Season 5 Guest Circle
"Reinvention"
Produced by Eric Berg, Kateri Cale, and Jonathan Villalobos

Danielle Georgiou / 08.03.2022 Season 5 : Episode 1
Danielle is a first-generation Cypriot-American director, choreographer, and performer based in Dallas, TX. Her stage and video work deal with puzzles found in gender and cultural identity—vulnerability, deformity, and beauty. With her performance project, the Danielle Georgiou Dance Group, Georgiou has created and directed a series of collaborative, devised dance theatre productions and dance musicals. She is particularly interested in the interplay of performative elements and collaborative, devising techniques eliciting a response from an audience. In addition, she is a Movement Coach, Intimacy Director, and a Professor of Dance, Humanities, and Visual Arts at Dallas College-Eastfield Campus. She is also the former Associate Artistic Director of The Undermain Theatre.

Ariana Cook / 08.10.2022 Season 5 : Episode 2
Ariana is an actor, director, arts administrator, and all-around theatre-maker in Dallas, Texas. She received her Masters Degree in Drama from Texas Woman's University and her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Musical Theatre from Sam Houston State. Ariana is an anti-racist facilitator and also recently served as the Managing Director of Cara Mía Theatre.

Ariana is an alumnus of the Lincoln Directors Lab in New York and the inaugural artEquity Cohort that convened at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She is an Artistic Ensemble Member of Cara Mía Theatre Company, where she wrote, directed, and starred in her original play, Where Earth Meets the Sky.

Kathy A. Perkins / 08.17.2022 
Kathy is an award-winning lighting designer, theatre historian, and educator. Her lighting designs have been seen across the country at regional theatres such as the American Conservatory Theatre, St. Louis Black Repertory, the Goodman, Steppenwolf, Manhattan Theatre Club, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and many, many more. Most recently, she became the second Black woman to design lights on Broadway for the production of Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind. As a theatre scholar, she has edited or co-edited seven anthologies on Black theatre and serves as the senior editor for Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance. She has also served as co-curator and theatrical consultant for Lincoln Center and the Smithsonian. She has served as faculty member at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Smith College, and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She received her BFA in Drama from Howard University and her M.F.A. in Lighting Design from the University of Michigan. In 2021, the University of Michigan awarded her a Doctor of Fines Arts.

Jaynie Tiller Saunders / 08.24.2022 
Jaynie is the managing director and producer at New Georges, a strategically small theater company with a national reputation for taking a first look at new and experimental plays and artists and as a home for women+ and TGNC theater artists.  Previously, she worked at the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York and as part of her graduate studies, worked at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New Dramatists, and the Princess Grace Foundation. Before moving to New York, she worked for five years in the artistic office at Dallas Theater Center, where she co-produced the Fresh Ink/Forward Motion Series, a showcase of new works. Currently, Jaynie is an adjunct faculty member at Marymount Manhattan College. She has previously taught at Brooklyn College (her alma mater) and Montclair State University and has served on panels for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Brooklyn Arts Council, A.R.T./New York and Theatre Communications Group. Jaynie holds a B.F.A. in Drama Performance and a B.F.A. in Musical Theatre Performance from The University of Oklahoma and an M.F.A. in Performing Arts Management from Brooklyn College.

Liz Mikel / 08.31.2022 
Liz is an award-winning stage/film actress and vocalist who has toured both nationally and abroad, working alongside some of the industry's biggest celebrities. She had a recurring role as Corrina Williams on NBC's Emmy-Award-Winning Series, Friday Night Lights. She body slammed Ben Stiller in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. She portrayed Gertrude Saunders opposite the late, great Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis in the James Brown biopic, Get On Up. Liz has appeared Off-Broadway and on Broadway as Hetaira, in Lysistrata Jones. Liz had the prestigious honor of being personally invited by Activist/Playwright, V, to participate in the star-studded 10th anniversary of the Vagina Monologues. Most recently, she portrayed John Hancock in American Repertory Theatre’s revival of 1776 in Boston, which will move to Broadway from Sept 16, 2022, through January 9, 2023, and will then tour nationally. As a vocalist, Liz has opened for Erykah Badu, Branford Marsalis, Isaac Hayes, Joan Rivers, Gennifer Flowers, Chrisette Michele, Ledisi and her friend, Blues legend, Lucky Peterson. Liz is a proud member of the Brierley Resident Acting Company of the Tony-Award-winning Dallas Theater Center, where she has just celebrated her 30th year!

