Leilani Chan is an award winning performance artist, actor, playwright, director, cultural worker, Founding Artistic Director of TeAda Productions. TeAda Productions exists to enrich the repertoire of contemporary works created and performed by people of color. Leilani and her partner, Ova Saopeng, are currently traveling the country developing "Refugee Nation" a multi-disciplinary performance based on the stories of Laotian refugees and their descendants from around the country. This project received a Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund and a NPN Creation Fund in partnership with OUTNORTH, Highways Performance Space and Legacies of War – and education and advocacy group around the removal of UXOs form Laos (www.legaciesofwar.org). Leilani is a Department of Cultural Affairs Artist-in-Residence and has toured natitionally with her solo work "E Nana I ke Kumu." Her performance installation "Life as a Dashboard Hula Dancer" has been presented as part of Guillermo Gomez-Peña's La Pocha Nostra at LACMA in 2005 and FITLA 2004. Ms. Chan has worked with Hawaiian and multi-racial communities to develop community-based performances and has she been presented at Borderlands Theater, Highways Performance Space, JACCC, Grand Performances, the Getty Center Museum, and at many other college campuses and performance venues across the country. Leilani has directed new works by Robert Karimi at Out North in Anchorage, Alaska and Kristina Wong at REDCAT, [INSIDE] the Ford, and at La Peña Cultural Center. Ms. Chan has also worked with numerous arts organizations throughout the country including Center Theatre Group, New WORLD Theater, Great Leap, Highways Performance Space and many others. Leilani obtained her M.F.A. from U.C. Irvine in 2004. Ms. Chan is on the national steering committee for the National Asian American Theater Conference and Festival and for Legacies of War.

Corky Dominguez is an advocate for youth programming involving the performing arts, has produced, directed, choreographed, and taught throughout Southern California. He is the Associate Artistic Director with California Youth Theatre, Director with the Violence Intervention Program – Youth Action Theatre Company, an Associate Artist with the Cornerstone Theater Company, Core Member with The Center for Theatre of the Oppressed/Applied Theatre Arts/Los Angeles, Advisory Council member with Fringe Benefits and President with California Educational Theatre Association (CETA) – South Board, as well as a member on the CETA State Board. He currently teaches theatre at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. He has spent the past several years as the resident teaching artist for Performing for Los Angeles Youth division of Center Theatre Group Educational theatre productions.  Corky has performed his solo piece Good Seed/Bad Seed at Highways and at The Ford Amphitheatre’s Community Bridges Program. Professional directing credits include Josefina Lopez’s When Nature Calls, Jerry Quickley’s ACCESS for Center Theatre Group’s Performing for Los Angeles Youth, Girl Planet 2 with TeAda; LeVan D. Hawkins’s Welcome to the Village of Robbins; Laurie Woolery’s Salvadorian Moon/African Sky and Life as a Muslim by Qiyamah Aquil-Shah for Cornerstone Theater’s Festival of Faith; Gravedigger and Queens Commission for the John Lion New Plays Festival at Cal State LA; This Land, which was performed at the World Youth Theatre Festival STRAMASH 95’ in West Lothian, Scotland, and at the Cockpit Theater in London, England.

Lindsey Haley is a Chicana-Irish poet, writer, journalist, and performance artist. Raised in Venice, CA her formal education ended at the age of fourteen when she ran away to Fresno, CA with the father of her two children and where she made her living as a farm worker. Upon her return to Venice ten years later, she became a community activist advocating for the Latino community on the Westside. Her work has been published in several publications and anthologies, including the LA Weekly, La Opinion, Venice Magazine, Lowrider Magazine, Public Art Review, Frameworks, Chismearte and the Eastside Journal/Belvedere Citizen. Her poetry and short stories have also appeared in Saber Es Poder and Hybrid City (ADOBE Press LA), and Urban Latino Cultures: La Vida Latina en L.A. (Sage Press). She recently wrote a solo show about her experiences of growing up in Venice and performed a six-night run at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica as part of TeAda’s 2004 New Performance Artists Festival. She was also selected to perform her show as part of the 2005 and 2006 Los Angeles Women’s Theater Festival.

D'Lo is described as a “jolt of creative and comedic tragedy”, D’Lo is a Tamil Sri Lankan-Americn, political theatre artist/writer and music producer, currently causing the most trouble in Los Angeles. D’Lo holds a BA from UCLA in Ethnomusicology and is a graduate of New York’s School of Audio Engineering.  D’Lo’s work is a part of the vibrant tapestry that sheds light on many of the issues of our modern day society; brutality, justice, AIDS, sexuality, political and social unrest and division along ethnic and gender lines.  D’Lo has worked closely with ArtWallah, Mujeres de Maiz and Great Leap as well as directors Laurie Carlos and Shishir Kurup.  D’Lo is a teaching artist and has performed and held workshops extensively throughout the US and Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Sri Lanka and India.

Maria G. Martinez seeks to explore and share her experiences through various mediums, including stand-up comedy, writing, storytelling and theater. She has appeared in Safari, In the Name of God, Hungry Woman Mexican Medea, Food for the Dead, and August 29, which she co-produced with “Las Cuatro.”

Maria has participated with TeAda in Native Immigrant, and has written and performed her stories including, chronicling her political awakenings as a young immigrant who attended the Chicano Moratorium and later traveled to China in 1972.

