AGANA

Multi-dimensional contemporary mural artist

Known to the world as AGANA, internationally acclaimed artist Vanessa Solari Espinoza (American, b.1982) is a multi-dimensional contemporary mural artist.

Of Venezuelan descent and hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area, Agana gives public walls vibrant life with her iconic pictorial imagery, bold aesthetics, bursting colors, textual calligraphic gestures and form. At the intersection of graffiti and fine art practices she communicates common social threads via monumental vision.

Rooted in her Latinx identity as part of the larger American experience, AGANA also translates the artistic mural process into fruitful community-building strategies. She cultivates new leaders in the field via workshop and mentoring with the tools to transform lives through intentional, relevant art.

Her layered storytelling style bridges thought provoking visibility to otherwise marginalized experiences while stimulating transformative conceptualism for diverse viewers through visual linguistics via spray patterns, gradients, drips, and blended mixed medium.

With a background in graphic design and jewelry metal arts, AGANA received a BAS in Visual Effects from Ex’pression College for Digital Art in 2008 working in the film, animation and video game production industries. Prolific in her production, AGANA creates platforms for successful global art projects found on city buildings across the Americas and worldwide from Switzerland to Senegal. djagana.com

Agana’s art first appeared at Brava back in 2018, when Brava commissioned her to create the mural “Madre Tierra de mi Corazon” on the east-side gate of our newly opened storefront. The work appeared in our 2018 Baile en la Calle: The Mural Dances, and has become beloved by Brava and the neighborhood alike. This past July Brava had the opportunity to engage Agana again, in the creation of “Brava Breaths Palabra.” Commissioned by Brava! for Women in the Arts with support from our neighborhood partner, Acción Latina, for the July 16, 2020 Paseo Artístico: Art is Collective Action, “Brava Breaths Palabra” honors our nation’s ancestral heritage and the generations of Black and Indigenous women who have given heart, breath, and life to this land. 

At the mural’s unveiling on September 7, Agana read an artistic statement she had prepared for the event. The whole of which can be read here.

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Rotimi Agbabiaka

Rotimi Agbabiaka is an actor, writer, director, and teacher who uses humor, glamor, and drama to upset the status quo. Most recently, Rotimi originated the role of Salima in House of Joy (California Shakespeare Theatre) and the role of Cellphone in If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (Playwrights Horizons, NYC). Other acting credits include Tom Waits’ Black Rider (Shotgun Players), Bootycandy (Brava Theater, Theatre Bay Area award), originating the role of Boy in runboyrun (Magic Theatre), and several shows with the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe. As a playwright, Rotimi penned the solo shows Homeless, Type/Caste (Theatre Bay Area award), and MANIFESTO, and the musical, Seeing Red—co-written with Joan Holden and Ira Marlowe. Rotimi teaches acting, movement, and play creation to students from pre-school through college and has presented work at museums (the deYoung), in parks (with We Players), on street corners (with Jess Curtis’ GRAVITY), and on nightlife stages around the world (as alter ego Miss Cleo Patois). rotimionline.com

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Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe

Actor, Writer, Director

Edris is the Founder and Artistic Director of Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience, and has been performing more than 20 years with credits at the Sacramento Theater Company; SF Mime Troupe; Theater Works in Palo Alto; Magic Theatre; Intersection For The Arts and was an Associate Artist with Rhodessa Jones' The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women. In 1991, she won the Goldie Award for Acting from the SF Bay Guardian. In addition, Edris has created more than 8 different solo performances, including the recently published Adventures of A Black Girl: In Search of Academic Clarity and Inclusion.

 As a director, Edris  has worked at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI; Capital Repertory in Albany, NY; Southern Rep in New Orleans ; Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles; Alabama Shakespeare Festival; Woolly Mammoth in Washington, D.C; Curious Theatre in Denver; TheatreWorks, Palo Alto.  Edris’ Bay Area directing credits include the West Coast premieres of Relativity at the Magic Theatre, Stealin’ Home at Exit Theatre; The Old Settler at TheaterWorks in Palo Alto; Crying Holy at Theatre Rhinoceros, andUrban Zulu Mambo and Blue/Orange at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. Her productions of John Henry Redwood's The Old Settler, received the Dean Goodman Award for Excellence (TheatreWorks) and, in Dallas. Best Production, two Best Acting Awards and an Outstanding Direction nomination from the 2003 Rabin awards. In 2006, she received her second Rabin nomination for her direction of Neil LaBute’sThis Is How It Goes at Water Tower.  She holds an M.F.A. in Directing from the University of Iowa and is an alumna of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors. Additional training has included theatre research and performance at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and at Shakespeare & Company in Tanglewood, Massachusetts.

