Ben Johnson is excited to be making his acting debut in Welcome To Arroyo’s. He is a NE Portland native who has garnered success nationally in the underground hip-hop scene under the MC name Milc, releasing several projects in the last 2 years alone (most recently ‘Neutral Milc Motel’ and ‘Windbreaker XL’). He has performed shows in Portland and beyond, opening for acts like Boldy James, Armand Hammer and Blu and Exile. This is Ben’s first foray into acting, and he’s excited for the opportunity to highlight the joy of rap and connect with his community in a new way.
Anthony “Tron” Parrish is an artist based in Portland, OR. He has been performing musically as Old Grape God since 2012, releasing 37 albums through 2022, collaborating with over 100 other musicians (including Milc, who plays Trip Goldstein). When he is not performing, he is a self-taught oil painter, poet, muralist, embroiderer, designer, producer, audio engineer, printmaker, or whatever the job calls for; claiming the title of All-Purpose Artist. After spending most of his 20’s working in leather goods, Tron made the switch to full-time artist, in a quest to explore every artistic medium and form of expression. He also co-hosts a monthly comedy show at Beuhlahland called Stoolhumpin’. Welcome To Arroyo’s is Tron’s first time acting outside of a music video.
Bobby Bermea is the co-artistic director of The Beirut Wedding World Theatre Project, a 20 year member and now part of the leadership body of Sojourn Theatre, and a long-standing member of Actors Equity Association. Bermea is a writer, director and award-winning actor and has appeared in theatres literally from New York, NY to Honolulu, HI. As a director, Bermea has recently helmed productions of My Soul Grown Deep and The Green Book with BaseRoots Theatre, Hollow Roots with BoomArts, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents with Theatre Vertigo, Wait Until Dark at Northwest Classical Theatre (for which he was a finalist for a Drammy Award), and Top Dog/Underdog at Street Scenes. This is Bermea’s third stint as a director at Profile Theatre (having previously helmed Blue Door and Fires In the Mirror) and ninth production at Profile overall and he’s ecstatic to finally be working on a comedy!
Mic Crenshaw is a world class MC and poet who has emerged on the national – and international stage. Crenshaw was born in the Southside of Chicago, and was raised both there and in Minneapolis, where he became a leading voice for social equity and racial justice. After moving to Portland in 1992, he quickly became one of the most respected artists in the Northwest – he has recorded and produced over ten albums, recorded and performed with Dead Prez and Immortal Technique, and is the founder and frontman for the Portland based hip hop group Hungry Mob. In 2001, Crenshaw won The Portland Poetry Slam Championship and went on to finish as a national finalist. He is a long-time anti-racist and social justice activist, educator, and co-host of the 11-episode podcast “It Did Happen Here,” which Crenshaw describes as “the people’s history of anti-fascist and anti-racist organizing primarily in Portland, but it draws from stories that involve Minneapolis and a broader national story that took place in the eighties and nineties.”
Tiffany Conklin is Executive Director and co-founder of the Portland Street Art Alliance (PSAA), a non-profit organization that manages and documents the creation of public works of art, educates the public about the significance of street art and related traditions, and builds supportive networks for local, regional, and international artists. Tiffany has nearly two decades of professional research experience, including 16 years managing projects at Portland State University. She holds a Bachelors in Cultural Anthropology and Sociology, and a Masters of Urban Studies from Portland State University, with a specialty focus on Public Space. As ED for PSAA, Tiffany manages the daily operations, including all commissioned work, community art projects, public policy consultation, and a variety of public engagement activities.
christopher oscar peña grew up in San Jose, California before moving to New York City to earn his BFA and MFA at NYU, and now splits his time between New York and LA. An in-demand TV-writer for such hit series as CW’s “Jane The Virgin,” HBO’s “Insecure” and ABC/Hulu’s “Promised Land,” for which he is Supervising Producer, peña works in media ranging from theatre to tv to opera.
A resident of New Dramatists and a former Fellow with The Lark, NYTW, the Playwrights Realm and the Old Vic/New Voices, peña was recently named Artistic Associate at Arizona Theatre Company and was listed on Backstage’s “Future Broadway Power List.”
