AMERICAN THEATRE | The Subtext: TyLie Shider’s Rehearsal Dramas

Every month on The Subtext, Brian speaks with a playwright about life, writing, and no matter itches we’re scratching. On this month’s episode, Brian visits Brooklyn, N.Y., for a chat with playwright TyLie Shider.

Shider is the inaugural playwright in residence at ArtYard, the I Am Soul playwright in residence on the Nationwide Black Theatre, and a 2022-23 McKnight Fellow in Playwriting on the Playwrights’ Middle. He’s additionally a recipient of Premiere Levels’ Liberty Stay fee and two consecutive Jerome Fellowships. His current initiatives embrace the autumn 2022 New Jersey premiere of Sure Facets of Battle within the Negro Household at Premiere Levels, The Gospel Girl at Nationwide Black Theatre, and Whittier at Playwrights Middle. He holds a BA in Journalism from Delaware State College and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU. He’s a professor of playwriting at Minneapolis’s Augsburg College, and a employees author for Minnesota Playlist.

Tylie grew up as considered one of six kids for his mother and father, “the Black Brady Bunch,” in his phrases. Or perhaps that needs to be the Partridge Household: Each his mother and pa are musicians. Dad, particularly, was a guitarist and songwriter, and Tylie says he discovered to write down by studying his dad’s lyrics. Songs became poetry, and over time that poetry advanced into performs. However the affect took maintain, and music stays a central a part of his performs.

As Tylie says, “The backdrop to my life has been rehearsal,” as a result of his mother and father’ involvement in music and efficiency. In consequence lots of his performs he describes as “rehearsal dramas,” and he tries to that seize that sonic world in his writing.