Building Our Own Tables

Victor Vasquez joins Yura Sapi to share his experience creating X Casting, a casting company that spans theatre and film in the United States and worldwide through a shared purpose of collective liberation and anti-racism. This episode’s topics include thinking about our role in the political landscape, globalism, and a curiosity for generous solutions.

Recently named Edward Medina Prize winner Brittani Samuel joins Yura Sapi to share about her experience building her own table as a theatre critic. Topics in this episode include choosing joy every day, being a child of immigrants, and a shared meditation practice. This episode is dedicated to theare artist and critic Edward Medina, honoring his legacy which brings us all together today.

Jose Solís joins Yura Sapi to discuss creating the BIPOC Critics Lab and co-creating the Token Theatre Friends podcast-webseries. This episode’s topics include finding beauty in the internet, how a metaphorical grain of sand can change the world, and a tarot reading for the first three months of 2023.

Abundance Zaddy joins Yura Sapi to talk about creating Cause Reign, an oral history project that connects Black people—with a focus on Black trans and queer folks—to their histories through dreamwork, the practice of remembering, recording, and activating the healing potential of dreams. Topics in this episode include prioritizing love and sweetness, transcending time, and asking for consent.

How exciting is it to transform our future and be the future ancestors we dream for? Yura Sapi opens the space with a gratitude ritual and shares about what’s to come on the new season of the Building Our Tables podcast. Topics for this season include evolutionary times, the four elements, and sounds of nature.

Yura Sapi speaks with Rose Kim, founder and producing director of Art Rat Theatre. Art Rat Theatre is a production vehicle dedicated to gardening anticolonial, anti-capitalist theatre for a truly diverse new era audience and catalyzing a greater network of independent institutionally marginalized, young adult creatives.

Yura Sapi speaks with Eric Lockley, co-founder of the Movement Theatre Company. Lockley is a member of the company’s producing artistic leadership team, who work together to create an artistic social movement by developing and producing new works by artists of color. Their work engages audiences in a rich theatrical dialogue, enlightens communities to the important issues affecting our world, and empowers artists to celebrate the many sides of their unique voice.

Yura Sapi sits down with Ann James, founder of Intimacy Coordinators of Color, whose mission is to support and promote decolonized intimacy education and inclusive hiring practices in the entertainment industry.

Yura Sapi sits down with Iyvon E., artistic director of The Parsnip Ship, a podcast play company that amplifies bold artists for audiences who crave accessible stories and storytellers.

Yura Sapi speaks with Teresa Coleman Wash, the founding artistic director of Bishop Arts Theatre Center, whose mission is to create a diverse and vibrant arts community while creating sustainable opportunities for local and emerging artists through performances and education.

Yura Sapi talks with Quanice Floyd, founder of Arts Administrators of Color Network, whose mission is to empower artists and arts administrators by providing tools and resources to advocate for equity, inclusion, access, and diversity in the arts.

Yura Sapi sits down with Tara Moses, a co-founder of Groundwater Arts, an organization that shapes, stewards, and seeds a just future through creative practice, consultation, and community building.

Yura Sapi sits down with Black, Deaf artist Michelle Banks to talk about Visionaries of the Creative Arts, an organization Michelle co-founded, dedicated to responding to the critical needs of d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing artists who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color, in Washington, DC.

In this episode of Building Our Own Tables, host Yura Sapi discusses Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble, the first Iranian theatre company in Seattle, with co-founder Parmida Ziaei.

In this episode of Building Our Own Tables, Yura Sapi talks about leadership in theatre with Black actor and educator Maurice Parent, a co-producer of the Collective.

In this episode of Building Our Own Tables, host Yura Sapi discusses Theatre Diaspora with co-founders Samson Syharath and Dmae Lo Roberts.

For the last episode of this season's Building Our Own Tables, podcast host Yura Sapi talks with Beto O'Byrne of Radical Evolution, a multiethnic producing collective.

In this episode of Building Our Own Tables, podcast host Yura Sapi talks with Pooja Prema of The Ritual Theatre and The Rites of Passage Project.

During this episode of Building Our Own Tables, podcast host Yura Sapi talks with Claudia Alick, founding executive producer of the transmedia social justice company Calling Up Justice.

In this episode of Building Our Own Tables Podcast, host Viviana Vargas discusses amplifying Afrolatinx and Caribbean stories with an emphasis on women through media and entertainment with Blactina founder Nydia Simone.

In the third episode of Build Our Own Tables podcast, host Viviana Vargas interviews Jonathan Castanien co-founder and co-producing artistic leader of The Sống Collective, which uplifts work that pushes against preconceptions of Asian Americans and reclaims the Vietnamese American narrative. Your donation to Advancing Arts Forward supports liberated spaces that uplift, heal and encourage us to change the world.

In the second episode of Build Our Own Tables podcast, host Viviana Vargas interviews Lauren E. Turner of No Dream Deferred, a community anchored theatre production company in New Orleans, Louisiana. Your donation to Advancing Arts Forward supports liberated spaces that uplift, heal and encourage us to change the world.

The Angel Rose Artist Collective is a multilingual Two-Spirit, Native American Transgender, Intersex, Asexual, Queer+ led collective of artists, healers, educators, and advocates that uplifts Two-Spirit Nation and BIPOC Communities through art & land justice. Your donation to Advancing Arts Forward supports liberated spaces that uplift, heal and encourage us to change the world.