Partner Bios

NANCY KEYSTONE 

Artistic Consultant

Nancy Keystone is a director, multi-disciplinary artist, and the artistic director of Critical Mass Performance Group. She is the company's chief investigator, writer, director, and scenic designer. As a freelance artist she has directed and designed dozens of award-winning theatre productions and opera around the country including at Portland Center Stage, Center Theatre Group, Georgia Shakespeare Festival, Long Beach Opera, Actors Express, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival.

Among many honors, Keystone is the recipient of a 2014 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artists Hoi Fellowship (2011), a Theatre Communications Group Alan Schneider Director Award (2003), and she has been named one of LA Times' "Faces To Watch."  She holds a BA in theatre from U.C.L.A., and an MFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon.  She is on visiting faculty at UCLA, and is a frequent university guest lecturer around the country.

DAN KWONG

Artistic Consultant

Dan Kwong is a veteran performance artist, writer, teacher and visual artist who has been presenting his solo performances since 1989. Hailed by critics as “a master storyteller”, Kwong draws upon his own life experiences to explore the personal, the historical, the social and the unspeakable. With keen insight and a generous sense of humor, he intertwines storytelling, multimedia, dynamic physical movement, poetry, martial arts and music. 

NIKKEI FOR CIVIL RIGHTS AND REDRESS (NCRR)

Partner Organization, Artistic Consultant

NCRR was founded in 1980 by Nikkei (Japanese Americans) from across the country. They held the firm belief that our community had to come together to fight for proper redress for what our government did to Nikkei during World War II. 

We worked with the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), the National Council for Japanese American Redress (NCJAR), and the Nikkei members of Congress to win passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (CLA). 

Foremost has been our drive to empower the grassroots community, to help give voice to Japanese Americans who felt that they had nothing to say or that what they did have to say was not important. 
NCRR helped many of them to speak out at the 1981 hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC). We held countless forums to educate and activate the community to participate in the Redress Movement. 

ERIC NEWTON

Circus Consultant

Eric's performing career began more than 20 years ago. He has been a principle performer with Cirque du Soleil Believe and Quidam; Cirque Eloize (Cirque Orchestre); Teatro ZinZanni; as well as innumerable performances of his original acts. He has coached at the SF Circus Center, throughout Los Angeles and Seattle, in London, Israel and Las Vegas. In 2002, he founded Eye of Newt Circus and created solo, duo and group aerials, ground acrobatics and character driven comic acts and innovative theatre productions.

He is recognized as a master coach/teacher and act choreographer. Eric recently added Pilates instruction to his bag of tricks, developing a synthesis of classical Pilates with aerial technique. He has been profiled in the LA Weekly, on news shows on KNBC in Los Angeles and KOMO in Seattle.