Artist in Residence 2027
Jay Mercury
Jay Mercury (they/she) is an artist, organizer, and mother of the house of resilience. Their work aims to explore issues of identity and belonging from a place of joy and collective liberation. They have collaborated with other Portland artists on multiple independent film, theater, and comedy projects, especially those that center marginalized voices. Jay's current projects include a memoir in progress, a drag resurrection of Jesus Christ, and The Great Pretender, a show about their journey from being the youngest winner of the teen Miss America pageant to the transgressive drag king they are today.
Rio Whelchel
Rio Whelchel is a Portland, Oregon–based multidisciplinary performing artist, educator, and mentor with over 20 years of experience in theater. As a dancer, actor, singer, and playwright, Rio brings a dynamic, cross-disciplinary approach to performance, combining technical skill, creative exploration, and a deep commitment to artistic growth. With a rich background in musical theater, Shakespeare, and clowning, Rio has mentored emerging performers, taught students of diverse backgrounds, and collaborated on original devised works. Her practice emphasizes versatility, collaboration, and the development of each artist’s unique voice. Dedicated to helping performers build confidence, strengthen their craft, and pursue their goals with intention.
Susan Stein
Susan Stein has a background in dance, theater, poetry, and somatic studies. Since she is in her 70's, she has amassed many other experiences in the creative fields. She has been practicing psychotherapy for half her life. She loves the growing of things in her wild yard and garden and being with her grandchildren. She is coming back to life and with a renewed since of her passion for performing she has recently began training through works with From the Ground UP lead by Katherine Murphy Lewis. She is deeply grateful from From The Ground UP and Katherine for the opportunity to re-discover her creative self.
Sarah DeGrave
Sarah DeGrave (she/her) is a Portland, Oregon–based performer whose work spans theatre, dance, and vocal performance. She has performed extensively with Portland-area companies, including Lakewood Theatre Company, Portland Revels, Anonymous Theatre, Clackamas Repertory Theatre, triangle productions!, Broadway Rose, and others. As a vocalist, she regularly performs in cabarets, concerts, and special events, and can be seen singing around town with the award winning a cappella group The HoneyBees. Alongside her performance work, Sarah maintains an active photography practice, with exhibition history at Radius Art Studio and Siren Nation Arts Festival and ongoing portrait work for artists and small businesses. Her original work often centers on themes of visibility, vulnerability, and viscerality.
Carolyn L Myers
At the age of nine, Carolyn rounded up the neighbors for her first theatrical production: Hansel and Gretel. She discovered her lifelong passion of making theater with whoever else is interested. She’s been doing some version of that ever since. In high school, she directed the school’s first student-written play, Nastley Quick and the Revenge of the Paper People. At university, her first play, Jimmy Sodacracker was another student-written first—and won the Norman Lear College Comedy Writing Award. She has helped launch seven theater companies: Isla Vista Community Theater; Lilith, San Francisco’s internationally touring women’s theater; Mixed Company in Ashland, Oregon; Planned Parenthood’s award-winning Teen Theaters—Crater Cabaret, Duct Tape Theater, and Ophelia Rising—and the glamorous Hamazons. These companies lasted a long time, all of them outliving her involvement, and some still going strong. Her happiest times onstage have been in comedy: with Terry Baum in The Crackpot Crones, Dori Appel in Mixed Company, and her fellow improvisers in The Gorillas and The Hamazons. She’s directed the premieres of more than a dozen solo shows, plus many high school plays. Her published and widely performed plays include Girl Talk and Hot Flashes, written with Dori Appel, and Dos Lesbos, with Terry Baum and Alice Thompson. Her poem She Bop became an animated film, and her writing has appeared in Changing Bodies, Changing Lives, The We’Moon Calendar, and One Dyke’s Theater. Through it all: lifelong friends, a little political mischief, and the spontaneous joy of making something together. Her involvement with From the Ground Up marks her return from retirement, at age 76, to tread the boards once again.
Antje Schaefer
Antje Schaefer is a dance and movement facilitator, community space curator, multidisciplinary artist, and somatic guide devoted to creating liberatory spaces where resilience and connection can take root. As a queer, non-binary German immigrant, they bring the investigation of the in-between to both personal process and the group and cultural bodies they work with. Their endless curiosity has led them to social dance, somatics, anatomy, expressive arts, interpersonal neurobiology, emergency medicine, hospice care, many deep encounters with the natural world and countless hours on dancefloors everywhere.They lovingly craft workshops, gathering spaces, and immersive art in collaboration with the wisdom that comes from their personal process, their students, teachers, and peers. Antje is the steward of Portland’s monthly fusion partner dance Nectar Fusion, which they founded in 2015. They are the co-founder of Cocréa Mindful Partner Dance, and the creator of Relational Body, a mind-body agility practice for embodied resilience and relational intimacy. They made their public debut into the theater arts realm with co-producing The House of Re-Membering in 2024– an immersive theater ritual haunted house.
