Memberships

Center Stage Salon Dates 
4 PM Pacific Standard Time

• August 29 | Margo Hall
• September 12 | Eureka Day Cast Reunion
• October 25 | The Flats Actors
• November 22 | The Flats Playwrights
• January 10 | Mia Tagano
• February 28 | Colonialism is Terrible, but Pho is Delicious 
• March 28 | Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye Cast
• April 25 | Dawn Monique Williams
• May 23 | Carlos Aguirre
• June 27 | M. Graham Smith
• July 25 | Barbara Damashek and Lance Gardner

Barbara Damashek is a Tony-nominated director, composer-lyricist, and co-author of the musical Quilters. Aurora credits include 2020's The Children, Creditors, A Number, Splendour, The Lyons, American Buffalo,Fat Pig, and Private Jokes, Public Places. Other credits include the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Rep, A.C.T., The Denver Center, South Coast Repertory, and Actors Theater of Louisville, and internationally in the U.K. and Ukraine.

Lance Gardner is the Live Events Producer at KQED public media in San Francisco. He works to bring KQED’s award winning programing to life across the bay area in creative and engaging ways, and strives to create new opportunities to bring art and journalism to life together. Before joining KQED, Lance performed in dozens of plays over his 15 years as a professional actor and musician. He previously worked as an EMT with Santa Clara County emergency medical services and enjoys creating sound-rich narrative stories as an independent audio producer.

Dustin Chinn is a Seattle native whose plays include Snowflakes, Or Rare White People, I Am Nakamura, The Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan Commission Herschel: Portrait Of A Killer and Let’s Ninja Science Ranger Team Get! He has developed work at the Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep Summer Residency Lab, A.C.T.’s New Strands Festival, the University of Washington via a Mellon Creative Fellowship, SPACE on Ryder Farm, UMass at Amherst New Play Lab and Vampire Cowboys. He has also written for the 52nd Street Project. Dustin is a member of the Ars Nova Play Group and Ma-Yi Writers Lab. BA: Cornell University.

Oanh Nguyen has been serving as Chance Theater’s founding Artistic Director since 1999. Oanh is a recipient of TCG’s New Generations Grant and the TCG Nathan Cummings Young Leaders of Color Fellowship. He was awarded the Outstanding Artist Award by Arts Orange County, profiled in Orange County Register’s “Most Influential People” series and OC Weekly’s People Issue, inducted into Anaheim High School’s Hall of Fame and was a commencement speaker for Chapman University College of Performing Arts. Oanh was Producing Associate at South Coast Repertory for three years. He also served on the advisory board of the Anaheim High School Performing Arts Conservatory, the board of Network of Ensemble Theatres, LA’s 99-seat Transitional Committee, and OC Theatre Guild, as well as panels and committees for Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, Alternative Theatre Los Angeles, National Endowment for the Arts and Theatre Communications Group. Oanh is a proud member of SDC and SAG-AFTRA. His directing credits include productions at Chance Theater, East West Players, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, South Coast Repertory, Chapman University, Azusa Pacific University, AMDA, CSU Fullerton, and served as the Associate Director for the international tour of David Henry Hwang’s Chinglish (Berkeley Repertory, South Coast Repertory, Hong Kong Arts Festival).

Mia Tagano was last seen at Aurora in Bull in a China Shop and Splendour. Other bay area credits include Berkeley Rep (Macbeth), ACT (Love and Information), CalShakes (Hamlet and Nicholas Nickleby), and TheatreWorks (M Butterfly, Calligraphy and Loudest Man on Earth). Regional credits include  Tamburlaine, (Shakespeare Theater), Snow Falling on Cedars (Portland Center Stage, Hartford Stage), and Tantalus (Denver Center/RSC co-production/UK tour). New York credits include Far East (Lincoln Center), 99 Histories (Cherry Lane Theater) and Song of Singapore (Capital Repertory).  A member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA, Mia received her MFA in Acting from the University of Washington; BA from OSU.

Margo Hall (Exit Strategy, Trouble In Mind; Global Age Project director) has performed and directed in theaters throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. She was seen onstage in Skeleton Crew, a co-production with Marin Theatre Company and Theatreworks. She recently directed BARBECUE (which she also starred in) for San Francisco Playhouse and Brownsville, b-side for tray for Shotgun Players. Her writing credits include The People’s Temple at Berkeley Repertory Theater, which won the 2005 Will Glickman Playwright Award for best new play in the Bay Area, and Be Bop Baby, a Musical Memoir, a semi-autobiographical piece at Z Space in San Francisco, featuring the Marcus Shelby 15-piece orchestra. She is a founding member of the award-winning, San Francisco-based multi-cultural ensemble Campo Santo, and has directed, performed and collaborated on new plays with artists such as Naomi Iizuka, Jessica Hagedorn, Philip Kan Gotanda, and Octavio Solis.

Josh Costello, Artistic Director

Josh Costello is the Artistic Director of Aurora Theatre Company. Throughout his career, Josh has worked to make theatre more accessible for more people, sharing a passion for the visceral experience of live theatre with new audiences and underserved communities. He was the founding Artistic Director of Impact Theatre, which focused on audiences in their teens and twenties. As the Artistic Director of Expanded Programs at Marin Theatre Company, Josh created and administered several programs that built relationships with new audiences. At Aurora, Josh initiated student matinee and Community Partner programs and led a revision of Aurora’s mission to emphasize the theatre’s role as storyteller to the community. Josh has directed Exit Strategy, The Importance of Being Earnest, Detroit, Wittenberg, and The Heir Apparent for Aurora, as well as the world premiere of Eureka Day, which won every Bay Area new play award. His world-premiere production of Aaron Loeb’s Ideation with the San Francisco Playhouse in both SF and NYC won the Glickman Award for best new play in the Bay Area and the Theatre Bay Area Award for Outstanding Direction, and was named a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Other directing work includes My Children! My Africa! at Marin Theatre Company, House of Lucky at Magic Theatre, and his adaptations of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and Aphra Behn’s The Rover. Josh was the Education Director at Marin Shakespeare Company, and a faculty member at Cal Shakes, ACT, SF Shakes, UC Riverside, Cal State Long Beach, South Coast Rep, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Josh holds a BFA in Theatre from Boston University, and an MFA in Directing from the University of Washington, Seattle.