February's Creating Change Conversation highlights the work of two organizations (1 in theatre, 1 in dance) making big strides.

Join Momentum Stage in conversation with the Dance Education Equity Association and Building Our Tables on the topic of creating equity.

Learn about the missions and visions of these organizations and how you can be involved in their work, or implement changes in your own programs or organizations that also create equity.

Geri Brown is a storyteller, an educator, and social entrepreneur whose work is threaded in breaking the barriers to access and building safe, equitable, and inclusive communities. Her work utilizes art (dance, theatre, and music)  as the catalyst for change. Geri’s family legacy is engrained with anti-racist, inclusionary pioneering in the arts. Her grandmother was a Broadway dancer and actress, with the legendary Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, during segregation and fought for representation in an industry that didn't hold space for her. While Geri's mother trail-blazed as a dancer on Broadway and film, while combating colorism, discrimination, and racism.  With that family lineage of fighting for equity and equality in the performing arts, Dance Education Equity Association is a direct result of Geri's DNA and the trauma she experienced due to her own personal experiences with racism and othering in performing arts education. Geri has created and runs several organizations that are connected in their efforts to create more safe, equitable, and inclusive, performing arts educational spaces and school districts. Geri is the founder and CEO of Liberate Artists Inc., a dance education movement and benefit corporation, which utilizes dance education to build confidence and promote social growth in young people. Not a dance competition or dance convention, Liberate Artists Inc., has created its own pathway forward that focuses on helping students be their best self in a non-competitive environment.  In her work, with Liberate Artists Inc., Geri has traveled all over the world making dance the catalyst for change. From Australia to England to New York to Texas, Liberate Artists builds each dancer up through their catch phrase “You Are Enough.” They inspire kids and promote socio-emotional growth through mindfulness, colorful history, inclusionary practices, and award over $500,000 in scholarships per year. Including the Patricia A. Woodward Inspiration Award, which has been awarded since 2016, where Liberate Artists pays for dancers tuition for an entire year at their home studios. With Liberate Artists Inc., Geri has launched the “You Are Enough Campaign” which raised funds for Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation and featured dance educators such as Comfort Fedoke, Mia Michaels, Lauren Froderman, Kai Lin, Kaycee Rice, Amanda LaCount, Kayla Igo, Eva Igo, The Williams Family, Julie Carter, Amelia Burkhardt, Maureen Gonzales, Eric Lehn, Sara Perez, and dancers and studios from all around the world (click to view “You Are Enough” Campaign). She also is the creator of Phoenix Fire and Focus (their summer dance intensive programs), and Forward Movement. Forward Movement was a free online experience with over 900 registrants during the pandemic, in August of 2020. Forward Movement launched with an original music video, with music and lyrics created by Geri and her collaborator and friend NYU Musical Theatre Writing graduate, Brett Macias. This music video, written, filmed, and edited  in seven days, featured dancers and singers from Hamilton on Broadway, Six on Broadway, The Lion King on Broadway, other Broadway performers including Tony Award Nominee Liz Callaway and students and educators  from all over the US featured as dancers (click to view “Forward Movement” music video).  In an effort to continue to support families and provide additional socio-emotional support, Geri is the President and Executive Director of Always, Enough Foundation [501c3]. Always, Enough Foundation breaks barriers to access to ensure performing arts education is for all. In their effort to remove financial barriers to access, Always, Enough Foundation pays for tuition, travel, accommodations and meals, for dancers and their families to attend dance competitions, dance conventions, and other performing arts opportunities that meet their standards of safety, equity, and inclusivity. Geri is also a member of the newly initiated Intersectionality Task Force for the International Association for Dance Medicine & Science (IADMS). IADMS's mission is to enhance the health, well-being, training, and performance in dance by cultivating medical, scientific, and educational excellence. As an artist and storyteller, Geri graduated cum laude, with her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre from Pace University. As a student and post graduation, Geri was hired as the Assistant Recruitment Coordinator under the tutelage of her mentor Patricia A. Woodward, and then became the Interim Recruitment Coordinator for the entire Pace University Performing Arts Department. There, she assisted and managed thousands of auditions and applications for the Acting Program, Musical Theatre Program, and then the novel Commercial Dance Program, and was also responsible for ensuring all of the performing arts students, had the requirements needed to graduate. Geri is a trained actor, singer, dancer and writer, who uses the word storyteller to best describe her work. As a member of Actor’s Equity Association, Geri has performed Off-Broadway, in pre-Broadway productions, and in NYC theatres. Geri also originated her role in Tales from the Tunnel starring alongside Tony Award and Drama Desk Award winner Wilson J. Heredia, who originated the role of Angel, in the Broadway musical Rent. Due to her exceptional character work, Geri has been highlighted for her work by The New York Times which quoted “Geri Brown is ferocious as the station clerk who has seen it all,” and by TheaterMania “Geri Brown radiates presence, attitude, and a sense of humor.” Additionally, Geri has been researching and writing a spoken word musical about civil rights and LGBTQIA2+ rights activist, Marsha P. Johnson, for the last eight years with her collaborator and friend Brett Macias. As a storyteller, Geri continues to create spoken word, poetry, and essays including her recent essay, "A Letter To White Women Who Keep Asking What To Do To Combat Racism From A Black Women" (view here). From storyteller to educator to social entrepreneur, the pulse of all of Geri's work is her mission is to inspire all to truly know that "You Are Enough," exactly as you are, in the skin and body you are in.” The only direction to change is Forward. Pronouns she/her 

