Co-Founders
Annalisa Dias and Anna Lathrop
CURRENT CORE TEAM
Annalisa Dias, Lisa Hill-Corley, Mimsi Janis, Linda Lombardi, Althea Middleton-Detzner, Lori Pitts, Nawal Rajeh
ANNALISA DIAS, co-Founderis a playwright, director, and performer based in Washington, DC. She is a Producing Playwright with The Welders, and has also worked with the Gulfshore Playhouse, the Source Festival, the Atlas Intersections Festival, the Mead Theatre Lab, Longacre Lea, Theater Alliance, Forum Theatre, Signature Theater, the Inkwell, and the Folger Theater. Her plays have been produced in New York, DC, Glasgow, and London. Annalisa also teaches Theatre of the Oppressed and is Director of an international documentary film entitled The Salima Project, which is about theatre and community health in rural Malawi. It had its Festival Premiere at the Awareness Film Festival in Los Angeles on September 21st, 2014. For more information visit http://salimaproject.org.
Web: http://annalisadias.weebly.com Twitter: @ajdm Instagram: @annalisadias Mimsi Janis, CORE TEAMis an actor, writer and educator. She first began doing TO while perusing her MFA in Acting. Since then, she has participated in and led workshops with people from all over the world, ranging from children to adults. As an actor she has worked with Studio Theatre, Signature Theatre, Washington Stage Guild and many others in the DC area. Mimsi holds an MFA in Acting from Catholic University in DC and a M.Ed from George Mason University. She teaches at Howard Community College and George Mason University.
ALTHEA middleton-Detzner, CORE TEAM is a creative arts enthusiast and practitioner with over ten years of experience as a facilitator, trainer, and educator in the field of nonviolent civil resistance and strategic peacebuilding. She is especially interested in the use of arts as a method for engaging in empowering pedagogies, and pedagogies of empowerment, and is thinking about the intersection of arts and awareness, and the role of arts in innovation. As a member of the DCCTSJ team, Althea is excited to contribute to the convergence of theater for social justice in activist spaces and nonviolent actions.
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Lisa Hill-Corley, Core teamis an actor and writer in Northern Virginia. As an actor she has worked with Brave Spirits Theatre, NextStop Theatre, The Prince George’s Shakespeare Festival, Capital Fringe Festival among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University and is an editor with the alumni feminist press Gazing Grain Press.
Lori Pitts, Core teamis an Applied Theatre practitioner, Joker, teaching artist, performer, and director in the DMV area. She is passionate about finding a platform for voices that often go unheard. Currently, she is working to design and bring TO workshops into prisons with her program, Voices Unbarred. Pitts is also thrilled to be able to use her talents as the Curriculum & Creativity Coordinator at Reach Incorporated, a nonprofit that hires high school teens struggling in school and teaches them to be literacy tutors for 2nd and 3rd graders. She received the Arts and Humanities Fellowship Program grant through the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her work in the community last year.
Nawal Rajeh, Core Teamis a community organizer and educator in Washington DC. She has been trained in Theater of the Oppressed facilitation and Participatory Applied Theater techniques, which she has been using in her work since 2010. Nawal has taught theater to youth with a focus on theater and social justice and conflict resolution as well as facilitated theater workshops for youth of all ages with a special emphasis on anti-oppression, trauma healing, and conflict transformation. She is currently a PhD student at George Mason's School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and is exploring how TO can be a catalyst for intervention in the peacebuilding field. She loves the way that theater brings groups into deeper dialogue and is always awestruck by the transformative (and accessible) power of this art form.
ANNA LATHROP, Co -Founderis a Brooklyn based director, dramaturge, and producer. She was one of the co-founders of the DC Coalition for Theatre and Social Justice.
She is the current Executive Director of THE MUSE PROJECT - a NYC-based company focused on amplifying female voices in the theatre by developing work around female actors. She is a former Directing/Artistic Director Intern at Forum Theatre. NYC Directing: GAME BOY & TALK TO ME ABOUT HOME (29th St Playwrights Collective); DC Directing: TURN OFF ALL LIGHTS (Robinson Secondary School); ONE FIFTY (Nu Sass); CRAM SCHOOL SNOW DAY (LiveArt DC); WE COULD BE HEROES and HAROLD EVENTUALLY…ONE SECOND (Source Festival); BACK TO THE ISLAND (Rorschach Theatre Klecksography); SERVANT OF THE WIND (Atlas Intersections Festival), VIVIE CAN FLY (Actor's Center), LOVE SUCKS: A 5X5 (Theatre J - staged reading series). Associate Member SDC Web: ahlathrop.weebly.com Instagram: anainstamonsta |