In This Moment…Now

Hosts

Aimee K. Bryant* is an actor, singer, and teaching artist who has appeared on many stages throughout the Twin Cities and across the nation since graduating from Howard University. She has appeared numerous times on Illusion’s stage including Bubbly Black Girl, No Distance Between Us, How Come There Ain’t No White People In This Show? Two Weeks With the Queen, The Laramie Project, and Child of God. City Pages named Aimee Best Actress of 2015; she was named a 2015-16 McKnight Theater Artist Fellow at the Playwright’s Center. Her debut album Becoming is available online.

*member Actors’ Equity Association

T. Mychael Rambo* is an award-winning actor, vocalist, arts educator, and community organizer. He is a beloved member of our Twin Cities arts community. T. Mychael has performed on every professional theater stage in the Twin Cities. He has also toured nationally and internationally including in NYC’s Carnegie Hall, Africa, Europe and South America. T. Mychael has originated many roles at Illusion including Ben in Miss Evers Boys and Durius Do -Wright in Always and Forever. He also appeared in Blues in the Night, Warrior Within, Waiting to Be Invited, and most recently in his one -man show Present where he shares how he learned to be present in his life and how his songs and stories are a present/gift he offers to audiences.

*member Actors’ Equity Association

Artists

Danez Smith is the author of three collections including Homie and Don’t Call Us Dead. They have won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and have been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, the National Book Critic Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Danez's poetry and prose has been featured in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, Best American Poetry and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective. Former co-host of the Webby nominated podcast VS (Versus) and the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Princeton, United States Artists, the McKnight Foundation, the Montalvo Arts Center, Cave Canem, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Danez has been featured as part of Forbes’ annual “30 Under 30” list and is the winner of a Pushcart Prize. They live in Minneapolis near their people.

Brittany Delaney is a Spoken Word Artist and Arts Educator born and raised in Minnesota. She has been performing on the scene for 20 years after getting her start in Slam Poetry. Brittany has participated in many Slam organizations such as The Minnesota Spoken Word Association, Quest for the Voice, Brave New Voices (HBO), Women of the World Poetry Slam (WOWPS), and various Artists collectives. She creates and facilitates poetry workshops in K-12 schools, university-based establishments across the country, and has worked as a traveling Curriculum Consultant for the last eight years, promoting literacy, inclusion, and safe space learning environments through culturally responsive (and responsible) curriculum and practices. She is currently serving as the Executive Director for Black Table Arts Cooperative in Minneapolis, MN. Brittany performed in the 2020 edition of Illusion’s In This Moment.

Lester Purry was part of Illusion’s Acting Company for five years and appeared in many Illusion productions including Men Sing, Amazing Grace, and Miss Evers’ Boys as well as being a co-author of Objects in the Mirror are Closer Than They Appear. Lester was a part of Illusion’s 2020 edition of In This Moment.

Ryan Bynum is a Washington, D. C. native. Ryan Bynum is a versatile musician who brings creative and technical dexterity to every performance – whether performing solo or accompanying renowned artists including Debbie Allen, Mike Malone, Ice Cube, Diana Ross, Jellybean Johnson, The Steele’s, The Peterson’s, and many others. Ryan has been musical director for many organizations including Community Covenant Church in North Minneapolis, The Minnesota Black Music Awards, and “Here’s The Truth” on the CW Network. His adaptable style covers a spectrum of genres ranging from R & B, hip-hop, jazz, gospel, and classical. Ryan has called the Twin Cities home since attending the McNally-Smith College of Music in St. Paul. Ryan Bynum is working on his first solo album right now, hoping to release it by early summer.

Michael G. Keck is a composer, playwright, and performer whose music has been featured at the Kennedy Center, Mark Taper Forum, Arena Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Alliance Theater, Milwaukee Repertory, Indiana Repertory, Portland Center Stage, and many other American theaters. He has a long history with Illusion, composing Miss Evers’ Boys, Dancing with Giants, Velvet Rut and performing his own work Voices in the Rain. He participated In this Moment in 2020. His sound design will be heard this May in the Guthrie Theater’s production of Murder on the Orient Express.

Darrius Strong is a Twin Cities based dancer, choreographer, and instructor. His dance company STRONGmovement uses the universal language of dance, blending styles such as Hip hop, Ballet, Modern, and West African to tell stories related to society and humanity. Strong is a graduate of University of Minnesota (BFA 2015) and is currently faculty at St. Paul Conservatory Performing Arts High School and director of the Hip hop program at Eleve Performing Arts Center where he focuses on teaching dancers how to connect their identity to movement. His creative work has been chosen for the Walker Art Center’s Choreographers Evening, and Rhythmically Speaking. He was featured in the 2015 New Griots Festival as well as an American Standard Billboard advertisement in NYC Time Square in 2016. Strong has created works for TU Dance, Threads Dance Project, Flying Foot Forum, Alternative Motion Projects, and James Sewell Ballet. Strong is a grateful recipient of a 2017 Momentum New Works Award, 2019 Jerome Hill Fellowship, and 2021 McKnight /fellowship award.

