Zhaleh Almaee
Co-Director
Click to read about Zhaleh
Rosalyn Smith-Stover
Associate Artist
Click to read about Rosalyn
Daniela Fernandez
Associate Artist
Click to read about Daniela
Marc Weinblatt
Co-Director, Founder
Click to read about Marc
Dr. Lalenja Harrington
Associate Artist
Click to read about Lalenja
Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble
Click to read about
Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble
Rosalyn is the executive director of a children’s advocacy and sexual violence resource center. She has thirty years of experience teaching and serving individuals, and organizations in the areas of leadership, organizational change, sexual violence, child abuse, teen pregnancy, and primary prevention of violence. Rosalyn utilizes the arts to create healing experiences, expose and remedy injustices, incite dialogue, and inspire action while disrupting the status quo. As founder and artistic director of Act Up Drama, Inc., an applied theater center located in South Carolina, she provides classes and programs in Playback Theatre, Theatre of the Oppressed, Drama Therapy and traditional theatre.
Now in our 20th season, the Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble (PJTE) is a multi-ethnic, multi-generational (teens to elders) team of citizen actors. Through highly participatory, interactive theatre performances, Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble stimulates dialogue, strengthens community connections, and invites positive action on burning social issues. A community service project of Mandala Center for Change, its primary tools for social change are Theatre of the Oppressed and Playback Theatre.
** Due to the challenges of 2020-21, Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble is currently on hiatus. We intend to re-ignite in the coming season. Stay tuned for interactive performances, workshops, and community events.
https://www.facebook.com/poeticjusticetheatre/
Dr. Lalenja Harrington is a poet/performer and full-time educator dedicated to exploring the intersection of performance, activism and education. She considers herself to be an “a/r/tographer” where her identities as artist, researcher, and teacher are fully integrated and essential to each other.
She acquired a PhD from the University of North Carolina Greensboro in Educational Studies and Cultural Foundations, where she is Academic Director for Integrated Community Studies. She is the Artist-in-residence for the Honors College at UNC Greensboro where she advocates for the use of arts-based pedagogy in higher education as a way to cultivate interclusivity in higher education.
As a performer, she cut her teeth in Boston’s Can Tab lounge, where she learned the craft of slam poetry as a member of the early Boston Slam Team. She facilitates collaborative poetry sessions with diverse groups, and has had the honor of working in collaboration on numerous projects with talented and skilled artists. Lalenja has also acted in a number of productions with professional theatres. She has experience working with children and adults from diverse backgrounds in school settings, professional theatre summer camps, and community trainings, both in person and on-line. She has most recently been engaged as a teaching artist using Theatre of the Oppressed and Playback Theatre methods to devise work with various youth groups in her community.
Zhaleh (she/they) is a multi-heritage ritual theatre artist, social justice educator, and cultural organizer. They live where land and water meet on the Olympic Peninsula, historically known as a gathering place of many tribal nations including the S’Klallam (Nəxwsƛ̕áy̕əm̕) and homelands of the Chemakum (Čə́məq̓ əm). She brings center stage a passion for justice and a commitment to supporting lifestyles of rest and connection. Zhaleh fosters a culture of possibility guided by a belief in people’s inherent birthright for healing and creative expression.
She holds degrees in Psychology and Theatre Arts. Their background/training also includes conflict transformation, Restorative Practices, movement arts, Drama Therapy, Sign Language, meditation, community ritual, and breath work, to name a few. She is a humble mother of four, song weaver, and youth advocate grounded in ancestral practices and earth-based traditions. Zhaleh finds great joy in nurturing curiosity and cultivating skillful witnessing.
Their theatre career began at a young age in 1987 in Philadelphia with the People’s Light Theatre Company. A graduate of Emerson College in Boston, MA, they have a background in guerrilla/street theatre. Her work with Peter Schumann of Bread and Puppet Theatre and John Bell, theatre educator and puppeteer, continues to influence and inspire them. An Applied Theatre practitioner since 2006, Zhaleh has extensive training and is a facilitator of both Playback Theatre and Theatre of the Oppressed (T.O.). She is honored to currently be a trainer/member of the Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble in Port Townsend, Washington.
Marc has been a professional educator, theatre director, activist, and workshop facilitator since 1980 having extensive experience with both adults and youth. An internationally recognized leader in the use of Augusto Boal’s renowned Theater of the Oppressed (T.O.) to stimulate community dialogue and social change, Marc has worked with diverse communities ranging from police to homeless youth, grassroots organizers and laborers to University deans.
Internationally, he has worked with activists in Norway, Holland, and Canada, youth workers in Guatemala, refugees in Azerbaijan, ex-combatants in Northern Ireland, construction workers in South Africa, slum families in India, community workers in the Republic of Congo, and victims of war, among others, in Afghanistan. Marc was named “Cultural Envoy” by the U.S. State Department for his work in the Congo in spring 2010.
Marc regularly facilitates T.O. based diversity / anti-oppression workshops in a wide variety of contexts across the U.S. with a commitment to bringing a deep sense of spirit and humanity into social justice work. He also directs the multi-generational Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble which incorporates T.O. and Playback Theatre techniques to generate community dialogue on burning social issues. One of Augusto Boal’s “multipliers”, Marc has trained thousands of people in the use of Theatre of the Oppressed techniques through his classes and annual week-long intensive trainings since the early 1990′s. Marc is also a dedicated father of 4 beautiful boys.
Daniela Fernández is a racial justice organizer, applied theatre artist, and an elected official in rural Northern California. She believes that in order to dismantle systems of oppression within our communities, we must first dismantle systems of oppression within ourselves. As a trained drama therapist, Daniela uses embodied methods such as Theatre of the Oppressed to explore the topics of power & privilege and as a way to build empathy for self and other.
Spring Cheng navigates her life between the spirit of a philosopher, mind of a scientist, and the body of a performance artist. Spring is a teacher and leadership coach, integrating Taoism and the philosophy of Chinese medicine into leadership development and personal growth. Theatre and movement art is a foundation of Spring’s work. Spring’s work has reached China, US and Europe.
Spring believes that social systems, like other living systems on Earth, continue to adapt to the complexity of life and evolve toward wholeness. The evolution toward wholeness can be guided by the principle of Tao, which governs how yin and yang, the opposition forces within a living system, come together to create and nourish life. Spring strives to live by the principle of Tao and influence the social systems and people around her to evolve toward wholeness.
Spring has received a PhD in molecular biology and a MS in East Asian medicine. She and her partner, Joe Shirley, co-founded the Resonance Path Institute in Bellingham Washington.