Shows
Art RestartViolinist Johnny Gandelsman gets scared ... and new music benefits.Johnny Gandelsman is not only one of the world’s finest violinists, as comfortable playing contemporary works as he is interpreting pieces from the Western classical canon. He is also an inveterate musical innovator. A long-time member of Silkroad Ensemble and a co-founder of string quartet Brooklyn Rider, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this past year, Johnny has long championed the dissolution of genre boundaries to celebrate music’s unique power to bridge cultural divides. Over the years he has collaborated with and played the works of musicians from the Middle East to Appalachia, along the way stretching his own...2025-01-1328 minArt RestartAmericana duo Chatham Rabbits thrive on authenticity and generosity through thick and thin.The year 2020 was looking to be a banner year for musical and life partners Sarah and Austin McCombie, aka Chatham Rabbits. They had just made the biggest financial investment in their band, namely the purchase of a tour van, and were looking forward to months of being on the road and performing to promote their second album when the pandemic hit and their bookings vanished. What they did next, though, exemplifies their resourcefulness, generosity and innovative spirit. They installed solar panels on top of the van to power a sound system, hitched a flatbed trailer to their n...2024-12-3026 minArt RestartAccess is the art itself: Kinetic Light’s disability-centered revolutionTo describe Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson as dancers is to name only a small sliver of their creative portfolio. To be sure, they are proficient, trained dancers and have created and performed several works for Kinetic Light, the disability arts ensemble that Alice founded in 2016 and continues to lead. In Kinetic Light’s first piece, titled “Descent,” Alice and Laurel danced in their wheelchairs on a raked stage with a large ramp — stage design by Laurel — and since then have proved to be increasingly adventurous in exploring their relationship to gravity. In recent pieces, they have boldly moved into the v...2024-12-1630 minArt RestartAaron McIntosh’s quilts archive queer Southern historyFor fiber artist Aaron McIntosh, quilting is an act of defiant documentation. Growing up in an Appalachian family with a generations-deep tradition of quilting, he learned the craft as a boy and went on to develop his own ethos and mission, studying first at the Appalachian Center for Craft in Tennessee and then earning his MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.In recent years, Aaron has placed his own personal history and metaphorical body into fabric sculptures that blend his familial and cultural background with his identity as a queer Appalachian artist. His work has been...2024-12-0226 minArt RestartKickstarting Classical: Composer Christopher Tin keeps fans close on his musical adventures.Christopher Tin is an award-winning and genre-bending classical composer whose work has been featured in a variety of settings and media, from august concert halls to the world of video games. His orchestral piece “Baba Yetu,” which Christopher originally composed for the game “Civilization IV,” was the first ever musical work written for a video game to win a Grammy Award. It has since become a staple in choral and orchestral venues. He received his second Grammy for his debut album, “Calling All Dawns,” a multilingual song cycle. Christopher has been as adventurous in his producing as h...2024-11-1827 minArt RestartWhat urban-rural divide? Matthew Fluharty supports art across geographies.Matthew Fluharty is the founder and executive director of Art of the Rural, an organization that works to support and promote the work of artists and culture bearers across the country and that also aims to bridge cultural divides across urban and rural areas.Initially created as a blog in 2010, Art of the Rural has since then developed several long-term projects in collaboration with artists and community leaders, particularly in the upper Midwest (Art of the Rural is based in Winona, MN) and in Kentucky Appalachia. Projects have included “High Visibility: On Location in Rural American and In...2024-11-0426 minArt RestartFrom land to stage, Groundwater Arts nurtures justice in the arts.Theater artists Annalisa Dias and Tara Moses are the co-directors of Groundwater Arts, an organization they founded in 2018 — along with Anna Lathrop and Ronee Penoi — to braid together goals that at first might seem disparate: decolonizing the arts-and-culture field and striving for a climate-just future.Guided and inspired all along by an advisory council as well as a youth council, Groundwater Arts has created countless opportunities — whether through creative projects, consulting or virtual and in-person gatherings — for cultural institutions to learn how they can start dismantling structural inequities that for generations have exacerbated the climate crisis and have pri...2024-10-2124 minArt RestartTruly Appalachia: Author/theatre-maker Robert Gipe holds safe spaces through the toughest times.Calling Robert Gipe an author or novelist is a bit like calling Neil deGrasse Tyson a YouTuber. Yes, Robert wrote a widely praised self-illustrated trilogy of novels — “Trampoline,” “Weedeater” and “Pop” — that follows the travails of a young woman growing up in rural Appalachia. He completed that authorly feat, however, after decades working as an educator, community builder and theater-maker in and around Harlan, KY, where he continues to reside.Originally from Kingsport, TN, Robert moved to Southeastern Kentucky in the late ’90s after receiving his master’s in American studies at the University of Massachusetts. Initially he worked in marketi...2024-10-0725 minArt RestartPiano/percussion duet SHHH! Ensemble makes contemporary classical a blast for a new audience.You might be forgiven for guessing SHHH! Ensemble to be a collection of musically minded librarians, but you’d be way off the mark. Because SHHH! Ensemble makes noise. A lot of it. On a variety of instruments. And people are loving it. Which might be especially surprising given that SHHH! mostly plays contemporary classical works, a genre that can be intimidating to many audiences. So how do they do it?SHHH! comprises Ottawa-based life partners Edana Higham, a pianist, and Zac Pulak, a percussionist, making them possibly the world’s only professional piano/percussion duo. Since laun...2024-09-2327 minArt RestartNorms-busting choreographer Aszure Barton uses joy as the foundation for her work.On January 26 of 2024, San Francisco Ballet premiered a commissioned work by Canadian American choreographer Aszure Barton. It was titled “Mere Mortals” and explored the science and ramifications of AI through the ancient myth of Pandora. With a brand-new score by world-renowned British electronica composer Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points, and video and sound design by Barcelona-based Hamill Industries, “Mere Mortals” was a big gamble for new artistic director Tamara Rojo as she closed out her first season with the Ballet. It paid off. Not only was “Mere Mortals” a hit with critics, with the San Francisco Chronicle calling it “...2024-09-0929 minArt RestartAlexander Lloyd Blake's Tonality: a choral call to social changeIn 2016, while earning his doctorate in music at the University of Southern California, Alexander Lloyd Blake founded the choral group Tonality. His initial aim was to create a choral ensemble that would represent and celebrate the full diversity of Los Angeles’ population. That done, Tonality started to focus each concert on social-justice issues, from global warming to gun violence, always providing audiences with an array of resources to encourage activism and change.Tonality’s repertoire is as varied as its membership, ranging from Gregorian chant to contemporary pieces in a variety of styles and genres, but Alex’s comm...2024-08-2627 minArt RestartConscious Costume's Kristen P Ahern builds networks of ethical designers.Costume designer Kristen P Ahern has been thinking about sustainability since childhood, when her parents, her mother in particular, instilled in her a passion for environmental responsibility. As an adult, she has centered that passion in her art, in 2018 founding Conscious Costume, an information-and-resources clearinghouse with a clear vision: “Every costume created in harmony with people and planet.” Although Kristen now lives in Pittsburgh, PA, she still has deep roots in Chicago, where she designed for several theaters and also managed a few costume shops in the area. Chicago is also where Conscious Costume’s costumes-rental facility continu...2024-08-1226 minArt RestartLaunch a sumptuous arts complex in this arts climate? Bill Rauch’s vision is already bearing fruit.Of all the tasks to undertake in the current arts climate, leading a brand-new multimillion-dollar performing-arts center through its opening and first season must be one of the most daunting. Yet, Bill Rauch, the inaugural artistic director of the Perelman Arts Center (usually referred to as PAC NYC) in Lower Manhattan managed to launch with a bang through an astonishing array