Chi-wang Yang (Los Angeles, CA)
Theater Director
Chi-wang Yang is a Los Angeles-based theater director and digital media artist. Committed to physical performance and interdisciplinary collaboration, his work synthesizes stage, media, and technology. His work has been featured at REDCAT (Los Angeles), New York International Fringe Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe, Time-Based Arts Festival (Portland), and the Platform International Animation Festival. Recent projects include the world-premier staging of composer Sandeep Bhagwati's Vineland Stelae, conceived as a theatrical concert at REDCAT, and co-directing a week of 365 Plays/365 Days Festival at the Public Theater. Chi-wang received his MFA in Theater Directing and Integrated Media at the California Institute of the Arts. Other training includes the SITI Company with Anne Bogart, the Kitchen Summer Institute, and Brown University. He is a recipient of the 2006 Princess Grace Award for Theater Directing. www.mysteriously.org

Aleigh Lewis (Los Angeles, CA)
Co-Creator/Filmmaker
Aleigh co-founded The Closest Farthest Away and has spent extensive time in Cuba since the project’s inception.  Aleigh’s role in the performance is to connect the cinema world to the theater world. Aleigh is a candidate for an MFA in Film/Video at CalArts in 2010. She has been selected as the first CalArts student to attend a four month residency at the prestigious cultural institution CENTQUATRE in Paris, France starting May, 2010.  She will be doing research for a documentary film about the politics and aesthetics of light and the balance between quality lighting and energy efficiency.  Aleigh is a recent recipient of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences internship grant which funded assisting Academy Award nominated director Kirby Dick in the summer of 2009. www.aleighlewis.com

Boris Gonzales Arenas (Havana, Cuba)
Film Director, Writer
Boris is a fiction film director who graduated from Latin America's premier film school, La Escuela Internacional de Cine. He also holds a B.A. in History and is currently teaching philosophy to film and theater students at the ISA, Cuba's primary university for the arts. He has written and directed numerous short films and documentaries in Cuba and Spain. Boris was assistant director to Fernando Perez' award winning feature Suite Habana.

Sage Lewis (Los Angeles, CA)
Creator/Composer
Sage is the composer and co-founder of The Closest Farthest Away and has produced the work throughout its many phases. He works as a freelance composer and sound designer for live performance, animation, film, and video games.  Recent projects include Musical Director of Under Polaris, a Cloud Eye Control performance at the REDCAT, music authoring for Rock Band 2, and a new  work for a bi-national performance between two children's choirs from Los Angeles and Havana.  Sage has an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BA from the Oberlin Conservatory in Music Composition.  He is a recipient of the 2009 Sherwood Award administered by Center Theatre Group. www.sagelewismusic.com

Yasef Ananda (Havana, Cuba)
Producer
Yasef is a producer, writer, and film director. His 16mm film, Gozar, Comer, Partir, won Best Short Fiction in the Havana Film Festival in 2006.  Yasef holds a B.F.A in Audiovisual Communication from the Instituto Superior de Arte, as well as a Master’s degrees in Filmmaking from the Escuela Internacional de Cine and the University of Bergen, Norway.  Yasef has directed numerous international films, music videos, commercials, and television shows throughout Cuba, Mexico, Bollywood, China, and Japan.  He now lives in Beijing where he is getting his PhD at the National Film Academy of China.

Raúl Pérez Ureta (Havana, Cuba)
Cinematographer
Rául is an award-winning cinematographer from Havana. He has shot over 40 features and shorts around the world, most notably those of Cuban director Fernando Pérez such as La Vida es Silbar and Suite Habana. La Vida es Silbar won over 17 awards such as the Special Jury Prize at Sundance, the C.I.C.A.E. award at the Berlin International Film Festival, a Goya for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film and Best Cinematography at the Havana International Film Festival. His latest collaboration with Fernando Pérez, Madrigal, won the Silver Dolphin award for Best Cinematography at the Festória-Tróia International Film Festival. Another recent film, Madinusa, a Spanish-Peruvian co-production, won Best Cinematography at the Cine Ceará National Cinema Festival and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at Sundance Film Festival.

