Artist Activist - Creating Art, Advancing Culture & Awareness

Melisa Cardona – Was born to two immigrant parents and raised between Atlanta, Georgia and their native land Colombia, South America. After several years of world travel, theater and film performances throughout Atlanta and the west coast, Melisa’s gaze organically turned to the wetlands and is now based in New Orleans, LA. She is currently collaborating with various artists and theatre ensembles around the city as a community organizer and performer including Mondo Bizarro, Art-Spot Productions, Alternate Roots, M.U.G.A.B.E.E., RISE and many others.

Having lived in Blacksburg, VA for ten years, Shannon was wrapping up her M.F.A. at Virginia Tech when the tragic shootings occurred there in 2007. She worked in the Blacksburg community for nearly a year following the tragedy to spearhead an organization called HERE: Honoring Experiences, Reflections, and Expressions. HERE's goals were to facilitate ongoing artistic response and dialogue toward the community's healing.

I'm a storyteller who "carries words" from times in places where the Old South met the Original South; stories born by melding and conflicts between Indigenous peoples and colonizing immigrants, truly southern stories lived in spirit and flesh. As a writer and performer for WagonBurner, the Native American radio theater directed by Leanne Howe, my characters often spoke from the lives of people who I knew as neighbors living in small, Indian settlements in rural Alabama. Theater written from oral literatures, oral histories, papers tossed into courthouse basements or jumbled for sale with recipe books by a roadside flea market vendor.

I am a stage director, arts and community cultural development organizer, and teacher. I work in conventional theater spaces and in "found" , indoors and out. I direct written scripts and I develop new work through collaborative processes. I am interested in plays that engage in direct audience interaction and that offer contributions to relevant public dialogues in the communities of the play's production. I am on the CAPP/RSC WorkGroup and am an RSC trainer. I am director of the MFA in Theatre at Virginia Tech, where I teach the MFA programs in Stage Management, and in Directing and Public Dialogue.

Hailed as a “musician’s musician”, violinist Samuel Thompson continues to earn recognition for his passionate, sensitive and insightful interpretations of works ranging from the Baroque to those of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. An intense, high-caliber performer, Samuel has been awarded grants from both the Alternate ROOTS Artistic Assistance Program, which is made possible by funds from the Ford Foundation, and the Haight Bursary Fund.

Ashley Sparks holds an M.F.A. in Directing and Public Dialogue from Virginia Tech University and is a 2008 Princess Grace Honoraria Awardee. Directing projects include Turning of the Bones by Jan Villarrubia, La Pastorela St. Joseph by Jack Bentz, Incide by Erik Ehn, and The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler. Ensemble developed and directed projects include 28: A Traveling Menstrual Show.
She has worked nationally with ensemble theatre companies such as Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles and AboutFace Youth Ensemble in Chicago. She has served as both an assistant director and community organizer on projects with Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble in NYC, DXM Theatre in Seattle, and Synchronicity in Atlanta. She is an ensemble member with ArtSpot Productions

Sheila Kerrigan, The Juggler Who Drops! The Mime Who Talks!, performs and teaches mime, communication, conflict resolution, collaborative creative process, juggling, and theater. In her performance for adults, Mime Explains String Theory, she starts before birth, ends after death, and in the middle she discovers the meaning of life and valiantly struggles to communicate it. 

Improviational Theatre. Movement Theatre. Poetry. Dance

Has worked as a Arts Administrator, Stage Manager, and Techie in Atlanta for 15 years. Started a drama program at Lee Arrendale State Women's Prison in 2009. The program is in its infancy but Wende is hopeful that it will take hold and expand.

Gwylene Gallimard & Jean-Marie Mauclet's collaborative experiences include two community-oriented French cafes; art installations about the health insurance industry, the fast food phenomenon, religious beliefs; archives & history, globalization, gentrification, populations displaced by war, dictatorship. Their endeavors have involved school populations, a homeless community, a refugee organization, art institutions, other artists and activists.

i primarily work with the visual arts. i am a builder.
i am part of azule : to provide a place where artists and community meet, learn and work through the arts in their many forms.
i work for inclusion : disability, class, race, gender, beliefs...

Jo Carson is the author of seven books including Stories I Ain’t Told Nobody Yet which is taught widely in Appalachian Literature courses. TCG has recently published Spider Speculations: A Physics and Biophysics of Storytelling, which considers how stories work in our bodies and our lives. Liars, Thieves, and Other Sinners on the Bench is a collection of Jo’s favorite material from the community story plays she has written. Liars, Thieves… is also performance material for Jo. She has won five national awards for her traditional plays (including the Kesselring Prize for Daytrips) and these plays have been produced widely this country, including Hartford Stage Company, the Women’s Project in NYC and the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Stage manager, actor, dancer, writer, fiber artist, gardener, lover of cats and music and all forms of chocolate.

