CAATA Keynote Speakers Announced for National Asian American Theatre Conference and Festival

Born in Honolulu and raised in Los Angeles, Roberta Uno is a theater director, writer, and national arts leader. She is the Director of Arts in a Changing America, a national project on changing demographics and the arts based at CalArts. She was the Senior Program Officer for Arts and Culture at the Ford Foundation 2002-2015. From 1979-2002, she was the founder and Artistic Director of the New WORLD Theater, a theater dedicated to the work of artists of color, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Professor of Directing and Dramaturgy in the university’s Department of Theater.

A member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, her directing and dramaturgy credits span over three decades, working with a range of artists including James Baldwin, Alice Childress, Chitra Divakaruni, Mark Bamuthi Joseph, thúy le, Pearl Primus, Dawn Saito, Sekou Sundiata, Keo Woolford, and William Yellow Robe Jr. She is currently directing the development of a new plays by Dionna Danielle and Dahlak Brathwaite.

Karen Narasaki is a civil rights attorney, an American civil rights leader and a human rights activist. In July 2014 President Barack Obama appointed Narasaki to serve as a Commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

She is the former president and executive director of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC. Advancing Justice | AAJC is a Washington D.C-based, nonprofit civil rights organization whose mission is to advance the human and civil rights of Asian Pacific Americans through advocacy, public policy, public education and litigation. Prior to her post at AAJC, she served as the Washington, D.C. representative to the Japanese American Citizens League. Narasaki is also currently Chair of the Asian American Diversity Advisory Council for Comcast/NBCU and Co-Chair of the Asian American Advisory Council for Nielsen.