Miranda Wright (Los Angeles, CA)
Producer
Miranda is an independent producer for live performance, and the co-founder of The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts.  She received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, where she participated in some of the first theatre centered sustainability courses in the country.  She has presented at the Theatre Materials/Material Theatres conference hosted by the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and the Earth Matters On Stage conference in Eugene, OR.  She is currently working on Cooking Oil, a staged play scheduled to perform at the National Theater of Uganda in October 2010. www.sustainablepractice.org

Armando McClain (Los Angeles, CA)
Actor
Armando McClain is a recent Acting MFA graduate from the California Institute of the Arts. Only just now beginning his journey in LA with shows at Theater 150 in Ojai & the Pasadena Playhouse, Armando is very excited & honored to be working on such and heartfelt and important project as this and hopes to continue to work with these fine talented people. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area some credits include; Hamlet (Player King/Fortinbras), The Night is a Child (Henrique), Smoke Lilies and Jade (Langston Hughes), Bash (Iphigenia in Orem), Blue/Orange (Christopher), That Untraveled World (Herald) and Tartuffe (Tartuffe).

Yipsia Torres Cueva (Havana, Cuba)
Actor
Yipsia has acted for the camera throughout Cuba, Italy, and Spain.  Film credits include Video de Familia by Humberto Padrón, Color Habana, Rosa la China, Habana Blues, Siempre Habana, Páginas del diario de Mauricio, and Intermezzo.  Television credits include Deporte y Amor, Todos para Uno, La Noticia del Año, Corazón Partido Bajo Otra Circunstancia, Violetas de Agua, and Oh, La Habana.  She has a degree in acting from Cuba's Instituto Superior de Arte.

Andrea LeBlanc (Los Angeles, CA)
Actor
Andrea received her MFA in performance from CalArts and is a founding member of Blank-the Dog theatre company.  She most recently co-created and starred in The Carolyn Bryant Project at RedCat’s spring studio and played Vanessa for BBC radio’s premiere of Margaret Heffernan’s new plays, Power Play and Willful Blindness. She also plays Jill in the upcoming film, Flying Lessons, directed by Derek Magyar.  In May 2006, she began to establish her presence in France, performing in the tour of Michel Vinaver’s, September 11, 2001 under the direction of Robert Cantarella. The tour began in Dijon, France and ended in Paris at The National Theatre at the Colline.  She will collaborate again this year with Mr. Cantarella in Paris at France’s new cultural institute, The 104.

Nathan Ruyle (Los Angeles, CA)
Sound Designer
Nathan is an artist, designer and producer whose professional credits include sound, music, performance, visual and interactive media creation for gallery, stage and screen. Nathan is the '09-'10 visiting artist for the Center for Integrated Media and adjunct faculty in the School of Film/Video at CalArts while also contributing as an audio producer on the public radio show Marketplace. Additionally, Nathan maintains his own private studio and consulting company, focusing on new media creation and integration strategies. His work has been presented at Sundance, Cannes, MOMA, Microsoft and many other venues around the world. www.thisissounddesign.com

Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (New York, NY)
Lighting Designer
Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew is a theater designer in lighting and video and a puppetry artist.  She has extensive experience with new works and adaptations in a collaborative setting.  As a designer she aims to create a visual environment that is organically integrated into the landscape and language of the production.  Her designs have been seen in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland OR, Minneapolis, and Madison WI.  As puppetry artist, Jeanette has worked with many contemporary puppetry artists including Janie Geiser, Susan Simpson, and Paul Zaloom as designer.  In addition, she also creates original pieces with a contemporary aesthetic.  She is also the recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program and is an adjunct faculty member with Stony Brook University's Theatre Arts Department. www.jeanetteyew.com

Shannon Scrofano (Los Angeles, CA)
Scenic Designer
Shannon Scrofano is a designer who creates original devised work with a focus on site specificity, integrated multimedia, civic engagement and participation strategies.  Her collaborations include live performance, installation, conference and film projects around the US as well as abroad.  Her work has been seen at PICA’s TBA, REDCAT, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Evidence Room, Baryshnikov Arts Center, the Orchard Project, St. Ann’s, Manual Archives, Montreal Fringe, Tribeca Film Festival, the Berlinale and the Oscar Awards, as well as in car dealerships, state legislatures, barns, condo showrooms, plazas, libraries, warehouses, medical labs, skyscrapers, open fields, crumbling cathedrals, and rooftops in multiple cities. She is a company member of Sojourn Theatre and the performance collective TENT, a graduate of Northwestern University, and holds her MFA from CalArts, where she currently teaches.

