Survey Parties

Latiana "LT" Gourzong (she/her/hers), is from Ocean Township, NJ and is currently the Technical Director at American Repertory Theater. She received her MFA in Technical Design and Production MFA from Yale School of Drama and BFA in Technical Direction from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Between schooling and after LT has worked in multiple states, east coast, west coast, and midwest, as a Technical Director, Associate/Assistant Technical Director, over hire carpenter, and Sound Designer.  Some companies include Guthrie Theater, Center Theatre Group, Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, Washington and Lee University, Rosebrand East, and ReVision Theater. She has also been involved in USITT since 2012, received the KM Fabrics Technical Production Award  in 2019, and is currently the Vice-Commissioner of Mentorship in the Technical Production Commission. Feel free to visit her website for more information -  latianalt-td.weebly.com

Shá Cage is a renaissance artist/activist who directs, and produces theater and film. Her work has taken her across the U.S. to Japan, South Africa, England, Bosnia and Canada. Raised in Mississippi, and has been called a change-maker and one of the leading artists of her generation. She also writes plays and poetry and has experienced a successful career as an award-winning actor. Seen last on stage as Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet at the Guthrie Theater, she holds Emmy and Ivey awards, TCG and McKnight Fellowships and is the recent Lloyd Richards New Futures Fellow with Cornerstone Theater based in LA. Her last play, Hidden Heroes about the Black female computers was produced by Stages Theater in 2019. She has co-founded several organizations and initiatives including Catalyst Arts, The MN Artist Coalition, Million Artist Movement, Mama Mosaic Theater, MN Spoken Word Association, and more. Cage has been called a mover and maker, and has been using Art & Equity praxis to consult and elevate Black and Brown narratives through Tru Ruts for over 20 years. She's is particularly excited about the Grown Ass Woman music video she directed for Kiss the Tiger.

Linda Parris-Bailey creates story-based plays with music focusing on themes of transformation and empowerment. She is President and CEO of Parris-Bailey Arts, Inc., and former Executive/Artistic Director of The Carpetbag Theatre, Inc of Knoxville, TN. During her forty-seven-year career as a playwright, she has written and performed numerous works. Linda is a 2019 Creative Capital Awardee, and recipient of a 2015 Doris Duke Artists Award in Theater. Her award-winning works include, Speed Killed My Cousin and Between A Ballad and A Blues, her ode to Appalachian renaissance man Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong. Her signature work Dark Cowgirls and Prairie Queens continues to be performed. Linda is a founding member of Alternate Roots and a Senior Advisor to the Women Playwrights International Conference. Her works have been published in Alternate Roots: Plays from the Southern Theater, Ensemble Works, and other anthologies of contemporary plays. She is currently developing two new works Flushing and Yankee Bajan. Flushing, an adult puppet piece, is a collaboration with Eric Bass and Ines Zeller-Bass of Sandglass Theater, directed by Kathie DeNobriga. The piece centers on generational transitions in leadership, race, and culture. Yankee Bajan is an original play which focuses on an African American family's response to the racism and violence that continues to plague America and their journey to repatriate to their ancestral home in Barbados.

Rhiana Yazzie is a 2021 Lanford Wilson and Steinberg award winning, playwright, director, a filmmaker, and the Artistic Director of New Native Theatre, which she started in 2009 as a response to the lack of connection and professional opportunities between Twin Cities theaters and the Native community. She is a 2018 Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow and was recognized with a 2017 Sally Ordway Award for Vision and has been a Playwrights’ Center fellow multiple times (McKnight 2016/17 & Jerome 2006 & 2010) and Core Member. A Navajo Nation citizen (Ta’neeszahnii bashishchiin dóó Táchii’nii dashinalí), she’s seen her plays on stages from Alaska to Mexico including in Carnegie Hall’s collaboration with American Indian Community House & Eagle Project. She has a new co-commissioned play in the works with Long Wharf Theatre and Rattlestick Theater. She is developing her play Nancy, about Nancy Reagan and her intersection with Indian Country in the 80s, astrology, and her little known about Native heritage. It is the sequel to Queen Cleopatre and Princess Pocahontas, a joint commission from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theater for American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle. Her first feature film, A WINTER LOVE (writer/dir/prod/actor) will premiere at festivals in 2021/22.

Her non-profit company, New Native Theatre, based in the Twin Cities is a new way of looking at, thinking about, and staging Native American stories. Notable recent productions include the 2020 global indigenous online festival, Good Medicine, Native Man the Musical which was praised by the Twin Cities’ local Native American newspaper, The Circle News, “The paradigm of Native American manhood shifted with New Native Theatre’s production.” It was followed up by Native Woman the Musical. When New Native Theatre celebrated its Tenth Anniversary Season they premiered six mainstage plays, five of which were world premieres.