The LAB: The Artistic Caucus

Marie Cisco (she/her) is a Multi-Disciplinary Producer. She has worked at The Public Theater, The National Black Theatre, The Apollo Theater, and Lee Daniel’s Entertainment. She currently works as the Creative and Development Consultant for Think Common Entertainment and Tour Producer for the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative.  

Adil Mansoor (he/him) is a theatre maker and educator centering the stories of queer folks and people of color. He is currently developing “Amm(i)gone”, his solo performance adapting Sophocles’s “Antigone” as an apology to and from his mother. “Amm(i)gone” is National Performance Network (NPN) Creative and Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Kelly Strayhorn Theater, The Theater Offensive, and NPN. 

Adil has developed new work with New York Theatre Workshop, The Poetry Project, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Tofte Lake Center, NYU Tisch, and PearlArts Studios. In addition to his own practice, Mansoor also directs new and contemporary plays including include “Daddies” by Paul Kruse (Audible), “Gloria” by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Hatch Arts Collective), “Desdemona’s Child” by Caridad Svich (Carnegie Mellon), and “Plano” by Will Arbery (Quantum Theater).  

Mansoor is a founding member of Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective and the former Artistic Director of Dreams of Hope, an LGBTQA+ youth arts organization. As an educator, he has worked with Sarah Lawrence, Middlebury College, The Mori Art Museum, The Andy Warhol Museum, and others. He was the inaugural director with Quantum Theatre’s Gerri Kay New Voices program and a 2050 Directing Fellow with New York Theatre Workshop. Mansoor is currently a fellow with Sundance’s Art of Practice Initiative and part of the inaugural Artist Caucus gathered by Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf, St. Louis Rep, and Woolly Mammoth. Mansoor received his MFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University. 

Regina Victor (they/them/pharaoh) is a Black director, multidisciplinary artist, and cultural critic. Presently Sideshow Theatre’s Artistic Director, and one of Newcity’s “Fifty People Who Really Perform for Chicago”– two years running. Victor has helped develop world premieres by Antoinette Nwandu, Anna Deavere Smith (Notes from the Field), Sarah Ruhl, and recently directed an all Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) ACLU Benefit reading of The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Other notable artistic collaborations include Steppenwolf Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Timeline Theatre, and California Shakespeare Theatre. Works in development include Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom (Once in a Bleu Moon) Brynne Frauenhoffer (Pro-Am, Kilroys List 2020), and Emma Durbin (landscape). In their spare time, they run Rescripted, an arts journalism platform they founded in 2017, serve on the National Advisory Council for Howlround Theatre Commons, are a board member for The Sappho Project, a member of the Beehive Dramaturgy Collective, and a member of the Bard at the Gate selection committee at McCarter Theater.

Nailah Unole didanas’ea Harper-Malveaux (she/her) is a multiracial and multidisciplinary theatre director, producer and community organizer. She creates, facilitates and curates artistic engagements that center intersectional experience and celebrate the beauty, complexity, resilience, imagination, and joy of those living in the margins, particularly Black and Indigenous women and queer folks. She is currently the Community Relationships Manager at Playwrights Foundation and this winter, will be directing the world premiere of Dipika Guha’s Getting There at New Conservatory Theatre Center. Recent directing jobs include The Light by Loy A. Webb at Shotgun Players and two projects for the American Conservatory Theater’s (A.C.T.) MFA program. While the Bret C. Harte Directing Fellow at Berkeley Repertory, she assistant directed the world premiere of Becky Nurse of Salem (Sarah Ruhl). She is a Resident Artist at Crowded Fire, a 2019-21 SDCF Observer and former Community Producing fellow at A.C.T. She graduated with a B.A. in Theatre Studies and American Studies from Yale University.