TOMMY SOULATI SHEPHERD, Keynote

Tommy Soulati Shepherd (he/him/they) is an internationally renowned actor, playwright, composer, educator, rapper, drummer, beatboxer and music producer. Tommy (aka Emcee Soulati) is a longtime member of the performance group Campo Santo who continue to tell stories of the people and Oakland's own Antique Naked Soul-The Soundtrack for Revolution. Tommy has composed, performed and toured internationally with Marc Bamuthi Joseph, collaborating on Scourge, the break/s, Spoken World, red, black and GREEN: a blues and /peh-LO-tah/. Tommy won a 2018 Isadora Duncan Award for his composition work and is a two-time GRAMMY nominee. Tommy brings love for family, art, activism and community building to all of his work.  His inspiration and hope for a more joyful and equitable world is felt through the hearts of families everywhere.

​

​

​

KATHLEEN ANTONIA TARR, Founder and Moderator

Kathleen Antonia Tarr is a University of California, Berkeley and Harvard Law School graduate, Advanced Lecturer at Stanford University in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, former Skadden Fellow (“legal Peace Corps”), and founder of the Getting Played Symposia. Kathleen has authored several publications about equity in the entertainment industry including "The Arduous Ride(r) to Inclusion" (2018) and "Bias and the Business of Show: Employment Discrimination in the 'Entertainment' Industry" (2016) which was touted by filmmaker, screenwriter, and activist Maria Giese as the most important document published on the issue of Hollywood's discriminatory hiring practices that year. "Bias and the Business of Show" evolved from Kathleen’s General Session presentation with special guests Amy Pietz and Edward James Olmos at the 2015 State Bar of California Annual Meeting which was attended by over 1,000 of California's attorneys.

 

2022 marks the eighth Getting Played symposium, named after Kathleen's documentary on (un)equal employment opportunities in the entertainment industry which received Honorable Mention in the 2010 International Black Women's Film Festival. Kathleen has produced two other films that were official selections in film festivals: the short animation "I Have All The Feelings" (2014 International Black Women's Film Festival) and the short sci-fi film "Early Aliens" (2015 ASTRONOMMO: Speculative Fiction on Film + Black Women). A triple threat by multiple definitions, Kathleen’s acting credits encompass stage, film, commercials, television, and video games including "House M.D.", Sundance award winner "Dopamine", "Sim City", "Time Crisis 3", and 2019's "Bennett's War." She is also appears in documentaries "Nevertheless" and "Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power," the latter of which world premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and internationally at Berlinale. Fun fact: Kathleen is also a Women’s American Football League draftee and indoor rowing world record holder.

​

​

ROTIMI AGBABIAKA, Panelist

Rotimi Agbabiaka is an actor, writer, director, and is currently teaching Acting and Solo Performance at Stanford University. Most recently, Rotimi originated the roles of Aladdin in The Magic Lamp (Presidio Theatre), Salima in House of Joy (California Shakespeare Theatre) and Cellphone in If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (Playwrights Horizons, Off-Broadway). Other acting credits include roles at Yale Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre, Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Shotgun Players, and TheatreWorks. Rotimi is also a company member of Word for Word, Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience (BACCE), and the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe. As a playwright, Rotimi penned and toured the solo shows Homeless, Type/Caste (Theatre Bay Area award), and MANIFESTO, and the musical, Seeing Red—co-written with Joan Holden and Ira Marlowe and produced by the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Rotimi has taught acting, movement, and play creation at the Yale School of Drama, Middlebury College, Bennington College, Southern Illinois University, the California Institute of Integral Studies, and American Conservatory Theatre, among others. Directing credits include the world premieres of VS. at TheatreFIRST and The Red Shades: A Trans Superhero Rock Opera at Z Space. Rotimi trained at the Moscow Art Theatre, received an MFA in Acting from Northern Illinois University, and has presented work at museums (the deYoung), in parks (with We Players), on street corners (with Jess Curtis’ GRAVITY), and on nightlife stages around the world (as alter ego Miss Cleo Patois). rotimionline.com

