CREATIVE
Awele / Mama Mugabe
Awele is thrilled to be working with Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko and Lisa Evans in her debut performance at Theatre First! She celebrates what it means to be human, in the moment, speaking your truth, forgiving, and a social justice warrior! She gives honor to the ancestors for their blessings. Her African ancestry DNA is Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Benin, Mali and Bantu. Some of her favorite performances include: the world premiere of Nambi E. Kelley’s XTIGONE (Spirit/Old blind Woman) at African American Shakespeare Company, The Winter’s Tale (Antigonous/Old Shepard), directed by L. Peter Callender, City Council Meeting (Aide/ensemble) co-created by Erika Chong Such, Mallory Catlett, & Aaron Landsman, , Philip Gan Kotanda’s The Wash, Jamaican Project (Wife) with Carl Lumbly, The Story directed by Margo Hall (Detective/ensemble) at SF Playhouse, The Othello Papers (Cleopatra/Ensemble) by Robert Henry Johnson, and her internationally acclaimed solo show, Rage Is Not A 1-Day Thing! (Ellen Sebastian Chang /Benny Sato Ambush), past readings of Waafrica 123 at the Breaking the Binary Symposium (CalShakes/Berkeley Rep), and CalShakes’ Glass Menagerie (Amanda understudy).“She has mesmerized audiences around the world as a storyteller from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Musikverein in Vienna, Tsinchu Teacher’s College in Taiwan, Suriname (U.S. Dept. of State Tour), Russia, Australia, France, Canada to TED-Ed, and Stanford University. Her featured award-winning CDs include, Tell That Tale Again, This Land Is Your Land, plus the Oregon Public Radio recording of The Undiscovered Explorer: Imagining York with Danny Glover, and Trailblazers: African Americans in the California Gold Rush. She is a voice-over artist/narrator in an episode of the award-winning documentary, Have You Heard From Johannesburg and the voice of Rose on PlayStation2, Legend of the Dragon. Film credits include Ella Hill Hutch in MILK (Gus Van Sant, FOCUS Films. Awele is proud of her high school drama students who were invited to perform in Edinburgh Scotland August 2017. Visit Awele.com
Anastasia Barron / Bobby
Anastasia is a dancer, actress, and singer who researches using art as a tool for personal and collective healing. She has performed with companies in the Bay Area including Anton’s Well (Tender Napalm, Woman), and Theater Mundi (The Maids, Solange). She has also produced original and co-devised work, including WILD, a performance and feminine ritual about the history of the witch burnings, an Red Delicious, an immersive hike/instillation/dance-scape celebrating the wild feminine, set in the Oakland hills. She was part of the Subterranean Arthouse Collective, where she hosted performance salons and community events. Anastasia trains in contemporary dance, contact improvisation, Axis Syllabus, and Butoh. She has studied voice and acting with the Song of the Goat Theater, and holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Chicago. Anastasia maintains a private bodywork and movement education practice in Albany (alchemicalbody.com).
Dameion Brown / Chief
Dameion played Macduff in 2015 under the direction of Lesley Currier as part of Marin Shakespeare’s Arts in – Corrections programs. He played “Othello” in 2016 with the same company, a performance that earned him the best principal actor award from Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, as well as a nomination for best principal actor for the Falstaff awards. He has also worked with Utopia Theatre Project. Dameion also works in the community as a Case Manager for the Transitional Age Youth ((TAY) population. He also holds Restorative Justice circles in the community with (TAY) youth. He is honored to be working Theatre First and is equally “thrilled to be on a team with such amazingly talented artists”.
Troy Rockett / Awino
Troy Rockett received a joint MFA/MA degree in English Literature at Holy Names University. An avid reader she finds liberation through honest and radical story-telling. She is thrilled to be apart of a current truth-telling movement where Indigenous, Migrant, Trans, Queer and POC stories are taking the stage and rising on new platforms. She would like to give a special thanks to past production families as well as deep bows to artists D’Lo, Cherríe Moraga, Staceyann Chin and Adelina Anthony, in which she was first able to see herself reflected on stage.
Jeunée Simon / Mama Otieno
Jeunée Simon has worked with Central Works Theater, Bay Area Children’s Theatre Company, Shotgun Players, Bread Box, Ragged Wing, Aluminous, Town Hall Theatre and more.She is a board member at TheatreFirst, where she was seen most recently in the world premiere of ‘HeLa’. She was honored to be the 2017 recipient of the RHE Artistic Fellowship from the RHE Charitable Foundation in partnership with Theatre Bay Area.
