ABOUT THE ARTISTS

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Franchelle Stewart Dorn:  Currently: Ford’s Theatre playing Mary Church Terrell,  Credits: Shakespeare Theatre Company, Arena Stage, ACT, Yale Rep, Long Wharf, George Street, Great Lakes, Cleveland Playhouse, Arizona State Theatre, SCT, Everyman, Guthrie, OSF, CATF. Off-Broadway: Red Bull, Signature. Austin: Zach, The State, and Austin Shakespeare. TV: Dr. Rita Madison on NBC’s “Another World.” Awards: nominated for seven Helen Hayes Awards, winning three; Austin Critics’ Circle for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Edge of Peace, Medea. MFA, Yale. Professor, UT-Austin 

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Kent Gash directed the Premiere of Robert O’Hara’s’ Barbecue at the Public Theatre and is co-author and director of Langston in Harlem, (Four 2010 Audelco Awards including Best Musical.)  New York productions:  Lockdown for Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (also virtual co-production with WP Theater), the Off-Broadway premiere of Miss Ever’s Boys for Melting Pot Theatre Co., the York Theatre presentation of Duke Ellington’s Beggar’s Holiday.  Recent Regional: Guys and Dolls at the Guthrie, Master Harold… at Arizona Theatre Co., The Wiz at Ford’s Theatre (Washington Post Ten Best of 2018, Broadwayworld Best Musical Award, Three Helen Haye’s Awards) and The Gem of the Ocean at South Coast Rep (LA Times Ten Best of 2017.), Tarell McCraney’s Wig Out for Sundance Theatre Lab and Studio Theatre, DC. Choir Boy at the Studio DC, Marin Theatre Co. and The Comedy of Errors, set in the Harlem Renaissance, for Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  Upcoming productions for 2021-22: Choir Boy for Steppenwolf Theatre, Twelfth Night or The Three Musketeers for the Acting Co. Paradise Blue at City Theatre and the new Billy Strayhorn musical, Something to Live For.  Mr. Gash is the former Associate Artistic Director of both the Alliance Theatre and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.  Mr. Gash is the founding Director of the New Studio on Broadway, Tisch Drama-New York University.

 

A former Corporal of the United States Marine Corps, Yvonne Johnson traded in her combat boots for a career in costume, fashion, and scenic design after serving 5 years with a tour overseas in Operation Iraqi Freedom. A native of Dallas, Texas, her passion for visual storytelling has led to a diverse and multifaceted career with work as a freelance fashion illustrator featured on the Real Housewives of Dallas, to designing the costume worn by 50ft celebrity animatronic mascot Big Tex at the 2016-2018 Texas State Fair. A recent graduate of Meadows School of the Arts at SMU with an M.F.A. degree in Stage Design she has garnered such achievements as the competitive Television Academy's costume design internship, as well as winning 2019’s Black Theatre Network's Judy Dearing Costume Design Competition for her work on SMU's opera production of Our Town. Hoping to continue her career in film, television, opera, and theatre, she is relocating to the Chicago area this late Summer as a new USA local 829, IATSE member. Her most recent work has included her debut as a playwright for the workshop performance of Overbooked with Prism Movement theatre and costume designing In Search of the Sublime by Kara-Lynn Vaeni at Stage West theatre. She is excited for the opportunity to get back to work and all the big opportunities head her direction. 

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Jacqueline E. Lawton is a playwright, dramaturg, producer, and advocate for Access, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the American Theatre. producer, and advocate for Access, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the American Theatre. Her plays include: Among These Wild Things; Anna K; Behold, A Negress; Blackbirds; Blood-bound and Tongue-tied; Deep Belly Beautiful; The Devil’s Sweet Water; Edges of Time; Freedom Hill; The Hampton Years; The Inferior Sex, Intelligence; Love Brothers Serenade; Mad Breed; Noms de Guerre; So Goes We; and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Her work has been developed and presented at the following venues: Classical Theater of Harlem, Folger Shakespeare Library, the Hangar Theatre, the Kennedy Center, Pasadena Playhouse, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Rep Stage, Rorschach Theater Company, Round House Theatre, Theater J, and Woolly Mammoth Theater Company. Lawton has received commissions from Arena Stage, Adventure Theatre - Musical Theatre Center, National New Play Network, National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of American History, Round House Theatre, Tantrum Theatre, and Theater J. She received her MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. She is a 2012 TCG Young Leaders of Color award recipient and an alum of National New Play Network (NNPN) Playwright Alum, Arena Stage's Playwrights' Arena, and Center Stage’s Playwrights Collective. Currently, she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a production dramaturg for PlayMakers Repertory Company. She is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild.

