Adil Mansoor is a theatre director and educator centering the stories of queer folks and people of color. Directing projects include Gloria by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Hatch Arts), Chickens in the Yard by Paul Kruse (Hatch Arts and Quantum Theatre), Desdemona’s Child by Caridad Svich (Carnegie Mellon University), Dark Play or Stories for Boys by Carlos Murillo (Carnegie Mellon University) and an upcoming ensemble generated piece with Pittsburgh Playhouse. Adil’s solo performance adapting Sophocles’s Antigone as an apology to and from his mother, Amm(i)gone, is being co-commissioned by Kelly Strayhorn Theater in partnership with The Theater Offensive and the National Performance Network. Adil has developed and directed new work through NYU, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, and PearlArts Studio. He is a founding member and resident director with Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective, a member of DirectorsLabChicago, a Gerri Kay New Voices Fellow with Quantum Theatre, and a 2050 Fellow with New York Theatre workshop. As an educator, Adil has worked with Middlebury College, Carnegie Mellon University, The Mori Art Museum, and The Warhol. He led educational programming at Dreams of Hope, an LGBTQA+ youth arts organization in Pittsburgh, for over 5 year

For the past two decades Aixa has been living in Westchester and fully engaged in sharing her skills with numerous community organizations, including but not limited to: Youth Theatre Interactions, The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers Public Schools, The Gateway Program and Wartburg Senior Center. Professional experience includes: Broadway, regional and international theaters; industrials, TV, film, commercials, choreographer, assistant choreographer, dance instructor and dance and theatre director and coordinator. She also owns a Pilates studio in Yonkers, ‘Mind-Body Pilates’, teaches Pilates for the Lion King Company on Broadway and works as a faculty member for the Civic Engagement Theatre Program in the Sarah Lawrence College Theatre Program.

BA, University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. MFA, SUNY-Empire State College. Published plays include Chimera, White Buffalo, and The Wading Pool. Recipient of the Lipkin Playwright Award and Drury College Playwright Award. Plays produced in New York City at Pan Asian Rep, Red Shirt Entertainment, La Mama, The Nuyorician Poets Cafe, and other venues. In New York, directed new plays by Richard Vetere, Adam Kraar, Diane Luby, and Michael Schwartz. Established The River Theatre Company in Central Wisconsin with a company of local players. Directed, toured with the work of Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Slawomir Mrozek, David Lindsay Abaire, and John Patrick Shanley, among others. Performances presented on NPR and in shopping malls, street festivals, bus stops, parking lots, and abandoned stores, as well as more traditional venues. Conducted theatre workshops for participants of all ages in New York City, Yonkers, Westchester County, and throughout the United States and abroad. Wrote, directed, and performed in original plays presented in schools, community centers, and museums in Yonkers, Westchester County, and beyond. Recipient of grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, The Wisconsin Council of the Arts. Sarah Lawrence College Theatre Outreach co-director; artistic director of the Sarah Lawrence College theatre program, 2007-2010. SLC, 1998–

Caden Manson is a performance maker (Big Art Group), curator (Contemporary Performance and Special Effects Festival) and educator(SLCTheatre). Through the company Big Art Group, their performance work creates radical queer narrative structures and embodiments to construct and aid transitory generative critical space for participants and audience. Their work is dense, fast, multi-layered, and traverses multiple genres and forms, often using interference, slippage, and disruption strategies. Manson’s work has been presented throughout 14 countries and over 50 cities in Europe, Asia, and North America. Their work has been co-produced by the Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Hebbel Am Ufer, Rome’s La Vie de Festival, PS122, and Wexner Center for The Arts. Caden is a Foundation For Contemporary Art Fellow, Pew Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. Their writing, with Jemma Nelson, can be found in the publications PAJ, Theater Magazine, Theater der Zeit, and Theater Journal. Manson is the Director of The Theatre Program at Sarah Lawrence College, BA, MFA. SLC, 2019-

