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The Drama League of New York’s Associate Artistic Director Nilan passed away on January 4, 2026, due to a sudden illness involving complications from flu. Nilan is survived by his mother, Melle Johnson, and his sister, Malease Johnson. The details for a celebration of life memorial service will be announced shortly.
“The sadness and shock, for all of us who called Nilan friend and hero, is beyond measure,” said Artistic Director Gabriel Stelian-Shanks. “I cannot find the words to accurately capture the immense scale of loss, to those of us who loved him, and to the American arts community. It is incalculable. The depth of Nilan’s artistry, leadership, and wisdom has forever changed the lives of thousands of artists who worked with him, students who learned from him, and those of us lucky enough to have shared life with him. I will honor his memory every day by remembering his kindness, his generous laughter, and his drive for all of us to be rigorous in our pursuit of excellence.”
Nilan
(he/him+) was an award-winning writer, director, actor, producer, educator, and arts leader whose work centered on intersectionality, queer life, and the multiplicity of human experience. For the last nine years, he was the Associate Artistic Director of The Drama League of New York and was the co-founder of the acclaimed producing company A Certain Something.
As a writer, Nilan’s work includes the plays Heaven, Hell, Or Carolina, A Rock and a Hard Place, FOLKtales: Stories of the Black Diaspora, Endangered Species, Our Precedent, Willie Richard Johnson, We Like To Party; the teleplay The Alphabets; and adaptations of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie and Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. His play Shadow in the Corner was published in the third volume of Harlem 9’s OBIE Award-winning 48 Hours In Harlem anthology. He co-authored the play And Then I Woke (A Vicarious Cataclysmic Event) with Cherrye J. Davis and Gabriel Stelian-Shanks, the television pilots Renaissance with Travis LaMont Ballenger and The Recipe with Gabriel Stelian-Shanks. Nilan co-wrote and starred in the series Extra Room and the short film Popsicles, as well as the streaming PSA campaign Consent Is Sexy. He was a 2025 recipient of Life Jacket Theatre Company’s Writer’s Room, a development accelerator for LGBTQ+ playwrights, and was part of the Center For International Theatre Development’s 2025 delegation to Poland.
As a performer, Nilan’s work was seen internationally at venues and festivals including PlayMakers Repertory Theatre, National Black Theatre, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Harlem International Film Festival, Madrid International Film Festival, Miami International Film Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The Orchard Project, Downtown Art, Bedlam MadLab, Redfern Theatre, New York Shakespeare Exchange, Playback Berlin, Recklinghausen Ruhr Festival, Pridefest, and others. He was a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, and the Black Theatre Network.
As an educator, his mentorship of emerging directors at The Drama League and deep commitment to arts education left an indelible mark on both the New York and international theater communities. His many enduring contributions include the production of seventeen short films for The Drama League’s New Visions/New Voices initiative, a project that reflected his particular passion for nurturing high school students. He also supported professional directors in his work at The Drama League as line producer of its educational workshops in television and film directing, its International Directors Summits, and its Directors Project Retreat, where he often did double-duty as an actor and mentor. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Nilan co-produced and co-hosted The Drama League’s TA(L)KING DIRECTION podcast (Spotify/Apple). He also recently taught for the Lucille Lortel Foundation.
Nilan earned a B.A. from California State University, San Bernardino, and an M.F.A. in Acting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Through his artistry, leadership, and mentorship, Nilan left an enduring impact on contemporary theater and media, championing voices and stories too often left at the margins, and creating work that was both deeply human and boldly transformative. He will be deeply missed by all those who were lucky enough to know him.