Lynn Nottage / 10.07.2022
Lynn Nottage is a playwright and a screenwriter. She remains the first and only woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama - twice. Most recently, Nottage premiered MJ the Musical on Broadway, Clyde's at Second Stage Theater on Broadway, and an opera adaptation of her play Intimate Apparel commissioned by The Met/Lincoln Center Theater. Her other work includes, Floyd's (retitled- Clyde's); the musical adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Secret Life of Bees; Mlima’s Tale; By The Way, Meet Vera Stark; Ruined; Intimate Apparel; Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por’knockers; and POOF! Her play, Sweat (Pulitzer Prize, Obie Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Tony Nomination) moved to Broadway after a sold-out run at The Public Theater. Lynn is also the co-founder of the production company Market Road Films and she has developed original projects for Amazon, HBO, Showtime, and many others. She was a writer and producer on the Netflix series She's Gotta Have It, directed by Spike Lee. Lynn is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, Steinberg "Mimi" Distinguished Playwright Award, and many, many others, including being named one of the Top 100 Most Influential People by Time Magazine in 2019. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama.  She is an Associate Professor in the Theatre Department at Columbia School of the Arts.

Season 4 Guest Circle
"Balancing Act"
Produced by Eric Berg, Lauren Floyd, and Jonathan Villalobos

Actor's Roundtable:

Gloria Vivica Benavides, Jenny Ledel,

and Denise Lee / 03.16.2022 Season 4 :  Episode 6

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Gloria Vivica Benavides earned her BFA in Theatre from the University of North Texas. Credits include Real Women Have Curves and White Rabbit, Red Rabbit (Dallas Theater Center); Dracula (Theatre Three); A Doll’s House, Elliot and A Soldier’s Fugue (WaterTower Theatre); Romeo and Juliet (Stage West); Where Earth Meets the Sky (Cara Mia Theatre), so go the ghosts of mexico, part two (Undermain Theatre), Within (Walkabout Theater), American Mariachi (Goodman Theatre), and Somewhere Over the Border (Syracuse Stage and Geva Theatre Center). She is currently the voice of Scarlett on One Piece with FUNimation and is represented by the Campbell Agency.

Jenny Ledel is an actor with over 15 years professional experience in stage acting, screen acting, and voiceover. She specializes in both the dramatic and the hilarious. She also teaches acting to interested adults, writes, acts in, and directs plays in her free time. She’s a fearless improviser unafraid to make bold choices when given the chance. She’s grateful for her husband, family, mentors, and her cat for their unending support and inspiration. She’s currently an artistic Associate at Second Thought Theatre and an acting company member at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, TX. She has also worked with Circle Theatre, Theatre Three, Firebone Theatre, Watertower Theatre, Undermain Theatre, and more.

Denise Lee is an award-winning actress, singer and down-to-earth diva! She is based in Dallas and has worked in many area theaters, including the Dallas Theater Center, AT&T Performing Arts Center, Bass Hall, WaterTower Theatre, Casa Manana and the Sammons Center for the Arts. She has also worked internationally in Shanghai, Beijing, Switzerland and France. Her company, Denise Lee Onstage, produces a Cabaret Series at Fair Park, and she has also developed multiple one-woman shows, including “Too Old, Too Fat, Too Black – Songs I’ll Never Sing On Broadway”  for which she won a Broadway World Award for ‘Best Cabaret Performer’.  She is the recipient of the Sammons Center for the Arts Cabaret Artist of the Year and multiple DFW Theater Critics and Dallas Voice Awards. Other performances include ‘The Sunshine Boys’ – with Dick & Jerry Van Dyke; ‘Crowns’ – Directed by playwright Regina Taylor, ‘The Wiz’, ‘A Christmas Carol’, ‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill’, ‘Doubt’, ‘Avenue Q’ and ‘Intimate Apparel’. Her television and film acting credits include roles in ‘Mad Money’, with Diane Keaton, ‘Cowgirls & Angels’, with James Cromwell, ‘Dallas’, ‘Memphis Beat’, ‘Good Guys’ and ‘The Lying Game.’

Glory Kadigan / 03.09.2022 / Season 4 : Episode 5

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Glory founded Planet Connections Theatre Festivity and currently serves as the Artistic Curator and Executive Producer of their renowned Playwrights For A Cause benefit.  Under “Playwrights For A Cause” she has presented world premieres by Erik Ehn, Halley Feiffer, Israel Horovitz, Neil LaBute, Wendy MacLeod, Winter Miller, Dominique Morissea, Jose Rivera, John Patrick Shanley, and Regina Taylor. She is an alum of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, La Mama Directors and Playwriting Symposium and of The Labyrinth Theater Company’s Master Class.