Jasmine Williams / Mama Opio
Jasmine Milan Williams is honored to be doing work that creates change and sparks conversation. She is ecstatic to be working on another play by one of her favorite playwrights Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko. She’s making her TheatreFIRSTdebut but she has had the honor of working with theater companies such as: New Conservatory Theater Center, African America Shakespeare Company, Campo Santo,Theater Rhinoceros, California Shakespeare Theater (understudy),and Berkeley Rep (understudy). She wants to thank her Theater Family at CSUEB and her immediate Family, especially her parents and sisters for always encouraging her to follow her dreams. Art will make America Great Again. :-).
Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko / Playwright
Trans, queer, NB, African, poet-playwright-fiction-essayist NICK HADIKWA MWALUKO: Plays include: 37, S.T.A.R: Marsha P. Johnson; two queer African trilogies Waafrika and Waafrika 123; the QTPOC trans masculine S/He:THEY/THEM; the queer apocalypse Homeless in the AfterLife; Blueprint for an African Lesbian; SH/eroe; Asymmetrical We; Brotherly Love; Trailer Park Tundra; Once A Man Always A Man; Mama Afrika; Queering MacBeth; Life Is About the Kill; That Day God Visits You; Ata; To Dyke Trans; Gayze and many more. Residencies include Resilience and Development (R&D) Writers’ Lab with Crowded Fire Theater Company in San Francisco; New York City’s EWG (Emerging Writers’ Group) at the Public Theater sponsored by Time Warner; New York City’s Groundbreakers Group, Djerassi Artist Residencyin northern California, Freedom Train Productions, Ragged Wing Ensemble and more. Nick is a two-time recipient of the Creativity Fundissued by the Public Theater and Time Warner, and a 2017 Spring grantee of a Theatre Bay Area (TBA) Individual Artist Cash grant. Nick graduated Magna Cum Laude at Columbia University and completed an MFA at Columbia University as a Point Scholar, the nation’s largest LGBTQIA scholarship fund, and Columbia University Fellowship.
Lisa Evans / Director
Lisa Evans is a black non-binary actor, poet, and cultural worker and a lover of bad horror movies and good comics.They have worked with several different Bay Area youth development and arts organizations including Youth Uprising, the QT Network of Alameda County, Peacock Rebellion, Destiny Arts Center, The California Shakespeare Theater and more.
They can be seen in award winning filmmaker Cheryl Dunye’s short film Black Is Blue. Lisa was also a 2016 YBCA Fellow and is the co-founder of both the How Spirit Moves Us Project, a healing arts project focused on using performance art to celebrate the struggles, resistance and resilience of Black Queer and Trans folks, and the #BreakingtheBinary Project, a initiative that works with theater arts organizations across the United States to create sustainable practices for TGNCNB2-S (trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary, Two Spirit) inclusion.
Kristoffer Barrera / Sound, Composer & Stage Manager
Kristoffer Barrera set foot on his theatrical journey at Laney College in Oakland as a generation one Fusion Theater member. He has collaborated on and off stage with many East Bay and SF theater companies and is honored to throw down as TheatreFIRST’s production manager and resident sound designer for another exciting season. He says this cast and crew is cooking up the goodness!
Regina Evans / Costume
Regina Y. Evans is the owner of Regina’s Door, an Oakland based social enterprise vintage clothing store which operates as a creative arts healing and sanctuary space for survivors of sex trafficking and young artists. Regina’s Door was named 2015 Social Changemaker, Oakland Indie Awards, 2016 Nancy’s Hero (Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley), and received a 2017 Oakland City Council Commendation in celebration of Small Business Week. As a Modern Day Abolitionist, Ms. Evans is a member of the AC United Council, and the CSEC Program Council/Claire’s House Safehouse (Catholic Charities). She was honored to be a speaker and delegate at the 2017 United Nations 61st Commission on the Status of Women.Ms. Evans is an award winning social justice poet, playwright and performer. Her stage play 52 Letters, which brings awareness to the fight against modern day slavery, was honored to win a Best of SF Fringe Festival Award, 2013. She is the Creative Director and Costumer for CEREMONY a theatrical ritual troupe bringing healing to survivors of sex trafficking, and a member of House Full Of Black Women (A multi site performance ritual project that addresses the displacement, well being and sex trafficking of Black girls and women.). Ms. Evans is a board member of The Flight Deck Performing Arts Space, Oakland, Ca., and the costume designer for the Lower Bottom Playaz Theater, Oakland, Ca.