His plays sit at the intersection of Latinx, LGBTQIA+ and American pop culture and interrogate the “American Dream” in ways that are current, fresh and illuminating. Profile Theatre is producing his play, “How to Make An American Son,” in June 2023.
Megan Tabaque is Filipina-Canadian playwright, actor, and arts educator. Her work has been developed, commissioned, and produced by the Alliance Theater, Salvage Vanguard Theater, Tofte Lake Center, the Workshop Theater, Paper Chairs, and Egg & Spoon Theatre Collective, among others. She is a Kundiman Fiction Fellow, Sewanee Writers’ Conference Scholar, Seattle Public Theater Emerald Prize finalist, Playwrights’ Realm Scratchpad Series semi-finalist, and a 2021 Four Seasons Residency nominee.
Recent works include Britney Approximately, a pop Greek tragedy commissioned by Vanderbilt University and Decapitations, a comedic haunting of a multi-facial family in Florida by the ailing president of an HOA (scheduled for Salvage Vangaurd Theater’s 2023 season).
She is currently developing a brand new play about conspiracy theorists and human trafficking in Asian American communities titled Marry Me, Bruno Mars for Emory University’s Brave New Works festival. Megan earned her MFA in Playwriting and Fiction from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX.
Alvaro Saar Rios is a Texican playwright living in Chicago. His plays have been performed in New York City, Mexico City, Hawaii, Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee and all over Texas. He has received playwriting commissions from various organizations, including Kennedy Center, Chicago Children’s Theatre, First Stage, Houston Grand Opera, Honolulu Theatre for Youth, Purple Rose Theatre Company, Houston Community College, Zoological Society of Milwaukee and Omaha’s Rose Theater.
His award-winning play Luchadora! is published by Dramatic Publishing Inc. Other plays include On The Wings of a Mariposa, Unmuted, Bienvenidos a Milwaukee/Welcome to Milwaukee, and Carmela Full of Wishes. Alvaro holds an MFA in Writing for the Stage and Screen from Northwestern University. He is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists and Playwright-InResidence at Milwaukee’s First Stage.
Alvaro is a proud veteran of the US Army and an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. https://www.alvarosaarrios.com/ Twitter & Instagram: @realCrazyMex
CHIP MILLER is a director and producer, currently in the role of Associate Artistic Director at Portland Center Stage at the Armory. Some of their recent directing credits include Rent, August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, Hedwig & The Angry Inch, the world premiere of Redwood (Portland Center Stage at the Armory), Larry Owens’ Sondhemia (Carnegie Hall), Journeys to Justice (Portland Opera), School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play, Welcome to Fear City, A Raisin in the Sun, (KCRep); the world premiere of Becoming Martin (The Coterie); dwb: driving while black (Lawrence Arts Center, Baruch Performing Arts Center). Upcoming: It’s a Wonderful Life – a Live Radio Play at Portland Center Stage and the world premiere of Kareem Fahmy’s American Fast at Artists’ Repertory Theatre.
Cristi Miles is a native of El Paso, Texas and is a theatre artist rooted in Portland, OR. She enjoys making life awesome with her husband, daughter and their 4 pet friends. She wildly enjoys teaching, and making radical art with PETE (petensemble.org), where this past November they concluded FRONTERIZA, a three year long project investigating Cristi’s identity in context of the recent immigration crisis along the US/Mexico border. Her work has taken her all across the Pacific Northwest and Northeastern parts of the US.
This year finds her teaching Reed, Lewis and Clark, and the University of Portland all for the first time! She has been previously seen acting on stage with PETE; Artist’s Rep; Third Rail; Portland Playhouse; Profile Theatre; Portland Shakespeare Project; and Teatro Milagro, as well as many theatres in New England. Cristi is a founding faculty member at the Institute for Contemporary Performance and a graduate of The Oregon Center for Alexander Technique (AmSAT certified teacher).
Ella deCastro Baron is a second generation Filipina American born and raised on Patwin and Muwekma lands (Vallejo, California). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, is a VONA alum, and teaches English and Creative Writing at San Diego City College and U Mass. Ella’s first book of creative nonfiction is, Itchy, Brown Girl Seeks Employment, and she will be/is published in Nonwhite and Woman, (Her)oics: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Coronavirus Epidemic, Anomaly, and The Rumpus. An embodied storyteller, Ella honors sensations, images, story, dance, and candid cultural insight to reflect the dynamic identities in all of us.