Caden Manson is a performance maker (Big Art Group), curator (Contemporary Performance and Special Effects Festival) and educator(SLCTheatre). Through the company Big Art Group, their performance work creates radical queer narrative structures and embodiments to construct and aid transitory generative critical space for participants and audience. Their work is dense, fast, multi-layered, and traverses multiple genres and forms, often using interference, slippage, and disruption strategies. Manson’s work has been presented throughout 14 countries and over 50 cities in Europe, Asia, and North America. Their work has been co-produced by the Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Hebbel Am Ufer, Rome’s La Vie de Festival, PS122, and Wexner Center for The Arts. Caden is a Foundation For Contemporary Art Fellow, Pew Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. Their writing, with Jemma Nelson, can be found in the publications PAJ, Theater Magazine, Theater der Zeit, and Theater Journal. Manson is the Director of The Theatre Program at Sarah Lawrence College, BA, MFA. SLC, 2019-, MFA, Brooklyn College. Kempson’s plays have been presented in the United States, Germany, and Norway. As a performer she toured internationally from 2000-2011 with Nature Theater of Oklahoma, New York City Players, and Elevator Repair Service. Her own work has received support from the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Dixon Place. She was given four Mondo Cane! commissions from 2002-2011 for The Wytche of Problymm Plantation, Crime or Emergency, Potatoes of August, and The Secret Death of Puppets). She received an MAP Fund grant for her collaboration with Elevator Repair Service (Fondly, Collette Richland) at New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW), a 2018 PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for American Playwright at Mid-Career (specifically honoring "her fine craft, intertextual approach, and her body of work including Crime or Emergency and Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag), and a 2014 USA Artists Rockefeller fellowship with NYTW and director Sarah Benson. She received a 2013 Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation commission for Kyckling and Screaming (a translation/adaptation of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck), a 2013-14 McKnight National residency and commission for a new play (The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S.), a New Dramatists/Full Stage USA commission for a devised piece (From the Pig Pile: The Requisite Gesture(s) of Narrow Approach), and a National Presenters Network Creation Fund Award for the same project. Her second collaboration with David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group, I Understand Everything Better, received a Bessie Award for Outstanding Production in 2015; the first was Restless Eye at New York Live Arts in 2012. Current and upcoming projects include a new opera with David Lang for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston for 2018, Sasquatch Rituals at The Kitchen in April 2018, and The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S. Kempson is a MacDowell Colony fellow; a member of New Dramatists; a USA Artists Rockefeller fellow; an artist-in-residence at the Abrons Arts Center; a 2014 nominee for the Doris Duke Impact Award, the Laurents Hatcher Award, and the Herb Alpert Award; and a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. Her plays are published by 53rd State Press, PLAY: Journal of Plays, and Performance & Art Journal (PAJ). In addition to Sarah Lawrence College, she teaches and has taught experimental performance writing at Brooklyn College and the Eugene Lang College at the New School in New York City. Kempson launched the 7 Daughters of Eve Theater & Performance Co. in April 2015 at the Martin E. Segal Center at the City University of New York. The company’s inaugural production, Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag, premiered at Abrons Arts Center in New York City. A new piece, Public People's Enemy, was presented in October 2018 at the Ibsen Awards and Conference in Ibsen’s hometown of Skien, Norway. 12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens, a three-year cycle of rituals for the Whitney Museum of American Art in the Meatpacking District of New York City, began on the vernal equinox in March 2016 to recur on each solstice and equinox through December 2018. SLC, 2016-, A performer and media designer born in Japan, raised in the United States, and based in Brooklyn, New York, Blow’s work incorporates photography, video, and sound with a focus on found media artifacts. He has performed and designed for The Laboratory of Dmitry Krymov, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jodi Melnick, Ann Liv Young, Big Dance Theater, David Neumann, and Deganit Shemy & Company. He also performs as Frustrator on Enemies List Recordings and is one-half of Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble. Blow’s work has been featured at Hartford Stage, Dance Theater Workshop, Lincoln Center Festival, The Kitchen, BAM, The Public Theater, Kate Werble Gallery, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Wadsworth Atheneum, and at theatres around the world. He is the recipient of a 2015 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Sound Design. Blow composed the sound score for I Understand Everything Better by dancer and choreographer David Neumann, in which Blow also performed; the piece won a 2015 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Production. Blow’s most recent production with Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble, The Art of Luv Part I: Elliot, premiered in The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival in January, 2016; it was reviewed in The New York Times. Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble is the recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital award. SLC, 2016–

