photo credit Daniel Terna 2022

JENNY ROMAINE is a NYC based director, designer, puppeteer, and educator who co-founded the Obie winning Great Small Works visual theater collective to keep theater at the heart of social life. She is music director of Circus Amok and has directed/ designed puppet pageants, street spectacles, operas, toy theater shows, acts for clubs, black box productions, and works for puppets on film including “Muntergang and other Cheerful Downfalls,” The Sukkes Mob featured in Punk Jews, The Spectacle of the Rising Tide for the River to River Festival, NYC. Romaine anchors puppet theater workshops co-led by formerly incarcerated individuals for youth in NYC jails with Inside Change, and has, for two decades, directed the JFREJ/Aftselakhis Spectacle Committee's pan Jewish Purim shpil extravaganzas serving thousands. Romaine has worked as a puppeteer with GSW, Amy Trompetter, Bread and Puppet Theater, Viva Di Concini, Chinese Theatre Works, and Janie Geiser. She is featured in "Dazzle Camouflage: Spectacular Theatrical Strategies for Resistance and Resilience" a monograph by Ezra Berkley Nepon and is a founding member of Naming The Lost /Memorials. 

Carol Prud'homme Davis

Carol Prud’homme Davis was born in Texas and moved to NYC in 1980, after graduating from Texas Christian University to pursue a career in dance. In 1994 she received a master’s degree in administration and Supervision in the Visual Arts from Bank Street and Parsons School of Design.

She danced professionally, and was Artistic Director of “us” Productions, in where she choregraphed and produced dance/theatre pieces with her company, ages 4 to 65. She served as the Visual Artist in residence with the Sandra Cameron Ballroom Studios and is the Visual Artist in residence the Peridance Dance Center. Her artwork was shown in the first American Contemporary Dance Museum exhibition and is now in the permanent collection of the museum.

She has drawn live and now via zoom, dance classes, rehearsals, and performances for over 100 professional dance teachers, performers and companies spanning over a variety of techniques.

She can also be seen on the street and subway drawing her fellow human beings.

Her exhibitions include: The Infinity Dance Theatre, The East Texas Fair, Anna Sokolow Dance Theatre Ensemble and Francesca Todesco web gallery. Her work was featured in the “We Are All Bowery” Lower Manhattan Cultural Council project and the which was displayed in the Cooper Union windows in NYC. "Homeless Street Artists and Resident Bowery Artists projection exhibition in 2020 at the 6th Street and Avenue B, Alison Cook Beatty Dance exhibtion: from Concept to Production....in the Raw, LES Resident Artists and Homeless Street Artists exhibition at the Elizabeth Street Garden and Cross Pollination produced by Putnam Dance Project. Carol’s work inspired by Yukiyo Yuki will be featured in Japan’s Y Ballet program, August “22. Her piece “My Reaction My Reflection” is featured in the art video: “PAUSE” which was Awarded the Tagore International Film Festival (India) - Winner Experimental Film Critic’s Choice Award La Paz International Film Festival (Bolivia) - Winner Best Experimental Short Film New Orleans Second Line FF - Winner Best Dance Film.

She is now illustrating a book for Jeanne Donough based on Jazz dance pioneer Lynn Simonson. Carol illustrated the "Helmet" children's puppet production and illustrated the book cover of "A Dancer Writes Haiku" by Marie Paquet-Nesson.

Theresa Stanley

Theresa Stanley has been a devoted, innovative educator who has been touching young minds and lives for over thirty years. Currently, a drama specialist at the Bedford Village School located in Brooklyn; she has assisted in setting the stage for our children to claim their position in the spotlight of theatre. As a NYC elementary school pedagogue, she has left positive imprints upon the hearts and lives of so many young people via her productions of musical and stage performances. It is through various forms of art expression that children’s self-esteem and sense of worth is cultivated. As a part of Inside Change, Theresa hopes to continue to reach young minds whose main purpose on earth is to shine like diamonds.

Michael Manswell

Michael Manswell, Artistic Director, Teaching Artist, Choreographer, Singer began his performance life as a storyteller at Arts Festivals in his native Trinidad & Tobago, winning many prizes and awards. He studied music with Lindy-Anne Bodden-Ritch at St Mary’s College and at Brooklyn College (CUNY) with Tom Cultice. As a singer he has toured Europe, the UK, and the Caribbean and has performed as a soloist in many productions of opera and oratorio including Dido & Aeneas, The Marriage of Figaro, Die Fledermaus, Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony, Handel’s Messiah, Missa Criolla and Missa Luba. He studied dance at the Trinidad Dance Theater with Dr. Eugene Joseph training in Modern, Ballet, Jazz, Ballroom, and Folkloric styles. Michael worked with Geoffrey Holder on “Dougla II” and “La Valse des Bakas” for TDT and toured with the company in the USA and the Caribbean. A prolific choreographer he has created several works currently in the repertoire of Something Positive Inc, the performing company he now directs. Something Positive has recently returned from performing in Morocco and the Ivory Coast and has also performed in Costa Rica, Belize and Trinidad & Tobago. An avid folklorist and an Orisha devotee in the Yoruba religion, Mr. Manswell presents lectures and workshops in dance, music, and traditional religious practice and works closely with the Caribbean Cultural Center and the Interfaith Center in their programs. One of “Brooklyn’s Black Men of Distinction 2000” and one of “Brooklyn’s Black Dance Kings (2010)”, Michael is currently an Adjunct Prof (Dance) at Lehman College (CUNY) and teaches for Something Positive Inc., Purelements An Evolution in Dance, the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI), and E.M Techniques. 