of music, dance, theater and opera performances. He also capped the first season with a personal triumph, co-directing with Zhailon Levingston an inventive reimagining of the musical “Cats” set in New York’s drag ballroom scene. The production, titled...2024-07-0927 minArt RestartOnce a refugee himself, photographer Tariq Tarey honors our newest arrivals.Tariq Tarey is a documentary photographer and filmmaker based in Columbus, OH. Over the years, he has captured thousands of portraits of refugees from around the world whom the U.S. government resettled in Central Ohio.Tariq himself arrived in the States in the mid ’90s as a refugee from his native Somalia. He therefore has a particular empathy for his subjects, many of whom like him hail from Somalia but also from a myriad global locations, from Nepal and Iraq to the Democratic Republic of Congo and more recently Ukraine. His passion is not on...2024-06-2525 minArt RestartFlorida-based Antonia Wright channels her rage into boundless discovery—and hope.Antonia Wright is an award-winning Cuban American multimedia artist based in Miami, FL whose work has been exhibited all over the world, from the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and the Pérez Art Museum in her hometown to the Havana Biennial and the Faena Arts Center in Buenos Aires. The focus of her work tends to be the human body and how it responds to extremes of emotion, control and violence promulgated by systems of power, and in the past, she has often used her own body — often in startling and violent ways — to illus...2024-06-1027 minArt RestartPhil Chan makes ballet a contemporary artform for all Americans.Phil Chan is a choreographer, director and ballet scholar who seven years ago decided to turn a longstanding frustration into a wellspring of activism. Although American entertainment had made great progress in eliminating the use of blackface, demeaning and wildly inaccurate depictions of Asians and Asian-ness continued to appear on ballet stages. He therefore teamed up with prima ballerina Georgina Pazcoguin to create Final Bow for Yellowface, an organization that started working with ballet companies in America and Europe to eliminate offensive depictions of Asians in their repertoires and help them find inventive and respectful ways to...2024-05-2827 minArt RestartJerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate brings the sounds of Indian Country to the concert hall.Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s compositions are finding evermore ardent fans among the public and musical institutions alike. This interview took place just days after his return to his Oklahoma City home from an eventful week in New York. While there he heard the New York Philharmonic play the string-arrangement premiere of his piece “Pisachi.” He also not only experienced the Carnegie Hall premiere of his “Clans” performed by the American Composers Orchestra; he also performed in it, singing alongside his 10-year-old son, Heloha. Onstage as well were several fellow members of the Chickasaw Nation dressed in traditional regalia.Jerod’s wo...2024-05-1427 minArt RestartGriff Braun makes ballet dancers union-strong.A major theme that reappears in episode after episode of Art Restart is the fact that audiences/consumers, institutions/businesses and sometimes even artists themselves often fail to recognize that art is labor, not a pastime or an unconventional way to earn a living. A recent labor action by America’s premier ballet company served as a fresh reminder.On February 6 of this year, by an overwhelming majority, the dancers and stage managers of American Ballet Theatre voted to authorize a strike. Among their demands were an increase in wages that had been frozen since the Great Re...2024-04-2928 minArt RestartFrom rural southern Oregon, Ka'ila Farrell-Smith fights for and paints with Native land.For painter Ka’ila Farrell-Smith, the land on which she lives and works is the raw material for her art, both metaphorically and literally. In November 2016, ten days spent at Standing Rock, ND protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline and meeting and working alongside fellow Native artists changed her life. Ka’ila, who is Klamath Modoc, learned about the Jordan Cove Energy Projects, a liquid natural gas LNG pipeline that was threatening her ancestral homeland in southern Oregon, and in 2018, she moved to Modoc Point, where she jump-started a new chapter in her activism and artistry journey, scoring a co...2024-04-1525 minArt RestartFor Rising Appalachia, time off is the newest tool in their slow-music toolbox.In February of 2024, after a year of touring the country, the musical group Rising Appalachia, an ensemble that marries American folk music with a wide array of world influences, made an announcement that might have been surprising only to those who don’t know them well. Sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith, who created Rising Appalachia over 15 years ago, had decided to take a sabbatical year, though they would honor the concerts already on the books in 2024. Longtime Rising Appalachia fans have been supportive because they know this is a band that has never taken shortcuts in how...2024-04-0127 minArt RestartEquity in collecting? April Bey has a plan.Through her wildly multicolored and multitextured interdisciplinary work, April Bey loves to explore speculative realms. For example, in a recent installation of hers, titled “Atlantica, the Gilda Region,” she invited the viewer to imagine they’d just landed as aliens on the faraway planet Atlantica, an opulent galactic wonderland full of Black and Brown bodies savoring luxury and leisure. First exhibited at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, the show then traveled to the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno this past fall.Art Restart was eager to speak with April specifically because of a projec...2024-03-1827 minArt RestartFilm composer Sultana Isham's curiosity takes her from horror to the stars.For New Orleans-based film composer Sultana Isham, plunging into research on her subject matter is as important as creating her score. Trained as a classical violinist, she moved from her native Virginia to New Orleans to steep herself in one of her passions, the peoples, history and culture of Créolité throughout the Americas and abroad. Once in New Orleans, Sultana Initially busked in various venues around New Orleans and then started playing with Les Cenelles, an ensemble devoted to Creole folk music and work by composers of color. She began to write her own pieces, and in...2024-03-0426 minArt Restart"Water is memory": Zeke Peña illustrates the Rio Grande and our changing southern border.Zeke Peña is a Xicano cartoonist and illustrator who, for most of his professional life, has focused on the lives and stories of El Paso, TX, where he grew up and lived for decades. A self-taught artist with an undergraduate degree in art history from UT Austin, he has built a rich portfolio of varied works that, as he describes them, are “a mash-up of political cartoons, border rasquache and hip-hop culture.”He has illustrated several award-winning books, including “My Papi Drives a Motorcycle,” which The New York Times called a best children’s book of 2019, and “Photog...2024-02-1926 minArt RestartShayok Misha Chowdhury on the bracing success of his "Public Obscenities"One of the bona fide theatrical hits of 2023 was a play titled “Public Obscenities” by director-turned-playwright Shayok Misha Chowdhury. It opened at Soho Rep in Manhattan in January of 2023 to the kind of glowing reviews and audience responses a playwright can only dream of. The same production was remounted that fall at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington D.C., and as of this writing, it is currently running at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn. A New York Times Critic’s Pick from its first outing, the play continues to draw raves in its latest iterat...2024-02-0526 minArt RestartDimensions Variable plays it smart and cool in Miami's red-hot art market.In 2009, while expecting their first child, visual artists and life partners Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova and Frances Trombly co-founded a new artist space in their hometown of Miami. They named it Dimensions Variable after their short-lived visuals-only blog that had showcased the kind of challenging art they rarely saw supported or valued in their city.Using a donated space in Miami’s Design District, Leyden and Frances worked in their personal studios in the back, and in the small front space, Dimensions Variable started curating exhibits. Leyden was committed to imbuing their new venture with the ethos that had gu...2024-01-2329 minArt RestartChicago's Floating Museum: "We don’t bring culture to people; people already have culture."Architect Andrew Schachman and multidisciplinary artist and educator Faheem Majeed are two of the four artists who, along with poet avery r. young and sculptor Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, co-lead Chicago’s Floating Museum. As its name suggests, the Floating Museum does not have a brick-and-mortar fixed space; rather it creates inventive projects through