8 L.A. Artists

In Conversation / July 2020

July 29, 2020

5pm pacific / 8pm eastern
FREE – Zoom Registration Required

Join us virtually on July 29, 2020 for a conversation with 8 Los Angeles-based artists as they share their current creative needs and curiosities, which may or may not include: using technology to decolonize theatre and escape the Western canon, question leadership and accountability in our major institutions, artists as social workers, resiliency, our changing isolated bodies, nature and spirituality, systems, time, roots, funghi, repetition, and the microfauna growing on all of us. 

8 ARTISTS:

Milka Djordjevich
Jessica Emmanuel
Joel Garcia
Miwa Matreyek
Alexandra Meda
Anna Luisa Petrisko
DeLanna Studi
Kristina Wong

Facilitated by Patricia Garza
Hosted by Los Angeles Performance Practice

This project is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

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Milka Djordjevich is a Los Angeles based choreographer, performer and educator.  Her work draws from a variety of compositional strategies to question preconceived notions of dance, examining the moving female body in so-called “neutral” public spaces of theaters, galleries, and museums. Her work has been shown at several venues in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Santa Ana, NYC, Portland and Philadelphia, and internationally, in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Poland, Serbia, and the UK. Djordjevich was a 2006-2007 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a 2008/2010 danceWEB Europe Scholar, a 2017-2018 Princeton University Hodder Fellow and a 2020 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Artist Grant recipient. In 2016, Djordjevich established STANA, an organization cultivating Los Angeles, national and international dance connections. 

Jessica Emmanuel is a Los Angeles-based dancer, choreographer, performance artist, educator and curator. She studied Dance & Choreography at the BOCES Cultural Arts Center in New York and is a graduate of The California Institute of the Arts with a BFA in Performance & Choreography. Jessica is the founder of HumanStages and a co-founder of the theater based artist collective Poor Dog Group. Her work has been presented internationally at the Bootleg Theater, Live Arts Exchange Festival, the New Original Works Festival at REDCAT,  Teatr Studio at the Palace of Culture & Science (Poland), Highways Performance Space, Zoukak Studios (Lebanon), The Getty Villa, Interferences Festival (Romania), Baruch Performing Arts Center, The Curtis R. Preim Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) and The Contemporary Art Museum Santa Barbara. She has choreographed/performed for Poor Dog Group, Heidi Duckler Dance Theater, The MOVEMENT Movement, Ania Catherine Genevieve Carson, Bryan Reynolds, Paul Outlaw, No)one. Art House and Stacy Dawson Stearns. Jessica has also curated art events at various locations in Los Angeles.

Joel Garcia (Huichol) is an artist, arts administrator and cultural organizer with 20+ years of experience working transnationally focusing on community-centered strategies. His approach is rooted in Indigenous-based forms of dialoguing and decision-making (non-hierarchical) that uplifts non-institutional expertise. Joel uses arts-based strategies to raise awareness of issues facing underserved communities, youth, and other targeted populations garnering national press in publications such as the LA Times and Artforum among others. He’s the co-founder of Meztli Projects, an Indigenous based arts & culture collaborative centering indigeneity into the creative practice of Los Angeles. He served as Co-Director at Self Help Graphics & Art (‘10-’18).

Patricia Garza is a member of the artistic staff at Center Theatre Group (CTG) where they manage new play projects and programming initiatives as the Line Producer of Special Artistic Projects. They had the honor of working alongside Diane Rodriguez on a multi-year project specifically focused on collective and ensemble creation, engaging world-renowned international and local companies.  Prior, Patricia served as Assistant Department Director for Education and Community Partnerships at CTG for six years. They have been selected as a Theatre Communications Group’s Young Leader of Color, Leadership U Continuing Ed grant recipient, and as a fellow for the Salzburg Global Seminar on Young Cultural Leaders twice. Patricia was featured in Latino Leaders Magazine as a Club Leader for Los Angeles, frequently speaks at public events, facilitates group conversations, and has led strategic planning consulting processes for El Teatro Campesino and Playwrights’ Arena. They have served as a grant panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and The Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, among others. Patricia’s passion is working with other theatre professionals nationally on issues surrounding anti-racism and inclusion with a focus on the LGBTQIA+ community through artEquity. Board service includes Get Lit, LA’s leading nonprofit in teen poetry programs. Patricia has an MFA/MBA in Theatre Management from California State University, Long Beach, and a BA in English with a minor in Theatre Studies from UC Berkeley.

