Welcome to Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project

Seth Beale

Seth Beale (production) knows how to pay attention, press buttons, pull levers, write detailed notes, and say things like "do that now". When requested to perform such tasks by people he loves, they often say thank you at the end.

Jesselito Bie

Jesselito Bie (performer) has danced with various companies in San Francisco such as The High Risk Group, Scott Wells and Kathleen Hermesdorf, Stephen Pelton, Kulintang Arts, Potrzebie Dance Project, Onsite Dance Company and Nesting Dolls. He was the artistic director of STEAMROLLER from1996 to 2006 and has presented at the In The Street Festival, Asian American Dance Perfomances, Trolley Dances in San Francisco and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica.

Matthias Bossi

Matthias Bossi (performer) is the drummer/orator for Rock-Against-Rock pioneers Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and was a member of NYC's seminal garbage-rock juggernaut, Skeleton Key. As a founder of The Book of Knots, a Brooklyn-based recording collective, he has had the pleasure of collaborating with Tom Waits, Mike Watt, Jon Langford, Carla Bozulich, and author Rick Moody. In the world of theatre and dance, he has written music for Jo Kreiter, Joe Goode, inkBoat, and Central Works, and has collaborated with Carla Kihlstedt on a score for choreographer Deborah Slater. He is currently on the road with guitarist Fred Frith in his new project, Cosa Brava, and also enjoys making music with singer/songwriter John Vanderslice.

Dwayne Calizo

Dwayne Calizo (vocal director, performer) has worked with Erika for 10 years. He's a Vocalist, Activist, Composer, Musical Director and Educator, and the Executive Director of Mama Calizo's Voice Factory in S.F. For 25 yrs years Mr. C's been singing soprano in & outta monster drag, He love cruising the town on his 57 Cruiser bike. He's one of the founding members of New Colleges Experimental Performance Institute, the worlds first Queer and Activist Performance Degrees. He received 3 degrees a B.M. in Voice and M.A./M.F.A. in Experimental Music and Vocal Pedagogy. Find out the real deal about Mr. Calizo at voicefactorysf.org

Jennifer Chien

Jennifer Chien (performer) was born and raised in San Francisco. She received her BA in American Studies from Smith College, and MA in Creative Inquiry/Interdisciplinary Performance at New College of California. In San Francisco she has danced in the works of Kathleen Hermesdorf/Albert Mathias, STEAMROLLER, Jo Kreiter, Annie Rosenthal Parr, Scott Wells, and Hope Mohr. Her own choreographic work has been shown at Venue 9, Jon Sims Center for the Arts, and CASA 0101 (Los Angeles) and since 2002 she has served as choreographer for acclaimed sketch comedy troupe Killing My Lobster. In addition to performing, she writes poetry and fiction, practices bodywork (karunahealingarts.com), teaches yoga, contact improvisation and creative writing, and enjoys walking her dogs in the park. Jennifer has been working with Erika since 2003.

Deborah M. Cullinan

Deborah M. Cullinan has been the Executive Director since 1996 of Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco's oldest alternative arts space. Under her direction, Intersection has achieved extraordinary success and a strong national reputation for its inclusive models for the support and development of new contemporary art and performance. She has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Business Arts Council, and as an Advisory Board Member of Unconditional Theatre Company, the Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project, the Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience, the 16th Street Neighborhood Association, the San Francisco Women's Building, and the African American Art and Culture Complex. She is also a fiction and prose writer and served as a reader and judge for the San Francisco Bay Guardian Fiction Contest for many years as well as having published in several journals. She has also served on numerous selection panels for the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose and has recently served as a panelist for Theatre Communications Group’s New Generations Program, for the Talking Art program at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, for Montalvo Artist Residency Programs, and at the New World Theatre’s Intersections Conference focusing on hybrid art forms, among many others. She is a co-founder and co-coordinator of Arts Forum SF - an inclusive forum committed to bringing people together to share ideas and resources and creating sustainable and forward-thinking arts programming, partnerships and civic policies in the city of San Francisco.

Daveen DiGiacomo

Daveen DiGiacomo (composer) has composed songs & theatrical scores, created sound designs and played with several bands. She previously worked with the Erika Shuch Performance Project as musical director/composer in Orbit (Notes From the Edge of Forever) at Intersection for the Arts and After All at YBCA.

Melanie Elms

Melanie Elms (performer, co-choreographer) was born and began dancing in North Little Rock, AR. She moved to New York and earned her BFA in dance from SUNY Purchase. She moved to San Francisco eight years ago and began dedicating her time to the Margaret Jenkins Dance Compance and ESP Project. On the side, she is obsessed with using vegetable oil as alternative fuel and homeopathy as alternative medicine.