Ella explores what it means to have integrity—to be integrated—as a woman of color who lives with chronic illness. She co-teaches and produces workshops and kapwa (deep interconnection) gatherings that aim to reconcile folks—especially BIPOC—through decolonial, nourishing acts such as writing, art, movement, food (yes!) and community rituals. She lives and loves on Kumeyaay territory (San Diego, CA) with her husband and interracial family. Her favorite pronoun is We.
E. M. Lewis is an award-winning playwright. Her work has been produced around the world, and published by Samuel French. Lewis received the Steinberg Award for How the Light Gets In and Song of Extinction and the Primus Prize for Heads from the American Theater Critics Association, the Ted Schmitt Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a playwriting fellowship from the New Jersey State Arts Commission, the 2016 Oregon Literary Fellowship in Drama, and an Edgerton Award for Magellanica.
Other plays include True Story (upcoming at Artists Rep), Apple Season (National New Play Network rolling world premiere), The Gun Show, Dorothy’s Dictionary (winner of the Portland Civic Theater Guild’s New Play Award, and upcoming world premiere at Theatre Lab), and You Can See All the Stars (Kennedy Center commission). Lewis is mid-way through a Mellon Foundation National Playwright Residency, based at Artists Repertory Theater (ART). She is working on The Great Divide — co-commissioned by ART and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for the American Revolutions program — and her first musical. Lewis is a member of LineStorm Playwrights and the Dramatists Guild. She lives on her family’s farm in Oregon.
Kate Carroll DeGutes – Kate’s first book, Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, won the 2016 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and a 2016 Lambda Literary Award in Memoir. A wry observer and writer who started her career as a journalist, Kate is a stickler for the serial comma, and also believes that there should always be two spaces between a period and the beginning of the next sentence. Her second book, The Authenticity Experiment: Lessons From the Best & Worst Year of My Life, based on her critically acclaimed blog, was released in September, 2017 and won an Independent Publishing Award medal in LGBTQ Nonfiction.Kate was recently recognized by the Tanne Foundation for outstanding artistic achievement with an unrestricted financial award.
Kate has received fellowships from the Jack Straw Foundation, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Anderson Center, Artsmith, and Centrum. An authentic and humorous teacher, Kate has taught at Pacific Lutheran University, University of Idaho, University of Puget Sound, and Willamette University, as well as at the Kachemak Bay Writers Conference, Chuckanut Writers Conference, and the Willamette Writers Conference. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing from the University of Puget Sound and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.
Kate Moira Ryan Selected work- The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, written with Linda S. Chapman and based on Ann Bannon’s Lesbian Pulp novels from the 1950s, produced off-Broadway by Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner. (Winner: GLAAD Award and published by DPS). Cavedweller based on the New York Times bestselling novel by Dorothy Allison, produced by New York Theatre Workshop, directed by Michael Greif, and published by DPS. Other work (selected) includes 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, written with and for Judy Gold, which ran for a year and a half off-Broadway and had a three-year national tour. (Winner: GLAAD Award; a book based on the play was published by Hyperion and nominated for the Quill Award.) The Judy Show, also written with and for Judy Gold, was produced at Theater J, Williamstown, DR2 (Union Square), and the Geffen Playhouse. OTMA was produced by the Atlantic Theatre, Yakertinburg Young People’s Theatre, nationally and internationally. Playscripts published it. She was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn prize for her play, Hadley’s Mistake.
Kate has received numerous fellowships, including the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship to EST, Sundance Institute, the Trust for Mutual Understanding (Russia), MacDowell, Yaddo, Edward Albee, the Center for International Theatre (Russia), New York Foundation for the Arts, Brooks Atkinson New Dramatists Exchange to the Royal National Theater, Sumner Locke Elliott Fellowship to the Australian National Playwrights Conference and the Van Lier to the Women’s Project and Productions.
An alumna of New Dramatists, she received her MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University and started her career with the Young Playwright’s Festival. She is on faculty at the Einhorn School of the Arts/Primary Stages and is an instructor for the New York Theatre Workshop Master Class program.
