Morning Plenary: 9:00am - 10:30am
Foundations of BIPOC Theaters with Linda Parris Bailey (Parris Bailey Arts formerly of Carpetbag Theare), Roger Tang (Pork Filled Productions), Mica Garcia de Benavidez (Su Teatro), and Randy Reinholz (founder of Native Voices). Moderated by Leilani Chan.
Break Out Sessions: 10:30am - 12:00pm
Assigned at random
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Linda Parris-Bailey creates story-based plays with music focusing on themes of transformation and empowerment. She is President and CEO of Parris-Bailey Arts, Inc., and former Executive/Artistic Director of The Carpetbag Theatre, Inc of Knoxville, TN. During her fifty year career as a playwright, she has written and performed numerous works. Linda is a 2019 Creative Capital Awardee, and recipient of a 2015 Doris Duke Artists Award in Theater. Her award-winning works include, Speed Killed My Cousin and Between A Ballad and A Blues, her ode to Appalachian renaissance man Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong. Her signature work Dark Cowgirls and Prairie Queens continues to be performed. Linda is a founding member of Alternate ROOTS and a Senior Advisor to the Women Playwrights International Conference. Her works have been published in Alternate ROOTS: Plays from the Southern Theater, Ensemble Works, and other anthologies of contemporary plays. She recently completed the new work Flushing, an adult puppet piece, in collaboration with Eric Bass and Ines Zeller-Bass of Sandglass Theater, directed by Kathie DeNobriga. The piece centers on generational transitions in leadership, race, and culture. Her latest solo work, Yankee Bajan, premiered in 2023. The original play focuses on an African American family's response to the racism and violence that continues to plague America and their journey to repatriate to their ancestral home in Barbados, touring in the 2023-2025 seasons.
Roger W. Tang (he/him) is a veteran theatre artist. As a playwright, he’s
written the award winning She Devil of the China Seas, and contributed to the 14/18
Festival, Pork Filled Players and SIS Productions’ Revealed series. As a producer, he’s
produced many Northwest and world premieres, from David Henry Hwang’s Bondage
and Yellow Face to Maggie Lee’s New Providence Steampunk trilogy. He was on the
boards of ReAct Theatre and the Northwest Asian American Theatre (helping build the
Theatre Off Jackson) and is Secretary of the Consortium of Asian American Theaters
and Artists (CAATA). He is also the Literary Manager for SIS Productions, Executive
Director of Pork Filled Productions and edits the Asian American Theatre Revue, the
web’s foremost resource on Asian American theatre.
Mica Garcia de Benavidez is the Managing Director of Denver’s Su Teatro since 2018, she has served in different roles in the organization since starting in 2001, and continues to wear many hats.
She was a Mellon Foundation LATC Fellow at the National Latino Theater Encuentro, working with famed Chicano Teatro group El Teatro Campesino. Mica is a graduate of the Circle of Latina Leadership program, and NALAC Leadership and Advanced Institute.
She was a member of the Performing Americas curatorial team for the National Performance Network, where she travelled to Costa Rica, Uruguay, Venezuela and Brazil to see new work. She coordinated Su Teatro’s presentation of groups from Mexico, Trinidad/Tobago, Chile and Haiti.
As the Director of Su Teatro's Cultural Arts Education Institute since 2007, she has guided the education program through long term relationships with multiple schools and organizational partners, the creation of the award-winning youth theater company El Teatro VolARTE. Under her leadership El Teatro VolARTE participated in the 2018 American High School Theater Festival at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, garnering the group the TrueWest Award and the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts- Global Award. She has received Arts Education training and consulting from arts partners in Denver, Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans and San Antonio.
Mica manages the main stage acting company She has directed Papi, Me and Cesar Chavez, Francisca y la Muerte, The Cancer Monologues, and Dancing with the Spirits for the Su Teatro touring company. Most recently she co- directed The Return of the Barrio Moon and this year’s Su Teatro’s season opener Wolf at the Door. She has worked to have the company perform throughout the state and in Kansas, Wyoming, New Mexico, California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.
.She received the 2007 Lalo Delgado Commitment to Education award, the 2018 True West Award and 2023 True West Award- Unsung Heroes, and will receive the Corazon de Educacion award from Museo de las Americas in June 2024.
Randy Reinholz, an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, is the Founding
Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry, the nation's premier Equity theater company
dedicated exclusively to developing and producing new plays by Native American, Alaska
Native, Native Hawaiian, and First Nations, playwrights.
Reinholz is a producer, actor, director, playwright, professor, and activist. His play Off The Rails,
directed by Bill Rauch, had its world premiere and a sold-out run at the Oregon Shakespeare
Festival. He has produced 35+ new scripts and directed 75+ plays in the United States, Australia,
Mexico, Great Britain, and Canada.
During his tenure, Native Voices presented 300+ workshops and readings of Native plays with
artists from more than 100 distinct tribal nations, with work appearing at OSF, La Jolla
Playhouse, The Old Globe, The Public Theater, Perseverance Theatre, the Smithsonian's
National Museum of the American Indian, Montana Rep, The Alaska Native Heritage Center,
Arizona Repertory Theatre, numerous universities, and tribal communities.
Awards include Playwrights' Arena's Lee Melville Award, the Ellen Stewart Award for Career
Achievement in Professional Theatre, The LA Drama Circle's Gordon Davidson Award, a
McKnight Fellowship, a Map Grant, a Ford Foundation Grant, and NEA grants.
He is the immediate past President of the National Theater Conference, a trustee of the College
of Fellows of the American Theatre and served as a Council Member for The Dramatist Guild of
America. He is a tenured Professor at San Diego State University, where he also served as
Director of the School of Theatre, Television, and Film.
Leilani Chan (she/her) is Founding Artistic Director of TeAda Productions: a nomadic theater of color based in Los Angeles. Chan’s devised ensemble plays include Global Taxi Driver and Refugee Nation. Her latest work Masters of the Currents, premiered in 2017 at the Honolulu Theatre for Youth and is the 1st nationally touring play about Micronesians in the U.S. Thus far this play has toured: inter-island to Maui (Maui Arts and Cultural Center) and Hilo (UH Hilo Performing Arts Center; to the continent including San Francisco’s Mission District (Brava Center for the Arts), Salt Lake City (Utah Presentes), Minneapolis (Pangea World Theater); and internationally to Guam (Breaking Wave Theatre/University of Guam). This work was awarded NEFA’s National Theater Project and MAPFUND and is Chan’s 4th NPN Creation Fund. Leilani is currently on the Board of the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists (caata.net). Chan has taught at both University of Hawai’i at Manoa and CSULB Theatre Departments. Born & raised in Hawai’i, Leilani currently resides in Los Angeles. Leilani attended Hampshire College and obtained her M.F.A. from U.C. Irvine. Chan and her partner Ova Saopeng are currently developing a new ensemble work Nothing Micro about Micronesia set to premiere in March 2024 at the Honolulu Theatre for Youth.