Lyam B. Gabel (they/he) is a trans* director,  performance-maker, and community organizer who creates containers for collective remembering and radical celebration. He is obsessed with archives and his ever-evolving process combines extensive research, emerging technology, and embodied improvisation. He worked for eight years in New Orleans where they founded LAST CALL, a collective that documents and interprets neglected queer history. With LAST CALL they co-created and co-directed Alleged Lesbain Activities, a nationally touring musical about the history of lesbian bars. They are a member of New Orleans physical theater ensemble NEW NOISE where they directed Jubilee, a dinner and performance that asks white audiences to interrupt familial patterns of racism. Now they are exploring queer care from 1980s-present with the dance floor, the hospital room, and the kitchen table which recieved a NPN Creation Fund commission. They regularly collaborate with playwrights and solo performers and have developed work at Ars Nova, Judson Church, Pipeline, Ashland New Plays Festival, The Theater Offensive, and    The New Orleans CAC among others. Lyam teaches acting and directing at Lehigh University. Drama League Resident 2021, Drama League Fellow 2017, Distillery Artist New Orleans CAC 2016. BFA Virginia Commonwealth University, MFA Carnegie Mellon University.

Jason Mendez is a Boricua nonfiction writer, interdisciplinary theater artist, and educator from the Bronx, NY and the creative force behind The Block Chronicles. He is a visiting assistant professor of education in the Center for Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh. His work examines the sociocultural histories and educational experiences of marginalized communities of color with a focus on Latinx students and traditionally underserved and underrepresented populations in postsecondary education. His writing captures the people and shifting landscapes of the South Bronx, the complexities of Puerto Rican identity, fatherhood, and the concept of home.

sarah huny young is an award-winning creative director and visual artist primarily documenting and exalting Black womanhood and queer communities through portraiture and video. Framing her subjects as collaborators, she often shoots on-location across the country in personal, intimate spaces of the subject’s choosing. Her work has been featured in Pittsburgh City Paper, New York Magazine, and The New York Times. huny received the Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh grant in 2016 and 2020 to execute AMERICAN WOMAN, a portrait and documentary series about Black American women, and was named one of the most influential African-Americans of 2017 by The Root (“The Root 100”); “Who’s Next in Art” 2018 by The Incline; and one of “12 People to Meet in Pittsburgh 2018” by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She is also the 2020 recipient of a “Best in Pittsburgh” award, via Pittsburgh City Paper, for co-founding the Pittsburgh Artists Emergency Fund to assist gig workers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.