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Graphics created by 16 year old Yaceline, NYC Mayor Adam's Student Summer
Youth Employee Program (SYEP)
The Production Team
Writer, Producer, Director & Lyricist
Dietra Kelsey is host and producer of Sistah Talk TV Show, a talk variety show which features African American Women discussing politics, hot topics, Showcasing entertainment and events in our community. She wrote, Produced and performed a one woman show ZORA SPEAKS about the life of the Writer and Anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston. Also, PASSAGE about the civil rights movement. Her writing was showcased for the event LETTERS TO OUR DAUGHTERS produced by Billie Holiday Theatre, and Frank Silvera Workshops curated by playwright and MacArthur Fellow Dominique Morriseau (writer of the Broadway show – Ain’t too Proud to Beg) in New York and Los Angeles in March 2019. She moderated a segment of The Frederick Douglass Continuum 2019: Echoes of Our Ancestors produced by Tammie Tyree. Kelsey recently completed a short thriller film, called SENSELESS that was accepted into the Queens Underground Film Festival in 2021.
She is delighted to premiere her staged gospel musical "WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?" about gang and gun violence at Goddard Riverside Bernie Wohl Center.
Former producer at the National Black Theater and Producer of TAKE WING AND SOAR PRODUCTIONS, both located in Harlem, New York. Freelance Producer at the Negro Ensemble Company and also The New Federal Theater as a Producer and a Board member. MFA in film. Jeffries is a mother of three. She loves to travel, go to museums and an avid theater goer.
Music Composer & Arranger
Steve Wallace is an award-winning singer and composer from Chicago IL. He is a member of TNNY Writer’s Lab and the winner of “The Harrington Award” for creativity as a composer with BMI’s Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop. His professional expertise incorporates a plethora of genres and styles from Soul, Hip Hop, Blues, Gospel and Classical and in the span of his career, Mr. Wallace has produced, performed and written on hundreds of albums. He has, and continues to compose scores for television and film including networks such as MTV, BET, NBC, not to mention the theme song for the return of the iconic YO! MTV Raps in 2022 as well as his score for the film Four Seasons which won the award for “Best Film Score” at the 2021 Diversity at Cannes film showcase. Steve also created an arrangement of Lift Every Voice and Sing for the NAACP, worked with Sony Music, The Universal Music Group, and he was the producer, composer and arranger for the song for the theme of the United Nations’s “Humanitarian Day” Be A Humanitarian that was also in the running for Grammy Award nominations. Mr. Wallace premiered his chamber opera based on a song by the rapper, Nas called Undying Love at the Kehrein Center in Chicago to great acclaim and the music from the opera was highlighted on Classical WFMT and the Chicago Tribune.
Steve Wallace has written a book of 14 art songs, 2 symphonies, 4 operas, a variety of chamber works and 4 musicals, of which the animated musical Humpty’s Hatching Day was a REMI award winner at The WorldFest Houston Film Festival. The groundbreaking R&B Opera/film musical Hal King that Mr. Wallace created, composed, and produced was a nominee for “Best Diaspora Feature” at the African Movie Academy Awards 2021 in Lagos Nigeria.
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Musical Director
Omar Jelani Noel (Jelani Dream) is a pianist, composer, and creative writer. He has been a music director for Amas Musical Theater, the Kwanzaa Film Festival, and Mickey’s Uncut Hits at the Laurie Beechman Theater. Jelani has also performed as a piano accompanist at the Consulate for the Czech Republic in New York City and the Shrine Club in Harlem. His credits also include La Mama Theatre, Lehman Stages, LIU Brooklyn Media Arts, and The Theater for the New City.
Jelani currently freelances as a musician and composer. He writes screenplays, stage plays, and works in education.
