The 2024 Fall Arts Preview: Ones to Watch

Six creative Atlantans who are just getting started for 2024

Our editors selected six Atlantans doing outstanding creative work in various disciplines. Atlanta has so many brilliant creatives, there’s no way to say that just six are better than all the rest. That’s why we’re not claiming that. But we are saying these six are among the exemplary, and it’s worth watching what they do next.

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Actor Braian Rivera Jimenez broadens his scope from screen to stage 

Though he has an extensive background in film and TV, including a role in The Walking Dead, Braian Rivera Jimenez will be a new face for many Atlanta theatergoers when he makes his Actor’s Express debut as central character Nico in A Third Way this fall, on stage October 3 through October27.

Jimenez’ first appearance in Atlanta theater was earlier this year, in Stage Door’s production of Karen Zacarias’ Native Gardens. That show was directed by Lee Osorio, the actor and playwright who wrote A Third Way. Osorio first met Jimenez while developing the script for A Third Way with Working Title Playwrights, and Jimenez read the part during a staged reading at Theatrical Outfit.

“When I first read this script, I didn’t know Lee,” Jimenez said in an interview with ArtsATL. “It was such a visceral, in-depth soul connection that it scared me. Like, ‘Is Lee spying on me? Does he know who I am?’ Because this character is so close to what I’ve lived and experienced in some relationships.”

Like the character Nico, Jimenez is outgoing, spontaneous and full of life. He grew up in Gwinnett County and attended school in Norcross, then he moved to Los Angeles in 2014 and returned to Atlanta in 2020. “What really captured my attention with this script was that this is a Latinx queer man in a story about his relationships in modern times,” he said. “It’s not a story that’s been told a lot. I’ve never played a queer role, and, as a queer male myself, I’ve always wanted to. I am beyond excited to show the theater community and the Latin community that there are queer actors in Atlanta who deserve these opportunities.” — BC

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Charity Hamidullah can make anything beautiful with paint

In conversation, painter and muralist Charity Hamidullah continually comes back to the word “grateful” in reference to herself. More specifically, the phrase she favors is “super grateful.” Indeed Hamidullah has had a lot to be grateful for in 2024. But Atlanta has even more reason to be grateful; Hamidullah continues to deploy her creative work and vision throughout the entire arts ecosystem.

Hamidullah spent 16 years as a tattoo artist before “switching lanes” (as she has phrased it on her website) during the pandemic to become a full-time painter. In just a few short years, Hamidullah has become one of the busiest, most in-demand muralists in the city.

Building on a track record of stellar walls and corporate commissions, Hamidullah was tapped to collaborate with Atlanta Ballet on resident choreographer Claudia Schreier’s 2024 Nighthawks, which set contemporary ballet to the music of jazz great Wynton Marsalis. Hamidullah designed the costumes and sets, interpreting the sound and movement through collage and color.

In an interview with ArtsATL, Hamidullah described the experience as “a whole new journey in space.” “I’ve always created with the body with tattooing,” she added. “For the ballet, I was creating with the body in a whole new way with clothing.” The much-celebrated costuming and set pieces were subsequently displayed at Atlanta Contemporary in her pocket solo exhibition All the Moving Parts.

Hamidullah remains active in urban and civic spaces. How We Grew Together, her mural for the Atlanta Beltline, was unveiled in July. According to the Beltline website, the mural reflects Hamidullah’s belief that “we are connected not only by this space but this city — together amongst beautiful differences.”

Look for Hamidullah in The Atlanta Opera’s upcoming alternating performances of La Bohème and Rent, where she’ll be one of several artists making art live on stage in the artists’ loft scenes. In order to be on the stage with live singers, the art has to be silent and odorless. But all the colors will doubtless still be visible. — ACH

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Playwright, educator and director Emily McClain is having a busy year

Whether it’s directing, teaching or writing, 2024 has been a banner year for Atlanta-based playwright Emily McClain. Four of her plays will be performed this fall, either full productions or staged readings. These include a staging of her play The Rock & the Hard Place, which won the 2024 Essential Theatre Play Festival, as well as Plan B, staged in this year’s SheATL Festival.

The Rock & the Hard Place deals with a young woman’s attempts to exonerate her father, who is on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. The play runs at 7 Stages through September 1. Plan B follows two congressional staffers in a clash over reproductive rights and is on stage September 4 and September 7 as part of SheATL.

Additionally, McClain has two readings coming up. She will travel to North Carolina in September for a reading of her play Cheek By Jowl at the Appalachian Playwrights Festival. And her new play, Syran-0, will be read by Atlanta’s Thrive Acting Hive in December.

The playwright is a theater instructor at Gwinnett’s School of the Arts and an education associate at Essential Theatre. “I’m fortunate to be currently directing the School of the Arts’ One Act Competition show, The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood,” she said. “We’ve started rehearsals, and I’m so happy to be building this production with my incredible students and fellow theater faculty.”

Along with education associate Amina McIntyre, McClain helped run Essential Theatre’s 10-Minute Play Boot Camp, where students were guided to create 10-minute plays over a course of four weeks. She also co-taught the Essential Playwriting 101 course.

“All told, 2024 has been a really terrific year for me as a playwright, educator and director. I’ve [been able to] tell beautiful stories with incredible people. I’m looking forward to what’s next.” — LE

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Scholar Gregory Zinman wants you to see more art films

Professor Gregory Zinman is a film geek’s film geek. The Emory researcher, writer and art historian has dived into every aspect of the moving image to explore all the odd, strange and astonishing things cinema can be.

