Dipankar Mukherjee

• Artistic Director
• E-mail: dipankar@pangeaworldtheater.org
• Telephone: 612-822-0015 Ext. 3

Dipankar Mukherjee is a professional director originally from Calcutta, India. He brings with him international experience and intensive training in both classical literature and directing. He was one of the founding members of a professional theater company in Madras, India and has administrative experience in both India and the United States. In India, he has directed plays in English, Hindi, Bengali and other Indian languages and taken his work to the streets of India to create socially relevant work. He is the Artistic Director of Pangea World Theater. Dipankar is on several non-profit boards such as the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, Center for Arts Criticism and the Irwin Andrew and Porter Foundation and Partners for Womens Equality He also serves on the National Steering Committee of the Asian American Theater Project, and South Asian Thater Arts Movement. Dipankar has been on multiple panels for the National Endowment of the Arts Panel, Minnesota State Arts Board Presentation grants as well as on think tanks convened by the Ford Foundation and Theater Communications Group. His credits include Procession, The Birthday Party, Twelfth Night, The Millionairess, Look Back in Anger, Five Finger Exercise, The Glass Menagerie, and The Little Clay Cart. At the Young Vic in London, he worked in the production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. In the United States, he worked with the South African playwright, Athol Fugard in his production of Playland at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta.

In 1992 he was invited to be the Resident Director at the Guthrie Theater where he worked in the productions of Nagamandala, Othello, A Woman of No Importance, The Rover, The Broken Jug and K- Impressions of the Trial. He has directed Mother Courage at the Guthrie Theater and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun produced by the Nevada Arts Council. In the Twin Cities, he has directed at Theater Mu, Teatro Latino, Teatro del Pueblo, Mizna, Katha Dance Theater, Theater and worked with many independent performance -art artists. He was invited to New World Theater to direct Nagamandala in 1999 and returned there to direct in their 2050 program. Dipankar has worked extensively with dancers to create cross-cultural work using his knowledge of Kalaripayattu, an Indian martial arts form as well as a director. He creates movement based theater performances in Pangea World Theater, bringing together text and movement in plays such as Osiris, Ajax, Rashomon, The Inner World and Conference of the Birds. Dipankar has worked extensively with Praxis International in Duluth and Advocates of Human Rights to create performances and workshops on domestic violence that are created to impact systems change in the legislation in the U.S. He has been the recipient of many research and study grants that have aided in his study of movement, martial arts and choreography techniques. Dipankar has been awarded the Twin Cities International Citizens Award in 2001 by the Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul for contributions in the area of human rights and international co-operation as well as an Excellence for the Arts Award by the Council of Asian Pacific Minnesotans in. He was honored by the Indian Association of Minnesota with an Arts Achievement Award and was a keynote speaker at their event. Dipankar recently received the Bush Leadership award to train with non-violence and peace methodologies at the local, national and international level. He was nominated and invited to speak at the Salzburg Global Seminar, an international forum for Arts activism and human rights.

Meena Natarajan

• Executive/Literary Director
• E-mail: meena@pangeaworldtheater.org
• Telephone: 612-822-0015 Ext. 2

Meena Natarajan is the Executive and Literary Director of Pangea World Theater and a professional playwright. She is committed to creating an international ensemble of actors, writers and designers in Pangea and bringing exciting classical and contemporary literature from all over the world to the Twin Cities. She was instrumental in founding and leading a theater company in India.

As a playwright, her scripts have been professionally produced in India and the United States. She has created, written and performed in mainstage and street theater pieces in India raising issues such as social injustice, corruption and dowry deaths. She has guided the theater’s growth and vision since its founding in 1995. In the U.S., she adapted Farid Ud-din Attar’s 12th century poem Conference of the Birds into a dramatic script for Pangea World Theater’s inaugural production in 1996. She adapted The Inner World based on two-thousand year old Tamil poems of love and war produced in 1998. Her most recent production was In the Mirror, a satire on the media written with the Pangea World Theater ensemble that premiered in Spring 2005.