which to explore and strengthen the relationship between art, community, architecture and public institutions in sites throughout Chicago. One example of past Floating Museum projects is “Cultural Transit Assembly,” which activated not only the Chicago Transit Authority’s green line but also parks and spaces along it...2024-01-0827 minArt RestartCellist Leo Eguchi makes classical music inviting, immediate and personalCellist Leo Eguchi has played all over the world in a variety of settings, from frequent appearances with the Boston Pops and the Portland Symphony to playing for some of pop music’s biggest stars, including Demi Lovato and Peter Gabriel. A career as a performer only, however, did not satisfy his itch to make music that would move an audience with its intimacy and immediacy, so he co-founded not one but two chamber music ensembles and began commissioning work from a broad array of contemporary composers.He continues to co-lead Sheffield Chamber Players, which is based in...2023-12-1826 minArt RestartMidnight Oil Collective: Tech connects creators with venture capital, so why not art?As our “Art Restart” interviews have made clear time and time again, artists’ relationship with capitalism is uneasy at best. Should we really allow the market to dictate whose artistic output is valuable? Can and should art be treated like widgets? Or like a new app? To the second question, Frances Pollock and Keith Hamilton Cobb might answer, “If the artist is up for it, why not?” Frances, an opera and musical-theater composer, is the CEO of a nascent company called Midnight Oil Collective (MOC) that cribs from the funding practices of tech accelerators, which after all a...2023-12-0427 minArt RestartFor social sculptor Philippa Pham Hughes, a meaningful conversation between strangers is a gorgeous work of art.The raw materials of Philippa Pham Hughes’ art are human bodies and minds. Since 2007, when she hosted her first gathering of strangers, Philippa has worked as a social sculptor and cultural strategist. What this means is that, through methods drawn from the arts and the humanities, she curates what she calls creative activations. These are carefully planned spaces and events to which groups of complete strangers from different walks of life meet face to face and break bread, often quite literally. In these activations, with Philippa’s guidance, participants can touch the third rails of polite discussion, whet...2023-11-2026 minArt RestartSteven Melendez, the new a.d. of New York Theatre Ballet, on his plan to create the most accessible dance company everIn 2022, Steven Melendez was named artistic director of New York Theatre Ballet, becoming only the second person to lead the institution. In several ways, he was destined to become its next leader since his relationship with the company started when he was only 7 years old and founding artistic director Diana Byer recruited him to train at NYTB’s school through the company’s LIFT scholarship program. As an adult he then went on to dance professionally with NYTB for 15 years. His dance career also included numerous international stints, including as a soloist dancer with Ballet Concierto in Buenos Aires, Arge...2023-11-0727 minArt RestartWith a clear and trained voice, Precious Perez advocates for herself and other blind artistsPrecious Perez is a singer, songwriter, educator and disability activist who has recently been performing and recording under the moniker “La Reggaetonera Ciega,” the Blind Reggaeton Singer. A graduate of the Berklee School of Music, she has already released one album, 2 EPs, one cover and eight singles, with a ninth on the way. Her single “Sin Preguntar” won Best Latin Song just last month at the Latin Music Awards KY.Precious is also President of RAMPD, Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities, whose mission is “to amplify Disability Culture, promote equitable inclusion and advocate for accessibility in the musi...2023-10-3126 minArt RestartThree TX artists on creating with and for Meow WolfTo describe Meow Wolf as an artistic juggernaut might not be entirely hyperbolic. Founded in 2008 by a group of Santa Fe-based artists looking to show their work outside of the traditional art ecosystem, the collective created its first permanent exhibition in Santa Fe 2016 when famed author George R.R. Martin pledged $2.7 million to purchase an abandoned bowling alley. Meow Wolf titled the installation “House of Eternal Return,” and the surreal, immersive, semi-narrative, multi-artist, multimedia and multi-room experience it provided quickly garnered many fans and repeat visitors. Since the success of “House of Eternal Return,” Meow Wolf has opened several more giga...2023-10-0229 minArt RestartExecutive producer/screenwriter Dorothy Fortenberry ("The Handmaid's Tale," "Extrapolations") on why the WGA strike matters to everyone whose profession might ever become just another gigWhen the Writers Guild of America strike began in early May of 2023, screenwriter, playwright and essayist Dorothy was in the middle of promoting an Apple TV+ mini-series titled “Extrapolations,” on which she’d worked as executive producer and writer. As a result, she had to cancel all appearances relating to the show, which was especially disappointing to her given that it was the first major scripted TV show about climate change. Instead, she braved the blistering heat of summer in Burbank, CA and started walking the picket lines.Dorothy’s TV producing and writing credits also include the accla...2023-09-1826 minArt RestartSAG-AFTRA Chicago local president Charles Andrew Gardner on strutting your stank through a strikeActor and educator Charles Andrew Gardner is starting his fourth term as president of the Chicago local branch of the union SAG-AFTRA.He grew up in Chicago and studied acting at Northern Illinois University. He is a company member with TimeLine Theater and has acted on several of Chicago’s important stages. He has appeared on the Chicago-filmed TV shows “The Chi” and “Chicago P.D.,” and his film credits include “Long Ride Home” and “Olympia.” He has also shot several national commercials for brands including Hyundai and Liberty Mutual, and he has many credits as a voiceover artist.2023-09-0625 minArt RestartJazz legend, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, changed how she listened and then centered gender inclusivity in her artistic practice.Terri Lyne Carrington is one of the most respected jazz musicians in the world. Her drumming career started at the age of 10, which is when she officially got her musicians’ union card, and in the decades since, she’s earned countless accolades, including four Grammys, a Doris Duke Artist Award and an NEW Jazz Masters Fellowship. She has performed on over 100 recordings and has toured and recorded with jazz legends, including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Stan Getz and Esperanza Spalding. In recent years she has turned her attention to correcting gender inequities in her field. In 2018 she foun...2023-08-2228 minArt RestartWoodworker and furniture-maker Aspen Golann likes having rules to both heed and push back against in her craft, but she's also working to toss out the rules of who's been traditionally welcomed into the wood shop.Woodworker, furniture-maker, artist and educator Aspen Golann trained at the renowned North Bennet Street School in Boston and specializes in building furniture with the techniques of 18th and 19th century American fine woodworking. Her pieces aren’t mere modern iterations of a centuries-old tradition, however. They also often exhibit very modern feminist touches that acknowledge and subvert the power and function of furniture, traditionally made by men, that is created for domestic spaces, historically the domain of women. Aspen’s work has earned her the admiration of the arts-and-crafts establishment. Her work has been featured in American Craf...2023-08-0729 minArt RestartPittsburgh Ballet Theatre's new artistic director, Adam W. McKinney, sets the stage for the company to thrive one hundred years from now.Barely four months into his tenure as the artistic director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Adam W. McKinney is already implementing revolutionary ways to build on the company’s existing strengths with his gaze firmly set on its overall health a hundred years from now.Adam has a remarkable resume as a ballet dancer, a choreographer, a professor, an activist and an arts leader. He danced with some of the world’s most renowned ballet companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Alonzo King LINES Ballet and Béjart Ballet in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was the co-fo...2023-07-2429 minArt RestartDesigner Norma Baker-Flying Horse's fashions are acts of defiant storytelling.Norma Baker-Flying Horse’s designs are the stuff of fashion runway dreams. They display the sophistication, impeccable tailoring and gorgeous lines of her fashion idols, including Chanel and McQueen, but what makes them exceptional is that they incorporate gorgeous details that bespeak her Native heritage. Norma Baker-Flying Horse, whose company, Red Berry Woman, bears her given Native name, is a member of the Hidatsa, Dakota Sioux and Assiniboine