SOIREE ARTISTS

Tasha Gordon-Solmon (Fountain of You Book and Lyrics)

Tasha’s plays and musicals have been developed and produced at the O’Neill National Music Theater Conference, NAMT Festival, American Music Theatre Project,Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Humana Festival, Clubbed Thumb, Northern Stage, New Georges, Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Playwrights Realm and Ars Nova. Honors & Memberships: Dramatists Guild Fellowship, Playwrights Realm Fellowship, Puffin Foundation Grant, AFO Residency, TNNY Musical Writers Lab and BMI Advanced Workshop. Aluma of the Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group, Project Y Playwrights Group, New Georges Jam and Ars Nova Playgroup. Residencies: Millay Arts, Bethany Arts Community, Barrington Stage and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She teaches at NYU and is a proud 52nd Street Project Volunteer.

Faye Chiao (Fountain of You Music)

Faye Chiao (music) is a composer of musical theater, opera, and concert music. Chiao has received awards from The Presser Foundation and OPERA America. Chiao’s works have been commissioned, produced, and developed by The New Victory Theater, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Saratoga, Syracuse Stage, Duffy Institute for New Opera, Boston Chamber Symphony, O’Neill National Music Theater Conference, NAMT Festival of New Musicals, American Music TheatreProject, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Manhattan School of Music, Prospect Theater, and The Playwrights Realm. Chiao holds degrees from The Peabody Institute of TheJohns Hopkins University.

Michelle Anais Beaulieu-Morgan

Michelle Anais Beaulieu-Morgan grew up in rural Maine in the 1980s and ’90s in a working-class family of makers, spending her childhood reading, wandering the woods, dancing, and drawing. She became a parent to her son, Ezra, in 1999 and came out as queer at 23. Her career has spanned restaurants, bartending, bookkeeping, caregiving, higher education, and now staff learning and development in IT at Yale. She earned a PhD in American Studies from Yale University in 2017, where her dissertation on race, material culture, and the limits of the human received distinction. In 2015, while getting sober, she taught herself embroidery, launching her creative practice as @mutuallyassureddeconstruction. She now shares her work through Substack and hosts Love & Communication, a biweekly radio program on WPKN. Embroidery, music, weightlifting, biking, and creative practice remain central to her life, recovery, and community.

Andrea Nunes

Andrea Nunes was born and raised in Brazil and is fluent in Portuguese, English, and Spanish. With degrees in International Business Management and Strategy, she brings a global perspective shaped by living and working across Latin America, North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Andrea spent 18 years at General Electric in senior Human Resources leadership roles, specializing in executive talent, organizational effectiveness, culture transformation, and change management. She later served as Managing Director of Portfolio Talent at Centerbridge Partners, where she led executive talent strategies, board governance initiatives, and organizational development across the firm’s portfolio companies. Today, Andrea is the founder of Lotus Talent Strategies, LLC, advising private equity firms on leadership and talent strategy while exploring board and senior advisory roles. A certified yoga instructor and meditation practitioner, Andrea is passionate about mindful leadership and creating workplaces where diversity, inclusion, environmental responsibility, and social impact are woven into organizational culture, helping both people and businesses thrive. For more collage @andrea_nunes_nyc

Emily Larned

Emily Larned is an artist, publisher, designer, and educator whose work explores feminist history, collective labor, and social justice through print and publishing. She has been publishing as an artistic practice since creating her first zine as a teenager in 1993. In 2016, she founded Alder & Frankia, an imprint that produces award-winning collaborations from feminist archives. She is also co-founder of Impractical Labor in Service of the Speculative Arts (ILSSA), a collaborative project that examines the often-invisible labor of artists through publications, exhibitions, and participatory projects. Larned is an Associate Professor of Art and Graphic Design at the University of Connecticut, where she also serves as Affiliate Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her handmade artist books and publications are held in more than 90 institutional collections, including the Tate, the Brooklyn Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Smithsonian. She continues to create projects that preserve overlooked histories while advancing the transformative possibilities of art, publishing, and community engagement. https://emilylarned.com/index.html

Nicole Rose

Nicole Rose (b. 1996, Pittsfield, MA) is a visual artist and lifelong ballet dancer whose paintings investigate the synchronicities between movement and mark making. The process of creating each of her paintings begins by dipping her feet in paint and dancing on canvas, allowing her choreographed movements to translate marks onto the surface. The first layer of movement-marks creates a map, guiding the following layers of formalized painting that investigate the traces of Rose’s movements while researching the traces left behind by industry. The culmination of these layers results in abstract landscapes that explore the physical and psychological dichotomy between chaos and control. The paintings question the individual and collective impact humans leave as we move through the world and the consequences of the traces we leave behind both physically and ecologically. Nicole Rose holds a BA in Studio Art from Mills College and currently lives and works in the Berkshires, MA.

