Creative Team

Dahlak Braithwaite

Writer | Composer

Dahlak is an award-winning dramatic auteur: playwright, composer, performer, director, and filmmaker. His work has been presented at The Smithsonian, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, REDCAT, MCA Chicago, Ars Nova, The Public Theater, The Apollo, SXSW, by Creative Time, and on HBO’s last two seasons of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. Dahlak’s trilogy of works - Spiritrials (solo play),  Try/Step/Trip (musical), Adapting History (documentary film) - take a personal look into the criminal justice system and the relationship between Black American music and Black American subjugation. Development of the work has been supported by CalArts, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Victory Gardens, and Montalvo Arts Center. Dahlak has received awards and support from NEFA, the Doris Duke Foundation, The U.S. State Department, NYU Tisch, and MAP Fund. He was a Creative Capital finalist, a United States Artist nominee, and a member of The Public Theater's 2023 DTWG cohort. He is a graduate of NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, where he was awarded the Dean’s Full-Tuition Fellowship and served as the Assistant Director for the national tour of the Tony-winning revival of Oklahoma!

Khiyon Hursey

Writer | Composer

Khiyon is a writer and composer based in Los Angeles and New York. He was a staff writer for Soundtrack on Netflix and is currently co-writing Love in America, a movie musical to be produced by Issa Rae, and co-penning songs with Oscar Award winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul for a major musical motion picture. He is the recipient of the ASCAP Foundation’s Irving Burgie Scholarship, the Bart Howard Songwriting Scholarship, the Lucille and Jack Yellen award, a 2016 NAMT Writers Grant, a 2016/2017 Dramatists Guild Musical Theater Fellow, 2017 Space on Ryder Farm Residency, 2018 Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project residency, 2019 ASCAP Foundation Musical Theatre Workshop, 2019 Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, the 2020 Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed Musicals and the 2020 Stephen Schwartz Award. His musical Eastbound was selected for the 2020 National Alliance of Musical Theatre Conference and he has works in development at New York Stage and Film and Ars Nova. Hursey got his start as the music assistant on the off-Broadway and Broadway productions, and the Grammy Award-winning cast album of Hamilton. He is a graduate of Berklee College of Music with a degree in Songwriting.

Ken-Matt Martin

Director | Choreographer

Ken-Matt Martin is an award-winning theatre-maker that has worked at many theaters across the country. He started his career as a child actor after appearing on All That on Nickelodeon after becoming a semi-finalist in their search for a new cast member. Martin worked professionally as an actor through his teens & twenties, appearing in numerous commercials, plays and musicals in theatres across the country. He is a co-founder of Pyramid Theatre Company in Des Moines, IA where he served as Executive Director until 2018. Martin’s producing and directing credits in Des Moines have received numerous Cloris Leachman Excellence in Theatre Award nominations, including two awards for Best Play and a Special Honor for Martin in 2016. As a director he has developed new plays at Vineyard Theatre, The Playwrights Center, Primary Stages, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Space at Ryder Farm. Next season, he will direct world premiere plays and musicals at Flint Repertory Theatre, Mosaic Theatre Company, Olney Theatre Center, and The Apollo Theatre in NYC. In 2022 he received a joint commission from Wooly Mammoth Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, American Conservatory Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, St. Louis Repertory Theatre, and True Colors Theatre. Martin has also served in senior leadership positions at Williamstown Theatre Festival (Producing Director), Goodman Theatre (Associate Producer), and Victory Gardens (Artistic Director). He is currently Interim Artistic Director of both Baltimore Center Stage and Arkansas Repertory Theatre and the business manager for Congo Square Theatre. He received two degrees from Drake University and his MFA in Directing from Brown University.

Victor Musoni

Co-Choreographer

Victor Musoni is an actor, writer and dancer based in Chicago. Select theater credits include: Toni Stone (Goodman); The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington, Columbinus (Steppenwolf); What to Send Up When it Goes Down (Congo Square); Queen of the Night (Victory Gardens); America V2.1, are you ready to smash white things?, No Child (Definition Theatre Company); La Havana Madrid (The Den Theater); Television and film: Me, We; The Tensile Strength of Air; 61st Street; WHOLE; Chicago Med and 6×9. Choreography: Alaiyo (Definition); Musoni is an ensemble member of Definition Theatre and is represented by Paonessa Talent Agency.

Simean “Sim” Carpenter is an award-winning, African-American scenic and lighting designer from Baltimore, MD currently based in Brooklyn, NY.

He has worked as a freelance teaching artist, as well as a lighting and set designer and has toured with theater companies and music groups throughout North America.

Sim holds a deep passion for social equality. His goal as a designer is to use his many mediums to captivate the audience and reveal the too often disregarded stories of marginalized groups.

Recent credits include: The Color Purple, Tiny Beautiful Things, The Folks at Home, NDSF Romeo & Juliet, Queen of the Night, When Harry Met Rehab, The Last Pair of Earlies, Hoodoo Love, HELA, Middle Passage, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Native Son. Regional Credits Include: Baltimore Center Stage and Pittsburgh Public Theatre.

Sim holds a B.F.A. in Stage Design from DePaul University and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Scenic Design from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.