Meena Natarajan is a playwright and director and the Executive and Artistic Director of Pangea World Theater, a progressive, international ensemble space that creates at the intersection of art, equity and social justice. She has led the theater’s growth since its founding in 1995. Meena has co-curated and designed many of Pangea World Theater’s professional and community based programs. She has written at least ten full-length works for Pangea, ranging from adaptations of poetry and mythology to original works dealing with war, spirituality, personal and collective memory.  Meena leads ensemble-based processes in Pangea that lead to works produced for the stage. She has also directed and dramaturged several original theater and performance art pieces. She is currently on the board of the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists and is a National Theater Project Advisor at New England Foundation for the Arts.  She was on the Advisory Committee of the Community Arts Network, was on the founding board of the Network of Ensemble Theaters and was the president of Women’s Playwrights International between 2000-2003. She has been awarded grants from the Theatre Communications Group, Playwrights Center and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She was recently awarded the Visionary Award for mid-career leaders from the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.

Suzanne Victoria Cross was born and raised in North Minneapolis, graduated from St. Cloud State University with a BA in Theater and Community Psychology. Suzanne is a local actor, stage manager and teaching artist in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area. She has worked with many local theater companies including touring with CLIMB Theatre as an Actor-Educator, Penumbra Theatre Company’s Education and Outreach Program, Lyric Arts Academy, Teatro del Pueblo, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre and has been the lead instructor for multiple teaching artist residencies in the Twin Cities. She also identifies as the primary caregiver for her mother who is currently navigating the progression of Alzheimer's over the last 9 years. Her methodology is centered in honoring and actively engaging with our elders and that stage management is a social justice and community organizing artistic practice. Suzanne has a strong passion for the role theater can play in the development of an individual and a community as a whole and that we are never done creating magic. She is currently the Production Manager for Pangea World Theater.

Ellen Marie Hinchcliffe is a queer Mama, feminist, poet, performer, curator and filmmaker. She is white within the oppressive system of white supremacy and is a child of Earth. Both realities inform her work. Her work includes: the performance Murmurations with Gabrielle Civil, the ensemble performance Life Born of Fire and Spell for an End to Whiteness (and After Joy) with jazz drummer Juma B. Essie, the books Fierce Shimmer- Poems for Mama and Walk Towards It- an anthology of resistance released on inauguration day 2017 and the films– Thought Woman- The Life and Ideas of Paula Gunn Allen and Art Letter (For Gabrielle Civil). Ellen is a long time DIY artist- self publishing and producing independent films and performances. She works with Pangea World Theater creating Placekeeping connections/ story circles/ public art and performances along Lake Street as the curator for Lake Street Arts! More at www.fierceshimmer.art

Born in Beirut to Palestinian parents, Ismail Khalidi is a playwright, screenwriter and director. Khalidi’s own plays include Truth Serum Blues (Pangea World Theater 2005), Tennis in Nablus (Alliance Theatre 2010), Foot (Teatro Amal 2016), Sabra Falling (Pangea 2017), and Dead Are My People (Noor Theatre 2018). He also co-adapted two novels for the stage with Naomi Wallace; Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa (Finborough Theatre 2018; Pangea 2023) and Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer (Actors Theatre of Louisville 2019). Khalidi's directorial debut was the Chilean premiere of Foot, which was produced in Valparaiso and then Santiago in 2016-17. He co-edited Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora (TCG 2015) and his plays have been published in numerous anthologies, including the upcoming collection, Until I Return: The Selected Works of Ismail Khalidi (Bloomsbury, 2025). His writing has been featured in American Theatre Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Mizna, Guernica, Al-Jazeera, The Dramatist and ReMezcla. Khalidi was the 2023 Artist-in Residence at Boston University’s Center on Forced Displacement and is a Directing Fellow at Pangea World Theater. He holds an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Janet Sanchez is a twenty-three-year-old indigenous artist, a part of the Leech Lake Tribe Band of Ojibwe. Janet first performed with Pangea Theater in 2013, performing Wait - A Teen Pregnancy Story and Most recently performed in We Will Do It For The Water as an Ally and Protestor. Janet first got involved in theater 10 years ago to work on her confidence and speaking. And to share the knowledge and history of Native people. Working with Indigenous Peoples Task Force’s Ikidowin Youth Theater Ensemble. Since then, she has performed on over 20 different stages. Janet loves working with youth in her community. In her free time, she enjoys being with family, going on hikes and creating art.

Aurora Long (She/They) is a soon-to-be graduate of St. Catherine University, studying Digital Media, Women’s Studies, and Psychology. She has been involved in theater for the past 8 years, working both onstage and backstage, but tech has always been where her heart lies. Inspired by her love of the arts and the lack of a theater space within her university, Aurora co-founded their own drama company with other passionate students, Dew Drop Drama Co. (3DC). At 3DC, she is the tech director and co-director of past productions DNA, She Kills Monsters, and is currently directing their Spring production of The Wolves. This is Aurora’s first year interning with Pangea and she is already obsessed with the welcoming community they offer and their persistence towards inspiring change on a personal, local, and global scale. In her free time, Aurora loves to sing, dance, and cook meals for her loved ones. After graduation, she hopes to continue her career in professional theater.

Dipankar Mukherjee is a professional director originally from Calcutta, India with a 25-year history of directing. He is the Artistic Director of Pangea World Theater and received the 2023 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award.

He co-founded Pangea World Theater, an international theater in Minneapolis that is a progressive space for arts and dialogue. His aesthetics have evolved through his commitment to social justice, equity and deep spirituality and these factors along with relevant politics form the basis of his work. As a director, he has worked in India, England, Canada and the United States.  
 
