Daaimah Mubashshir '15 to Join Bard’s Theater and Performance Program as Playwright in Residence in Fall 2021

By
Angeline Dimambro
June 01, 2021
Daaimah Mubashshir headshot

Award-Winning Playwright and Theatre alumna Daaimah Mubashshir ‘15 will join Bard’s Theater and Performance Program faculty as the Playwright in Residence for Fall 2021.

The Theater and Performance Program at Bard trains well-rounded theater-makers to study the history, theory, and contemporary practice of theater and performance, hone their technical abilities as writers, performers, and directors, and create their own productions and performances under the mentorship of master artists and teachers. 

A playwright and theater-maker, Mubashshir is the artistic director of {EDAP}, which, according to Mubashshir, “produces moving image work, text, and performance to give audiences a kinetic experience of Black bodies freeing themselves from the bondage of our past.” Her work has been commissioned by the Guthrie Theater and 3 Hole Press. She has received numerous awards, including the 2019-2022 Core Writer Fellowship (Playwrights Center, MN), an 2018 Audrey Residency (New Georges), a MacDowell Fellowship, a Catwalk Institute Residency, a Foundation of Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, among many others. 

In September 2020, Mubashshir was named as one of the fifteen artists selected for the 2020-2022 WP Theater Lab. Mubashshir’s two-year residency began in fall of 2020 and will culminate with the biennial WP Pipeline Festival in 2022. As a lab fellow, Mubashshir will be connected to a professional network of fellow playwrights, producers, and directors, have access to entrepreneurial and leadership training, and will have the opportunity to develop, as well as produce, bold new work for the stage. The Pipeline Festival will feature five new plays written by the lab fellows in collaborative teams to showcase their new work. The festival features works at varying stages of production, ranging from staged readings to full-length workshop productions.

Mubashshir’s published works include Molasses and a Blue Coat (Kenyon Review Online, 2019), The Zero Loop (No Tokens Journal, 2019), Come with Me - Solve for X in The Occasional 2, edited by Will Arbery (53rd State Press, 2018), and The Immeasurable Want of Light (MacDowell, 3 Hole Press, 2018). Selected stage plays include Night of Power, Room Enough (MacDowell, Fire This Time Festival, Clubbed Thumb, Pride Plays, Playwrights Center),The Chronicles of Cardigan and Khente, and the musical Emily Black is a Total Gift (New Georges). She has been a guest speaker at such schools as the Yale School of Drama, Williams College, Skidmore College, and Kennesaw State University.