Stephanie Anne Johnson / Light
I am a second-generation theater practitioner (my mother worked with The American Negro Theater in N.Y.) who has been a lighting designer working locally, nationally, and internationally for over forty years. Locally, I have worked with Cultural Odyssey, Afro Solo, Ubuntu Theatre, and many other groups. My designs have been seen in Holland, India, France, Italy, and Canada.My mixed media art work was exhibited in two one-person shows in San Francisco. I have also written and performed a one-person show entitled Every Twenty-One Days: Cancer, Yoga, and Me. In the realm of education, I am a professor and founding faculty member of the Visual and Public Art Department at Cal State University, Monterey Bay.
I serve on TheatreFirst’s Board of Creative Development. WAAFRIKA is my sixth production with this group. Recently I was nominated for two awards in lighting design excellence: by Theatre Bay Area (TBA) for HeLa which was produced at TheatreFirst, and by the Bay Area Critic Circles for Ubuntu Theater’s production of To The Bone.
My work can be seen online at www.lightessencedesign.com.
Celeste Martore / Scenic & Properties
Celeste Martore is an art director/ set designer in the Bay and LA. Originally from San Francisco, Martore holds a BA in Environmental Design from the University of California, Berkeley and is a Cal Women’s Soccer Alum. Her artistic sensibilities draw from afrofuturism in literature & film, and the cubism movement in painting. Her work explores world-making through abstract spatial forms and the possibility of stretching imagination through object and image distortion.
Randy Wong-Westbrooke / Scenic & Properties
Randy Wong-Westbrooke is a local scenic designer born and raised in the Bay Area. Driven by their own identity as a multiple minority person and desire to bring unheard voices from around the world to various audiences, they seek opportunities to work with diverse creative teams to tell relevant, impactful, and intersectional stories. Local credits include: Madame Ho (Eugenie Chan Theater Projects), The Crucible (Los Altos Stage Company), MacBitch (The Breadbox), Ghost Limb (Brava), brownsville song (b-side for tray) (Shotgun Players), Beneath the Tall Tree (TheatreFIRST), Apocalypse, Please (PianoFight), dark is a different beast (6NewPlays), Taming of the Shrew (ACT M.F.A. Program), Stories High XVI (Bindlestiff Studio), Avant GardARAMA! (Cutting Ball). They are proud to be a resident designer at TheatreFIRST. They have also been a scenic art assistant in Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s F.A.I.R. Program and a mentee in the USITT Gateway Program. Education: Ithaca College, B.F.A. rwwestbrooke.com
Tierra Allen / Assistant Director, Choreographer
TIERRA ALLEN uses live performance to make her ancestors and descendants proud. She’s directed for PlayGround and Playwrights Foundation and has devised original works with her theater collective, The Bonfire Makers: WE GO BOOM!, which explored the impact of the tech industry on Oakland, and PLACE to LAND (an oakland love story), which examined Oakland’s histories of displacement and how to make its ideal future. She won an Isadora Duncan “Izzie” Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Company Performance for her role as Babygirl in An OPEN LOVE LETTER to Black Fathers: A Choreopoem, earned a San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award nomination for her role in The Farm at TheatreFIRST, and has performed at the Black Choreographers Festival, Dance Brigade’s Dance Mission D.I.R.T. (Dance in Revolt(ing) Times) Festival, New Conservatory Theatre Centre, the One-Minute Play Festival at Z Space, Bay Area Children’s Theatre, and more. Tierra is one of the 13-member Coalition of Black Women Professional Theatre Makers who organized against antiblackness and rape culture perpetuated by Marin Theatre Company’s production of Thomas and Sally. As Community Discussion Coordinator at TheatreFIRST and Artistic Engagement Manager at Cal Shakes, she bridges performance, audience, and activism to further social change. She holds a B.A. in Theater & Dance with concentrations in Black Studies and English from Amherst College, where she graduated magna cum laude.
JahniahOmi Bahari / Assistant Costume Designer
JahniahOmi Bahari is a multifaceted spirit artist/medicine woman infused dancer/choreographer, musician/producer, designer, teacher, sound healer, photographer rooted in Oakland CA.
Elena Wright / Fight Director
Elena Wright is a bay area actor, teacher, and director. She has taught and/or directed for All Terrain Theatre, San Francisco Shakespeare, University of Washington, Napa Valley College, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California Shakespeare Theatre, Laney College, Oakland Technical High School and Redwood High School among others. Some of the companies she has performed with are California Shakespeare Theatre, Shotgun Players, Sonoma County Rep, B Street Theatre, Marin Shakespeare, Capital Stage, Symmetry Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare, Foothill Theatre, and Commonwealth Shakespeare. She is a company member of Playground, BA Northeastern University, MFA University of Washington.