tribes, and her creations often bear designs from these cultures rendered via traditional techniques, including intricate beadwork and/or appliques of smoked hide, sometimes even feathers or shells. And al...2023-07-1027 minArt RestartFor dancer/choreographer Michael Manson, Detroit Jit is not only a dance; it is also a key tool for cultural preservation and celebration.Dancer/choreographer Michael Manson is an internationally recognized authority in Detroit Jit, a dance genre birthed in his hometown over 50 years ago. His talent earned him a national audience when he appeared on “So You Think You Can Dance” in 2015, and as a performer and teacher he has worked all over the States and as far away as Paris and La Paz. Once a student of famed dancer/choreography Rennie Harris, he now tours with Rennie Harris Puremovement in performances of “Caravan,” starring jazz scholar Terence Blanchard.Last year, Mike, in conjunction with the non-profit Living Arts, was one...2023-06-2827 minArt RestartMaura Brewer makes art by laundering money...through art!Early in her career, Maura video essayist and performance artist Maura Brewer explored the relationship between representations of women in Hollywood films and the structures of contemporary capitalism. Through several often-tongue-in-cheek video pieces, she focused on the actor Jessica Chastain, who at the time was being typecast in films such as “Zero Dark Thirty” as a steely go-getter who paid a steep personal price for her ambition. In recent years, Maura’s focus has shifted from representations created by capitalism to the underlying financial structures that uphold it. To wit, she is deep into a years-long project titled...2023-06-1328 minArt RestartPro-wrestling aficionada, comedian Robin Tran, on how she's stayed in the comedy ring when it seemed likely she'd go over the top ropeRobin Tran has been performing standup comedy for the past 11 years, but it is only in the last eight that she has been performing under the name Robin. Before her transition in 2015, she presented as male and used the name Robert. During the pandemic, she gained a sizeable and loyal following via TikTok, and in 2021 she was featured as one of the “New Faces” of the year by the influential Just for Laughs festival. In the last couple of years, she’s enjoyed some very prominent appearances on various TV and streaming platforms, including “Comedy Central Roast” and Comedy...2023-05-3027 minArt RestartActor/dancer/choreographer/DASL Alexandria Wailes on why you can't just hire one ASL interpreter and call it a dayAlexandria Wailes is an accomplished actor, choreographer and dancer who just this last season appeared on Broadway in the acclaimed revival of Ntozake Shange’s seminal play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” The production, directed by UNCSA alum Camille A. Brown, held one notable surprise, the use of American Sign Language, since Alexandria, who is Deaf, played the Lady in Purple, a part that had not originally been written as a Deaf character. This was not her first time on Broadway. She understudied Marlee Matlin in the revival of “Spring Awakenin...2023-05-1630 minArt Restartdots: three visionary scenic designers swap individual plaudits for the creativity and security of a business partnershipPerhaps the hottest ticket on Broadway right now is to the starry revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s play “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” starring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan. Should you be lucky enough to score that ticket, you will find an unusual credit in the Playbill: scenic design by dots.Barely two years old, dots is a collective of three talented international designers who decided soon after earning their MFA’s at NYU to create a unique partnership. They are Andrew Moerdyk, who hails from South Africa; Kimie Nishikawa, born in Japan; and Santiago Orjuela-La...2023-04-2428 minArt RestartDirector Sean Daniels plans an intervention for the performing-arts industry, which is failing its most vulnerable artists.Theater director Sean Daniels has outstanding credits to his name. He co-founded the company Dad’s Garage, which is now a cornerstone of Atlanta’s theatrical scene, and then went on to lead Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Massachusetts. He also spent four years as associate artistic director at Actors Theatre of Louisville where he oversaw the sadly now-defunct Humana Festival of New American Plays and directed many of its world premieres over five years.The credit that brings him the greatest pride, however, is just a tad more recent, however: person in long-term recovery. For almost two deca...2023-04-1127 minArt RestartChef J Chong has built her business not with bricks and mortar but with fundamentally artistic valuesJ Chong was a well-respected chef in her community of Asheville, NC for years before she suddenly acquired a national profile thanks to her participation in HBO Max’s cooking-competition show, “The Big Brunch.” Suddenly J, who only recently had decided to strike out on her own by creating J Chong Eats, had a new platform on which to extol the flavors of her bedrock cuisine, traditional Cantonese.She also had a platform on which to express her unique perspective as a Canadian Asian queer woman making food and creating a business in the American South. In “The Big...2023-03-2027 minArt RestartDrag clown Anthony Hudson celebrates horror onstage -- and stands up to homophobic horror off-stage.Anthony Hudson might have earned the tongue-in-cheek title of “Portland OR’s premier drag clown” even if he were not Portland’s – and perhaps even the country’s -- only drag clown. He has delighted and terrified Portland audiences in equal measure as his alter-ego Carla Rossi for over 12 years, performing carefully honed satire in a variety of venues, including the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art.At Portland’s historic Hollywood Theatre, both Anthony and Carla program and host “Queer Horror,” the only LGBT horror screening-and-performance series in the country. Anthony also co-hosts with writer Stacie Ponder the queer feminist...2023-03-0628 minArt RestartBassoonist Brian Petkovich on leading San Antonio's musical phoenix, the brand-new San Antonio PhilharmonicLast summer, bassoonist Brian Petkovich lost his job and then got a job that had never existed before. Not long after the San Antonio Symphony, with whom Brian played for 25 years, shut its doors, he became the inaugural president of the nascent San Antonio Philharmonic, which as of this writing is seven months old.For a brief moment in 2022, it seemed like San Antonio, the nation’s seventh-largest city, might not have a major orchestra. The musicians of the San Antonio Symphony, protesting significant personnel and salary cuts demanded by the Board, had gone on strike in Se...2023-02-2026 minArt RestartSound artist Brian Harnetty plays the beauty of Appalachian Ohio back to itself.For sound artist and ethnographer Brian Harnetty, listening is perhaps even more important than composing. He is passionate about capturing the essence of a place through his creations, and his work therefore involves venturing into towns and landscapes armed with his microphone and recording everything from ambient sounds to oral histories. It also involves in-depth research in archives and libraries to discover a community’s often forgotten history, images and archival recordings. The geographic area to which he is most devoted is Appalachian Ohio. His parents and their forebears hail from those mountains, and though he currently li...2023-02-0629 minArt RestartEach cut in Sukanya Mani's paper sculptures tells part of a deeply researched story.Sukanya Mani’s works seem light as air, intricate and mesmerizing paper sculptures that can move and twirl with the slightest breeze. What may not be immediately apparent, however, is that Sukanya has made each irreversible cut in her material with the intention of representing — albeit abstractly — a weighty story or theme she’s explored in depth. The way gravity affects light; the relationship between physiological, psychological and cosmological time; how clothing and adornment affect how a woman’s sexuality is perceived: These are just a few of the themes Sukanya has researched before picking up her scissors and utility kn...2023-01-2327 minArt RestartDespite a devastating flood, visual artist Lacy Hale burrows her roots even deeper into the Appalachian community that has supported her through the years.When the devastating floods of July 2022 tore through the mountain communities of Southeastern Kentucky, visual artist Lacy Hale lost her studio and a trove of works in progress. Since that tragic and deadly night, though, even as many of her neighbors in Whitesburg have been forced to move away, one thing she has not lost is her determination to remain in the mountains where she grew up. They are in her blood, and they inspire her art, just as she intends for her art to inspire the people of her corner of Appalachia.Lacy has been making a...2022-12-1627 minArt RestartDon't tell choreographer and photographer Trey McIntyre what success is. He knows it when he feels it.Described by The