​

MARIA GIESE, Panelist

Maria Giese is an American journalist, screenwriter, and film director. She wrote and directed the feature films When Saturday Comes (96), starring Sean Bean, Emily Lloyd, and Pete Postlethwaite, and Hunger (01), starring Robert Culp. In 2015, after four years of activism in the Directors Guild of America, Giese became the person who instigated the historic industry-wide federal investigation for women directors in Hollywood. She and her work are now a subject of five recent books and three new documentary films: Half The Picture (Amazon, 2018), This Changes Everything (Netflix, 2019) and the new film she co-produced in 2022, Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power. This film, directed by Nina Menkes,  has just opened to rave reviews at its Sundance World Premiere and its International Premiere at the 2022 Berlinale.  In The New York Times, Manohla Dargis referred to Giese's work as “a veritable crusade.”  She has an upcoming book, Troublemaker, which describes her work getting the ACLU and EEOC to investigate the issue of discrimination against women directors—the ramifications of which are resonating globally. She holds a BA from Wellesley College and a Master’s degree from UCLA’s Graduate School of Theatre, Film and Television.

​

CIDNEY HUE, Panelist

Cidney Hue is a writer-director in NYC with a focus on building inclusive futures through science fiction. Her most recent award-winning film, Ovum, is a Black Mirror-esque short on the convergence of reproductive rights and VR technology. Her previous award-winning short, Odessa, recounts the journey of an astronaut’s last night on Earth. Her webseries for Wired & Reddit, Cyborg Nation, profiles scientists at the forefront of prosthetics, robotics, and brain-computer interfaces. She teaches filmmaking at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Cidney founded Pano (formerly NYC Women Filmmakers) in 2015, where she leads its thousands strong grassroots community to support women, non-binary & GNC filmmakers in New York. She can often be found traveling the world with her camera in tow, capturing Earth’s most spectacular natural phenomenons. Her lifelong goal is to visit space by 2050 so you should email her if you have an extra seat on your rocketship.

​

NAOMI McDOUGALL JONES, Panelist

Naomi McDougall Jones is a storyteller and changemaker. She has written, acted in, and produced two award-winning feature films. The first, Imagine I’m Beautiful (2014), collected 12 awards on the film festival circuit before receiving a theatrical and digital distribution deal and is now available on AmazonPrime. Her second feature, Bite Me (2019), was released via a paradigm-shifting 3 month, 51 screening, 40 city Joyful Vampire Tour of America that took the country by storm, and is now available on iTunes, GooglePlay, and Amazon. She is currently at work on her third feature film, Hammond Castle, for which she received the honor of being the first artist in residence at the final home of Ernest Hemingway in Sun Valley, Idaho. Naomi is an advocate and thought leader for bringing gender parity to cinema. Her writing on this has appeared in The Atlantic, Ms. Magazine, and Salon.com and she gave a virally sensational TEDTalk, What it’s Like to Be a Woman in Hollywood, which has now been viewed over 1 million times and can be seen on TED.com. Naomi’s first book, The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood, received an electric response, with The Christian Science Monitor calling it, “...an outpouring of passion that will change the ways in which movies are seen,” and is now available wherever books are sold. She is a Founder of The 51 Fund, dedicated to financing films by women. Their film, Cusp, won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Naomi’s newest project, out now, is a scripted fiction podcast, The Light Ahead, which brings together more than 120 artists and next economy activists to answer the question, “What would 2030 be like if the USA had an economy that truly worked and cared for everyone?” More at www.naomimcdougalljones.com. 

​

SEAN SAN JOSÉ, Panelist

Sean San José is co-founder of Campo Santo, new performances group for and by People of Color since 1996, and also the recently appointed Artistic Director of the Magic Theatre. San José is the first POC to be named to the position in the theatre's long, impressive history and will now help lead it into a new age by making it a home to more people by rightfully centering People of Color throughout the organization and inviting residents in throughout the calendar year for collaboration and community building. Come through.