Helly Minarti is Jakarta-born and works as an independent, itinerant dance scholar/curator, rethinking radical strategies to connect theory and practice. She is interested in historiographies of choreography as discursive practice vis-a-vis the eclectic knowledges that infuse the understanding of human body/nature. She worked as Head of Arts for the British Council Indonesia (2001-03), which set her off to curating. She has been involved in various arts exchange projects, forums/conferences, and conducted research fellowships in Asia, Europe and the US. She is a recipient of the British Chevening Award, Asia Fellows Scholarship, Asian Cultural Council and most recently the US-ASEAN Fulbright Visiting Scholar Fellowship. Helly earned a Ph.D in dance studies from University of Roehampton (UK) and has just relocated to Yogyakarta where she is preparing to launch LINGKARAN | koreografi, a collaborative research platform focusing to expand the critical notions of choreography.

Born in Tokyo in 1979, Akane Nakamura became involved in performing arts while she was an undergraduate in the College of Art at Nihon University. She handles tasks in a wide variety of areas, such as production of the activities of contemporary theater and dance artists and companies inside and outside Japan, holding of site-specific festivals, and execution of programs for interdisciplinary human resource development. She founded precog Co., Ltd. in 2006, during her stint as program director at the NPO ST Spot Yokohama (2004 – 2008), and has been its Representative Director since 2008. precog has produced the works of artists in Japan and other countries, including Toshiki Okada’s chelfitsch and Mikuni Yanaihara’s Nibroll, and handled international tours and co-productions in 70 cities in 30 different countries. In 2009, she established the NPO Drifters International. She proposed and is one of the directors of the Open Network for Performing Arts Management (ON-PAM). Since 2011, she has served as a part-time instructor in the Nihon University College of Art. She has built up an impressive record of collaboration with other parties, such as The Japan Foundation Asia Center, British Council, Kanagawa Arts Theatre (KAAT), Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and the municipal governments of Kunisaki and Bungo-Takada in Oita Prefecture.

Since 2019, Ms. Nakamura has been broadening the activities of precog, as evidenced by its service as the secretariat of the True Colors Festival. This event is organized by The Nippon Foundation and aimed at transcending disabilities and differences in aspects including gender, generation, language, and nationality.

Masashi Nomura is a theater producer and dramaturge born in Nagano Prefecture in 1978. Since 2007, he has been enrolled in the production division of theater company SEINENDAN and Komaba Agora Theater. Alongside, he has worked as dramaturge for young directors. As the program officer of Okinawa Arts Council, he was involved in the establishment of a small theater/atelier Mekaru Base in Naha City. After that he started to organize the annual meeting of The Smaller Theatre Initiative. He is currently Nagano prefecture’s cultural coordinator and a board member of the Open Network for Performing Arts 10 / Management (ON-PAM). His latest works as dramaturge are The Bacchae−Holstein Milk Cows (Aichi Triennale 2019) by Satoko Ichihara, I Go Through You – Performance (Kyoto Experiment 2018) by Chikako Yamashiro, and The Story of Descending the Long Slopes of Valparaíso (Kyoto Experiment 2017).

Awa Gakuji is a true Okinawan who was born (in 1969) and bred there. He awakened to the world of theater with the organization of the troupe Gekishoku Otonadan in 2011. In Otonadan, he is the playwright, and has thus far created many plays that focus on Okinawa. As an actor, he has handled many roles of elderly people (both male and female), using his proficiency in the Okinawan dialect (Uchinaguchi). He joined in the establishment of Okinawa Art Culture Theater in 2015, and applied his carpentry experience to help build Atelier Mekaru Base, a small playhouse that opened in 2017.

The actor Toyama Shoichi was born in Tokyo in 1966 and raised in Okinawa. After making his debut in a drama made for television in 1986, he began appearing on the stage in 1988, and subsequently appeared in many plays that toured Japan. He moved the base of his activities to Okinawa in 2004, and was involved in the organization of Otonadan in 2011, Okinawa Art Culture Theater in 2015, and Atelier Mekaru Base in 2017. Within Gekishoku Otonadan, he handles the directing chores and publicizes works that could only be made in Okinawa both inside and outside the prefecture. At both Okinawa Art Culture Theater and Atelier Mekaru Base, he accepts performances by companies from outside the prefecture in addition to Okinawan companies, and also contributes to interchange among cultural figures. On the front of human resource development, he is engaged in a program on staff work, a camp for members of high school drama clubs, and other activities.

Mark Teh is a performance maker, researcher, and curator based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His diverse, collaborative projects address the issues of history, memory, counter-mappings, and urban contexts – often taking on documentary and speculative forms. His practice is situated primarily in performance, but also operates via exhibitions, education, social interventions, writing, and curating. His projects have recently been presented at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai (2020), Salihara, Jakarta (2019), Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre (2019), Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media YCAM, TPAM, Yokohama (2019), BIPAM, Bangkok (2018), OzAsia Festival, Adelaide (2018), Fast Forward Festival, Athens (2018), MMCA Seoul (2018), SPIELART Festival, Munich (2017), Haus de Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017), and Bangkok Arts & Culture Centre (2017), amongst others. Mark graduated with an MA in Art and Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London. He is also the coordinator and a member of Five Arts Centre, a collective (formed in 1984) of interdisciplinary artists, producers and activists in Malaysia.

Yudai Kamisato is a playwright and director born in Lima, Peru in 1982. His father emigrated to Peru from Okinawa, Japan. In 2006, he became the youngest person ever to win the first prize in the TOGA Directors’ Competition for his staging of“Desire Caught by the Tail,”written by Pablo Picasso. In 2018, he won the 62nd Kishida Kunio Drama Award for“The Story of Descending the Long Slopes of Valparaíso”. His work as a writer has attracted increasing attention in recent years, with his scripts appearing in the literary magazine Shincho and translations of his plays receiving performances and readings in Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei, and New York. From 2016-2017, he spent a year in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a grant from the Agency for Cultural Affairs. He was also a junior fellow of The Saison Foundation from 2011-2016.