New York Times as “one of America’s most peculiarly original dance poets,” choreographer Trey McIntyre has made a habit of defying expectations throughout his career. A graduate of UNCSA, he went on to the Houston Ballet Academy where upon finishing his training, he was given the position of Choreographic Apprentice at the Ballet, a post created specifically for him.As his freelance career started to take off, he did something completely unexpected. Rather than tether himself to a large coastal metropolis or a European capital, he decided to settle down in Boise, ID, where...2022-11-2327 minArt RestartSiblings Crystal and Rico Worl honor Tlingit and Athabascan tradition with ultra-contemporary designSiblings Crystal and Rico Worl have been making art together in Juneau, AK since they were children, and as adults, not only are they thriving as professional artists, they also co-own a successful online business, Trickster Company, whose mission is to promote innovative Indigenous art. Members of the Tlingit and Athabascan clans, Crystal and Rico continue to explore the cultural traditions of their heritage, studying at length with master craftsmen and artists, and the formline style prevalent in the Pacific Northwest lies at the heart of their practice. However, whether using new technology in their art or...2022-11-0928 minArt RestartSiblings Crystal and Rico Worl honor Tlingit and Athabascan tradition with ultra-contemporary designSiblings Crystal and Rico Worl have been making art together in Juneau, AK since they were children, and as adults, not only are they thriving as professional artists, they also co-own a successful online business, Trickster Company, whose mission is to promote innovative Indigenous art. Members of the Tlingit and Athabascan clans, Crystal and Rico continue to explore the cultural traditions of their heritage, studying at length with master craftsmen and artists, and the formline style prevalent in the Pacific Northwest lies at the heart of their practice. However, whether using new technology in their art or...2022-11-0928 minArt RestartGlass artist Cedric Mitchell on joining an exclusive club...and then throwing its doors wide openCedric Mitchell is a glass artist based in Los Angeles who for the last 10 years has created an array of both decorative and functional pieces. He has completed residencies at some of the most prestigious craft institutes in the country, including Penland School of Craft, Pilchuck Glass School and Corning Museum of Glass. In 2018 he officially launched his own business, Cedric Mitchell Design, through which he continues to create blown glass for retailers nationwide.Cedric is also the events-and-resource manager for Crafting the Future, a nonprofit that works to diversify the fields of art, craft and design...2022-10-2625 minArt RestartTheater artists Mallory Catlett and Aaron Landsman on remaining unique and humbleWhile working on a project in Portland, OR over a decade ago, theater-maker Aaron Landsman accepted a colleague’s invitation to attend a city-council meeting. In between moments of boredom typical to such meetings, Landsman, who had made a career of making works of theater in a variety of unusual settings, glimpsed inherently theatrical moments. The clincher came when a well-dressed sixtysomething by the name of Pete Colt, clearly well-known to and barely tolerated by the city councilors, testified about the drug-related paraphernalia that littered a children’s park in the city. At the end of his testimony, to make...2022-10-0529 minArt RestartTheater artists Mallory Catlett and Aaron Landsman on remaining unique and humbleWhile working on a project in Portland, OR over a decade ago, theater-maker Aaron Landsman accepted a colleague’s invitation to attend a city-council meeting. In between moments of boredom typical to such meetings, Landsman, who had made a career of making works of theater in a variety of unusual settings, glimpsed inherently theatrical moments. The clincher came when a well-dressed sixtysomething by the name of Pete Colt, clearly well-known to and barely tolerated by the city councilors, testified about the drug-related paraphernalia that littered a children’s park in the city. At the end of his testimony, to make...2022-10-0529 minArt RestartFor bassoonist Midori Samson, holism beats so-called excellence hands-down.With a bachelor’s degree from Juilliard and a doctorate in musical arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Midori Samson is not only exquisitely trained in her instrument, the bassoon. Throughout her education she also studied social work, even minoring in the field as she earned her Ph.D. For Midori — who describes herself as equally a bassoonist, educator, activist and scholar — her commitment to equity and social inclusion is inseparable from her artistry.She is a longtime member of Arts Ignite, a non-profit that works with artists to unlock children’s imaginations and potential. Arts Ignite w...2022-09-2728 minArt RestartSekou Cooke translates hip-hop culture into built formThough Sekou Cooke did not invent the term or the theory of hip-hop architecture, he is one of its leading proponents and practitioners. An architect, urban designer, researcher and curator born and raised in Jamaica and educated at Cornell and Harvard, he currently serves as the Director of the Master of Urban Design at UNC Charlotte. He also owns and operates Sekou Cooke STUDIO, which recently earned a 2022 Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League of New York.Sekou’s recent projects include “Grids + Griots,” an architectural intervention commissioned for the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the soon-to-be-built Syracu...2022-09-1226 minArt RestartRural and proud: In Green River, UT, Maria Sykes and Epicenter place creativity in service to their small community.Maria Sykes earned her architecture degree from Auburn University just as the 2008 recession paralyzed the nation. Unable to find a job right away, she decided to join a classmate who was volunteering with AmeriCorps in the small town of Green River, UT. The plan was to spend a summer in Green River before buckling down to launch her architecture career. That summer turned into her own yearlong commitment to AmeriCorps, which then turned into a second year, with Maria always thinking she’d leave when the economy turned around.What she hadn’t planned on was falling deep...2022-08-2927 minArt RestartPhotographer Shedrick Pelt on capturing the January 6 attack on the Capitol through a Black lensOn January 6, 2021, hearing that Trump supporters were descending on the U.S. Capitol, freelance photographer Shedrick Pelt grabbed goggles, a respirator and his Canon 5D Mark 4 and ran to the scene to document the event. The arresting images he captured on that terrifying day constitute “Attack on Democracy: Through the Lens of a Black Photojournalist,” a traveling exhibit that opened at Gallery O in Washington, DC one year after the attack on the Capitol. Shedrick’s instinct to run towards the danger of that day was based in a bone-deep commitment to community and local storytelling. Moving to D.C...2022-08-1525 minArt Restart"Don't be ashy!" -- Performance artist Ayo Janeen Jackson pivoted her dance career to honor and care for the Black body through art as well as business.Ayo Janeen Jackson enjoyed an enviable dance career after earning her BFA at UNCSA. She danced with two of the world’s most renowned contemporary companies — Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and Ballet Preljocaj — before joining the company of Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”Yearning to learn more ways to express herself, though, she shifted her career path. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she earned a Master’s in Interdisciplinary Arts, and today she remains a performing artist firmly rooted in her body with the difference that she has added seve...2022-08-0122 minArt RestartActor and artistic director Gregg Mozgala uses theater to put the disabled body on display with unassailable authenticity.UNCSA alumnus Gregg Mozgala, after years of performing on some of Off-Broadway’s finest stages, is enjoying a well-earned banner year. He recently completed a national tour playing the title character in “Teenage Dick,” a modern take on Shakespeare’s “Richard III” centered on the experience of a high school student with cerebral palsy, and this summer he appeared in “Richard III” itself, alongside film and theater star Danai Gurira, in the Public Theater’s revered Shakespeare in the Park season. This fall he will cap off the year with his Broadway debut in Martyna Majok’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Cost of Living,” r...2022-07-1824 minArt RestartMultidisciplinary artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya on how she protects her explorer's spirit and invites strangers to join her in her discoveriesA neuroscientist-turned-artist, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, has long known how to “make the invisible visible,” as her artist statement declares. Her ability to make intricate scientific concepts accessible through art and design earned her a TED residency as well as the opportunity to