Motherloss

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Assistant Director: Jay Slomka
Choreographer: Ana María Álvarez
Assistant Choreographer: Vrisika Chauhan
Dramaturg: Cambria Herrera
Dramaturg: Emma Baker
Scenic Designer: Muting Fan
Costume Designer: Kimberly Kocol
Lighting Designer: Spencer Duff
Sound Designer: Scarlett Shi
Dramaturgy & Script Consultant: Lamar Perry
Cultural Consultant: Oluyemisi Bolonduro
EDI Advocate: TBD

  

Production Stage Manager: Stephanie Carrizales
Assistant Stage Manager: Rosemary Montoya
Assistant Stage Manager: Maya Melancon
Production Assistant: Mark Fraley
Production Assistant: Charlotte Yu

 

 

Production/Additional Team

About the Playwright

Mylan Gray (they/he) is an Eagle Scout turned playwright from Kansas City, KS, who uses their gift of the tongue to imagine a way out, a way through, a way (back) to love. Their writing dares us to seek more of ourselves and this world. They have received the Lorraine Hansberry Award from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival for their play, Buried in Blood. Their work has been developed by the Tank Theater, the Workshop Theater, the Kansas City Public Theater, the Whim Theater Company, the Mid-America Theater Conference, and the Writing Downtown Residency in Las Vegas. They are a graduate of Stanford University, where they received the Kennel Jackson Jr. Award, the Braden Storytelling Grant, and a Chappell Lougee Scholarship. They are co-producer of the LIT Council of the Tank Theater, and have written a fiction podcast for LWC Studios. Their work draws on his deep reverence for Brazil and a penchant for spiritual journeying. When they are not writing, reading, or watching films, they are in the forest soaking up the songs of birds and listening to the world's oldest keeper of stories: the trees.

UC- San Diego Credits include: Buried in Blood (staged reading), BOXED (WNPF ’23), and Tú no Estas Solo (In Collaboration with Chicanx Teatro Ensemble).

 

About the Choreographer

 Ana María Alvarez, a 2020 Doris Duke Artist and an inaugural Dance/USA Artist Fellow, is a prolific choreographer, skilled dancer, masterful teaching artist, and movement activist who has achieved multiple accolades for her dynamic works. Her thesis work explored the abstraction of Latine dance, specifically Salsa, as a way to express social resistance as related to the U.S. immigration battle. This work became the impetus for founding CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater in 2005 in Los Angeles. Her most recent work with the company, ¡azúcar! was commissioned by APAP Arts Forward and NC State Live in Raleigh, NC. She will continue to work with CONTRA-TIEMPO on further developing the work as part of Jacob's Pillow, Pillow Lab, in February 2024 and will work with local dancers as part of WinterWorks 2024. After this, ¡azúcar! will be shared as part of the 20th season of Art & Power at UCSD in Spring 2024. 

Alvarez and CONTRA-TIEMPO have continued to tour “joyUS justUS” (2017). This signature work is a radical celebration of humanity and the feminine, centering joy as a more loving and just future is imagined. Herwork has been presented in theaters across the country and the world, including in Germany, Bulgaria, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and El Salvador.  She was selected as the 2018 BiNational Artist in Residence, connecting communities in the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix (U.S.), Douglas (U.S.), Tucson (U.S.), and Agua Prieta (M.X.), through leading artistic workshops, collaborative performances, and public talks, and concluding with a performance at the U.S.-Mexico border. Alvarez and CONTRA-TIEMPO were also invitedto represent the best of American Contemporary Dance Abroad through The Obama Administration’s U.S. Department of State cultural exchange program, produced by BAM, DanceMotionUSA. In the Fall of 2022, Alvarez was invited to join the UC San Diego Theatreand Dance Department as a tenured faculty member. In this exciting new chapter of her career, Alvarez, in collaboration with her colleagues and students, is imagining and designing a new future for embodied performance and practice at UCSD. 

Alvarez has been recognized with a number of awards and grants including NEFA’s National Dance Project, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, LA City Department of Cultural Affairs,  Los Angeles County and the California Arts Council among others.

She is the recipient of  the Mujeres Destacadas awardfrom LA Opinion and a Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival Rainbow Award for her work with CONTRA-TIEMPO called “Agua Furiosa.” She received a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and Politics from Oberlin College and a Master of Fine Arts in Choreography from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures. Alvarez lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.