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Featuring: Dora Arreola, Izumi Ashizawa, Jeff Becker, Charlotte Brathwaite, Troy Hourie, Joan Osato, DeLanna Studi
Facilitated by: Andrea Assaf
This Roundtable brings together award-winning theatre directors, ensemble leaders, scenographers, and designers in conversation about aesthetics, process, and collaboration across disciplines. As part of the 2025 National Institute for Directing & Ensemble Creation, co-organized by Art2Action and Pangea World Theater, this special session emerges out of two days of practice-based professional peer exchange, exploring what designers and directors need from each other, approaches to and challenges of collaboration, how to communicate creative concepts, and more. Directors and designers will also share what drives their work in these times, what it means to work in solidarity, and why aesthetics matter.
About the Artists
DORA ARREOLA has more than 30 years of experience as a theatre director, choreographer, and performer. She holds a MFA in Directing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and participated in Jerzy Grotowski’s Workcenter in Pontedera, Italy (1987-89). Since 1999, Arreola has been the founding Artistic Director of Mujeres en Ritual Danza-Teatro. She has directed more than 40 productions, often toured and featured in national and international festivals, including: Festival Coslada RADIAL, Madrid, 2022; Festival Escénica Yucatán, 2022; GESTO Festival de Danza, Spain, 2018; La MaMa ETC, NYC, 2015; Revolutions Theatre Festival, New Mexico, 2015; TCG National Conference, Tijuana, 2014; Spoleto Open, Italy, 2014; Morphologies: Queer Performance Festival, Minneapolis, 2012; El Centro Su Teatro, Denver, 2011; Meetings with Remarkable Women, Poland, 2009; Teatro Justo Rufino Garay, Nicaragua, 2006; and more. She is co-author of the book Mujeres en Ritual: Género y Transformación/Gender & Transformation (CECUT, 2014). Arreola was a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the State of Sinaloa (2014) and the Thespian Prize of Honor for Artistic Excellence in Baja California (2015). She is currently a full professor of Theatre at the University of South Florida (USF Tampa). She has received grants and commissions from the National Performance Network (NPN), U.S. State Department, Fideicomiso para las Culturas México y Estados Unidos, and more.
IZUMI ASHIZAWA is a Japanese-born-raised-trained performance art practitioner and visual artist. Specialized in cross-cultural trans-media performance art, she reinterprets the Japanese traditional codes and places them in different contexts to generate a whole new meaning. She utilizes physical storytelling and unconventional puppetry and object animation. Her past commissioned projects have taken place in the U.S.A., Japan, the U.K., Canada, Turkey, Iran, Norway, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Russia, Estonia, Australia, the Cayman Islands, Greece, Cyprus, Peru, and Greenland. Her most recent works are Bacchae (Cyprus International Ancient Greek Drama Festival, Nicosia, Curium, Pafos, Cyprus), Illernartunnguaq (National Theatre of Greenland and the Greenland tour), Kurogo Me (Assemble Fest, London, Venice Biennale 2024 Venice Night, Italy), Kurogo Me, Together! (Mid-west tour). Ashizawa won numerous awards including the Medal of Honor for Cultural Excellence from the City of Piura in Peru (2012), the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Faculty Achievement Award Excellence in Directing and Technology (2010), Capital Fringe Director’s Award (2011), UNESCO-Aschberg Award for artist-residency (2006-2007), etc. Ashizawa holds an MFA from Yale School of Drama. Learn more at her website.
ANDREA ASSAF is a writer, director, performer, and cultural organizer. She is the founding artistic and executive director of Art2Action Inc., and co-director of the National Institute for Directing & Ensemble Creation in partnership with Pangea World Theater. Her seminal work, Eleven Reflections on September, was commissioned by Pangea and has been featured at The Carver Community Cultural Center, CAATA’s 2016 National Asian American Theatre Festival at OSF, La MaMa ETC, The Apollo Theatre, The Kennedy Center, and internationally. She is currently re-creating the project as a multi-city, community-engaged series titled Eleven Reflections on the Nation. Awards include: 2024 Joyce Award, 2024 Venturous Playwright Nomination, 2021 Silk Road Film Awards Cannes (Best Experimental Feature), 2020 Pushcart Prize Nomination, 2019 NEFA National Theatre Project, 2019 & 2011 NPN Creation Fund Commissions, 2017 Finalist for the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism, 2010 Princess Grace Award/Gant Gaither Theater Award for Directing, and more. Andrea has a master’s degree in Performance Studies and a BFA in Acting, both from NYU. She currently serves on the Executive Committee of Alternate ROOTS, and is a founding Board Member of the Middle Eastern/North African Theatre-Makers Alliance (MENATMA). For more information, visit her website here.
