Episode #024: Come On In Live with Daniel Callahan & Iona Morris Jackson

Conversations With Carole

Today’s Special Guests of the upcoming One Man play, “Come On In-Live,” are Playwright and Artist Daniel Callahan and Executive Director Iona Morris Jackson.

The play debuts at the Strand Theatre in Boston on March 28, 2024.

A twisting journey through the mind of a Black artist fraught with inner demons and outer troubles, Come On In - Live is one man's search for purpose, place, and voice. Through film, music, projection, and performance, Come On In - Live throws you into a world where Hip Hop, religion, education, and mental illness collide. An autobiographical, one-man show featuring award-winning artist Daniel Callahan, Come On In - Live is a social, sonic, and spiritual odyssey: a bold new approach to storytelling. Based on Daniel's feature-length psychological thriller "Come On In" and featuring his signature MassQing artwork and technique, Come On In - Live is a daringly new approach to hybrid storytelling, immersive theater, and community-engaged art making.

For more information visit www.comeoninlive.com

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Daniel Callahan is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, and designer. Merging a legion of disciplines, including painting, digital photography, film, music, writing, and performance, Daniel works to craft immersive experiences incorporating story, ritual, and the human form to explore aspects of resilience and mysticism.

Best known for his painterly technique of MassQing - a ritual painting of the face used to reveal rather than conceal one's inner essence - Daniel and his work have been featured at the Museum of Fine Arts, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, The New Orleans Museum of Art and the Queens Museum.

Daniel is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, where he received a Bachelor of Applied Science in Fine Arts and Africana Studies, and Emerson College, where he received a Masters in Fine Arts in Film and Video. Daniel is a recipient of the Donor Circle for the Arts Grant, the New England Foundation for the Arts Creative City Grant, a Mass Cultural Council's CYD Teaching Artists Fellow and a Creative Entrepreneurship Fellow of the Greater Boston Arts & Business Council.

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Iona Morris Jackson was nominated for a Hollywood Critics Award and now for a NAACP Image Award for her direction of the ABC hit comedy BLACKish, titled "If A Black Man Cries In The Woods," airing in 2022. Her short, completed 2020, "Celeste's Dreams," which she Directed, Wrote, and Executive Produced, has been in 14 Short Film Festivals, garnering 3 nominations and the Award for Merit from the Canadian Short Film Festival.

Her directing theater credits include her co-creating, directing, and co-writing the star-studded sold-out concert event, "Broadway Under The Stars: 35th Anniversary of 'Dreamgirls' starring the 3 originals Loretta Devine, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Jennifer Holliday. Iona won a Best Director Award from the Beverly Hills/Hollywood NAACP Theatre Awards for her direction of the award-winning comedy "Sassy Mamas," which she also acted in. She's directed 2 successful solo shows for Jenifer Lewis, co-wrote and directed Blair Underwood's one-man show, director and contributing monologuest for Penny Johnson Jerald's solo show, directing Kim Wayans and Tammi Mac's award winning solo show and many others.

As an actress, Iona won a Best Solo Show from the Beverly Hills/Hollywood NAACP Theatre Awards for her production of "FOR YOU," an autobiographical piece about her father, actor Greg Morris, from the 1970s series MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE, an Ovation Award for Best Ensemble for the play "In The Red and Brown Water," and 2 Dramalogue Awards for Best Supporting actress in "Two Rooms" and for Best Ensemble in the play "Up the Mountain."