Joy Tomasko (New York City, NY)
Writer
Joy Tomasko was the 2009 Playwright-in-Residence at Women's Project, where her multi-disciplinary performance piece Talk Soon is currently in development with the support of the New York State Council on the Arts. Unfold Me was presented off-Broadway at Arielle Tepper's Summer Play Festival.  My End has been developed at The Lark, Soho Think Tank, and has recently evolved into a music theater piece entitled Mia Luna with composer Andrew Lynch and developed at Primary Stages Theatre School, The Playwrights Center and Nautilus Music-Theater's Rough Cuts. Joy was a 2008 MacDowell Colony Fellow, a 2008-2009 Jerome Fellow and the recipient of a 2009 AROHO Foundation Creative Woman Scholarship. She is currently a writer on Jake Witlen’s Virtual Odyssey for The Internationalists, the Playwright-in-Residence teaching at The Gateway Middle School in NYC, and a participant in St. Ann’s Warehouse Puppetry Lab. Joy received her MFA from CalArts.

Agnieska Hernandez Díaz (Havana, Cuba)
Writer
Agnieska is a playwright who has received numerous literary awards throughout Cuba including the Playwright's Prize from the Royal Court Theatre in London and the Grand Prize of Theater from the Spanish Embassy in Cuba, 2006. Her work has been published nationally in literary magazines and anthologies of short stories. She has a B.F.A from Cuba's art school El Instituto Superior de Arte where she is currently teaching playwriting. She is also a specialist at the National Counsel for Theater Arts in Cuba, where she is overseeing the production process of the International Havana Theater Festival, slated in 2009.

Adrianne Koteen (San Francisco, CA)
Still Photographer
Adrianne Koteen is a freelance photographer and arts consultant who lives in San Francisco. She has been working as an editor and curator with the International Museum of Women on the exhibit and anthology “Imagining Ourselves: A Global Generation of Women” for the past five years. Her photography has taken her to six continents, and her work has been used in numerous non-profit settings, including an Imagining Ourselves exhibit at the United Nations. Currently her work as a co-producer on a documentary short can be seen as part of the Ironweed Film Club, and her photographic work can be seen in a traveling exhibit entitled “Tibet in Sight and Sound.” She holds a BA in Visual Art and African American Studies from Oberlin College. See adriannekoteen.com.

Laura Vitier (Havana, Cuba)
Assistant Director
Laura Vitier has worked in the cuban film and theater industry since graduating from the University of Havana. She has produced productions for Teatro América, and worked as Assistant Director for Cuban filmmakers such as Humberto Padrón, Enrique Pineda Barnet’s latest film Te Espero en La Eternidad, and most recently with Arturo Infante for Gozar, Comer, Partir which won the prize for Best Latin American Short at the International Havana Film Festival.

Karina Peña Rodríguez (Havana, Cuba)
Art Director
Karina is a visual artist, art director, and set designer. She works regularly as an art director for Cuban National Television and feature films. Her art work has been shown in galleries and museums and her set design has been seen in numerous plays around Cuba. She holds a BFA in art direction and set design from El Instituto Superior de Arte.

Kirin Kapin (Portland, CA)
Sound Engineer
Kirin received his MFA in World Music Performance from Cal Arts in 2006, specializing in gamelan music from Java, Indonesia. During his studies at Cal Arts he wrote the Hyper-Opera "Music for Normal People" and Directed the Hyper-Opera "The Queen in Yellow" under the guidance of Anne LeBaron. His film scores and songs have been featured at film festivals around the US, including the San Diego Asian Film Festival, Woods Hole Film Festival in Massachusetts, the UCLA Animation Showcase, and the Action on Film Festival in Long Beach, CA, among others. Kirin received his BA in Music (Flute/Composition) from UC Santa Cruz. See kirinkapin.com.