Nic Adams is an NYC-based playwright, director, producer, and theatre-maker.

ARTIST STATEMENT

“I first learned of the term theatre-maker in my undergraduate actor training. My professor introduced it to me as an ideal - a model and expectation that any person in the company had either done every job possible in the art form or would eventually accumulate this body of knowledge. For the past two decades, I’ve done almost every job you can in the theatre: I’ve stage-managed at BAM, driven trucks for The Public, swept and mopped the deck at New York Theatre Workshop, produced my work at Judson, assistant-directed opera in South Carolina, fundraised for Oye Group, and managed tours to Skidmore, Castleton University, and The D Hotel in Las Vegas. Live performance is a wonderful art form for theatre-makers because it can engage so many diverse skill sets, but after a decade of lending my talents to others’ productions and festivals while producing my work in New York City, I knew no one would grant me an artistic identity. And so in 2021 I went back to school, bent on proving that I was both a jack-of-all-trades and a damn good playwright, too. At Brooklyn College, I wrote plays about odd jobs, charlatans, the American daydream, sclerotic bureaucracies, class warfare, the heroism of artists, toxic masculinity, fraternal love, eco-psychosis, the careless language of buffoons, and most importantly, bathos: the transformation of the ridiculous into the sublime.

The sublime ridiculous - and the ridiculous sublime - are necessary. If we can’t recognize the ridiculous, we become susceptible to imperiousness, self-importance, and superiority.”

HISTORY

Adams’ work has been presented at Judson Memorial Church, Joe's Pub, The Bushwick Starr (with Target Margin), JACK, and The Brick, among other venues, and by The BEAT Festival (at the Brooklyn Museum), The Performing Garage Presents (with Oye Group), and The Exponential Festival. Residencies and fellowships include the Woodward Residency, Atlantic Center for the Arts, IRT Theater, Theater Reconstruction Ensemble, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His poetry has been published online at B O D Y Literature. Since '17, Adams has served as the Producing Director of The Exponential Festival, overseeing its grant-writing, reporting, and fundraising activities, as well as its establishment as a 501(c)(3). A book of artist interviews from the festival's first decade, edited by Adams, is due from 53rd State Press in January '25. As a director, Adams has collaborated with Eliza Bent, Lee Rayment, Cori Marquis, and Lane Dombois, whose site-specific musical NO ONLY debuted in the summer of '23 in a shipping container on Governors Island. BA in theatre arts from the University of Arizona ('12). MFA in playwriting under the direction of Dennis A. Allen II, Elana Greenfield, and Haruna Lee, Brooklyn College ('23). In addition to his work with Exponential, Adams works as an adjunct professor of English at Brooklyn College, teaching classes in composition, climate change literature, and creative writing.