SHE/HER

(“di-BOR-uh el-ee-AY-zr”) is a mixed identity white/SWANA theater maker, cultural activist and California fire survivor living and working on the unceded territories of the Ramaytush Ohlone and Southern Pomo. She is the founding Artistic Director of Aviva Arts, an Associate Artist with Golden Thread, an artEquity arts facilitator alumna, and serves on the MENA Alliance of Theatre Makers steering committee (MENATMA) and formerly on the board of the Alliance of Jewish Theatre. Passionate about the power of human transformation, her work focuses on disrupting assumptions about art, human values and society. Formerly the Artistic Director of foolsFURY Theater, she has devised numerous world premieres, working with playwrights Katie Pearl, Kate Tarker, Yussef el Guindi, Denmo Ibrahim, Torange Yeghiazarian, Fabrice Melquiot, Angela Santillo, Sheila Callaghan, Doug Dorst, Ben Yalom and Dan Chumley. Eliezer wrote and performs (dis)Place[d] which toured the FURY Factory Festival of Ensemble Theater, Ko Fest, Olivia Cruises and Limmud UK in 2019 and is featured in Michael Malek Najjar’s book, Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures and Artists. She stars in the short film Wresting Place written and directed by Coral Cohen release date TBD. As a professional voiceover, you may have heard her voice in over 25 Leapfrog Toys, Sims 2, 3 and 4 video games or numerous radio ads. Eliezer teaches throughout the Bay Area and maintains a private coaching practice. She holds a BA Cum Laude from SFSU, a certificate in Sound, Voice Music Healing from CIIS and is a certified yoga instructor.

HE/HIM

Nick Rodrigues was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Orange County. He then moved up to the Bay Area to attend Santa Clara University and graduated with two degrees, a B.S in Accounting and a B.A. in Theatre Arts with minors in Mathematics and American Musical Theatre. After college, he began working at various tech companies as a revenue accountant and financial analyst. He has been seen performing in San Francisco as Princeton in Avenue Q and Wes in The View Upstairs (New Conservatory Theater Center), William Barfee in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Bay Area Musicals), and most recently as Johnny/Favorite Son in American Idiot at Left Hand Theater Company. Favorite roles include Lumière in Beauty and the Beast (Cabrillo Stage), Hunter in [title of show] (Los Altos Stage Company), Bernardo in West Side Story and Piragua Guy in In the Heights (City Lights Theatre Company), Frank Suzuki in Allegiance (Contra Costa Civic Theater) and Steven Kodaly in She Loves Me (Foothill Music Theatre). He is honored and excited to be taking on his new role as operations manager for Aviva Arts.

SHE/HER

Krista Smith brings over 23 years of Arts Nonprofit Development and Strategic Planning experience. She has previously served as the Director of Development for Fresh Meat Productions, the Queer Cultural Center and Frameline. Smith is a Grants and Strategic Planning Specialist, and provides income generation and programmatic coaching to artists and arts organizations. She views the arts as a foundational element to creating cultural equity and is thrilled to be putting her skills and experiences to use to work with Artists, Arts Organizations, and Artistic Entrepreneurs to increase their financial resources, create sustainable organizational strategies, and engage with their communities. In addition to Aviva Arts, Smith serves over two-dozen artists and arts organizations including AXIS Dance Company, Intersection for the Arts, World Arts West, Peacock Rebellion, Foglifter Press, Cuicacalli, and Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits. Born and raised in the Bluegrass State, Smith, a White Fat Queer Femme, is also known as Kentucky Fried Woman, a multi-disciplinary artist who has produced and performed in hundreds of Queer cultural events. Her writing has been published in several anthologies including Queer Appalachia, Glitter & Grit, Femmes of Power, and the Register of Kentucky History. Smith lives in the ancestral territory of the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Delaware, Miami, Peoria, Seneca, Wyandotte, Ojibwe and Cherokee, also called Ohio with her Poet wife and Snacks, an orange polydactyl cat.

SHE/HER

Natalie Schmidt is a dramaturg, editor, and game designer based in San Francisco, CA. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon's BXA Intercollege Degree Program ('20), Natalie's training has centered on the intersection of Dramaturgy, Culture Studies, and technical Narrative Design. There, she was also the Artistic Director of the nation's oldest co-ed student theater group, Scotch'n'Soda, where she produced and led a 6-show season. Her other notable projects include: serving as the dramaturg and sensitivity/EDI consultant on documentary play Atlas of Depression (Dir. Eben Hoffer), and co-writing original movement play Scholar & Painter (Dir. Rachel Pospíšil). In 2021, she also presented at the Tinderbox PlayAway Festival on Games & Empathy, educating on empathic production practices and accessibility of design. Natalie is fascinated by the potential of multimedia storytelling, having explored interactivity and movement in both theatre and interactive media like games. She continues to chase that potential in her current artistic projects. https://natalie-schmidt.wixsite.com/portfolio

