Dion Reiner-Guzman (DJ/ Sound Designer) better known as Dion Decibels, was born into music. With his father, a professional drummer, and his mother, a samba and flamenco dance instructor, Dion was steeped in sound from his earliest days. He discovered the turntables in 2001 and fell in love with the ability they gave him to shape, transform, and extend his favorite songs. He has since become a major force in the Bay area music scene and is highly respected as a DJ, engineer, producer, and artist. From parties to concerts to award-winning theater performances across the country, there’s no environment untouchable to this dynamic DJ. Dion has performed at the Nokia Theater, Fox Theater, and Lincoln Center, DJ’d alongside Saul Williams, J.Rocc, Digable Planets, Rahzel, and George Watsky, to name a few. In the theater world, he is best known as the musical director & DJ for celebrated playwright Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s masterwork Word Becomes Flesh. He is a renaissance man. Dion’s seamless mix of hip hop, soul, and funk, with some latin and house sprinkled in have made him a favorite of devoted fans in every area code. His mixes, beats, and eclectic take on postmodern music have earned him a well-deserved reputation as a sound engineer whose skill set and crates are limitless.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph (Director) is the 1999 National Poetry Slam champion, the 2011 Alpert Award winner in Theater and one of 21 artists to be named to the inaugural class of Doris Duke Artists in 2012. He is the founding Program Director of the exemplary non-profit Youth Speaks, and is a co-founder of Life is Living, a national series of one day festivals designed to activate under-resourced parks and a peaceful urban life through hip hop arts and focused environmental action. Spiritrials is the latest piece he’s directed with Youth Speaks/Campo Santo having most recently helmed Chasing Mehserle and Mirrors in Every Corner by Chinaka Hodge and Dennis Kim’s Tree City Legends to acclaim. Mr. Joseph is currently completing new works for Creative Time, the Philadelphia Opera, the Chautauqua Symphony and South Coast Repertory Theater while serving as Chief of Program and Pedagogy at Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. bamuthi.com/@bamuthi
Sean San José (Director) is the new Artistic Director of The Magic Theater and is co-founder of Campo Santo, the award-winning ensemble theater company in San Francisco. He also conceived the theater project Pieces of the Quilt, a collection of short plays confronting the AIDS epidemic. San José organized and created the AIDS Service Arts organization Alma Delfina Group-Teatro Contra el SIDA, to distribute funds and present benefit performances. As Founding Director he has worked, commissioning these pieces and then presenting the plays in theatres, schools, libraries, clinics and community centers. He has recently been awarded one of the Audrey Skirball-Kennis TIME Grant Awards to support the development of his new work. He has also been awarded a San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Commission, two residencies at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from the Wattis Artist Residency, a Bay Area Critics’ Circle Award, the DramaLogue Award, Backstage West, the Cable Car Award, and the Bay Guardian Goldie Artistic Achievement in Theatre Award. Productions he has conceived, created and produced have also garnered numerous awards in excellence, including; the Bay Area Reporter Best of the Season, Cable Car Award, DramaLogue and Bay Area Critics’ Circle Award.
Joan Osato (Video Projection Design/Producer) For the past 20 years she has played a pivotal role in local and national theater and been Producing Director of The Living Word Project since its inception with Artistic Director Marc Bamuthi Joseph in 2001. She’s brought a multiplicity of producing and design talents to Living Word Project Repertory works such as The Break/s, Word Becomes Flesh, Scourge, Tree City Legends, Mirrors in Every Corner and Chasing Mehserle amongst many others. She has designed plays for Campo Santo including The River by Richard Montoya, and Alleluia by Luis Alfaro, directed by Jonathan Moscone. She recently received the Theatre Bay Area Award in Video Design for Berkeley Rep’s (Tribes, by Nina Raine), directed by Jonathan Moscone. Joan’s current work includes a state-wide community engagement project called Califas (2013 Rockefeller Mapfund) with Calshakes and Intersection for the Arts, Reflections of Healing with muralist Brett Cook, Nogales (Mapfund 2014 recipient with Richard Montoya, Sean San José and ASU’s Department of Film, Theatre and Dance), Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s /peh-LO-tah/, directed by Michael John Garces, as well as Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival and Life is Living, a community development project centered around neglected parks in urban centers around the country.
Brittany White (Production Manager) has approximate knowledge of many things and it seems to have made living life in and for theatre feasible. In most instances she plays the role of Prop Artisan, sometimes that role extends out to Production Manager, Director's Assistant, Set Designer, Stage Manager, Set Dresser, Storyboard Artist, Scenic Carpenter, or whatever duty gets thrown at her. She has worked on a few theatre, film and/or dance productions around the Bay Area with Campo Santo, CuttingBall Theater, TheatreFirst, California Shakespeare Theater, Marin Theater Company, Bay Area Children's Theater, HEIST, DelinaDreamProductions, FaultLine Theater, African American Shakespeare Co., Aurora Theatre, and K*STAR Productions, and has served as Production Manager for Youth Speaks. Brittany White stays behind the scenes. Technical theater background, mainly as a Prop Artisan but will cover most roles. Member of SF based theater group, Campo Santo. Happy to be alive and doing theater nationally and internationally for 10+ years. Yee!
Darl Andrew Packard (Lighting Designer) is a Bay Area lighting and video designer who is also the co-founder of Collage Theater (www.collagetheater.com). He is incredibly excited to be making this project his lighting debut with The Living Word Project’s Spiritrials. His video design work has been seen in collaboration with Collage Theater, Amara Tabor-Smith/Ase Dance, and Jayne Wenger’s Winter Bear Project. His lighting credits include collaboration with Killing My Lobster, Wolfgang Wachalovsky, Megan Finlay/ Rapid Descent, Laura Arrington Dance, FACT SF and Jesse Hewit/Strong Behavior among others. He has previously served as the production stage manager for Josh Kornbluth’s Citizen Josh, the Touring Technical Director for Word for Word Performing Arts, and the Theater Manager at CounterPULSE. He has apprenticed with Bay Area designers David Szlasa and Allen Wilner, and served as Technical Director on Living Word Project’s red, black and GREEN; a blues by Marc Bamuthi Joseph.
The Living Word Project is a theater commissioning, developing and producing company, whose work crosses disciplines integrating photography, film, visual arts and new media into its creations. As a collective of designers, performers, directors and technicians, our work endeavors to break open new modes of narrative, employing emerging aesthetics and techniques that push the possibilities of storytelling and theatre. We commission, develop, premiere and tour our Repertory works such as The Break/s, Word Becomes Flesh, Scourge, red, black and GREEN; a blues, Nogales, /peh-LO-tah/, Moving & Passing, Chasing Mehserle and Translating Selena by Richard Montoya. Upcoming work includes Rashomon by Sean San José, directed by Mina Morita, Last Days a Pu’unene Mill with Tanya Orellana, and The Travelers by Luis Alfaro and the The Magic Theatre. Works currently on tour include Try/Step/Trip by Dahlak Brathwaite, directed by Robera Uno, Prieto by Yosimar Reyes, Kat Evasco and Jose Antonio-Vargas, Peoples Kitchen Collective’s EARTH SEED, and Cristal Chanelle Truscott’s Plantation Remix.