Our Team

Kelley nicole girod

Executive Director & Founder

Kelley Nicole Girod is the founder and Executive Producing Director of Obie Award winning, The Fire This Time Festival.  She is a 2008 graduate of Columbia's MFA playwriting program where she was a Stein and Liberace Fellow, as well as a John Golden Fellow. Her plays reflect the rich world of her native Louisiana and include Ambrosia, Straight on til Morning, Poetics of the Creative Process, Parabolas, and Watching. She was named Nytheatre.com Person of the Year for her work on TFTT, and is a part of the Indie Theatre Hall of Fame. As a producer her credits include Israela Margalit's Get Me A Guy, and Night Blooming Jasmine (both at Horse Trade Theater); Louisiana Mon Amour (Women Center Stage at Culture Project); Thais Francis's Outcry (Horse Trade Theater, Jack). She is a mother to two beautiful daughters, Penelope Evelyn and Noelle Anamaria.  

Cezar Williams

Artistic director

Cezar Williams is an award-winning director. Recent credits include the Off-Broadway premiere of Dancing on Eggshells (Billie Holiday Theatre), Till: A Musical (American Theater Group), Crowndation: I Will Not Lie to David (National Black Theatre), The Hunting Season (Planet Connections Festivity, Award for Best Direction), You Wouldn’t Expect (American Bard Theater), How To Be Safe (The Dirty Blondes in rep at the Kraine Theater), directing all seven short plays in the 8th Annual (The Fire This Time Festival), Free Will (The Arthur Seelen Theatre), Ghost Town and Tailypo (Detroit NY Festival), Lunchtime in Heaven (48 hours in Harlem), Nightfall and Slow Gin Fits (The Fire This Time Festival 2013 & 2014).  He has worked at venues including The Actor’s Studio, Williamstown Theater Festival, 59 e.59th Street Theater, La Mama, The Cherry Lane, and the Bleeker Street Theater. Cezar is a graduate of New York University where he was the recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship. Cezar Williams is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. For professional inquiries contact him at cezar@cezarwilliams.com.

A.J. MUHAMMAD

Associate Producer & Director of TFTT new works lab

A.J. Muhammad has a background in audience development, arts administration, dramaturgy and library public services. He has dramaturged many productions directed by the educator, activist and director Dr. Daniel Banks in New York City, regionally and internationally. Along with Neyda Martinez he co-developed and implemented the pilot phase of the New Audience Project, an initiative to develop and train Latina cultural ambassadors in support of Latino arts institutions through arts immersion, workforce development and micro-entrepreneurism. The New Audience Project received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and was incubated at The Fire This Time Festival's East 4th St. neighbor Teatro Circulo. A.J. also completed the Artist Manager Program (AMP) training program at The Field. 

Julienne Hairston

Producer

Julienne L. Hairston was born in Kenitra, Morocco. She lives and writes in New Rochelle, New York. She received her BA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, NY. She was selected to participate in Hunter College’s inaugural MFA in Playwriting with Tony Nominated Playwright Tina Howe. She has written for Our Men Productions and The Mission Herald. Her plays have been featured in Hunter’s Playwrights festival; Project Y’s Racey Play Festival; Obie award winning The Fire This Time Festival (season six); Project Y’s Techno Plays; Project Y’s Parity Plays; NY Indie Theater Annual one- minute Play Festival; Project Y’s Women in Theater Festival; Madness Theater Ten Minute Festival. Julienne was a member of Project Y’s 2015-2017 Playwright Group. She was commissioned to write for WIT The Hrosthwitha Project 2017. She was a contributing member with Athena Writes 2017 fellowship. In 2018 She became a company member playwright with NYMadness. She is the founder of Lift as You Climb, Inc, a theater company dedicated to inspire and lift African American children through the experience of live theater, in Westchester County, New York.

Danielle Covington

Producer

Danielle Covington is an NYC-based performer, writer, producer, and arts administrator from Oakland, California. They graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where they trained as an actor and were most recently seen playing Romeo at The Classical Studio. Danielle is the co-founder of Affirmation Theatre Company, where they co-produced the inaugural Pro Black One Acts Festival and Graphite at Theater for the New City. They currently serve on the producing team of the Obie award-winning Fire This Time Festival. Their work as a director was most recently seen at The Brick’s ?!:New Works Festival with Alexis Cofield’s you seem better since our last talk. Danielle strives to make theatre that can serve as a roadmap to liberated futures and generate change that spills outside the theater space.