Maria has written and presented her stories and those of her family journeys in Mexico and in the mines in Arizona. Lately Maria’s stories emphasize her emotional and physical experiences of caring for her mother who suffers from dementia..

Shyamala Moorty is an interdisciplinary artist and activist with a background in contemporary Indian and western dance forms and theater. Shyamala has been working with TeAda since 2003, and through TeAda Works, birthed her solo show RISE, acclaimed as a "tour de force" by the LA Times (1/17/04). She also has co-founded the Post Natyam Collective, a multinational community of dance artists critically and creatively engaging with South Asian dance forms and aesthetic concepts. Shyamala received an MFA in dance from UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures and has studied Bharata Natyam from Medha Yodh and Malathi Iyengar. When she's not creating and performing, she's sharing yoga and dance with students at Cerritos College, Rio Hondo College and West LA College. She also designed and coordinated Artwallah's summer arts development program, YouthWallah, and served as the first Executive Director of WYSE (Women and Youth Supporting Each other. For more information go to www.postnatyam.net.

Marcella Pabros-Clark is a multi-disciplinary artist: actor, director, dancer, writer, photographer, musician and more. She is currently working with her multi-talented husband, John Pabros-Clark on the development of HEALING MARS. As a professional artist She's been described as a “story-teller." Her stories are a commentary on the human condition and reflective of my own experiences: from a single woman facing the inevitable end of her reproductive life; a daughter’s take on her immigrant mother’s schizophrenic episodes, eventual internment and electro shock treatment in a California mental institution; to a woman’s journey through her holistic healing of rheumatoid arthritis. Also, She have created pieces in dance, film, theater and photography that have embraced personal experiences far beyond her own. In her photo and video-graphic work, she captures moments not only visually; but emotionally and spiritually. Visceral imagery acts as a vital organ within all of my creations. It comes from the heart. Her choreographic work is rooted in ethnic dance training (Philippine and Afro-Caribbean styles), choosing music that leans to the more rhythmic, whether Philippine Kulintang, Afro-Cuban/Brazilian drums or hip-hop electronica. However, recently she's been drawn to movement and music that are more serene, meditative and contemporary. Having been trained and exposed to various medium and forms of expression--visual, auditory, physical and spiritual--Marcella enjoys creating multi-disciplinary work that crosses all cultural barriers and not only informs the audience, but moves them to participate in the performance.

Raquel Salinas is a cultural artist dedicated to helping heal our community through the arts.  She has been performing as a solo artist since 1993 with her work; Heat Your Own, Madres de Juarez, Verde Blanco y Rojo, Muneca de Carton, and Malintzin, Malinche, Maria.  She would like to thank Teada Productions for their on-going support of artists of Color.  Because of Teada’s support and that of The Taper Theater Innitiative, she was able to be mentored by established playwright Judy Soo Hoo  and write a play called, ”Libertad” about a single mom raising two teenagers, one an anarchist the other enlists to go to Iraq. “All my relations”

Ova Saopeng is an actor and writer from Los Angeles, he was born in Savannahket, Laos and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He received his B.A. in Theater from the University of Southern California and since then has worked nationally with many theater companies from the Children's Theater Company in Minneapolis on the production of "Dragonwings" based on the Newberry Award winning book by Laurence Yep, Mark Taper Forum/P.L.A.Y. production of "Wondrous Tales of Old Japan", a kabuki American adaptation of Japanese folk tales written and directed by David Furumoto, and East West Players the premiere Asian American Theater Company in the nation. He has toured colleges and universities with the Asian American Theater troupe hereandnow and is an active member of We Tell Stories and Water's Edge Theater, children's theater companies based in southern California. He is also a roster artist with TeAda Productions led by founding artistic director Leilani Chan, who is also his wife. TeAda is a company dedicated to supporting, developing and incubating artist of color to create innovative theatrical performances to empower under-served communities. "Refugee Nation" a play written and performed by Leilani Chan and Ova Saopeng about the Lao-American experience, based on interviews and workshops in Lao communities throughout the U.S., is currently touring.

Kristina Wong is a nationally presented solo performer, writer, actor, educator, culture jammer, and filmmaker. Described by the East Bay Express as "brutal but hilarious... a woman who takes life's absurdities very seriously," her body of performance work includes short and full-length solo performance works, outrageous street theater stunts and pranks, subversive internet installations, and plays and sketch comedy. She was awarded the Creative Capital Award in Theater and a Creation Fund from the National Performance Network to create her third full length solo show, "Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" exploring the remarkably high incidence of mental illness among Asian American women in a world that’s more nuts than we are. Cuckoo's Nest has shown in dozens of cities in spaces that include the Kirk Theater in New York City, the Painted Bride in Phildaelphia, La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley and numerous universities around the country. Kristina was recently selected to write and perform in the 2008 CBS Multicultural Comedy Showcase. Her show "Free?" was also featured earlier this year at the South Beach Comedy Festival in Miami. She is also completing a novel started with the PEN USA Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship. She is also a freelance contributor to anthologies and magazines that include Playgirl Magazine. Her spoof mail order bride website is www.bigbadchinesemama.com. Her real website is www.kristinawong.com