Olivia Lilley is a playwright, screenwriter, director, and producer who came up in Chicago's DIY scene. She uses a devised process to create and develop her plays that she's been honing since 2013. Olivia's work often ransacks classics or non fiction with a collective and builds a new story for the current moment. Olivia fights American perfectionism by telling stories about complex and messy characters, subverting tropes, and giving alternate endings to women who are traditionally tragic. Olivia is the Artistic Director of Prop Thtr. She was the founding Artistic Director of The Runaways Lab Theatre (Voted Best New Theatre Company in the Chicago Reader's Best of 2014). She is a Board Member at The National New Play Network, an Artistic Associate with Pivot Arts, and co-produces "Building Our Tables", a Producers of Color: Panels & Masterclass series with playwright, Riti Sachdeva.

As a performance maker and cultural worker, Riti Sachdeva has been creating art in some shape, pattern, or rhythm for over twenty five years. Incorporating text, installation, song, and dance into her writing and performance, she straddles the practices and conventions of traditional U.S. theater, performance art, and international approaches to theater. Interweaving the personal, political, and arcane, she has crafted the singular Indo-Gothic aesthetic of her work.

Playwriting fellowships include: Core Writer at PlayWrights Center; Dramatists Guild Fund, which awarded her the 2019 Thom Thomas playwriting award; The Public Theater's EWG, WP Theater Lab, Ingram New Works Lab, New Georges, Civilian R&D. She is recipient of the Kennedy Center ACTF Quest for Peace award and Sultan Padamsee award for her play Parts of Parts & Stitches and a Theater Communications Group / Mellon Foundation travel grant to begin adapting her play Suicide Seed to the kathakali dance-theatre form. Her play The Rug Dealer made the 2016 Kilroys List. Additionally, plays have been developed by Phoenix Theater, Working Theater, Baltimore Centerstage, The Civilians, PWC, NNPN, U of Hawai’i, and Lincoln Center Director’s Lab.

Acting/performance highlights include work with National Hispanic Cultural Center, PopUp Theatrics, Honest Accomplice, HBO, Disney, lots of cool indie films, and an Outstanding One Act award from Planet Connections for her performance art show Scene/Unseen. She continues to develop her solo show BEHIND EVERY FAVORITE SONG IS AN UNTOLD WOMAN, part cabaret, part memoir, part mythicism. Riti has performed her original works in NYC, Toronto, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque.

As a cultural worker, Riti was a sexuality educator with South Asian Youth Action (SAYA) in Queens; a teaching artist and community organizer  with Somos Los Otros and Cambio in Albuquerque; and a founding sister of South Asian Women for Action (SAWA) in Boston. Back in the day, she trained in direct action organizing with Center for Third World Organizing. Her cultural works activate the crossroads of solidarity; economic, gender, and racial justice; the arts - with intergenerational, cross cultural, transnational communities. ritisachdeva.com               IG: @midniteschild        FB: Riti Sachdeva

Event is Pay-what-you-like. $10 is the suggested donation.