Artists & Projects Directory

• Africa Consortium
• Boyzie Cekwana
• Dan Hurlin
• David Roussève/REALITY
• Dean Moss
• Gregory Maqoma
• Los Muñequitos
• Marc Bamuthi Joseph
• Ralph Lemon
• Stories Left to Tell
• The America Project
• Yasuko Yokoshi

Marc Bamuthi Joseph/The Living Word Project

Michael John Garcés (Director) is the Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles, California.  Directing credits include The Falls by Jeffrey Hatcher (The Guthrie Theatre/Cornerstone); dark play, or stories for boys by Carlos Murillo and Finer Noble Gases by Adam Rapp (Humana Festival); Light Raise the Roof (New York Theatre Workshop), Force Continuum (Atlantic Theatre Co.) and Snapshot Silhouette (Children's Theatre, MN) by Kia Corthron; N.E. 2nd Avenue by Teo Castellanos (Miami Light Project; Edinburgh Fringe Festival - Fringe First Award); Kissing Fidel (INTAR), The Cook (Hartford Stage and INTAR), and Havana is Waiting (The Cherry Lane) by Eduardo Machado; The Dear Boy by Dan O'Brien (Second Stage); Grace by Craig Wright (Woolly Mammoth); Cradle of Man by Melanie Marnich (Florida Stage); Finer Noble Gases (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre); La próxima parada by Carmen Rivera (Repertorio Español); Forever In My Heart by Oscar Colón (INTAR); September Shoes by José Cruz Gonzales (Geva Theatre); ¡Siempre México con nosotros! in collaboration with Sna Jtz'ibajom ("The House of the Writer") in Chiapas, Mexico; and King Without a Castle by Cándido Tirado (Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre). Plays he has written include Los Illegals (Cornerstone Theater Company), points of departure (INTAR), Acts of Mercy (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre), and the short plays on edge and the ride (2007 Humana Festival - "The Open Road"), agua ardiente (The American Place); audiovideo (Drama League Director's Project), kapital (Estrogen Fest, Chicago), god (Cornerstone), Adelaide (The Production Company - "The Australia Project"); tostitos (Shalimar Productions); and sandlot ball (Mile Square Theatre - "7th Inning Stretch"). Michael is the recipient of the Princess Grace Statue Award, the Alan Schneider Director Award, and a TCG New Generations: Future Leaders Grant.  A member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, he currently serves on the Executive Board of the organization. Michael is a resident playwright at New Dramatists.

Brian Freeman (Dramaturg) is a playwright, dramaturg, theater director and actor.  He has taught theater, playwriting and performance at the Art Institute of Chicago, California Institute for the Arts, San Francisco Art Institute, Colorado College and is currently a visiting artist at UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures. His work has been published in the anthologies: West Coast Plays; Out, Loud and Laughing and Colored Contradictions: Contemporary Black Plays and Performance and Staging Gay Lives. His play Civil Sex was published in The Fire This Time: African American Plays for the 21st Century by T.C.G Press. Awards include a "Bessie," California Arts Council Playwriting Fellowship and the CalArts Alpert Award in Theater.  In his role as dramaturg he developed works such as: Crossing America by Keith Adkins;  The Gibson Girl by Kristen Greenidge; The Watts Towers Project, by Roger Guenvere Smith; Slide/Glide the Slippery Slope by Kia Corthron;  Live From the Front by Jerry Quickley; Last Rites by Letta Neely; Mother's Milk by Wayne Harris; Aesop: Alive & Well by Diane Ferlatte; Dreaming Backwards by Diane Ferlatte, Anita Jones & Rhodessa Jones; The Sweetest Taboo by Ricardo Braccho; Perfect Courage by Rhodessa Jones, Bill T. Jones and Idris Ackamoor;  Ashes to Ashes by Marijo; The Gospel According to Wayne by Wayne Corbett; Sapelo: Time Is Winding Up by Diane Ferlatte; I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine by  Ed Bullins & Cultural Odssey; The Rent Party by Cultural Odyssey.

Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi (Filmmaker) is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker making his mark in the international documentary scene. A graduate of UC Berkeley, he received his MA from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU in 2004. Before graduation, he won the prestigious juried Student Film-maker Award from the Pan African Film Festival for his documentary Inventos: Hip-Hop Cubano, a film he shot, directed, edited, and produced. Jacobs-Fantauzzi has traveled extensively in the Caribbean and Africa and produced and directed several shorts and music videos, including the award winning music video from Ghana, Besin. His first film, i of MOTION us of MOVEMENT chronicled the life of 4 women hip hop artists in the San Francisco Bay area. Inventos, is the first in-depth look at Hip-Hop culture in Cuba, which premiered in Havana Cuba and at the H2O International film festival in New York in November 2003, and has since shown across the U.S. to great reviews. Jacobs-Fantauzzi has been featured in Anthem Magazine, NRG Magazine, and the Libertad Journal that wrote, "Inventos embodies the true spirit of hip hop, which is to build a powerful and useful mechanism out of what is seemingly impossible." Currently, Jacobs-Fantauzzi is in production on his next film entitled, HomeGrown, a unique documentary on hip hop in Ghana, West Africa. He is a powerful filmmaker, whose philosophy is built on experiences of struggle, and who is dedicated to craft coupled with commitment to social justice and awareness.