Dipankar has received the Humphrey Institute Fellowship to Salzburg and has been a Ford Foundation delegate to India and Lebanon. He is a recent recipient of the Bush Leadership Fellowship award to study non-violence and peace methodologies in India and South Africa. Dipankar was invited to visit the White House as part of the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Delegation. In his rehearsal and workshop practices, Dipankar’s facilitated processes that work to disrupt colonial, racist and patriarchal modalities that we have inherited and collaboratively searches for an alternate way of working.

Sarah Tan (she/her) is an artist educator born and raised in Singapore. She has since worked in the field of theater in both the United States (Arkansas, Arizona, and Minnesota) and Singapore. A late bloomer in performance, Sarah discovered and fell in love with how acting and dance contributed to building her self-esteem, social skills, and sense of joy. As an artist educator she strives to pass on this positive experience by building spaces of belonging for her students. Sarah believes in engaging in work that builds on the strengths and stories of participants in the room, meeting each person as their full selves, and growing with them. Her past research and interests include digital creations with young people, the performance of identity, and the intersection between the performing arts and trauma. Sarah holds a BA in Theatre Arts with a concentration in Education Studies from Carleton College, and an MFA in Theatre for Youth and Community from Arizona State University.

Sarah N. Duncan is a mixed-media artist and graphic designer. Believing that representation matters, her mixed-media works use gesture, craft, mark-making, and objects to view herself and the world through different lenses to investigate why and how this world and imagine what is possible. She is queer, white, artist, dancer, writer, parent, friend, and old enough to know that her work is serious play and that the way she move in, with, and through this world is as important as what emerges from her efforts. She joined Pangea’s circle as an intern in the spring semester of 2020 as part of HECUA’s Art for Social Change program and is happy to continue to be part of the connected, grounded, and process-focused way of working that is Pangea.

Sir Curtis Kirby III, Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe and African American descent is enjoying his 7th year directing the Ikidowin Youth Theater Ensemble. He has been selected as Emerging Artist for a TPT Minnesota Originals. Kirby is mentored by Dipankar Mukherjee, Artistic Director of Pangea World Theater and has participated in the Next Generation Theater Director's Institute for the past three years. This year, he has been awarded a 2 year Fellowship with Pangea World Theater for Directing. Kirby is the Assistant Director for Five Weeks, Sabra Falling and Mother Courage and Her Children. He recently directed a one-act play in New York City, 2020 Reflections of Native Voices as an emerging director.

Shruti is a budding actor, director and writer. After graduating NYU with a BFA in Acting, as well as a double minor in creative writing and journalism, she relocated to Minneapolis in October 2024. She believes in theater for resistance, innovation and rehabilitation. She is currently pursuing an artistic internship at Pangea World Theater. She is preparing to make her Minneapolis theatrical debut in April 2025, as an ensemble member of Pangea’s upcoming production of Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros.”

Adlyn Carreras was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She came to St. Paul, Minnesota on scholarship to study at Macalester College, where she majored in Latin American Studies with a core concentration in Latin American Literature and a Minor in Biology. After traveling and living in Hawaii, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico, Adlyn returned to Minnesota and began acting in the Twin Cities. She has performed at The Jungle Theater, Park Square Theater, Pangea World Theater, Mixed Blood, Penumbra Theater, and Teatro del Pueblo. She has also been in various commercials and Industrial films. Adlyn is General Manager & Ensemble Member at Pangea World Theater and an Adjunct Professor at Augsburg University. She was a past Teaching Artist for the Neighborhood Bridges program at Children’s Theater Company and Monologue Artists for Penumbra Theater’s Race Workshop. Adlyn is currently working on her first one-woman performance, If My Bones Could Speak, commissioned by the Alternate Visions program at Pangea World Theater.

Bethany has loved Pangea’s work since first seeing Conference of the Birds in 1995, and is honored to be joining this incredibly talented, creative, thoughtful, and revolutionary team. She has spent her entire lifetime in Twin Cities theaters and arts organizations, starting with the Cricket Theatre back in the 1980s and then working at Theatre de la Jeune Lune, the Jungle, and Nautilus Music-Theater. For the past two-plus decades she has run her own arts and non-profit management consulting firm, working with a number of organizations (ranging from circuses to labor unions, think tanks to theaters) in nonprofit management, as well as in evaluation, strategic planning, and access — all skillsets that come to play in her work with the Pangea team.

Seamus Wakefield is a 2022 UMN graduate with a degree in Global Studies, with a regional focus on Europe and thematical focused on Human Rights and Justice. Was it his original choice? No. Did he have any idea what he was getting into? Also no, but so far it’s been one of the better life choices he’s made so far. Seamus grew up without giving much thought about his career, but he knew that – given the choice – he wanted to help people share their stories with the collective consciousness. To him, those stories are better than any fairytale. Now that he's at Pangea, not only does he get to dedicate himself to making the world a better place for all to live in, but he still has time to make wonderful memories with his family and friends (including, of course, his fellow ensemble members). If you ask him, he's a pretty lucky guy :)

Jennifer Cortes is an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe tribe and Mexican. She has been in theater for 8 years and is now the youth theater assistant at Indigenous People Task Force, as well as an intern with Pangea world theater. Jennifer also creates indigenous beadwork and fashion!

Beja Puškášová (she/her/hers) is an international student from the Czech Republic studying Theater and Creative Writing at Macalester. She likes cooking, learning languages, drawing, adopting transgender kids and going to tea shops, which she cannot find in the US. Beja is a sarcastically self-identified menstruation amateur enthusiast and hobbyist. She loves talking about all the diverse experiences of menstruation as well as writing theater and poetry about it.