Freedom Train Play Development Workshop Facilitators

Along with featuring each resident playwright's work at our Fire! stage reading series, Freedom Train offers a play development workshop for our writers to get feedback on their latest pages. In 2007, Freedom Train brought on two professional playwrights to facilitate the workshop series: Zina Camblin and Djola Branner. They come to the Train with a great deal of experience and a whole lot of heart for Black playwriting spaces.


Zina Camblin (Play Development Workshop Facilitator) recently completed a residency at The Juilliard School under Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang, as a part of the Juilliard Playwriting Fellowship. While at Juilliard, she has received the Lecomte du Nouy Prize for playwriting. Her play, And Her Hair Went With Her, was selected as part of Lincoln Centers Directors Lab play reading series and enjoyed a successful reading as a part of the Lab. In addition, And Her Hair Went With Her enjoyed successful readings at The Culture Project, the Tribeca Theater Festival, and most recently as part of New Jersey Repertory Theater's Script in Hand Series. The play will have it's regional premier at the Phoenix Theater in Indianapolis in April 07' Past productions and workshops of her other work include: Memoirs to Live/ Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Bedroom Stories/ Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts, in San Francisco, and Life's a Drag/ UC San Diego. As a consultant for NYU's Creative Arts Team, she helped to create several interactive theatre scripts for young audiences. As an assistant writer, she contributed to The Jonestown Project, a commission by Berkeley Repertory Theater. Zina is a native of Cincinnati and received her MFA in Acting from UC San Diego where she was also a recipient of a San Diego Playbill Award. As an African American playwright she is committed to creating unique and strongvoices for women of color.


Djola Branner (Play Development Workshop Facilitator) is an interdisciplinary theater artist who combines movement, sound and light to create compelling portraits of American life for the stage. Cofounder of the critically acclaimed Pomo Afro Homos, he toured nationally and internationally with their shows Fierce Love: Stories from Black Gay Life and Dark Fruit. His one-act plays include Cover (Sam French Festival), The House that Crack Built (New School for Drama), Oranges & Honey (New School for Drama), and Sweet Sadie (Dixon Place), Out (North Theater), Josie's Cabaret and Patrick's Cabaret, his full-lengths: Mighty Real A Tribute to Sylvester (Queer Arts Festival), National Black Theater Festival, Boston Center for the Arts, Intermedia Arts, Queen Nanny, Queen Nanny In the Heart of the Beast (Puppet Theater), and Where I'm At (Southern Theater). He has received numerous grants and awards for his work including the prestigious Bush Fellowship for Performance Art, and contributed to several journals and anthologies including Voices Rising: Celebrating 20 Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Writing, Colored Contradictions and Staging Gay Lives. A graduate of The New School for Drama where he earned an MFA in playwriting, Djola teaches playwriting and performance throughout the United States.

UPDATE: As of Summer 2007, Djola has joined Hampshire College's Theatre faculty. The train wishes him the best!