Angela da Silva
Angela da Silva takes pride in being a fifth generation descendant of Missouri slaves on both sides of the family. She received her bachelor’s degree in business management from Webster University, where she also attended graduate school. She also received a M.A. in Education with an emphasis in Historical Interpretation from Lindenwood. She is currently an adjunct in her tenth year there. She taught African American history for the AmeriCorps for ten years. She is the owner of the National Black Tourism Network and in that capacity is a member of the Century Club. Many from St. Louis have traveled with her around the world. Her first love though, is history. She has endeavored to make history three dimensional and accessible through performance and education. Her portrayals of Black female characters have won acclaim. She wrote the regionally performed historical play “The St. Louis Attitude.” She is currently performing her one woman show “Lila: The Life of a Missouri Slave” all over the country. This is the eighteenth year she has written the historical program for the Mary Meachum program. She performs monthly at the Historic Daniel Boone Home and Village and school districts in the tristate region.
Gregory S. Carr
Gregory S. Carr is an instructor of Speech and Theatre at Harris-Stowe State University. He is an accomplished director and writer. Two of his plays, Johnnie Taylor is Gone and A Colored Funeral have been given productions at the historic Karamu House in Cleveland. His essay “Top Brass: Theatricality, Themes, and Theology in James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones” appears in Theatre Symposium Volume 21: Ritual, Religion and Theatre. Gregory’s newest play is titled Tinderbox, which focuses on the events leading up and following the devastating East St. Louis Race Riots of 1917. Two of his latest essays, “Weathering the Winds of Change: The Sustainability of the St. Louis Black Repertory Company” and “A Brand New Day on Broadway: Remembering Geoffrey Holder’s Culturally Relevant Costumes for The Wiz and the Messages of the African Diaspora” are scheduled to be published in the Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Theatre Symposium 26 respectively. Gregory has been an avid fan of super heroes and is developing a number of super hero-related stories for the screen such as Watch Night, Fleur de Lis, and The Daguerreotypes. He is also working on a novel titled Murmuration, which addresses the cruel treatment of enslaved African Americans and how the ghost of unatoned for American slavery continues to haunt American today and Disparate, a story surrounding mutated teens in a dystopian St. Louis in the future.
Mariah L. Richardson
Mariah L. Richardson is a native of St. Louis. She received a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of New Mexico and an M.F.A. in playwriting from Smith College. Richardson began her acting career in New Mexico. She did two seasons with the St. Louis Black Repertory and three seasons with Metro Theater Company during which she completed an 80-show tour of Delilah’s Wish, commissioned by MTC. Her HBO/New Writers Project solo performance show, all that…, has toured throughout the country. Her second play, Sistahs Indeed!, was a mainstage production at St. Louis Community College at Forest Park in 2008. Richardson is a budding filmmaker with several films under her belt. Her first short film, 5 of Cups, premiered in The Center’s film festival in New York in 2004. Her third film, Beautiful Hands, made the rounds in film festivals, being screened by Chicks with Flicks Film Festival in New York City and the 2006 St. Louis International Film Festival. Richardson is an accomplished poet whose work is published in many anthologies and magazines such as Essence magazine, Sinister Wisdom and Harbinger: Poetry and Fiction as well as her own chapbook, Stronger Than My Fears. Richardson is currently an adjunct professor at St. Louis Community College at Forest Park. She has taught in after-school programs, residences and homeless shelters from Los Angeles to New England. Richardson’s goal is to combine all the things she loves—poetry, performance, film and music—to create work which inspires others to tell their own stories and radiate the Creator Spirit within.