Our Creating Change Conversations return for a 4th Series!
May’s conversation will speak to racial representation and equity in theatre and dance.
A PWYL event. Suggested ticket is $10-20.
We do pay our panelists for their time and sharing. Please consider your privilege when donating. All funds support our mission, and to help us continue to make our resources for artists and arts educators free and/or affordable, using sliding scale and donation-based pricing models. If you can't donate right now, we appreciate you spreading the word about our resources and events to your colleagues and on social media!
Meet the Panelists:
Ty Defoe (Theatre) (Giizhig), citizen of the Oneida/ Ojibwe Nations.
A writer, interdisciplinary artist, and Grammy Award winner. Ty aspires to an interweaving and glitterizing approach to artistic projects with social justice, indiqueering, and environmentalism. Ty’s global cultural arts highlights: the Millennium celebration in Cairo, Egypt; Ankara, Turkey, International Music Festival; and Festival of World Cultures in Dubai. Awards: Global Indigenous Heritage Festival Award, Jonathan Larson Award, and Helen Merrill Playwriting Award 2021, and finalist at the Cordillera International Film Festival for, We Will Always Be Here. Works created and authored: Trail and Tears (w/ Dawn Avery) River of Stone, Red Pine, The Way They Lived, Ajijaak on Turtle Island, Hear Me Say My Name, The Lesson (w/ Avi Amon and Nolan Doran), and Firebird Tattoo, among others. An artEquity facilitator, co-founder of Indigenous Direction (with Larissa FastHorse). Member of All My Relations Collective, GIZHIBAA GIIZHIG | Revolving Sky at Under the Radar's Incoming, The Public Theater. Publications: Casting a Movement, Pitkin Review, Thorny Locust Magazine, Howl Round, and Routledge Press, The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays for the Stage. Degrees from CalArts, Goddard College, + NYU Tisch. Director: The Winer Bear (Perseverance Theater), Midsummer Night’s Dream (Arizona Shakespeare Company). Movement Direction: Mother Road, Dir. Bill Rauch (OSF), Manahatta, Dir. Laurie Woolery (OSF + Yale Rep), and Choreographer for Tracy Lett’s The Minutes (Broadway). Appeared on the Netflix show: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Broadway debut in Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men, Dir. Anna Shapiro. Lives in NYC + loves the color clear. He|We, www.allmyrelations.earth, tydefoe.com
Michael Love (Dance)
is an interdisciplinary tap dance artist, scholar, and educator. He is a 2021-2023 Princeton University Arts Fellow and Lecturer in the Program in Dance at Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts and Affiliated Faculty member in the M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts (or MFAIA) graduate program at Goddard College. His embodied research intermixes Black queer feminist theory and aesthetics with a rigorous practice that critically engages the Black cultural past as it imagines Black futurity. In Austin, TX, his work has been supported and presented by Fusebox Festival, ARCOS Dance, Ground Floor Theatre, and The Cohen New Works Festival. He has received an Austin Critics’ Table Award and has been nominated for a B. Iden Payne Award. Love has also collaborated with film-based artist Ariel René Jackson on video and performance projects which have been featured in or programmed by The New York Times Style Magazine’s #TBlackArtBlackLife Instagram series, Digital Arts Resource Centre’s Project Space in Ottawa, the New Museum and CUE Art Foundation in New York, the Galleries at the University of Northern Colorado, and the Jacob Lawrence Gallery at the University of Washington. Love's performance credits include the Broadway laboratory for Savion Glover and George C. Wolfe’s Shuffle Along and roles in works by Baakari Wilder. Love holds an M.F.A. in Performance as Public Practice from The University of Texas at Austin and is an alumnus of Emerson College. You can visit DancerMLove.com to learn more. Venmo is @mlove10 .
Emilio Rodriguez (Theatre)
began his theatre career at the age of 2 by performing one-kid adaptations of The Wizard of Oz in his parent's living room using a funnel, a broom and a pair of his mama's high heels. Since then, he has gone on to have his plays produced in Miami, Sacramento, Lancaster, Portland, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Ann Arbor, Minneapolis, and Puerto Vallarta. Emilio is the recipient of a Kresge Detroit Artist Award, a National Association for Latino Arts and Culture Catalyst for Change Grant and the Victor Bumbalo/Robert Chesley LGBT Playwriting Award. He was the guest playwright for the 2017 Theatre Kalamazoo Festival and the 2019 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Midwest Region. He has taught theatre and playwriting at Michigan Actors Studio, Detroit Institute of Music Education and Kalamazoo College. He currently teaches at the University of Michigan. PayPal.me/bandbtheatre
Diep Tran (Arts Criticism)
is an arts journalist and editor in NYC. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News, The Cut, Playbill, Broadway News, Time Out New York, New York Theatre Guide, TodayTix, and Backstage, among other publications. She was previously the features editor of Broadway.com and the senior editor of American Theatre magazine. Venmo: @DiepThought