She is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers and the Actors Studio, PDU, and she has been the recipient of the Meritorious Achievement Award in Direction from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Her directing credits include Clover (La Mama), Safe (the 14th Street Y), Mean Girls (Alvin Ailey), and Biting The Bullet (The Atlantic). Glory is a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women which works to promote the visibility of women in the arts.

Yvonne Miranda / 03.02.2022 / Season 4 : Episode 4

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Yvonne is a costume, fashion, and scenic designer, as well as a US Marine veteran. Her passion for visual storytelling has led to work as a freelance fashion illustrator (where her art was featured on the Real Housewives of Dallas,) to designing the shirt worn by the 50-foot animatronic mascot Big Tex at the 2016-2018 Texas State Fair while working as the design coordinator for apparel company Williamson-Dickie.

A recent graduate from Meadows School of the Arts at SMU with an M.F.A. degree in Stage Design, she has garnered such achievements as the competitive Television Academy's costume design internship, as well as winning the 2019 Black Theatre Network's Judy Dearing Costume Design Competition. She recently married & relocated to the Chicago, IL area where she has several exciting productions all over the U.S. as a new member of the USA local 829, I.A.T.S.E Union, as well as the Design Action coalition.

Adrienne Dawes / 02.23.2022 / Season 4 : Episode 3

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Adrianne is an Afro-Latina writer, producer, and teaching artist from Austin, TX. She received her bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and studied sketch and improv with The Second City. Adrienne has been a resident artist with Colt Coeur, an Alice Judson Hayes Fellow, a MAPFund, NEA, and NALAC Fund for the Arts grantee, and a selected playwright in the 2018 Fornés Playwriting Workshop. Her play Am I White won an award for Outstanding Original Script by the B. Iden Payne Awards.

Her full-length plays have been produced by Salvage Vanguard Theater, Sacred Fools, and American Theatre Company. She has developed new work with The Workshop Theater, Queen City New Play Initiative, Stages Repertory Theatre, Teatro Milagro, National Black Theatre, and more. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, ScriptWorks, and a company member of Salvage Vanguard Theater. (And a reading of her play, Teen Dad, was produced through Echo Reads in 2017!)

Estefania Fadul / 02.16.2022 / Season 4 : Episode 2

Estafania is a New York-based Colombian-American director and deviser of new work. Her recent projects include The Garbologists (Philadelphia Theatre Company), Eva Luna (Repertorio Español), the Drama League Award-nominated Carla's Quince (The Voting Project), Kamloopa (WAM), Zoom Intervention (Weston Playhouse, NYTimes Critics' Pick), and the world premieres of C. Quintana's Azul (Southern Rep) and Scissoring (INTAR).

She was the 2020 recipient of New York Stage and Film's Pfaelzer Award and has been a directing fellow at Clubbed Thumb, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the Drama League, and Repertorio Español. She is also an artist with the Center for Performance and Civic Practice and a member of the New Georges Jam, The Latinx Theatre Commons advisory committee, and the Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab.

Tina Parker / 02.10.2022 Season 4 : Episode 1

Tina is a graduate of Southern Methodist University Theatre, where she studied acting and directing. Active with Kitchen Dog Theater since 1993, she has been directly involved with over 58 of their productions. Her work has also been seen at the Dallas Theater Center, Junior Players, Shakespeare Dallas, WaterTower Theatre, Undermain Theatre, and the Arts & Letters Live Reading series.

Tina has appeared in many film and TV projects, including MINARI, WHAT/IF, and a recurring role on the award-winning Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. Over the years, she has received awards from Dallas/Ft. Worth Critics Forum, Leon Rabin Awards, D Magazine and Dallas Observer. Tina is active member of SAG/AFTRA.

Season 3 Guest Circle
"A New Direction"
Produced by Eric Berg, Jonathan Villalobos, and Kateri Cale

Regina Taylor part I  / 09.08.21 Season 3: Episode 4

Regina Taylor part II / 09.15.21 Season 3: Episode 5

Catherine is joined by actress, stand-up comedian, poet, and playwright Natalie Nicole Dressel to discuss sadness in comedy, making "mistakes," and her play There is Evil in This House, which was presented in our Echo Reads series in October 2021!

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Natalie is a transgender writer/actress currently living in North Hollywood, California, but is originally from Muskegon, MI. She has a BFA in theatre from Michigan State University and a Masters in Writing for the Stage and Screen from Park Point University. She is a stand up comic who won the 2012 Funniest Mouth of the South contest in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is a graduate of United Citizens Brigade LA's improvisation program.

