DCORRELL@STANFORD.EDU

Danielle Adair is a 2024-25 Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellow. Her scholarship focuses on the intersections of media and performance, with attention to the environment and feminist sound studies. Her artistic works have premiered in exhibition, screening, theater and concert venues internationally. She is the author of five artist books, including From JBAD: Lessons Learned (Les Figues Press) based on her time as embedded media with US Forces in Afghanistan and for which she created the feature-length video-performance, FIRST ASSIGNMENT. As part of her three-part video-performance Caution, bomb, Adair created and premiered her experimental opera Caution Baum with the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart. Adair has earned numerous awards and fellowships including a Mellon Teaching Race Fellowship, the Carl Weber Fellowship, a California Community Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship, a Center for Cultural Innovation Grant, and she has been a resident fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude and the Digital Arts Studios Belfast, among other distinctions. She holds her MFA in Critical Studies and in Studio Arts from California Institute of the Arts and a BA with Honors in Human Development and in Visual Arts from The University of Chicago. danielleadair.com

  MARLONA@STANFORD.EDU

Marlon Ariyasinghe (he/him) is a writer, editor, theatre practitioner and researcher from Sri Lanka. He is a master’s graduate in English from the University of Geneva and received his BA (honors) in English from the University of Peradeniya. He served as the secretary of the Sri Lanka Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and has organized multiple international literary conferences from 2010-2023. He was the co-editor of Mise en Abyme: International Journal of Comparative Literature and Arts (VIII, Issue 2), a special edition on Sri Lankan Combative Art, Angampora.

He was the Senior Assistant Editor at Himal Southasian, a regional magazine of politics and culture. His rapportage has been featured in Reuters, DW, BBC World, WION, The Washington Post, NPR, and other outlets worldwide. Marlon has directed plays for Emmet Theatre Company in Geneva and published a collection of poetry Froteztology in 2011.

Marlon’s research interests include Southasian theatre and historiography, performing blackness, Southasian antiblackness, cognition and performance, theatre pedagogy, and decolonizing actor-training methodologies. His research has been published in The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Mise en Abyme: International Journal of Comparative Literature and Arts, and Phoenix: Sri Lanka Journal of English in the Commonwealth.

He tweets at @exfrotezter. Click here to access his artistic profile.

LBAISCH@STANFORD.EDU

Lucas Baisch is a playwright and artist from San Francisco. His plays have been read and developed at the Goodman Theatre, The Playwrights’ Center, Ars Nova, The Bushwick Starr, The Mercury Store, Cutting Ball Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, The Neo-Futurists, Chicago Dramatists, Links Hall, SF Playground, etc.

Lucas is a recipient of a Steinberg Playwright Award, the Princess Grace Award in Playwriting, a Jerome Fellowship from The Playwrights’ Center, the Kennedy Center’s KCACTF Latinx Playwriting Award, and the Chesley/Bumbalo Playwriting Award. His plays have been published by Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama, Yale’s Theater Magazine, and 53rd State Press.

Outside of writing for theatre, his artwork has been presented at Elsewhere Museum, the Electronic Literature Organization, gallery no one, and the RISD Museum. He has held residencies through the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Millay Arts, ACRE, Ars Nova, Page 73 Productions, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, the Goodman Theatre’s Playwrights Unit, and the LMCC Workspace residency.

His current research interests arrive at the intersection between excess/dearth and affect theory. He’s invested in discard studies, (new) materialism, histories of excavation and technology’s impact on the composition of the playscript or artist’s score. MFA: Brown University, Playwriting. lucasbaisch.com

KBHAGANI@STANFORD.EDU

Karishma Bhagani, from Mombasa, Kenya, is pursuing a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University. She graduated from New York University (NYU) with a B.F.A in Theatre and a B.A. in History. In her capacities as a director, producer and scholar of the performing arts, Karishma is keen on contributing to the development of a sustainable creative economy within East Africa. Karishma currently serves as the Associate Artistic Director for the Tebere Arts Foundation in Uganda and Associate Producing Director for the Nairobi Musical Theatre Initiative in Kenya. She is also a fellow at the Georgetown Lab for Global Performance and Politics. While at NYU, Karishma was the recipient of the Richard Hull Fellowship, the Bevya Rosten Memorial Award, the CTED Development Impact Fellowship and the Presidents’ Service Award. She was also the Tisch bachelor’s representative at NYU’s All-University Commencement ceremony.

