Artists
Linda Amayo-Hassan
Linda is a playwright and in the writers pool for PlayGround. Her short play Latino Souls was selected in November for PlayGround. Linda developed her full length play ¡CHEER! Story of a Dreame, at the Berkeley Rep School and she attended the Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive in 2018. Linda was commissioned by the Hayward Area Historical Society to write, The Heart of Our Bay, a history of Hayward, California. Linda runs Chabot College Theatre for Young Audiences and is a founding member of Theatre Cultura.
Linda is a playwright and in the writers pool for PlayGround. Her short play Latino Souls was selected in November for PlayGround. Linda developed her full length play ¡CHEER! Story of a Dreame, at the Berkeley Rep School and she attended the Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive in 2018. Linda was commissioned by the Hayward Area Historical Society to write, The Heart of Our Bay, a history of Hayward, California. Linda runs Chabot College Theatre for Young Audiences and is a founding member of Theatre Cultura.
Lynn Aylward
Lynn studied playwriting at the Writer's Center in Washington, DC where she was a member of the Playwrights Forum. She has been a member of the Writers Pool at Playground for two seasons, and three of her short plays have been presented by Playground at Berkeley Rep. Her short play Twelve Twenty Five was performed at the Shelton Theater in November 2018. Lynn is working on a full-length play on climate change commissioned by Playground and Planet Earth Arts, and her play Three Chords and the Truth was a semi-finalist for the 2019 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Lynn has a MSc in economics from the London School of Economics and one in environmental science from New York University.
Lynn studied playwriting at the Writer's Center in Washington, DC where she was a member of the Playwrights Forum. She has been a member of the Writers Pool at Playground for two seasons, and three of her short plays have been presented by Playground at Berkeley Rep. Her short play Twelve Twenty Five was performed at the Shelton Theater in November 2018. Lynn is working on a full-length play on climate change commissioned by Playground and Planet Earth Arts, and her play Three Chords and the Truth was a semi-finalist for the 2019 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Lynn has a MSc in economics from the London School of Economics and one in environmental science from New York University.
Peter Fitzsimmons
Pete is a San Francisco native and works in theater, film and television. He was recently seen in the film short "As Ye Sow", which won the Reel Award in the Canadian Film Festival. He also appeared as the Narrator and Ollie Harrington in the Morrison Theater premiere production of Reg Clay's "Four Men in Paris".
Pete is a San Francisco native and works in theater, film and television. He was recently seen in the film short "As Ye Sow", which won the Reel Award in the Canadian Film Festival. He also appeared as the Narrator and Ollie Harrington in the Morrison Theater premiere production of Reg Clay's "Four Men in Paris".
Paul Heller
Paul Heller is an award-winning playwright based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In collaboration with actors, puppet-
beers, dancers, directors, and university professors. Paul has devised original plays that examine America's
shrinking rural culture, prison debt, opioid addiction, our current political divide, our identity as Americans, and our relationship with Mexico, Japan, China, and Vietnam. Paul's plays have premiered in the Bay Area and nationally. He has taught actin and has directed dozens of plays and musicals in the Bay Area as well as in Mexico, Venezuela, and Rome while teaching in local and at international schools. He ran the Asian American Theater’s playwrights’ incubator program and currently serves as dramaturge for Indra’s Net, a theater company devoted to work about science and mathematics. https://paulgheller.com
Paul Heller is an award-winning playwright based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In collaboration with actors, puppet-
beers, dancers, directors, and university professors. Paul has devised original plays that examine America's
shrinking rural culture, prison debt, opioid addiction, our current political divide, our identity as Americans, and our relationship with Mexico, Japan, China, and Vietnam. Paul's plays have premiered in the Bay Area and nationally. He has taught actin and has directed dozens of plays and musicals in the Bay Area as well as in Mexico, Venezuela, and Rome while teaching in local and at international schools. He ran the Asian American Theater’s playwrights’ incubator program and currently serves as dramaturge for Indra’s Net, a theater company devoted to work about science and mathematics. https://paulgheller.com
Lisa Kang (Founder)
Lisa is a resident of Sacramento and a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has been a playwright, actor, educator and environmental activist for several years. Her work has been performed by theaters in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seoul and Taipei. Her work has been featured with Ferocious Lotus, PlayGround, Stanford's Asian American Theatre Project, Planet Earth Arts and Theater Bay Area’s Playwriting Showcase and has been recognized as finalist or semi-finalist by Playwright’s Foundation, MultiStages (NYC), and Naatak Theater. She is the co-founder of San Jose's City Lights Theater's Light Source playwriting workshop and founder of Butterfly Effect’s playwriting workshop in Taipei. Lisa is a member of Playground and of the Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco. She is currently working on a full-length play about Monsanto and farmer suicide in India, commissioned by PlayGround and Planet Earth arts.