speak on two TED mainstages. Her numerous works — including an AR installation immersing viewers in the world of microbes and “Beyond Curie,” a project that harnessed both technology and design to celebrate the most badass women in STEM history — have been featured in spaces all over the world, from a highway tunnel in the Netherlands to New York’s Cooper Union...2022-07-0525 minArt RestartLear deBessonet and Clyde Valentín galvanize community artmaking to achieve local and national healingIt’s a good thing that director Lear deBessonet and producer Clyde Valentín have extensive experience in community-engaged participatory art — nine years ago she founded the acclaimed Public Works program at the Public Theater in New York City; he was the inaugural director of Ignite/Arts, a renowned community-arts incubator in Dallas since 2015 — because the scope of their newest project, One Nation/One Project, would overwhelm most artists and administrators. One Nation/One Project, a partnership with the National League of Cities, is a truly national multi-year health-and-wellness initiative. Over the next two years, 18 communities scattered through...2022-06-2026 minArt RestartDancer Lauren Edson and musician Andrew Stensaas co-created and co-lead Boise’s LED, where dance and music are just two elements of numerous artistic adventures.Partners in life, love and art, dancer/choreographer Lauren Edson and musician/composer Andrew Stensaas founded the remarkable performance company LED in Boise, ID in 2015 and remain its co-leadersLauren, the company’s artistic director, trained at UNCSA and Juilliard before dancing with the renowned dance company Trey McIntyre Projects for many years. Andrew, LED’s creative director, is a self-taught musician and composer who played with two critically acclaimed bands — one in Portland, OR; the other in Boise, ID — before establishing himself as a teacher and composer/songwriter at Boise Rock School. Just five years af...2022-06-0726 minArt RestartLauren Edson and Andrew StensaasPartners in life, love and art, dancer/choreographer Lauren Edson and musician/composer Andrew Stensaas founded the remarkable performance company LED in Boise, ID in 2015 and remain its co-leadersLauren, the company’s artistic director, trained at UNCSA and Juilliard before dancing with the renowned dance company Trey McIntyre Projects for many years. Andrew, LED’s creative director, is a self-taught musician and composer who played with two critically acclaimed bands — one in Portland, OR; the other in Boise, ID — before establishing himself as a teacher and composer/songwriter at Boise Rock School. Just five years af...2022-06-0726 minArt RestartNimble in Boise: Lauren Edson and Andrew Stensaas on founding multimedia company LED.Partners in life, love and art, dancer/choreographer Lauren Edson and musician/composer Andrew Stensaas founded the remarkable performance company LED in Boise, ID in 2015 and remain its co-leadersLauren, the company’s artistic director, trained at UNCSA and Juilliard before dancing with the renowned dance company Trey McIntyre Projects for many years. Andrew, LED’s creative director, is a self-taught musician and composer who played with two critically acclaimed bands — one in Portland, OR; the other in Boise, ID — before establishing himself as a teacher and composer/songwriter at Boise Rock School. Just five years af...2022-06-0726 minArt RestartComposer Brittany J. Green cultivates community and a deep listening practiceComposer Brittany J. Green is already making waves in the world of new classical music. However, given the variety of inspirations that pervades her work – from computer-coding languages to Black feminist theory – and her growing passion for electronica and for DJing her own sets, she is very much beating an artistic path that disregards the boundaries of genre.Her work has been performed at concerts and festivals throughout the United States, including the Boulanger Initiative’s WoCo Fest and New York City Electronic Music Festival, and last year she recorded a new piece with the Atlanta Symphony that w...2022-05-2326 minArt RestartChristinaMaria Patiño Xochitlzihuatl Houle decolonizes the interview itself!Artist, activist and visionary ChristinaMaria Xochitlzihuatl Patiño Houle is the co-founder and lead visionary of Las Imaginistas, a socially engaged art collective working to liberate the public imagination.Several of Las Imaginistas’ projects have centered on Brownsville, TX, including “Taller de Permiso,” an arts and economic-justice campaign. Through hands-on art-making workshops and events, “Taller de Permiso” harnessed the community’s collective imagination to parse and reimagine the municipal permitting process, particularly as it affects small businesses operating in communities of color.Another Las Imaginistas project is “Borders Like Water,” an ongoing international cro...2022-05-0928 minArt RestartFor Artistic Director Jacob Padrón, a radical change at his theater is an opportunity for collective reimaginingIn February of 2022, Long Wharf Theatre, one of the country’s most respected regional theaters, released a bold statement. Starting with its 2022/23 season, the theater will not renew the lease on the space it has occupied for 57 years on the outskirts of New Haven, CT. Rather, under the leadership of artistic director Jacob Padrón, who joined Long Wharf in late 2018, the theater will commit at least for a few years to an itinerant production model that “will prioritize equity, accessibility and transparency, guided by three core pillars: revolutionary partnerships, artistic innovation, and radical inclusion.” Coming at a time...2022-04-2527 minArt RestartLandscape architect Daniel Woodroffe tells stories of joy and ingenuity through his urban landscapes.In the twelve years since Austin-based landscape architect Daniel Woodroffe founded his firm, dwg, it has become a leader in sustainable design and low-impact development. The firm has worked on projects all over the world but has made a particularly deep impression on the landscape of its home city. One of dwg’s most remarkable years-long project finally came to fruition when in August of 2021 Waterloo Park, at 11 acres downtown Austin’s biggest greenspace, opened to the public. Daniel’s company served as the local landscape architect team for world-renowned landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh. Waterl...2022-04-1127 minArt RestartFashion designer Nyla Hasan on code-flexing and playing the long gameA graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology with 15 years of experience working for some of the country’s top designers, Nyla Hasan in 2019 decided to create her own fashion line. A few complications — not the least of which was a pandemic — delayed the planned debut of the line, but in the fall of 2021 her dream became a reality when fashion brand the øther launched its first collection. The øther quickly made waves for its graceful blending of South Asian and Western influences and its use of both inventive as well as traditional South Asian techniques and handiwork...2022-03-2825 minArt RestartViolinist and composer Earl Maneein brings Paganini chops to heavy metal and punk, slaying all the wayEarl Maneein is a violinist and composer who loves nothing more than to lend his considerable chops as a classically trained musician to the sounds and venues of heavy metal and hardcore punk. None other than Robert Trujillo, bassist for Metallica, has called him “a kick-ass artist who pushes the creative boundaries.” Earl received a Bachelor of Music from Queens College and a Master of Music from the Mannes College of Music, where he studied with Daniel Phillips of the Orion String Quartet. He is the founder of and main composer for the string quartet SEVEN...2022-03-1428 minArt RestartAmelia Winger-Bearskin on why AI needs artists as a guiding forceAmelia Winger-Bearskin in an artist, technologist and researcher who specializes in working in and with artificial intelligence. She lives in Jacksonville, FL, where she is a Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Arts at the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida.Her work, though incredibly varied, always focuses on finding ways to use AI to benefit communities and the environment. In 2017 she founded a nonprofit, IDEA New Rochelle, that created a VR/AR Citizen toolkit to engage the community as co-designers of their future city. The project, in p...2022-02-2825 minArt RestartMuralist Troy Summerell on taking an artistic leap of faith and joy, haters be damnedTroy Summerell has become well-known in his hometown of Virginia Beach, VA for his vibrant and joyful murals of flowers and ocean creatures that can be seen throughout the region, from the sides of large buildings to basketball backboards. He loves bringing joy to those who need it and has therefore often worked in hospitals that serve children. He recently completed his largest commission to date, a 100-foot-long mural enlivening an entire hallway in Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk, VA. Even the hospital’s ambulances are now wrapped in Troy’s unmistakable designs...2022-02-1423 minArt RestartInterlochen’s Director of Music, Enrique Márquez, shapes