coLAB Arts resident artist Ashley Teague will be working with Reformed Church of Highland Park - Affordable Housing Corporation. Teague will be creating original theater pieces with the diverse refugee community served by RCHP-AHC, in an effort to share the story of how their mutual aid service work transforms lives.

Ashley Teague is the founding Artistic Director of Notch Theatre Company (www.notchtheatre.org) and recipient of the Embark Award for Social Innovation in Entrepreneurship. Notch creates community-responsive theatre to drive change around the pressing issues of our time, offering communities nationwide a platform to tell their stories on stage and be their own change makers. Notch is currently producing Wild Home, which takes an odyssey across rural America to tell personal stories about threatened wilderness spaces and the communities that depend on them. Wild Home has been featured on Howlround and Broadway World and awarded an NEA ArtWorks grant. Additionally, Teague is a participating partner on Remember2019: an effort to make space for the congregation of Black communities in the Arkansas Delta, by supporting and facilitating local artistic practices of self-determination, memory and reflection as directly related to the mass lynching of 1919, the lasting effects of racial terror and the current and future health of these communities. Remember2019 is the recipient of a Map Fund grant and has been featured by the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, Monument Lab, and HowlRound. Teague co-created FIT, a play about the American eugenics movement of the 20th century that partners with the Intellectually Disabled Community and features actors with Down Syndrome. ashteague.com

coLAB Arts resident artist Jody Wood will be working with Elijah’s Promise. Wood will be developing a “Health Hub” with guests of Elijah’s Promise’s community kitchen, documenting the stories, rituals, and personal health practices of those who are largely unhoused or housing precarious New Brunswick community members.

Jody Wood is an artist working in mediums of social practice, video, photography, and performance. Her recent work re-imagines routines in poverty support agencies, aiming to shift power dynamics and resist stigmas surrounding poverty. Her community-based work has been supported by prestigious institutions including A Blade of Grass, Esopus Foundation, Rema Hort Mann Foundation, an ArtPlace America Initiative at McColl Center for Art + Innovation, and through residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, Yaddo, and Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been exhibited internationally at Manchester School of Art, UK; Parrish Museum of Art in Water Mill, NY; and FIVAC in Camaguey, Cuba and has been featured in publications such as The Atlantic, Hyperallergic, The Art Newspaper, and MSNBC.

“Maybe I have a cane, because I was born to part seas.”- An excerpt from “Sacred Illness,” a Poem by Osimiri Sprowal

coLAB Arts resident artist Osimiri Sprowal will be working with coLAB Arts to develop a new digital platform to house new creative interventions produced with New Brunswick’s houseless and housing precarious communities. We’ll be working in collaboration with Elijah’s Promise, Mercado Esperanza, and SHELTER (www.shelternj.org), to connect with communities and provide virtual and in person workshops and oral histories, and commission professional artists to develop creative responses in dialogue with that community work.

Osimiri Sprowal is an international slam champion poet, author, workshop facilitator, creative director, and budding photographer born and raised in Philadelphia. They are an alumnus of the Philly Youth Poetry Movement (PYPM), Babel Poetry Collective, and the founder of deadname.arts, Philly’s only exclusively trans and gender-expansive art collective. Osimiri was the Philly Youth Grand Slam Champion in 2015, and a 2018 College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) Semi-Finalist, where they received the Best Love Poem Award for their poem “Genesis.”

coLAB Arts resident artist Susana Plotts-Pineda will be working in collaboration with Unity Square Neighborhood Revitalization Project and Dr. Mary Nucci of the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University to produce a new comic book in response to the oral histories, experiences, and gardening practice of the Latino immigrant gardeners of New Brunswick’s Landers Garden and Feaster Park.

Susana Plotts-Pineda is a Mexican-American theatre-maker, multi-media artist, performer, and writer. Her documentary play, La Caravana de los Misterios was staged at PSi#25 in Calgary and at Emerging Artists Theatre. Susana has worked with Noche Flamenca and Mapa Teatro. She is also the co-founder of Egg y Pan Magazine.

Jasmine Carmichael is dedicated to educating and inspiring students as a teaching artist with coLAB Arts. After obtaining her BFA in Acting from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, Jasmine established a successful career as an actress, director and teacher. She is passionate about sharing the lessons learned from her experience on stage, in front of the camera and behind the scenes so that younger artists have the tools needed to pursue their dreams with confidence.

Resident Teaching Artist - Stephanie Van Bond has been a professional storyteller and educator for 10 years. She holds a bachelors degree from Rutgers University in both Theater Arts and English Literature, as well as a Masters Degree in Education. Stephanie strategically uses storytelling to encourage reflection, empathy, and growth in people from all backgrounds and identities. Her career in higher education has allowed her the privilege of working for Rutgers University, Fordham University, Raritan Valley Community College, The College of New Jersey, and Rider University.

Van Bond is a freelance director, intimacy choreographer, and teaching artist throughout New Jersey and New York. She is currently an adjunct faculty member at Rider University’s Westminster School for the Performing Arts. When she is not teaching, Van Bond serves as the Executive Director of ReThink Theatrical, a non-profit theater organization based in Middlesex county that provides free theater to the public. Contact Stephanie at svanbond@gmail.com

Carolina hosts the weekly Facebook show Cooking Outside the Box.

She is an activist and community organizer based in New Brunswick. As a collaborator with coLAB Arts, she is one of the co-curators of theVOM story slam and workshop series and organizes much of the Spanish language programming. With a personal mission to bridge the gap between the Spanish and English languages, she mentors many young people in the community and works with the Esperanza Neighborhood Project, Elijah’s Promise, Mercado Esperanza, and other local organizations.

John Keller was born and raised in the City of New Brunswick and works in NYC and internationally as a freelance actor. Through his work at coLAB Arts, John is committed to creating projects that use the arts as a lens to examine complex issues that affect community. While serving as Director of Education for coLAB Arts, John has produced main-stage productions and initiated educational residencies in several central New Jersey schools. John curates and directs coLAB Arts’ Trueselves oral history and theater project in partnership with the Pride Center of New Jersey and Rutgers Oral History Archive. John is also the Board Chair for New Brunswick’s Town Clock Community Development Corporation. John earned his undergraduate degree at Holy Cross and holds a Masters in Fine Arts in Acting from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts. He has taught theater at all grade levels in a variety of residency programs as well as at Rider University, Westminster Choir College and is currently teaching Theater for Social Development at Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts, and Acting at Fairleigh Dickinson University