SOLO WORK

Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe's new solo show, Adventures of A Black Girl: Traveling While Black, debuted at Brava Theater Center for a weekend in March, 2013 and transferred to Eastside Alliance in Oakland in November of 2013.  TWB returned for a longer run in October, 2014.

TWB is the 2nd play in a trilogy entitled, Adventures of a Black Girl. The first production in the trilogy, Adventures of a Black: In Search of Academic Clarity and Inclusion was commissioned by AfroSolo and received its first full production at Intersection for the Arts in 2004.  In 2011, it was presented as part of the solo/black/woman festival and was published in an antholoy, solo/black/woman  edited by E. Patrick Johnson & Ramón H,Rivera-Servera.  Edris is developing the final installment in the series, The Oneness of Blackness; the oneness of mefor a run in June, 2015.

BLACK ARTISTS CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL EXPERIENCE

June, 2015

So So San Francisco, a cabaret performance with Marvin K. White

2014

Zakiyyah Alexanders's  bitter satire,Sweet Maladies, set during the Reconstruction Era and starring Brit Frazier, Lisa Anner Porter, Kehinde Koyejo and Stefanee Martin. Awarded Best Ensemble for 2014 Theatre Bay Area Awarads.

2013

West Coast premiere of In A Daughters' Eyes' by A. Zell Williams. Set in Oakland, In A Daughter's Eyes is the story of two women, daughter of an Oakland police officer and the daughter of the man accused of his murder and their struggle to honor their father's and come to grips with their pasts. 

Prior to Brava

Previous productions from Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience,include  On The Hills Of Black America and Hollis Mugley’s Only Wish +2 by Keith Adkins (Intersection for the Arts); Chain and Late Bus To Mecca by Pearl Cleage (Theatre Rhino); and Will He Bop, Will He Drop? by Robert Alexander (African American Art & Culture Complex).  

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Virginia Blanco 

Actriz y realizadora integral de teatro

Actriz y realizadora integral de teatro. Originalmente de Argentina, fue miembro fundadora de Drakma Grupo Teatral. Créditos regionales como actriz incluyen (Ex Ubuntu) Oakland Theater Project, Shelton Theatre, TheatreFirst, y The Cutting Ball Theater, como también varias puestas de teatro leído con Brava Studio Sessions y 3 Girls Theatre. Recientemente fue la voz de Catalina en el radioteatro-comic 'A Solid Home' (Un Hogar Sólido) en MACT The Mexican American Conservatory Theater. Antes encarnó a Paulina en la lectura escenificada virtual de La Muerte y la Doncella, y pronto será Nora en el radioteatro 'Adiós, Robinson' de Julio Cortázar, ambas producciones de La Lengua Teatro en Español. Localmente, Virginia ha estudiado Arte Dramático en Studio ACT, BerkREP Theatre School, y Shakespeare & Co. Fue nominada por BroadwayWorld SF a Mejor Actriz Protagónica en una Obra por el papel de Young Woman en Knives in Hens (Cuchillos en Gallinas) en Anton’s Well Theatre Company (2019). Estudió Ciencias de la Comunicación en la Universidad de Buenos Aires y ha trabajado como periodista. Es la Directora Artística y Fundadora de La Lengua Teatro en Español, así como también Artista Residente en Brava! for Women in the Arts. virginiamblanco.com

ACERCA DE LA LENGUA
Creada en 2019 por Virginia Blanco, La Lengua Teatro en Español/La Lengua Theater es una compañía emergente que crea espacios para producir teatro en español, difundiendo su inmensa diversidad y riqueza, con el objetivo de empoderar a las comunidades hispanohablantes en el área de la bahía de San Francisco. Más información sobre nosotros:  www.lalengua.org


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VIRGINIA BLANCO
Actor and theater-maker