the next generation of leaders through music.In June of 2021, Enrique Márquez arrived on the campus of the renowned Interlochen Center of the Arts in Interlochen, MI as its new Director of Music. Founded in 1928, Interlochen offers students from grades 3 through 12 a wealth of arts-education opportunities through several programs, including its boarding school, the Arts Academy, and its Summer Arts Camp.Before becoming an admired arts administrator and educator, Enrique was a professional violist who made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2005. He served as principal viola of The Orchestra of the Americas and the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra, performing in o...2022-01-3124 minArt RestartEnrique MárquezIn June of 2021, Enrique Márquez arrived on the campus of the renowned Interlochen Center of the Arts in Interlochen, MI as its new Director of Music. Founded in 1928, Interlochen offers students from grades 3 through 12 a wealth of arts-education opportunities through several programs, including its boarding school, the Arts Academy, and its Summer Arts Camp.Before becoming an admired arts administrator and educator, Enrique was a professional violist who made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2005. He served as principal viola of The Orchestra of the Americas and the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra, performing in over 25 c...2022-01-3124 minArt RestartValencia JamesBorn and raised in Barbados, Valencia James studied modern dance in Budapest, Hungary and had the opportunity to perform work by some of the world’s most adventurous choreographers in international venues. However, it wasn’t until she started asking questions about what role artificial intelligence might play in shaping the future of the performing arts that she truly found her passion.Today Valencia works with innovative technologists and scientists to create collaborative performance pieces that blur the boundary between artificial intelligence and the human performer and that hint at how different the experience of performance may be f...2022-01-2424 minArt RestartDancer Valencia James urges artists of all stripes to dream and scheme with techies.Born and raised in Barbados, Valencia James studied modern dance in Budapest, Hungary and had the opportunity to perform work by some of the world’s most adventurous choreographers in international venues. However, it wasn’t until she started asking questions about what role artificial intelligence might play in shaping the future of the performing arts that she truly found her passion.Today Valencia works with innovative technologists and scientists to create collaborative performance pieces that blur the boundary between artificial intelligence and the human performer and that hint at how different the experience of performance may be f...2022-01-2424 minArt RestartComposer Sahba Aminikia proves that a musical education is part of a spiritual education.Sahba Aminikia is an Iranian American composer, musician and educator based in San Francisco whose own musical training spanned three continents. He first studied composition in the city of his birth, Tehran, and then relocated to Russia to attend the St. Petersburg State Conservatory. After emigrating as a refugee to San Francisco in 2006, Sahba then earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.His passion for blending genres and cultural influences in his work — he is as well-versed in traditional music from Iran and classical music from Europe as he i...2022-01-0328 minArt RestartSahba AminikiaSahba Aminikia is an Iranian American composer, musician and educator based in San Francisco whose own musical training spanned three continents. He first studied composition in the city of his birth, Tehran, and then relocated to Russia to attend the St. Petersburg State Conservatory. After emigrating as a refugee to San Francisco in 2006, Sahba then earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.His passion for blending genres and cultural influences in his work — he is as well-versed in traditional music from Iran and classical music from Europe as he i...2022-01-0328 minArt RestartJosé Ome Navarrete MazatlJosé Ome Navarrete Mazatl is the co-artistic director of NAKA Dance Theater in San Francisco, CA. Since he and fellow dancer Debby Kajiyama founded NAKA in 2001, the company has worked with a wide array of communities in the Bay Area as well as internationally to explore urgent social-justice issues.Among the communities and organizations with whom NAKA has partnered to create performance projects over the years are the Eastside Arts Alliance, a cultural and empowerment space for Black youth in East Oakland; Mujeres Unidas y Activas, a social- and economic-justice organization of Latina immigrant women; and Skywatchers, a...2021-12-1424 minArt RestartEvan WeissmanIn 2012, theater-maker Evan Weissman founded Warm Cookies of the Revolution, a civic health club in Denver, CO. What exactly is a civic health club? Warm Cookies’ own description can’t be beat: “Well, you go to a gym to exercise your physical health, a religious institution to exercise your spiritual health, and a therapist to exercise your mental health. Warm Cookies of the Revolution is where you go to exercise your Civic Health.”Since Warm Cookies’ founding, Evan and his team have found evermore inventive and entertaining ways to introduce citizens —particularly those who are not trad...2021-12-0124 minArt RestartDanielle VillasanaDanielle Villasana is an independent photojournalist whose documentary work focuses on human rights, gender, displacement, and health with a focus on Latin America. Her work has earned her widespread recognition. She is a National Geographic Explorer, Magnum Foundation awardee, Women Photograph grantee, and an International Women's Media Foundation fellow, and her photographs have been included in solo and group exhibits and have been published in National Geographic, The New York Times, and the Washington Post, among others. She is a member of Women Photograph and Ayün Fotógrafas, a collective of women photographers united by...2021-11-1526 minArt RestartNoelle ScaggsAs the co-lead vocalist of the alt-pop band Fitz and the Tantrums since 2008, Noelle Scaggs was used to seeing huge crowds through her years of live performance and touring. Their songs “Out of My League” and “The Walker,” both of which Noelle co-wrote, were certified Platinum and hit the number one spot on the Alternative Airplay chart, and in 2016 their song “HandClap” became a bona fide sensation, a triple-platinum international hit that the casual listener could hear anywhere from Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to FOX’s Superbowl preshow. What Noelle wasn’t used to seeing while on tour, however, were Blac...2021-11-0124 minArt Restartchristopher oscar peñachristopher oscar peña is an accomplished playwright with a resume that includes productions, commissions and residencies at some of the country’s most forward-thinking theatrical institutions. Among his most recent productions are the world premieres of his plays “a cautionary tail” at the Flea Theater in New York and “The Strangers” at the Clarence Brown Theatre in Knoxville, TN. chris is also amassing impressive credits as a TV writer, having written for the Emmy-nominated first season of “Jane the Virgin” on the CW and HBO’s highly lauded “Insecure” as well as the Starz series “Sweetbitter.” He is currently on the wr...2021-10-1928 minArt RestartFrank HorvatFrank Horvat is a celebrated Toronto-based composer and pianist who for decades has written and performed music across genres, from contemporary classical to musical theater and electronica. In 2017 he was the inaugural recipient of the Kathleen McMorrow Music Award which recognizes outstanding work by Ontario composers.Frank is devoted to using his creative platform to support and bring awareness to causes about which he is passionate: the environment, human rights and mental health. Examples of his artivism include his album “For Those Who Died Trying” that memorializes the lives of murdered environmental activists and the “Piano Therapy” concert...2021-10-0425 minArt RestartMartine Kei Green-RogersMartine Kei Green-Rogers is an author, educator and dramaturg with decades of experience, having worked as production and new-play dramaturg at theaters all over the country, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to Houston’s Classical Theatre Company and Chicago’s Court Theatre. This past summer she took a leave from her position as associate professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at the State University of New York-New Paltz to become the interim dean of the Division of Liberal Arts (DLA) at UNCSA.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Mart...2021-09-2026 minArt RestartRulan Tangen
Dancer/choreographer Rulan Tangen was thriving in an international career as a performer and dancer when in 2004 she survived a bout with Stage 4 cancer. Emerging from the harrowing experience, she shifted her goals and committed herself to getting a brand-new company, Dancing Earth Creations, off the ground, and 17 years later she remains its founding artistic director.
