Nilan, the associate artistic director of The Drama League of New York, died January 4 due to complications from the flu. News of his passing was confirmed by the Drama League.
"The sadness and shock, for all of us who called Nilan friend and hero, is beyond measure," said Artistic Director Gabriel Stelian-Shanks in a statement. "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 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 served the Drama League, alongside his work as the co-founder of the producing company A Certain Something.
As a playwright, 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, and The Alphabets, along with 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 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.
Nilan is survived by his mother, Melle Johnson, and his sister, Malease Johnson. A celebration of life memorial service will be held at a later date, with details to come.
