Impulse Festival: Happy Songs About Unhappy Things

Nikki Lynette (she/her) is a suicide survivor and multi-hyphenate social impact artist who fuses mental health activism into her performance art, film projects and visual art, creating a lane that is uniquely her own. Her journey with mental health outreach began in 2016 when she returned to the public eye after a long hiatus with a confession: she’d secretly been battling mental health issues. In a time when being open about mental health struggles was taboo, Nikki began writing articles about depression and suicide for prominent media like Afropunk and AllHipHop. As the opening act for Pussy Riot’s first American tour, Nikki workshopped the material that would soon become her musical about depression, GET OUT ALIVE. In 2019, Nikki made history as the first black female playwright to be produced by American Music Theatre Project, in 2022 she became the first Steppenwolf LookOut Series work and first female AMTP alum to be featured at NAMT’s Festival of New Musicals, and in 2024 Nikki Lynette became the first American Playwright to be invited to Cove Park’s Musical Theatre Writing Residency in Scotland. GET OUT ALIVE is currently in development under the guidance of Tony & Grammy Award winning producers Octopus Theatricals. A proud ambassador and board member for the Chicago chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), seeing her music used to tell stories in tv shows led Nikki to an interest in filmmaking. Since adapting her musical to film during the pandemic, GET OUT ALIVE has been invited into over a dozen film festivals and won three awards. Her zeal for crafting edgy multimedia theatrical experiences that center mental health is on full display in Nikki Lynette’s second film, the new documusical entitled Happy Songs About Unhappy Things.

Roger Ellis (he/they) is a director who works across screen and stage. Recent projects include the docu-musical Happy Songs About Unhappy Things (co-director), Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 at Writers Theatre (associate director), and the documentary Emergency Contact (director). Professor Ellis directed Nikki Lynette’s afrogoth musical Get Out Alive (Steppenwolf, National Alliance for Musical Theatre, film adaptation) and Ellis’ film work has screened internationally at festivals such as Black Harvest (Gene Siskel Center), Melbourne Lift-off (Australia), School of Sound (London, UK), San Francisco IndieFest’s Decibels Music Film Festival, African Diaspora International Film Festival (NYC), and Pan African Arts and Film Festival (Los Angeles). Other stage work includes Ephemera by Deborah Black, Sophia Treanor, and Mary Overlie (Dancer – Clurman MAD series at Stella Adler NYC), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (movement director – Horizon Theatre/Aurora Theatre), and AntigoneNOW (movement designer – Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre). Roger has worked across the US with Writers Theatre, Sacramento Music Circus, American Music Theatre Project, California Center for the Arts, Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma, Tuacahn Center for the Arts, Paramount Theatre, and San Diego Repertory. Ellis’ research in contemporary theatre explores the interplay between the synthetic and somatic through the mixed reality of Black-queer experience. The conceptual grit of Ellis’ work is anchored in xenoqueer and xenofeminist theory. Ellis has undergone extensive study with Fay Simpson (Lucid Body), Stephen Wangh (Acrobat of the Heart, Grotowski), Mary Overlie, Deborah Black, Sophia Treanor (Six Viewpoints, Hamilton Technique), Wendell Beavers (Developmental Movement), and Erika Berland (Experiential Anatomy). MFA San Diego State University; BA Oklahoma City University; and certified Lucid Body Teacher. Ellis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre at Northwestern University, where they teach courses in movement, music theatre, physical theatre, and directing for the musical. Ellis serves as the coordinator of the movement area for Northwestern’s MFA Acting Program. Professor Ellis is a member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), and National Alliance of Acting Teachers (NAAT).