Actor and theater-maker. Originally from Argentina, where she was a founding member of Drakma Grupo Teatral. Regional credits include (Ex Ubuntu) Oakland Theater Project, Shelton Theatre, TheatreFirst, and The Cutting Ball Theater, along with several staged readings with Brava Studio Sessions and 3 Girls Theatre. She was Catalina in the radio-theater comic piece 'A Solid Home' by MACT The Mexican American Conservatory Theater. Before that, she was Paulina in the live-streamed performed reading of La Muerte y la Doncella (Death and the Maiden), and soon will be the voice of Nora in 'Adiós, Robinson' (Goodbye, Robinson) by Julio Cortázar, both shows produced by La Lengua Teatro en Español. Virginia’s acting training is from Studio ACT, BerkREP Theatre School, and Shakespeare & Co. She was nominated by BroadwayWorld SF for Best Leading Actress in a Play for the role of Young Woman in Knives in Hens at Anton's Well Theater Company (2019). She studied Communications at Universidad de Buenos Aires and has worked as a journalist. Virginia is the founder of La Lengua and an Artist in Residence at Brava! for Women in the Arts. virginiamblanco.com 

ABOUT LA LENGUA THEATER
Founded in 2019 by Virginia Blanco, La Lengua Teatro en Español/La Lengua Theater is an emerging company that creates spaces for theater in Spanish, sharing its immense diversity and wealth, in order to empower the Spanish-speaking community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more about La Lengua Theater at www.lalengua.org

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Jesus "Jacoh" Cortes

Founder, Cuicacalli Dance Company

Jesús "JACOH" Cortés, began his training in Mexican folk dance when he was six years old under the direction of his great uncle Juan Natoli. In 2000, he started dancing with Ballet Folklórico de Mexico de Amalia Hernandez in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City after he was trained as a Deer Dancer under the direction of Lucas Zarate Lobato. He was a soloist in the role of The Deer Dance “La Danza Del Venado” for Ballet Folklorico de Mexico de Amalia Hernandez and toured Mexico, Europe, and the US. He was the company choreographer and lead teacher for Los Niños de Santa Fe y Compañia. In addition he taught hundreds of elementary school children as part of the Arts in the Schools program in Española, New Mexico. He joined Moving People Dance Theater performing Contemporary, Jazz, and Modern in June 2005. In 2006 he was a founder and artistic director of Arte Sin Fronteras, a new dance school/company in rural Northern New Mexico now know as Moving Arts Española.

Currently, he lives in San Francisco and works as an artist in residence with the SFUSD and Brava! for Women in the Arts. He is founder and Artistic Director of Cuicacalli (meaning house of culture in nahuatl dialect), and is a lead teacher and choreographer for Dancing Earth. Cortés joined Printz Dance Project Company in 2009 as a guest artist for their tenth anniversary and has also joined the ALICE (Arts and Literacy in Children’s Education) program as a dance instructor since 2008 where he performed in their production called “Burning Libraries,” a multi-media performance about immigration stories. Cortes is a dance consultant and choreographer for Ballet Folklorico de Stanford University. He also choreographed and performed John O'Keefe's ‘Mystical Abyss’ directed by Theatre of Yugen's Founder, Yuriko Doi, at the ODC Theater. In 2012 Mr. Cortes premiered Cuicacalli Dance Company. In the last four years he has developed three works: “Raices sin limites” (Endless roots) “500 Years of Resistance,” and “Cicatrices” (Scars).

For the last 10 years, Cortés has been presenting Cuicacalli's annual production "Tradición, Movimiento y Pasión" at Brava Theater.

In 2013, Mr. Cortés choreographed and performed a section of the production “Noche de Muertos” with Calidanza Dance Company at the SF Symphony ‘Dia de los Muertos’ Community Concert. And in 2014 Mr. Cortes was commissioned to choreograph and perform a solo to the music of“La Llegada de los Muertos” played by the SF Symphony for the same event. 

Also In the past three years he has presented his work with Cuicacalli Dance Company at Baile en la Calle The Mural Dances, San Francisco Son Jarocho, Cuba Caribe, FLACC! Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers, San Francisco Carnaval, and  D.I.R.T Dancing In Revolt(ing) Times.

