photo by Matt Scott, New York 2022
“N” // Nicky Maggio is a Director with a focus on New Play development.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
I engage in unapologetic and risk-taking theatrical narratives by bringing my entire sense of self to every project. I am a natural leader. I am a life-long learner. I am a lover of writers. I am transgender. I am plus-sized. I am a rape survivor. I am an advocate for BIPOC voices. I am complex and I shift, de-center, change, collaborate.
I find my absence of language to be freeing. T. Fleischman writes about the uninscribed as “a site of change, where I might understand my actual context and do something about it…I can’t escape the language but that won’t stop me from refusing it anyways, and believing that a blank paper might transport me somewhere else”. I tattooed uninscribed on my body and ventured into the world as my very own blank paper. I turn to writers to invite me into their lived experiences and imaginations and in doing so I find endless possibilities of who I can be. This is why I am an artist.
My Directing is a form of theatrical curation. I define my role by
Upholding the integrity of the artist’s perspective, curiosities and relevant immediacies.
Establishing an aesthetic through actualizing the living environment for the work.
Inviting exploration; to transition from the ethereal to the concrete.
Following these principles, I dream of what our collective worlds can be. I tend to drift towards unconventional structures that experiment. If something doesn’t work- blow it up, build something new. I never stop looking for a “new”.
BIO:
N has directed, assisted, and workshopped productions at The Brick, IRT Theatre, National Queer Theatre, Cherry Lane, Pipeline Theatre Company, The Drama League, The Wilma Theatre, The Public, The Lark, Boston’s Lyric Stage Company, Arts Emerson/Emerson Stage, Teatro LATEA, and ItalyTime. N was a member of Mercury Store’s Directors Lab (2023) and a member of Mercury Store’s inaugural cohort of the Directing Intensive (Summer 2023). N also noteably directed JHANJAR DI PAANWAN CHHANKAR at NQT's innaugral Criminal Queerness Festival partnered with World Pride 2019, featured in New York Times’s “Pride Month’s Theatre To See!”. N has been a member of SDCF observership class, a finalist for the Soho Rep Writers/Directors Lab with Nikhil Mahapatra (2019), a Finalist for Civilians R&D Group with Nikhil Mahapatra (2023), a Finalist for Clubbed Thumb’s Directing Fellowship (2023), a twice Finalist for NYTW’s 2050 Directing Fellowship (2023/2020), and a member of National Alliance of Musical Theatre’s inaugural directing fellowship class (2018).
N currently reside in Brooklyn.
BFA Emerson College, MFA The New School.
www.nmaggio.com Instagram: @nickymaggio