YUTSHA@STANFORD.EDU

Yutsha (she/her) is a researcher, writer, and artist from Nepal. After completing her Bachelor’s from the University of Delhi and a Master’s in Arts and Aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Yutsha worked as a research associate at Nepal Picture Library, a digital photo archive in Lalitpur, Nepal.

During her undergraduate years, as the co-president of the English Theatre Society, The Ariels, she collaboratively directed, acted, and produced plays like The Maids by Jean Genet, Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, and The Bald Soprano by Eugène Ionesco. More recently, her artistic endeavors have been rooted in digital archiving, field research, and photographs. She has been part of two exhibitions at Nepal Picture Library: The Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project (2018) and The Skin of Chitwan (2020).

Her research interests intersect embodied citizenship, political identity, representation, and visual media/culture.

KXFANG@STANFORD.EDU

Kathy Fang holds a BA in Comparative Literature & Society and Drama & Theatre Arts from Columbia University. Her academic research is interested in Asian/American immigration history and diasporic traditions, technological performance and artificial intelligence, translation and performance theory, and Francophone postcolonialities. Her article “‘You act as Human, and I will act as AI’: Technological Rehearsals at the Interface” was recently published in TDR. In addition to her scholarly work, Kathy is a director and dancer whose artistic praxis currently explores translation as a dramaturgy of performance.

Recent directing credits include Love & So (2024, Barnard Theatre Department), Anointed with Gasoline (2021, NOMADS), and Chinglish (2020, Harker Conservatory).

  DNJACK@STANFORD.EDU

Daniel Jackson works in live performance and digital media at the intersection of technology, interactivity, and identity. His work interrogates the possibilities that new technologies provide for creating surprising experiences that question our understanding of the world. His recent work includes An Old Ruinous Vault, With A Strong Grated Door, Through Which The Moon-Beams Are Gleaming, exhibited as part of San Antonio’s CAM Perennial group art show, and Basement Complex Suite 102 at Jump-Start Performance Co. He holds an MFA in Video for Performance and Integrated Media from the California Institute of the Arts.

In addition to creating and producing his own work, Daniel has spent time working as an artist and technician with Andrew Schneider, Young Jean Lee, Radiohole, The Wooster Group, and Jump-Start Performance Co.

Daniel’s research interests include algorithmically generated performance, the execution of code as performance, performance in virtual spaces, and contemporary American experimental theater.

MARINAJB@STANFORD.EDU

Marina Johnson (she/they) is a fourth-year PhD candidate with PhD minors in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. She was a 2021-2022 Graduate Public Service Fellow with the Stanford Haas Center and the 2022-2023 co-artistic director of the Nitery Experimental Theater.

At Stanford, she recently directed the TAPS Winter 2024 Main Stage The Wolves. She regularly works on community-engaged theatre projects in the Bay Area. Johnson has worked as a dramaturg with Golden Thread Productions, Silk Road Rising, Penn State University, and on several Stanford Main Stage productions. Select additional directing credits include: The Shroud Maker (International Voices Project), Shakespeare’s Sisters (Stanford), and The Palestinian Youth Monologues (Stanford).

She is the co-host of Kunafa and Shay, a MENA/SWANA theatre podcast produced by HowlRound Theatre Commons. Johnson is also a member of Silk Road Rising’s Polycultural Institute. She has trained with Theatrical Intimacy Education, the Society of American Fight Directors, SITI Company, the Kennedy Center Directing Lab, and the Chicago Director’s Lab. Marina holds a Certificate in Critical Consciousness and Anti-Oppressive Praxis from Stanford, an MFA in Directing from the University of Iowa, and a BA and a BS from Penn State University.

