creative team bios

Since 1996, as the artistic director of Vessel, Rachel Bowditch (PhD)  has specialized in creating original devised, immersive, site-specific, and physical theatre that tackles challenging social issues from suicide, addiction, mental health, indigenous forced relocation, the death penalty, and now climate change and sustainability. Her directing work has been presented at Childsplay, Mixed Blood, Northwest Children's Theatre, the Denver Center, Mesa Arts Center, Phoenix Art Museum, IDEA Museum, and Scottsdale Public Art among others. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Theatre Journal, American Theatre, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Live Design, Rolling Stone, Channel 8/PBS, and ABC 15 News. 

She has received competitive funding from the Map Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Network of Ensemble Theatres NET/TEN Exchange Grant. She is author of 3 books: On the Edge of Utopia: Performance and Ritual at Burning Man (University of Chicago Press, 2010); Performing Utopia co-edited with Pegge Vissicaro (University of Chicago Press, 2010); and Physical Dramaturgy: Perspectives from the Field (Routledge) co-edited with Jeff Casazza and Annette Thornton. She is currently working on her fourth book, Inside the Performance Workshop: A Sourcebook for Rasaboxes and Other Exercises with Paula Murray Cole and Michele Minnick. She is a Professor of Theatre in the School of Music, Dance, and Theatre in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University.

websites: 

https://rachelbowditch.com/

https://vesselproject.org/

Karen Jean Martinson, PhD, has developed her robust dramaturgical approach over the past two decades, creating socially-engaged theatre that considers issues of race and racial oppression, the impacts of gun violence, intergenerational trauma, the Indian Industrial Boarding School System, issues of mobility in underprivileged communities, and now the impending climate crisis. She specializes in production dramaturgy, dramaturgy for devised theatre, eco-dramaturgy, and new play dramaturgy, and has worked in professional and academic theatres in Phoenix, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Her scholarship has been featured in such journals as The LMDA Review, Theatre Annual, Theatre Topics, Cultural Studies  Critical Methodologies, and Popular Entertainment Studies. She is an Assistant Professor of Dramaturgy in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University.      

 Her scholarly and creative work explores the intersection of contemporary USAmerican performance, consumer culture, neoliberalism, and the processes of identification, interrogating issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. She also writes and talks (constantly) about dramaturgy and dramaturgical thinking. Her manuscript-in-progress, Make the Dream Real, dissects the performances of El Vez, The Mexican Elvis. She has published in such journals as The LMDA Review, Theatre Annual, Theatre Topics, and Popular Entertainment Studies. Martinson currently serves as the VP Advocacy for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the American (LMDA) and is active in the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), and the American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS).    

Founder/Co-Artistic Director of EPIK Dance

Saza received her BFA in dance education from Arizona State University and is currently pursuing her MFA in Dance at ASU. She has taught on the dance faculty of Arizona State University, Mesa Community College, Glendale Community College, Dobson High School, and Willow Canyon High School. In addition, Saza has served as School Administrator of Experience Arts School and as Manager of Creative Arts at City of Grace Church (now Hillsong Phoenix). Most recently, she worked as the Artistic Director and Spokesperson of the Be Kind People Project, where she developed and managed “The Be Kind Crew,” a hip hop dance crew consisting of over 50 dancers that visit K-8 schools nationwide to deliver the organization’s kindness message in ways that kids find exciting, engaging and fun.

Saza loves to choreograph and perform. Beyond her work with EPIK over the last 11 years, she has been a guest artist/choreographer for the University of South Carolina and University of North Carolina Greensboro and has created pieces for many professional sports teams in the NBA, NFL, and WNBA, independently and as “Pro” for Choreography Pros. Some of Saza’s performance credits also include works by David Dorfman, Cliff Keuter, Yvonne Rainer, FLUX Dance Project, ODC Theater (SF), the NBA Allstar Games, and NBA Celebrity Games. She also toured as a dancer and co-choreographer for the drum and dance group, Street Jam, and was a member and co-choreographer for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury Hip Hop Squad for seven years.

Saza enjoys hosting and public speaking, on and off camera. She was a guest host on MSN’s travel show, “Re: Discover – Phoenix” and was recently featured in two national commercials for Verizon and 5 Hour Energy. As a representative of the Be Kind People Project, Saza was awarded the People’s Choice Award while competing in the Social Venture Partners Fast Pitch Competition where she competed against 25 other non-profits by giving a 3-minute pitch about her organization. She also hosted assemblies and performances for BKPP at schools nationwide. Saza regularly hosts 2 large urban arts events at ASU called Urban Sol and the Come As You Are Ball, has served as in-game host for the Cactus Bowl twice and has given keynote addresses to youth about having a successful career in the arts.

Saza has a passion for sharing her knowledge with others. Along with residencies at Arizona schools through the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Free Arts AZ, ArtSpace and Ear Candy, she has taught and presented curriculum throughout the U.S., including the Dance and the Child International (DACI) conference and the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) national conferences four times. Saza has received awards for teaching, including the Artsbridge America Scholarship, the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) Student Scholarship, and the Arizona State University Intercollegiate Athletics Board’s Award for Most Inspirational Faculty Member, and was nominated for an ASU Pitchfork Award for outstanding teaching. She has been featured in Dance Teacher, Dance Spirit, and Dance magazines.

https://epikdanceco.org/

Steven Beschloss is an award-winning writer, editor, journalist, filmmaker and content strategist. He is a Professor of Practice with a joint appointment from the College of Global Futures, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He is the Founding Director of the Narrative Storytelling Initiative across the university, leads the Narratives focus of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, and is a Senior Global Futures  Scholar. 

