ARTISTS
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ARTISTS
THE PLAYWRIGHT: KATORI HALL
Katori Hall makes her Lincoln Center Theater debut this year, as the writer of THE BLOOD QUILT. The award-winning writer, and director of both stage and screen, made her stage debut in London with THE MOUNTAINTOP in 2009. Her other notable works include HURT VILLAGE, OUR LADY OF KIBEHO, CHILDREN OF KILLERS, SATURDAY NIGHT/SUNDAY MORNING, and HOODOO LOVE.
On her website, Hall describes THE BLOOD QUILT as a story of “four sisters return[ing] to their homestead off the Georgia coast[…] work[ing] their way through the fabric of life, chance, and their own choices after their mother’s funeral.”
“I actually come from a quilting family. My grandmother - Big Mama - she makes like five quilts every year. She taught me how to kind of use the scraps that other people have discarded and create something amazing and new. This is kind of how my writing process is like I write a bunch of stuff and I cut everything up and I put it back together again. There's just a lot of overlap and a lot of similarity that we're both using our hands to create something to keep people warm, to change people, to make people feel good, and I hope that this play does that for audiences. I hope people laugh, I hope people cry, and I hope people see themselves in the Jernigan sisters.”
THE DIRECTOR: LILEANA BLAIN-CRUZ
Lileana Blain-Cruz joined Lincoln Center Theater as a resident director in 2020. She has previously directed five plays for the theater: WAR, PIPELINE, MARYS SEACOLE, FLEX, and THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH, which was her Broadway debut. Blain-Cruz grew up in New York and Miami and has an MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama.
Blain-Cruz describes THE BLOOD QUILT as an “incredible ride with a group of sisters mourning their mom’s passing but also kind of reckoning with their own lives.” She explains, “Ultimately, it’s a story of healing. And I think right now, we need that kind of care and love and reckoning with each other and that’s what this play offers.”