Mentors and Guest Speakers

During their participation, they not only act as lecturers but also as true mentors as they engage in one-on-one discussions with the participants. They are present for multiple days, some for the whole period of the training. They allow participants an honest and open insight into their careers, including both success stories and failures.

Members of the Alumni community of The Festival Academy are also invited to join the Atelier and take initiative leading sessions and involving professionals from their own networks (find out more about our Alumni-led sessions here).

You can have a look at the list of experts present during previous editions here.

Below you will find the lit of mentors and experts engaged in the Atelier Elefsina:

Mike van Graan served in leadership positions in a variety of anti-apartheid cultural organisations such as the Congress of South African Writers and the Community Arts Project. After South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, he was appointed as a Special Adviser to the new Minister responsible for Arts and Culture where he played an influential role in shaping post-apartheid cultural policies. He was the founding Secretary General of Arterial Network, a pan-African network of creatives and activists, and served on UNESCO’s Expert Facility on the 2005 Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions from 2011 to 2018. 

With 36 plays and numerous nominations and awards, he is considered as one of South Africa’s leading contemporary playwrights. 

He is the 2018 recipient of the Sweden-based Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award in recognition of his contribution to the fight against apartheid, building a post-apartheid society, and the interface of peace and culture both in South Africa and across the African continent.

You can read his full bio here.

Rashmi Dhanwani is founder of the Art X Company,  a strategic and research consultancy that helps creative businesses make substantial and lasting transformations in their organisations through strategic consulting; data and evidence; and information and resources, and Festivals From India, an online platform that is designed to showcase hundreds of arts and culture festivals across artforms, locations and languages. 

She holds a Masters in Cultural and Creative Industries from King’s College London. She has also been a recipient of the ARThink South Asia Fellowship (2011-12), a participant fellow at ‘The Academy—a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School and the Weill Music Institute’, a scholarship grantee of the JN Tata Trust and Charles Wallace India Trust, and a 2017 Global Fellow of the International Society for Performing Arts (ISPA), New York, and a current international fellow of the Australia Council Arts Leadership Fellowship Programme. 

Anton Ovchinnikov – multidisciplinary artist and culture manager. He works as choreographer, performer, composer, lecturer, and artistic director of the annual international dance festival Zelyonka Space UP in Kyiv.

Since 2008 he has been the artistic director of the Black O!Range dance productions company.  The company was recognized as one of the most distinctive and original dance projects in Ukraine. 

In 2015 Ovchinnikov cofounded Ukrainian Association “Contemporary Dance Platform”. Since then he is the President of the organization. Main objectives of the Association are to support young Ukrainian choreographers, integrate contemporary dance into the modern cultural life of Ukraine and establish the national center of contemporary dance.

In 2016-2021 Anton Ovchinnikov presented a few solo performances and created five multidisciplinary projects. In 2017 he was the fellow of CEC Artslink Residency in the USA.

In 2018/2019 Anton Ovchinnikov was the member of the expert panel of Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.

Cristina Fuentes La Roche is the international director of Hay Festival. Since 2005, Fuentes La Roche has led Hay Festival’s global development strategy, managing and overseeing annual Festival editions and Forums in Colombia, Mexico, Peru, the USA, and Spain, alongside Festival projects including global education and outreach series Hay Joven, Hay Communitario and Hay Festivalito, and digital platforms Imagina el Mundo and the Spanish Hay Festival podcast. 

She was awarded an honorary OBE in 2019 for services to promoting British culture and values to the Spanish-speaking world and in 2020 collected the Princess of Asturias Awards for Communication and Humanities on behalf of Hay Festival. She graduated from Business and Administration at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid before earning MAs in Arts Management (Birkbeck Colleague) and European Literature and Theatre Studies (UNED).

Gintarė Masteikaitė is a cultural leader and performing arts producer. Since 2017, she has been working as director of the Lithuanian Dance Information Centre and artistic director of the festival “New Baltic Dance”, the largest international dance festival in the Baltic region. In 2019, she founded and started organizing the international performing arts festival “ConTempo” in Kaunas and Kaunas district (part of Kaunas 2022 program). 

