The front porch arts collective Leadership team
Dawn Meredith Simmons
Artistic Director Dawn Meredith Simmons has spent the past fourteen years working in Boston as a director, a playwright and an arts administrator. Ms. Simmons is the current Director of Performing Arts at the Boston Center for the Arts. Ms. Simmons has worked with the following companies: Bad Habit Productions, Anthem Theatre, Boston Public Works, Lyric Stage Company, New Exhibition Room, Suffolk University, Fresh Ink Theatre, Dorchester Fringe Festival, GAN-e-meed Theatre Project, The Theatre Offensive, Our Place Theatre Project, Mill 6, Actors Refuge Repertory Theatre, Fort Point Theatre Channel, Boston Theatre Works, and As Yet To Be Theatre.
Ms. Simmons is Co-Artistic Director of New Exhibition Room and a founding member of the Small Theatre Alliance Boston, as well as a Board Member of StageSource. |
Maurice Emmanuel Parent
Executive Director Maurice Emmanuel Parent has been a Resident Acting Company member of the Actors’ Shakespeare Project (ASP) since 2011 and he recently serviced as one of the Acting Artistic Directors for ASP. Mr Parent has performed locally with the Underground Railway Theater, SpeakEasy Stage, New Repertory Theatre, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Wheelock Family Theatre, Lyric Stage, Huntington Theatre Co., Off the Grid Theatre Company, Boston Theatre Works, Barrington Stage, and Cape Playhouse. Outside of Boston, Mr. Parent has performed nationally and abroad. He's received two Elliot Norton Awards (2008 and 2017), three Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) Awards (2015, 2016, and 2017) and an Arts Impulse Award (2017). In addition to his work on stage, Mr Parent is an adjunct professor at Boston University’s School of Theatre and Guest Artist at Tufts University. Currently Maurice is playing the title role in Man of La Mancha at New Repertory Theatre. MauriceParent.com
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Victoria George
Executive Producer |
Victoria A. George is an actor and arts administrator with a special interest in addressing issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in the arts. She studied theater at Wellesley College first as an apprentice and then as a company member of the Wellesley Repertory Theatre (WRT), the professional resident theater of the college. Favorite roles at WRT include the Importance of Being Earnest (Gwendolen) and Goodnight Desdemona/Good Morning Juliet (Desdemona); and Exit Strategy (Jania) with Zeitgeist Stage Company. Victoria supports the FPAC team as Executive Producer.
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Liana Asim
Playwright-in-Residence / Special Events |
Zachary Rice
Marketing / Audience Development |
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Liana Asim is a playwright/actor/director and Founding Playwright-In-Residence for The Front Porch Arts Collective. She is also a 2016/17 Company One PlayLab Fellow. She recently directed the world premiere of a family musical, The Hairy Scary, for The Outside the Box festival 2016. She was recently seen on stage as Mai Tamba in The Convert at Central Square Theater (winner of the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production). She also played Marcus Lycus in the Stoneham Theatre production of A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum. A 2015 BCA and Company One PlayLab Fellow, her full-length plays include Bedfellows, The King of Love Is Dead, Slut Walk or A Play About Marilyn Monroe, The Hairy Scary (musical co-written w/J. Asim and Joshua Stephen Kartes.) Her work has been developed at BCA/Company One, Boston Theatre Marathon, Fresh Ink Theatre, Davenport Studios NYC, Playwright’s Platform and Emerson College in Boston, MA. She studied performance art at Northwestern University and screenwriting and playwriting at Emerson College. She is the proud wife of author Jabari Asim, mother to five brilliant children, and grandmother of two delightful grandbabies. She believes in the power of LIVE theatre to change the world.
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Zachary Rice is a Boston-based theater artist from the beautiful Pacific Northwest. He received his BFA in Theater Arts from Boston University with an emphasis in directing and acting. Zack has directed for the Boston Theater Marathon, Roxbury Repertory Theatre, and his undergraduate thesis, and assistant directed with SpeakEasy, Underground Railway Theater, The Nora, and Fresh Ink Theater. He aspires to develop art that interrogates social and economic inequity and provokes radical empathy.
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Pascale Florestal
Artistic Associate Pascale Florestal is a Director, Teaching Artist and Theatre Artist in the Greater Boston Area. She has taught in several Boston Public Schools with The Huntington Theatre Company, Citi Spotlights Leadership Program and Company One Theatre. As a Teaching Artist her work has been focused primarily in using the theatre as a way to connect with Social Justice topics as well as integrating theatre into Humanities classes. She has Assistant Directed Bevin O’Gara, Paul Daigneault and Billy Porter. Her recent directing credits include: Kentucky by Leah Nanako Winkler with Pine Manor College and Ole White Sugah Daddy by Obehi Janice with SpeakEasy Stage Company. She also directed in the Boston Theatre Marathon this past spring for The Huntington Theatre and Company One as well as the Mad Dash Festival by Fresh Ink Theatre. She was recently accepted into the SDC Observership Class. This season she will be directing a new work by Stefan Lanfer with Open Theatre Project and will be Assistant Directing the Huntington Theatre Company’s Production of Top Girls directed by Liesl Tommy. She is thrilled to be directing An Issue of Blood with Front Porch Arts Collective and would like to thank Dawn, Maurice and Keith this amazing opportunity.
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