Community Engagement > Season Engagement

Valarie Curtis Newton, Moderator

Valarie Curtis Newton

Currently the Head of Directing at the University of Washington School of Drama, Valerie also serves as the Founding Artistic Director for The Hansberry Project, a professional African American theatre lab.Valerie has worked with professional theatre's across the country including: The Guthrie Theatre, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Seattle Rep, Playmakers Repertory Comany, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Intiman Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, The Mark Taper Forum, New York Theatre Workshop, and Southern Repertory Theatre among others.

Pun Bandhu, Guest Speaker, Actor and co-founder of AAPAC

Pun Bandhu

Pun Bandhu is an award-winning Actor, Producer and Advocate. He has acted on Broadway, Off Broadway and. throughout the regions and is the recipient of a regional Henry Award and New Dramatists' Bowden Actor Award. He also received an Obie Award for his advocacy work co-founding the Asian American Performers Action Coalition which publishes The Visibility Report, an annual report on representation statistics for New York theatre. He has guest starred on numerous TV shows including NCIS: New Orleans, FBI, and recurs on Blue Bloods. He recently played John Yoo in Amazon’s The Report and can also be seen in the Oscar-nominated films Michael Clayton, Burn After Reading, and Can You Ever Forgive Me? among others. He serves on the Advisory Board for the Yale School of Drama where he received his MFA in Acting.

Victor Vazquez, Guest Speaker, Casting Director for Broadway, Film, and TV

Victor Vazquez, CSA (he/him/his) is the founder and lead Casting Director of X Casting.

Victor has held casting calls in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, the SF Bay Area, and Washington D.C.

Victor is an adjunct professor of acting for senior students in the Drama Department at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts within the New Studio on Broadway.

Previously, he taught Anti-Racist Theatre course at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama.

Victor holds a master’s degree (with distinction) from the University of Oxford in the UK. He is the proud son of Mexican immigrants; Spanish is his first language. Victor is a member of the Casting Society of America, and a 2020 Theater Communications Group (TCG) Rising Leader of Color. He lives in New York City with his partner Bryan.

Randy Reinholz

Randy Reinholz

Randy Reinholz, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, is co-founder and producing artistic director, emeritus of Native Voices at the Autry. The award-winning producer, director, actor, activist, and playwright, has produced more than 30 scripts and directed over 75 plays in the United States, Australia, England, Mexico, and Canada. Off the Rails, his bawdy and irreverent adaptation of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure had its World Premiere and a sold-out run at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He is a tenured professor at San Diego State University, where he served as Head of Acting (1997–2007), Director of the School of Theatre, Television, and Film (2007–2012), and director of Community Engagement and Innovation for the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts (2012–2015). Reinholz has been honored with the Ellen Stewart Award for Career Achievement in Professional Theatre, Playwrights Arena’s Lee Melville Award, LA Drama Critics Circle Gordon Davidson Award, SDSU’s Outstanding Faculty Award, and the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission and City of Los Angeles Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Los Angeles Community.

Sandra Laronde

Sandra Laronde

A highly accomplished arts leader, creator, innovator, and influential speaker, Sandra Laronde (Misko Kizhigoo Migizii Kwe) which means “Red Sky Eagle Woman” in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibway) language, M.S.C., O.M.C., B.A. (Hon), Hon. LL.D. has over 30 years of experience in arts and culture. She is from the Teme-Augama-Anishinaabe (People of the Deep Water) in Temagami, northern Ontario and is based in Toronto.

Sandra plays a pivotal role in the ongoing Indigenous cultural resurgence in Canada. For three decades, she has created an extraordinary body of work with collaborators that has led to powerful arts experiences elevating the ecology of arts and culture in this country while strengthening an international presence. Sandra is the Executive and Artistic Director of Red Sky Performance, a leading company of contemporary Indigenous performing arts and culture in Canada and worldwide.

Sondra Segundo

Sondra Segundo

“My hope is that my artistic endeavors amplify the love, wisdom and faith of my Haida people".

Sondra Segundo is an activist, a published author, artist and composer/singer of the Haida language. She is an educator and has worked in schools and programs throughout the Northwest, teaching art and sharing her books and songs.

Sondra grew up singing both traditional Haida songs and gospel music with Elders. She released her first album, Díi Gudangáay uu Síigaay - I Can Feel the Ocean in 2018 and 2nd album, Sáandlaanaay-The First Light in 2020.

Her community activism lead her to building non-profit organization, Haida Roots, which focuses on Haida language education and preservation.

Kev Marcus and Wil Baptiste

Kev Marcus and Wil Baptiste

For 17 years, Black Violin has been merging string arrangements with modern beats and vocals and building bridges in communities along the way. Members Kev Marcus and Wil Baptiste first met in orchestra class at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, becoming classically trained on the violin and viola through their high school and college careers. Post-college, they reconvened to produce beats for South Florida rappers, and began building an audience in local clubs. They later went on to win Showtime at the Apollo in 2005, and eventually sold out headline performances at venues across the country, including a sold out two-night headline run at The Kennedy Center in 2018. NPR took note and declared “their music will keep classical music alive for the next generation.” Black Violin’s latest release, Take the Stairs, earned a Grammy Award nomination for “Best Contemporary Instrumental Album”.

Demarre McGill

Demarre McGill

Demarre McGill has appeared with orchestras and participated in festivals around the globe. He is co-founder of Art of Élan, the Myriad Trio, and, along with clarinetist Anthony McGill and pianist Michael McHale, founded the McGill/McHale Trio.

Demarre coaches and presents master classes internationally. He is on the faculty of the Aspen Music Festival and School, and is Associate Professor of Flute at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Now with the Seattle Symphony, Demarre previously was principal flute of the Dallas and San Diego symphonies, Florida Orchestra, and Santa Fe Opera Orchestra as well as acting principal flute of the Metropolitan Opera and the Pittsburgh Symphony.

A native of Chicago, Demarre studied there with Susan Levitin, and continued his studies at The Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School.

Dr. Carlene Brown

Dr. Carlene Brown

Carlene J. Brown, Ph.D., MT-BC is a musician, music educator, board-certified music therapist, and arts manager. Her early training began in Boston, Massachusetts, where she studied music education and music therapy, taught in the Boston Public School system, and began a life-long career of working with youth and the arts, starting at Tanglewood, for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Brown earned a doctorate in Systematic Musicology, with a focus on the Psychology of Music, from the University of Washington. She is currently a Professor of Music at Seattle Pacific University and the Director of the SPU Music Therapy Program. In 2020, to honor her sister’s legacy, Dr. Rae Linda Brown, Carlene Brown wrote the ‘Afterword’ and published her sister’s biography on Florence B. Price, the first African American woman composer to have a work performed by a major symphony orchestra in the United States. Carlene Brown is now dedicated to telling the stories of these two extraordinary African American scholars and how their lives and work have impacted the canon of American music.