Margo Hall
MARGO HALL is an award winning actor, director, playwright, and educator, has been a leading performer and director in the Bay Area for over 30 years. In 2018 she was awarded the Jerry Friedman Lifetime Achievement Award by the San Francisco Theatre Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. She was recently appointed the new Artistic Director of the Lorraine Hansberry Theater of San Francisco — the first female Artistic Director in the history of the institution named for the trailblazing Black female writer of A Raisin in The Sun. Hall’s film credits include BLINDSPOTTING with Daveed Diggs and the Netflix film All Day and A Night. She is a founding member of Campo Santo, a multi-cultural theater company in San Francisco, where she has directed, performed, and collaborated on new plays with artists such as Naomi Iizuka, Jessica Hagedorn, Phillip Kan Gotanda, Ntozake Shange, and Octavio Solis. Her writing credits include The People’s Temple, a verbatim text piece with Leigh Fondakowski of the Tectonic Theatre Project, and her autobiographical musical BeBop Baby, A Musical Memoir, with original music by Marcus Shelby. Margo serves on the board of Theater Bay Area and The Oakland Theater Project, and is a professor at UC Berkeley and Chabot College in the Theater Department.
Stephanie Anne Johnson
Stephanie Anne Johnson is a second-generation theater practitioner. Her mother Virginia Greene worked with the American Negro Theater in the 1950s. Johnson has been a lighting designer for over forty-five years. Nationally she has done designs for La Mama Theatre (N.Y.), Black Moon Theatre (N.Y. & Paris), Telluride Theatre (Colorado), The Arizona Repertory Theatre, The National Black Theater Festival, and The Apollo (N.Y.). In the S.F. Bay Area, she has worked with Cultural Odyssey, Afro Solo, Ubuntu Theatre, TheatreFirst, African American Shakespeare Company, Shotgun Theatre, Aurora Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, and many other groups.
Internationally, she has worked in India, Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, and Canada. Johnson is the playwright/performer of Every Twenty-One Days: Cancer, Yoga and Me, a play that has been performed in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Atlanta. Johnson has worked on Robert Townsend and Alice Walker films.
Johnson is also a visual artist who has had two one-person shows in San Francisco. Her public and site-specific installations have focused upon the use of light and projections as tools for symbolic and metaphorical examinations of African American history.
Dr. Johnson is a founding faculty member of the Visual and Public Art Department at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her research is in the areas of Black public art, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Public Sphere, and The New Deal.
Image Credit: Joan Osanto
Aldo Billingslea
Aldo Billingslea is the Father William J. Rewak S. J., Professor of Theatre Arts at Santa Clara University. He holds a B.A. in English and Communication Arts and an M.A. in Secondary Education from Austin College in Sherman, Texas. He earned his M.F.A. in Acting at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. A member of Actor’;s Equity Association and the Screen Actor’s Guild, Billingslea has appeared in numerous theatrical productions in the Bay Area and across the country. On the MTC stage Aldo appeared in: Othello, Splittin’ the Raft, In the Red & Brown Water, and The Hairy Ape. Billingslea is an Asscoiate Producer at PlayGround and serves on the Board of The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. He resides in Santa Clara with Renee Billingslea, his visual-artist wife who also teaches at Santa Clara University, and Trinity, their daughter, who is captain of the Santa Clara Bronco Rowing team.
Delicia Turner Sonnenberg
Delicia Turner Sonnenberg is a founder and the former Artistic Director of MOXIE Theatre in San Diego, CA, which she helmed for 12 acclaimed seasons receiving The Des McAnuff New Visions Award for “Risk Taking Leadership and Body of Work” and “2015 Director of the Year” from the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She has also directed plays for Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival, San Diego REP, The Old Globe Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Cygnet Theatre, New Village Arts, Diversionary Theatre, and Mo'olelo Performing Arts Company. Some honors include: Theatre Communications Group's New Generations Program, San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Awards, Women's International Living Legacy Award, Van Lier Fund Fellowship (Second Stage Theatre) and the New York Drama League's Directors Project.
Veronica Fauntleroy
Veronica Fauntleroy was born and raised in Petersburg, Virginia. She attended Howard University before receiving her JD from UC Berkeley Law. She is a retired Assistant General Counsel for the East Bay Municipal Utility District, and a 30-year member and former Board President of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Oakland. A lifelong lover of Black Theatre, Veronica is a step-mother, and considers herself the best aunt in the world!
Vincent Terrell Durham
Vincent Terrell Durham is a playwright who first honed his storytelling skills as a stand-up comic in clubs across the country. He was born and raised in Binghamton, NY. He is a 2020 Samuel French OOB Festival winner and a Eugene O’Neill semifinalist. His voice as a proud gay man of color is fresh, compelling and his marksmanship for piercing the souls of theatre audience is unerring. He writes to pay honor to the Johnson family. The best storytellers a little Black boy could have ever spent time with.