The People
of DBA Studios
Ifa Bayeza
(Producing Director) is a multimedia writer, producer
and educator. Her works for the stage include Amistad
Voices, Till, Club Harlem, and Homer G. & the
Rhapsodies, for which she was awarded a Kennedy Center
Fund for New American Plays fellowship. In addition to Kid
Zero & Little X, Bayeza’s works for young audiences
include Best Enemies, Drink Water, Moonstone and
Teresa Pruitt’s Bad Mad Day. Her plays have
been performed at New Federal Theatre, the Lorraine Hansberry
Theatre, the National Black Theatre Festival, Crossroads Theatre,
BRAVA Women’s Center for the Arts, Cosmic Theater in
Amsterdam and at the Sorbonne. Other awards include two consecutive
fellowships to the Tuck School Minority Business Executive
Program (MBEP) and the Arna Bontemps Centennial Writer’s
Fellowship. A graduate of Harvard University, Ms. Bayeza is
a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Theatre Communications
Guild and the Writers Guild of America.
Pam Dickler
(Producing Director) has worked in Chicago as a producer,
director, actor and writer for twenty years. As founding managing
director of Terrapin Theatre, she produced ten seasons of
plays, which included such award-winners as Blue Remembered
Hills (After Dark award, Best Production), Stags
and Hens (Best Ensemble), and Aunt Dan and Lemon
(Best Ensemble). Ms. Dickler directed the world premieres
of the critically acclaimed The Love Song of Saul Alinsky
(which included panel discussions with such Chicago luminaries
as Barack Obama and Monsignor Jack Egan), and Laurel &
Hardy Sleep Together. Commercially, Ms. Dickler managed
such long-running hits as Do the White Thing, Always…Patsy
Cline and Menopause the Musical, and was casting
director for The (Female) Odd Couple, starring Barbara
Eden. Ms. Dickler received her BFA from Syracuse University,
where she served on the College of Visual and Performing Arts’
inaugural Advisory Board from 2000 to 2004.
Bayeza
and Dickler began working together in 1998 as artistic
director and managing director of the Chernin Center for the
Arts. Under their six-year tenure, the Center expanded to
a 26,000 square ft. facility, featuring recording and dance
studios, a gallery, giftshop, computer lab and two theaters,
presenting more than 150 performances per year. Dickler and
Bayeza’s theatre co-productions included the multimedia
dance drama Ken Kesey’s The Sea Lion and the
Chicago premieres of Passages of Martin Luther King
by Clayborne Carson and Undesirable Elements by Ping
Chong (After Dark award, Life Stories). Their premiere of
Bayeza’s Amistad Voices was rated one of the
top twenty-five Chicago productions for the 2000 season and,
remounted at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in 2003, was Critic’s
Pick in the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times.
In May 2002, Dickler and Bayeza created The ShoeBox Theater,
a subscription series of six original plays for very young
audiences. Cited for excellence by the National Endowment
for the Arts and the Chicago Arts & Business Council,
The Shoebox inaugural season opened with Dickler’s musical,
The Little Turtle, and closed with a workshop production
of Bayeza’s Kid Zero & Little X.
DBA Studios
(Dickler, Bayeza & Associates) creates new and
innovative theatre, encouraging dialogue among races, cultures
and people. The Kid Zero Project is the company’s
premiere arts integration initiative.
|
