Florinda Bryant
is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. Florinda has worked with Theatre Action Project for over four years, and has been working with at-risk youth for over ten years. Florinda currently serves as a Theatre Action Project Program Specialist and is also the Artistic Director of the Austin Project Performance Company, supported by the Center for African and African Americans Studies Department at the University of Texas and a company member of StampLab. Florinda directed and performed in their award winning Artspark Festival 2008 play, “HUSH”.
Helga Davis (Photo Credit: Hatnim Lee)
Helga Davis is a New York based artist whose inter-diciplinary work includes collaborations with composers and choreographers alike. 2004 marked Davis’ directorial debut at the University of Texas, Austin, with Sharon Bridgforth’s, ” love/conjure/blues”. For the past five years she has been the co-star of “The Temptation of St. Anthony”, directed by Robert WIlson with libretto and score by Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweet Honey in the Rock. In March 2007 Davis began hosting Overnight Music on WNYC and was awarded the ASCAP Deems Taylor Multimedia Award for hosting” 24:33: twenty-four hours and thirty-three minutes of the playful and playable John Cage”. In February 2008 Davis conducted a special feature interview with artist Kara Walker on the eve of her Whitney Museum retrospective. She also wrote and performed a new multi-media piece entitled: “Imaginings” at the Whitney Museum at the retrospective’s conclusion. Davis, along with long time collaborator Daniel Alexander Jones, was the recipient of this years MAP Fund grant for a new work entitled, “Qualities of Light” which will have a production in Fall 2009. She is currently starring in “The Blue Planet”, a multi-media theater piece written by Peter Greenaway and directed by Saskia Boddeke which will tour in Europe this summer.
LISTEN To an Interview with Helga. LISTEN To Helga’s Radio Show on WNYC
Sonja Perryman
Sonja Perryman is an actress/singer from Atlanta,GA who now calls New York City home. She holds a BFA in theatre from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Since graduation she has worked extensively with La Mama theatre where she played the title role twice in Theodora Skipptares’ acclaimed production of Iphegenia. On the NYC stage Sonja was last seen playing the role of Ollita in the Off-Broadway smash hit ‘Celia’ about the life and music of the queen of salsa, Celia Cruz. Sonja has also starred in numerous national commercials for companies such as Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Chuck E. Cheese.
Baraka de Soleil
is an award-winning performance artist, choreographer & curator. At the center of his career is the development of experimental works for theatre, dance and alternative spaces. His artistry reflects moving images excavated from the multilayered traditions of the African Diaspora, immersed in an urban contemporary reality; actively crafting from ancestral memories, post-modern aesthetics and cultural legacies. Last summer Baraka traveled to Ghana under the auspices of Jerome’s Travel & Study Fellowship to research & experience the spatial configurations of historic slave routes and castles for the upcoming work Water Moves the Soul [2010]. Other Acknowledgements include: a MicKnight Choreography Fellowship, Jerome Foundation grant, AUDELCO nomination for Obatala: King of White Cloth[2004], commissions by Walker Art Center, Southern Theatre (Mn)and Dixon Place [2009], and residencies through Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Ontological Hysteric Theatre and Queens Museum of Modern Art . For his choreographic work on Sango: Lord of Thunder, Baraka was awarded the prestigious Katherine Dunham Choreography/AUDELCO for excellence in Black Theatre at the 34th annual VIV ceremony. For more go to: dunerbelly.com
Monique Cortez is a performance artist, physician and writer living in Austin, Texas. She has performed in Broken Circles, written by Omi Osun Olomo and Southern Fried Check One, written by Florinda Bryant. She has been a member of The Austin Project since 2003.
Andrea Edgerson has performed in The Vagina Monologues, Advice to the Players and has worked as an extra in movies, commercials and TV shows. To pay the rent, she works as a policy analyst within the movement to end family violence.