Before coming to Stanford, Marina was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Beloit College for three years where she directed plays like Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche, In the Next Room, Men on Boats, [title of show], and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and taught Directing 1 and 2, Devising, Acting, Script Analysis, and Arab Theatre.

Johnson’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in Theatre/Practice, TDR, Theatre Topics, Arab Stages,  Decolonizing Dramaturgy in a Global Context (Bloomsbury), Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders and Sexualities (Routledge), Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance, Volume I: Performers (Bloomsbury).  Marina-Johnson.com

  TSJ2110@STANFORD.EDU

Shacon Jones II is an artist-scholar-activist and doctoral candidate in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies, with PhD minors in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests focus on Black studies, masculinities and sexuality, dance studies, pleasure activism, and technologies of remembrance. Primarily interested in the Black male body in undervalued citizenship-making and life-sustaining practices, his dissertation Towards a Grammar of Aliveness: Black Radical Pleasure, Muscular Bonding, & Performance 1989-2024, employs ethnographic and visual methods to examine mundane and spectacular choreographies of Black men engaged in radical pleasure in the United States and abroad.

At Stanford, Shacon has served as a graduate fellow for the Black Community Service Center and the Haas Center for Public Service. He has also worked for the Nitery Theater as co-Artisitic Director and as a DEI Facilitator in the Office for Inclusion, Belonging and Intergroup Communication (IBIC). In 2024, he earned the Outstanding Teaching Award from the Department of African and African American Studies, completed a Mellon Foundation Teaching Race Fellowship, and concluded his four-year tenure as a Point Foundation Flagship Scholar.

Before coming to Stanford, Shacon held senior-level administrative positions at New Haven Public Schools and Bronx Community College. He worked off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop and New York Live Arts and has trained at the Ailey School, EMIA, the British American Drama Academy, New Haven Ballet, and the Shanghai Theater Academy. Shacon is an arts education and intimacy consultant deeply committed to foster youth advocacy.

He earned an MA in Education from Stanford Graduate School of Education, an MFA in Theatre Management and Producing from Columbia University, and a BA in English and Drama & Dance from Morehouse College. A proud member of the Stage Directors & Choreographers Society, Shacon also holds a Consent-Forward Artist Certificate from Intimacy Directors & Choreographers, Inc., a Certificate in Leading Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion from Northwestern University, and a Certificate in Critical Consciousness and Anti-Oppressive Praxis from Stanford.

  CLIFSON@STANFORD.EDU

Connor Lifson is a director of live, devised, and multimedia performance. Alongside his artistic work, Connor’s scholarship and practice-based research examine how the genres of science fiction and fantasy can serve as a catalyst to rehearse new realities: not to hold up a mirror to society, but a shimmering looking glass — not to reflect our world’s reality, but its fantastic potential. In service of this mission, Connor engages across disciplines and forms, drawing on cinematic vocabularies in his onstage work through live video cameras, dynamic video projections, and various forms of puppetry. He is currently developing a highly collaborative process for devising performance, called Worldbuilding, which integrates methodologies of world-building popular among speculative fiction writers with critical frameworks of worldmaking, phenomenology, and posthumanism.

Connor is a proud graduate of Northwestern University’s Department of Performance Studies, where he studied adaptation, toy theater, and directing under the department’s scholar-artists. Remaining at Northwestern, he worked as an Assistant Producer, supporting student-driven performances. He also served as a guest lecturer/teaching assistant, running workshops on adaptation and object performance.

