RISE AND BEINGS

Rudi Goblen a playwright, professor, and performer who creates solo theatre and devised theater work. As an acclaimed dancer, he has toured nationally, and internationally, competing, adjudicating, and teaching with his award-winning group Flipside Kings. Rudi is a recipient of the Vineyard Theatre’s Colman Domingo Award: a three-time recipient of playwriting awards from the Kennedy Center, the Distinguished Achievement for the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, and an O’Neill Finalist; as well as a Future Aesthetics Artist Award, two Miami-Dade County Choreographer Awards; a FEAST Award for his book of poetry “A Bag of Halos and Horns,” and a Theater Masters’ Take Ten Playwright. He has trained and worked with Cirque De Soleil and DV8 Physical Theatre, and he is a founding member of Teo Castellanos/D-Projects and Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre. Publications include Theater Magazine, Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage, and Samuel French/Concord Theatricals. Rudi holds an MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama where he was mentored by Tarell Alvin McCraney and Sarah Ruhl; and he is currently on faculty in the Theatre Arts Department at the University of Miami.

Lamar Perry is a Queer Black director, producer, and educator originally from Connecticut. In addition to working as a freelance director, he currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Directing at UC San Diego. Prior to his tenure at UC San Diego Lamar served as Associate Producer at Tony-award winning, The Old Globe, and also having previously served as Producing Associate at The Classical Theatre of Harlem. He is a member of the Roundabout’s Leon Levy Foundations Directors Group Cohort 2 and a two-time finalist for the National Black Theatre: Soul Directing Residency. Up next Perry will be directing a workshop presentation of Rise & Beings by Rudi Goblen at The Vineyard. Recent directing credits include; The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis (Old Globe/USD MFA Acting Program), Than by Agyeiwaa Asante (UCSD Wagner New Play Festival) the world-premiere of Mansa Ra’s …what the end will be (Associate Director/Roundabout), Animals Out of Paper by Rajiv Joseph (Chautauqua Theater Company), and recently he christened Detroit Public Theatre’s brand new home with his production of Mud Row by Dominique Morisseau (winner of a Wilde Award for Best Direction of a Play). Other credits include; What Lies Beneath (UCSD MFA Acting), Run/Fire by Aurin Squire (Cygnet Theater/Finish Line Commission), In Sickness & In Health by Dea Hurston as a part of an An Evening with the San Diego Black Artist Collective featured in The Old Globe’s Powers New Voices Festival, which Perry also produced, and the audio plays Punchbowl Spaces and The Family Sound (Blindspot Collective/La Jolla Playhouse). Prior to shutdown he also served as assistant director, under longtime friend/mentor Steve H. Broadnax III, on the world premiere of Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King (2021 Pulitzer Prize in Drama) at the Signature. Perry is the creator, writer, producer and co-host of both of The Globe’s podcasts, Cocktails with the Canon and Gather Round! which are available on Apple Podcasts Google, and Spotify. Lamar has developed work at The Old Globe, Penumbra Theatre, National Black Theater, Diversionary Theatre/Spark Festival, UCSD/Wagner’s New Play Festival, The O’Neill, Chautauqua, San Diego Repertory Theater, Cygnet Theater, NAMT, and The Classical Theatre of Harlem. Perry was featured in American Theatre Magazine’s “Roll Call: People to Know,” and is a member of For (bes) The Culture. Lamar holds a Bachelor of Science from St. John’s University and is an alum of both the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and Public Allies Connecticut (AmeriCorps). He is a lover of new play development, as well as cultural adaptations of classical texts. This is totally a Whitney Elizabeth Houston stan account.