She recently directed Draw Two Circles, a performance art piece created for the Naked Stages Program at Intermedia Arts. She wrote Osiris in 2004, a play based on The Egyptian Book of the Dead and the myth of Isis and Osiris. Other plays she has written include Rashomon and Bearing Witness with writer Luu Pham and Partitions based on the anti-Sikh violence of 1984 and the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. She wrote Shadowlines which was commissioned by the Minnesota Advocates of Human Rights and dealt with the bias against immigrants, Prayers for the Future which was commissioned by Amnesty International and performed at their annual meeting in Minneapolis in May 2000 and dealt with war and refugees and Silent Children with David Mura, which dealt with child labor. Her play Without My Country was selected to be read at the Women Playwrights International conference in Greece in October 2000.

She has received a Many Voices Cultural Collaboration Grant from the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, a Minnesota State Arts Board Career Opportunity Grant in 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 and an Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in 2004. She received a TCG Extended Collaboration grant in 2004 to work on a new play about the experience of migrations during partition. Meena is the past President (2000-2003) of Women Playwrights International, an organization that promotes the work of women playwrights all over the world. She serves in the Steering Committee and Board of Directors of the Network of Ensemble Theaters and also serves in the advisory committee of SAATH, a South Asian American Theater collective in Boston, Massachsetts. She was recently invited in the capacity of a delegate and observer to the Asian Women Director’s Festival in India in 2002 by the Ford Foundation. She has been awarded the Twin Cities International Citizens Award in 2001 and an Excellence in the Arts Award by the Council of Asian Pacific Minnesotans.

KATIE HERRON ROBB

• Office Manager
• E-mail: katie@pangeaworldtheater.org
• Telephone: 612-822-0015 Ext. 1

Katie Herron Robb began her journey with Pangea World Theater in 2000 as an artistic and administrative intern and has worked administratively with Pangea since then. A graduate of the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in Theatre Arts and minor in Mathematics, Katie has also trained extensively as an actor with the Flinders Drama Centre in Adelaide, Australia and DAH Teatar in Belgrade, Serbia. For Pangea, Katie has acted in Oedipus el Rey, Conference of the Birds, Strange Voyage, From the Ashes, Entrances and Exits, In the Mirror, Breaking the Silence (formerly Journey to Safety), Breath, Momentum, and Shattered Images. She has created Mirror, Mirror, a solo performance for the Naked Stages program at Intermedia Arts through the Jerome Foundation, and is creating another solo piece, Solo Flight, with Meena Natarajan, in the coming year, as well as continuing to perform and tour in Praxis International’s Will You Hold My Child… She sits on the Executive Committee of the Minnesota Association for Experiential Learning (MAFEL) and is currently Membership Coordinator.

JESSICA HUANG

• Development Associate
• E-mail: jessica@pangeaworldtheater.org
• Telephone: 612-822-0015 x4

Jessica Renee Huang writes plays cross-legged on the kitchen floor, often wearing one sock and chewing her cuticles. She and her laptop have survived higher education at the University of Missouri, a melodramatic stint in Phoenix and now write together in assorted Minneapolis diners and bars. Jessica used 10 of her 15 minutes on her short play Mermaids, which won the regional KCACTF ten-minute play award and was performed at the Kennedy Center at the national festival. Mermaids manifested most recently at 2G’s Free Range festival in New York City, now a creature of its own free will. Jessica cofounded the Unit Collective to contend with her multi-cultural confusion; she is currently a Many Voices Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center. Upon her 2009 arrival in Minneapolis, she began her journey with Pangea World Theater as a Bridges Artist and attributes many of her radical notions about the nature of theater to the smart people she met and worked with at that time. Jessica now proudly works as a development associate for Pangea and is pleased to put your money where her mouth is.

Julia Malmgren

• Accounting Consultant
• E-mail: pangea@pangeaworldtheater.org
• Telephone: 612-822-0015

Educated at Eastern Michigan University, Julia Malmgren has 25 years experience in managing the accounting needs of nonprofit organizations ($500,000 to $4,200,000 budget size).  She has worked in the theater arts, the health, and community needs areas.  She has expertise in all areas of accounting from general accounting tasks through financial statements and audit facilitation.  In addition, she is experienced in grant management for foundations, corporations, and governmental entities.

Areas of expertise include payroll and related tax filings, general bookkeeping, bank account reconciliation, accounts payable and receivable management, cost center analysis and reporting, financial statement preparation and analysis, and year-end reporting.

