Associate Artists

ArtsWest is pleased to welcome to the company an inaugural cohort of five Associate Artists, creating a new power-sharing model for curation and beyond in season programming. In collaboration with the Artistic and Managing Directors, this group will determine the upcoming season of programming as a collective, engaging in a collaborative exploration and decision-making process.

The mission of ArtsWest calls the organization to use live theater as a powerful agent of change, and as a non-profit, we have a responsibility to the entire community we serve. One of these responsibilities is to ensure that our programming is as thoughtfully planned and broadly representative as possible, centering historically excluded and global majority voices in the programming of the work rather than as an after-thought.

The Associate Artists group will determine together not only what is necessary for the thoughtful planning of this programming, but also for its thoughtful execution. Together the group will undertake an investigation of what stories we’re telling and who those stories serve, challenging assumptions about what theater is useful for, especially in our current moment.

ArtsWest deeply values the creation of an artistic home for both our artists and our audiences. The work we program forms the core of that home, and we are thrilled to join forces with these five talented and multidisciplinary Seattle artists to drive the creation of a home that is stronger and truer than ever before.

Meet the Artists

Ana María Campoy

Ana María Campoy is a Mexican-American theatre artist, educator, and advocate. She moved to Seattle in fall 2010 to participate in Seattle Repertory Theatre’s Professional Arts Training Program and was part of TAT Lab’s inaugural class in 2011-2012. In addition to Seattle Rep, she has taught for the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Arts Impact, Book-It Repertory Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre,  and Village Theatre. For the last five years, she has worked as an arts teaching mentor in Arts Impact’s Voices from the Fields program; working with public schools in migrant districts throughout Washington state. As an actor, director, adaptor, or dramaturg, she has worked for OSF, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Book-It Repertory Theatre, Washington Ensemble Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Company, and Pork Filled Productions. One of her most cherished acting roles includes Catherine in a bilingual adaptation of David Auburn’s Proof, which she also produced and translated alongside director Arlene Martínez-Vásquez, and is now under consideration for publication. She has toured nationally in Living Voices’s solo show, La Causa. She’s developed four bilingual scripts for Seattle Shakespeare’s Touring Productions: The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, and Hamlet, the latter two she also directed. She is a passionate and proud advocate of the performing arts, believing that performance provides communities a voice and individuals self-exploration. At the center of her work lives the driving desire to create opportunities for artists of color, to remove economic and geographical barriers for audiences and students, and to expand and deepen our American identity. In addition to her work within the arts, she founded and now runs the all-volunteer, mutual aid collective, WashMasks, which works to provide PPE, support, and advocacy for migrant and seasonal farm workers and their families during this current pandemic (www.washmasks.org; @washmasks on Instagram). 

Corinne Park-Buffelen

Corinne Park-Buffelen is a multidisciplinary artist from Rochester, NY. Since moving to Seattle, Corinne has performed in Peerless (ArtsWest), Do It for Umma (Annex), Hotel Nordo (Cafe Nordo), and Scary Mary and the Nightmares Nine (Annex). Other credits include Machinal, The Shape of Things, Squatch! the musical, and Coriolanus. Corinne costumed Trevor, Do It for Umma, From Kings to Controllers, and The Lost Girls. She also adapted the script and assistant directed Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw (ArtsWest).

Jessamyn Bateman-Iino

Jessamyn Bateman-Iino (they/them) is a theater maker from the Seattle area, focusing on stage management and prop design. They graduated from the UW Drama Department in 2005, and have worked since then in the backstages of Seattle with companies including SiS Productions, ReAct Theatre, Theater Schmeater, MAP Theatre, Live Girls! Theater, Annex Theatre, Reboot Theatre Company, Book-It Repertory, and ArtsWest. In 2019, they were selected as the recipient of the Melissa Hines Backstage Award at The Gregory Awards. You may have seen their work at ArtsWest in The Last World Octopus Wrestling Champion, Sunset Baby, and Saint Joan. Other past favorite shows include Live! From the Last Night Of My Life (Theater Schmeater, Theatre22), The Secretaries (Theater Schmeater), and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Reboot Theatre). Outside of theater, they work as graphic and visual artist (MutinyHall.com), and enjoy comic books, dancing and petting cute animals. 

Lamar Legend

Lamar Legend is a native New Yorker and began his theatrical training at The High School for the Performing Arts (The “Fame” School/LAG Arts) as an actor. He honed his dancing technique at The Alvin Ailey Dance School. But it wasn’t until he moved to Chicago that he combined his love of Shakespeare with physical theatre under the title of Director. Since then, Lamar has written and adapted seven plays, produced, directed, and starred in over fifty theatrical works in four US cities, as well as abroad in Tuscany, Rome, Milan, Prague, and Mexico. He’s performed at The MET, The Steppenwolf Theater, The Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Teatro Franco Parenti in Milan, and has been honored with The Gregory Award in Seattle, and The Rising Star Award by The Broadway League in New York. His plays have been workshopped by Seattle Rep and produced by 14:48 Productions, The Pocket Theatre, Pork Filled Productions, and Funhouse in Seattle. 

Porscha Shaw

Porscha Shaw is a recent graduate of the Professional Actor Training Program at the University of Washington. She is a native of Richmond, Texas and a graduate of Santa Fe University of Art and Design where she majored in Drama under the training of Jon Jory. Her recent Seattle credits include: Seattle Seattle Rep’s  Shout Sister Shout and NINA SIMONE’s Four Women, Upstart Crow’s Richard III,The Last World Octopus Wrestling Champion, Lamplighter,12 Ophelias, By The Way, Meet Vera Stark, Sound Theatre’s Hoodoo Love, As You Like It, The Octavia,  Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Wooden O’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Force Continuum.