Guest Bios

November 12, 2023

Lisa Sanaye Dring (she/her) is a writer, director and actor originally from Hilo, Hawaii and Reno, Nevada. She has been nominated for an Emmy for her work as a writer and director. This year Lisa will have productions with Skylight Theatre (Hungry Ghost) and La Jolla Playhouse with Ma-Yi Theater Company (SUMO). She has recently worked on multiple projects with Meow Wolf and was a member of The Geffen Writers’ Room. She was awarded the 2021 Dorothy and Granville Hicks Residency at Yaddo, which honors one promising young writer a year. 

Ari Chadwick-Saund (they/them) is a South Asian/mixed race nationally produced playwright, emcee and multidisciplinary artist based in Portland, Oregon. Recent poetry publications include collections in Pile Press, Mythos Magazine, and Drip Literary Magazine.  They are a proud company member of Theatre Diaspora and enjoy collaborating with Portland area artist organizations; some include Oregon Children’s Theatre, APANO, LineStorm Playwrights/ Bag & Baggage Productions, Body Home Fat Dance, and Profile Theatre.  

Dmae (Dee-May) Lo Roberts (she/her) is a two-time Peabody award-winning writer, director, theatre and media artist and is the executive producer of the nonprofit, MediaRites. Her Peabody award-winning documentary Mei Mei, a Daughter’s Song is a harrowing account of her mother’s childhood in Taiwan during WWII. Her Peabody award-winning series Crossing East was the first AAPI history series distributed on 230 public radio stations. With Samson Syharath,(See-hah-rahth) she co-founded Theatre Diaspora, Oregon’s first AAPI theatre, as a project of MediaRites. Roberts directed two shows at Oregon Children’s Theatre. She will be directing for Yohen at PassinArt Theatre and for Portland Opera on a new opera she was commissioned to write. 

Cristi Miles (she/they) 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 3 pet friends. She wildly enjoys teaching, and making radical art with PETE (petensemble.org) where they recently concluded FRONTERIZA, a three year long project investigating Cristi’s identity in context of the immigration crisis along the US/Mexico border.  Her work has taken her all across the Pacific Northwest and Northeastern parts of the US. 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).

November 19, 2023

Jimena Alvarado (she/her) is a professor specializing in gender, sexuality, and intercultural issues. Jimena is a Queer Central American immigrant who has gone back and forth for decades, and has recently decided to make Portland her permanent home.