Alfian Sa’at is the resident playwright of Wild Rice. In 2001, he won the National Arts Council Young Artist Award for Literature. He has been nominated 11 times for Best Original Script at the Life! Theater Awards, winning for Landmarks (2005), Nadirah (2010), Kakak Kau Punya Laki (Your Sister’s Husband, 2014) and Hotel (with Marcia Vanderstraaten, 2016). Sa’at has also been awarded the Boh-Cameronian Award in Malaysia for Best Book and Lyrics for The Secret Life of Nora (2011) and for Best Original Script for Parah (Wounded, 2013). His plays have been performed in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Melbourne and Berlin.

Born in Central Java, Indonesia, Muhammad Abe is based in Yogyakarta and works as an actor and researcher. He is the director of Indonesia Dramatic Reading Festival (IDRF). In 2019 he was one of the curators of Asian Playwrights Meeting in Yogyakarta. Abe has been working in various fields of art, with projects which include researching and exhibiting archives of Bagong Kussudiardjo and Wisnoe Wardhana for Jejak Tabi Exchange in Yogyakarta (2018), researching and writing for Pekan Teater Nasional Indonesia (Indonesia National Theater Festival, 2018), as observer for Asian Dramaturg Network (ADN) in 2018, and curator for Indonesian play in“ Indonesian New Plays”p ublished by Aurora Metro Books, London, 2019.

A choreographer, new media artist, she founded YiLab. in 2005 in Taiwan. The philosophy of the group is, ‘‘in a work, there is not just one dominant medium, only concepts that appear similar but collide with one another; every artist involved is an independent entity who has his/her own artistic trajectory, can freely put forward their viewpoint and undertake in-depth explorations of the core significance of the theme’’ . Combining the concepts and forms of new media and performing arts, Su attempts to rethink the possibilities of performing arts from the perspective of new media, extending the controversy and reflection of contemporary art in the face of the impact of digital technology. She was the artist-in-residence at the National Theater and Concert Hall in Taiwan, Arts@CERN and is currently the artist-in-research of EMPAC / Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY. She received the Jury’s Special Award in the 9th Taishin Arts Award and Alternative Design Gold Award in the 2017 World Stage Design Award.

www.suwenchi.com

Actor. Born and based in Okinawa, he has been engaged in stage creation for children’s musicals in Laos from 2012 to 2014. After returning to Japan in 2015, he performed in Othello in Naha, in Blind Blind Box, Donsoko, Clif of time, and other appearances. In video work, he was selected to play the role of hero in the drama Acres Grandmaster (2016). Since then, Kamida also appeared in some films, including Forgotten Whale Island (2017) and King Shoen (2020). Expanding the scope of activities using English and Lao, he started creative activities in Thailand in April 2019. As a member of theater Unit USUNDAY Brotherhood 3on3 won the International Award at Bangkok Theater Festival 2019, the theater festival in Thailand. For independent projects, he also produced and performed poetry and video concerts: Pure Earth Poetry, Yasugai, and Douchi Uchiunii.  

Lisa Ito is a writer, curator, and cultural worker. She is a faculty member of the Department of Theory, University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. She is the current Secretary-General of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP), an organization of progressive artists and cultural workers founded in 1983, and a member of the Young Critics Circle (YCC) Film Desk. She was among the fellows of “Condition Report”, a Southeast Asia-wide curatorial development program of the Japan Foundation from 2015 to 2017.

Donna Miranda is a choreographer living and working in the Philippines. She studied Anthropology at the University of the Philippines and received specialized training in contemporary dance in Philippines and Europe. At the moment she is producing works that delimit the notion of the choreographic through critical engagements with the institutions of dance and the body working along the intersection between choreography, pubic health and policy. She makes a living as a development worker providing communication and advocacy support to an international NGO on public and reproductive health.

Karlo Mikhail I. Mongaya is instructor, Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature, College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines-Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines. He is pursuing his MA Araling Pilipino with a thesis on the practice of revolutionary journalism during the height of the anti-Marcos dictatorship struggle in the early 1980s.

Ariane Carandang is the head artistic director of Sinagbayan (Sining ng Naglilingkod sa Bayan, or Arts for the People), a nationwide organization of cultural workers, artists, and educators founded 19 years ago and aiming to develop the youth in rural areas.

Cristina Ponce is a cultural worker from the group SIKAD or Sining Kadamay, doing work under its  performing arts progam Tanghalang Mulong Sandoval. SIKAD is a cultural group advancing the rights of Filipino urban poor. Her most recent performance is from the group’s documentary theatre on the government’s brutal drug war dubbed “Sa Digma ng Halimaw” (2018-2020), presented at the Jejak Tabi Exchange on Asian contemporary performance.She was part of the creative team for the Public Information department of Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement) as well as the Makabayan (Patriotic) Coalition from 2012-2017. In 2017, she was featured in the short film “Kontrata” by Mayday Multimedia which tackled the plight of Filipino contract-hired sales workers. In the same year, she was cast in a lead role as a migrant worker in the Taiwanese short film “Lovely Sundays” where she was also nominated as Best New Actor at the Taiwan’s 53rd Golden Bell Awards in 2018.

CHRISSY CRUZ USTARIS is a documentary filmmaker and a lecturer at the FEU Department of Communication and Mapua University School of Media Studies. She received her MA in Media Studies (Film) at the UP Film Institute and is currently pursuing her Phd in Philippine Studies at the UP Asian Center. She is a member of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP).