
Jesse Bliss
Founder / Artistic & Executive Director

Bairton Brown
Grant Writer / Teaching Artist / Producer

Sigrid Gilmer
Teaching Artist
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Robert Rose
Product Designer
STAFF + BOARD
STAFF + BOARD

Founder and Artistic Director
Jesse Bliss
Bliss is as an international playwright, director, producer, actress, poet, journalist, and veteran arts educator. Her work has been showcased globally at prestigious venues such as the United Nations, Off-Broadway, the Edinburgh Festival, Traxx at Union Station, Lincoln Heights Jail, S.P.A.R.C at the Old Jail in Venice, The Last Bookstore, King Eddy Saloon, The Rosenthal Theater at
Inner-City Arts, Casa 0101 Theater, Theatre of Note, Hollywood Fringe Festival, Occidental College, UCSC, UCLA, and the California Institute of Integral Studies, among many others.
Bliss is the playwright behind influential works such as Roots and Wings, Diamonds, Tree of Fire, A Record of Light, Night Flower, and The Joy Ride, which have left a significant impact on both artists and audiences.
She is a featured artist in Kate Crash’s LA Women, Look What She Did, Yahoo News' Shine, and an Emmy-nominated segment on Spotlight Arts: Standup for the Arts.
Bliss has developed curriculum and consulted for organizations including Center Theatre Group, The Geffen Playhouse, the California Arts Council, and the Institute for the Future. She also spent a decade as the producer and host of Pacifica Radio's Think Outside the Cage.
Currently, she just completed her newest work, Realm of the River.
Her groundbreaking trilogy, created by BIPOC femme writers—Matriarch, Women at Work, and Luminous Streets (both a Downtown LA and upcoming Highland Park theatrical tour)—explores women’s survival and the pursuit of justice, and has
received widespread acclaim. Bliss is also a proud mother to her 11-year-old daughter.

Grant Writer / Education Program Associate / Teaching Artist/ Producer
Bairton Brown
Bairton (Bair) Brown (they/he) is an award-winning filmmaker and theater practitioner. While earning a B.F.A. from The Theatre School at DePaul, Bair directed NAOMI & LEVI TAKE ON THE WORLD which was selected for distribution by OTV (Open Television). While earning an M.A. in Arts & Public Policy from NYU Tisch, Bair directed the off-off broadway premiere of HOW DARE YOU at Affirmation Theatre, and FINAL GOODBYE at Soundscape Theatre. Bair completed a Playwriting Fellowship at Congo Square Theatre. Bair’s full-length play, THE PLAY GROUNDS, or MEMENTO VIVERE, was produced at Congo Square in Chicago, Denver Fringe, and Hollywood Fringe. Bair currently works as an Assistant Director, Dramaturg, and Company Member for Interact Theatre Company. Bair’s first book, BLACKTOPIA, was published by Syllble Studios in 2024. In collaboration with Stonehaven Studios, Bair recently directed its audio series adaptation.

Teaching Artist/Writer
Sigrid Gilmer
Sigrid Gilmer makes black comedies that are historically bent, totally perverse, joyfully irreverent and are concerned with issues of identity, pop culture and contemporary American society. Her work has been performed at the Skylight Theatre, Pavement Group, Know Theatre of Cincinnati, Cornerstone Theater Company, The Roots and Wings Project and Highways Performance Space. She is a winner of the Map Fund Creative Exploration Grant, the James Irving Foundation Fellowship and is a USA Ford Fellow in Theatre. Sigrid is a facilitator of our writing program I LOVE MYSELF GOLDEN at California Institution for Women in Chino.

Producer / Writer
Roger Q. Mason
(they/them) is an award-winning writer, performer and educator who satirizes and revises history to disrupt the biases that separate rather than unite us. Their playwriting has appeared on Broadway; Off/Off-Off-Broadway; and regionally. Their recent productions have garnered five Barrymore Award nominations in Philadelphia, a Jeff Award Recommendation in Chicago and the San Francisco Chronicle's prestigious Datebook Pick. Mason's World Premiere of Lavender Men was lauded by the Los Angeles Times as "evoking the mingled visions of Suzan-Lori Parks, Jeremy O. Harris and Michael R. Jackson." They received 2024's Playwrights' Center McKnight National Playwright Commission, the inaugural Dramatists Guild Foundation Catalyst Grant Award, a Hermitage Residency, a Lucille Lortel commission, a Kilroys List nod, and the Chuck Rowland Pioneer Award. Mason is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and an alum of the Ma-Yi’s Writing Lab, Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group, the Fire This Time Festival, and Primary Stages Writing Cohort. They currently produce a memoir/cooking segment on Instagram called Cooking with Q: A Playwright's Guide to Telling My Truth. Previously, they co-hosted the podcast Sister Roger’s Gayborhood and hosted This Way Out Radio's Queerly Yours: Portraits in Courage. As an educator, Mason has served as a mentor for Lambda Literary, Workshop Theatre, the Marsha P. Johnson Institute’s Starship Fellowship, the New Visions Fellowship and the Shay Foundation Fellowship. They are currently on faculty at CalArts. Mason holds degrees from Princeton University, Middlebury College, and Northwestern University.

Digital Media
Nastassia Cordeiro
Nastassia is a social media and marketing strategist specializing in telling brand stories through digital media. She is most known for her work as founder of Out of Stok where she has amassed a wide-reaching digital presence as a go-to e-commerce vintage furniture retailer and design logistics firm. Nastassia has provided social media and marketing for filmmakers, non-profits, performers and writers including Roger Q.Mason, The Roots and Wings Project, Tree People, Yoga for Youth, among others.