SYMPOSIUM

Kamilah Forbes is an award-winning director and producer for theater and television and currently serves as the Executive Producer at the Apollo Theater. Known for her commitment to works by, for, and about the Hip-Hop generation, her directing credits include By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage, The Blood Quilt by Katori Hall, and Sunset Baby by Dominique Morisseau. She has also worked on Broadway productions including A Raisin in the Sun and the Emmy Award-winning The Wiz Live. Her HBO adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me earned widespread acclaim, including NAACP Image Award and Critics Choice Award nominations. She has produced major cultural events like Nas’ 20th Anniversary of Illmatic with the National Symphony Orchestra and What’s Going On with John Legend at the Kennedy Center. A Howard University graduate, Forbes co-founded the Hip-Hop Theater Festival and has received numerous awards, including the NBTF Larry Leon Hamlin Producer Award, NAACP Image Award, and a Root 100 Award. Appointed to the National Council on the Arts by President Biden, she is currently directing the Broadway-bound musical Soul Train, alongside Dominique Morisseau, Camille A. Brown, and Questlove. Forbes continues to amplify stories that celebrate culture, identity, and community, pushing the boundaries of storytelling and representation.

Dorcy Rugamba is a writer, actor, and director whose work seamlessly integrates both the performing and visual arts. Trained in dance by his father, Cyprien Rugamba, and in dramatic arts at the Royal Conservatory of Liège. A former member of Peter Brook’s renowned company, Rugamba has worked alongside several prominent contemporary stage directors. He co-wrote Rwanda 94, a monumental six-hour play. His works, such as The Investigation by P. Weiss and Bloody Niggers, grapple with the complexities of historical violence and its reverberating effects across time. In 2012, Rugamba founded the Rwanda Arts Initiative, which gave rise to projects like Planet Kigali and the opera Umurinzi. In 2022, he collaborated as associate director with Abderahmane Sissako and Damon Albarn on the opera “Le Vol du Boli”. He also created Les Restes suprêmes, a compelling visual and performative piece showcased at the Dakar Biennale 2022. In 2024, Rugamba launched Kigali’s inaugural arts market, Kigali Triennial, and published Hewa Rwanda, a critically acclaimed book that garnered widespread praise and was nominated for the prestigious Renaudot Prize.

Alina Troyano, aka Carmelita Tropicana is a Cuban born, New York based writer, performer and educator. Tropicana uses irreverent humor to challenge cultural stereotypes, performing feminine and masculine personas, animals, insects, cyborgs, and hybrid fantasy creatures. She’s currently working on Live Memoir, (2025) with her long time collaborator writer and director Ela Troyano. In 2024 the critically acclaimed Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!, a collaboration with playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, premiered at Soho Rep and was the farewell show for the theater’s home in Tribeca. She’s received a Latinx Artist Fellowship (2022); United States Artists Fellowship (2021); John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2017); and awards from Creative Capital (2016); Anonymous Was a Woman (2005); New York Foundation for the Arts (1987, 1991, 2006) and an Obie (1999). Her writing appears in her book I, Carmelita Tropicana, Performing Between Cultures (2000), a collection of scripts, short stories, essays and she is an editor on Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the Wow Café Theater (2015). She serves on the New York Foundation for the Arts Board of Directors, Soho Rep Board of Directors, and is a member of the Dramatist Guild.

Mei Ann Teo (they/them) is an Artistic leader at Ping Chong and Company, having formerly served as the Artistic Director of Musical Theatre Factory and the Associate Artistic Director and Director of New Work at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. A queer immigrant from Singapore, Mei Ann is a director/devisor/educator, making at the intersection of artistic/civic/contemplative practice, and working across genres, including music theatre, intermedial participatory work, reimagining classics, and documentary theatre. Teo’s work has been in international festivals including Belgium’s Festival de Liege (Lyrics from Lockdown by Bryonn Bain), Edinburgh International Fringe, Beijing International Festival (Labyrinth – Top 8 of Fest in Beijing News), Singapore Theatre Festival. They helmed Dim Sum Warriors the Musical by Colin Goh and Yen Yen Woo, composed by Pulitzer Prize winner Du Yun for a national China twenty-five city tour. They have directed and/or developed new work at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Theatreworks Hartford, Playwrights Realm, Goodman Theatre, Public Theater, Berkeley Rep (Ground Floor), Crowded Fire, History Theatre, Page 73, Musical Theatre Factory, and the National Black Theatre. Work includes Jillian Walker’s world premiere SKiNFoLK: An American Show, Madeline Sayet’s Where We Belong at Shakespeare’s Globe, Woolly Mammoth and the National Tour, the North American premiere of Amy Berryman’s Walden at Theatreworks Hartford (Best Production and Director- Connecticut Critics Award), and the English US premiere of Stefano Massini’s 7 Minutes at Waterwell. Teo received the League of Professional Theatre Women’s Josephine Abady Award and the Lily Fan Director Lilly Award. SDC.

Sxip Shirey is a composer and sound artist based in New York City. He is the composer and music director for the circus arts production LIMBO, produced by Melbourne based Strut N Fret Productions House and London based, Underbelly and South Bank Center. LIMBO which has toured internationally since 2015, including seasons at the Sydney Opera House, London’s Southbank Center, Bogota International Theater Festival, Munich’s Tollwood Festival and an appearance at Madonna’s 57th Birthday Day party. Shirey teaches workshops in “Text and Object Oriented Composition” at Norwegian Theater Academy in Fredrickstad which he considers the Black Mountain College of NOW. Shirey’s ongoing immersive choral works, The Gauntlet, developed with his artistic partner Coco Karol, have been performed at Rockefeller Center, The Sydney Opera House, Bard College and for the Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi. He is a collaborator of singer and song composer Rhiannon Giddens; released tracks include, “All Babies Must Cry” and “Woman of Constant Sorrow.” Shirey has presented at TED (2008), is a United States Artist Fellow (2011) and has been artist curator (2016) and artist in residence (2017) at National Sawdust, Brooklyn. Shirey composed for the short Neil Gaiman film “Statuesque” which premiered on Christmas Day on SKY TV, UK (2009). Other compositional highlights include composition for choreographer Dan Safer’s The One You Feed (2019) at M.I.T., and music for Little Amal’s visit with the artist Swoon’s Sibylant Sisters (2022) presented by Saint Ann’s Warehouse. Shirey created the electronic backing tracks for Paola Prestini’s Old Man and the Sea (2024) and Sensorium X to premier in 2025.