Day 1 Morning Keynote:
Katie Dawson
Katie Dawson is an Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Austin and serves as the Director for Drama for Schools, a professional learning program in drama-based pedagogy for K-16 education. Katie is an internationally recognized consultant in creative learning and teaching artist practice. She has given talks and offered workshops about ways to increase student engagement and ownership of learning globally and across the United States. Katie received the Creative Drama Award and the Winifred Ward Scholar Award from the American Alliance of Theatre and Education along with multiple teaching and research awards from her university, where she is appointed as a Provost’s Teaching Fellow. She has published fifteen journal articles and book chapters and her co-authored book, The Reflexive Teaching Artist: Collective Wisdom from the Drama/Theatre Field, received the 2015 Distinguished Book Award from the American Alliance of Theatre and Education. Her new co-authored book, Drama-Based Pedagogy: Activating Learning Through the Arts, was published in May of 2018. Katie has a consulting appointment with The University of South Australia’s School of Education as an Associate Professor for Pedagogical Innovation. Prior to her work in academia, Katie worked professionally as an actor, youth theatre director, classroom teacher and museum theatre educator.
Day 1 Afternoon Keynote: Poco a Poco, Se Llena el Saco, Bit by Bit, We Fill the Sack
Antonio Sacre
Antonio Sacre tells stories. His tales of growing up bilingually in a Cuban and Irish-American household have inspired children worldwide to gather their own family stories and become storytellers themselves. His stories have been published in award-winning books and audio recordings. His Professional Developments and Keynote addresses have helped educators teach writing to students from pre-Kindergarten through graduate school. Now his stories are being developed for film and television. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two children, and two cats. Yes, he's a cat guy.
Day 2 Afternoon Keynote:
Mickey Rowe
Mickey Rowe is the first actor on the autism spectrum to play Christopher Boone in the Tony Award winning play “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and one of the first actors with autism to get to play any autistic character. He has written about inclusion in the media for Teen Vogue, Playbill, NPR, CNN'S Great Big Story, and more. Mickey has said in Teen Vogue, "Young actors and artists with disabilities in this country need to see positive role models who will tell us that if you are different, if you access the world differently, the world needs you! Excluding us from stories that are entirely about us unfortunately doesn’t help to accomplish this. The point of storytelling is to connect us with people we otherwise wouldn’t come in contact with, to bring us life experiences we don’t already have. That is why diversity in the arts and media matters. Inclusion in the media matters because it leads to inclusion in life. If a show about autism can’t include autistic people thoroughly and directly, we have some good work still to be done.” He has appeared in productions at Syracuse Stage, Indiana Repertory Theatre, the Seattle Opera, SCT, Seattle Shakespeare Company, Book-It Repertory Theatre, The Ashland New Plays Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival Midnight Projects, and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Mickey lives in Seattle, WA with his wife, his 2-year-old son and his 7-month-old son. He is also Artistic Director of Arts on the Waterfront, a theater/philanthropy company working with Homeless Teen Artists, The Trevor Project, The City of Seattle, and Teen Feed. Mickey Rowe is represented by Kazarian/Measures/Ruskin & Associates.
Performances by:
Clive Romney
Clive Romney, songwriter, storyteller, multi-instrumentalist, arts advocate, Utah history purveyor, co-creator with Sam Payne of "Echoes of Hammers & Spikes", and folk arts representative on the Utah Arts Council is executive director of Utah Pioneer Heritage Arts.