Crowded Fire Theater Presents
The Last of the Love Letters:
A Meditation on Loneliness
West Coast Premiere
April 24 - May 3
at Z Below
Hold on? Or leave it behind? Two isolated humans unravel and examine the thing they love the most. With fierce humor, aching poetry, and piercing honesty, theatrical powerhouse Ngozi Anyanwu asks “How does love transform us—and the world—both in its presence and absence?” Offering a plea and a painful goodbye wrapped into one, The Last of the Love Letters gets to the heart of what it is to love and be loved.
CAST
YOU: Farrah Hamzeh
YOU NO. 2: Gabriele Christian
PERSON: hodari blue
CREATIVE TEAM
Director: Nailah Unole dida-Nese'ah Harper-Malveaux
Stage Manager: Taylor Mendez
Scenic & Props Designer: Brendan Yungert
Props & Associate Scenic Designer: Ashley Méndez
Costume Designer: Jasmine Milan Williams
Lighting Designer: Spense Matubang
Sound Designer: Jules Indelicato
Technical Director: Beckett Finn
Lead Electrician: Krys Swan
BIOS
Ngozi Anyanwu (Playwright, she/her) A playwright, storyteller, and a 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award winner. Her play The Last of the Love Letters premiered at the Atlantic Theater fall 2021. Previous productions include Good Grief (Vineyard Theatre in NYC/Center Theatre Group in LA) and The Homecoming Queen (sold-out world premiere run at the Atlantic Theatre). Good Grief was on the Kilroys List 2016 and a semi finalist for the Princess Grace Award, and won the Humanitas Award. The Homecoming Queen was on the Kilroys List 2017 and was a Leah Ryan Finalist. Her play Nike... (Kilroys List 2017) was workshopped at The New Black Fest in conjunction with The Lark and The Strand Festival in conjunction with A.C.T and Space on Ryder Farm. Ngozi also has commissions with NYU, The Old Globe, Two Rivers Theatre, The Atlantic Theatre, and Steppenwolf. Anyanwu has also received residencies from LCT3, Space on Ryder Farm, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, The New Harmony Project, New York Stage and Film, and Page 73. She attended Point Park University (BA) and received her MFA in Acting from University of California, San Diego.
Nailah Unole dida-Nese'ah Harper-Malveaux (Director, she/her) is a queer multiracial theatre director and generative artist focused on transformative new work that creates space for radical community imagination. She facilitates and curates artistic engagements that center and celebrate the beauty, complexity, resilience, healing, and joy of those living in the margins. Directing highlights include: the West Coast premiere of Edit Annie by Mary Glen Fredrick (co-directed with Leigh Rondon-Davis), the world premiere of Getting There by Dipika Guha, The Light by Loy A. Webb, and numerous A.C.T. MFA productions, including Sunset Baby, Belleville, and Next to Normal. She was a member of the inaugural cohort of the Artistic Caucus, a group of 4 freelance artists designed to initiate curatorial disruption and advocate for new artists at Woolly Mammoth, Baltimore Center Stage, the Rep of St. Louis and Long Wharf. She has worked at Center Theatre Group, Woolly Mammoth, Pasadena Playhouse, Williamstown Theater Festival, Berkeley Rep, Baltimore Center Stage, Z Space, and American Conservatory Theater. She received her BA in American Studies and Theatre Studies from Yale University.
Farrah Hamzeh (Actor - YOU, she/they) is a Palestinian creative from Amman, Jordan and is currently based in Los Angeles. She is a transfem and queer organizer, researcher, stripper, baker, actor, singer-songwriter, and dance healer who arrived in the US by way of education and asylum. With a deep love for and commitment to community-based organizing and performance, she’s drawn to professional, personal, and artistic endeavors that center embodied healing and community. She loves ASMR, dancing, and sipping on a homemade iced lavender latte while listening to Fairuzyat.
Gabriele Christian (Actor - YOU NO. 2, they/them) is a San Francisco-based conceptual artist and descendent of stolen folk. Experimenting within somatic practices, language, performance composition, video production and community arts facilitation, they locate and center BlaQ (Black and Queer) experience, vernacular, and aesthetics as wellsprings for radical futurity. They perform original work and collaborate trans- and inter-nationally, most recently Berlin, New York City, Vienna, and Amsterdam. They are a founding member of multiple Bay Area born performance collectives and land projects including: RUPTURE; OYSTERKNIFE; and BlaQyard. They currently serve as Executive Director and Co-Artistic Director of Jess Curtis/Gravity, a body-based arts and accessibility non-profit living on in the wake of Jess Curtis' transition in March 2024. At the heart of all their work: exhaustive research into belonging, spirit, and desirability while living in the fangs of dehumanizing times.
hodari blue (Actor - PERSON, they/them) is a black and indonesian, oceanic, gender expansive multi-medium artist and facilitator who creates to hold, heal, and transform their experiences into new embodied worlds and stories. in doing this work, they intend to make space for others to do the same. hodari believes inner space is home to everything we’ve inherited and everything that is possible; and in order to become the worlds we want, we must learn to explore and work with the celestial earth matter within. you can find them being a teacher/student of liberatory movement and play (karate, freestyle dance, storytelling) at Destiny Arts Center and beyond.
