#GettingPlayed
Maria Giese (www.mariagiese.com) is a feature film director and screenwriter educated at Simon's Rock of Bard College, Wellesley College, and UCLA's Graduate School of Theatre, Film and Television. An active member of the Directors Guild of America and an activist for parity for women directors in Hollywood, Maria lectures and writes about the under-representation of women filmmakers in the United States. Her articles have appeared in Ms. Magazine, Elle, Film Inquiry, IndieWIRE and the activist/agitator web forum she co-founded, Women Directors in Hollywood. Maria herself has recently been profiled in Bloomberg TV, ABC Live, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes and Fortune, among others, and she is currently the subject of several documentaries. In 2012, Maria began seeking legal intervention into Hollywood's hiring practices that keep women directors shut out. She approached the ACLU in 2013 who then called upon the EEOC resulting in the current industrywide Federal investigation on behalf of women directors. Maria is working on a book about her work and is attached to direct several feature films, her previous productions including two she also wrote: When Saturday Comes (starring Sean Bean and Pete Postlethwaite) and Hunger, based on the novel by Nobel Prize-winner, Knut Hamsun.
Free and open to the public. Seating is first come, first served after RSVPs.
Honorees
The Symposium's awards recognize otherwise unheralded contributions to equity in the entertainment industry. While those honored possess impressive lists of other, more publicly appreciated accomplishments, the lesser known courageous and critical actions for which they are awarded serve as inspiration, modeling for us all what we might also contribute. Past award recipients have been honored for refusing to write alternative character demographics for producers' commercial interests, refusing to audition as a stereotype, and investing their attentions and dollars only in those productions that support a more equitable world view. This year's honorees continue the tradition, and the presentation on February 27, 2016 includes one special award to be announced at the ceremony.
Natalie Leonard, JD/MBA is an attorney who directs the certified specialist program for attorneys at the State Bar of California. Prior to joining the State Bar, she clerked for the Honorable Harold Albritton III in the Middle District of Alabama and practiced labor and employment law at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco. She is also a Board Member Emeritus at the BALIF Bar Association. Before beginning her legal career, she worked at The Coca-Cola Company, where she helped to found KOlage, an organization for LGBT employees and allies that served as model for other affinity groups at the company. Natalie is a life member and longtime supporter of the Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to roots music and building community through music.
Roger Tang is a veteran theatre producer of over three decades and has worked with such playwrights as Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang and Philip Kan Gotanda. As a playwright, he’s written The Jade Con, Shadowed Intent, Truth and Lies, Third Generation Heritage and Mac ‘n Dex. He has also penned numerous sketches for the Pork Filled Players and several pieces for SIS Productions’ Revealed series of site-specifc theatre work. As a producer, he has helmed numerous Northwest and world premieres, from Hwang’s Bondage and Yellow Face to Genny Lim’s Paper Angels, Qui Nguyen’s Living Dead in Denmark, Maggie Lee’s The Clockwork Professor and The Tumbleweed Zephyr and Carla Ching’s Fast Company. He has sat on the boards of ReAct Theatre and the Northwest Asian American Theatre (where he helped build the Theatre Off Jackson). Called the “Godfather of Asian American theatre” by A. Magazine, he is a member of the national board for the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists (CAATA), is the Literary Manager for SIS Productions, the Executive Director of Pork Filled Productions and edits the Asian American Theatre Revue, the web’s foremost resource on Asian American theatre (www.aatrevue.com).
Karen Zacarías is reported by the NEA to be the most produced Latina Playwright in the United States. She wrote the celebrated libretto of The Sun Also Rises and Sleepy Hollow for the Washington Ballet and recently adapted Edith Wharton’s The Age Of Innocence at Arena Stage where she is a playwright-in-residence. Karen’s other plays include The Book Club Play, Legacy Of Light, The Sins Of Sor Juana, the adaptation of Helen Thorpe’s immigration policy memoir Just Like Us, the adaptation of Julia Alvarez’s How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, and Mariela In The Desert which she recently translated into Spanish (Mariela En El Desierto). Her work has been produced for numerous stages and include five world premieres: Destiny Of Desire, Native Gardens, the musical of Oliverio: A Brazilian Twist, the musical Ella Enchanted, and Into The Beautiful North. Karen has been awarded the 2010 Steinberg Citation-Best New Play (outside of NYC), National Francesca Primus Prize, New Voices Award, National Latino Play Award, Finalist Susan Blackburn, and Helen Hayes for Outstanding New Play. She is a core founder of the Latino Theatre Commons and the founder of Young Playwrights’ Theater, an award winning theater company that teaches playwriting in local public schools in Washington, DC where Karen lives with her husband and three children.
Special Remarks
Dr. Myrton Running Wolf holds masters degrees from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He completed his Ph.D. in Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University. Behind-the-scenes, Myrton worked in Production Management for Walt Disney Studio’s ABC Television Group on primetime network series LOST, Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Brothers & Sisters, and Criminal Minds. He was also a Creative Producer for The CW and NBC network television affiliates. His professional performance experience includes roles in feature films The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The New World, Into the West, several network television shows, and theater productions in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. As an award-winning writer/director/producer, his film and stage work has played across the nation. As an academic, he has taught at Stanford and Occidental College, lectured at Vassar College and Santa Clara University, and led workshops on theater making, identity politics, and the politics of ethnic minority inclusion/participation in mainstream media at numerous tribal and junior colleges.
Stanford University
February 27, 2016 ~ 1-5pm