His articles and essays on economics and politics, urban and international affairs, art, culture, science and education--from the U.S. and Europe--have been published by The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Smithsonian, The Economist/Economist Intelligence Unit, National Geographic and dozens of other print and online outlets. He has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, selected Journalist of the Year in Virginia and honored for his magazine writing by the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Beschloss also serves as the founding editor of Transformations, an online magazine of essays and a publishing channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books, and writes and publishes America, America, focused on politics, society, democracy and justice.

In addition to authoring two recent books ("Adrift: Charting Our Course Back to a Great Nation" with co-author William Harris and "The Gunman and His Mother: Lee Harvey Oswald, Marguerite Oswald, and The Making of an Assassin"), Beschloss has served as a managing director of a Los Angeles-based media relations firm, executive managing editor of a Phoenix-based custom publisher, and co-director of a Finland-based film and TV company. His fiction and non-fiction film work (from Finland, France, Russia and the U.S.) has been translated into more than a dozen languages and seen and sold in nearly two dozen countries. 

A Chicago native and married father of two daughters, he is a graduate of Haverford College in Sociology and the master's degree program of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He also studied for one year in the graduate program in economic history at the London School of Economics. His personal website is www.stevenbeschloss.com.

Among his recent work: "Scholars Need to Act with Greater Urgency," published by Times Higher Education and republished by ASU's Global Futures Laboratory, and "A Little Civility Can Be a Dangerous Thing,"  published by the Washington Post. 

Jake Pinholster is the associate dean for enterprise design and operations in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University and head of graduate programs in interdisciplinary digital media and performance design. As a designer, Pinholster’s efforts have centered on projection and media design and technology for performance. He is an associate artist with Les Freres Corbusier, the resident video designer for the David Dorfman Dance company, and a contributor to Live Design Magazine. His professional media/projection design credits include The Pee Wee Herman Show (Broadway/HBO Special), Carrie Fisher: Wishful Drinking (HBO Special), Current Nobody (Woolly Mammoth, La Jolla Playhouse), Hoover (La Jolla Playhouse), Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Center Theatre Group), Heddatron (HERE Arts Center) and many other productions at off-Broadway, regional, and academic venues. Much of his recent activity has been as a creator/director for immersive performance in unusual venues: site-specific installations, creation of performance in high end 3D planetariums, and the creation of a 360deg immersive performance/media dome. As an educator and administrator, Pinholster has been involved in a number of long-term initiatives that fuse technology, interdisciplinarity, and curricular innovation, and he has been an invited speaker on these topics at the National Association of Schools of Theatre, the Leadership Institute of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and LDI.

Daniel Perelstein Jaquette is a freelance sound designer, composer, and musical director. Daniel has been a professor of sound design at Arizona State University since 2019. Recent designs and original music at Opera Philadelphia, Cincinnati Playhouse, Cleveland Playhouse, McCarter Theatre, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Geva Theatre, Phoenix Theater, Wilma Theater, Arden Theatre, Roundabout Theatre, People’s Light, and others. Daniel has received two Barrymore Awards, and sixteen Barrymore Award nominations in three categories, including recognition as a finalist for the F. Otto Haas award. He received an Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts in 2013 to explore the relationship between sound design and the visual arts. 

 https://www.danielperelstein.com/

Micha Espinosa is an international teaching artist, activist, and voice specialist in culturally inclusive pedagogies. Professor (BFA, Stephens College; MFA Acting, U.C. San Diego) at Arizona State University (ASU), affiliate faculty with ASU’s School of Transborder Studies & the Sidney Poitier New American Film School; Artistic Director for Fitzmaurice Institute & Lead Faculty of Fitzmaurice Teacher Certification; award-winning editor of Monologues for Latino Actors & Scenebook for Latinx Actors; core member of Guillermo Gomez Pena’s performance art collective, La Pocha Nostra. She is passionate about social justice in actor training, global and feminist perspectives, and the voz (voice) cultural.  

Clara Kundin is a theater-maker and educator. She received her B.A. in theater from St. Olaf College and continued her studies in physical theater at the École Jacques Lecoq and mask and butoh at the École du Jeu in Paris. She is a current MFA student in Theater for Youth and Communities at Arizona State University. New York Theater: Luna Eclipse (spit&vigor), The Jewish King Lear (Metropolitan Playhouse), Doomocracy (Creative Time), {my lingerie play} (Rattlestick Theater), Helena in The Rover and The Naked Tempest (Torn Out Theater), Lake Victory (GYM at Judson), The Lysistrata Project (Irondale Center). Directing Credits: Sammie & Gran (Climate Change Theater Action/ASU), Loudmouth (The Tank/Rebel Playhouse), cards. (Permafrost Theatre Collective), The Donors (site specific), and The One and Only Sarah Stonely (Thought Bubble Theatre Festival). Clara served as the Founding Executive Director of Rebel Playhouse from 2016-2019. 

www.clarakundin.com

Becca Levy is an educator, theatre artist, and stage manager who facilitates educational programming and theatrical productions that create community, celebrate culture, and foster creativity for people of all ages. She is a current MFA student studying Theatre for Youth & Communities at Arizona State University. Prior to graduate school, Becca worked as a teaching artist, stage manager, and certified yoga instructor in Chicago after earning her BFA in Stage Management from Western Michigan University. She is a proud ensemble member at Strawdog Theatre Company where she’s worked on the creative team of over a dozen productions. Other production credits include work with Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Emerald City Theatre, Jackalope Theatre Company, Red Theater, and more. Becca also tours as the North American Company Stage Manager of Potted Potter: The Unauthorized Harry Experience with Starvox and Seabright Productions.

 www.beccaglevy.com