Dancing Earth is a mixed-heritage company that creates contemporary dance deeply rooted and researched in the communities in which it works. Through its workshops and dances, Dancing Earth explores and links themes of ecological and social health and wellness, p...2021-09-0625 minArt RestartStephen McKinley HendersonStephen McKinley Henderson has a resume that most actors in his generation would — and probably do — envy. Trained first at Juilliard and then at UNCSA, he has been working steadily onstage for more than four decades, performing in classical and contemporary plays in theaters around the country.
In 1996 he originated the role of Turnbo in August Wilson’s “Jitney” in Pittsburgh and then went on to play the part many more times around the country, including in a hugely successful Off-Broadway run that netted him a Drama Desk Award. He eventually played the part at the National Theatre in...2021-08-2327 minArt RestartTara Rynders
Tara Rynders is a dancer, choreographer and video artist based in Denver, CO. She is also a full-time registered nurse with over 15 years of experience. She combined her passions for dance and for compassionate care by creating The Clinic, an organization that through immersive artistic experiences combats compassion fatigue and professional burnout among nurses and fosters stronger connections between nurses, patients and communities.
Among the projects Tara has developed through The Clinic are movement-and-art group workshops designed specifically for nurses experiencing burnout and “Resiliency Moments,” one-on-one virtual and intimate interactions between individual artists and healthcare worke...2021-08-0926 minArt RestartHannah Drake
On Super Bowl Sunday of 2019, Hannah Drake, who had long written about politics, feminism and race, reached a new level of fame when film director and producer Ava DuVernay, to protest the NFL’s treatment of quarterback-turned-activist Colin Kaepernick, tweeted out a video of Hannah’s poem “All You Had to Do Was Play the Game, Boy.” Kaepernick in turn shared the poem with his followers, and in short order Hannah’s words reached 2.4 million viewers.
Hannah has only continued turning up the volume on her art and activism since, especially in the last year when after...2021-07-2627 minArt RestartCarlton Turner
Carlton Turner is an artist, agriculturalist, researcher and founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production, also known as Sipp Culture. Sipp Culture uses food and story to support rural community, cultural, and economic development in his hometown of Utica, MS. Before founding Sipp Culture, Carlton was executive director of Alternate ROOTS, an arts-service organization based in the South promoting the creation of art rooted in community and advocating for social and economic justice for all.
A widely admired thought leader on the power and urgency of creative placemaking, 2021-07-1227 minArt RestartSnehal Desai
In 2016, director Snehal Desai was named artistic director of the renowned theater company East West Players in Los Angeles, only the fourth person to lead the nation’s premier Asian American theatre since its founding in 1965. East West Players was created by nine Asian American artists and ever since has been a bedrock of Los Angeles’ vibrant theater scene. Under Snehal’s leadership the company has focused on new work, producing plays by some of the country’s most admired artists, including Qui Nguyen, Lauren Yee and the writer after whom the mainstage is named, Tony Award-winning playwrig...2021-06-2827 minArt RestartNarsiso Martinez
Narsiso Martinez creates drawings and mixed-media installations that focus on the lives and labor of the thousands of migrant agricultural workers on whom we all depend for our produce. Not only are the detail and atmosphere of each of his pieces breathtaking, but his canvas, so to speak, is also remarkable and evocative. He creates and assembles his work on and with discarded cardboard produce boxes that he himself collects from grocery stores.
He knows his subject well as he himself earned money to pay for his art education by working alongside friends and family i...2021-06-1425 minArt RestartSarah Cahill
Sarah Cahill is not only a brilliant classical pianist. As a producer, researcher and commissioner of new works, she also works to ensure that the lesser-known great talents of the classical music world — in particular female and non-white composers — are recognized and celebrated.
One of her newest and most ambitious projects, which had to be put on hold during the pandemic, is “The Future Is Female,” a ritual installation and communal feminist immersive listening experience featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, ranging from the 18th century to the present day. The experienc...2021-05-3127 minArt RestartKeith KnightKeith Knight is currently busy writing the second season of “Woke,” the hit show on Hulu that he co-created and co-produces. “Woke” follows a cartoonist named Keef Knight who after a startling assault by a policeman discovers that inanimate objects start speaking to him. In brutally funny ways, these objects, as well as Keef’s human friends, open his eyes to the pressing social issues his art has yet to address.
The show is clearly semi-autobiographical, but there’s no question that the real Keith Knight has been socially and politically aware decades longer than his TV creation. Sin...2021-05-1727 minArt RestartEisa Davis
Eisa Davis is a woman of many talents, all of them considerable. She has authored several acclaimed plays, including the historical drama “Bulrusher,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and “Angela’s Mixtape,” an autobiographical comedy with music that chronicled her coming of age in Oakland, CA under the tutelage of the powerful women in her life, including her aunt, the legendary activist Angela Davis. Eisa also starred in the play’s premiere, playing herself.
As an actor, she has amassed an impressive resume onstage, receiving an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Performance f...2021-05-0324 minArt RestartChip Thomas
Chip Thomas moved to the Navajo Nation in Northern Arizona in 1987 to work as a physician in a community with limited healthcare and thus repay a National Health Services Corps scholarship. The plan was to stay there four years. Thirty-four years later, Chip Thomas is not only still living and working as a physician in the Navajo or Diné Nation; he has also become an artist beloved by his community and increasingly by admirers from all over the world.
Since 2009 Chip, an avid photographer since his early teens, has been printing out large-scale enlargements of hi...2021-04-1928 minArt RestartKathy A. Perkins
Over the course of a remarkable 45-year career, lighting designer Kathy A. Perkins has worked in theaters all over the United States and as far away as South Africa and Cuba. She has also cultivated a distinguished academic career as a theater historian, editing or co-editing several collections of plays and textbooks, including most recently “The Routledge Companion to African American Theater and Performance.” She chaired the MFA lighting department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for 20 years, and in 2012 she joined the faculty at UNC Chapel Hill, where she is currently Professor Emerita of Dramatic Art.
2021-04-0525 min