For 17 years, she has been actively working in the field of cultural management, cultural representation and internationalization. The main areas of activity: development of contemporary dance and circus, initiation and management of projects, active international activities related to the presentation of Lithuania’s productions abroad and productions from abroad in Lithuania, initiation and implementation of international projects, production of contemporary dance, professional development of young representatives of the performing arts field. 

Gintarė is actively involved in the processes of cultural policy formation, strengthening of the contemporary dance in the public discourse, she also contributes significantly to the efforts of audience development and growth.

Horacio Pérez is a curator and creative producer of performing arts from Chile. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Theater Department of Universidad de Chile, and a Master of Arts from New York University. His professional practice is related to artistic mobility and international programming, promoting exchanges between Latin America and the rest of the world.

He has worked in festivals and institutions like Teatro a Mil International Festival and the Theatre Department of Universidad de Chile (Santiago), The Festival Academy (Montreal, Nicosia), Próximamente festival at KVS (Brussels) and The Public Theater (New York), and has toured with Latin American artists Tamara Cubas, Bonobo and Teatro La María in more than 20 international festivals.

Kenneth Uphopho is a Director, Writer, Arts Manager and Talent developer with over 25 years of extensive experience in Artistic Direction and Festival Management. He is the founding director of the Lagos Fringe & Abuja Fringe where he continues to invest in and promote new talent with his festival programmes that focus on learning through a series of conversations, exhibitions, workshops and networking events with established local and international facilitators. These platforms also support emerging artists and creative start-ups to present work. 

Kenneth was Festival Director for the British Council Lagos Theatre Festival from 2014- 2018 where through his work; he expanded the scope of the festival from 16 performances to 109 events in two years. Lagos Theatre Festival has so far featured over 300 productions with 25 international showcases and collaborations making it one of the largest performing arts festivals in Africa (as reported by AMEX Essentials).  

As a theatre & Filmmaker, Kenneth has produced and directed over 50 productions with some of Nigeria’s most exciting performers, writers, directors, and creative teams such as; Banky W’s BAAD Experience 2022, August Meeting 2019, Ada The Country 2022, Speaking Out 2021, Naked 2019, Dear Nigerian Parents TV series 2019, Gula 2017, Saro the Musical 2013 & 2015, The Wives 2011, Shift Lemme Faint 2019, Wait 2018, Shattered 2013 & 2018, Anatomy of a Woman 2010, Rubiewe 2012, Death & the King’s Horseman 2013 & 2014, Widow’s Window 2016, London Life Lagos Living 2016 & 2018, Next Of Kin 2016, Every Single Day 2014, Band Aid 2015 etc. 

Kenneth received the Salzburg Global Seminar Fellowship for 2020 in Austria and the Global fellowship of the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA) New York in 2019. Kenneth is a founding trustee member & General Secretary of the Guild of Theatre Directors Nigeria. He is also a member of the National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners NANTAP Lagos State Chapter, where he acts as the Interim Director of Productions & Screenings. 

As the Managing partner at Pawstudios Africa, a platform for innovation and creative collaborations, Kenneth also offers audiences an eclectic programme of Nigerian plays, festivals, TV shows, experimental plays, musicals, interpretations of classic repertoire, , and the best of new writing.  

Over the years, Kenneth’s practice has evolved to include the development of non –theatrical, repurposed, and unconventional spaces to increase the reach of artistes with limited access to audiences and exhibition opportunities as well as devising work with women in the arts for advocacy. Kenneth’s play titled Esther’s Revenge has featured at Arts Festivals in Nigeria, South Africa & will be showcasing at the Brighton Fringe 2023. 

Mark Russell launched the Under the Radar Festival at St. Ann’s Warehouse in January 2005. UTR focuses on theater-based contemporary performance. The festival moved to the Public Theater in 2006 and has become a centerpiece in the New York City theater season; mixing international performances with national and local artists. Russell has also served as the guest artistic director of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time Based Arts Festival 2006-2008. He created the Off Center Festival for the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa California, as well as the Off the Wall series at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He served as an associate curator for the Act French Festival in New York in 2005. 

