Survey Team

L MSP Burns

UCLA

L MSP Burns, a queer immigrant from a former U.S. territorial possession, is Associate Professor in the Asian American Studies Department at UCLA, a landgrant/landgrab institution in the homeland of Gabrielino/Tongva peoples. Burns’s writings include Puro Arte: Filipinos on the Stages of Global Empire (NYU Press, 2014 Outstanding Book Award in Cultural Studies by the Asian American Studies Association) and the co-edited anthology California Dreaming: Place and Movement in Asian American Imaginary (2020, University of Hawai’i Press). As a dramaturg, Burns has collaborated with BIPOC inter/multidisciplinary theater- and dance-makers including David Rousseve/REALITY; Leilani Chan/TeAda Productions; Priya Srinivasan; Jay Carlon; and R. Zamora Linmark.

Burns began her theater work at the New WORLD Theater, with its founding director Roberta Uno.

Leilani Chan

TeAda Productions

Leilani Chan is the Founding Artistic Director of TeAda Productions. Chan was awarded the 2019/20 Santa Monica Artist Fellowship and is currently the Co-Chair of the National Asian American Theater Conference & Festival (#HICONFEST CAATA.net) to be held in Hawai’i in May 2022. Born and raised in Honolulu, HI, she has called Los Angeles home since 1993. After working with multiple L.A. theaters of color, she founded TeAda Productions in 1999. Over the last two decades TeAda has supported the development of both solo and ensemble plays by artists of color, many of which have gone on to be presented at other venues throughout LA County and nationally. 

Chan's vision for TeAda has always been to support the presentation of stories from people and communities rarely represented on the American stages. She has spearheaded the development of TeAda’s Methodology which is rooted in community-based devised theater ensemble practices and deep community engagement work that establish long lasting relationships with underserved communities. Chan is Co-Creator/Director of TeAda’s current touring show “Masters of the Currents,” a devised ensemble play which tells the stories of Micronesians in the U.S., many of whom are recently arrived Climate refugees. This play premiered at the Honolulu Theatre for Youth for over 3000 students, toured to Maui, Hilo, & had its continental premiere at Brava Theater Center in San Francisco’s Mission District, followed by a tour to Pangea World Theater in MSP. This new work received a NEFA’s National Theater Project and the MAPFUND awards is Chan’s 4th NPN Creation Fund. Her previous projects “Global Taxi Driver,” explored immigration and mobility in the 21st century. Leilani is co-creator, along with her partner Ova Saopeng, of "Refugee Nation," the first nationally touring play about Laotian refugees in the U.S. 

Armando Huipe

Arts Management Consultant

Armando Huipe is an arts management consultant and theatre producer who has worked with organizations such as Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Center Theatre Group, Yale Repertory Theatre, REDCAT, and the Latinx Theatre Commons. He served as Managing Director of Yale Cabaret's 51st season and as a co-founder of the Latinx Theatre Alliance/Los Angeles, where he established the Writer's Circle Program and Playwrights' Nest Festival which developed 8 new plays that were shared in public readings in Los Angeles. He received his MFA in Theater Management from Yale School of Drama and BA in English Literature from UCLA.

Leslie Ishii

CAATA & Perseverance Theatre

Leslie Ishii (AD, Perseverance Theatre) has directed at Perseverance Theatre, Pangea World Theatre, East West Players; Artists At Play; and more; Oregon Shakespeare Festival: API 2x2 New Works Residency Founder/Co-Producer, Dramaturgy, FAIR Program Recipient, and facilitator of OSF’s E/D/I/A Initiative with artEquity; Native Voices Dramaturgy, and has directed at Northwest Asian American Theatre where she began her theatre journey.(Actor) Penumbra Theatre; Theatre Mu; Northwest Asian American Theatre; El Teatro Campesino; American Conservatory Theater; Southcoast Repertory Theatre; Broadway, other regional theatre and film/tv credits upon request.(National Scope) Consortium of Asian American Theatres & Artists: Board President, Co-Chair Steering Committee: 5th and 6th National Asian American Theatre ConFest; National New Play Network, Board Member and Membership Committee; National BIPOC/BITOC Coalition/Commons for the sustainability BIPOC artists and theatres, Founder/Organizer; artEquity, core faculty.  Anchorage Arts Group, Steering Committee; Fitzmaurice Voicework, conference organizer, Barcelona, Spain and Vancouver, Canada.(Affiliations & Awards) New England Foundation for the Arts Capacity Grant; Doris Duke Charitable Foundation National Theatre Grantee; JKW Foundation Grantee; NEA Grant Panelist; James P. Shannon Leadership Institute; Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Integrity Award; Los Angeles County Teachers Making A Difference Award; SDC E/D/I Standout Moments, 2016, 2017. SDC, AEA, SAG-AFTRA.

Hannah 하연 Joo (she/they)

Hannah 하연 Joo (she/they) is a second-generation Korean American living in Tovaangar (Los Angeles basin, So. Channel Islands). Hannah is a recent graduate from UCLA’s Asian American Studies MA program where they worked on Collective Memories, an oral histories project about the beginnings of the Asian American movement, and the May 19 Project / SEE US UNITE, a digital multimedia series on cross-racial solidarities. Previously, Hannah served as the Coordinator of Justice, Equity & Inclusion Initiatives at the arts advocacy organization Dance/NYC, co-leading the organization’s multiyear initiatives on racial, disability, and immigrant justice in collaboration with artists and organizers. They are an alumnus of the Diversity in the Arts Leadership program with Americans for the Arts and the Racial Equity in the Arts Innovation Lab with Race Forward.