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Tara Moses is a citizen of Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, Mvskoke, director, award-winning playwright, Producing Artistic Director of telatúlsa, co-Artistic Director of Red Eagle Soaring, and co-Founder of Groundwater Arts. Most recently, her work as a director has been seen with American Indian Community House (New York, NY); Arena Stage (Washington, D.C.); Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (New Haven, CT); Safe Harbors Indigenous Collective (New York, NY); telatúlsa (Tulsa, OK); Oklahoma Indigenous Theatre Company (Edmond, OK); Serenbe Playhouse (Chattahoochee Hills, GA); and Amerinda (New York, NY). She is a Participant in New York Stage and Film’s inaugural NYSAF NEXUS project (2021); a Cultural Capital Fellow with First Peoples Fund (2020); fellow with the Intercultural Leadership Institute (18/19); member of DirectorsLabChicago (2018); member of the Directors Lab at Lincoln Center (2017); recipient of the Thomas C. Fichandler Award (2016); alum of the Allen Lee Hughes Fellowship (2015-2017); associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society; and Dramatists Guild member. She holds a BA in Theatre from the University of Tulsa and is expected to attend Brown University/Trinity Rep as an MFA Directing Candidate in the fall of 2021. She is currently based on the Muscogee Creek Reservation.

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Rudy Ramirez is a director, writer and performer focused on the development of new work. They are the founding Artistic Director of Avante Theatre Project—dedicated to producing new and avant-garde Latinx/Latine work—and Associate Artistic Director of The VORTEX. They have directed for numerous companies around the country, including Austin Bike Zoo, Color Arc Productions, The Lark, National Queer Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, The Playwrights’ Center, The San Antonio Public Theatre, ScriptWorks, Shrewd Productions, Sky Candy Aerial Arts, Southwestern University, Teatro Audaz, Teatro Vivo and the University of Texas at Austin.  Rudy has received 7 B. Iden Payne Awards and an Austin Critics Table Award for Directing. They were named Best Director by the Austin Chronicle Reader’s Poll in 2017 and received an artistic residency in 2020 with Texas Performing Arts and Fusebox Festival to develop 3 new Latinx plays. Nationally, they have been finalists for the NNPN Directors Fellowship and the TCG Alan Schneider Award. They have a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in Performance as Public Practice from UT Austin and will begin their second year as an MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the fall.

Clint Ramos is a designer, educator, activist and producer. He is a 5-time TONY Award Nominee and the recipient of a TONY Award for Best Costume Design of a Play for Eclipsed - the first person of color to win in this category. He has designed sets and/or costumes for over two hundred theater, opera and dance productions. Film credits include: Production Design for Lingua Franca by Isabel Sandoval for Netflix; costume design for RESPECT, the Aretha Franklin biopic starring Jennifer Hudson for MGM will be on the big screen in August 2021; and costume design for I Wanna Dance With Somebody, the Whitney Houston biopic coming out in 2022. Clint is the Producing Creative Director for Encores! at New York City Center, is assistant professor of design and Head of Design and Production at Fordham University, and he serves on the American Theater Wing’s Advisory Committee. His lifelong advocacy is for an equitable landscape in theater and film for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color and for the rights of immigrants. 

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Kenny Ramos is a theater artist from the Barona Band of Mission Indians / Kumeyaay Nation.  He grew up on the Barona Indian Reservation before moving to Los Angeles, where he earned a degree in American Indian Studies from UCLA.  Kenny is an ensemble member at Cornerstone Theater Company and an Artist-in-Residence at La Jolla Playhouse.  He is a recipient of First Peoples Fund’s Cultural Capital Fellowship, Theatre Communications Group’s Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship, Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, & Transnational Migration’s 2021 Mellon Arts Practitioner Fellowship, and a current Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow.  Kenny’s favorite acting credits include the world premiere productions of Larissa FastHorse’s "Urban Rez" and "Native Nation" (Cornerstone), Mary Kathryn Nagle’s "Return to Niobrara" (Rose Theater Omaha), Vera Starbard’s "Devilfish" (Perseverance Theatre), and Dillon Chitto’s "Bingo Hall" (Native Voices at the Autry).  He has also performed at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Denver Center, and The Kennedy Center and he recently received his first play commission from Diversionary Theatre’s Rising Tide Commissioning Program.  Kenny is passionate about creating theater that centers Native perspectives, asserts tribal sovereignty, and challenges settler colonial realities of American society. 

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Madeline Sayet is a citizen of the Mohegan Tribe, Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program, and Co-Artistic Director in Residence at Red Eagle Soaring: Native Youth Theatre. For her work as a director, writer, and performer she has been honored as a Forbes 30 Under 30, TED Fellow, MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow, National Directing Fellow, Native American 40 Under 40, and a recipient of The White House Champion of Change Award from President Obama. Her play Where We Belong, first shown in London at Shakespeare's Globe, premiered this past June as a film adaptation from Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company to critical acclaim. Recent directing work includes: Tlingit Christmas Carol (Perseverance Theatre), Henry IV (Connecticut Repertory Theatre), Whale Song (Perseverance Theatre), As You Like It (Delaware Shakespeare), Poppea (Krannert Center), The Magic Flute (Glimmerglass), Miss Lead (59e59). Sayet is an Assistant Professor in the English Dept at Arizona State University with the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.