ARTIST IN RESIDENCE AT THE VOXEL: AWARDEE NIGEL SEMAJ

SEPTEMBER 2025

CALL ME BY ANY OTHER NAME… JUST AS SWEET is a queer reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, set in the pulsing heart of Club Verona, ruled by our illustrious drag queen and host, Mutha Laurence.

Inspired by the electric energy of the ballroom scene, drag culture, and underground club life, this immersive production plunges into the complexities of queer love, grief, pleasure, and mortality. Call Me boldly questions the very purpose of love itself. What unfolds is a fierce, poetic, and unapologetically raw night of dance, intimacy, and theatrical rebellion—exploring the edges of queer utopia while asking: what does it truly mean to love—and to lose?

Part party. Part drag show. Part nightclub. Part play.

Filled with love, sex, drugs, and grief, we invite you to spend a night of debauchery, tenderness, and unapologetic queerness at Club Verona.

Nigel Semaj will be developing a new adapation of Henrik Ibsen’s Classic “An Enemy of People.

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University has named its 2025–26 Visiting Fellows. This year’s group includes journalists, artists, faith leaders, social scientists, democracy and human rights advocates, and policy experts. Each brings a record of work that deepens public understanding, strengthens civic life, and connects lived experiences and academic research with real-world impact.

Nigel Semaj is this year’s inaugural Artist in Residence at the SNF Agora Institute. In this role, they will explore how performance and embodiment can create space for civic dialogue, collective memory, and political imagination, bringing creative practice into the heart of democratic inquiry. Their work complements the institute’s mission to expand the forms and methods through which civic engagement can take shape.

Nigel Semaj is currently developing a new experimental production of Shakespeares’ Macbeth.

the serpent under’t is a descent into the shadows of the human psyche where ambition, guilt, and fate intertwine with the supernatural. Blending movement, dance, and spoken text, this reimagining draws inspiration from horror and the macabre, conjuring a world that is both poetic and chilling.

At its heart, the serpent under’t seeks to immerse audiences in a visceral, haunting experience—one that blurs the lines between horror, tragedy, and the uncanny. Through this lens, the story dives deep into the minds of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, who are portrayed by older actors, their performances steeped in memory, regret, and unraveling control. Surrounding them, an ensemble of 7 to 12 student performers conjure the world around them—moving, dancing, embodying spirits, thoughts, fears, and echoes of violence.

In this world, some scenes unfold behind music stands, stark and raw; others erupt from the depths of full theatrical staging. And still others dissolve the boundary between stage and ritual, teasing the very question: what is performance? The ensemble becomes the breath and bone of the play, a living translation of inner turmoil and ambition through the physical body.

Drawing from the gothic undertones of Poe and the psychological torment embedded in Shakespeare’s text, the serpent under’t is a theatrical séance—an invocation of our most primal emotions. It is a meditation on power and decay, and an invitation for audiences to confront the serpents that slither beneath our most delicate facades.