Cuicacalli Dance Company

Cuicacalli Dance Company is a multidisciplinary organization, fusing various styles into a unique story of their own. By including dance styles such as Indigenious, Folkloric, Contemporary, Cuicacalli hopes to expose, sustain, and expand traditional and modern dancing with a new lens.  Cuicacalli Dance Company develops choreographies to revive traditions and address cultural, social and environmental situations.

In order to reach new levels of artistic innovation and exposure to importance of these cultural traditions, Cuicacalli engages in collaboration with  musicians, singers, graphic designers, aerialist, and more in and outside of the SF Bay Area. 

Cuicacalli holds its own annual performance “Tradicion, Movimiento y Pasion,” on Brava's Mainstage and has  developed relationships and performed with San Francisco’s Exploratorium, San Francisco’s Earth Day celebrations at Civic Center as well as been invited as guests with the Ballet Folkorico of Stanford University.Cuicacalli looks for the opportunity to present their works at festivals and events across the country and internationally.

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Marga Gomez

Comedian, Writer, Performer

Marga Gomez was named a 2015 "Agent Of Change" in the Huffington Post. She is the recipient of KGO television's 2014 "Profile Of Excellence." Gomez is the author and performer of eleven solo plays which have been produced nationally, internationally, and in New York at The Public Theater, Performance Space 122, Dixon Place, and La Mama Experimental Theatre Company and in San Francisco at Brava. The Marsh and Theater Rhinoceros. Her latest solo piece "POUND" will premiere in New York City at Dixon Place as a commissioned centerpiece of the annual "Hot! Festival." In October "POUND" will open for 5 weeks at Brava's Studio. "The Marga Gomez Workshop" for solo performers will continue for it's third season this fall at Brava. And look out for her annual fundraiser for Brava, "Brava's New Year's Eve Comedy Fiesta" in its 4th year.

Gomez was also a founding member of Culture Clash. She collaborates frequently with New York director David Schweizer. In San Francisco Gomez curates a monthly performance variety series "Performerama" at Oasis. Her acting credits include Off-Broadway and national productions of The Vagina Monologues and roles in Warner Bros films "Sphere" and "Batman Forever." Her other awards include the GLAAD Media Award for Off-Broadway Theatre, The Los Angeles "Ovation Award” for Best Featured Actress and the 2010 Bay Area Critics Circle Award for "Best Performance" Gomez is a triple winner of the SF Bay Guardian's "Best Comedian" and the 2015 "Bestie Award for Comedy" from The Bay Area Reporter. She was nominated for the 2006 New York Drama Desk Award. Her website is www.margagomez.com.

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Rhodessa Jones

Rhodessa Jones is Co-Artistic Director of the San Francisco acclaimed performance company Cultural Odyssey. She is an actress, teacher, singer, and writer. Ms. Jones is also the Director of the award winning Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, which is a performance workshop that is designed to achieve personal and social transformation with incarcerated women. On May 16, 2014 Rhodessa was the Keynote Speaker for Graduation Commencement, Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies University of California, Berkeley. Ms. Jones was just recently the Spring 2014 Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence for the College of Letters and Science and the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Beginning in 2015 Rhodessa will be a Visiting Professor at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California. During January 2014 Rhodessa traveled to New York City to the PUBLIC THEATER to direct BLESSING THE BOATS: THE REMIX, Sekou Sundiata’s acclaimed solo theater work. Other directing credits include the upcoming new play Lost in Language by the renowned NTOZAKE SHANGE; the 2007 production of Lysistrata, produced by the African American Shakespeare Company; Eve Ensler’s Any One of Us, VDAY: Until the Violence Stops Festival, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York; and Will Power's The Gathering.

In 2013 The Office of Mayor Edwin M. Lee and the San Francisco Art Commission presented the Mayor's Art Award to Rhodessa Jones, for her lifetime of artistic achievement and enduring commitment to the role of the arts in civic life. The SF Weekly Magazine recently proclaimed Rhodessa as San Francisco’s Best Artist-Activist Working with Prisoners. In June 2012 the U.S. Department of State, Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau selected Rhodessa as an ARTS ENVOY! As one of San Francisco’s most revered artists she received grant support to journey to South Africa to continue her work inside the Naturena Women's Prison in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2007 Rhodessa conducted her first U.S. Department of State Speakers Tour of Russia where she conducted performances and workshops at University of Moscow, the American Center, and University of Rayzen. In December of 2007 Ms. Jones received a United States Artist Fellowship to support her work.

