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Join us on November 20 for our final Direct Address conversation of the year. Resisting Shakespeare returns with a roundtable conversation of Educators including:
Awele Makeba, Award-winning & internationally known storyteller, teaching artist, literacy specialist, recording artist, and educator
Elizabeth Carter, Award-winning Actor, Director, and Educator
Jana Maiuri, Arts Educator
Michael Anthony Torres, Professor, Chair, Director, Actor, Presenter, Theatre Maker
Clive Worsley, Director of Artistic Learning at Cal Shakes
November 20
5 PM PST
Live captions in English and ASL interpretation will be provided.
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Bios:
Elizabeth Carter is the Associate Director of the Theatre Department at Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. She has spent the last 23 years teaching acting, voice and Shakespeare performance across the Bay Area, joining Ruth Asawa as an Artist in Residence in the 2004-2005 school year where she has remained as a core part of the staff for the past 16 years. Elizabeth has also performed with numerous Bay Area theaters over the past 25 years including California Shakespeare Theater, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Magic Theatre, Word for Word, Aurora Theatre Co, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Shotgun Players and TheatreWorks amongst others. As a director, Elizabeth enjoys new works and has helmed projects for ACT, TheatreFirst, AlterTheatre, and African American Shakespeare Co and most recently King Lear for San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. She is a graduate of Mills College with a BA in Dramatic Arts, and studied in London with the Marymount London Drama Program.
Jana Maiuri has been teaching English Language Arts and drama to students at Edna Brewer Middle School in Oakland for the last 15 years. With her support, young students read, view, explore, question, discuss, and produce one of Shakespeare’s plays in the original text each year.
Awele Makeba has mesmerized audiences around the world including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Musikverein in Vienna, Tsinchu Teacher’s College in Taiwan, Suriname (U. S. Dept. of State Tour), Russia, Australia, France, Canada, Suriname, Austria, NYU, Stanford University and TED-2012. She is featured on 3 award-winning CDs, Tell That Tale Again, This Land Is Your Land, The Undiscovered Explorer: Imagining York, plus Trailblazers: African Americans in the California Gold Rush. Awele teaches high school drama in Oakland. In 2017 her students performed at the American High School Theatre Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland and they received a Broadway World San Francisco Region Award – Best Performance By Youth. In 2019 her students were invited to perform at the Oregon Shakespeare Festivals’ Juneteenth Program. Awele also received a NBC All Star Teacher Award. In 2020 she was featured, Diversity, Inclusion, and Representation in Contemporary Dramaturgy: Case studies From the Field, Editor Philippa Kelly, Routledge, 2020.Awele is the producer of the OUSD, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Oratorical Festival which was featured in the EMMY award winning, 2020 HBO documentary, We Are the Dream (Outstanding Children’s Program). Awele has spent 4 summers at CalShakes in a teacher externship shadowing Eric Ting as a director, Philippa Kelly, dramaturg-in-residence, and as one of our loved Grove Talk speakers. She is a company member of Theatre First, a community producer for the Magic Theatre’s Magic Oakland program, and does Audience Development for Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She is currently performing in 2 virtual performances, Affinity by Cleavon Smith at Theatre First and 4 Queens and a Trump by Ted Lange at African American Shakespeare Company (Dec 2020).
Michael Torres was last seen in The Importance Of Being Earnest at the Aurora Theater in Berkeley’s art district. In 96, he co-founded Campo Santo where he originated roles for Dave Eggers, Denis Johnson, Jose Rivera, Jessica Hagedorn, Octavio Solis and more. An award winning actor, Michael has played at The Shotgun Players, Crowded Fire, Word for Word, Berkeley Repertory, Teatro Campesino, California Shakespeare,The Magic, TheatreFirst among others and has toured the U.S.A. and Europe in shows. Recently, he co-directed with Elaina Wright (nomination for Best Directors from TBA) The Farm by Jon Tracy for TheatreFirst. Film wise, you can see him in About Cherry as Po and as Crow in The Other Barrio. Michael is the Chair of the Laney College Theatre Arts Department where he founded The Fusion Theatre Project. Michael holds a BA from San Francisco State and an MFA from the University of California at San Diego.
Clive Worsley is the Director of Artistic Learning at the California Shakespeare Theater. As an actor he has appeared on such Bay Area stages as; Cal Shakes, Berkeley Rep, Marin Theater, TheaterWorks, Center Rep, Shotgun Players, TheatreFirst, Town Hall Theater and more.