Nancy Graham

Nancy O. Graham’s prose and poetry have been published in BlazeVOX, Eratio, In/Filtration: An Anthology of Innovative Poetry from the Hudson Valley, and elsewhere. Graham, who has a master’s degree in cinema studies from New York University, was the final executive director of the Collective for Living Cinema, an acclaimed and now defunct theater for repertory and experimental cinema in New York City. Under the name Noa Graham she has appeared in films including Elegy for a Glacier, You Know Where to Find Me, Paint, and The Secret Diary of an Exchange Student, as well as regional theatrical productions including Indecent, awarded Best Ensemble by the Connecticut Critics Circle in 2023. Graham studied acting at the Michael Chekhov Studio in Hudson, NY and hosts the occasional podcast, Ensemble Means Together, available on multiple platforms.

Against Protagonism: Why We Need More Ensemble Films

As the fourth-born kid of five, like anyone from a big family, I grew up in an ensemble. We were spread enough in years that school kept us segregated by age, so we had two main gathering sites. The first was the dinner table, where the social task was to make a worthy offering to the highly opinionated conversation. Maybe there was no offering within reach, other family members being older and more experienced. Maybe you stood to underscore a point or fetched a dictionary to prove that “flaccid” is pronounced with a “k” in the middle or happened on a witty remark and sparked a few laughs or tried to vanish into the wallpaper to avoid negative attention.
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