Crescent Moon Theater Productions

POLINA SMITH - Artistic Director

Polina Smith is an award-winning artist, theater producer, director and performer. Since a young age, Polina has been passionate about magic, theater, and activism. She holds a BFA in theater for social change from Concordia University and an MFA in Creative Inquiry from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Polina founded Crescent Moon Theater Productions in 2014 with the intention to create original, thought provoking theatrical productions that evoke awe and whimsy in audiences. Her first production, In my Mother’s Name, won the Best of Fringe Award. Since, her work has been performed at PianoFight Theater, the Bioneers Conference, the Tenderloin National Forest, St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, Commonweel Garden and The Bindery SF.

Since 2008, Smith has worked with The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women under the mentorship of Rhodessa Jones. In 2016, she produced CounterPulse Theater's first annual Blessed Unrest festival that brought together more than 30 artists working at the intersection of art and social justice. Polina curates the art for the annual Bioneers Conference and can often be see clowning around town as her clown character, Dr. Schmidt, who currently holds 49 PhDs.

Polina is the recipient of three Zellerbach Family Foundation Community Arts grants, the Theater Bay Area CA$H Grant, and the Tanette Goldberg Memorial Scholarship for her artistic and social justice work.

Melusina Gomez

Melusina Gomez is a multifaceted artist, teacher, Curandera and the founder of Metzmecatl: Moon Rope Theatre, a Bay Area physical theater company. Melusina’s creative work engages the intuitive and dreaming mind, cultivating ritual and enchantment while addressing the wounds, longings, and unvoiced expressions of the soul in post-colonial, modern culture. She holds a MA in Experimental Performance from The Experimental Performance Institute at New College. Melusina’s mission is to bring pathos, humor, abstraction, beauty, tension, and the enchantment of make-believe to the stage, in the hopes of helping to add a little more magic, and a little more healing, to our world.

Shmee

S. Shmee, MA is an intermedia artist, storyteller and educator whose work is driven by a commitment to the creative process and the potential it holds for enrichment. In partnership with kind collaborators at non-profit and community arts centers, Shmee offers art-based interventions at public events and alongside therapeutic and rite of passage practices. These programs use mindfulness, embodiment, and creative play for self-inquiry, story weaving and community building. Shmee’s original works have been seen at the Bioneers conference, the conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams, SF Fringe Festival, Cucalores Film Festival, and Figment Arts, among others. In addition to facilitating original and enchanting programs, Shmee supports higher education through curriculum development as adjunct professor, teaching artist, and administrator. With a BA in Film Studies and MA in Depth Psychology, Shmee’s passion for storytelling spans from personal narrative to cultural mythology and fosters a commitment to the myriad of tales of our time.

Shannon Gray

Shannon Gray can be found passing the time doing what many would consider rolling, climbing, releasing, gliding and creating. She enjoys things which consist of water, mud, trapeze bars, sand, and beautiful sounds. Merging the worlds of circus and dance, Shannon Gray has spent the last fifteen years developing her love of movement and curating her unique and expressive style. She draws specifically from somatic studies, dance, yoga, the practice of Authentic Movement and her MA in east-west psychology. Specializing in dance trapeze, she emphasizes a rich connection between the ground, apparatus, and air, dancing in ways which unfold a story more then tricks. Her movement quality revolves around release-based movement, contrast, and the emotion/physical connection. Born in Montreal, she has traveled extensively- collaborating, performing and teaching. No matter the venue and event- dancing in harness off a high rise building, improvising with live musicians in a secret, underground loft, or suspended over the ocean on a 100 ft. zipline- Shannon brings a rare kind of honesty and emotional intensity to all of her work. She currently lives north of San Francisco where she is commencing her new work, The Sentience Project- a film reflecting the examination and embodiment of injury, dreams, sentience, and the natural world.

Rhodessa Jones

Rhodessa Jones is Co-Artistic Director of the acclaimed San Francisco performance company Cultural Odyssey. She is an actress, teacher, director, and writer. Ms. Jones is also the Founder and Director of the award-winning Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women/HIV Circle, which is a performance workshop designed to achieve personal and social transformation with incarcerated women and women living with HIV. Ms. Jones has been a Visiting Professor at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California (2015), and an Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2014), as well as the Keynote Speaker for Commencement at the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Additionally, Ms. Jones was awarded the 2015 Theatre Practitioner Award by Theater Communications Group, which recognizes “a living individual whose work in the American theatre has evidenced exemplary achievement over time and who has contributed significantly to the development of the larger field.” Ms. Jones is also the recipient of a United States Artist Fellowship to support her work, and has been honored with an Honorary Doctorate from California College of the Arts.

Sammay Dizon

SAMMAY (Samantha Peñaflor Dizon) is a Bay Area-based choreographer/producer and interdisciplinary performance artist of Kapampangan, Ilokano, and Bikol descent born and bred in Carson, CA/Tongva Territory and now reclaiming space in San Francisco, CA with honor and gratitude to the Ohlone. She holds a B.A. in Media Studies and Sociology and minors in Dance & Performance Studies and Global Poverty & Practice from University of California Berkeley. SAMMAY is a kinetic storyteller who engages her body as a vessel for spiritual intercession and envisions a future in which our indigenous traditions co-exist with(in) our urban landscapes. When she is not deep in creative collaboration, she is either facilitating writing or movement workshops or teaching through San Francisco Ballet's Dance in Schools and Communities Residency Program in San Francisco Unified School District.

SAMMAY has performed in the works of Jack Gray, Rhodessa Jones, Alleluia Panis, Kim Epifano, and has been featured through Diego Rivera Art Gallery, RAW Artists, and Dance Mission Theater’s D.I.R.T. - Dance In Revolt(ing) Times Festival among others. SAMMAY has taught throughout the Bay Area and was a guest artist through Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU where she taught for DANCES WITH WOLVES: Indigenous Contemporary Dance Master Class Series and performed in the first ever Indigenous Dance Forum in April 2016.

Crescent Moon Theater Productions (CMTP) is built on one core belief: that art has power. The power to drive meaningful social change, the power to heal emotional wounds, the power to create community and invent new methods of communication.

Rich with curiosity, diversity, and creativity, Crescent Moon Theater Productions is a love letter to the power of art. Join us as we explore just how much art can change us – as individuals, as communities, and as a culture.

POLINA SMITH - Artistic Director

COLLABORATORS

Melusina Gomez

Shmee

Shannon Gray

Rhodessa Jones

Sammay Dizon

SUPPORTING FOUNDATIONS