Currently, Connor is creating a shadow puppetry short film for Lookingglass Theatre Company’s 50 Wards: A Civic Mosaic, entitled “The Garden of the Phoenix.” In addition to his own directing work, he has assistant-directed at many Chicago theaters, most recently for Mary Zimmerman on The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci at Goodman Theatre. For more on Connor’s work, please visit www.connorlifson.com

CMAIN@STANFORD.EDU

Caitlin Main is a researcher, writer, and theatre artist from North Vancouver, Canada. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences from Quest University Canada and an MFA in Theatre Studies from the University of Calgary. Her current research interests lie at the intersection of environment and performance, tracing how performance engages the hydrological cycle and how waterly relations are performed. Her past research focussed on memory in performance creation with particular attention to (i) working with traumatic, autobiographical memory in devised theatre and (ii) facilitating social connections amongst older adults in dance with an interdisciplinary research team, Moving Connections (UCalgary/Pil Hansen). Caitlin has also worked in programming and curation at Artspeak Gallery (Vancouver) and TRUCK Contemporary Art (Calgary), along with critical writing for interdisciplinary art exhibitions and qualitative research for the Calgary Arts Development.

  JMELGAR@STANFORD.EDU

eli melgar is a first-generation scholar and playwright from Sihuatehuacan (Santa Ana, El Salvador), which means place of feminine wisdom and vitality in Nahuatl. Their current work situates forms of migration and environmental justice in conversation with critical theories of race and performance studies. Other interests include Central American studies; indigeneity and decolonial feminism; avant-gardes in the Global South; queer theory and Marxism; theatre and philosophy; and ethics and poetics. Before coming to the ancestral land of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe (Stanford), they studied playwriting under the mentorship of Jorgelina Cerritos.

A.A., Secondary Education, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

B.A., Spanish, The City College of New York, CUNY

M.A., Spanish, The City College of New York, CUNY

[photo credit: René Figueroa]

  RASHI91@STANFORD.EDU

Rashi has an MA in Performance Studies from New York University, MA in Conflict and Peace Studies from Jamia Millia Islamia University and a Bachelors in Economics and Computers from Delhi University. Rashi was actively involved in Delhi University’s campus theatre where she was a member of, and later headed, Maitreyi College’s dramatics society Abhivyakti. She acted in various productions such as In The Name of Honour (a devised protest performance against honour killings in India), O Ibsen (based on Henrik Ibsen’s plays), Akka Amoli Anni (an adaptation of Munshi Premchand’s story ‘Bade Bhaisaheb’) and Eklavya Uvach (a satire on the prevalent caste system in India), which were performed at different university festivals in India. Amongst these the play O Ibsen was performed as part of the Norwegian Collegiate Theatre Festival in Delhi in 2010. She recently co-directed a devised experimental performance, based on Sadaat Hasan Manto’s partition stories, titled Enter At Your Own Risk. A seditious play in a few scenes showing sanity and insanity as performed by actors of National Paagalkhana — by order of Toba Tek Singh. She has also been associated with different socially and politically active theatre groups in Delhi in different capacities.

Her research interests include exploring the relationship between aesthetics, politics and performance; postcolonial studies; and representation & subjecthood of the subaltern in theatrical as well as every day performances. Rashi was a recipient of Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights at NYU as part of which she explored the role of theatre in fostering the human rights discourse, specifically looking at theatre practices of Palestinian artists in the West Bank.

  WMONT@STANFORD.EDU

Westley Montgomery is a scholar and multidisciplinary artist currently pursuing a PhD in performance studies at Stanford University. Montgomery’s scholarship lies at the intersections of performance studies, sound studies, gender/trans studies, and Black studies. Montgomery’s current work examines four technologies of voice modification—the Sonovox, the Synthesizer, the Vocoder, and Autotune—in order to explore how the body as expressed through sound comes to be a site through which raced and gendered subjectivities are both reified and refused. Other research interests include social media and streaming performance, Japanophilia in African American culture, and opera pedagogies and the construction of somatic difference.