SHE/HER

Lindsay L. Barr is a dramaturg, arts administrator, and director. A graduate from Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, B.F.A. '20, with a concentration on Dramaturgy, some of her favorite projects included: co-writing and directing a new musical Cruessical: The Crucible, a Seussical-Like Musical, and serving as dramaturg for the educational English language premiere of Aya Ogawa’s 100 Years Stray. In 2019, Lindsay presented at the ATHE conference as a part of the Dramaturgy Debut Panel, with a case study of her work on The Way Out West by Liza Birkenmeier. She is also an active member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. lindsayturgy.wixsite.com/home

SHE/HER

Dr. CK Olivieri Blackmore is a queer-identified licensed psychotherapist, depth psychologist, adjunct professor, clinical supervisor, researcher, mediator, and entrepreneur with 20 years of clinical mental health experience. In her 20s, CK had the joyous experience of performing in several theatrical productions in Key West, Fl, and was able to experience firsthand the healing benefits and transformational nature of the performing arts! Nowadays, CK specializes at the intersection of feminist, queer, and existential theories, developmental eco-social psychology, and relational trauma treatment modalities. She is the owner/founder of CK Blackmore Psychotherapy, a private therapeutic/coaching practice, as well as The Queer Mind Institute, an international organization dedicated to global, queer-positive, trauma-informed mental health research, training, and psycho-education. She teaches Law and Ethics, Couples Therapy, and Research Methods with the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is the author of numerous works, including Queer Archetypal Lifespan Development Theory & The New Myth, Your Church, My Bar, A Terrapsychological Inquiry of Queer Space in San Francisco, and Terraplomacy: An Ecofeminist Model for Working with Conflict.

THEY/THEM

CrAsh is a curious dabbler interested in qualia, consciousness, meditation, space, community, technology, AI, art, nature, and science. They have a deep appreciation for the intersections of queer/arts communities, innovation, and creative explorations in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a software engineer at Planet Labs, they collaborate with space geeks, environmentalists, researchers, and engineers using space to help life on Earth. They have contributed to an automated Mission Control for coordinating hundreds of imaging satellites in low Earth orbit and have built machine learning pipelines to detect changes such as urban developments, wildfires, deforestation, and flooding in Planet’s daily Earth scans. They love seeing our precious spaceship Earth from above and sharing the view with fellow humans. CrAsh sees arts and community as offering unique perspectives that can complement the views from space and connect people to each other and the Earth.

THEY/THEM

Guillermo “Yiyo” Ornelas is a theater creator, teaching artist, and arts education advocate. As a first-generation Mexican-American, they understand the impact that an arts education can have, especially to members of vulnerable communities. Most recently, they performed at Brava Theater in Richard Montoya's, Translating Selena. They have worked with Campo Santo, Fuse, and foolsFury to help develop new work. Yiyo has served as the Vice-Chair for the Arts Education Alliance of the Bay Area (AEABA) to ensure that arts education be equitable and accessible to all members of the community. Guillermo holds a B.A from UC Berkeley, double majoring in Sociology and Theater & Performance Studies, having received the Mark Goodson award for ‘Distinguished Artistic Talent.’ Prior to transferring to UC Berkeley, they led a weekly theater workshop for runaway and homeless youth in Redlands, California. They’ve worked with local communities to encourage youth and their families to foster creative modes of expression, through the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, the Teatro Project, and JumpStart. They currently work as an outreach coordinator and teaching artist with San Francisco Youth Theater.

SHE/HER

Vidhu is an Expressive Arts Facilitator trained at Northwest Creative & Expressive Arts Institute and a Social Emotional Arts Facilitator trained through UCLArts & Healing. A lifelong learner, she is passionate about using multi-modal expressive arts for creative expression and wellness.

Vidhu holds a Masters degree in Dramatic Art from UC Santa Barbara and a doctorate in Asian Theatre from UH Manoa. A graduate of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors’ Lab, Vidhu is a core member of Theatre without Borders; a founding member of World Wide Lab; the founder of RasaNova Theater; an ensemble member at Aviva Arts, and a resident artist at Brava Theater.

As a theater artist, Vidhu’s fluency in a variety of cultural and aesthetic forms, her dramaturgy, her scholarship and her advocacy for South Asian theater have made her contribution to the American theater truly unique. Cal Shakes recognized this uniqueness by honoring Vidhu with the 2020 Luminary Award in dramaturgy. Dramaturgy highlights include ReOrient 2023 with Golden Thread Productions (in progress), Burning Wild with Aviva Arts at 3GT Innovators Residency 2022 and Berkeley Rep’s 2021 Ground Floor Summer Residency Lab, Third Eye Moonwalk by Jon Bernson with Playwrights Foundation in 2021 and House of Joy by Madhuri Shekar with Cal Shakes in 2019 and Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 2018.