Sharon Bridgforth

New Dramatists member, Sharon Bridgforth is a two time Alpert Award Nominee. Recipient of the 2008 Alpert/Hedgebrook Residency Prize, she received an NPN Creation Fund Award for delta dandi -commissioned by Women & Their Work in partnership with the National Performance Network. Bridgforth is the Lambda Award winning author of the bull-jean stories and love conjure/blues a performance/novel (RedBone Press). The Austin Project Anchor Artist, 2002 - 2009, (Produced by The John Warfield Center For African and African American Studies, UT Austin), Bridgforth is co-editor of The Austin Project Archive: Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic (2010 by University of Texas Press). Bridgforth will be Artist In-Residence at Northwestern University, in the Performance Studies Department Fall 2009. www.sharonbridgforth.com

 

Laurie Carlos

For more than forty years, Laurie Carlos has been creating innovative new work for the stage.  As an Obie Award-winning actor, she originated the role of Lady in Blue in Ntozake Shange’s foundational for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf.  A Bessie Award-winning director and choreographer, she co-founded the legendary performance collectives Urban Bush Women and Thought Music (with Jessica Hagedorn and Robbie McCauley).  Carlos has also received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Theater Communications Group, the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation, the Bush Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.  Her contributions to the American stage continue with her mentorship of emerging artists such as Sharon Bridgforth, Zell Miller III, Carl Hancock Rux, Grisha Coleman, Suzan-Lori Parks, Kim Thompson, Mankwe Ndosi, and Daniel Alexander Jones.  Currently she curates the late-night series Non-English Speaking Spoken Here at Pillsbury House Theater in Minneapolis. 

 

Grisha Coleman

Grisha Coleman is a New York City native and has worked as a composer, performer and choreographer. She holds an M.F.A. in Composition and Integrated Media from the California Institute of the Arts. She joined AME as an assistant professor of Movement, Computation and Digital Media in fall 2008 after completing a research fellowship at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.
 

 

 

 

Daniel Alexander Jones

Daniel Alexander Jones is an integrator. His live art fuses writing, performance, design, and direction through dynamic collaboration. American Theatre magazine called him an artist whose work would "transform American stages for decades to come." His pieces include The Book of Daniel, Bel Canto, Earthbirths, Blood:Shock:Boogie, and Cab and Lena. Daniel's theater defies easy description and has been met with audience and critical acclaim for more than fifteen years. Daniel is a resident playwright at New Dramatists in New York City, is a national company member with Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis, and was a core company member of both frontera@hyde park theatre in Austin, Texas, and Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul. Daniel's close collaborators include Walter Kitundu, Helga Davis, Barbara Duchow, Sharon Bridgforth, and Tea Alagíc, among others. Daniel is the twelfth recipient of the prestigious Alpert Award in the Arts in Theatre; was the recipient of the Playwrights' Center McKnight National Artist Commission and Residency Award in 2007 for his play Hera Bright; and has been lead artist on three Multi-Arts Production Fund grants. Daniel held a National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Playwriting Residency with the Theater Offensive in Boston, and was the recipient of a Howard Foundation Fellowship in 2002. Daniel's Phoenix Fabrik is a project of the Creative Capital Foundation, and has been presented in Minnesota and New York. Daniel is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Visual Art at Fordham University. He previously taught at Goddard College, the University of Texas at Austin, and MIT. He frequently leads workshops on performance and writing in various communities. Daniel resides in Manhattan.

 

Robbie McCauley

Robbie McCauley is a celebrated performance artist and theater director whose personal vision has consistently explored the "herstory" of Black women. She has been an active presence in the American avant-gared theatre for three decades.  She was one of the original cast members who devised for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf.  She has directed works in New York City including Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome developed by Kamal Sinclair Steele at the New Federal Theater; a Signature Theater production of Adrienne Kennedy's Suzanne In Stages, a reading of Bel Canto by Daniel Alexander Jones, both at the Joseph Papp Public Theater; and A Tempest by Aimee Cesair at UBU Repertory Theater. Other productions she directed include Shakin' The Mess Outta Misery and the premiere production of Talking Bones by Shay Youngblood at Penumbra Theater in St. Paul, Mn. , Fires In The Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith at City College of New York, and Ntozake Shange's Spell#7 at Trinity College in Hartford, Ct.

 

Maiana Minahal

Maiana Minahal is a poet and educator. She is the author of the poetry collection Legend Sondayo (Civil Defense Poetry), and of the chapbooks closer and Sitting Inside Wonder (Monkey Press). She received her MFA from Antioch University, and was formerly director of the Poetry for the People program at the University of California, Berkeley. As an interdisciplinary artist, she created a collaborative multimedia performance called before their words that combined poetic narrative with precolonial cultural traditions of the Philippines. She has performed and taught poetry workshops throughout the United States and in the Philippines. Minahal was born in Manila; she currently lives in Oakland, where she teaches writing.

 

Carl Hancock Rux

Carl Hancock Rux is an award-winning writer, recording artist, and performer. He is the author of the novel Asphalt (Simon & Schuster), the poetry collection Pagan Operetta (Autonomedia Press), and the Obie award\-winning play Talk (Theatre Communications Group). Other plays include The No Black Male Show, Geneva Cottrell Waiting for the Dog to Die, Yanga, Smoke, Lilies & Jade, and the operas The Blackamoor Angel and Makandal. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Alpert Award in the Arts. From 2006\-2009 he was head of the MFA Writing for Performance Department at the California Institute of the Arts, and currently teaches writing at the University of Iowa. Carl lives in New York.