Jake-ann Jones is an award-winning writer, director, performer, and producer. Prior to writing and producing for film and television, Jones garnered acclaim for her work in the theatre as a playwright, including scripting Portrait of the Artist as a Soul Man Dead (Penumbra Theater, St. Paul), Under Frank Observation (New York Theater Workshop), Magic Kingdom (New Georges/Hourglass Theater Company), and Black Bitches Brew (Company One, Aaron Davis Hall). Her play, Death of a Ho was published by Theater Communications Group (TCG) in their anthology, PLAYS FROM THE BOOM BOX GALAXY. She co-wrote the Urban World/HBO Film Festival’s Grand Prize-winning screenplay SPOOK CITY with Gabriel Tolliver and was a writer/producer on his Creative Mothership series MONDO BLACK, produced by BlackPublic Media. Recently her play, The Way I want to be Remembered, about Eleanor Bumpurs and Deborah Danner, two Black women over the age of 60 who died at the hands of police in New York City, was part of the SAY THEIR NAME festival produced by HonorRoll! and ReproFreedom Arts.
She has also performed extensively onstage and in front of the camera, including in the lead role of Bridgett Davis’ award-winning independent feature Naked Acts, and in Christiana Kiang Booth’s Norma’s Lament.
Jones received an MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University, and a BFA in Theatre from CCNY. She has taught at City University of New York, the College of New Rochelle, and The Writer’s Voice at the 92nd Street Y in NYC.
She is the author of the biography Sometimes Farmgirls Become Revolutionaries: Notes on Black Power, Black Politics, Depression, and the FBI, on Civil Rights activist, journalist, and press secretary Florence L. Tate, published by Black Classic Press, and her afro/time/space/dimensional ode Rainbow(eyes) is featured in photographer Gerald Jenkins’ photonovel It’s After The End Of The World.
She is the 2022 Artist Laureate and Creative Pinellas, board member of the St. Pete-based nonprofit Barbershop Book Club, and writes for The Weekly Challenger Newspaper in St. Petersburg, FL. Visit jakeannjones.com for more.
Gabriel Allan Tolliver is writer/producer/director across media platforms. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and Long Island University’s TV Writing and Producing Program. He has a BFA in Film/TV Production and a Masters of Professional Studies in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Gabriel is also a decorated US Army Veteran who served as a video journalist (46R) from 2007-2011 which included deployment to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (09-10). Gabriel’s range of interests and expertise have led to a diverse portfolio. He also co-wrote and directed, “FLEECING LED ZEPPELIN”, a short crime caper film based on true events involving one of Rock’s greatest unsolved heists. The film has been added to the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame’s media archives and screened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Harlem International Film Festival. He co-authored the definitive pop culture book on trendy, ostentatious jewelry called BLING: THE HIP-HOP JEWELRY BOOK by Bloomsbury Press and wrote and co-produced MONDO BLACK, an artful 8 part documentary web series for PBS affiliate; Black Public Media. He directed behind the scenes and wrote show copy for the YO! MTV RAPS 30th Anniversary Experience at Barclays Center, Brooklyn, NY in June 2018. Gabriel was also a 2018-2019 Writers Guild Foundation fellow in their Veterans Writers Workshop. Gabriel is also a freelance producer for Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts’ digital series; ## ThriverThursday for which he received a 2019 Telly Award.
Stephanie L Jones & Suzanne Y Jones are twin sisters who create and produce content for TV, digital media, music and stage. For Universal Kids network, they consulted on their brand re-launch and created three original pre-school music series concepts. They developed series pitches for Disney Interactive Studios, Sesame Workshop/HBO, Thirteen/WNET and Out of the Blue Enterprises.
As producers for film and television, Stephanie has worked on production teams for director Spike Lee, kids’ network Nickelodeon (where she received a Daytime Emmy nomination), and on the development team at Happy Owl Media creating original documentaries and docuseries for air on DiscoveryScience and OWN networks. For the digital TV network BRIC TV, she co-created and produced “Brooklyn Love with Jiji Jones.”
