Full bios of the Play in the Grey teaching artists!

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Adam Mendez: Adam received his BA in Theatre (Acting Concentration) from Arizona State, and has been working as an actor/musician in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Oakland, and various other towns. Adam currently works with Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre and continually finds work in Film & Theatre in LA. Adam is very excited to be back with GBC and the innovative artists that make this company such a vital source of creativity.

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Chris Weise: Chris Weise is a director, teaching artist, and educator. In 2018 he graduated with his MFA in Theatre for Youth from Arizona State University. His recent directing credits include Searchers, The 13th Month, Six Stories Tall, Fiddler on the Roof Jr., Shrek Jr., and Once Upon a Mattress Jr. He currently teaches 6th through 12th grade drama. He has collaborated with such organizations as Erasing the Distance, NightBlue Performing Arts Company, Awkward Pause Theatre, Kohl Children's Museum, Northbrook Theatre, Kerfuffle, Homestead Playhouse, Childsplay, the Phoenix Children's Hospital. He is a certified Trauma Support Specialist through Trauma Institute International.

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Delia Ibañez: Delia Ibañez is a place-based interdisciplinary media and performing artist. The landscape of their hometown, Kilmarnock, Virginia, shapes the way they relate to both urban and natural settings and now, based in Phoenix, Arizona, they study the liminal space between points and landscapes. These contradictions have made their aim to uphold multiple truths within their work. Delia is moved by the body and the earth, and by layering them with technology and man made materials. Delia tries to find ways that technologies are dependent on natural beings to function, in this time where we feel so dependent on technology to function; understanding the world as webs and connections, and art as the blood cells transporting that nutrition and knowledge throughout the system. Supplementing their performance work, Delia spends their time giving other artists administrative support as well as teaching drawing, writing, and movement classes to all age groups.

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lizbett benge: lizbett loves to learn, to connect with others through art, and to hold space for those who ask. Through hope, passion, and justice, lizbett is committed to building and sustaining lives, livelihoods, and lifeworlds, and to do so creatively. She has a Ph.D. in Gender Studies and is a theatre maker whose work takes up state and intimate violence, women of color feminisms, and socially engaged art practices. From 2021-2023 she is a social practice resident artist for the city of Tempe’s arts and culture program working alongside Chaz Salazar to address climate justice and extreme heat in the region. Her next big projects are co-editing a book on abolitionist theatre practices and co-editing a special issue of the journal of adoption and culture on foster care. She teaches in the department of theater and dance at Carleton college in northfield, MN where she will lead the winter 2022 mainstage production.

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Micah Jondel DeShazer: Micah Jondel DeShazer is pumped to continue collaborating on his third project with Grey Box Collective. He engaged in the studies of music and theater for 3 years at Grand Canyon University and studied a year of film at Scottsdale Community College and has taught acting and musical theater for master classes, festivals and camps across the country over the last 7 years. Cherished acting credits include: Matilda (CTM), Life Could Be A Dream (Hale Theater, ariZoni nominee) Native Son (SCT, ariZoni Best Actor), Passing Strange (iTheatre Collaborative), Hair (DST) & Dracula (GCU).