BA, Marquette University. MFA, Columbia University. One-Year Study Abroad, Oxford, England. Actress, playwright, director. Appeared for nine seasons as Pam Shrier, the ballistics detective on Law and Order. Acting credits on TV include Saturday Night Live and One Life to Live; films, Ice Storm, Fatal Attraction; stage: Comedy of Errors, Uncle Vanya, Catholic School Girls, Division Street, The Dining Room. Two published plays: Mama Drama and The Once Attractive Woman. Directed in colleges, as well as Off Broadway, and was the artistic director and co-founder of the New York Team for TheatreSports. Performed in comedy improvisation throughout the world. SLC, 1991–

Artistic director of Youngblood, the company of emerging playwrights at Ensemble Studio Theatre (2012 Obie Award). Director of the E.S.T./Sloan Project, a $1.5 million program that fosters plays about science, technology, and economics. Worked as a playwright at theatres throughout the United States and Canada, including E.S.T. (Youngblood, Marathon of One-Act Plays), Rattlestick, Cherry Lane, Vampire Cowboys, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Source Theatre (DC), Tarragon Theatre (Toronto). Published by Dramatists Play Service and Applause Books. Member of the Actors Studio and E.S.T. SLC, 2013–

Jian Jung is a New York based set designer. Jung’s design has been acclaimed as 'innovative', 'inventive', 'genius' and 'spectacular' by major press such as The New York Times, LA Times, Time Out, and many others. Her theater work has been in numerous downtown NYC theaters including Classic Stage Company, ART/NY, The Kitchen, The Bushwick Starr, The Flea, Abrons Arts Center, Theater Row, and Soho Rep, as well as outside of NYC, in Venezuela, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Korea, and Los Angeles. Her opera work has been in Long Beach Opera (CA), Lincoln Center Juilliard School, Huntington Theatre (Boston), among many venues. Jung received 2015 Edith Lutyens & Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Award, and was nominated for 2019 Henry Hewes Design Award. Her design in Venezuela was presented in Prague Quadrennial 2015, the world’s largest scenography exhibition. Jung received an MFA in Theater Design from NYU, and an MFA in Environmental Design from Ewha Women’s University in Korea, where she was born and grew up. www.jianjung.com

Judi Lewis Ockler is a professional intimacy director, fight director, stunt performer, teaching artist and clown.  Her directing work has found collaboration with Signature Theater, WP theater, New World Stages, The Flea Theater, Classic Stage, Dixon Place, Here Arts Space, The Wild Project and Williamstown Theater Festival.  Stunt credits include feature films The Wolf of Wall Street, Enchanted, Across the Universe, and television shows 30 Rock, Gotham, Big Dogs, House of Cards, Boardwalk Empire.  She is a founding member of Kendall Cornell’s Clowns Ex Machina, an all female clown troupe in residency at LaMama, ETC.  She holds a BFA from the New School, NYC and is a certified Intimacy Director with Intimacy Directors International and Intimacy Directors and Coordinators.    She teaches/directs intimacy and violence in performance at Tisch Drama, The Meisner Studio, Playwrights Horizons, Atlantic Theater School, National Theater Institute,The New School for Drama, HB Studios, Stella Adler Studios,The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and The American Musical and Dramatic Academy, NYC.

MFA, Columbia University. BFA, University of Georgia. Award-winning filmmaker and theatre artist. Film festivals and awards include: South By Southwest (World premiere, Narrative competition); Hamptons Film Festival (New York premiere); Discovery Award & Best Actor Award, Rhode Island International Film Festival; Audience Award–Best Feature, Oldenburg International Film Festival; Jury Award–Best Film, Beaufort International Film Festival; David Horowitz Media Literacy Award, Santa Fe Indie Film Festival; Best Film, North Country Film Festival; Best Film, Peace On Earth Film Festival; Opening Night Film, Kansas City Film Festival; Voice Award, Nominee. As a theatre director and playwright, Manning has worked extensively Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway. Most recently, he wrote, directed, and starred in the critically-acclaimed Off-Broadway play AWAKE, which received its world premiere at the Barrow Group Theatre Company. Other recent theatre directing work includes: a new, critically-acclaimed adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (co-written with Seth Barrish) and John Yearley’s The Unrepeatable Moment. Manning is currently developing his second feature film, a television series, and a full-length documentary on young Cameroonian painter Ludovic Nkoth. SLC, 2018–

