Greater Good Theater Festival

Julissa Contreras is a Dominicana from the Bronx; she is a creator of the YouTube hit “Shit Spanish Girls Say” and creator of the “Ladies Who Bronche” podcast. Julissa is a playwright, actor, director, and current member of The Middle Voice at Rattlestick Theater. Currently, Julissa is working on her new play “La Greña” which was part of the MLK Festival at Teatro LATEA. She was a writer for Mitu’s “the Kat Call” (season 3) and recently wrote an episode for “Lenny Says” as part of the Spotlight program. She was a member of the Lather, Rinse, Repeat playwright collective and the Gingold Group’s Speakers Corner. Julissa has had her work presented at The Rattlestick Theater’s Play Jam Festival 2010 and 2017, Rebel Verses at Developing Artist Theater, One-Minute Play Festival (INTAR 2012-2017, NY Indie Theatre 2017), and in the Irene Fornes HPRL New Play Festival at Intar Theater.

Candice D’Meza is a social practice multi-disciplinary performance artist, writer, and activist. Her art ritualizes the public space for the reclamation and repatriation of self through song, dance, theatrical performance, audio-visual installation, diary/memoir, and film. Her work explores themes related to identity, diaspora, African spiritual technologies for connection, land and water. Heavily inspired by Theater of The Oppressed, all of my work intentionally invites those present to invoke, whether physically or sonically, the construction or reconstruction of self-determined liberated identities. Currently, D’Meza’s creative work explores the uses of fantasy and imagination as a radical liberatory practice. Her speculative fiction playwriting series, “30 Ways To Get Free” and her recursive memoir-mythology theatrical performance entitled “Fatherland” (funded by the City of Houston) use fiction as a call to arms to invent new and exciting possibilities of freedom. Candice is a proud mother of two boys, a daughter of water, and a child of Ayiti. More about her work can be found at www.candicedmeza.com.

Christin Eve Cato is a playwright and performer from the Bronx. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Playwriting at Indiana University. She completed her BA degree from Fordham University, and is also a graduate from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and the Performing Arts. Cato is affiliated with NYC theater companies: Pregones/PRTT, INTAR Theatre, and the Latinx Playwrights Circle. With a Puerto Rican and Jamaican heritage, Cato’s artistic style is heavily influenced by Caribbean culture and the Afrolatinx diaspora. Workshop productions & staged readings include: “Stoop Pigeons” (CTH’s Future Classics Reading Series; O’Neill NPC Semi-Finalist); “jelly beans” (Indiana University); “What’s Up With Marjorie?” (Teatro Vivo); “From Hunts Point To Whitlock” (Pregones Theater/Harlem9); “Smacked-Up Love” (Indiana University); “Just A Visit” (Play Your Part Seattle). Check out more stuff here: www.christinevecato.com

Shenny De Los Angeles is a Dominican-American storyteller based in Brooklyn. Shenny centralizes Black Caribbean femmes in her writing, captivating the power of their joy. Currently, she is a 2020 Suite Space Artist at Mabou Mines Theatre, where she is developing her one woman show entitled “What Happens to Brown Girls Who Never Learn How to Love Themselves Brown?” During this vulnerable and confusing time, she decided to tap into abundance and create a short film integrating text from her original play to tell the story.

Rachel Lynett is a queer Afro-Latinx playwright. All of her plays are dark comedies that center on queer people of color and how they attempt to navigate through the various complexities of their existence. Her plays have been featured at Mirrorbox Theatre, Laboratory Theatre of Florida, Barrington Stage Company, Theatre Lab, Theatre Prometheus, Florida Studio Theatre, Laughing Pig Theatre Company, Capital Repertory Theatre, Teatro Espejo, the Kennedy Center Page to Stage festival, Theatresquared, Equity Library Theatre, Chicago, Talk Back Theatre, American Stage Theatre Company, and Orlando Shakespeare Theatre. In 2017, her play “Well-Intentioned White People” was an honorable mention for The Kilroy’s and in 2020, “Last Night” and “HE DID IT” made the Kilroy’s List. Rachel Lynett is also the Artistic Director of Rachel Lynett Theatre Company.

Latinx Playwrights Circle started as a “pop up” organized by Chicago writers Nancy García Loza and Isaac Gomez in October 2017. From there, the group has been spearheaded and organized by playwrights Guadalís Del Carmen (Ars Nova Resident Artist) and Oscar A. L. Cabrera (The Public Emerging Writers Group) with Janio Marrero serving as Executive Director. LPC’s mission is to build a network of LatinX Playwrights nationwide in order to promote, develop and elevate their work while making their plays accessible to theater makers looking to find the next generation of American Storytellers. The group is mentored by esteemed playwrights Migdalia Cruz, Carmen Rivera, and Cándido Tirado. www.latinxplaywrights.com

Guadalís Del Carmen is an avid playwright, performer and… Dominican. During the pandemic she learned to cook oxtail, then wrote about it. She’s an Ars Nova Resident Artist, Co-Artistic Director of the Latinx Playwrights Circle, Artistic Associate of Black Lives Black Words, and a proud Chicagoan. Her play Bees and Honey would’ve had it’s Off Broadway premiere had it not been for La Rona. Her list of plays can be found on New Play Exchange. You can currently find Guadalís staring out the window, “thinking of a master plan…”, while sipping a cup of Earl Grey tea latte. Insta @guadalisdc

Darrel Alejandro Holnes is a Panamanian-American writer, performer, and educator. His writing has been published in English, Spanish, and French in literary journals, anthologies, and other books worldwide and online. He also writes for the stage. Most of his writing centers on love, family, race, immigration, and joy. He creates, teaches, and connects in New York City, NY. www.darrelholnes.com

Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater is a multigenerational performing ensemble, multidiscipline arts presenter, and owner/steward of bilingual arts facilities in The Bronx and Manhattan. Our mission is to champion a Puerto Rican/Latinx cultural legacy of universal value through creation and performance of original plays and musicals, exchange and partnership with other artists of merit, and engagement of diverse audiences. Pregones was founded in 1979 when a group of artists led by Rosalba Rolón set out to create and tour new works in the style of Caribbean and Latin American colectivos or performing ensembles. Established as a Bronx resident company five years later, Pregones remains in the vanguard of an arts renaissance radiating throughout and beyond The Bronx today. Spurred by stage and film icon Miriam Colón, PRTT was founded in 1967 as one of the first bilingual theater companies in all the U.S. It is credited for nurturing the development of hundreds of Latinx theater artists, legitimating creative connections throughout the Spanish-speaking world, and pioneering models for genuine and lasting community engagement. Following merger in 2014, our New York season plays a decisive role in empowering underrepresented artists and audiences to claim a place at the front of the American theater. Rosalba Rolón, Artistic Director. Alvan Colón Lespier and Jorge B. Merced, Associate Artistic Directors. www.pregonesprtt.org.

The inaugural digital edition of Greater Good Theater Festival is made possible, in part, with support from the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund at The New York Community Trust.

This program is also made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Southwest Airlines is the official airline of Pregones/PRTT. For a full list of our funders, visit www.pregonesprtt.org.