NILAN is a creator, performer, and arts leader. He serves as the Associate Artistic Director of The Drama League of New York. He is the co-host and producer of TA(L)KING DIRECTION, the podcast exploring those who help direct a better American Theatre and those influential directors shaping television, film, and theatre landscapes. He is the program director and revisionist of New Visions/New Voices the only after-school program that teaches the craft of directing to high school students in the NYC area. He is a member and co-founder of the award-winning creative content company A Certain Something (ACS), whose mission is to intersectional focused stories. He recently produced Bulgarian auteur Christian Bakalov’s immersive sensory experience PURE (Directorfest). He is known for his works that explore various queer and racial communities and histories in hope of creating a new societal consciousness of these people’s humanity. His plays include A Rock and a Hard Place, Endangered Species, FOLKtales, Blood Promises, We Like To Party, The Spectrum Plays (a series of plays that chronicle queer life across the U.S. post-AIDS epidemic), Our Precedent, Willie Richard Johnson, And Then I Woke: A Vicarious Cataclysmic Event (co-wrote), and others. His play Shadow in the Corner is published in the 3rd volume of Obie Award-winning Harlem 9's 48 Hours in Harlem: 10 Minute play anthology. His work as a performer/creator has been seen nationally and internationally at theaters and film festivals as the Harlem International Film Festival, PlayMakers Repertory, Downtown Art, Dixon Place, The Bay Area Playwright Festival, The Parsnip Ship, Madrid International Film Festival, Recklinghausen Ruhr Festival, Bedlam MadLab, Red Fern Theatre, Playback Berlin, 48 Hours in Harlem, Pridefest, 1MPF, New York Shakespeare Exchange, The New American Theatre Co., & others. Selected directing credits POPSICLES (ACS), Friable (13th St. Repertory/Take Ten Best Play), Ceremonies in Dark Old Men (Santos Manuel Theatre), A Holy Her (The Parsnip Ship, streaming now), Ladies in Waiting (CSUSB).  He is currently working on an immersive promenade about personal displays of affection, the musical The Great Escape, that chronicles the decline of dance clubs throughout NYC, and more. He co-created CONSENT IS SEXY, a four-episode PSA campaign about creating positive reinforcement around asking for consensual sexual behavior (YouTube). He is a member of Actors Equity, Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the Black Theatre Network. He holds an M.F.A. in Acting from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. nilan.me | acertainsomething.org