About

Valoneecia Tolbert  most recently appeared in Lisa B Thompson’s Single Black Female produced by Ground Floor Theatre and directed by Matrix Kilgore. Some of her past roles include Lisa B Thompson’s world premier of The Mamalogues as Beverly, Hellena in Hidden Room’s critically acclaimed The Rover; Actor #6 in the critically acclaimed, We Are Proud.., directed by Liz Fisher, and Marianne Angel in The Revolutionists directed by Rudy Ramirez. She is a company member of Hidden Room Theater and Shrewd Productions.  Valoneecia is an Austin homegrown stage, film and voice actor; BFA from Texas State at San Marcos. She is represented by Collier Talent Agency.

Raul Garza (playwright) is an Austin-based playwright who tells stories that resound with culture and sense of place. His full-length play Fantasmaville received the National Latino Playwriting Award, and earned a B. Iden Payne Award nomination for Outstanding Original Script. His short play MyHEB garnered FronteraFest 2015 Best of Fest recognition. Raul’s full-length plays include Fantasmaville, Sanctuary, Cura, Confessions of a Mexpatriate, Ruby, There and Back, and El. His short story “In the Room” won the 2014 Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest, “Running Bear” and “LeBaron” were cited for Honorable Mention by the 2017 and 2014 Texas Observer Short Story Contest.

Jerry Ruiz (director) has directed world premiere productions of Fade by Tanya Saracho at Denver Center for the Performing Arts Theatre Company and Mala Hierba, also by Saracho, at Second Stage Theatre in NYC.  Other off-Broadway and regional directing credits include productions at the Old Globe, Primary Stages, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Hartford TheaterWorks, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Mint Theater Company, Stages, Clubbed Thumb, NYC Summer Stage, Chalk Rep, Mixed Blood and Repertorio Espanol. A dedicated advocate for playwrights and new plays, he has developed work at the Alley All New Festival (where he directed a workshop production of The Survivors by Katie Bender), Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, The Public Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and the Playwrights Realm. From 2011 to 2015, he served as curator for the Crossing Borders festival of new Latinx plays at Two River Theater in New Jersey.  He was a recipient of the 2009–2011 NEA/TCG Career Development for Theatre Directors Grant.  He received his M.F.A. in Directing from UC San Diego and his B.A. from Harvard University. SDC Member. Currently, he serves as the head of the MFA Directing program at Texas State University.