BA, Rutgers College. Certificate, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). Graduate, The Conservatory at the Classic Stage Company (CSC), Playwrights Horizons Theatre School Directing Program. Actor, director, and producer of Off Broadway and regional productions; resident director, Forestburgh Playhouse; producer/producing artistic director, Sarah Lawrence theatre program (1994-2008); executive producer, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York (1992-94); associate artistic director, Elysium Theatre Company, New York (1990-92); manager, development/marketing departments of Circle Repertory Company, New York. Recipient of two grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; OBIE Award, Outstanding Achievement Off and Off-Off Broadway (producer, E.S.T. Marathon of One-Act Plays); nomination, Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Revival of a Play (acting company); director, first (original) productions of 13 published plays. SLC, 1994–

BFA, University of North Carolina School of the Arts. École Jacques Lecoq, Paris. Theatre work includes designing sets, puppets, and costumes and directing, choreographing, and performing. Drawn to incorporating puppetry, movement, and live music into the theatre, shows are frequently made from the ground up. Work seen in many New York theatres, including HERE Theatre, La Mama E.S.T., P.S. 122, St. Mark’s Church, Dixon Place, and One Arm Red. Past collaborative work includes Electric Bathing, Wind Set-up, White Elephant, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, What’s Inside the Egg?, How I Fixed My Engine With Rose Water, and Etiquette Unraveled. As an artistic associate with the Hip Pocket Theatre in Fort Worth, Texas, designed sets and puppets for a multitude of productions over the years, presented seven collaborative theatre pieces, performed in more than 30 world premieres, and launched its Cowtown Puppetry Festival. Puppet/mask designer for New York Shakespeare Festival, Signature Theatre Company, My Brightest Diamond, Division 13, Kristin Marting, Doug Elkins, Cori Orlinghouse, Daniel Rigazzi, and various universities; puppetry associate for War Horse on Broadway. Awarded a variety of grants and awards for theatre work. SLC, 2012–

BA, Bard College. Designer of costumes for theatre, dance, and film. Recent work includes Bill T. Jones’ Analogy Trilogy for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Co., as well as We Shall Not Be Moved, the opera that Jones recently directed for Opera Philadelphia, with music by Danial Bernard Roumaine and librettist Marc Bathmuti Joseph. Prince has designed numerous works for Bill T. Jones since 1990. Other recent work includes Doug Varone’s In The Shelter of the Fold for BAM’s Next Wave Festival, as well as his Half Life, commissioned by Paul Taylor Company’s 2018 Lincoln Center season. She has designed numerous works for Varone since 1997. Other premieres this year include works by Bebe Miller, Liz Gerring, and Pilobolus in collaboration with Bela Fleck and Abigail Wasburn. Prince’s costumes have been exhibited at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art; the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance, Design and Space; Snug Harbor Cultural Center; and Rockland Center for the Arts. She received a 1990 New York Dance and Performance Award (BESSIE) and a 2008 Charles Flint Kellogg Arts and Letters Award from Bard College. SLC, 2017–

Mallory Catlett is an Obie and Bessie award-winning creator/director of performance across disciplines from opera to installation art. In New York her work has premiered and performed at 3LD, HERE, Ontological-Hysteric, PS122, Abrons, Chocolate Factory, EMPAC; featured at COIL, Prototype, and BAM’s Next Wave; developed at CultureHub, Barishnykov Arts, Pioneer Works, Watermill Center, McDowell, Performing Garage, HERE, Mabou Mines, LMCC, EMPAC, and Yaddo and toured internationally to Canada, France, UK, Ireland & Australia. She has received 3 MAP Fund grants, 2 NYSCA Commissions, and is the recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital Grant and a 2015 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. She is the founder of Restless Production NYC (restlessproductionsnyc.org), an Associate Artist at CultureHub, a member of the Collapsable Hole (an artist-run development and performance venue), and the newly appointed Co-Artistic Director of Mabou Mines.  She has written about her work in Canadian Theatre Review, Theater, Performance Research,  PAJ and her first book co-written with Aaron Landsman called No One Is Qualified: a Primer for Participation will be published in 2022 by Iowa University Press. www.mallorycatlett.net