Ms. Jones was honored with an Honorary Doctorate from California College of the Arts in 2004. Rhodessa has received many awards for her work including a Sui Generis Foundation Award in 2014, GOLDIE Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2003, an Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theater in 2002, and a San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Award commending her for developing the Medea Project as "an intersection of art, politics and social rehabilitation". In June 2001, her film collaboration We Just Telling Stories, a film profiling Ms. Jones and her work with the Medea Project in the San Francisco County jails, won Best Documentary at the San Francisco Black Film Festival.

Rhodessa’s work has been published in a new book entitled, Solo/Black/Woman: Performing Global Traditions and Local Intervention featuring a chapter devoted to Rhodessa’s landmark play, Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women . Other publications include A Beginner’s Guide to Community - Based Arts ; Colored Contradictions An Anthology of Contemporary African American Plays ; and Let’s Get It On: The Politics of Black Performance . Her work with incarcerated women is the subject a book by Rena Fraden titled Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theater for Incarcerated Women. Most recently, The Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care have published Rhodessa’s work with the Medea Project’s HIV Circle titled An expressive therapy group disclosure intervention for HIV-positive women: a qualitative analysis. Other scholarly works include Deep in the Night in the Journal of Medical Humanities; Staging Migrations Toward an American West: From Ida B. Wells to Rhodessa Jones by Marta Effinger; Rhodessa Jones, Teacher in Women’s Jails, in Conversations with Great Teachers by Bill Smoot. In addition, a new film has been released charting and legacy of Rhodessa’s work with HIV positive women entitled, Talk Back Live, by Japanese filmmaker, Kaori Sakagami. It is currently receiving worldwide distribution. 

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Chelis López

Journalist

Chelis López is an award-winning Mexican journalist who has lived in San Francisco since 1996.  

For almost ten years she hosted the national radio show Línea Abierta at Radio Bilingüe, the National Latino Public Radio Network where she interviewed and produced diverse stories including live broadcast of The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, an annual celebration of communities and cultures in the United States and around the world presented annually in Washington, D.C. 

She is the host and producer of two Spanish-language shows on KPOO 89.5FM in San Francisco “Pájaro Latinoamericano” and “Andanzas” where she explores and offer news, comments and interviews with newsmakers and artists throughout Latin America. She is also the San Francisco correspondent for Rompeviento TV in Mexico as well as hosting locally at Marin TV.  

In 1998 she started a monthly Spanish-language reading group “Rincón Literario”, held at the San Francisco Main Library. As a cultural worker and activist, Chelis organizes book presentations, writer tributes and musical presentations. She has interviewed such greats as Eduardo Galeano; Guadalupe Rivera Marin, daughter of Diego Rivera; Concha Buika, Elena Poniatowska, Dolores Huerta, Gioconda Belli, Toto la Momposina, Carlos Fuentes, Francisco Toledo, Fernando Botero among others.  

Chelis is also a frequent host at Yerba Buena Gardens Festival and at The de Young Museum.  

In 2015 she won the Latino Heritage Media Award, and in 2013 she was awarded the prestigious Jose Martí Publishing Award by The National Association of Hispanic Publications.

Vero Majano

Multi-media Artist

Vero Majano is a queer Latina artist born and raised in San Francisco's Mission District. Her works are steeped in film, performance, visual culture, and storytelling. She works to archive, curate, reinterpret, and rehistoricize Latino culture in San Francisco’s Mission District for broad audiences to stake out complex stories of the Mission in the City’s memory and history. 

Her  multimedia projects often include archival footage, photographs, interviews, storytelling and film through which she aims to preserve, disseminate, and reinterpret. 

Majano is also cofounder of Mission Media Archives, which collects and preserves audio and films shot in San Francisco’s Mission district during the 1970s and ’80s.