Alexandra Meda (she/ella)

Teatro Luna West & Facilitating Liberation Lab

As a stage director, culture-producer, disrupter for social justice, and digital media creator, Meda generates original works through collective/ensemble practices that are engaged both in person and virtually with artists and changemakers globally. As a devised theatre-maker, she nurtures female-driven spaces that center Women Of Color in vibrant collaborations between the community, performers, scholars, designers, thinkers, and artists. Positively shifting how we interact with, look at, and value the femme body is fundamental across her work. She serves as the  Artistic Director for Teatro Luna West, a Women of Color artistic collective that tours internationally with theatrical ensembles founded in 2000 (Chicago) and 2014 (LA). In 2018 she opened Studio Luna, a performance and EDI laboratory for workshops, community gathering, and storytelling incubation in Boyle Heights. 

As a facilitator for equity work in the arts and culture field and a collaboration trainer at large, Meda supports the long-term organizational and individual transformation process. She engages healing as a central practice to making space for innovation. She works from the premise that theatre can serve as a tool for liberation and expanding our collective imagination. 

She has a forthcoming book project on the relationship between collaboration, failure, and innovation with Dr. Liza Ann Acosta. 

Meena Natarajan

Pangea World Theatre

Meena Natarajan is a playwright and director and the Artistic and Executive Director of Pangea World Theater, a progressive, international ensemble space that creates at the intersection of art, equity and social justice. She has led the theater’s growth since it’s founding in 1995. Meena has co-curated and designed many of Pangea World Theater’s professional and community based programs. She has written at least ten full-length works for Pangea, ranging from adaptations of poetry and mythology to original works dealing with war, spirituality, personal and collective memory. Her play, Etchings in the Sand co-created with dancer Ananya Chattterjea has been published by Routledge in a volume called Contemporary Plays by Women of Color: The Second Edition. Meena leads ensemble-based processes in Pangea that lead to works produced for the stage. She has also directed and dramaturged several original theater and performance art pieces. She is currently on the board of the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists and is on the advisory committee for the Community Arts Program at the University of Minnesota. Until recently, she was a National Theater Project Advisor at New England Foundation for the Arts. She was on the Advisory Committee of the Community Arts Network, was on the founding board of the Network of Ensemble Theaters and was the president of Women’s Playwrights International. She has been awarded grants from the Theatre Communications Group, Playwrights Center and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She was recently awarded the Visionary Award for mid-career leaders from the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.

Monica Ndounou

The CRAFT Institute | Dartmouth College

Dr. Monica White Ndounou is the founding Executive Director of The CRAFT Institute which convenes The International Black Theatre Summit and administers the Pay-It-Forward All-Career Level Mentorship Program and various initiatives designed to create culturally inclusive ecosystems throughout the world of arts and entertainment. She is also an Associate Professor of Theater and affiliate in African and African American Studies and Film and Media Studies at Dartmouth College. She is the past President of the Black Theatre Association (BTA) (2016-2018), Vice President of Advocacy for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) (2019-2021) and serves on the board of The August Wilson Society. She is a founding member of the National Advisory Committee of The Black Seed, a national strategic plan to create impact and thrivability for Black theater institutions and initiatives. She is an alum of The Black Arts Institute and a co-founder of CreateEnsemble.com, a digital platform for creative artists of color.

Also a mother, actor and director, Dr. Ndounou’s interdisciplinary research projects span a broad range of topics. She frequently writes for popular audiences and presents her work at national and international conferences. She is the co-author of Breaking It Down: Audition Techniques for Actors of the Global Majority (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021). Her award-winning book, Shaping the Future of African American Film: Color-coded Economics and the Story Behind the Numbers (Rutgers University Press), received the 2016 Distinction Honor from the Southern Conference on African American Studies, Inc. (SCAASI). Professor Ndounou is currently working on several projects including but not limited to a book, Acting Your Color: The CRAFT, Power and Paradox of Acting for Black Americans which includes a multi-media project exploring black American contributions to developing acting theories and practices.

Olga Sanchez

Middlebury College | Milagro | Latinx Theatre Commons

Olga Sanchez Saltveit is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Middlebury College and Artistic

Director Emerita of Milagro, the Pacific Northwest’s premier Latinx arts and culture

organization located in Portland, Oregon. Her work as an actor and director/deviser has also been seen in Seattle, NYC, LA, Martha’s Vineyard, Peru, Venezuela, and Honduras. Olga serves on the Advisory Committee for the Latinx Theatre Commons, the BIPOC/BITOC

Coalition/Commons Building Survey Design Team, and previously on the Executive Committee and the Diversity Task Force for TCG’s Board of Directors. She is the editor of Teatro de los Muertos, and her research has been published in The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Label Me Latina/o, and several edited collections including Encuentro: Latinx Performance for the New American Theatre (Northwestern University Press 2019), and Shakespeare and Latinidad (Edinburgh University Press 2021). AEA, SAG-AFTRA, SDC.

kt shorb, Ph.D. (they/them)

Generic Ensemble Company & Allegheny College

kt is the producing artistic director of the Generic Ensemble Company and Assistant Professor of Acting and Directing at Allegheny College. Theatre directing credits include The Future of Ismael, black girl love: an adaptation project, The Women of ____ (a song, not song), Carmen, 893 | Ya-ku-za, Scheherazade, The Mikado: Reclaimed and Robin Hood: An Elegy. Opera directorial work includes directing fellowships for Wolf Trap Opera and Chicago Summer Opera. kt is currently the Vice President for the Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists.