LOU BELLAMY (lecturer) is founder and artistic director of Penumbra Theatre and was an associate professor in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota for 35 years. Recent directing: Radio Golf at Indiana Repertory and Cleveland Play House, Two Trains Running at Penumbra, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom staged in Phoenix, Tucson and Minneapolis, and I Wish You Love staged at Penumbra, The Kennedy Center and Hartford Stage. Recent awards: 2009 Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs Award for Public Leadership; the 2009 induction into The College of Fellows of the American Theatre; 2007 Obie for Best Direction; the 2007 National Black Theatre Festival Lloyd Richards Award for Directing; and the 2006 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award.

SYDNÉ MAHONE is an associate professor of Theatre Arts and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. She is the editor of Moon Marked and Touched by Sun: Plays by African American Women and With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together. She is on the editorial board of the LMDA Review and guest editor of its 2009 special edition, “Shifting Boundaries: Perspectives from African American Dramaturgs.” Papers delivered at the National Black Theatre Festival: “The Mythical Matrix in the Plays of August Wilson” and “The Playwright as Global Positioning System: Plays by Kia Corthron.” She has taught at Dartmouth College, New York University-Tisch School of the Arts, and the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

HARRY J. ELAM, JR. is the Freeman-Thornton Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and the Olive. H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. He is author of Taking It to the Streets: The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez and Amiri Baraka, The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson, and co editor of African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader; Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Drama; The Fire This Time: African--American Plays for the 21st Century; and Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture. Awards include: the Betty Jean Jones Award from the American Theatre and Drama Society; the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society of Theatre Research.

PAUL CARTER HARRISON (lecturer) is a writer, dramaturge, playwright and Columbia College Chicago Professor Emeritus director. His plays include The Great Macdaddy, Pavane for a Dead-Pan Minstrel, The Experimental Leader, Abercrombie Apocalypse, The Death of Boogie Woogie, and Ameri/Cain Gothic. He is the author of The Drama of Nomm, a collection of essays identifying African retentions in the American experience that are the aesthetic root of black expression. He has edited several anthologies including Kuntu Drama, Totem Voices, and The Classic Plays from the Negro Ensemble Company Black Theatre: Ritual Performance in the African Diaspora. Awards include: a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for American Playwriting; Meet-the-Composer Reader's Digest Commissions; and a National Endowment of the Arts Playwrights Fellowship.

DOMINIC TAYLOR (moderator) is the associate artistic director—new play development at Penumbra Theatre and an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance. Directing: Black Nativity: A Season for Change at Penumbra, Fresh Faust at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, The Negroes Burial Ground at the Kitchen, N.Y.C., and Uppa Creek at Dixon Place. Plays: Wedding Dance, Personal History and UpCity Service(s). Most recently, his play I Wish You Love was staged at Penumbra Theatre, The Kennedy Center and Hartford Stage. He has also worked with Crossroads Theatre, Rites and Reasons Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, The Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, and Ensemble Studio Theatre.