JEFF BECKER is a director, designer, and sculptor based in New Orleans who specializes in site responsive performances and outdoor spectacles. In 1990 he co-founded CRISUS, a performance art group that utilized innovative kinetic sets. From 2003-2015 he was an ensemble member of ArtSpot Productions whose work addresses persistent oppression in the south such as racism, mass incarceration and environmental justice. Jeff has toured nationally and abroad and has collaborated with theater companies and artists including Cutting Ball Theater, Carpetbag Theater, Mondo Bizarro, Clear Creek Creative, choreographer Elizabeth Streb and with MacArthur Fellow, Anne Basting on Wendy’s Neverland, a creative storytelling project in assisted care homes throughout Kentucky. Jeff is the recipient of several awards and grants including a NEA/TCG Career Development Fellowship, MAP Grant for Vessels in collaboration with Rebecca Mwase and a Creative Capital Project Grant, NEFA, NTP Grant, NPN Creation Fund and NET 10 Grant for Sea of Common Catastrophe. His current projects include Invisible Rivers, Wonder Wander City Park, Unwinding the Universe, Midsummer Night's Dream and DRONE. Jeff is the co-founder of Catapult, a performance laboratory in New Orleans dedicated to the development of original theater and innovative design. Visit his website here.
CHARLOTTE BRATHWAITE is an artist and director of original, genre-defying works that illuminate the realities and dreams of those whose stories have been marginalized, silenced, or ignored. Her transdisciplinary inquiry takes form in immersive gatherings of color, music, film, and photography. She is the recipient of major grants, awards, and fellowships, including Doris Duke, United States Artists, Art Matters, Creative Capital, and the Princess Grace Foundation. Brathwaite has collaborated with Meshell Ndegeocello, Jacqueline Woodson, adrienne maree brown, Justin Hicks, Ayesha Jordan, Peter Sellars, Kyle Abraham, Malick Welli, and others. Her work has been presented across North and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. She is co-founding director of Forgotten Paradise Projects and Malidoma Popenguine, a space for art and community in Senegal. Brathwaite is also an educator and mentor in the arts. MFA, Yale University. Visit her website here.
TROY HOURIE is a scenographer and installation artist. Scenographer for 300+ productions for various off-Broadway, regional and opera companies across the USA, Canada and internationally; including Glimmerglass Festival, The New Victory, New York Theatre Workshop, Cherry Lane Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Guthrie, Geva, Classical Theatre of Harlem and American Vicarious. Art installations include: Apparitions Attic, Arteles Finland, and Static Apnea and Positive | Negative Liberty, Performance Arcade, NZ, The Wisdom Tree, Glimmerglass Festival and Espreitar Tondela, ARTerra, Portugal. Director/scenographer: Glass’ The Fall of the House of Usher, Mannes, NYC, Odditorio | A Performative Installation, Ei! Marionetas, Portugal, World Stage Design, and FIAMS. and Nanatasis, Musique 3 Femmes @ Festival Casteliers. Troy is an associate professor in Theatre at the University of Guelph. Visit Troy's website here.
JOAN OSATO has played a pivotal role in national theater for over two decades and is a committed community organizer. A core member of Youth Speaks since 2001, she is director of Narrative Change. She is also producing director for The Living Word Project and Campo Santo. She was the inaugural recipient of SFAC’s Artist and Communities Partnership Grant, Theater Bay Area Award for Excellence in Video Design, and the Surdna Foundation’s Artists Engaged in Social Change Award. Plays and films for Campo Santo include Garuda’s Wing by Naomi Iizuka, The Travelers by Luis Alfaro, Josephine’s Feast and Side Effects by Star Finch, and Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad by Ashley Smiley. Current work includes Atlan by Luis Alfaro, EARTH SEED by People’s Kitchen, Life is Living, Jerry Garcia in the Lower Mission by Richard Montoya, and Rashomon by Ashley Smiley. She is awardee of Creative Capital’s Wild Futures for this project, supported by the Creative Capital Foundation.
DELANNA STUDI is a proud citizen of the Cherokee Nation with 25 years of experience as a performer, storyteller, playwright, and activist. Her theater credits include the First National Broadway Tour of Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County, Off-Broadway’s Gloria: A Life, Informed Consent, and Regional Theaters (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland Center Stage, Cornerstone, and Indiana Repertory Theater). Her first play, And So We Walked: Along the Trail of Tears, retells her journey when she retraced her family’s footsteps along the Trail of Tears with her father. And So We Walked has toured throughout the country and was the first American play chosen for the Journees Theatricales de Carthage in Tunisia, Africa. Recently, it made its Off-Broadway debut at Minetta Lane, where it was recorded for Audible. Her film and television credits include the Peabody Award-winning Edge of America, Hallmark’s Dreamkeeper, Goliath, Shameless, General Hospital, Reservation Dogs, and Disney’s Launchpad Series. She is the artistic director of Native Voices, the only Equity theatre in the country developing and producing plays written by Native American playwrights. DeLanna is a 2022 United States Artists Fellow and an Advance Gender Equality in the Arts Legacy Playwright Grant Recipient.
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