Docbloc Project's Artists in Residence are a collective of multidisciplinary theatre makers, photographers, filmmakers, and storytellers working across nonfiction and documentary forms. Docbloc supports the development of original work through artistic collaboration, creative experimentation, mentorship, and opportunities to develop, workshop, and share new projects. Our residency cultivates a community of artists committed to exploring the power of storytelling to document lived experiences, preserve histories, and imagine new possibilities.

aaromoe (they/them) has a PhD in Theater and Performance as well as a MA in Religion, Ethics, and Philosophy from Florida State University, in historic Anhaica (AKA Tallahassee, Florida). aaromoe is an activist/organizer and interdisciplinary artist, using community-based arts like applied theater, theater of the oppressed, ritual arts, and devised performance to address critical social justice issues; questions of faith, meaning, hope, and doubt; and to lift up the voices and stories of those most impacted by oppression and social injustice. aaromoe teaches and facilitates workshops widely in theater, social justice, and world religions at universities, conservatories, seminaries, community colleges, prisons, and in other community settings. aaromoe is program developer and grantwriter for Latinx, immigrant theater company, Descolonizarte Teatro, and a freelance facilitator of courageous conversations for the Peace & Justice Institute (on Timucua, Seminole, and Miccosukee lands, AKA Orlando, Florida); co-editor of the open-source, peer-reviewed Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Journal; and serves on the Board of the National Queer Theater (Lenapehoking, AKA NYC). aaromoe splits time and work between Lenapehoking and Timucua, Seminole, Anais, and Miccosukee lands (Central Florida). 


  Projects Developed with Docbloc

Opalanietet (he/him) is a member of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape tribal nation of New Jersey. After graduating from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Opalanietet has performed in workshops and productions at renowned New York theatrical institutions, including New Dramatists, LaMaMa E.T.C., and New York City Opera at Lincoln Center. In November of 2020, Opalanietet made history by giving the first-ever Lenape Land Acknowledgment at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC. 


In 2012, Opalanietet founded Eagle Project, a theater company dedicated to exploring the American identity through the performing arts and our Native American heritage, http://www.eagleprojectarts.org. Through his leadership, Eagle Project has collaborated with and performed at the Public Theater, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Ashtar Theater in Palestine. In April of 2020, Eagle Project collaborated with the American Indian Community House of New York City and First Nations Theatre Guild to create Native Theatre Thursdays, a virtual reading series of new Native work. 


Opalanietet is currently pursuing his doctorate in Theatre & Performance Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center and has taught Contemporary Indigenous Theatre & Performance at The New School in New York City. 


Projects Developed with Docbloc

Wren Phoenix (they/them) is thrilled and honored to continue their collaboration with Dr. Ash Marinaccio and the DocBloc community. Wren is an award-winning, non-binary, neurodivergent, multi-hyphenate artist and arts educator based in New York City. As a performer, they relish devised work and specialize in quirky underdogs with a soulful soprano (a “Julie and Carol” special with a Jane Lynch edge). As a writer, they pen stories about magic, spirituality, queer identity and the EXvangelical experience. 


Their latest short film, “Counting”, won first place in the shorts category in the North by Northwest Micro-Budget Film Festival and Best Screenplay Award at the Fargo Moorhead LGBT Film Festival. Most recently, they were an inaugural member of DocBloc’s Intergenerational Theater Lab, and its devised piece, Now and Then and Now, was well-received at The Tank. A veteran performer with Frigid New York’s Living Radio, they’ve voiced and/or penned 100+ roles. Other favorites include Mrs. Ruthers in “Attackazoids, DEPLOY!” (Grand Prize Nominee, USA Film Festival), Iris in Children’s Letters to God (TYA National Tour) and Helena in A MidSummer Night’s Dream (Lucille Lortel). 


As an arts educator, Wren has co-created, adapted, and directed 100+ original short plays / film projects for and with K-8 children, including adaptations of both Shakespeare and musicals. In addition to their one-person show currently in development with DocBloc, Wren will also soon launch a podcast for ex-vangelical artists. A cum laude graduate of both Millikin University and The New School for Drama, Wren is a proud member of both Actor’s Equity Association and The Ring of Keys.


Projects Developed with Docbloc

Joseph Shahadi (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist. He makes experimental theater and performance, installations, photographs, video, works on paper, and paintings. His work is about how political moments and movements become culture, focusing on memory, violence and the gaze. Joseph has been produced in New York at Collective Unconscious, the Culture Project, the Ohio Theatre and the American Livingroom series at HERE among others, regionally throughout the United States, and internationally. His early play AMERICAN STANDARD was produced off-off Broadway with Expanded Arts. His visual art has been exhibited in New York and regionally at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). Joseph holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University, where he taught for five years at the Tisch School of the Arts. He has been published in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism in a special section he also co-edited, the Drama Review (TDR), and he contributed a chapter to Doomed By Hope, the first western text about Arab theater written in English. Joseph has been a Visiting Artist and Guest Lecturer in Theatre and Film, and an invited speaker and panelist, notably at Ralph Lemon’s Culture/Identity/Belief Forum and Redefining Performance in the 21st Century, convened by RoseLee Goldberg for Performa. He co-founded and Executive Directs the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, named "the signature film festival of the borough" in 2025. He lives in Brooklyn. 


Projects Developed with Docbloc