Luis Alfaro
Luis Alfaro is a writer/performer who works in theater, performance art, poetry, and journalism. Alfaro is Associate Professor of Dramatic Writing in the School of Dramatic Arts at the University of Southern California and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence. Alfaro is the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship. He is the first playwright to receive two Kennedy Center Fund For New American Plays awards in the same year (2002). His plays include Electricidad; Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles; Oedipus El Rey; St. Jude; Straight as a Line; Black Butterfly, Jaguar Girl, Piñata Woman and Other Super Hero Girls, Like Me; Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner; Body of Faith; Bitter Homes and Gardens; Hero; and LadyBird. His solo performance work has been seen throughout the United States, England and Mexico. His newest performance, No Holds Barrio, will be seen in the 2004 Goodman Latino Theater Festival in July. A highly anthologized short story and poetry writer, he is featured in over 20 anthologies. His short film, Chicanismo, was produced by PBS and nominated for an Emmy award. His solo spoken-word recording, down town, was recorded and released by SST/New Alliance Records. He is a member of New Dramatists and the recipient of, among others, two Rockefeller Foundation MAP grants, NEA/TCG Playwrights Fellowship and a University of California Regents Lecturer Appointment. He was co-director of the Taper’s Latino Theatre Initiative from 1995-2003.
Kayla Boffone
Kayla Boffone is a Houston-based director, educator, actor, and arts administrator. She holds an MA in Arts Leadership from the University of Houston and a BA in Theatre from Chapman University. Kayla is a passionate advocate for diverse representation in theatre and arts education and strives to bring this advocacy to her drama students in Houston ISD. She has directed with Mildred’s Umbrella, Rogue Productions, 50 Playwrights Project, and the Fade to Black Festival. Additionally, Kayla has worked with the Houston Shakespeare Festival on audience engagement and community outreach projects.
Adriana Gaviria
Adriana Gaviria is an actress, voice-over artist, writer and creative producer. She is founding member and artistic producer of The Sol Project, TV producer and World Theatre Map ambassador for HowlRound and serves on the steering committees for both the Parent Artist Advocacy League and Latinx Theatre Commons. She is a graduate of the 2017 NALAC Leadership Institute. Other Awards/Fellowships include: Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC)/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Artistic Leader Fellow, Fox Fellow, NHFA/HSF Scholarship recipient. BFA: Florida International University, MFA: Yale School of Drama She is a proud member of HOLA, SAG-AFTRA and the Actors’ Equity Association. www.adrianagaviria.com
Rachel Greene
Rachel Greene is the Founder of MonologueBank.org, an online experiment dedicated to getting new work into the audition room. Formerly, she worked as US-Japan Playwright Exchange Liaison, New Plays on Campus Coordinator, PlayLabs Coordinator and Special Programs Manager at The Playwrights` Center in Minneapolis; Artistic Administrator/Local Casting Director and Theater Education Department Registrar at Dallas Theater Center; Casting Director for various projects produced by Shakespeare Festival of Dallas, Project X of Dallas, Stage West of Fort Worth. She conducted the Dallas Casting for Sweet Tornado: Margo Jones and the American Theater, a PBS-KERA documentary. She graduated with a BFA in Acting/Directing and a BA in Spanish from Texas Tech University. In addition to her theatre life, she lived in Tokyo, Japan for 7 years, learned Japanese, and taught private English lessons. Rachel is married to an Argentine dynamo and mother of a young child blossoming in Montessori School.
Brian Eugenio Herrera
Brian Eugenio Herrera is Associate Professor of Theater at Princeton University where his work, both academic and artistic, examines the history of gender, sexuality and race within and through U.S. popular performance. He holds degrees in American Studies from Brown University, the University of New Mexico, and Yale University, where he earned his PhD. He is author of The Latina/o Theatre Commons 2013 National Convening: A Narrative Report (HowlRound, 2015) and Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance (Michigan, 2015), which was awarded the George Jean Nathan Prize for Dramatic Criticism. With Stephanie Batiste and Robin Bernstein, Brian serves as co-editor of “Performances and American Cultures” series at NYU Press. He is also the Inaugural Resident Scholar for The Sol Project, an initiative dedicated to producing the work of Latinx playwrights in New York City and beyond.