Lisa is a resident of Sacramento and a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has been a playwright, actor, educator and environmental activist for several years. Her work has been performed by theaters in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seoul and Taipei. Her work has been featured with Ferocious Lotus, PlayGround, Stanford's Asian American Theatre Project, Planet Earth Arts and Theater Bay Area’s Playwriting Showcase and has been recognized as finalist or semi-finalist by Playwright’s Foundation, MultiStages (NYC), and Naatak Theater. She is the co-founder of San Jose's City Lights Theater's Light Source playwriting workshop and founder of Butterfly Effect’s playwriting workshop in Taipei. Lisa is a member of Playground and of the Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco. She is currently working on a full-length play about Monsanto and farmer suicide in India, commissioned by PlayGround and Planet Earth arts.
Dhanendra Kawade
Dhanendra has been part of the theatre industry for the last 28 years and has roots in Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh. His initial training for 8 years under Dada Bangeshwar Mullick and then 3 years with Rangshri Little Ballet Troupe Bhopal made him skilled in designing, lighting and sound techniques and acting. Dhanendra has worked with many eminent theatre personalities like Prabhat Ganguly, Gul Bardhan, B. V. Karanth, Alok Chatterjee, Satyabrata Raut, Anil Chapekar, Dinesh Thakur, Astad Deboo, Rahul da-chuna, Naseeruddin Shah, Makarand Deshpande, Rajit Kapur, Neeraj Kabi, Om Katare, Nadira Zahir Babbar, and Nandita Das, among others. He formed his own theatre company called 3rd Bell Productions in 2005, now called Swangvale performing arts and social work samiti . So far Swangwale has been responsible for successfully staging 6 plays - Kahani Le Lo, Kai re…Gotya, K.T. Anna Jio to aise, Manaskhor, Baramasi, Rang Rangila Gittu Girgit. Nal –Jal, and Hil Mil Kar. He has acted in more than 60 plays along with production designing and light designing for several plays. Being a trained Chou dancer, he also conducts workshops on acting and designing. Now he is a Design Faculty in Drama School Mumbai. Dhanendra is a multitalented artist and wears various hats of an Actor, Designer, Writer, & a Director.
Dhanendra has been part of the theatre industry for the last 28 years and has roots in Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh. His initial training for 8 years under Dada Bangeshwar Mullick and then 3 years with Rangshri Little Ballet Troupe Bhopal made him skilled in designing, lighting and sound techniques and acting. Dhanendra has worked with many eminent theatre personalities like Prabhat Ganguly, Gul Bardhan, B. V. Karanth, Alok Chatterjee, Satyabrata Raut, Anil Chapekar, Dinesh Thakur, Astad Deboo, Rahul da-chuna, Naseeruddin Shah, Makarand Deshpande, Rajit Kapur, Neeraj Kabi, Om Katare, Nadira Zahir Babbar, and Nandita Das, among others. He formed his own theatre company called 3rd Bell Productions in 2005, now called Swangvale performing arts and social work samiti . So far Swangwale has been responsible for successfully staging 6 plays - Kahani Le Lo, Kai re…Gotya, K.T. Anna Jio to aise, Manaskhor, Baramasi, Rang Rangila Gittu Girgit. Nal –Jal, and Hil Mil Kar. He has acted in more than 60 plays along with production designing and light designing for several plays. Being a trained Chou dancer, he also conducts workshops on acting and designing. Now he is a Design Faculty in Drama School Mumbai. Dhanendra is a multitalented artist and wears various hats of an Actor, Designer, Writer, & a Director.
