Sojourner ZY Creative Team

Eugenie Chan is artistic director of Eugenie Chan Theater Projects (ECTP), dedicated to telling the untold stories of Chinese in the American West. Upcoming: The Truer History of the Chan Family, a digital vaudeville; online and at watch parties at community centers in San Francisco; Theater Mu, Minneapolis; ArtsEmerson, Boston, Spring 2024. Theaters that have produced or developed her prize-winning plays include Cutting Ball, the Magic, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Crowded Fire, the Public, Playwrights Horizons, Radical Evolution /Working Theater/New Ohio, Houston Grand Opera: HGOco, Northwest Asian American Theatre, Perishable. Community centers that have presented her work free-to-the public: Cameron House, Chinese Historical Society of America Museum, San Francisco. Resident, East-West Playwrights Lab. Resident Alumna: Crowded Fire R & D Playwrights Lab, New Dramatists, Playwrights Foundation. Recipient of a Gerbode Special Awards in the Arts – 2022 Theater Awards. Eugenie teaches at San Jose State University and the University of San Francisco. She’s thrilled to be working with Larry, Paul and the fabulous artists of ShadowLight Productions and Paul Dresher New Performance Traditions. www.eugeniechantheater.org

Larry Reed is a nationally and internationally acclaimed artist, and is a trailblazer in the contemporary shadow theatre. He is one of the first Westerners to have trained in the traditional Balinese shadow theatre (wayang kulit) and is a “dalang,” or “shadow master,” who manipulates over 20 carved leather shadow puppets while simultaneously serving as the conductor of the accompanying gamelan orchestra, the director, and the stage manager. Over the years, he has performed over 250 shows in this tradition around the world. In the early 1990’s, Reed entered a new phase of his career by inventing an ingenious shadow casting method, integrating traditional shadow theatre techniques with film, modern theatre and dance styles. Truly a multidisciplinary artist, Reed has also written, directed and produced films in the US and Mexico. Shadow Master (1979), his unique “dramatic documentary” on the family of a Balinese shadow artist, has been shown on PBS and Discovery Channel. He also served as Assistant Director of National Theater of Costa Rica, and performed and choreographed with Anna Halprin and her SF Dancers’ Workshop in the 60’s. Fluent in five languages, his articles and translation have been published in Asian Theatre Journal and Shattentheater (Germany) among others. Reed has collaborated with numerous artists and organizations from various disciplines and cultural background including: American Conservatory Theatre (The Tempest); Santa Fe and LA Operas (Orfeo); Minneapolis Children’s Theater (Whale); Ballet Austin (The Magic Flute); Lee Breuer (Peter and Wendy); Octavio Solis (7 Visions and Ghosts of the River); Puppet & Its Double of Taiwan (Monkey King at Spider Cave); Taiyuan Puppet Theatre Company and Cengiz Ozek (Silk Road); Karen Kandel, Coco Zhao, and Wu Na (The Good-for-Nothing Lover); OKI (Poro Oyna); and Hamid Rahmanian (Feathers of Fire) among others.

Paul Dresher is an internationally active composer noted for his ability to integrate diverse musical influences into his own coherent style. He pursues many forms of musical expression including experimental opera/music theater, chamber and orchestral composition, live instrumental electro-acoustic music, musical instrument invention, and scores for theater and dance. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition in 2006-07, he has received commissions from the Library of Congress, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA, Kronos Quartet, San Francisco Symphony, Zeitgeist, San Francisco Ballet, Seattle Chamber Players, Present Music, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Brenda Way/ODC Dance and Chamber Music America. He has performed or had his works performed throughout the world at venues including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Festival d ’Automne in Paris, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. Recent works include Breathing at the Boundaries (2020) created with Rinde Eckert, Alexander V. Nichols, Michael Palmer and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Trace Figures (2019) also with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company; Crazy Eights & Fractured Symmetries, commissioned and premiered by the Berkeley Symphony in 2016, Family Matters (2014) - a duo for TwoSense - cellist Ashley Bathgate and pianist Lisa Moore, Concerto for Quadrachord & Orchestra for the Berkeley Symphony, and Two Entwined (2011) - commissioned by pianist Sarah Cahill and premiered at the Spoleto Festival USA. In 2015, Dresher entered an entirely new arena with Sound Maze, a hands-on installation of his large-scale invented musical instruments created in collaboration with Daniel Schmidt. Sound Maze, has been presented at OZ in Nashville, the Esplanade Theater in Singapore, Fort Mason in San Francisco, the Mondavi Center at UC Davis, the Napa Valley Museum, USC’s Fisher Museum, UNC Chapel Hill’s CURRENT ArtSpace + Studio and at The Doseum in San Antonio. In the fall of 2022, it will travel to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.