Noe Montez
Noe Montez is Associate Professor of Drama and Director of the PhD In Theatre and Performance Studies at Tufts University where he also serves as core faculty in Latino Studies. He is the author of Memory, Transitional Justice, and Theatre in Postdictatorship Argentina, which considers how theatre, as a site of activism, can produce memory narratives that change the public’s reception to governmental policies on human rights violations. Noe also co-edits the journal Theatre Topics, which engages in the theory and practice of theatre curriculum, pedagogy and performance. He has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, serves on the executive committee for the American Society for Theatre Research and as the representative of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Latinx, Indigenous, and the Americas group.
Rachel Afí Quinn
Rachel Afí Quinn received her Ph.D. from the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan in 2012, after which she served as a postdoctoral fellow and then visiting faculty in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of Houston. She is currently Assistant Professor in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston. At University of Houston she has coordinated colloquia on gender-based violence in the South Asian community (2014), the Chicana feminist archive (2015) and more. Dr. Quinn’s scholarship focuses on race, mixed race identities, gender, and sexuality in the African Diaspora and she employs tools of transnational feminist theory, including ethnography and visual culture in her research. Her first book project, Ya Somos Americanizadas: Dominican Women’s Transnational Identities in Santo Domingo is an interdisciplinary cultural studies project that explores the impact of neoliberal development and US popular media on Dominican women ‘s identities. Dr. Quinn has also worked in documentary film production and distribution; her most recent film collaboration, Cimarron Spirit (2015), examines the African roots of Dominican traditions during Easter week.
Chantal Rodriguez
Chantal Rodriguez is the Associate Dean of Yale School of Drama and a lecturer in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism. From 2009-2016 she worked as the Programming Director and Literary Manager of the Latino Theater Company, operators of the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Chantal holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from UCLA, and her work has been published in Theatre Journal, Latin American Theatre Review, e-misférica, and Theatre Research International. In 2011, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press published her monograph, The Latino Theatre Initiative/Center Theatre Group Papers, which was nominated for three Latino Literacy Now International Book Awards. She serves on the Advisory Committee of the Latinx Theatre Commons and is co-editing an anthology of plays from the Encuentro 2014 Festival. Chantal is a recipient of the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival’s 2016 Rainbow Award and was recognized as a Young Leader of Color by TCG in 2011.
Abigail Vega
Abigail Vega is an actor, director, and the Producer of the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC), a national network of Latinx and allied theatre practitioners who work digitally to grow the field by forging new connections. With the LTC she has produced six live convenings for Latinx and allied theatre artists, scholars, and administrators in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, and New York City, as well as a digital space accessible to practitioners all over the country. Previously, she was an Ensemble Member of Teatro Luna: America’s All-Latina Theatre Company, with whom she performed in over twenty-five cities in four countries. Her writing can be found in Micha Espinosa’s Monologues for Latino Actors, and her directing credits include numerous pieces with Teatro Luna, as well as Divorciadas, Evangelicas, y Vegeterianas and Sweep the Aurora Theatre. Abigail was named one of Latino Leaders Magazine’s “Leader of the Future—Chicago 2014.” She is a graduate the NALAC Leadership Institute, and is a member of artEquity 2016 cohort. Abigail Vega is a participant in the Leadership U: One-on-One program, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group.
Karen Zacarías
Karen Zacarías is one of the most produced Latina playwrights in the nation. Zacarías’ award-winning plays include The Book Club Play; Legacy of Light; Mariela in the Desert; The Sins of Sor Juana; Just Like Us; How the García Girls Lost Their Accent; Destiny of Desire; Native Gardens; Oliverio: A Brazilian Twist; Ella Enchanted: The Musical; and Into the Beautiful North. Her TYA musicals with composer Debbie Wicks La Puma are: Ferdinand the Bull; The Magical Piñata; Einstein is a Dummy; Looking for Roberto Clemente; Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans; Frida Libre; and Chasing George Washington. Zacarías collaborated on the libretto for Sleepy Hollow and Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises for the Washington Ballet. She is one of the inaugural Resident Playwrights at Arena Stage in Washington, DC, and is a core founder of the Latinx Theatre Commons. She is the founder of Young Playwrights’ Theater, an award-winning theater company that teaches playwriting in local public schools in Washington, DC. Karen lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and three children. http://www.karenzacarias.com
