Marissa Ghavami (they/she) is an Iranian-American, queer artist, advocate and creator based in NYC. Most recently, they played Khalilah, opposite Tony Winner KO (Karen Olivo), in a workshop of Siluetas, part of 4xLatiné Off-Broadway. Up next on stage, they can be seen as Jessie in Divine Riot’s Cry It Out this November. Film/TV highlights include starring in the feature film The Gift of Christmas, alongside Academy Award Nominee Bruce Davison, and roles in Paramount’s Not Fade Away, with James Gandolfini, and on CBS’s Without A Trace; as well as singing on NBC’s It’s Showtime at the Apollo. Marissa has also sung at Joe’s Pub (alongside Tony Nominee L Morgan Lee), Birdland (alongside Academy Award Winner and Tony Nominee Ariana DeBose) and 54 Below. Voiceover/Commercial/Print highlights include Audible, McDonald's, Ford, JCPenney, Belvedere, PepsiCo, Girl Scout Cookies and KFC.

Marissa co-produced the feature film Mass, starring Ann Dowd, Martha Plimpton, Jason Isaacs and Reed Birney. Mass premiered at Sundance, was acquired by Bleecker Street, had a theatrical release, won the Robert Altman Award, was a Gotham, Critics Choice and BAFTA nominee and is now streaming. They produced and co-wrote the short film Silk, directed by John Magaro (Carol, The Big Short), an Official Selection at the Academy Award Qualifying Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival, among others.

Marissa is the Founding Executive + Artistic Director of the nonprofit Healing TREE (Trauma Resources, Education & Entertainment). They are a national public speaker, a healing trauma-focused coach for artists and a trauma consultant for productions. They are a Queer Writer Fellow at Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and an Artists Striving To End Poverty (now Arts Ignite) Fellow and participant in the Artist As Citizen Conference at Juilliard. They are a Founding Company Member of Divine Riot, a new theatre and film company that defies convention. They are also an avid meditator, vegan and cat parent. AEA, SAG-AFTRA.

www.marissaghavami.com @marissaghavami www.healingtreenonprofit.org @healingtreeorg www.divineriot.org @adivineriot


Montgomery Sutton (he/him) is an actor, director, playwright, and educator. LONDON: Twelfth Night (Shakespeare’s Globe); OFF-BROADWAY: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (New York Classical Theatre); REGIONAL: One Man, Two Guvnors (Florida Studio Theater), Oswald (Casa Manana), Shakespeare in Love, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest (Shakespeare Dallas), Henry V (Cape Fear Regional Theatre), Measure for Measure, Richard III, Love’s Labours Lost, King Lear (Trinity Shakespeare Festival), Pericles, The Winter’s Tale (Seven Stages Shakespeare Company), Booth, Gruesome Playground Injuries (Second Thought Theatre), Tomorrow Come Today (Undermain Theatre), The Temperamentals (Uptown Players), On the Eve (Theater Three). FILM/NEW MEDIA: 1865 podcast; Skindiving; Trouble with Women. He has directed for the Gilbert Theater, Rude Grooms, Junior Players, Seven Stages Shakespeare Company, and written and directed several short films including Between the Lines (winner, Best Screenplay; nominee, Best Director). His plays and adaptations include Advent (semi-finalist, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference), Ruins, two versions of Antigone (verse and modern), Oedipus, Broken Water, Your Colonel, and Moonlight Gospel which have been produced and developed with the Gilbert Theater, Kitchen Dog Theater, Metropolitan Playhouse, EBE Ensemble, and Salt Pillar Productions. He is on faculty for the Atlantic Theater Company/NYU and has taught for the Shakespeare Theater Association, World Shakespeare Congress, Shakespeare Dallas, the Gilbert Theatre, Junior Players, Dallas Children’s Theater, Cape Fear Regional Theatre, New York Shakespeare Company, and Rude Grooms. He received his BFA from NYU / Atlantic Acting School and was a member of the International Actors Fellowship at Shakespeare’s Globe. montgomerysutton.com

Paco Bezerra is one of Spain’s most exciting dramatists. His awards include National Literary Drama Award in 2009, The Calderon de la Barca National Theatre Prize in 2007, and the Eurodram Award 2014. Paco's plays and writings have been translated into several languages and are being produced all over the globe. He trained as an actor at William Layton Theater Laboratory Madrid and read Theatre Science and Dramaturgy at the Royal School of Dramatic Art of Madrid (RESAD).

Marion Peter Holt (1924-2021) remains a leading translator of contemporary Spanish and Catalan theatre. His translations have been staged internationally and by regional and university theatres throughout the United States. A member of the Real Academia Española since 1986, he was an emeritus professor of The City University of New York and visiting lecturer at the Yale School of Drama and Barcelona’s Institut del Teatre. Dr. Holt’s many translations include publications by The Martin E. Segal Center.

Kimberly “Kimi” Ramírez is a professor, playwright, and critic with an M.F.A. in Playwriting and a Ph.D. in Theatre & Performance whose writing has been published and presented internationally. They are affiliated with The City University of New York, Speranza Theatre Company, Macondo Writers Workshop, Lucille Lortel Awards, Talkin' Broadway, and are a member of the Dramatists Guild.