Djerassi Resident Artists Program | Current Artists - Djerassi Resident Artists Program

SESSION 3, 2025

October 28 – November 25, 2025

Jessie Barr | Writer/Director | Los Angeles, CA

Jessie Barr (she/her) is a filmmaker, Sundance fellow, and Half Initiative directing fellow, with roots in independent film, theater and comedy. She grew up in Washington D.C. and cut her teeth as an actor in NYC’s Off-Broadway scene. Her work is intimate and emotionally raw, blending naturalistic performances, lush soundscapes, and poetic visuals to explore desire, grief, and identity in characters who defy social norms.

She’s currently developing a Shakespeare adaptation with Academy award-winning prod co. Caviar (War Pony, Sound of Metal) and in post on her latest short film Sylvia, starring Jena Malone (Love Lies Bleeding, Neon Demon, The Hunger Games). Jessie’s critically acclaimed, award-winning feature debut, Sophie Jones premiered in competition at the 2020 Deauville Film Festival and was released by Oscilloscope Laboratories in 2021. The film holds a 100% rating on RottenTomatoes and is streaming on Showtime.

Jessie’s work has screened globally at festivals including Berlinale, Tribeca, and Mar Del Plata, and has been featured by The New York Times and the National Board of Review. An alum of NYU Tisch, she’s collaborated with Lincoln Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and received support from MOS Silent Film Grant, PEN America and Oregon Made. As a performance artist, she recently appeared with Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova in PUSSY RIOT SIBERIA (2025) at MOCA.

Jessie’s darkly funny, deeply personal cancer chronicle, Serving Cunt debuted at SADE Gallery in Los Angeles in 2024, featuring original films, installations, and photography as a way to process her bladder cancer diagnosis, treatment, and healing.

Jordan Michael Blake & Gregory Barnes | Writers/Directors | Los Angeles, CA

Jordan Michael Blake (he/him) left Mormonism to make movies at NYU. His award-winning shorts include Paradise Man (Sundance 2025), Nervous Energy (Cannes 2025), Dead Enders (SXSW 2023) & The Touch of the Master’s Hand (Sundance 2021). He has worked as a writer/director for Adult Swim’s OFF THE AIR and co-founded The Taco Bell Film Festival ®

Gegory Barnes (he/they) makes movies about his experience being raised a faithful Mormon in Oak Park, IL, combining the absurdity of leaving that religion with dry Midwest humor to create his peculiar tone.

His most recent short, Together Forever, was produced by Neon in partnership with Kodak and is a follow-up to his debut, The Touch of the Master’s Hand, which won the Jury Prize for U.S. Fiction at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. His work as a writer, producer, and director has screened internationally at Cannes, Golden Horse, SXSW, New York Film Festival, Telluride, and more.

After serving a two-year Mormon mission in Salta, Argentina, Barnes earned a BA in Media Studies from Brigham Young University and an MFA from NYU Tisch, where he was a King Scholar.

Shinobu Eto | Composer | Tokyo, Japan

shinobu eto (she/her) is a composer, koto player, and interdisciplinary artist. Her work explores the philosophical and aesthetic concept of “in-betweens” (ma), using silence, natural sounds, and the tension between traditional and experimental music. She creates a complex bricolage of history, local culture, folklore, crafts, and sound, aiming to support and nourish the land, people, and living ecosystems. She has performed on many stages all over Japan, including concerts sponsored by the National Theatre of Japan, Kioi Hall, NHK TV/radio programs, and CDs. In 2018, she started to perform abroad and has been an artist-in-residence at Art Omi, Headlands Center for the Arts and the Swatch Art Peace Hotel.

Brit Fryer | Film | Brooklyn, NY

Brit Fryer (he/him) is an artist and filmmaker from Chicago’s South Side, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. His approach to nonfiction storytelling centers gender and queerness through process-forward and collaborative methods. Through intimate character stories and curious social experiments, he explores the inherited and traded narratives of queer and trans life as a challenge to cultural stasis, ambivalence, and threats to self-determination.

His most recent film, Tessitura, the entangled ways that voice, character, and gender are continuously reformulated in opera by those who contend with these connections daily. The film won the Academy Award Qualifying Best Short Film at Mountainfilm 2025. He is also the co-director of The Script, which premiered on The New Yorker and Criterion Channel. His other films include Caro Comes Out, Across, Beyond and Over, and TRANS·IENCE.His films have been screened in theatres and festivals internationally, including Blackstar, CPH: DOX, Newfest, Indie Grits, Nitehawk, and MIX NYC. He has received generous support from The Sundance Institute, The Ford Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, and The Gotham Film and Media Institute.

Christina YR Lim | Writer/Director | Los Angeles, CA

As a two-time immigrant, Christina YR Lim (she/her) is a Korean-American writer/director who tells fish-out-of-water, genre-bending AAPI stories. Christina is an alumnus of The Black List & WIF Feature Residency, Yale’s directing lab, Cine Qua Non, Stowe Labs, Wscripted’s Cannes Screenplay List, and EAVE. She holds an MFA from USC. Her debut feature, B-SIDE: FOR TAYLOR, was released in 2024. She recently completed a proof-of-concept for her second feature, GYOPO, through The Black List x GM incubator fund and Panavision’s Camera Grant. Lim has directed films in Shanghai, Beijing, and recently received the Seriesfest x Shondaland Directing Mentorship.

Danny Tejera | Playwright/Screenwriter | Brooklyn, NY

Danny Tejera (he/him) is a playwright, film/TV writer and teacher from Madrid. His play Toros (Second Stage Theater) was a New York Times “Critic’s Pick,” Theatrely “Best Off-Broadway Theater of 2023,” HOLA Award Winner for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting, and Lucille Lortel Award Nominee (Frank Wood, Best Featured Performer in a Play). It’s published by DPS and had a regional premiere at Rec Room Arts in Houston. His play Tatiana was a finalist for the National Playwrights Conference.

Danny has received fellowships from MacDowell, Djerassi, Millay Arts, Stillwright, and Tofte Lake Center. He has been a member of EST/Youngblood, Colt Coeur, Roundabout Space Jam, The Motor Company Writer’s Lab, and the Sun Valley Playwrights Fellowship/MTC workshop. He has received commissions from Second Stage, the EST/Sloan Foundation, and The Lucille Lortel. He’s developing a TV show with Secuoya Studios. He received a B.A. from Columbia University and a Playwriting M.F.A. at UT-Austin, where he was mentored by Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. He’s represented by WME and 2AM.

Ogemdi Ude | Choreographer | Brooklyn, NY

Ogemdi Ude (she/her) is a dance and interdisciplinary artist, educator, and doula based in Brooklyn. Her performance work focuses on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. Her work has been presented at Kampnagel, The Kitchen, Gibney, Harlem Stage, Danspace Project, Abrons Arts Center, BRIC, ISSUE Project Room, Recess Art, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Center for Performance Research, and for BAM’s DanceAfrica festival. As an educator, she has taught at The New School, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and University of the Arts. She is a 2025 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Choreography, 2025 Princess Grace Honoraria in Choreography, 2025-2028 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, 2024 NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant recipient, and a Live Feed Residency Artist at New York Live Arts. In January 2022 she appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine for their annual “25 to Watch” issue. Most recently, she has published a book Watch Me in a collection edited by Thomas DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson: Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study published by Dancing Foxes Press and Wesleyan University Press.