Nikole Beckwith
Nikole Beckwith is a filmmaker, writer and artist.
She made her feature film debut with Stockholm, Pennsylvania starring Saoirse Ronan, Cynthia Nixon and Jason Isaacs, which premiered at Sundance 2015 and sold to A&E. The film garnered Nikole a Women’s Image Award for Best Screenplay and nomination for Best Director, a Satellite Award for Best Film for Television, three TV Critics Choice Award nominations including Best Movie and slew of awards and nominations for the cast.
Her Sophomore screenplay About Ray premiered at TIFF 2015 starring Susan Sarandon, Naomi Watts and Elle Fanning. Residencies and fellowships include The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Nicholl Fellowship, San Francisco Film Society Female Genre Screenwriting Fellowship, Sundance Labs for screenwriting and sound design.
Beckwith’s stage work has been developed and performed in New York, Chicago and London with The Public Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, Barrow Street, Colt Couer, ATC, The National Theatre of London and The Royal Court. Also a pen and ink artist, her comics have been featured on WNYC, NPR, The Huffington Post and The Hairpin among others.
As an actor she has appeared in work by Eric Bogosian, Gregory S Moss, Labyrinth Theater Company, The Story Pirates and EST. She made her NY theater debut originating Lady in a Leotard in Joshua Conkel’s critically acclaimed MilkMilkLemonade.
Nikole is from Newburyport Massachusetts where she commuted to Sudbury Valley School and grew up making plays in people’s basements, curating art shows in the street and using her living room as a music venue. She lives in Brooklyn.
144: Nikole Beckwith, part 1: Education and leadership
While Nikole’s being a celebrated director and writer is a great reason to feature her and listen to her, I approached her because she graduated from Sudbury Valley School. I hope you’ve heard of Sudbury. If not, it’s likely a different school than any you’ve heard of.
Learning about in inspired me to learn as much as I could about it. Here are many of the links I read on it. As an educator I am as fascinated by its success and how it overturns my view of childhood, education, and humanity, as well as my own childhood.
What better background could I find and feature on it than a student who loved her experience there and shares it.
Nikole shares openly about herself, her childhood, her education before Sudbury and at Sudbury. This episode is longer than most, in part because I believe you’ll find self-directed learning as fascinating as I do. I recommend learning about self-directed learning as part of learning about yourself, democracy, systems, . . . many important things in life.
This conversation was beautiful to me. I relived trials and things about my childhood I couldn’t stand. I don’t know if self-directed learning would work for me, but I would love to have tried it.
Her describing democracy in action made me think about the authoritarian-based schooling I experienced. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it. I reached the pinnacle of education and did well.
I teach now, but not rooted in authority. Not self-directed, though, either, since for college students who are making their way in the world based on their interests, I prefer project-based learning.
By the way, speaking of the environment, walking around Silver Lake after this conversation, I kept passing taco stands and asked if I could get a taco without disposable anything, but not one could. So I missed out on Silver Lake tacos.
Read the transcript.