Suzette Jornae Gilreath is a Twin Cities native. Born and raised in Minnesota, she is currently a dance artist based in MN. As of May 2020, she received her B.A in Dance and American Sign Language from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. Jornae is a virtuosic, versatile, and curious mover. She began her dance training at Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artist, and TU Dance at the age of 16. She is classically trained in Classical Ballet, Contemporary Ballet, Modern and African, with experience in street style Hip-hop, and Heels. As an alumni student from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Dance Program, she has been taught under the instruction of Carl Flink, Toni Pierce-Sands, Ananya ChatterJea, Erin Thompson. Through her dance training, she has obtained, a greater understanding of the relationship dance has with the world, globally and internationally. Over the past five years, Jornae has gained professional dance experience by training and performing with Twin Cities-based companies Contempo Physical Dance and STRONGmovement. She has also performed works by Kenna Cottman, Sidra Bell, Gregory Maqoma, Leslie Parker, and Robert Moses. She had chosen to learn American Sign language as a second language requirement and fell deeply in love with D/deaf culture and the language.. ASL has shifted her artist praxis, how she interacts with the world, ethnically, culturally, and spiritually. Jornae’s work is approached through an intersectional lens. Through aligning her multitude of identities and practices, she cultivates composition and projects that focus on enlightening the world to see who they are, and how we are all connected to the source. Her mission is to transform, inform, and inspire through art and human exchange

Carlyle Brown is a playwright/performer, curator, and artistic director of Carlyle Brown & Company based in Minneapolis. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists, a Lifetime Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center. His plays have been produced at theaters across the country and internationally. He has received numerous commissions, fellowships, and awards. A scholar and historian, Carlyle has been an artist-in-residence or visiting professor at various colleges and universities and has worked as a museum exhibit writer and story consultant. Illusion Theater has supported his work producing plays Finding Fish, Acting Black, Down in Mississippi, and A PLAY by Barb and Carl. Carlyle is the Andrew W. Mellon Playwright-in-Residence at Illusion Theater and the 2022 Legacy Award winner from the Legacy Playwrights Initiative.

Ashley DuBose is a recording artist and performer who is most widely known for her hit single, Intoxicated, and her compelling audition and performances on Season 5 of NBC’s The Voice in 2013. Just prior to that, she worked on her first independent, full-length album Somethin' More, while juggling college and parenting her then two-year-old daughter. It was released in 2012, a day before she graduated with a B.A. in mathematics from St. Catherine University. Ashley was chosen "Best Vocalist (Female)" by City Pages (2014) and released her second album Be You (2015) followed by singles and EPs in the years that followed. In addition to parenting, songwriting, performing and recording music, Ashley invests in real estate, does on-camera and voice-over acting, and travels nationally performing at private and corporate events. Ashley DuBose Official Website

Mary Moore Easter Poetry: From the Flutes of Our Bones, The Body of the World (2018 MBA Finalist), Walking from Origins, and Free Papers: poems inspired by the testimony of Eliza Winston, a Mississippi slave escaped to freedom in Minnesota in 1860. Memoir: The Way She Wants to Get There: Telling on Myself. (MBA Finalist 2023) Widely published, her poems also appear as texts for art songs, anthology contributions, and on library-sponsored poetry trails. Her adult career as an independent dancer/choreographer and Founder and Director of Carleton College’s dance program overlapped with writing as a Cave Canem Fellow.  A multi-faceted performer, she has combined text, movement and song to present evening-length performance works for herself and others around the country.

Fred N. Cheng is a videographer, a teacher, and improv artist. He has performed in the mainstage troupe of Stevie Ray’s Comedy Cabaret at the Chanhassen Dinner theater and taught improv at the Brave New Workshop and Stevie Ray’s. For the past four years, Fred has served as the Video Designer for Illusion.

Peter Macon in addition to his film and television work, Peter performed Othello at the Guthrie. Early in his career Peter worked with Illusion in such plays as, Objects in the Mirror are Closer Than They Appear, Among Our Own, and participated in the 202o edition of In This Moment.

Regina Marie Williams has performed on every stage in the Twin Cities including Illusion, Guthrie Theater, Pillsbury House, Chanhassen, Ordway Center, and is a Penumbra Theater Company Member. Regina was a part of Illusion’s workshops of Marion McClinton ‘s Beauty is a Rare Thing and his adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Jazz. Regina originated the role of Nina Simone in Christina Ham’s Nina Simone: Four Women. She is a 2007 McKnight Theater Artist Fellow and received an Ivey Award for her role as Mama Nadi in Mixed Blood Theater’s Ruined. She is City Pages’ Best Actress 2016 and the Minneapolis Star Tribune “Artist of the Year Honorable Mention.” Regina has recorded three solo albums.

Designers and Production Staff

Stage Manager

Matthew Meeks* (he/him) is happy to be back with Illusion after assisting with Live at Lyndale Gardens. He is a freelance AEA Stage Manager and has previously worked with The Guthrie Theater in various capacities (A Christmas Carol, SITI Company’s The Bacchae, As You Like It, and many others), American Players Theatre (three seasons in the woods, most recently: Hamlet, The River Bride, and Stones in His Pockets), Ten Thousand Things (Mlima's Tale), and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (Yuletide Celebration). Thanks to you for supporting and celebrating live art! All my love to Hannah and the family.

*member Actors’ Equity Association

Lighting Design

Dante Benjegerdes (they/them/theirs) is a freelance lighting designer and technician recently based in the Twin Cities. They are ecstatic to be making their debut design in the Twin Cities with the Illusion Theater. Local Assistant Lighting Design credits include The Song Poet with the Minnesota Opera and Annie with the Children's Theatre Company. They spent last Summer as a Lighting Supervision Apprentice with the Glimmerglass Opera Festival in New York. Other design credits include The Pinballs and The Imaginators with Black Hawk Children's Theatre, Sideshow with Nolte Dance Academy, and Blackberry, Agnes in Green, and Palanquin with the University of Iowa.