Suzanne was a producer on FXX Network’s critically acclaimed comedy series “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.” As a producer at People Magazine TV, she wrote an animated segment for Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan produced in collaboration with Warner Bros. Classic Animation. At Nuvo TV (now Fuse Media) as part of the Development team, she co-developed comedy and docu-series. Suzanne was a staff writer and voice actor for No Evil Animation, and has done national commercial voiceovers as a voice artist represented by ICM agency.
The Jones Twins’ original performance work is archived through The New Museum of Contemporary Art on archive.org. As a performance duo, their original musical, The Jones Twins Do Bebop Muzak, was presented by Smithsonian’s Center for African-American History & Culture, Aaron Davis Hall, Franklin Furnace (Emerging Artist Award), CreativeTime, LA’s Largo, Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point Center, and Hartford’s RealArtWays. They presented work at Central Park Summerstage’s John Cage tribute and for George C. Wolfe at The Public Theatre. As Voice & Vision Theatre Artists-in-Residence at Bard College, they developed Superstarlet Shero Show (and at Dixon Place’s Festival of New Musicals). With composer Janice Lowe, Stephanie wrote the musical Lil Budda, developed at the Eugene O’Neill National Music Theatre Conference and National Alliance for Musical Theatre. Also with Lowe, the Jones Twins created Barbicide, presented at the Ohio Theatre. The Jones Twins created vocals for System Noise screened at Slamdance Film Festival and named NY Independent Film Festival’s Best Experimental Film. They wrote songs for legendary music producer Malcolm McLaren.
Stephanie is a graduate of Howard University School of Communications and NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing M.F.A. Program.
Suzanne has a B.A., with Honors, in Screenwriting and Film from The New School, and an M.F.A. in Writing and Producing from the Steiner Studios-sponsored The TV Writers Studio through LIU-Brooklyn.
Darius James — aka Dr. Snakeskin — is an author, filmmaker, and performance artist. He is the author of four books: Froggie Chocolate’s Christmas Eve, Voodoo Stew; his book That’s Blaxploitation: Roots of the Baadasssss ‘Tude, is an unorthodox, semi-autobiographical history of the blaxploitation film genre, and Negrophobia: An Urban Parable, is a satirical novel written in screenplay form. His writing has appeared in publications including The Village Voice, Vibe, Esquire, The New York Times, High Times, Art Forum, and Spin; he wrote liner notes for Richard Pryor’s albums Are You Serious? and The Wizard of Comedy. He is the co-writer and narrator of the 2012 film The United States of Hoodoo and co-author of the soon-to-be-released film Sammy-Gate, “a psychedelic trip into the 1970s polyester heart of darkness” and an ‘intrigue’ that puts Sammy Davis Jr. in the middle of a CIA-sponsored plot.
Darius has lived and worked in New York City for twenty-two years. In 1998, he
moved to Berlin, Germany, and worked as a free-lance journalist, radio host, theater director, and creative writing coach. He now lives in Connecticut.
IN MEMORIUM — WE LOVE YOU, LEWIS, ALWAYS…
Lewis Erskine (March 1, 1957 – June 2, 2021) a born and bred New Yorker, attended Pitzer College and held a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from New York University, College of Arts and Sciences.
Listening to music on 1970’s Black radio stations and watching The Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre honed his ear and his eye. His first job was mixing sound for clubs, concerts and records (yes, vinyl records). Lewis began working in television on Evening Magazine at WJZ, then went on to Maryland Public Television PBS, NBC, The Disney Channel, Arts & Entertainment Television, and the BBC.
For him, being paid to edit was like getting a ticket to editing camp. He worked with Walter Cronkite, Michael Moore, Ken Burns, Shola Lynch, Bill Moyers, and Stanley Nelson. Favorite projects include The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, The Cronkite Report, TV Nation, Faith and Reason, Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords and Freedom Riders. Lewis won an Emmy (2011) and an ACE Eddie (2012) for his work on Freedom Riders. He has won acclaim for — and was recently interviewed in Variety regarding — his most recent project, the 2020 PBS Masters documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool.
Lewis has a beautiful son, prefers poetry to prose, and no longer has a boat payment, but sails when time, weather, and the kindness of sailors permit.
He is known for his work on Freedom Riders (2010), Unscrewed (2003) and The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords (1999).