Larissa Velez-Jackson is a choreographer and hybrid artist who uses improvisation as a main tool for research and creation, focusing on personhood and the dancing/sound-making body. She employs a deep humor to grant audiences universal access to contemporary art's critical discourse. Of her 2010, critically acclaimed show at Danspace Project, the New York Times said, “Ms. Velez-Jackson demonstrates her own formidable presence as she bursts into the space… A choreographer who is not afraid of being (or showing) ugly onstage, she disarms her audiences with humor….” In 2011, she launched a song-and-dance collaboration with her husband, Jon Velez-Jackson, called Yackez, “The World's Most Loveable Musical Duo." For more info on Yackez visit www.yackez.com. She is also the Artistic Director of the LVJ Performance Co. Velez-Jackson's works have been performed widely in New York City, including The Bushwick Starr, The Chocolate Factory, Roulette, Museum of Art and Design, Danspace Project, New Museum, American Realness Festival at Abrons Arts Center, and Martin E Segal Theater. In May 2014, LVJ performed an exciting mobile outdoor work, S.P.E.D. THE BX, with the support of Bronx non-profit, Pepatían and Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education. S.P.E.D. THE BX was a durational site-speciific work that culminated for an audience of 70 children and BRONXNET cable television. Later in 2014, LVJ premiered “Star Crap Method” at Chocolate Factory Theater. The piece was the culmination of three years of studio and stage research in LVJ’s improvisational performance practices for a cast of four people. The piece also featured lighting designer Kathy Kaufmann, who improvised the lighting design anew each performance. Talya Epstein, a member of the cast, was nominated for a 2015 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” award for her performance in “Star Crap Method”.

BA, University of California–Los Angeles. MFA, Columbia University. Diploma, French Culinary Institute. A New York-based playwright, lyricist, and librettist, Tien is the author of the plays Untitled Landscape, The Boyd Show, Best Life, Yellow Card Red Card, Familium Vulgare, and Refrain. Mary, her musical co-written with composer Matt Frey, will have a workshop at New Dramatists in fall 2019. Her play Best Life was selected to participate in the 2018 Bushwick Starr Reading Series and will be part of JACK’s inaugural season in its new space in Brooklyn. Her play Yellow Card Red Card was presented as part of the Ice Factory Festival in 2017 at the New Ohio Theatre and had a workshop production at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 2016. In addition to being a resident playwright at New Dramatists, she is a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in playwriting/screenwriting, a Walter E. Dakin fellow at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and a recipient of the Theater Masters Visionary Playwright Award. She has been a resident of the MacDowell Colony and the Millay Colony and was a member of the 2010-2012 Women’s Project Lab. She has presented work at the Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Women Playwrights International Conference, and the National Asian American Theatre Conference and Festival. SLC, 2019–

Modesto Flako Jimenez is a Bushwick-raised artist and educator. 2015 HOLA Best Ensemble Award Winner. ATI Best Actor Award Winner 2016. HOLA Outstanding Solo Performer 2017, 2016 Princess Grace Honorarium in Theater, and NY Times profiled. He has taught theater/poetry in NYC Public Schools for ten years. He has toured internationally and appeared on TEDxBushwick, EARLY SHAKER SPIRITUALS (Wooster Group), Richard Maxwell’s SAMARA (Soho Rep.), Kaneza Schaal’s JACK &. (BAM) and Victor Morales ESPERENTO (Sundance). In 2018 he became the first Dominican-American Lead Artist in The Public Theater’s UTR Festival for ¡OYE! FOR MY DEAR BROOKLYN. www.flakojimenez.com

Naveen Bahar Choudhury is a playwright, librettist, and lyricist whose work has been produced, commissioned, and/or developed by Ma-Yi Theater, Prospect Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Second Stage Theatre, New Federal Theatre, Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, The Lark Play Development Center, New Dramatists, Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, and more.  She has been a Dramatists Guild Fellow, a LaGuardia Performing Arts Center Playwriting Resident, and a Mellon Creative Research Fellow/Playwriting Resident, at the University of Washington. Her play SKIN is published in Plays For Two, an anthology by Vintage Books/Random House, and was broadcast on Northeast Public Radio as part of the Playing On Air series.  She has an MFA in Playwriting from The New School and has been a guest instructor of playwriting at both The New School and SUNY - Purchase.  Her short musical on film, Lady Apsara, commissioned by Prospect Theater, and written with composer Kamala Sankaram, will be presented at the 44th Asian American International Film Festival this summer.