Sidal Kekilli
Sidal is an actress whose first performance was at the Arcola for the play 'Where we are: The Mosque' where she represented the figure of an imam and delivered the opening sonnet. She has also been in the play 'soupcase' at Theatre 503 and recently in Project Phakama UK, a play called 'Identity', performed in Graeae theatre, where she partook in the process of writing the play and performed her first spoken word live. After being a member of the National Student Drama Festival Lab for 2021, she curated her own gig theatre company called 'Mistaken Identity Theatre Company' and went on to produce the play 'Rum&Coke'. Follow her on twitter to keep updated on all upcoming projects:
Sidaall_
Sidal is an actress whose first performance was at the Arcola for the play 'Where we are: The Mosque' where she represented the figure of an imam and delivered the opening sonnet. She has also been in the play 'soupcase' at Theatre 503 and recently in Project Phakama UK, a play called 'Identity', performed in Graeae theatre, where she partook in the process of writing the play and performed her first spoken word live. After being a member of the National Student Drama Festival Lab for 2021, she curated her own gig theatre company called 'Mistaken Identity Theatre Company' and went on to produce the play 'Rum&Coke'. Follow her on twitter to keep updated on all upcoming projects:
Sidaall_
Piyush Kumar
Piyush has been a theatre practitioner for 10 years who has worked in several productions including Same Boat Theater Collective (California), Hanchu-Yuei Japan, Tadpole Repertory, Black Box's Woyzeck, Barefoot, Crow, Kaivalya Plays' Unravel. He directed an ensemble production on plastic pollution called Panniarchy with the Little Theatre Group Repertory, Delhi. He has conducted several workshops and directed productions in schools and colleges of Delhi University and was a primary cast member in Arré’s web series Tathaastu and Amazon India’s TV Ad campaign Chonkpur Cheetahs.
Piyush has been a theatre practitioner for 10 years who has worked in several productions including Same Boat Theater Collective (California), Hanchu-Yuei Japan, Tadpole Repertory, Black Box's Woyzeck, Barefoot, Crow, Kaivalya Plays' Unravel. He directed an ensemble production on plastic pollution called Panniarchy with the Little Theatre Group Repertory, Delhi. He has conducted several workshops and directed productions in schools and colleges of Delhi University and was a primary cast member in Arré’s web series Tathaastu and Amazon India’s TV Ad campaign Chonkpur Cheetahs.
Shubhra Prakash
Shubhra is an artist whose work lies at the intersection of film, theatre and tech. Shubhra has served as co-producer and voiceover artist for Priya’s Shakti. She most recently co-wrote, produced and acted in an original play The Music In My Blood about Indian classical music that was seen by over a thousand audience members in the New York City area and the east coast. She has co-founded the award-winning NYC based Hypokrit Theatre Company. She served as festival director of the company's South Asian International Performing Arts Festival in its inaugural year 2015. Previously, she wrote and directed short films including Three Dates, part of New York Indian Film Festival 2013 and Funny Faces, about women in standup comedy. Her interactive short CAST ME! a "choose your own adventure" style film/game was part of The Challenge of Diversity competition by Interlude, Games for Change and Tribeca Film Festival. Shubhra has been part of TFI Interactive Immigration Co/Lab in 2017 where she and her team created COYOTEK a multimedia-interactive project that works as a speculative web market where immigrants can find tools to bypass the oppressive forms of surveillance put upon them. In December 2018, Shubhra relocated to India to develop her next play inspired by the life of Rajeev Prakash Khare, a font designer and calligrapher of Indian scripts. As a result of this research, she presented a digital art exhibition in New Delhi at Kaleidoscope Digital Art gallery, "Fontwala: Stone to Mobile, what remains?" which shows the evolution of Indian Devnagri script and questions how digital media impacts the journey of a complex script. The exhibition received a special segment on the Indian national TV channel and was covered by prominent press. Shubhra shot, edited, animated and produced the exhibition in collaboration with Rajeev Prakash Khare that ran for three weeks in Aug 2019. More info about this can be found at https://sprakash.github.io/portfolio/fontwala.html