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Bryan Pangilinan

COMPOSER/MUSICIAN

Bryan Pangilinan has been rooted in the Filipino American and arts communities for nearly four decades. He holds degrees in ethnic studies from the University of California, San Diego, and music from San Francisco State University. Trained in Filipino rondalla music by composer and ethnomusicologist Bayani Mendoza de Leon, Bryan served as Music Director with the PASACAT Philippine Performing Arts Company and LIKHA Pilipino Folk Ensemble performing in local, regional, national, and international tours. His compositions and arrangements for rondalla have been performed by Filipino American folk dance companies across California. In the past decade, Bryan has been featured in nearly twenty musical theater productions in the San Francisco Bay Area, most recently as Tatsuo Kimura in the Bay Area premiere of the musical “Allegiance.” Moreover, he has over twenty years of expertise as a fund development professional with leadership roles at Bindlestiff Studio, United Way of the Bay Area, San Francisco State University, and Earthjustice. In 2017, he was honored by LIKHA for his “contribution and dedication to Philippine cultural arts and traditions” at their 25th anniversary performance of “Karangalan.” Bryan is deeply honored to join Brava as an Artist in Residence to co-compose the first musical about Filipino American labor leader Larry Itliong with Gayle Romasanta.

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Gayle Romasanta

Writer/Composer/musician

Gayle Romasanta is a writer and musician whose work focuses on the Filipino American experience. She received a BA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and an MFA, Writing from California College of the Arts. Her written work has been featured in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, KQED’s The Forum, and Smithsonian Folklife and Cultural Heritage Magazine. She has been published in books, online, and magazines, such as Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora: Troubling Borders Between Literature and Art (University of Washington Press), Field of Mirrors: Anthology of Philippine American Writers (PAWA Press), Cipactli: Raza Studies Journal of Literature and Art, and more. Gayle is also the former artistic director of San Francisco’s Bindlestiff Studio, the only theater space in the U.S. devoted to Filipino American storytelling. She co-founded California College of the Arts literary and art journal Eleven Eleven, now in its 16th year of production and her musical, Love in the Time of Breast Cancer, premiered at Off-Market Theater in San Francisco. As a violinist, she co-composed the first Google Philippines campaign commercial and has performed widely such as at the San Francisco Asian American Jazz Festival 20th Anniversary and the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Her most recent work, Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong, co-written with the late Dr. Dawn Mabalon, has taken her on a national book tour celebrating Itliong and his contributions to the farm labor movement. Currently, she is writing “Itliong” the musical, co-composed with Bryan Pangilinan, produced by Brava Theater.

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Vanessa Sanchez

Choreographer, Dancer, Educator and Artistic Director of La Mezcla

Vanessa Sanchez is Chicana-Native dancer, choreographer and educator who focuses on community arts and traditional dance forms to emphasize the voices and experiences of Latina, Chicana and Indigenous women and youth. Sanchez is a 2019 Dance/USA Artist fellow and the recipient of the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) National Dance Production Grant. She holds a degree in Dance and Child Development from San Francisco State University and has trained with master artists throughout the United States, Mexico and South America. Sanchez uses dance as a tool to engage with the community and has worked closely with community organizations including Dance Mission Theater and Eastside Arts Alliance. She is the Dance Lead for Loco Bloco, an artist in residence at School of the Arts and the Founding Artistic Director of multi-disciplinary rhythmic ensemble La Mezcla. Her award-winning show “Pachuquísmo,” an all-female tap dance and Son Jarocho performances about Pachucas and the Zoot Suit Riots, was presented at Brava Theater in October 2019.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, La Mezcla is a multi-disciplinary rhythmic ensemble whose work is rooted in Latinx traditions and social justice. La Mezcla is made up of artists, dancers and musicians who utilize folkloric and contemporary forms to portray the untold stories of marginalized communities of color on stage.

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Vin Seaman

Performing Artist

Vin Seaman is an interdisciplinary performance artist exploring queer identity and drag culture at the intersection of gender and sexuality. He received the 2017 Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader Award, was named one of SF Weekly’s 16 Artists to Watch in 2016, and was an inaugural Association for Performing Arts Professionals Leadership Fellow. At home in nightlife venues, theatres and large-scale institutions, his work has been presented locally at The Stud, CounterPulse, YBCA and Frameline, and nationally at the Austin International Drag Festival, the National Queer Arts Festival, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Yale School of the Arts. 

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Vidhu Singh

Expressive Arts Facilitator/Theatremaker

Vidhu is an Expressive Arts Facilitator trained at Northwest Creative & Expressive Arts Institute and a Social Emotional Arts Facilitator trained through UCLA’s Arts & Healing Initiative. A lifelong learner, she is passionate about offering accessible multi-modal expressive arts sessions for creative expression and wellness.

