MY AMERICA

Written by J.S. Davall and Anna Jones, My America is a six-part web series released one-a-day leading up to the November 8 election. It tells the story of Lucian, a black artist and Uber-driver, and Carmine, a retired white police officer visiting his son in Los Angeles. Over the course of a week, each man, seemingly so different, experiences a parallel journey confronting personal and political challenges amidst the contrasting value systems of today’s America.

Inspired by the impassioned level of heated debate in the run-up to the election and their own experiences in Uber, J.S. Davall as a driver and Anna Jones as a passenger, My America confronts some of the nation's biggest issues on a deeply human level. Through the use of the Uber experience as a chance for unforeseen chance interactions, the show is written for an audience as diverse as its characters,  from a Chinese mother refusing to vote to a white Democrat concerned about racist remarks on his mixed race children.

Premiering online on November 3rd, My America is a complicated and nuanced set of portraits of present day Americans grappling to understand what their America is and can be. 

Festivals to date include 15 Minutes of Fame (Palm Bay, Florida) and the Unrestricted View Film Festival (London, UK).

Jamel Davall is a black Latino actor/writer; Anna Jones is a white British writer/director; they are married and based between LA and London. They met at the Yale School of Drama where they began their long-term collaboration on Tarell McCraney’s In the Red and Brown Water. A decade of joint theatre making followed in New York (The Shot and day lights the bone for Jones’ acclaimed theatre company, Bone Orchard) and London through their production company, NYLon Projects.

London productions include Alena Smith’s melancholy farce Plucker at Southwark Playhouse (“This particular Smith & Jones form a fruitful partnership.” Evening Standard, London) and several projects for Arts Council England, including the co-authored The Brooklyn Bumpkin, which toured London schools and The Hackney Volpone, the pair’s adaptation of Ben Jonson’s C17th classic about greed ("This is an endearing production that doesn't deserve to slip under the radar", Evening Standard, London), which featured six professional actors including Davall, Babou Ceesay (NBC's The Bible) & Amara Karan (HBO’s The Night Of) and seven local Eastenders.

My America marks the pair's tenth professional collaboration, including shorts playing at various festivals including the London Short Film Festival and Williamsburg International Film Festival.

Special thank you to: Rachel Rusch, Alena Smith, Emmy Grinwis, Miki Johnson, Margaret Glover, Zara Hayes, Asaad Kelada, Carissa Diest, Sandy Yep, Greg Copeland, Kathy Eldon and Megha Kadakia & the entire Creative Visions staff, Zachary Nussbaum, Gregory Nussbaum, Electra Lang, Peter Lang  & the entire Picrow staff.

Made possible with donations by: Line Langebek, Katie Lee Richards, Jaimie Kourt, Veronica Bainbridge, Angela Garcia Combs, Satya Bhabha, James Bundy, Katie Beckley, Alexandria Fisk, Victor Kaufold, Erin Buckley & Heather Greeley, Emily Berry, Steph Pateman, Trisha and David Harbord, Marina Orsini-Jones, Desiree Matthews, Carolyn K. Miller, Anne Loveluck, Sally Mackay, Seon, Jonny & Cons Bone, Rebecca Rosen, Ben Jones & Fang Zhu, Mark Taylor, Nicola Sersale, Elizabeth Lippitt, Lynn and Amer, Al Zimmermann, Andrzej Jachimczyk and Ola Maslik, Derek Dooley, Les and Margaret, Zara Hayes, Matilda Brooker, Nick Maccarone, Caroline Miros, Charlotte Monnickendam, Mariette Moor, Georgia Wever, Megan Pelson, Martha Jennings, Femi Ngozi, Mo and Saima, Elspeth Brooke, Alison and Phil, Michael Shevelaw, Hans and Linda Lee-Frederiks, Allan Leas, Trevor, Paul B., Helen and Peter, Gila Rabinovich, Rebecca Rosen-Checa, Penny & Gerald Watson, various anonymous backers, Stephen & Esther Jones, Fred Williams and in memory of Lina Williams.

Fiscally sponsored by Creative Visions