His website, handmadecinema.com, first launched in 2012 as an inventory of practices and themes related to “artisanal moving images.” Imagine an archive of countless film techniques beyond simply exposing film to make images: scratching, painting, alternative projections and so on. The site won recognition from the Popular Culture Association as Best Electronic Reference Site in 2015. Zinman detailed these practices in his book Making Images Move: Handmade Cinema and the Other Arts (2020).

Zinman has gone on to write for a variety of outlets on the subject of film and media, including in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. And he took a turn at the helm of the popular Emory Cinematheque series earlier this year, curating films and discussions around the topic of artificial intelligence.

Zinman’s signature Atlanta project is the audacious Off the Wall @ 725 Ponce project. Running on select nights several times a year, the program projects experimental films on the largest movie screen in the Southeast: the side of the building at 725 Ponce de Leon on the Atlanta Beltline. The project is designed to get nontraditional cinema in front of more eyes.

“I’ve always been interested in addressing larger audiences,” said Zinman in an interview. He has, he says, always wanted to move these forms of cinema out of the classroom and more into mainstream culture. “It may be a little stranger than what people are used to. But there are ways to make this appealing,” he added.

Past programs have focused on dance film, black women filmmakers and other topics. Everything Is Perfect and Nothing Is Perfect, a program of short films by women working with nature, is coming September 13 and September 14. Work by Cauleen Smith, Jennifer West and ArtsATL writer Deanna Sirlin will be featured.

Finally, look for Zinman’s forthcoming book, Public Scenes (for which he recently won a Warhol Arts Writers Grant) about all the nontraditional places video is shown — nightclubs, malls and on people’s personal computers to start. — ACH

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Jason Ikeem Rodgers is bringing Blackness to the classics

The stuffy, decorum-ruled world of classical music is finally loosening its tuxedo bib and starting to shake a leg. And it’s getting a helping hand from Maestro Jason Ikeem Rodgers, founder and music director of Orchestra Noir, Atlanta’s African American Orchestra.

“I don’t really fit the prototype,” Rodgers told ArtsATL in 2021 “Most conductors are older White Europeans. I’m from the hood, and I don’t shy away from that.” The triple-threat musician — he plays piano, conducts and composes/arranges — infuses all his shows with a liveliness, theatricality and just plain joy long overdue in classical music. Orchestra Noir members dance through the audience while playing their instruments or stand and jam during a hot solo, even incorporating humor. Meanwhile, Rodgers doesn’t just lead his players — he inspires and serves as hype man for the musicians.

Rodgers’ shows are a reflection of his fascinating background. Raised in the poor Philadelphia neighborhood of Meeks Mill, his childhood oscillated between freestyling with friends in the streets and dashing to classical piano lessons with a gifted teacher who would later become production manager of Orchestra Noir, which Rodgers founded in 2016.

Since then, Rodgers has been making headlines on such programs as The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and the Oprah Winfrey Network and working with legends like Cardi B, Migos and Rick Ross, the latter at a 2022 Red Bull Symphonic performance at Atlanta Symphony Hall.

On September 7, after performances in Alabama and North Carolina, the orchestra will perform in Atlanta at the Tabernacle.

This musical alchemy also has allowed Rodgers to carve out more space for Black musicians (comprising only 2% in the classical music world) and to engage in cross-cultural dialogue. “I am exposing people who normally would listen only to classical to hip-hop and R&B — and people who would normally listen only to hip-hop and R&B to classical,” he told ArtsATL. “I want to build a bridge between both cultures.” — JD

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Julianna Feracota embodies joy, grief and fierce energy

If there’s one physical feature that defines Julianna Feracota’s power and presence, it’s her back. In her solo, From Within, she begins facing away from the audience. She raises her arms, then drops her elbows into her waist in sharp rhythmic thrusts. Her back muscles and bones move in an orchestration that builds complexity as she launches into tightly wound spirals, then sweeps her whole body expansively across the stage.

Now five years on the Atlanta dance scene, the Chicago area native has proven to be one of the most prolific and engaging contemporary dancers in town.

When Feracota interprets a work — whatever the theme — it’s clearly drawn out and passionately underscored in ways that are full of color, depth and imagination.

As a member of Full Radius Dance for the past five years, her intent has been electric in the glides, spins and counterbalances of Douglas Scott’s physically integrated choreography. In Niobe, José Limón’s tribute to early modern dancer Isadora Duncan, Feracota expressed the artist’s deep grief as a mother mourning the loss of her children.

But Feracota has a fiercer side. She’s a practitioner of Muay Thai (Thai boxing) — a skill that’s led her to wield both knife and spear in The Atlanta Opera’s Die Walküre and to sustain a dance boxing marathon in Julio Medina’s high-energy desahogo//undrown.

On October 5 and October 6, Feracota will appear with Monica Hogan Danceworks’ production Spectra: Volume 2, and next spring she will dance in Meagan Novoa’s new work, Viscera. 

Monica Hogan Thysell said that working with Feracota is a choreographer’s dream. “Dancers like Julie are totally along for that ride. They love it, and they’re willing to try anything. They’re willing to take feedback but also to bring their own voice into things,” she said.

“Julie’s brilliant in that capacity. She brings that ‘yes and’ energy to every project.” — CBP

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