Vidhu holds a Masters degree in Dramatic Art from UC Santa Barbara and a doctorate in Asian Theatre from UH Manoa. A graduate of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors’ Lab, Vidhu is a core member of Theatre without Borders; a founding member of World Wide Lab; the founder of RasaNova Theater; a wellness facilitator with Bauman Wellness; an ensemble member at Aviva Arts, and a resident artist at Brava Theater.

As a theater artist, Vidhu’s fluency in a variety of cultural and aesthetic forms, her dramaturgy, her scholarship and her advocacy for South Asian theater have made her contribution to the American theater unique. Cal Shakes recognized this uniqueness by honoring Vidhu with the 2020 Luminary Award in dramaturgy. Dramaturgy highlights include ReOrient 2023 Festival with Golden Thread Productions, Burning Wild with Aviva Arts at 3GT Innovators Residency 2022 and Berkeley Rep’s 2021 Ground Floor Summer Residency Lab, Third Eye Moonwalk by Jon Bernson with Playwrights Foundation in 2021 and House of Joy by Madhuri Shekar with Cal Shakes in 2019 and Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 2018.

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Kat Evasco

award-winning writer, theatermaker, comedian and cultural strategist

Kat Evasco is an award-winning writer, theatermaker, comedian and cultural strategist committed to honoring and celebrating the experiences of immigrants, women and LGBTQ communities. In 2020, Kat was awarded the Kenneth Rainin New & Experimental Works (NEW) Program Grant towards the premiere of her new play Be Like Water produced by Brava Theater in San Francisco. Building on the success of her autobiographical one-woman show Mommy Queerest co-written by John Caldon, Kat supports artists to produce solo shows. Kat’s current solo theater projects include directing Prieto by Yosimar Reyes and Not My First Pandemic by Cesar Cadabes, which received Best One Man Show and All About Solo Critics Award at United Solo Festival 2021. She is a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow in Playwriting and her works have been featured on Deadline, IndieWire, Vice, Shondaland, Bustle, The Advocate, Out Magazine, and NBC News Asian America. Kat is the founder and CEO of With You Productions and holds a BA in Asian American Studies from San Francisco State University. 

She served as Director of Artist Leadership at the Center for Cultural Power, leading the design and implementation of the organization’s core programs including the Disruptors Fellowship and the Creative Entrepreneur Series. She continues to collaborate with the Center for Cultural Power on national cultural strategy initiatives including the Reclaiming the Border Narrative Project, funded by the Ford Foundation. In 2014, she was invited to study with Anna Deveare Smith at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for a week-long intensive called Personal Narratives and Global Identities. Smith taught her that exploring our own personal narratives enables us to connect more deeply to the world. For the last 10 years, she deepened this practice and helped develop and produce five autobiographical solo shows, including collaborating and directing comedian Irene Tu in RIP Irene, and poet Jason Bayani in Locus of Control. Facilitating personal narrative storytelling workshops and helping others tell their stories in ways that recognize their own power is also a vital part of her artistic practice.

Empress Kehinde Koyejo

Nigerian-American and Oakland Native, Empress Kehinde Koyejo, is a performance arts vanguard dedicated to artistry and activism. An esteemed artist, healer, and entrepreneur, Empress Kehinde directs and curates productions rooted in an ethos of liberation and examination. As an established performer, Empress Kehinde has been featured in numerous professionally acclaimed theater productions throughout the SF Bay Area, New York, and abroad. Empress Kehinde holds a BFA in Acting from Pace University, and a Master’s in Performance Studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Empress Kehinde is a company member of the Black Artist Cultural Contemporary Experience and an artist-in-residence at Brava! Theater for Women in the Arts.

Empress Kehinde’s specialized focus is utilizing performance as a platform for Black womyn to emote their ready-to-be-told stories of restoration, reclamation, and rebirth. She guides artists through a co-creating process that highlights how they creatively shift from surviving to thriving as they travel on their healing journeys toward freedom.

Empress Kehinde is the Owner of Kehinde Koyejo & Co., a luxury brand house of consciously-crafted products and uniquely curated experiences. Kehinde Koyejo & Co. includes specialty brands Kalm Korner and Choc’late Mama Cookies. 

Learn more |@kehinde.thebrand| |@kalmkorner| |@chocolatemamacookies|