamstown Theatre Festival), The House That Will Not Stand (New York Theatre Workshop), Fireflies (Atlantic Theatre Company), Hurricane Diane (New York Theatre Workshop), and If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (Playwrights Horizons). Upcoming choreography includes The Good Swimmer (BAM), Faust (Opera Omaha), and A Strange Loop (Playwrights Horizons). |
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RACHEL PRITZLAFF (Executive Director) is a performer, educator, and arts administrator. She began her career with Raja Feather Kelly and the feath3r theory as a performer and company manager in 2013 before being named the Executive Director of New Brooklyn Theatre in 2018. Rachel holds a BA with honors in Gender and Women’s Studies and Dance from Connecticut College. In 2016, Rachel founded Rivertown Dance Academy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which she currently serves as Founding Executive Director. Built upon the belief that arts education should be accessible to all, Rivertown Dance Academy provides need-based financial aid to a quarter of its students. As a performer with the feath3r theory, Rachel has originated roles in each of the company’s evening-length works since 2013.
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.JEFF STRABONE (Chairman of the Board) is a co-founder of New Brooklyn Theatre. He holds a BA from Dartmouth, an MA from Northwestern, and an MA, MPhil, and PhD from New York University. Currently Associate Professor of English at Connecticut College where he teaches British and African literatures, he has also taught at New York University, CUNY Lehman, and the University of South Florida, and been a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. As a civic leader in Brooklyn, he has served as president of the Cobble Hill Association and vice-chairman of Community Board 6. He wrote the original adaptation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People that the company performed in its site-specific production of the play in Charleston, West Virginia. His book Poetry and British Nationalisms in the Bardic Eighteenth Century: Imagined Antiquities was published in 2018 by Palgrave Macmillan.
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