Andrea Assaf

• National Coordinator, Institute for Directing & Ensemble Creation
• E-mail: art2action@earthlink.net
• Telephone: 612-822-0015

Andrea Assaf is a performer, writer, director, & cultural organizer.  The founder of Art2Action, she has a Masters degree in Performance Studies and a BFA in Acting, both from NYU.  She is the former Artistic Director of New WORLD Theater (2004-09), and Program Associate for Animating Democracy (2001-04).  She has taught Acting technique, Voice and Creative Movement in New York, Boston, and Washington DC.

Her performance work ranges from original, interdisciplinary solo and collaborative productions, to spoken word.

Recent  directing and new works include:  breaking letter(s) by Suheir Hammad (NWT, 2008); Shekadii Walaalo (Sister-Story), a community collaboration with the Walaalo! Somali Sisters Collective (2008); Womb-Words, Thirsting by Lenelle Moise (2007); and Parang Sabil by Kinding Sindaw at the first National Asian American Theater Festival (NYC, 2007).  In 2005-06, Andrea toured to Mexico, the U.S., Nicaragua and Canada with Mujeres en Ritual Danza-Teatro, in Fronteras Desviadas / Deviant Borders, which she wrote/co-created (supported by a grant from Contacto Cultural).  In 2003, her solo show, Globalicities, was featured in the New York International Fringe Festival.

As a spoken word artist, Andrea has performed her newest series, Eleven Reflections on September , at the Centro Cultural Tijuana (Mexico, 2010), the Zero Budget Festival in Wroclaw, Poland (Grotowski Institute, 2009); and the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC (2007).   Andrea was a featured poet at the People’s Poetry Gathering in 2003, and at Blue Stockings Women’s Bookstore in NYC.  She has performed live on WBAI’s Radio Tahrir: Voices of the Arab/Muslim Community, twice.  In 2002, she was a winner in the Urbana Queer Slam in NYC.

Andrea is a recipient of a 2010 Princess Grace Theater Fellowship, and the Gant Gaither Theater Award.  As a Princess Grace Directing Fellow, she will be an Artist-in-Residence at Pangea World Theater for the 2010-11 season.  Andrea has also received a 2010 Creation Fund through the National Performance Network (NPN), with the support of Pangea World Theater, El Centro Su Teatro, and the Esperanza Center.  In 2007, Andrea was awarded a residency at the Hedgebrook, for “women authoring change.”  Andrea serves on the National Steering Committee of the CAATA (Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists).  She is a member of Alternate ROOTS, and RAWI (Radius of Arab American Writers).

J. Otis Powell!

• Bridges Program Co-Curator
• E-mail: pangea@pangeaworldtheater.org
• Telephone: 612-822-0015

2012-2013 Artistic and Administrative Interns

FELICIA CURRAN

Felicia Curran is a senior at the University of Minnesota studying Global Studies with an emphasis in Human Rights. Through her studies and time at Pangea, she has learned about the various communities around Minneapolis and about human rights at the domestic level. She enjoys traveling and is an avid yogi.

TARA GUPTA

Tara Gupta is a freshman at Wellesley College. Tara speaks Spanish, Hindi, and is learning French. Her favorite authors include Toni Morrison and bell hooks, and she enjoys Spanish literature and film. Tara hopes to pursue international relations, filmmaking, and linguistics in the future.

SOPHIA SARENPA

Sophia Sarenpa, Ojibwe from Leech Lake, is a sophomore at South High School in Minneapolis. Sophia loves theater; she has worked with Pangea before and is extremely excited to have the opportunity to work with Pangea once again this summer!

JANE ULRING

Jane Ulring is a sophomore at Augsburg College, Majoring in Anthropology and Philosophy, minoring in Theater. Jane volunteers at the Animal Humane Society and is in the process of publishing her first novel. She also illustrates comic book strips and lives by the quote, “With great power comes great
responsibility” –Spiderman.

SHEA WHEATLEY BURKE

Shea Wheatley Burke is a recent college graduate from Hofstra University in Long Island with a double-major in Drama and English.  She is planning to move to Chicago at the end of the summer to pursue a career in makeup artistry.  In her spare time, she makes stuff up, reads comics, and enjoys educating people on the internet about feminism. She firmly believes that Sansa Stark will wind up on the Iron Throne, and is still desperately trying to develop superpowers.

Hyphe-NATIONS interns

• Marco Davila
• Celia Hernandez Payen
• Betsy Schaefer