-Community-based public art
-Environmental sculpture
-Site art
-Arts Education: Teaching Artist
-Collaboration coach
-RSC facilitator and 2X C/APP recipient

Has benefited from the Virginia Fellowship for Individual Writers due to her highly recommended wor(d)-shops and literary works. A member of the 2007-8 Charlotte National Poetry Slam Championship Team, the reigning Red Bull Word Clash champion, and currently runs “Say What?!?” a national collegiate performance Word-Shop driven by Red Bull. NAACP Image Award Nominee for works in the Anthology Home Girls Make Some Noise, Published In: Essence, Old Dominion University’s 44th St. Poets Journal, S. Florida University Urban Griot, 1st Spoken Word artist cover story for Portfolio Magazine, The Syracuse University Women in Hip-Hop and National Featured Poet for Rolling Out and Creative Loafing, amongst thousands of online journals.

Sage Crump has been involved in the arts community for 20 years. Her company Sagacity Productions has produced multi-state music festivals, peace concerts and staged theatrical readings. She has worked with and for such organizations as 89.3 WRFG, Comedy Plus Review, Omenala Afrocentric Teaching Museum, and Alternate ROOTS. She is a founding member of Young African Writers Collective (YAWC) and Oyster Knife writers group. Sage founded Community Theater Initiative to support the growing number of theater artists interested in art for social change. She is currently Program Director of the Performing Arts Exchange for the Southern Arts Federation. Sage is a performance poet, actor and vocalist.

By day I'm the Deputy Director of the Southern Arts Federation working with our staff, board and regional partners to build a better South through the arts. I'm particularly interested in arts participation, strategic planning and action, organizational learning and working with a great creative team. I also create glass art and jewelry as Southern Flameworks; I'm a consultant and facilitator in critical response, audio description, participation building and other arts areas; and I see and hear as much work as I can in Atlanta and beyond.

An actor/director/activist Trey is Associate Director for The Conciliation Project, a social justice theatre organization promoting dialogue on Racism in America. He has a background in theatre administration, facilitation, devising new works, and developing non-profits. Based in Richmond, Trey's next project is G.O.Rilla! Theatre co-founded with Louisa Sargent. G.O.Rilla! Theatre's main premise is "going out and really doing it", making all arts accessible to the Richmond community.

clergy and chaplaincy

Composer of music for theater, film, even television (once). Violinist, classically trained but working the other side too. Performing ensembles include the DeLuxe Vaudeville Orchestra, the 4th Ward Afro-Klezmer Orchestra & the Albany Symphony. Teacher of violin and director of string program at Glennwood Academy in Decatur GA. Vaudevillian, perhaps, depending on current definition.

I use theatre hip-hop and spoken word to tell stories and give voice to the times. Wheter it be education or social justice, i use art as a platform for poor and under represented people. My goal is to make art fun and entertaining, yet informative and educating.

I have been working with Gwylene Gallimard for the last couple of years. It started by editing a paper she wrote with the RSC workgroup. I was new to RSC and appreciated the chance to listen. We got to go to the MICA conference that year and the paper is  on the Community Arts Network site.

http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2008/09/principles_of_w.php

Then we joined together to make a proposal for the MICA Ongoing Dialogue Project and worked in 2009 on the Ongoing Dialogue of the processes of the RSC program and what the RSC principles mean. check out http://alternateroots.org/programs/rsc/ongoingdialoguesproject

I am a theatre artist and educator with over ten years experience in creating art for change. I graduated with a BFA from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and an MA from the University of Kentucky, Lexington. I am currently working on a project called Life Without Walls. Life Without Walls is a workshop series and play in collaboration with: The Atlanta Outreach Project, The Little Five Points Community Center, and various local Atlanta artists. The theatre and literacy project is to address the issue of homelessness in Atlanta. The play is produced, written, and acted by the clients of the Atlanta Outreach Project.

Sarah Powers is an artist based in Raleigh, North Carolina whose mixed media work focuses on industrial and rural landscapes and landscape details. Her work has been featured in galleries across the U.S. including Rhode Island’s risd l works, The Sarah Doyle Gallery at Brown University and The Mahler Gallery, The Collectors Gallery, Long View Gallery, Rebus Works, Vision Gallery and Artspace in North Carolina. Powers is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and maintains a studio at antfarm in the Boylan Heights Neighborhood of Raleigh. Sarah is currently the executive director of Visual Art Exchange, a nonprofit art organization that supports emerging artists and produces SPARKcon, an annual interdisciplinary art festival.

Guerrilla Girls On Tour is a New York City based touring theatre company that creates fresh and original comedies celebrating women’s history -- past, present and future. All of our work is presented using masks and draws from a variety of classic theatre techniques such as physical theatre, vaudeville and parody resulting in our own unique style that allow us to imaginatively portray a wide range of characters and scenarios with minimal technical elements.