Miwa Matreyek is an animator, director, designer, and performer based in Los Angeles. Coming from a background in animation, Miwa Matreyek creates live, staged performances where she interacts with her animations as a shadow silhouette, at the cross-section of cinematic and theatrical, fantastical and tangible, illusionistic and physical, and hand-made and tech. Her work exists in a dreamlike visual space that makes invisible worlds visible, often weaving surreal and poetic narratives of conflict between man and nature.She performs her interdisciplinary shadow performances all around the world, including animation/film festivals, theater/performance festivals, art museums, science museums, tech conferences, and universities. A few past presenters include TED, MOMA, SFMOMA, Sundance New Frontier, Future of Storytelling, Exploratorium, Adler Planetarium, ISEA conference, Meta.Morph (Norway), Anima Mundi (Brazil) and many more. She received her MFA for Experimental Animation and Integrated Media from CalArts in 2007. She is also a co-founder and core-collaborator of the multi-media theater company, Cloud Eye Control. She is a recipient of the Golden Nica for Computer Animation at Prix Ars Electronica (2020), Sherwood Award (2016), Creative Capital Award (2013), and Princess Grace Award (2007).http://www.semihemisphere.com/

Alexandra Meda is a stage director, culture-producer, disrupter for social justice, and a digital media creator. She generates original works through collective/ensemble practices that are engaged both in person and virtually with artists and changemakers globally. As a devised theatre-maker, she nurtures female-driven spaces that center Women Of Color in vibrant collaborations between the community, performers, scholars, designers, thinkers, and artists. Positively shifting how we interact with, look at, and value the femme body is fundamental across her work. As the Artistic Director for Teatro Luna West, she directed and co-produced an Audible Original called TALKING WHILE FEMALE & OTHER DANGEROUS ACTS, featuring 25 short solo plays with original music. She is also the producer of a podcast of the same title available on all Podcast streaming sites. She is currently finishing development on THE TIMES  which she will direct both the stage and film version. She has a forthcoming book project on the relationship between collaboration, failure, and innovation with Dr. Liza Ann Acosta. She is passionate about her work as an anti-oppression facilitator and organizational change strategist and hopes to see you as a participant in one of her Creative Renewal, Collaborative Leadership, or Leading Change retreats or training events in her favorite cities worldwide. www.alexandracollaborates.com 

Anna Luisa Petrisko performs artistic research into the complexities of identity, history and culture. In built environments that are as much invested in the sacred as they are interested in technological speculation, the work explores future and ancient ideas coinciding at a non-linear tempo. Collaborating with many artists, she sees the shared work as a way to navigate relationships and cultural communion. Her mediums include experimental opera, video art, immersive theater, design, sound, music, textiles, and sculpture. She recently premiered a new opera VIBRATION GROUP and released the original soundtrack on Bandcamp. Anna Luisa is a current faculty member in the School of Art at California State University San Marcos, where she teaches Video Art and Sound Design. http://annaluisapetrisko.com

DeLanna Studi (Cherokee) is an actor/playwright whose TV credits include “Dreamkeeper”,“Edge of America”, “Shameless”, “General Hospital”, Z Nation, and the third season of “Goliath”. Her theater credits include the First National Broadway Tour of “August: Osage County”, Off-Broadway’s “Informed Consent” and Gloria: A Life”. She retraced her family’s footsteps along the Trail of Tears with her father and wrote her play “And So We Walked” which is currently on tour. Theatre for One recently commissioned her newest short play “Before American Was America.” She is the Chair of SAG-AFTRA’s National Native Americans Committee, and the newly appointed Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry.

Kristina Wong is a performance artist, comedian and elected representative of Koreatown Los Angeles.  Her national tour of “Kristina Wong for Public Office” about her run and win for local elected office was sidelined by the pandemic, she pivoted to touring “Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Empire” on Zoom about how in ten days she went from out of work artist to the Factory Overlord of the Auntie Sewing Squad, a national network of people of all genders who have turned our living rooms into homemade mask sewing “sweatshops” because of the failure of the Federal Government to provide proper PPE to essential workers and vulnerable communities. .  In the “Before Times,” Kristina toured her award winning solo shows internationally, was a guest on late night television, and created the kids web series “Radical Cram School.” www.kristinawong.com