Annie Howell is a writer, filmmaker, and educator based in Manhattan, where she teaches third-year writing in NYU’s Graduate Film program and holds a Distinguished Lectureship in Film at City College’s MFA program. A returning Catwalk resident (Summer 2023), Howell will continue developing two major projects during her winter stay: a gothic stage musical addressing the opioid epidemic in rural Ohio, and an independent feature following three generations of a family on a single day trip from suburban New Jersey to Manhattan—each carrying a private agenda. Her work blends dark humor, intimacy, and social observation, and Catwalk once again provides a space for sustained creative focus.

https://linktr.ee/anniejhowell 

Affiliation: NYU

Molly Rydzel is a playwright, WGAE screenwriter, script consultant, and professor of screenwriting at NYU. A Catwalk alumna (August 2024), Rydzel returns to continue work on her provocative new play ChatGPT Says He Raped Me, which examines consent, kink gone wrong, artificial intelligence, and the uneasy transformation of private experience into consumable content. Having written a horror film during her previous stay, she looks forward to once again using Catwalk’s secluded environment to deepen focus and build momentum on this challenging and timely project.

https://mollyrydzel.com/

Affiliation: NYU

Chloe Sarbib is an American and French-Algerian filmmaker, writer, and professor based in Brooklyn whose work centers on characters caught in their own contradictions. Supported by organizations including Sundance, Tribeca/Chanel’s Through Her Lens, Cine Qua Non, and the Saltonstall Foundation, her films have screened at major Oscar- and BAFTA-qualifying festivals worldwide. A multi-time Catwalk resident (2019, 2022, 2023), Sarbib will begin a new project exploring love as cultural exchange, while also revising and translating her Sundance-supported feature Trou Normand, which follows a fading actress whose search for a lost family heirloom uncovers unexpected truths about her past.

https://www.chloesarbib.com/

Affiliation: Columbia

Paulo K Tiról returns to Catwalk to continue developing DEAR AMERICA, a musical adaptation of the bestselling memoir by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and immigration activist José Antonio Vargas. Previously at Catwalk, Tiról collaborated with director Noam Shapiro on ON THIS SIDE OF THE WORLD, which premiered at East West Players in Los Angeles in 2023. During his Winter 2026 residency, he will focus on fleshing out, refining, and writing the music for DEAR AMERICA in preparation for the project’s next stages of development.

www.paulophonic.com

Affiliation: NYU

Ian Miller joins the Winter 2026 residency as music director for DEAR AMERICA, continuing his collaboration with Paulo K Tiról following their work together on ON THIS SIDE OF THE WORLD. He previously served as music director and orchestrator for the show’s world premiere and cast recording. During his time at Catwalk, Miller will support the musical’s development while also dedicating time to composing original music and advancing his pianistic repertoire.

musicianmiller.com

Collaborator

Josie Bettman’s work investigates performance as a way of living—an ongoing act of self-creation that metabolizes memory into the present. Her practice moves fluidly between choreography, embodiment, and narrative, treating lived experience as both material and method. Bettman previously attended Catwalk during the Summer 2024 residency, where she developed the first draft of a narrative short film. During her Winter 2026 residency, she will continue refining and expanding this film, deepening its conceptual and performative dimensions.

vimeo.com/user61548105

Affiliation: Vassar

Rebecca Hart is a New York City–based performer and writer returning to Catwalk after a 2024 Main Residency. She is continuing development of submersible, a darkly funny semi-opera inspired by the 2023 Titan submersible implosion. The piece lifts the event onto a mythic plane, giving voice to both the Titan and the Titanic as female characters. During the winter residency, Hart focuses on refining the libretto and shaping the theatrical and musical structure of the work in collaboration with composer David Kornfeld, advancing the next integrated draft of the piece.

rebeccahart.substack.com

Affiliation: NYU

David Kornfeld is a Birmingham, Alabama–based composer, music director, and multi-instrumentalist making his first appearance at Catwalk. He has worked on national tours including Jagged Little Pill and Shucked, as well as productions at ART in Boston. During the residency, Kornfeld collaborates with Rebecca Hart on submersible, developing the musical language of the work. His focus includes crafting song moments, exploring the sonic seascape of the piece, and integrating music directly into the evolving draft of this opera-adjacent project.

www.davidkornfeld.net

Collaborator

João Paulo Schlittler is an artist, researcher, and Associate Professor at the University of São Paulo with an extensive background in motion design, broadcast graphics, and experimental animation. A returning Catwalk resident, he will further develop Banana Bubble, a documentary project begun in 1992. The work follows decades of interviews with Brazilian immigrants in New York and Brazil, centered on Maria Barragan, a woman closely connected to Schlittler’s family. The residency supports continued development of this long-form documentary exploring memory, migration, and enduring personal relationships across time.

