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.
Company Members
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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. The two companies merged in 2018. Raja has been awarded 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), New York Dance Performance "Bessie" Award, and, twice, the Princess Grace Award (2017, 2018). His fellowships and residencies include a Bessie Schonberg Fellowship at The Yard, a DanceWEB Scholarship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, a HERE Arts Fellowship, a Creator-in-Residence at Kickstarter, and a Choreography Fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. He was born in Fort Hood, Texas and holds a BA in Dance and English from Connecticut College.
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 and Soho Rep: The Sandbox, Drowning, Funnyhouse of a Negro, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Everybody and FAIRVIEW, under the directorship of Lila Neugebauer, Lileana Blain-Cruz and Sarah Benson. Other theatre credits include choreography for 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). Upcoming Choreography includes The Good Swimmer (BAM), The Chronicles of Cardigan and Khente (Soho Rep), Hurricane Diane (New York Theatre Workshop), If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (Playwrights Horizons), 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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SAMANTHA LEVITT (Literary Manager) is a dramaturg, actor, and producer. This is Sam's second turn as Literary Manager after serving as the company's Artistic Director from 2015 to 2018. Samantha grew up and trained in the theatre, studying in a variety of manners including training in two conservatory programs: the Experimental Theatre Wing at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and the two-year Meisner program with Terry Knickerbocker at the William Esper Studio. She has worked at organizations including The Public Theater, The Cherry Lane, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, The Ontological-Hysteric, The Lark Play Development Center, New Dramatists, McCarter Theatre, The Irondale Ensemble Project, The Riant Theatre, the Times Square Arts Center, Ars Nova, The Wild Project, and Theatre Row. She has worked as a freelance dramaturg, developmental consultant, and producer in NYC for over a decade, and has performed in local, national, and international productions on stage and screen. She is a member of LMDA (Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America), AGMA, and AAHA (American Animal Hospital Association) for which she volunteers her time when she's not working.
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Board of Directors
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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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JENNIFER ANNA PAZDON, PE, is a consulting structural engineer based in NYC with ten years of experience in new construction and renovations. Her featured projects in New York include the West 57th Pyramid with BIG, New Whitney Museum of American Art, One Jackson Apartments, numerous office, retail and townhouse renovations, and new private residences. She contributed to the design and led the BIM development for Frank Gehry's New World Symphony concert hall in Miami. In 2009 she led a group of Princeton undergraduates in the design and construction administration of a school library in the largest and fastest-growing slum in Ghana outside of Accra. She is currently working with Build Change to providing home owners and builders in Indonesia with engineered designs and construction training for disaster-resilient construction. Jennifer received her BS in civil engineering with a minor in architecture from Carnegie Mellon University and her MSE in structures from Princeton University. She is an active member of the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY) and served as Programs Chair from 2006 to 2011. She is a contributing author to the book Sustainability Guidelines for the Structural Engineer and has been published in various periodicals including The Structural Engineer, Structure Magazine, and the SEAoNY quarterly newsletter, CrossSections.