Originally from Atlanta, GA, Vaswani spent the last 18 years working as a production stage manager and production manager in New York City. She currently serves as the director of production at Sarah Lawrence College. In her freelance career, she has worked on a wide range of shows, including Mabou Mine’s Peter and Wendy and Mine’s Song for New York by the late Ruth Maleczech. She has stage-managed the majority of Basil Twist’s repertoire, including, Arias With A Twist, Master Peter’s Puppet Show, Petrushka, Dogugaeshi, La Bella Dormente nel Bosco, and Sister's Follies. Other credits include The Adventures of Charcoal Boy, Wind Set-up, Don Cristobal, and Wind-up Bird Chronicle, which was presented at the International Edinburgh Festival and the Singapore Arts Festival. Vaswani’s work in the theatre has brought her all over the United States, as well as overseas to France, Stockholm, Edinburgh and Singapore. Currently, she is also a member of the Alphabet Arts collective, whose focus is to continue arts education through poetry and puppetry—specifically to underprivileged communities. And when not working in a dark theatre, she is the project manager for Emdee International, a textile company where she designs, builds, and does all the visual merchandising for six annual trade shows. SLC, 2016–

MFA, Sarah Lawrence College. Active in performance art and theatre since the mid-1980s, starting as technical director at The Franklin Furnace performance space. Co-founded DSR, a sound performance group, and toured Japan and Europe in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Assistant Technical Director for the SLC theatre program prior to starting his own sound design company. Sound design credits include: work for Off Broadway theatre companies, including Naked Angels, Clubbed Thumb, Cucaracha and Gabrielle Lansner; in-house sound designer for Ensemble Studio Theatre (1999–2003) and designed most of its yearly Marathon series productions of one-act plays during those years; created sound for dance choreographers Jeanine Durning, Hetty King, Lans Gries, and Lisa Race; and currently is an audio engineer for CBS News. SLC, 2008–

Sadah Espii Proctor (she/hers/Espii) is an XR director and sound/media designer for live performance and immersive experiences. She was recognized by American Theatre Magazine for multimedia storytelling in the "Six Theatre Artists to Know" series, and she also received a Barrymore Award for Outstanding Media Design. Her work encompasses global stories of women, social issues, and the African Diaspora, often with an Afrofuturist/Cyberpunk lens.

Sara Lyons is a Los Angeles-based director who seeks to explode form and politic in critically embodied, often interdisciplinary new theatre and performance works. Working frequently in adaptation, social practice, and new media as well as theatre, their work has been presented nationally and internationally by REDCAT, Los Angeles Performance Practice, OUTsider, SFX Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, HERE Arts Center, LaMaMa, Edinburgh Fringe, and more. Current projects include Paul Outlaw’s BBC (Big Black Cockroach), a Kafka-inspired live horror farce in which a white Tr*mp-supporting woman wakes up as a montrous vermin—a black man (REDCAT 2019). Sara’s ongoing project I’m Very Into You is an original adaptation of the published 1995 email correspondence by feminist literary legend Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark. Called “worth keeping an eye out for” by American Theatre Magazine, I’m Very Into You is an ongoing queer archival performance project engaging queer and feminist artists in communities around the country. It has been presented by The Wattis Institute, Los Angeles Performance Practice, and OUTsider. Sara has received residencies from Thymele Arts (2020 Resident Artist), Ucross Foundation, PAM Residencies, and Los Angeles Performance Practice/Automata LA. Sara holds an MFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University and is an alum of the Hemispheric Institute's EMERGENYC program for artists working at the intersection of performance and politics at NYU. Sara teaches at UCLA and their critical writing has been published by ContemporaryPerformance.com and Riting.org.