Dr. Lisa M. Donovan’s

Dr. Lisa M. Donovan’s work positions the arts as a vital strategy for engagement, inquiry, leadership development, cross-sector collaboration, and civic participation. A professor in the Fine and Performing Arts Department at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA), she is an educator, arts administrator, author, and advocate whose work bridges arts, education, and community development through interdisciplinary and collaborative practice.
Previously, Dr. Donovan served as Associate Professor of Education and Director of the Creative Arts in Learning Division at Lesley University. Her professional experience spans leadership and educational roles with organizations including Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Barrington Stage Company, Berkshire Opera Company, Boston University’s Theater, Visual Arts and Tanglewood Institutes, and the University of Massachusetts Department of Theater. She also served as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Alliance for Arts Education.
Dr. Donovan leads regional initiatives including the Berkshire Regional Arts Integration Network (BRAINworks) and the Berkshire Cultural Asset Network, using collective impact models to connect arts, education, and community development. She is co-author and co-editor of several books on arts integration, including Teacher as Curator and the Shell Education arts integration series. Her research on rural arts education has been featured by the National Endowment for the Arts.
A nationally recognized speaker and advocate for arts-integrated learning, Dr. Donovan has received numerous honors, including the Irene Buck Service to Arts Education Award and recognition as one of Berkshire Magazine’s Berkshire 25.

Vernice Miller

Vernice Miller (She/They) is a Jamaican-born, Afro-Caribbean theatre artist rooted in New York City, whose work across borders is guided by an unwavering faith in the arts as a common language of transformation and hope. WAM Theatre: Amani, Where We Stand Producing Director: Keen Teens, the educational arm of the Obie and Drama Desk Award-winning Keen Company, which provides NYC high school students the opportunity to collaborate with professional playwrights, directors, and designers on world-premiere Off-Broadway productions. Co-founder and Artistic Director: A Laboratory for Actor Training Experimental Theatre Company in New York City. Devising and teaching intensive actor training inspired by Grotowski and Barba, using movement and voice work to strengthen presence and unlock the performer’s physical and imaginative expression. Director: Joe’s Pub @ The Public Theatre, NYC; Folger Shakespeare Theatre, Washington, DC; HartBeat Ensemble, Hartford, CT; Market Theater Laboratory, Johannesburg, South Africa; Ukrainka Dramatic Theatre, L’viv, Ukraine; Glej Theatre, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Warsztaty Teatralne, Opole, Poland; Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Scotland; Skolen Teater, Dans og Musik, Silkeborg, Denmark. Actor: NYC – The Public Theatre; 59E59 Theatre; The Duke; Brooklyn Academy of Music; La Mama E.T.C. Abroad – Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK; Glej Theatre, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Warsztaty Teatralne, Opole, Poland; Odin Teatret, Holstebro, Denmark; Metropole Theatre, Aarhus, Denmark. Additional artistic credits: Writer, director, actor, producer, educator, activist. Creative inspiration: At the core of my artistic work is the belief in dignity—the conviction that every human being deserves the chance to live a worthwhile life—and, like Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmentalist who sowed justice through hands-on action, I strive to nurture the seeds of change by channeling the rhythms, resilience, and ancestral wisdom of those who came before me to tell stories that stir awareness, deepen empathy, and inspire meaningful transformation. Community Engagement/Activist work: Facilitator/coach with LEAD FOR IMPACT a social impact enterprise that provides transformational leadership services internationally; Co-produced and directed the fundraiser To Amadou with Love featuring Angelique Kidjo, supermodel Iman. For Partnership for the Homeless directed the 16th, 17th, & 18th Annual Benefits with Jessye Norman, Audra McDonald, Lawrence Hamilton, and LaChanze. Trained as a Peacekeeper with New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG). Membership/Affiliations: Actors’ Equity Association; Ensemble member of HartBeat Ensemble, Hartford, CT; Company member New Circle Theatre Company (Formerly Circle Repertory Company); Alumna WP Directors Lab. Selected training: Cross-disciplinary Performance Studies Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium, International School of Theatre Anthropology, Odin Teatret Denmark. Month Long Intensive Shakespeare and Company, Lenox, MA. Suzuki Actor Training with Ellen Lauren & SITI Company, NYC. Graduate William Esper Studios Meisner Technique, NYC. City University of New York, Hunter College. Awards/proudest achievements: Recipient of the London New Play Festival’s Best Actress Award for the solo performance of Medea:Now. Established THE DRAMA CLUB (ALATetc) a free, after-school theatre program at Public School 282 in Park Slope Brooklyn. Profiled in Best of the Fest, celebrating 10 years of London New Play Festival, edited by Phil Setren, and in Inside the Performance Workshop by Paula Murray Cole and Michele Minnick, Routledge, publisher. Original cast member The Treasure Makers by Patricia Sternberg, Samuel French, publisher. Final word: Oh, the desire to be/long. To be seen. To be included. To be counted. Connect: www.alatetc.org