What's color and lighting got to do with freedom? A designers' panel discussion
Designed by community artist/activist and lighting designer, Lisa Aurora, these sessions will kick off with her sharing the impact of falling in love with Martin Luther King Jr. 's use of the word 'maladjusted' in his now famous speech. When Lisa first heard it her response included, "It made me feel more free in a racist world I was furious about".
Participants will hear from professionals based in the San Francisco Bay Area who inspire her work in the creative arts - theatre, lighting design, digital design and music - as they share what their journey has looked like and the radically inclusive decisions they've made along the way in their development to help brown and black people.
Dates:
Monday, June 19, 12:30-1:30 pm PT /3:30-4:30 pm ET
and Monday, June 26, 12:30-1:30 pm PT /3:30-4:30 pm ET
Lisa Aurora has been an artist-curator-gallerist, environmental scientist, and social activist. She experiences social justice as integral to her life and her work. Since 2008 she has worked to support over 100 music and visual artists in the Bay Area and beyond. Lisa joined Local 16 in 2018 and is now an electrician and lighting technician in performance spaces throughout the Bay Area, most recently at the SF Opera House. She is passionate about supplying and supporting community-generated music and theater.
Tyrice Hicks
Before consulting, Tyrice was a UX Designer at Ally, a financial company. He graduated from North Carolina Central University with a B.S. in Family and Consumer Sciences. Today, he has 7 years of experience bringing products to market and initiating positive change across a wide range of industries.
Stephanie Ann Johnson
Johnson has been a lighting designer for over forty years. Nationally she has done designs for La Mama Theatre (N.Y.), Telluride Repertory Theatre (Colorado), The Arizona Repertory Theatre, The National Black Theater, and The Apollo (N.Y.). Locally, she has worked with Cultural Odyssey, Rhodessa Jones, Afro Solo, Ubuntu Theatre, African American Shakespeare Company, The Aurora Theater, Shotgun Players, The Marin Theatre Company, and many other groups.
Her design work has also been seen in India, The Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Canada and France. She was awarded a Gerbode Design Fellowship in partnership with Cultural Odyssey of San Francisco in 1998. Photographs of Ms. Johnson's designs were included in the show Onstage: A Century of African American Stage Design which was presented at The N.Y. Public Library For The Performing Arts in 1995.
Jill Battalen (co-creator) is passionate about the relationship of culture, theatre, performance activism and improv in transforming our world and the inequities and lack of freedom in it. She is the coordinator of community engagement with Life Performance Coaching, a center with a social therapeutic practice. She is a founding member of Reimagining Dementia: A Creative Coalition for Justice and co-leads a senior support group with NCJW- NY.
Jill was sales director with the Castillo Theatre in NYC and grassroots fundraiser and program manager with the All Stars Project (innovative performance-based inner city youth programs in NYC and the SF Bay Area). She also had a career as a social worker in NYC.
Event Details
Date: Monday, June 19, 2023
Time: 12:30 pm — 1:30 pm Pacific Time
Location: Online; registration requested
Cost: Free
Hosts: Co-created by Lisa Aurora and Jill Battalen