From 1983-2004 he was the Executive Artistic Director of Performance Space 122, bringing the space from an artist rental space to a world-renowned presenting institution committed to developing the work of New York City artists.  Russell has been involved with many artists over his career in dance, music, performance, and theater, creating opportunities for them to reach wider audiences.  In 2014 and 2015 Russell lived with his family in Lausanne, Switzerland, researching  European festival practice while maintaining his work with The Public Theater.  After 18 editions of the Under the Radar Festival in May of 2023, the Public Theater decided it could no longer produce the festival for financial reasons. Russell is currently pursuing a re-imagined collaborative festival for 2024.

 He and his family are currently living in New York on the Upper West Side. 

Nima Dehghani is an Iranian writer, director, and interdisciplinary artist based in San Francisco and Tehran. He holds a BA degree in architecture from IUST (Iran 2010) and an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, with an emphasis on digital media and performance art (US 2016).

Nima is the founder and director of the Re-Connect online performance festival (2019) and Ctrl+Z theater group (2008).

He works predominantly in the field of experimental theater, Digital media, VR, and video projection design for live shows. He also teaches a "Digital storytelling workshop" specifically designed for refugee children and underserved communities in collaboration with nonprofits in the US, Germany, Turkey, and Iran. He is presently working on developing collaborative initiatives that serve as alternative platforms for connecting and empowering independent artists and social activists.

Thobile Maphanga is a Durban-based dance practitioner, writer, creative collaborator, and emerging curator from South Africa, whose current preoccupation is with Black female narratives and how Black women are writing themselves into future herstories in the now. She is passionate about the arts and more specifically how we use the arts to negotiate our collective and individual beings.

As a contemporary dance scholar and practitioner, Thobile uses her dance practice to interrogate and negotiate the spaces Black women fill. Through her research, which is theory and practice-led, she explores where and how Black women use their voices and where these voices can be found.

Jonathan Grenay (he/him/his) is the Associate Director of The Under the Radar Festival and Devised Theater Working Group at The Public Theater.

Prior to joining this program in 2019, he was a Production Manager at The Public where he helped lead high profile programs including Shakespeare in the Park, Public Works’, and Under the Radar along with numerous other productions and events ranging from Latin History for Morons by John Leguizamo, White Noise by Suzan Lori-Parks, and the Hair 50th Anniversary Benefit at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Outside of The Public he has worked with NBCUniversal, Atlantic Theater Company, Playwrights Horizons, and toured with the Radio City Rockettes Christmas Spectacular among other companies.

Jon is a Latinx-American of Mexican heritage and began his career in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, working at Flint Youth Theatre (now Flint Repertory Theatre) as a Resident Artist, where he was a teacher and artist developing unique work written by and for the local community. During this time, he performed in productions presented at the Kennedy Center and the United States Capital. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan-Flint.

Brett Pyper is a South African arts, culture and heritage practitioner with over thirty years’ experience advancing and studying the country’s cultural-democratic transition. He grew up between Johannesburg and Pretoria/Tshwane, where his background as a classical musician informed his efforts to open up programming at the former performing arts councils as a young arts organiser.

 In the early 1990s, he arranged the first post-exile performances in Tshwane by returning jazz icons as well as showcasing the work of an emerging generation of musicians. He also worked with singer-songwriters, choirs, Afrikaans counter-cultural artists and colleagues in related performance disciplines including dance and theatre. Based on this work, as a Fulbright scholar, he earned Master’s degrees from Emory University in Atlanta (in Interdisciplinary Studies) and New York University, where he earned his PhD on contemporary jazz culture in South Africa in 2014.

 He has taught arts, culture and heritage policy and management as well as ethnomusicology and popular music studies at Wits and Rhodes Universities. From 2008 to 2013 he was CEO of the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (KKNK), a major festival of art, popular and vernacular culture. He recently completed an 8-year term as Head of the Wits School of Arts, where he pursues ongoing research alongside his leadership responsibilities and supervises postgraduate work in music, theatre, dance, heritage and cultural policy. He regularly serves as a mentor for The Festival Academy, having co-hosted Atelier Johannesburg in 2018 – the first on the African continent.

