Starring Zakiya Young
CREATIVE
Playwright
Zakiya Urbi Young
Director
Jacole Kitchen
Dramaturg
Zharia O’Neal
Producer
Laurie Bernhard
Zakiya Urbi Young is an accomplished actress, singer and playwright. In August of 2022, she was honored to participate in the Ojai Playwrights Conference New Works Festival as both playwright and actress as she explored her suburban roots amid Black Lives Matter protests in her autobiographical solo show Suburban Black Girl. Zakiya continued developing Suburban Black Girl in the DNA reading series at Tony award winning regional theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, and is excited to share this important show with audiences across America. Favorite acting credits: TV: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin (MAX), Diarra From Detroit (BET +), Iron Fist (Netflix), Orange is the New Black (Netflix). Broadway: Stick Fly, The Little Mermaid and Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Off Broadway: Storyville (Audelco Award nomination). Tours: Disgraced and Good People. Regional: Familiar, Spamilton and It’s a Bird...It’s a Plane...It’s Superman. Zakiya was the vocalist for LA Philharmonic’s Beverly Hills Songbook series and can be heard as a background vocalist on the album Map of the Soul:7, by pop mega group BTS, as well as on tracks by music icon Dolly Parton, rock singer Gabriella Valdes and opera singer Radmila Lolly. Her voice can also be heard in numerous video games, commercials, audiobooks and animated projects.
Jacole Kitchen (Director) is a wildly passionate arts advocate with a unique array of experience as a director, producer, educator, consultant, casting director, and arts administrator. She is currently the Director of Arts Engagement and In-House Casting at La Jolla Playhouse. Select directing credits include Suburban Black Girl (Zakiya Urbi Young) and Manny and the Wise Queens (Idris Goodwin) - La Jolla Playhouse DNA New Works Series, Jin vs the Beach (Min Khan), Pick Me Last (Idris Goodwin) and Light Years Away (Laura Schellhardt) - La Jolla Playhouse POP Tour, Cardboard Piano (Hansol Jung) - Diversionary Theatre, An Iliad (Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Leary) - New Village Arts, and September and Her Sisters (Jennifer Lane) Scripps Ranch Theatre.
Zharia O’Neal (Dramaturg) (she/her/hers) is a poet, playwright, and dramaturg hailing from the British Virgin Islands. O’Neal is the 2022 Playwright-in-Residence at Sound Theatre, International Artists’ Fellow, and Humanitas Play LA awardee. Her work has been commissioned by UCLA's Diversifying the Classics and Sound Theatre and includes: Roost (O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist), Seven Stage Circle (Ashland New Plays Festival Finalist), poetry collection rottincrop, and more. Selected dramaturgy projects: NAMBAM (Center Theatre Group), Derecho (La Jolla Playhouse), Suburban Black Girl (La Jolla Playhouse DNA New Works, Ojai Playwrights’ Conference), Is God Is (Lobby Theatre), and A Raisin in the Sun (South Coast Repertory). Residencies: Sound Theatre, Headlands Center for the Arts, SPACE at Ryder Farm.
Laurie Bernhard (Producer) is an independent theatrical producer concentrating on daring new plays that provide a lens into the condition of being human. Laurie collaborates with playwrights, directors, dramaturgs, actors and designers to explore new work, to experiment and push boundaries. Her creative producing work includes: The Spanish Prayer Book (The Road Theatre Company), The Shot (Center Stage Theatre, Great Barrington Public Theatre) Suburban Black Girl (Ojai Playwrights Conference, La Jolla Playhouse DNA New Works). Other workshops include Scintilla (The Road Theatre Company), A Place For The Burdens (Industry), Class (John Jay College of Criminal Justice) The Time It Takes For Light to Travel From My Mother (Industry) and several streaming projects during covid. She currently has multiple projects under development in Los Angeles and New York. Laurie is on the boards of Ojai Playwrights Conference and Thunder River Theatre Company. In addition to her theatre work, Laurie produced the award winning independent short film Benny & James.
Thank you to
Tracie Thoms
Janine Lee Papio and Mike McCauslin
of Think Big Picture, LLC
India Duff and Amanda Levie
of BlackLight Community Inc.