  PMORNET@STANFORD.EDU

Pauline Mornet is a PhD student in TAPS at Stanford University. She holds a MA in Performance Studies from New York University and a BA in Political Humanities from Sciences Po Paris. Originally from France, Pauline has spent equal parts of her life bumbling between Hong Kong, Europe and Australia and cannot dissociate these migratory pathways from her work. She is interested in alternative community formations and how we host each other. 

Pauline has a background in theater, co-writing and co-directing a play titled Titre Provisoire about performances of everyday life that toured in France at the Festival des Bourbons in 2019 and won the directorial award at festival Reims Monte en Scene. 

Her piece Intimate Archives: Love Letters in Wartime Europe will be upcoming in peer-reviewed academic journal Performance Research. It explores an archive of love letters sent during the Second World War and uses practice-as-research techniques to engage with the archive. 

  MZ114@STANFORD.EDU

María Zurita Ontiveros is director, puppeteer and theatermaker born and raised in Mexico City, Mexico. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Duke University in Theater Studies and in History, and a minor in German. She has training in directing, playwriting, and performance from the National Theater Institute, the Mexican General Society of Writers, and the City Academy in London, UK. Her paper, Identity and Activism: What did La Raza mean for Los Siete? was published in the monograph of the 2020 National Association of African American Studies Conference. She has directed Euripides’ Medea, the musicals In the Heights and Title of Show, at Duke University, assistant directed Tender Age at the 2019 National Playwrights Conference, directed a collection of new work at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and co-directed I Want to be Naked with the Who Are They Now Theater Collective, which she founded alongside other Duke Theater alumni. She performed as a puppeteer at the 2021 La Mama Puppet Fest, as well as building sets and puppets for the festival. She served as company manager for the Off-Broadway production of sandblasted by Charly Evon Simpson. She has also worked in Development and in the Literary Department of the Vineyard Theatre in New York. She has received numerous awards, including the University Scholars Program Scholarship at Duke University, the Benenson Award in the Arts, the Graywill Arts for Arts Leadership and Service, and the Award for Excellence in Directing. She is also a member of Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society.

She is interested in producing research and theatrical work around trauma and healing– particularly how theater traditions have been and continue to be used as outlets for communities to heal. Moved to this research because of the femicide crisis in Mexico, she seeks to create community-driven work to provide victims’ families ways to grieve and social justice theater to demand justice. Human resilience fascinates her, fills her with hope, and guides her art. Her artistic practice is based on community, healing, and endless curiosity.

SRAJAK@STANFORD.EDU

Shailee (she/her) is a scholar, theatre practitioner, writer, and archivist from India. She holds a Master of Arts in English Literature and Drama from McGill University, where she researched queer history and the politics of representation in South Asian theatre and performance. Prior to this, she earned a Master of Arts and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English with a minor in History from Miranda House, University of Delhi.

She worked as an Archivist at Teesri Duniya Theatre in Montreal from 2022 to 2024 and led a project that aimed to curate, preserve, and digitize the company’s four decades of rich history. Her subsequent research was published as a paper, titled “Teesri Duniya’s ‘Counter’ Offence: Diasporic Theatre and Minority Representation in the Bill 96 Era,” in Critical Stages/Scènes critiques. She has also contributed to the Miranda House Archiving Project in India as well as the SSHRC-funded “English-language theatre in Quebec” archival project at McGill University. 

In her capacity as a theatre artist, Shailee has worked with Imago Theatre and Teesri Duniya Theatre in Canada. Notable credits include the development of two original plays: “Dancing Along the Rainbow ” (2023-24) and “From Troy to Lanka” (2022-23). She is the author of the YA graphic novel, “My Story, My Voice: Sita and Helen,” which was published by Tulika Books in 2023. Her poetry and creative writing have been featured on various platforms including Montreal Serai, The Bombay Review, and LIVEWIRE.