Shubhra is an artist whose work lies at the intersection of film, theatre and tech. Shubhra has served as co-producer and voiceover artist for Priya’s Shakti. She most recently co-wrote, produced and acted in an original play The Music In My Blood about Indian classical music that was seen by over a thousand audience members in the New York City area and the east coast. She has co-founded the award-winning NYC based Hypokrit Theatre Company. She served as festival director of the company's South Asian International Performing Arts Festival in its inaugural year 2015. Previously, she wrote and directed short films including Three Dates, part of New York Indian Film Festival 2013 and Funny Faces, about women in standup comedy. Her interactive short CAST ME! a "choose your own adventure" style film/game was part of The Challenge of Diversity competition by Interlude, Games for Change and Tribeca Film Festival. Shubhra has been part of TFI Interactive Immigration Co/Lab in 2017 where she and her team created COYOTEK a multimedia-interactive project that works as a speculative web market where immigrants can find tools to bypass the oppressive forms of surveillance put upon them. In December 2018, Shubhra relocated to India to develop her next play inspired by the life of Rajeev Prakash Khare, a font designer and calligrapher of Indian scripts. As a result of this research, she presented a digital art exhibition in New Delhi at Kaleidoscope Digital Art gallery, "Fontwala: Stone to Mobile, what remains?" which shows the evolution of Indian Devnagri script and questions how digital media impacts the journey of a complex script. The exhibition received a special segment on the Indian national TV channel and was covered by prominent press. Shubhra shot, edited, animated and produced the exhibition in collaboration with Rajeev Prakash Khare that ran for three weeks in Aug 2019. More info about this can be found at https://sprakash.github.io/portfolio/fontwala.html
Sol Schiller
After my years in the study of the theater scene, and acting experiences overseas, got passionate about the photographic side of plays and movies, about the quality of images, about the fragments of the stories that we get thru our eyes. Finally, got behind the camera and start to capture pieces of this imaginary realities. Soon I started to get attracted by every day scenes, created spontaneously by average people. Traveling only encouraged this and open my eyes wide to document what ́s around me, the things and people that naturally create fantastic scenes. Then I merge this with my love for nature and majestic trees, curious animals and painted skies became important subjects of my pictures. After I saw and understood the power of images to show realities hidden from our everyday sight and provoke change in life, pictures became my message, my personal attempt to achieve a more loving, just and comprehensive world.
After my years in the study of the theater scene, and acting experiences overseas, got passionate about the photographic side of plays and movies, about the quality of images, about the fragments of the stories that we get thru our eyes. Finally, got behind the camera and start to capture pieces of this imaginary realities. Soon I started to get attracted by every day scenes, created spontaneously by average people. Traveling only encouraged this and open my eyes wide to document what ́s around me, the things and people that naturally create fantastic scenes. Then I merge this with my love for nature and majestic trees, curious animals and painted skies became important subjects of my pictures. After I saw and understood the power of images to show realities hidden from our everyday sight and provoke change in life, pictures became my message, my personal attempt to achieve a more loving, just and comprehensive world.
Rafael Duarte Oliveira Venancio
Rafael Duarte is a Brazilian writer, playwright, psychoanalyst, astrologer and psychotherapist. He holds a PhD in Audiovisual Media and Process (Meios e Processos Audiovisuais ) at Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (ECA/USP - 2013) and was a Postdoctoral fellow at the same university (2019-2020). He is an effective member of the Astrological Psychology Association (APA-UK), Dramatists Guild (US) and Brazilian Writers Guild (União Brasileira de Escritores - Brazil). He is co-founder of Caminhada Estelar - Espaço de Autoconhecimento e Expansão da Consciência, a holistic center in Southern Brazil.
Rafael Duarte is a Brazilian writer, playwright, psychoanalyst, astrologer and psychotherapist. He holds a PhD in Audiovisual Media and Process (Meios e Processos Audiovisuais ) at Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (ECA/USP - 2013) and was a Postdoctoral fellow at the same university (2019-2020). He is an effective member of the Astrological Psychology Association (APA-UK), Dramatists Guild (US) and Brazilian Writers Guild (União Brasileira de Escritores - Brazil). He is co-founder of Caminhada Estelar - Espaço de Autoconhecimento e Expansão da Consciência, a holistic center in Southern Brazil.