Jessica Fudim

Jessica Fudim (performer) was an original member of the ESP Project, co-founder of the former dance theater collective The Beauty School with Erika Chong Shuch and Evra Baldinger, and co-founder of The Experimental Performance Institute. She has been producing her dance-theater work and performing in the Bay Area for over a decade, receiving a 2006 “Best of SF Fringe” award for her solo Sheepish and choreographed an "Absolutely Fabulous Musical Contingent" in the SF Gay Pride Parade. She is the Artistic Director of The Dance Animals and a recent resident artist of The Voice Factory SF and The Workspace for Choreographers in Virginia. www.myspace.com/danceanimals

Sean San Jose

Sean San Jose is proud to be the Program Director of Theatre for Intersection for the Arts and with their resident theatre company Campo Santo. He is also proud to have worked directly with Erika Chong Shuch and the ESP Project on the development and premiere of new works since 2004, including 5 world premiere evening length pieces. Sean has had the pleasure of working with Erika since 2002 through the Hybrid Project, Campo Santo and looks forward to their next collaboration for Intersection in the fall- "The Future."

Tommy Shepherd

Tommy Shepherd (performer) A.K.A Soulati is a father, a husband, actor, playwright, b-boy, rapper, drummer, and beatboxer. His wife Anna Maria had their baby boy in November, 2007! His most recent conquest was re-writing an incomplete script formerly written by Duke Ellington called “Queenie Pie”, performed at the Oakland Opera in May 2008. Tommy created and performed his first one act solo performance piece The MF in ME, premiering at Intersection in 2008. Shepherd acts in children’s cooking show called Doof, created the score for Donald Lacy’s touring show Color Struck, performs internationally with Marc Bamuthi Joseph in Scourge, and is a Musician/Beatboxer for the break/s, which premiered at Yerba Buena in 2008, and ran at the Kennedy Center(D.C.), Yale Rep(New Haven),The Public in N.Y. With Dan Wolf, he performed in and created the live musical soundscape for Angry Black White Boy, and collaborated with Wolf on Stateless, which will tour Eupore on 2009/10. Tommy is co-founder of the live hip hop band, Felonious: onelovehiphop, and is 1 of 3 M.C.’s in the live Funk-Hip Hop band Raw Deluxe, bommbin’ the Bay and world. Tommy was a long time Hybrid Resident Artist at Intersection with Erika Chong Shuch and Dan Wolf. He is also a member of resident theatre company Campo Santo and Erika Chong Shuch’s ESP Project. With Campo Santo, Tommy acted in and created the live score for Hamlet: Blood in the Brain, by Naomi Iizuka and was Musical Director and live vocal musician for a fist of roses by Philip Kan Gotanda. Tommy created the sound design and score with Howard Wiley for A Place To Stand, and acted, beatboxed, and composed a live score with Scheherazade Stone for Domino by Campo Santo with Sean San José, directed by Erika Chong Shuch, which premiered at Yerba Buena.

Erin Mei-Ling Stuart

Erin Mei-Ling Stuart (performer) is proud to be an ESP Project collaborator. Erin has also worked with dozens of wonderful Bay Area companies, including Stephen Pelton Dance Theater, Huckabay McAllister Dance, Dance Elixir, Potrzebie Dance Project, SHIFT Physical Theater, Flyaway Productions, Steamroller, and Lizz Roman & Dancers. She has also ventured into theater, appearing in Mark Jackson's "The Forest War" and David Slasza's multimedia theater piece, "My Hot Lobotomy". Erin makes dances and films with her own company, EmSpace Dance. In 2008, Erin was awarded a GOLDIE for dance by the Bay Guardian.

Ishan Vernallis

Ishan Vernallis (video design) has been interested in performance ever since preschool, when they put a synthetic hula skirt on him while he sang and signed "little grass shack" before his elders. Since then he has presented inter-media works in museums, galleries, nightclubs and street corners internationally. Ishan and Erika have been making music, theater, and movies since they met in 1994. Ishan’s video design for ESP Project’s ORBIT (notes from the edge of forever) was met with great acclaim. Ishan is also a proud father.

Allen Willner

Allen Willner (Composer, Set and Lighting Design) has been designing lights and sets and writing music for theater and dance in New York and the Bay Area since 1998. He designed lights, set and composed the score for the ESP Project’s “51802” and “After All”. Some past collaborators include Shinichi Iova-Koga and inkBoat , Carla Kihlstedt, Deborah Slater, Scott Wells & Dancers, Company SO.GO.NO and The Shotgun Players. His direction of inkboat’s “Heaven’s Radio” received 4 “izzie” nominations including music composition. He has received an Isadora Duncan Dance Award for the Lighting and Stage Design of inkBoat’s “Heaven’s Radio”, and for ESP Project’s “51802.”

Danny Wolohan

Danny Wolohan (performer) is a member of Campo Santo and The ESP Project, the resident theater and dance-theater companies, respectively, at San Francisco's Intersection for the Arts. With ESP, he has danced, written, sung, and spoken in three critically acclaimed world premiere productions: One Window, Orbit, and 51802. With Campo Santo, he has appeared in seven world premiere productions, collaborating with such writers as Denis Johnson, Dave Eggers, Philip Kan Gotanda, Octavio Solis, and Jessica Hagedorn. Wolohan has been nominated for several Bay Area Theatre Critics' Circle Awards and was SF Weekly's Best Ensemble Actor of 2006, as well as the Bay Area Reporter's Best Drag Performance of 2005. Danny was also featured on the cover of American Theatre magazine as one of seven actors in the nation one should travel to see.