Christie Vela Associate Artistic Director / Theatre Three

Theatre Three illuminates the human experience with exemplary, intimate theatre by nurturing authors, artists and audiences. Theatre Three is a recognized pillar of the North Texas arts community ― enriching lives by bringing audiences engaging, provocative, and professionally produced theatrical experiences in an intimate space.

Founded in 1961 (!) T3 is now in its 6th decade as a professional theatre-in-the-round in Uptown Dallas producing musicals, dramas, and comedies year-round.

Tonya Holloway Co-Artistic Director / Soul Rep Theatre Company

Soul Rep Theatre Company exists to provide quality transformative Black theater.

Founded in 1995 by Dallas/Fort Worth natives Guinea Bennett-Price, Anyika McMillan-Herod, and Tonya Holloway. Guinea and Anyika are both products of Dallas ISD's Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (Class of ’89), while all three co-founders hold BFAs in Theater from the dynamic undergraduate programs of Howard University and Prairie View A&M University. The trio returned to Dallas in the mid 90’s after attending graduate school programs and internships at regional theaters across the country. They shared a tremendous desire to establish a theater company in Dallas dedicated to the Black experience.

Kateri Cale Managing and Artistic Director / Echo Theatre

Echo Theatre champions the diverse voices of women+.

Founded in 1998, Echo has led the charge for gender parity on our region's stages for 24 years. Echo enjoys plays that encourage learning, growing, and evolving together as people and as an institution. Whether an experiment in form and language, a comedy, a drama, a historical piece, or a new translation, Echo produces rich and compelling work with high quality artistic effort.

 / 08.25.21 Season 3: Episode 2

 / 08.18.21 Season 3: Episode 1
 

For the season three debut, Echo brings you a part one of our new Round Table series, where Catherine leads a discussion with a select group of guests to discuss current topics in American theatre! This Round Table episode focuses on BIPOC women+ artistic directors in Dallas as they discuss the lasting effects of COVID in theatre and our country's continuing racial reckoning.

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Part II The panel discusses building connections with BIPOC audiences, the new AEA Open Access program, and what theatres can do for women+ artists.

Reina Hardy / 03.31.21 Season 2: Episode 6 

Reina Hardy is a playwright whose work explores elements of magic and science! Her play, The Other Felix, was a finalist for Echo’s Big Shout Out play contest in 2010, was honored by the Kilroy List in 2020, and will receive its regional digital premiere April 3rd as part of Echo’s main stage season!  Her other plays include Annie Jump and the Library of Heaven, Glassheart, and many other titles.  Her plays have been produced across the country, including at Rorschach Theatre in DC, the Vortex in Austin, and the NNPN National New Play Showcase.

She’s a Michener Fellow, winner of the Kennedy Center ACTF TYA Prize, finalist for the Terrence McNally Prize, and the recipient of an Interact 20/20 Commission.  She is a graduate of Columbia University, and she holds an MFA in Playwriting from UT Austin.

Mia Chung / 03.10.21 Season 2: Episode 3

Mia Chung is a playwright whose works include You for Me for You, Catch as Catch Can, and This Exquisite Corpse. Catch as Catch Can was produced at Steppenwolf in 2020 and will be part of our Echo Reads season this July! You for Me for You has been performed at the Royal Court Theatre (UK), the National Theatre Center of Korea, and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre (DC).

Her work has been supported by awards, commissions, and fellowships including: the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Clubbed Thumb, Kennedy Center, LAByrinth Theatre Company, Ma-Yi Theatre, the NEA, Playwrights' Center Jerome Fellowship, Stella Adler Studio, TCG, and many others. She is an alumni of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, the Huntington Theatre playwright fellows, and New Dramatists. She attended Yale (BA), the University of Dublin, Trinity College (M.Phil.), and Brown (MFA).

Becca Chapman / 03.03.2021 Season 2: Episode 2

Chapman is the Executive Director of Prescription Joy, a healthcare clowning nonprofit in New Orleans that promotes healing through human connection and education. She holds a Master’s in Education from The University of New Orleans, a Bachelor’s of Performing Arts from the University of Southern Mississippi and has taught at Trinity Episcopal School for over a decade.

She trained in static trapeze, aerial sling, and partner acrobatics at Fly Circus Space and New England Center for Circus Arts and is certified by Dueling Arts International in broadsword, rapier dagger, unarmed combat, and quarter staff.

Anyika McMillan-Herrod / 11.30.2020 Season 1: Episode 6