José Torres-Tama

Born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, raised in Jersey City and New York City, and living in New Orleans since 1984, José Torres-Tama has received an NEA Regional Artists Project Award for his multidisciplinary performances, a Louisiana Division of the Arts Theater Fellowship, two National Performance Network Creation Fund awards, a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant for his art book publication New Orleans Free People of Color & Their Legacy, and a 2015 MAP Fund grant for his ALIENS Taco Truck Theater Project. A poet, visual artist, and performance artist, he explores the underbelly of the American Dream mythology and the current anti-immigrant hysteria gripping the United States. He teaches traditional drawing at the Ogden Museum in New Orleans, and from 2006–2011, he contributed commentaries to NPR’s Latino USA program, exploring the challenges of life post-Katrina and Latino immigrant contributions to the reconstruction of the city.

Elise Witt

Born in Switzerland and raised in North Carolina, Elise Witt has called Atlanta home for nearly forty years. Witt is fluent in five languages and sings in at least a dozen more. A member of Alternate ROOTS since 1979, her music promotes the causes of peace, justice, and human dignity. In addition to connecting singing communities around the world with her concerts of Global, Local, & Homemade Songs™ and her Impromptu Glorious Chorus™ workshops, Witt is currently the Director of Music Programs at the Global Village Project, a special-purpose middle school for teenage refugee girls in Decatur, GA. She is the 2015 recipient of the William L. Womack Creative Arts Award, which acknowledges artists who use their talent to build bridges of understanding between diverse communities.

Nicole Gurgel

Nicole Gurgel is the Content Developer for Alternate ROOTS, a network of artists and cultural organizers in the South creating a better world together by working to dismantle all forms of oppression, everywhere. In addition to her work with ROOTS, Nicole is a writer, performance-maker, and community-based arts educator living in Albuquerque, NM. She holds an MFA in Performance as Public Practice from The University of Texas at Austin.

Carlton Turner

Carlton Turner is the executive director of Alternate ROOTS, a regional nonprofit arts organization based in the south. Carlton Turner is also cofounder and co-artistic director, along with his brother Maurice Turner, of the group M.U.G.A.B.E.E. (Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction), a performing arts group that blends jazz, hip-hop, spoken word poetry, and soul music together with non-traditional storytelling. Carlton is a cultural organizer living and working in Mississippi and is currently on the board of Appalshop, an advisory member to the National Theater Project at NEFA, chair of the We Shall Overcome Fund Advisory Board, an Arts and Culture Social Justice Network steering committee member, and a former Network of Ensemble Theaters board member.