Professor Margaret Laurena Kemp, Department of Theatre and Dance chair, is pleased to announced two guest artists and presenters for DRA 199: Theatre for Social Change and Social Justice in fall quarter. On Oct. 12, Oona Hatton, theatre artist, teacher, performance ethnographer, and critical scholar, participates in the class and on Oct. 21 Joyce Lu, founder and director of LAPlayback. The unique year-long course features the world renowned Ping Chong and Company as collaborators.

In DRA 199, students, faculty and staff will have a year-long engagement with Ping Chong and Company and create a fact-based performance (docu-drama) and film about the issues and impact of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Statements).

Oona Hatton(she/her)’s creative and research interests include community performance, representations of race, and performance of and with the incarcerated. She also writes about performance pedagogy. Her scholarship has been published in Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance (RiDE), Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, Partake: The Journal of Performance as Research, Theatre Research International, Youth Theatre Journal, and PUBLIC: Imagining America. As a dramaturg and director, Oona is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Davis Repertory Theatre, where she is currently working on multiple community-engaged projects including a new play about wildfires. Previous works include SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS, adapted from the letters, poetry, and artwork of solitary confinement survivor Jack L. Morris and an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s IN DUBIOUS BATTLE. Dr. Hatton is an Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at San José State University, where she was the 2020 recipient of the CoSS Teaching Excellence Award. In 2019, Oona co-facilitated SJSU ODEI’s faculty workshop series on Whiteness and Race. (Ph.D.: Northwestern’s Theatre and Drama program).

Joyce Lu started her Playback journey in the Living Arts Playback Ensemble, directed by Armand Volkas, MFA, MA, MFT, RDT/BCT, where she was also introduced to his Healing the Wounds of History methodology. She also works as an equity consultant and Playback actor for Oakland Freedom Theatre, Be The Change Consulting and Dailey Innovations, Inc. Joyce is a certified Feldenkrais practitioner and is also training in psychodramatic techniques. She holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from UC Berkeley and is currently an Associate Professor of Theatre and Asian American Studies at Pomona College.

Founded in New York City in 1975 by leading theatrical innovator and National Medal of Arts recipient Ping Chong, the company engages multigenerational and interdisciplinary artists to build on, and expand, Ping Chong’s singular and visionary body of work. The company’s work is centered on innovation, collaboration, and community engagement. Artistic Director Ping Chong has explored and dismantled history, chronology, geography, race, and culture in his interdisciplinary works and the Undesirable Elements form.