Abby Ross
Abby Ross has had a 25-year stage career in Washington DC, Maine, and now Portland, after a 40-year left-brain career in national security policy, including five years in the Clinton White House. On stage, they/she have played everything from King Lear to Hamm in Beckett’s Endgame. In the late 20-teens they/she began to study personal storytelling, based on their own gender journey and 15 boxes of family archives revealing a surprisingly Queer family. They/she have told parts of a solo show, now in development, at the Moth, the Portland Queer Arts Spectacular, Off the Rails at Third Rail Theater, and currently in senior citizen residential communities. They/she loves to sing, act, play the guitar, tell stories, and play with their/her cat.
Amber Green
Amber Green (she/they) is honored to be welcomed into this year’s artist residency program.
She is classically trained as a dancer, singer, and actor with a BA in Acting and Performance from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA, and has performed on the West Coast and Internationally for decades. Inspired by the likes of Carol Burnett & Lucille Ball, and molded by a deep love for dance and movement, comedic, Vaudevillian physical comedy is their happy place. Clue is a dream show for Amber. Some of their favorite roles have been Mrs. Peacock in Clue (ETP), Callie Pax in Stop Kiss (Seoul Players), and BellaDonna in Beauty and the Beast (Portland Panto). Amber returned to the PNW in 2019 after a decade in South Korea, living out numerous performer dreams while teaching English. Amber was a Board Member, Artistic Associate, Producer, Director, and Actor with Seoul Players, an expat theatre company. She was the lead singer of several rock bands, a femme fatale in NJ Calder’s indie movie Fear Eats the Seoul, Assistant Director for Seoul Film Club, and worked as a voice-over artist for animation, educational, and commercials. Ms. Green is excited to be a part of Portland’s vibrant arts community and gives thanks to her loved ones for all their incredible support.
Jackie Apodaca
Jackie Apodaca is an Ashland-based director, actor, educator, and theatrical leader whose work spans classical text, new play development, and ensemble-based performance. She serves as Professor of Theatre and Department Chair at Southern Oregon University, as well as Executive Artistic Director of the Ashland New Plays Festival. Jackie’s directing, acting, and leadership credits include work with Roundabout Theatre Company, Denver Center Theatre Company, National Geographic, Bag&Baggage Productions, Oregon Cabaret Theatre, and Island Shakespeare Festival (where she recently directed Macbeth). She previously served as Head of Production for Modern Media, Associate Artistic Director of Venice Theatre Works, and Producing Director of Shakespeare Santa Barbara. A widely respected voice on professional practice in the industry, Jackie is the co-author of Answers from the Working Actor (Routledge) and spent more than a decade as a Contributing Editor and advice columnist for Backstage Newspaper. She earned her MFA from the National Theatre Conservatory under the guidance of Royal Shakespeare Company founding member Tony Church, and holds a BFA from UC Santa Barbara. Jackie is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA.
Alina Cenal
Alina Cenal is a Cuban American, actor, dancer, director, and teacher who has been dancing through life with energy and passion in everything she does. Her career extends over 50 years in television, theater, and film. A physical performer, her solo shows, CUBA: MY RETURN and WORDS FROM A CUBAN FATHER have toured national and internationally. Most recent, Alina performed at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in QUIXOTE NUEVO, and in IN THE HEIGHTS and CHRISTMAS CONTIGO at the Oregon Cabaret Theater in Ashland. Alina also directed at Southern Oregon University, performed in Chicago’s Physical Theater Festival, Oregon’s Lunacy Festival, and Chihuahua Mexico’s Festival de Payasos.
She is a member of BOXTALES, a school touring children’s physical theater company. Alina is on the board of TEATRO DE LAS AMERICAS where she performs, directs and teaches in Oxnard, California. Teaching children life skills through the magic of theater has been the center of Alina’s work. In 1995, she founded KIDS ACTING OUT-WEST bringing after-school program and summer camps to the youth.
Most proud is being LALA to her five grand-babies.
Some of her TV credits include: The Shield, Judging Amy, Days of our Lives, Diagnosis Murder, Quantum Leap, Matlock, Webster.
Some STAGE: Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Oregon Cabaret Theater, Southern Oregon University, San Diego Rep, LATC, Odyssey, South Coast Rep, Mark Taper Improvisational Theater Project, Bilingual Foundation of the Arts, and international company of “A Chorus Line”.