Editor and Contributor Biographies
Ramón A. Flores earned his B.A. in History and M.A. in Cultural Pluralism in Education at Stanford University and his MFA in Directing Theatre at Yale University School of Drama. He teaches history in University of New Mexico’s Continuing Education Program, conducts elections as a poll worker, and is working on a teleplay about Mexican American football players in West Texas. In a career spanning several decades, Ramón has written or co-written ten plays and has directed more than thirty, including The Merchant of Santa Fe. Much of the magic of Merchant is due to the immense dramatic gifts of his co-writer Lynn Knight and is also the product of a remarkable theater movement: La Compañía de Teatro de Alburquerque, which was supported by the work of individuals like Dr. Miguel Enciñías, José Rodríguez, Margarita Martínez, Arturo Sandoval and Verónica Sánchez. Although it stopped production around 2007, its work of thirty years still reverberates. Merchant would not exist without the support at many levels from Ramón’s mother, Terrie Flores Baca. Te quiero y te extraño mucho, mamá.
Lydia G. Garcia is Executive Director of Equity and Organization Culture at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. She served as a dramaturg for 11 seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and co-adapted La Comedia of Errors with Bill Rauch in 2019. Garcia has directed several plays and served as the Managing Editor of Theater magazine from 2005–2006.
Katherine Gillen is Professor of English at Texas A&M University–San Antonio. She is the author of Chaste Value: Economic Crisis, Female Chastity, and the Production of Social Difference on Shakespeare’s Stage (Edinburgh University Press, 2017) and several essays on race, gender, and economics in early modern drama and Shakespeare appropriation. She is currently working on a monograph called Shakespeare’s Racial Classicism: Whiteness, Slavery, and Humanism, which examines Shakespeare’s use of classical sources within the context of emerging racial capitalism. With Kathryn Vomero Santos and Adrianna M. Santos, she co-founded the Borderlands Shakespeare Colectiva, which has received funding from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
José Cruz González is a Professor Emeritus at California State University, Los Angeles. His plays include If by Chance (South Coast Repertory), The Extraordinary ZLuna Captures the World (Denver Center Theatre Company), Under a Baseball Sky (The Old Globe), American Mariachi (Alley Theatre, PCPA, Alabama Shakespeare, Cleveland Playhouse, Arizona Theatre Company, Denver Center Theatre Company, South Coast Repertory, The Goodman Theatre, The Old Globe), September Shoes (Geva Theatre), The San Patricios (PCPA), and The Sun Serpent (Childsplay). A member of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, the Dramatists Guild of America, and TYA/USA, he was selected as one of the inaugural 2022 Kennedy Center’s Next 50, a new initiative celebrating cultural leadership with trailblazing leaders and organizations. González was also a grantee of the 2021 ReImagine: New Plays in TYA to support the development of The Wondrous Adventures of Pia Sandía. He serves as a board member of the New Harmony Project, dedicated to a desire to support stories of hope, optimism, and the resiliency of the human Spirit.
Lynn Knight co-authored The Merchant of Santa Fe with Ramón Flores for La Compañía de Teatro de Alburquerque. She is also the author of The Night They Stole the Santo Niño and the co-author of The Price We Pay and Tierra Encanta. A graduate of the University of New Mexico, Knight has lived in the Pacific Northwest since 2000 (but has never lost her love for New Mexico chile—red or green!). Her work has appeared in various literary magazines, such as the Solamente en San Miguel anthology, which published her short story, “Los Momias.” Currently working on a futuristic novel set in the Mesilla Valley of New Mexico, Knight also writes songs and plays electric fiddle for an all-woman band.
Bernardo Mazón Daher is a border-brat bred in the San Diego South Bay. Raised in Chula Vista, California, he graduated from San Diego State University with degrees in Literature and Theatre. While in school, Bernardo became a professional actor, director, writer, educator, and producer, cutting his teeth at La Jolla Playhouse and San Diego REP. Since then, his journeys in theatremaking have taken him around the country to work with organizations of high prestige alongside grassroots, community-based projects. He has served as a steering committee member of the Latinx Theatre Commons, forged grants and award opportunities for dramaturgs across Latin America, and co-founded TuYo Theatre, a nonprofit theater for Latinx artists and audiences. Bernardo is an all-around storyteller driven to create spaces where different peoples can intersect to listen, learn, labor, love, and play together. Most recently he performed in the site-specific play Taxilandia when it came to San Diego.
Bill Rauch is the inaugural Artistic Director of the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC) at the World Trade Center. His work as a theater director has been seen across the nation, from community centers to Broadway in the Tony Award-winning production of All the Way and its sequel The Great Society. From 2007 to 2019, Bill was Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the country’s oldest and largest rotating repertory theater. Bill co-founded Cornerstone Theater Company, where he served as artistic director from 1986 to 2006, directing collaborations with diverse rural and urban communities nationwide.
Adrianna M. Santos is Associate Professor of English at Texas A&M University–San Antonio. Santos has built her career on publications that center Chicana/x cultural production, and her work is deeply rooted in and accountable to Chicanx communities. Her book Cicatrix Poetics, Trauma and Healing in the Literary Borderlands: Beyond Survival (Palgrave, 2024) addresses often-eclipsed legacies of colonial violence and examines Chicana survival narratives as a critical facet of social justice work. With Norma E. Cantú and Rita Urquijo-Ruiz, she is co-editor of El Mundo Zurdo 8: Selected Works from the Meeting of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa, 2019 (Aunt Lute, 2022). She has written several articles on Chicanx literature and performance, including Borderlands Shakespeare. With Katherine Gillen and Kathryn Vomero Santos, she co-founded the Borderlands Shakespeare Colectiva, which has received funding from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Kathryn Vomero Santos is Associate Professor of English at Trinity University. Her cross-historical research explores the intersections of performance with the politics of language, empire, and racial formation in the early modern period and in our contemporary moment. She is currently completing a book entitled Shakespeare in Tongues, which situates Shakespeare and his legacy within conversations about imperialism, multilingualism, and assimilation in the United States. She is co-editor, with Louise Geddes and Geoffrey Way, of a collection of essays entitled The Ethical Implications of Shakespeare in Performance and Appropriation (Edinburgh University Press, 2024). Her most recent articles examine how Borderlands artists use Shakespeare to disrupt colonial ideologies and narratives. With Katherine Gillen and Adrianna M. Santos, she co-founded the Borderlands Shakespeare Colectiva, which has received funding from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
