Café La MaMa Live: July Month

Christin Eve Cato is a NYC based playwright and performer. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Playwriting at Indiana University. She completed her BA degree from Fordham University, and is also a graduate from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and the Performing Arts. Cato is affiliated with NYC theater companies, Pregones/PRTT, INTAR Theatre, and Hip-Hop Theatre Company, Rhymes Over Beats. With a Puerto Rican and Jamaican heritage, Cato’s artistic style is heavily influenced by Caribbean culture and the Afrolatinx diaspora. Plays include: Stoop Pigeons (2020 O’Neill NPC Semi-Finalist); jelly beans (Indiana University); What’s Up With Marjorie? (Teatro Vivo); From Hunts Point To Whitlock (Pregones Theater/Harlem9); Smacked-Up Love (Indiana University); and Just A Visit (“More Than Maria” Festival @ Play Your Part Seattle). She dedicates much of her work to diversifying theatre, film, and educational institutions, particularly focusing on how to include Latinx voices. Also an award-winning indie film producer, her films have reached festivals like Different Faces, Different Voices; West Virginia Mountaineer Festival; Tulipanes Latino Art & Film Festival; SAG Foundation Showcase ; 33rd Annual Chicago Latino Film Festival; Official Latino Short Film Festival; Viva Latino Film Festival NYC Int’l; Philadelphia Latino Film Festival; YoFi Film Festival; Imagine This Women’s International Film Festival; New Filmmakers New York Film Festival; Indie Theatre Film Festival; Downtown Urban Arts Festival; and counting. As a performing artist, her credits include: Credits Include- New York Theater: Dancing In My Cockroach Killers (The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater); Reclaiming Our Time (Joe’s Pub @ The Public); Job (World Premiere/ The Flea Theater); I Hate Fucking Mexicans (World Premiere/The Flea Theater); Shadow Box (Open Hydrant Theater Co.); Satyricoño (INTAR); Marfa Lights (INTAR); The Beacons (New York Premiere/ INTAR); Juliet & Romeo (The Brick); Ribbon About a Bomb (Exquisite Corpse Company at Governor’s Island); Showtime (MITF) Regional: Water By The Spoonful (Odessa/ Indiana University); We Have Ire (San Francisco Premiere/Yerba Buena Culture Center); Dancing In My Cockroach Killers (DC Premiere/GALA); Patience, Fortitude, and other Anti-Depressants (LA Premiere/The LATC)

Mateo Hurtado (@_laserpipe) is a Brooklyn-based comedian, variety show host, co-founder of the Brown Theatre Collective, and Performance Studies chameleon from Chicago. As a pupil of Anna Deavere Smith, Sandra Ruiz, and Alexandra T. Vazquez, Mateo’s training spans, spurs across solo performance and Latinx Performance Studies which informs his deliberate yet dizzying vision/s as a curator, thinker, and comedic cacophony-conduit. Mateo has been seen (perf)orming throughout the big apple at rambunctious spaces including Ars Nova,The Kitchen, HERE Arts Center, Chateau de 420 Marcy, Mayday Space, Triple Crown, Dixon Place, The PIT, ART/NY, Edge Theater @ The Point, and The Footlight. When he’s not having a ball or gallivanting literally anywhere, he’s probably thinking about formerly being in a café, obsessed about something wild. And he has a YouTube presence, he swears. NYU Performance Studies MA. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign BFA Theatre Studies, BA Latina/o Studies. For more on Mateo: www.mateohurtadothings.tumblr.com

Kristen Kelso is a translator, director, recovering (and again aspiring?) actor, writer, musician and performance artist from Savannah, GA. Her research and performances focus on memory and trauma as well as the performativity of translation. Kristen’s work also ventures to explore grandparent studies, bilingualism, and code-switching. She loves cats. Loves ‘em. In the realm of music, she has been excavating and exploring her late grandfather’s musical repertoire. Before moving to New York, she spent ten years directing and acting in Dallas, TX. Her work has been seen at Dallas Theatre Center, Shakespeare Dallas, Amphibian Stage Productions, Cara Mía Theatre Company, Kitchen Dog Theatre and Cry Havoc Theatre Company, among others. She holds a BFA in Theatre Studies and BA in Spanish Language & Literature from Southern Methodist University, an MA in Translation Studies (Spanish) from UT Dallas, and most recently, an MA in Performance Studies from NYU.

Suni Reyes hails from San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is a multi-hyphenate artist and performer. She started her career as a dancer, and later transitioned into theatre and comedy. Some of her TV credits include: Nora from Queens on Comedy Central, Billions, and Late Night with Stephen Colbert. Suni has performed at New World Stages, Carolines on Broadway, UCB, The PIT, The Magnet, Broadway Comedy Club, The Triad Theatre, among other renowned NYC venues. Her work has been featured on Remezcla, and NBC’s Visiones.

Melissa Rocha is a Brooklyn-based comic with a performance art background. She’s only cried on stage three times this year. Wow! She’s been on the scene for 5 years producing her own shows and entertaining at venues such as: Club Cumming, Union Hall, Gotham Comedy Club, & Littlefield. Most recently, she’s come on as a producer & comic for Savage Comedy— a successful weekly show going on four years. After a few months of being a guest host for the storytelling series: Funny/Sexy/Sad, she’s come on as a permanent host. In July 2019, she made her first appearance on SiriusXM for John Fugelsang’s Tell Me Everything. She’s toured Nashville, Pittsburgh, Boston, Chicago, and Indiana. Look at her go. Melissa has acted in shorts by MeansTV and the Visible Poetry project. Her first film: Onions for Everyone— featuring an all women & queer people of color crew will begin production in 2019. She’s really doing it.

Urayoán Noel is a poet, performer, critic, and translator based in the South Bronx. He is the author of ten books, including the award-winning In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (University of Iowa Press, 2014) and the poetry collections Buzzing Hemisphere / Rumor Hemisférico (2015) and Transversal (forthcoming), both with the University of Arizona Press. For his translations of Latin American poetry, he has been a finalist for the National Translation Award and the Best Translated Book Award. He has recently performed at the Berlin Poesiefestival, the Woodberry Poetry Room, and the Toronto Biennial of Art, and his poetry is currently on display as part of the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico’s permanent exhibit. Originally from Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, Noel teaches at NYU and at Stetson University’s MFA of the Americas and is also currently teaching Latinx Social Movements for the Operating System’s Liminal Lab. His improvisational/dérive poetics vlog is wokitokiteki.com.

Lauren Walker is a queer, Black woman from Chicago. A humble dropout from both the University of Illinois and Depaul University, Lauren remarkably pieced together an education from various comedy institutions, such as the iO Theatre, The Annoyance, and The Second City. She is a Bob Curry Fellowship recipient as well as an alum of the Second City National Touring Company.

‍