Shailee’s scholarship on theatre and performance resides at the intersection of South Asian studies, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial studies, and queer of colour theory. For more on her work, please visit shaileerajak.com

  ZOERYU@STANFORD.EDU

Zoe Ryu holds a BA in Economics from Korea University and an MA in English literature from Seoul National University. The main concentration of her current studies lie primarily on the intersection of race and gender in American theatre and literature. Her theatre practice focuses mainly on dramaturgy – in Seoul, where her work is based, she worked with prominent Korean theatre companies and produced plays such as Machinal by Sophie Treadwell and A Fortunate Day by Hyun Jin-geon both performed at the Yeohangza Theatre. Her future aspirations lie in intercultural performance that makes use of traditional Korean movements, dance and sound derived from Korean masked dance and traditional Korean opera.

  ADINW@STANFORD.EDU

Adin Walker works on queer, feminist, and transgender performance and media. Walker holds a BA in English from Princeton and is a fifth-year PhD Candidate in Theater and Performance Studies with minors in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Dissertation title: “Coming In: Queer Interiority in American Musical Theater 1996 – 2022.”

Walker has published peer-reviewed articles in TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Theatre Topics, and New Review of Film and Television Studies. Walker’s writing received the Gerald Kahan’s Scholar’s Prize (ASTR), the Chris Holmlund Prize by the Queer and Trans Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), The Oxford University Press Prize from the International Society for the Study of Musicals (ISSM), and Honorable Mention for Outstanding Article from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE).

At Stanford, Walker is a R.A.I.S.E. fellow for community-engaged research and has co-taught two courses: “Introduction to Queer Theory” (with Namrata Verghese); and a Summer Arts Intensive on circus history and practice (with Aleta Hayes). Walker tutors in Stanford’s Hume Center for Writing and Speaking and has been a member of the teaching team for the yearly seminar on writing tutor pedagogy.

As a theater director and choreographer, Walker is a frequent collaborator with the internationally-touring dance, puppetry, and climate-justice focused Phantom Limb Company, whose production Falling Out about the 2011 tsunami and radiation disaster in Fukushima premiered in BAM’s Next Wave Festival. Walker recently directed the world premieres of Yilong Liu’s PrEP Play, or Blue Parachute with the New Conservatory Theater Center and Adam Ashraf Elsayigh’s Data Queen for Golden Thread’s ReOrient Festival, both in San Francisco. In Summer 2024, Walker will be in residence at Dartmouth University with New York Theatre Workshop directing a lab of Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel’s Lupe Finds Me in the Garden of Dreams, and Walker will direct a workshop production of a new musical titled Wild Fire about uprooted communities due to wildfires at San Francisco’s Z Space. adinwalker.com

  EMWATERS@STANFORD.EDU

Emily Waters is a Brooklyn-raised interdisciplinary artist grounded in a Black theater tradition that explores the roles of witness and testimony in collective and intergenerational healing. Waters helped to roll out the first ever #MeToo curriculum with Girls for Gender Equity, focusing on joy and storytelling through theater. Emily was an Emerge Fellow 2019 with Hemispheric Institute where they presented their work in progress at Abrons Arts Center. Waters is also the recipient of the Peace and Social Change Fellowship with Columbia University where she supervised research on the healing capacity of theater for survivors of sexual assault. In December 2019, Waters was awarded the Mount Tremper Arts Residency. They have presented their original work at Jack Theater, the Apollo, the High Line, Novo Foundation Grantmakers of Color Conference, and Judson Church. Waters is a Performance Project Fellow alum and was a selected writer in Billie Holiday Theater’s annual 50in50 and Black Revolutionary Theater Workshop’s Revolution Now! Program. Emily Waters received a Drama League Award nomination for outstanding digital theater alongside the selected artists for All for One Theater’s Solo Short’s Series. Most recently, Emily presented their original performance, Look Back At It, at The Shed as part of the Open Call commission program for early career artists. 

Emily’s current research interests African diasporic narrative healing modalities, folklore and religious studies, and the connections between contemporary Black performance movements and anti-violence work.