Leigh Gaymon-Jones began to pursue a career in dance in Atlanta, Georgia, studying various dance forms and performing with City Dance Ensemble. After relocating to Austin, Gaymon-Jones worked with Wura-Natasha Oguni on The Sweetest Road, The Austin Project Performance Company on America: Love Out of Con/text, Urban Bush Women during their Summer Institute and recently appeared as a guest choreographer/ performer with Gesel Mason during the Black Arts Movement Festival. Currently, Gaymon-Jones is developing a new work for the upcoming Austin Community College Choreographer’s Showcase and working on Christina Houle’s The Science of Suggestion, debuting in Frontera Fest 2009.
Karla Legaspy is a interdisciplinary Xicana artista from East Los Angeles. Most recently, she appeared in two such films, “Pura Lengua” and “Flor de Naranja”. Karla approaches both her art form and life with an open corazón, a sense of freedom, and little inhibition. She also collaborates and actively supports the work of other artists from varying genres and communities. Karla is an active member of TEATRO Q which is created and directed by Adelina Anthony to provide a safe space for LGBTQA/two spirited people of color to explore theater arts and performance. Karla’s Myspace Page
Azure D. Osborne-Lee grew up in Oak Ridge, TN. She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with B.A.s in English and Spanish in 2005, and an M.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies in 2008. She has performed in a variety of shows, including “The Book of Daniel”, “The Vagina Monologues”, “The Taming of the Shrew”, and “Alicia”. Azure currently lives, works, and plays primarily in Houston, TX. Azure’s Myspace Page
Technical Directore
Tramaine Berryhill is a first year technical director in the MFA program for scenery technology at the University of Texas at Austin. Originally from Miami Fl, he received his BFA in scene design from the University of Central FL in Orlando FL. Tramaine’s experience includes; several seasons working as a carpenter and painter at The Utah Shakespearean Festival, Technical Supervisor of Mc Million Assc. Sloss Freight Furnace 2006 and 2007 in Birmingham Alabama, and several scene designs with The M Ensemble Theatre Company in Miami FL. “I would like to that The Warfield Center and Sharon Bridgforth for the privilege of working on this project, and a very special thanks to my grandmother who passed during this process, for her full support and love in my education and career. She was our matriarch and will truly be missed.”
Costumer
Miramar Dichoso is a New York transplant who now sees herself as part cowgirl. Currently a shop girl, Miramar intends to use her training from the Fashion Institute of Technology to open her own store. This is her first foray as a costume designer.
Dramaturge
Jen Margulies is a writer and antiviolence worker living in Austin, Texas. She is a co-founder of Evelyn Street Press, where she has edited several books, including the anthology Affirming Flame: Writings by Progressive Texas Poets in the Aftermath of September 11th. Her own poetry has been published in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and is currently featured at the Blanton Museum of Art as part of “If These Walls Could Speak,” a project uniting visual art and poetry. She is a new playwright, and was honored to serve as dramaturg for October’s staged reading of delta dandi in Austin.
Set Designer
Leilah Stewartis a freelance scenic designer and performance artist based in Austin, TX. She created “Ziraat” an installation which featured an amazing score, written and performed by Phillip Owen for Fuse Box 2006. Other performance art events include; “31 days,” (2006) and “Just So Beautiful,” (2005) both pieces were commissioned by Austin Script Works, and “If I Knew you were coming” for the Fuse Box Festival, 2007.
Leilah is also a company member of the Rude Mechanicals, an experimental theatre collective whose hit play, “Get Your War On” won the Total Theatre Award at the Edinborough Art Festival in the fall of 2007.
delta dandi poster art is provided by Tonya Engel. The piece is titled, The Actress (Oil on Canvas 20in X 30in). Tonya was born in Houston, Texas and traveled extensively in the US and Europe before settling down in her studio in Brooklyn, NY. Tonya is a self-taught painter. After a short-lived exploration in her earlier career with abstract painting, she began to totally concentrate on figurative form mixed with the emotion and expressionistic boldness that makes her works resolutely contemporary. Tonya Engel Studios Brooklyn – Austin www.tonyaengel.com.
Sharon Bridgforth. For Sharon’s bio CLICK HERE