MFA, Brooklyn College. Kempson’s plays have been presented in the United States, Germany, and Norway. As a performer she toured internationally from 2000-2011 with Nature Theater of Oklahoma, New York City Players, and Elevator Repair Service. Her own work has received support from the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Dixon Place. She was given four Mondo Cane! commissions from 2002-2011 for The Wytche of Problymm Plantation, Crime or Emergency, Potatoes of August, and The Secret Death of Puppets). She received an MAP Fund grant for her collaboration with Elevator Repair Service (Fondly, Collette Richland) at New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW), a 2018 PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for American Playwright at Mid-Career (specifically honoring "her fine craft, intertextual approach, and her body of work including Crime or Emergency and Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag), and a 2014 USA Artists Rockefeller fellowship with NYTW and director Sarah Benson. She received a 2013 Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation commission for Kyckling and Screaming (a translation/adaptation of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck), a 2013-14 McKnight National residency and commission for a new play (The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S.), a New Dramatists/Full Stage USA commission for a devised piece (From the Pig Pile: The Requisite Gesture(s) of Narrow Approach), and a National Presenters Network Creation Fund Award for the same project. Her second collaboration with David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group, I Understand Everything Better, received a Bessie Award for Outstanding Production in 2015; the first was Restless Eye at New York Live Arts in 2012. Current and upcoming projects include a new opera with David Lang for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston for 2018, Sasquatch Rituals at The Kitchen in April 2018, and The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S. Kempson is a MacDowell Colony fellow; a member of New Dramatists; a USA Artists Rockefeller fellow; an artist-in-residence at the Abrons Arts Center; a 2014 nominee for the Doris Duke Impact Award, the Laurents Hatcher Award, and the Herb Alpert Award; and a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. Her plays are published by 53rd State Press, PLAY: Journal of Plays, and Performance & Art Journal (PAJ). In addition to Sarah Lawrence College, she teaches and has taught experimental performance writing at Brooklyn College and the Eugene Lang College at the New School in New York City. Kempson launched the 7 Daughters of Eve Theater & Performance Co. in April 2015 at the Martin E. Segal Center at the City University of New York. The company’s inaugural production, Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag, premiered at Abrons Arts Center in New York City. A new piece, Public People's Enemy, was presented in October 2018 at the Ibsen Awards and Conference in Ibsen’s hometown of Skien, Norway. 12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens, a three-year cycle of rituals for the Whitney Museum of American Art in the Meatpacking District of New York City, began on the vernal equinox in March 2016 to recur on each solstice and equinox through December 2018. SLC, 2016-

Sifiso is a New York based multidisciplinary theatre maker from Zimbabwe. Off Broadway: Riddle of the Trilobites (Flint Rep; New Victory Theatre), Carnival of The Animals (Miller Theatre); Bismarck (Wright Theatre); Red Hills (En Garde Arts), Art of Luv Part 6  (Abrons), Molly’s Dream (The Public: Fornes Marathon), Shoot Don’t Talk (Labapalooza, St Ann’s Warehouse), Ocean Filibuster (Abrons). International: Winter’s Tale (National Arts Festival, SA), The Comeback (HIFA, ZW), Love in the Time of Malaria (NAF, South Africa). Sarah Lawrence: Macbeth, Harmless, Endless Long Hot Summer, Under African Skies (solo show). As a playwright, Sifiso has collaborated with The Royal Court Theatre and the British Council (ZW). Her work has been performed at the Harare International Festival of the Arts (Winner of HIFADirect 2011), the Intwasa Festival and the Chimanimani Festival. A burgeoning puppeteer, she’s collaborated to make original puppet theatre works like Mashup Dreams For Nostalgics and Phenomenal Woman (#blackgirlmagic) that were performed at Dixon Place’s PuppetBlok in 2018 and 2019. Sifiso holds an MFA in Theatre from Sarah Lawrence College, and is a CUNY Adjunct Professor in Theatre. SLC, 2019-

Stephen Tyler Davis (he/him) is New York based multi-hyphen artist from Huntsville, Alabama committed to connecting communities and inspiring joy through theatre and music. Over the past decade he has worked as a director, teacher, writer, performer, producer, and designer at colleges, regional theaters, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, and the New York International Fringe Festival. He is the author of plays, poetry, and original musicals such as Huckleberry Haywood, Bird Brain, Bad Kiss,Little Trees, Rusty the Robot, Stargazing with Helen Keller, Lights Out in Cootah County,​as well as an original shadow puppetry adaptation of A Christmas Carol. In 2006 he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Creative Writing from the University of Alabama, and in 2016 he received his Master of Fine Arts in Theatre from Sarah Lawrence College. He has toured the U.S. for three seasons with TheatreWorks USA and can be found daily as a singing hologram on Broadway at the Ripley’s Museum in Times Square. Stephen is a founder and Artistic Director of CitySalt Theatricals, an ordained minister, ASCAP songwriter, and a member of the Actors Equity Association.

