Despina Stamos is a dancer/choreographer living and working in NYC since 1989. Her work has been presented through out New York City at such venues as Dance Theater Workshop, PS122, PS1,as well as internationally in Greece, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Puerto Rico.Her interest in site-specific work has been developing since 1998 when she was invited to be a participating artist in Julie Atlas Muz’ 24 Hours on the Staten Island Ferry.  Since then, she has performed and organized events in a plethora of locations including Times Square, the NYC subways, piers, parks, bathrooms and gardens.

As a dancer she has worked with various companies and choreographers including Chen and Dancers, Hikari Baba and Dancers, Anahi Galante Dance Theater and the National Caravan Theater, Felix Ruckert, Zendora Dance Theater, Aspassia Yaga and Wendy Osserman Dance Theater.


Samantha Chanse is a writer & performer, teacher, and arts organizer who's been based in San Francisco since 2001. Her work has been presented with the NY International Fringe Festival, Kearny Street Workshop, The Marsh, Asian American Theater Company, Footloose/Shotwell Studios, Bindlestiff, and others. She is the recipient of an Individual Artist Commission from the San Francisco Arts Commission, resulting in the 2008 SF/NY productions of her first solo play, Lydia’s Funeral Video. In 2009, she started performing a new solo show, Back to the Graveyard, for which she received an Artist In Motion residency from Footloose/Shotwell Studios. She co-founded multidisciplinary artist salon series Laundry Party, served as KSW’s artistic director, and recently embarked on a bicoastal lifestyle to pursue a MFA in playwriting at her native NYC's Columbia University. www.samanthachanse.com.

In the last few years she's also written and performed plays & theater pieces, including Lydia's Funeral Video, which was produced in 2008 at the Dark Room in San Francisco, and directed by Wilma Bonet. The play was produced again in August 2008 at the Milagro Theater in New York as part of the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival, and was directed by Thoams Connors. Her first play, "what good intentions," was produced in 1999 at Rites and Reason Theater in Providence, RI; more recently, she developed her newest solo show, Back to the Graveyard, for a September 2008 performance at Intersection for the Arts as Featured Artist for KSW's APAture festival; the show was subsequently produced by Bindlestiff Studio at the Thick House in April 2009, by Footloose/Shotwell in January and May 2009, and by the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center at SomArts in May 2009. Other past work includes a 2005 production of her full-length play Sleeper (a chronicle of the return of the remarkable), with Asian American Theater Company and Bindlestiff Studio; co-writing & co-producing Pipe Dreams and Paper Trails at Bindlestiff; and having a staged reading of one-acts at Calaveras Repertory Theatre and Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

Behzad Yaghmaian is an Iranian-born author living in the United States. Currently, he is a Professor of Political Economy at Ramapo College in New Jersey. He has taught international political economy in the United States, Iran, and Turkey.

Yaghmaian has published a number of articles on globalization and Third World Studies in various academic journals. His book, Social Change in Iran: An Eyewitness Account of Dissent, Defiance, and Movements for Rights, was written after a year-long visit to Iran during the time of the brief political opening in Iran in 1998-99. During that period, Yaghmaian was a columnist for a popular reformist newspaper, Neshat, while also contributing articles to other widely-read dailies and magazines. He was the consultant for a 2003 PBS/Channel 4 (England) documentary about Iran.

In September 2002, Yaghmaian left the United States, traveling for two years in the Middle East and Europe following migrants from Muslim countries on the journey to the West. He lived among them, listened to their hopes, dreams, and fears, weaving together dozens of their stories of yearning, persecution, and unwavering faith in his latest book, Embracing the Infidel: Stories of Muslim Migrants on the Journey West.

Yaghmaian is currently traveling in Asia working on a new book.

http://www.yaghmaian.com

Sara Goudarzi is a New York City writer and performer of poetry. She was born in Tehran and grew up in Iran, Kenya, and the US. Her nonfiction and poetry have appeared in The Adirondack Review, National Geographic News, The Christian Science Monitor, Terry and Drunken Boat, among others. She is the founder and co-editor of /One/ The Journal of Literature, Art and Ideas. Currently, Sara is working on a first novel. Her CD, Oryan, Selected Poems of Baba Taher, in collaboration with Kees van den Doel, is available on CD Baby. Sara’s website is www.saragoudarzi.com.



Assurbanipal Babilla , a painter and playwright is originally from Iran, where in the 1970s he was one of the country's leading avant-garde directors. Babilla was one of three resident directors with the Drama Workshop of Tehran from 1973 to 1978. He fled to the United States in 1979. Both his plays and his paintings dealt with controversial material. This put him doubly at risk from the new conservative Islamic government . Plays written and directed by Assurbanipal Babilla have been performed in Los Angeles & New York. He has toured his work to Poland, Boston, Baltimore, Seattle and Portland. you can read a review of his work at http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/15/theater/theater-in-review-199991.html



Mohammad Ghaffari was born in Iran. In 1971 he joined Peter Brook's international research center as an actor. From 1974-1978 he produced, a wide range of traditional theater forms; which also included  the epic drama of Ta’ziyeh.. He later moved to New York where he continued to work at Ellen  Stewart's La Mama etc where he directed plays and performed at

Festivals in Europe. He was assistant to Jerzy Grotowski at Columbia University in 1983 where he taught acting from 1982-1992.. He directed the first international performance of Ta’ziyeh at the Festival d’Avignone in 1992 and later at the Festival d’Automne in 2000. In 2002 he directed three Ta’ziyeh plays for Lincoln Center Festival.