Marina Celander

Marina Celander

Marina Celander is a theatre artist, singer, dancer, living and working in NYC. She studied music in Sweden, dance at London Contemporary Dance School, England, and then acting at the Gene Frankel Theatre Workshop, NYC. Marina has performed nationally and internationally.

Marina received the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre’s annual Red Socks Award 2014 for her contribution to Asian American theatre. In 2016 Marina was nominated for the Innovation In Performance Award at the Stockholm Fringe Festival. She was invited to the Tony award-winning theatre LaMama ETC as part of their solo festival Series Of One.

Marina wrote, performed and directed Mermaids Howl and Shakespeare's Sisters, two solo shows.
Tree She, a collaboration with Swedish composer Fredrik Söderberg, part of Marina's pandemic series Hallway Jam, premiered at Estrogenius Festival 2020. Tree She was nominated for Best Movement Artist by the Young-Howze Theatre Awards. Sea She and Stone She have grown out of the pandemic series, and Stone She was shown at LaMama Moves Dance Festival 2022.

As a hula student Marina has had the pleasure and honor of studying with notable Kumu Hula (hula master teachers) for the last 20 years, and has then made it her mission to spread aloha and hula in New York City's public elementary schools. She believes that every child can dance, and should have the opportunity to move and express themselves.

Carmen Einfinger

Carmen Einfinger’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world, including: China, Italy, Germany, Taiwan, Turkey, Poland, Tahiti and US. Her work is in numerous private collections, including the Rockefeller and Faberge family collections.

Her work takes its inspiration directly from her eclectic origins and upbringing. Born in England to Dutch and Croatian parents, she grew up in Brazil before settling in NY where she now lives and works since 1991. In 1984, she received a B.F.A. in Painting at State University of NY Buffalo, and in 1990 was awarded an Andrew Mellon Fellowship at Brown University where she received a M.F.A.in Brazilian Studies. She was awarded artist residencies by, Le Meridien Hotel in Tahiti, Beijing, China; Gedok Schleswig-Holstein in Lubeck, Germany; and at the Blue Mountain Center, NY.

Carmen won first prize in the International Competition of the Outdoor Gallery of the City of Gdansk, Poland.

In that same year, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY featured her as an artist in the museum’s "Bowery Artists Tribute.”

Einfinger continuous successfully executing her Public Art Installations abroad. Her latest Installation “Palm Trees” was installed in Osnabruck, Germany.

Carmen Einfinter received her first public art commission from the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan to create a work for their “Eco-container Art Project.” It became a popular backdrop for tourist photos – and it was subsequently re-staged in a slightly different incarnation in Genoa, Italy, the following year.

In addition, Einfinger, has created interventions that utilized a series of modular, circular paintings that measure 30 to 20 inches in diameter, acrylic paint to bring people together in a shared public space to inspire them to view art in a new fresh way. It is a viewer-friendly guerilla art moment featuring works that can be viewed, ignored, even walked upon. These interventions take place in New York City, Buffalo, Sao Paulo and Taiwan at Oral History and Creative Aging Festival put out by the Taiwan National Museum and at the Beer Bottle Cap Factory.

In 2016 she executed on the iconic Spiral Jetty at the Great Salt in Utah a Public Art Intervention titled “Color Homage to Robert Smithson.”

She was inspired by her longstanding respect for Smithson's pioneering work in Land Art, or Earthworks. The work was created to acknowledge his enormous contribution which influences today’s Public Art worldwide.

Carmen Einfinger’s work has received acclaim from renowned critics such as Valerio Deho and Sara Ugoline, and was a featured artist in the Bilingual Art Magazine Cool and publications online including Dirt Asla, Art Knowledge News, Art Daily, Art Reviews Design, Taxi and Absolute Arts.

Kelebohile Nkhereanye (Kele) is a food street vendor, food justice activist, community chef and community leader in East New York. Kele is an immigrant from Lesotho, Southern Africa, where she learned the values of street vendors as opportunities toward economic empowerment. Currently, Kele is a retired Station Agent for NYCTA, Brooklyn Community Board 5 Board Member-Co-Chair of Parks, Sanitation, & Environment, founder of Soil Afrika Global, Inc. She is a committed member of SVP supporting efforts advocating for street vendors to remind New Yorkers to think of vendors as small business owners who need to work to support their families. She graduated from MCNY with MPA, Hunter College with Sociology and Women's Studies, New York College of Technology with AA in Hospitality Management, Institute for Integrative Nutrition with Health Coach, Interfaith Minister from The New Seminary. 

Collette Mays

Collette Mays

Ms. Mays graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx, in 1978. Then move on to the Brough of Manhattan Community College in the Fall of 1982 and graduated in 1990 with an Associate degree in the Liberal Art and Sciences. In the fall of 1991 she Started attending City University of New York and began her Bachelor degree in Social Work with a minor in Early Childhood Education. In between all of this she gave birth to two Children who are now in college and employed. And recently return to college in 2013 at TCI College of Technology and obtained another Associate degree in Allied Health and Sciences.

Colette Mays employment experiences include working with children as well as with youths during afterschool and in Counseling along with an internship at Bellevue Hospital Department for Chemical Dependency helping to facilitate groups, along with individual Counseling. Her other employment experiences include Home Attending, Retail, Office Assistant and currently at Bellevue Hospital Center working for Winston’s Temp Service.