BA, Vassar College. Postgraduate training at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), at Sonia Moore Studio, and with David Kaplan (author, Five Approaches to Acting). President and artistic director, Cygnet Productions, National Equity Theatre for Young Audiences Company; leading performer, Boston Shakespeare Company; guest faculty at Storm King School, Western Connecticut State University, and at Vassar College; certified instructor, Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD); winner of the Society of American Fight Directors’ 2006 Patrick Craen award; designated practitioner, Stough Institute of Breathing Coordination; certified teacher, Alexander Technique. SLC, 1991–

As Tony Award and Two-Time Obie Award winning playwright/co-composer of the ground-breaking musical PASSING STRANGE, critically acclaimed singer/songwriter and veteran of multiple dive-bar stages, Stew’s classes are hothouses of multi-disciplinary, self-challenging experimentation which encourage celebratory transformation via myth-making & Song. His courses are equally informed by the spontaneous immediacy of rock-club survival tactics and the human grandeur of theater. As an instructor, Stew strives to demystify the song-writing process, while simultaneously inviting students to create myths out of their truths, so that those truths might reach deeper and shine brighter. WORKS 2019: MAYBE THERE’S BLACK PEOPLE IN FORT GREENE: Composed for Spike Lee’s TV show “She’s Gotta Have It.” 2018: A KLOWN WITH THE NUCLEAR CODE: Composed for Spike Lee’s TV show “She’s Gotta Have It.” 2017: RESISTING MY RESISTANCE TO THE RESISTANCE: Metropolitan Museum of Art 2016: MOSQUITO NET (NYUAD Arts Center, Abu Dhabi 2016) 2015: NOTES OF A NATIVE SONG: Commissioned by Harlem Stage. (performed worldwide). 2015: WAGNER, MAX!!! WAGNER!!!: Kennedy Center. 2013: CHICAGO OMNIBUS commissioned by & debuted @ Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. 2012: SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ANALOG: UCLA. 2010: BROOKLYN OMNIBUS: Brooklyn Academy of Music. 2010: MAKING IT: St Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn 2009: SPIKE LEE’S PASSING STRANGE (film) 2008: PASSING STRANGE: Tony for Best Book of a Musical. Broadway. 2007: PASSING STRANGE: Obie: Best New Theater Piece & Best Ensemble. Public Theater. 2006 PASSING STRANGE: World Premier. Berkeley Repertory. STEW & THE NEGRO PROBLEM have released 12 critically acclaimed albums between 1997 & the present. Stew is the composer of “GARY COME HOME” of SPONGE-BOB SQUAREPANTS fame, which, honestly, is all anyone cares about anyway.

BA, Lawrence University (Appleton, Wisconsin). MFA, Sarah Lawrence College. Author of numerous plays performed in New York and around the country, including Resident Alien (Broadway Play Publishing). Other plays include In the Western Garden (Broadway Play Publishing), Blue Stars (Best American Short Plays of 1993-94), and Sudden Devotion (Broadway Play Publishing). A playwriting textbook, The Playwright’s Guidebook, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2002. Recent plays are Alabaster City, commissioned by South Coast Rep, and Judy Garland Died for Your Sins. Former literary manager of Ensemble Studio Theatre; fellow, the Edward Albee Foundation; member, Dramatist Guild. SLC, 1991–

BA, Jacksonville University. MFA, Sarah Lawrence College. Co-founder and artistic director for Jacksonville’s A Company of Players, Inc.; productions with The Actor’s Outlet, Playwrights Horizons, Summerfest, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre. SLC, 1981–

BA, Bowdoin College. Songwriting with Paul Simon, New York University, 1969; taught Singing Workshop with John Braswell at Sarah Lawrence (1971-77); scored musicals at Sarah Lawrence, Astor Place Theatre, and Cafe LaMaMa, New York City; composed, orchestrated, and musical-directed three rock operas Off-Off Broadway and at Sarah Lawrence. (The first, Joe’s Opera, was twice optioned for Broadway production; animated the second, The Sea of Simile, on a full-length DVD.) Toured and recorded (1977-1998) from Vietnam to Vienna, New York City to Sun City, with Dire Straits, Bryan Adams, Cyndi Lauper, Tina Turner, Bon Jovi, B-52s, the Pretenders, Nils Lofgren, Little Steven, Peter Wolf, Ian Hunter/Mick Ronson, two former NY Dolls, Live at CBGB’s, the Spinners, Shannon, John Waite, and Pavarotti. Returned to Sarah Lawrence in 2000 to work with Shirley Kaplan, William McRee, and Thomas Young. Fields of expertise: Hammond organ, rock-and-roll piano, synthesizer programming and sequencing, piano accompaniment, popular and progressive music of the 1950s-1990s. SLC, 1971-77, 2000–