A Certain Something, Investigating Intersectionality
The Faces of A Certain Something, Cherrye J. Davis, Nilan, Gabriel Shanks, and Catalin Stelian
In this profile series, Revry is highlighting authentic contributors to the LGBTQ media and entertainment community. We ask questions to find out who they are and where they are going in the future. The questions remain the same but the answers tell their unique story. It’s time to explore and celebrate true representation beyond the limits of Hollywood.
A CERTAIN SOMETHING is the brainchild of Cherrye J. Davis (writer/actor), Nilan (writer/actor/producer), Gabriel Shanks (writer/director/producer), and Catalin Stelian (director of photography/editor/actor). It's a queer content production company working in film, television, theater, music, spoken word, and digital performance. As colleagues, the four of them share a belief that art shapes better futures; ACS embraces this idea by investigating intersectionality in the stories they tell in a variety of mediums. ("Intersectionality" was first coined by theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe the interconnected nature of race, class, gender, orientation, origin, and ableism as they apply to individuals or groups, creating overlapping and interdependent systems of privilege, discrimination and disadvantage.) As queer folk, ACS wants to make space for ALL stories to be told, ALL lived experiences to be valued...and seen in all of their complexity and fullness.
What are you best known for?
We've recently been on the film festival circuit with two award-winning short pieces we made during the early days of the pandemic, "COVERED" and "THE DAMNABLE DEPRIVATION OF DMITRI". In television and streaming, we're best known for our upcoming queer comedy ensemble series EXTRA ROOM, which we hope to see on Revry one day!
What is the first thing you all worked on?
Gabriel has been directing for 30 years, so we gotta go way back...it was "ADAM AND THE EXPERTS", Victor Bumbalo's incredible play about the AIDS epidemic, at Atlanta's 14th Street Playhouse. Catalin is originally from Romania, where he was a well-known television star on the comedy "NIMENI NU-I PERFECT" (aka Nobody's Perfect). For Nilan, his play "ENDANGERED SPECIES" got a lot of buzz early in his career, including being selected for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. And Cherrye's history with spoken word and music is deep in the NYC music scene, but she might have been first seen by audiences in the HBO film "FOR FLOW" as part of its Black Film Fest in 2011. Although we worked in different configurations, the first time the four of us were together in this situation was 2017, when we produced AND THEN I WOKE (A VICARIOUS CATACLYSMIC EVENT), a piece about police violence perpetrated on Black and Brown bodies, and the phenomenon of it being filmed (and rewatched) by citizens.
What are you working on that no one knows about yet?
Our next TV/streaming series will be THE RECIPE, which was selected for development this summer from over 1,300 scripts by the Orchard Project accelerator lab. We are really excited about it; it follows an intergenerational Black family as they deal with the loss of their patriarch and start a new business. We're also developing our first feature film, two more short films, a third television series called THE ALPHABETS, and remounting Cherrye's solo performance piece "HOW TO MOURN AN AMERICAN." We're keeping busy!