David Szlasa (Video Design and DVJ) is committed to producing art and artists with a conscious desire to affect social change. Szlasa has created, directed and produced three original interdisciplinary performance pieces: Dissection (1997), Light (2000), and GADGET (2006), an immersive, media-based performance based on a series of original interviews conducted with living members of the Manhattan Project. Szlasa's next piece, My HOT Lobotomy, is currently under development as part of STREAM/fest, a program of Counter Pulse Theater in San Francisco. Currently, Szlasa is the Production Manager and part of the curatorial team at the Z Space Studio in San Francisco, an organization dedicated to the development of new theater by Bay Area artists. From 2002-2004 Szlasa was the Production Manager and Designer in Residence at the Culture Project @ 45 Bleecker where he opened The Exonerated (Obie Award), Sarah Jones' Bridge and Tunnel (Lortel Award), and Red Bull Theater'sPericles, among others. Previously, Szlasa was the Production Manager and Designer for Theater Artaud in San Francisco. As a designer, Szlasa has collaborated with Bill "Crutchmaster" Shannon for the past 6 years and played venues including the Edinburgh Fringe, Walker Arts Center, The Kitchen, and Sydney Opera House. In 2001, Szlasa toured to the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe with Universal Arts's the Beat. Other design credits: Rennie Harris Puremovement's Facing MeKKa (lights), Synaesthetic Theatre's The Trial of K (set), Deb Margolin's Index to Idioms (lights and video), Marc Bamuthi Joseph's Scourge (video), Encore Theater's Five Flights (lights). Szlasa is the production designer Sara Shelton Mann's Telios/Telios and Inspirare. Szlasa holds a BFA from Tisch School of the Arts and MA in New Media and Performance from the Gallatin School, NYU and has been a teacher of design for Playwrights Horizon's Theater School, a division of NYU.

James Clotfelter (Lighting Designer) is committed to the creation of collaborative and socially conscious work for theatre and dance. He is the Resident Lighting Designer and Production Manager for Miro Dance Theatre, an Artistic Associate with Pig Iron Theatre Company, and a co-founder of Mlab, a laboratory for innovations and design technologies in the live arts. James has had the pleasure of collaborating with artist and choreographers such as Johannes Wieland, Rennie Harris, Marc Bamuthi Jospeh, Dan Rothenberg, Bill Shannon, Reggie Wilson, Antony Rizzi, and Thaddeus Davis as well as companies such as Dayton Contemporary Dance, Southern Repertory Theatre, Z Space Studios, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Peoria Ballet, and Lubelski Teatr Tanca. His work has been seen at the Walker Center, Yerba Buena, Jacob's Pillow, Bates Dance Festival, Fall for Dance OC, The New Victory Theatre, The Kimmel Center Philadelphia, Queen Elizabeth Hall, The Pleasance London, Whitney Museum Altria, and The Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Stacey Printz (Choreographer) is artistic director of the Printz Dance Project (PDP) and a Bay Area based choreographer, dancer and educator.  Printz received her sociology and dance degrees from UC Irvine.  In addition to teaching at San Francisco Dance Center, she has been on faculty at St. Mary's College, Sonoma State University and RoCo.  She has taught master classes and workshops for Universities and studios across the United States as well as internationally in Amsterdam, Belgium, Russia, Lithuania and Ireland.  Founded in 1998, her company has  performed extensively in California with  home seasons at the Cowell Theater in SF,  and has toured all over the U.S. being presented in such places as New York, Los Angeles, Memphis, Arizona, Colorado, and internationally in Lithuania, Russia and Ireland.  Printz has been commissioned to choreograph for many companies in California and has received numerous awards and grants from organizations such as the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the W&F Hewlett Foundation, Fort Mason Foundation, and is the recent recipient of the New Work Fellowship from the Marin Arts Arts Council. Highly interested in collaborative experiences, Printz had the pleasure of co-choreographing Marc Bamuthi Joseph's previous piece, Scourge and creating new work with live music and spoken word for Intersection for The Arts 40th Anniversary. From joyous to playful and sensual to fierce, Stacey's musically driven choreography "blends dance techniques that include modern, jazz, ethnic, and hip-hop with a flow that motivates eye, energy and spirit" (Marie Beneat, Attitude Magazine) Visit www.printzdance.org for more information.

Ajayi Lumumba Jackson (Composer) is an eclectic and versatile musical artist known for his performance, composition, production, and educational talents. Jackson holds a bachelors degree in classical bassoon performance and is also a respected Haitian and West African percussionist and trap drummer. He serves as the musical director for performance artists and dance and theater companies.  Jackson is currently on the faculty of the Oakland Public Conservatory. He also directs his own Haitian folkloric dance company (NEG DIASPORA) and operates OAKLION PRODUCTIONS, a film score and commercial production house. His credits include Marc Bamuthi Joseph's Scourge and Word Becomes Flesh.  Jackson has composed for and or performed with Deep Waters Dance, Anne Bluethenthal and Dancers, New World Ballet, L.E.E.Movement, Traci Bartlow and Dancers, Dimensions Dance Theater, Ase Dance Collective, Petit la Croix, Lauryn Hill, The Black Eyed Peas, Zion I, E.W. Wainwright, Prince Lawsha, John Santos, Omar Sosa, Faye Carrol and Adam Rudolph among others. Upcoming composition works include Beauty The Beast and Bopha.