SDCF is thrilled to share that Dominic Moore-Dunson, an award-winning choreographer and arts leader, has been selected as the 2025-2026 Lloyd Richards New Futures Resident Artist at the Wilma Theater, where he will work with Co-Artistic Director Morgan Green.

An award-winning choreographer and arts leader known for his innovative work blending dance, social justice, and community engagement, Dominic will receive a $50,000 grant.

Named for the legendary leader of the American theatre and awarded to mid-career directors or choreographers, SDCF’s Lloyd Richards New Futures Residency is a year-long residency that helps increase access to institutional leadership and supports artists who are illuminating Black cultural experiences on stage..

“My greatest fulfillment comes from uniting my work as an artist and a leader, where vision and collaboration meet to shape teams and create new Black-centered work,” Dominic says. “Through the Lloyd Richards New Futures Residency, I aspire to expand the reach of that work and help shape the future of American theatre.”

Finalists for this year’s award were Carlton V Bell II, Tor Campbell, Bianca Jones, and Taylor Reynolds.

You can read the press release here. 

Named one of Dance Magazine’s 2023 “25 to Watch,” Dominic Moore-Dunson is an award-winning choreographer, performer, and storyteller based in Akron, Ohio. His work blends contemporary dance, physical theater, live music, and text to explore themes of race, identity, memory, and belonging through what he calls Urban Midwest Storytelling—narratives shaped by growing up Black in post-industrial America. He is the writer, director, and choreographer of inCOPnegro: Aftermath, a podcast and dance-theater work examining the long-term impact of police violence on Black communities; The Remember Balloons, an intergenerational family performance about memory, loss, and Alzheimer’s; and The Block, a digital Substack essay series combining personal narrative, satire, and movement to reflect on the creative realities of Black working artists. His work has been presented nationally and featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Akron Beacon Journal, and on PBS Western Reserve. A 2024 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, Dominic creates immersive, multidisciplinary performances that spark dialogue, healing, and joy—continuing a legacy of storytelling that moves both people and systems. Photo credit: Michael Cannon

Morgan Green is an Obie-winning director and Co-Artistic Director of the Tony Award-winning Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. She recently directed a number of world premieres including Five Models in Ruins, 1981 by Caitlin Saylor Stephens (LCT3), HILMA, a new opera by Kate Scelsa with music by Robert M. Johanson (Wilma Theater), Staff Meal by Abe Koogler (Playwrights Horizons), Eternal Life Part 1 by Nathan Alan Davis (Wilma Theater), School Pictures by Milo Cramer (Wilma Theater, Playwrights Horizons), and Fat Ham by James Ijames (Wilma Theater, digital), which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Green was a co-founder of the award-winning company New Saloon, best known for Minor Character: Six Translations of Uncle Vanya at the Same Time (The Public Theater, The Invisible Dog, Sharon Playhouse). Additional credits include The Comeuppance by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Woolly Mammoth and Wilma Theater), The Music Man (Sharon Playhouse), The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe (Marin Theatre Company), and Cute Activist by Milo Cramer (The Bushwick Starr). Her short film One More Time With Feeling premiered at the Raindance Film Festival in London in October 2023. She is a current recipient of the Drama League TV/Film Fellowship. She has developed new work with organizations including the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, BRIC, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Mabou Mines, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and Mercury Store. A New Georges Affiliated Artist and proud Member of SDC, she is currently developing a new play with Milo Cramer called JURY DUTY, about voir dire, the juror selection process, and the lofty democratic ideal of a “jury of one’s peers.” Photo credit: Johanna Austin

About the Residency:

Lloyd Richards with his Tony Award for Best Direction for Fences, 1987 PHOTO c/o the Lloyd Richards Estate (Lloyd Richards Papers, Yale University).

The Lloyd Richards New Futures Residency is a yearlong residency for mid-career directors and choreographers who are interested in institutional leadership.  It is named after Lloyd Richards, a legendary leader of the American Theatre who directed some of the most important plays on Black life of the 20^th century.

The goals of this residency are to help develop artists to become artistic leaders in the American Theatre and support artists who are illuminating Black cultural experiences on stage. This residency provides unique exposure to the responsibilities of being an Artistic Director and the internal structure and workings of a theatrical institution by forging or deepening a relationship between the recipient artist and artistic leader. The vision is to increase access, opportunities, and pathways to institutional leadership for mid-career directors and choreographers who are thinking strategically about how their work can increase Black cultural representation on stage within their local community and/or the industry at large.

Each Resident Artist in the program receives a $50,000 grant. The Resident Artist is also guaranteed the opportunity to direct or choreograph a production at the Host Theatre within three years of the residency.

About Lloyd Richards:

The New Futures Residency is named for Lloyd Richards, whose career blazed a trail through our industry. Starting as an actor in 1940s New York, in 1956, Sidney Poitier arranged an interview for Richards with producers to direct Lorraine Hansberry’s new play A Raisin in the Sun. Richards’ work on the production garnered his first of five Tony nominations for Best Direction of a Play; he later won the award in 1987 for his work on Fences. Richards led the National Playwrights Conference (NPC) at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center for more than 30 years, developing work with hundreds of playwrights. From 1979-91, he was Artistic Director of Yale Repertory Theatre and Dean of the Yale School of Drama.

Richards was the first Black director to be nominated for and then to win the Tony Award for Best Direction. Aside from his first nomination for Raisin in the Sun, the other four honored his work directing August Wilson’s plays on Broadway. Richards’ collaborations with Hansberry and Wilson sustained his deepest beliefs about our industry: “We must each bring the wonder of our particular cultural heritage to the context of the here and the now. That is American Theatre—theatre which reaches into the ethnic memory of each of us and is informed by its wisdom, form, and artistry, and brings that to the context ‘now,’ where we all dwell, and informs the now, which provokes and enriches us all.”

In addition to his artistic accolades, Richards was a staunch advocate for artists’ rights as workers. A founding member of SDC, Richards served as president from 1970 to 1980. He received the National Medal of Arts in 1993; he died in 2006.

For Lloyd Richards’ full biography, click here.

Support for the Residency:

SDCF has received a $150K Grant from The Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation.

The 2025 Lloyd Richards New Futures Residency is made possible with support from The Diana King Memorial Fund presented by The Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation, the Miranda Family Fund, and support through the SDCF fellowship funds named for Shepard and Mildred Traube and Sir John Gielgud, and many generous individuals.