www.tupi.tv

Affiliation: NYU

Jean Zimmerman, author of critically praised nonfiction and fiction, returns to Catwalk for a fourth time to begin a historical novel, Summoning Jane, rooted in her fascination with America’s first female botanist and badass-before-her-time Jane Colden. During her residency, she will conduct research and imagine Colden’s life at the Hudson Valley ruin of Coldengham, her family’s Revolutionary-era estate in nearby Montgomery. Zimmerman’s forthcoming memoir Of Heartwood and Woundwood: An Unlikely Arborist’s Path to Courage and Joy (Broadleaf, Fall 2026), invites readers into a world where trees become teachers, healers, and companions amid life’s most daunting challenges.

Affiliation: Columbia

Marin Sardy is the author of the memoir The Edge of Every Day (2019), and her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and many other publications, as well as in two award-winning photography books. Danielle Ezzo is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist-writer whose practice often begins with photography, exploring new approaches to image-making and the slippages between innovation and understanding. Together they created Psychic Telephone, a collaborative project combining words and images to investigate the lives and beliefs of self-identified psychics, intuitives, and mediums. During their residency, they will conceptualize and shape the project’s exhibition and book.

Affiliation: Columbia

marinsardy.com 

danielleezzo.com 

Shona Tucker is the Mary Riepma Ross Chair of Drama at Vassar College and a writer, director, and performer whose work spans theatre, television, and film. Her writing includes Mississippi Mud, a trilogy inspired by the lives of African-American women whose actions reshape their families’ histories, and she has appeared on Broadway in To Kill a Mockingbird and Death of a Salesman with Wendell Pierce.

She is joined at Catwalk by writer, filmmaker, and playwright James Michael Marshall, whose work explores contemporary life through performance and visual storytelling. A former professional basketball player and coach, Marshall has directed music videos, television, and film, and founded The Marshall Studio and The Luck Laboratory to mentor emerging artists. Together at Catwalk, they will continue developing new narrative work across stage and screen.

Affiliation: Vassar

Keika Okamoto is a visual artist working between New York and Japan whose practice explores poetic interpretations of nature through drawing, painting, and installation. Returning to Catwalk, she will create new work inspired by the landscapes of both regions, reflecting on cycles of time, place, and memory. Her work emphasizes quiet observation and a deep sensitivity to environment and material.

https://www.keikaokamoto.com/

Affiliation: Columbia

Research Mattress is a collaborative group of artists—Alice Tang, Judy Lieff, Mohamed Ihsan, and Maria Maciak—whose work explores relationality, ecological awareness, and sensory experience. During their residency, they will develop Sensory Unlearnings, a series of performative and research-based works including micro films, rituals, and a Field Atlas that gathers ecological observations and conceptual threads. Their interdisciplinary practice challenges anthropocentric thinking and invites audiences into embodied, site-responsive experiences.

https://www.researchmattress.org/

Affiliation: NYU

Nathan Butler is an artist based in Nashville whose work integrates sound, performance, and painting with psychotherapeutic processes. Returning to Catwalk after many years, he will develop Wound Cartographies, a project exploring the relationship between movement, listening, and mark-making in the landscape. His practice translates internal psychological experiences into physical and spatial forms.

Affiliation: SAIC

Emily Elyse Everett is a writer and actor based in Brooklyn whose work explores narrative storytelling through theatre and performance. She returns to Catwalk following her 2024 residency, where she developed her play The Quakers. At Catwalk, she will collaborate with composer Yael Karoly on a new folk-rock musical adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Karoly, a New York–based composer and performer and participant in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, has presented work at venues including 54 Below and Green Room 42. Together, their collaboration blends literary adaptation with contemporary musical language and performance-driven storytelling.

https://www.emilyelyseeverett.com

https://yaelkaroly.com

Affiliation: Columbia

Durra Leung is a multilingual composer and writer whose genre-spanning work explores identity, humor, and cultural hybridity. His projects include musicals, operas, and scores for film and dance, with productions presented internationally. Returning to Catwalk, he will continue developing Lullabies for Motherf*ckers Trilogy , a trilogy of musicals following queer Chinese artists across parallel narratives. His work bridges cultures and disciplines, centering immigrant experience and contemporary identity.

https://www.durraleung.com/

Affiliation: NYU