Dr. Angi Yoder-Maina, the Executive Director of Nairobi's Green String Network (GSN), is passionately dedicated to instigating grassroots change in trauma-organized communities within Somalia, Kenya, and South Sudan. Harnessing her expertise in Peace Studies and Conflict Transformation, she designs programs and healing-centered curricula, uniquely adapted to each region's context. These efforts facilitate a comprehensive understanding of trauma and its repercussions while promoting open conversations about personal experiences of violence. Angi's trailblazing work aspires to dismantle the pervasive cycle of violence, supplanting victimhood with empowerment and aggression with comprehension.

Having accomplished her doctorate at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies in Cambodia, her research on healing-centered approaches for social recovery informs GSN's groundbreaking programs throughout the Horn of Africa. Unyielding in her dedication to social reconciliation and healing, Angi is a veritable catalyst of change and resilience.

Relentlessly passionate about connecting people and possibilities, Carla holds bachelor's degrees in Economics and in Public Management, a Master Degree in Marketing and a PhD in Urban Studies. She led innovation projects for multinationals in different countries before she set up her own company, Garimpo de Soluções (Solutions Mine), in her beloved Brazil. Over the past 20 years Garimpo has been operating at the crossroads of culture, economics and cities, through pioneering books, consultancies, conferences, missions, tailor-made projects and whatever else can help push the boundaries of creativity in favor of development. Her clients include private companies, governments and institutions, the UN (Unesco, Unctad, PNUD) and universities, in 244 cities of 33 countries.

She loves cooking, recharges her batteries walking by the sea and is crazy for her boy, Octávio and her dog, Caíque.

Shahidul Alam obtained a PhD in chemistry from London University, before taking up photography. Returning to his native country Bangladesh in 1984, he campaigned to bring down autocratic general Hussain Muhammad Ershad. In his pursuit of social justice he set up the award winning organisations, Drik, Pathshala and Chobi Mela, through media, education and culture.

His book “My journey as a witness” has been described by John Morris, the legendary picture editor of Life Magazine, as the ‘most important book ever written by a photographer’. A recognised public speaker, Alam has lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford and Yale universities. He has been exhibited at MOMA, Tate Modern and Centre Georges Pompidou.

His awards include the Lucie Foundation award considered the Oscars of photography, as well as the Shilpakala Award, the highest cultural award given to Bangladeshi artists. Alam is the only person of colour to have chaired the prestigious international jury of World Press Photo.

He is a visiting professor of Sunderland University and an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. In 2018 he was jailed and tortured for speaking out against his government’s repressive practices.

Anis is a networker as well as a citizen of the world with experience and journeys in the private sector, public administration, and various institutions. As co-founder of El Sistema Greece, Anis believes in community arts projects as a tool for social inclusion. Anis has worked at the French Embassy in the USA, Radio France, Sciences Po Paris, and at Askonas Holt representing orchestras and choirs from all over the world, developing a close relationship with El Sistema Venezuela.

He is the Managing Director of the Community Arts Network, which aims to enable, engage and empower individuals, organisations and communities through arts and unlikely alliances and works on advocacy for the role of Arts in tackling our current global challenges. Anis is on the board of several organisations: Terra Firma International, Peace Power Foundation, Letters of Love, Friends of El Sistema Greece, and a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader.

Georg Weinand is an expert in contemporary performing arts. As an independent agent he advises cultural and educational institutions, performing art companies and artists. His activities as curator, dramaturge, moderator or coach for artistic feedback are nourished by his international engagements in cultural and educational institutions of all kinds.

After studies of philosophy, theatre sciences and cultural management in Belgium and Germany he started his performing arts activities at the Belgian theatre company AGORA where he co-created about ten visual theatre pieces. His interdisciplinary artistic interests were first expressed through the direction of alternative performance evenings he curated in public space. Within the dance company Ultima Vez he has worked over years as a dramaturge for Wim Vandekeybus and co-founded Les Ballets du Grand Maghreb with which he premiered at the KunstenFESTIVALdesArts in Brussels. After being the artistic director of a creation place for scenic art in Genk, he joined the DasArts Master program in Amsterdam. As staff member dramaturgy & artistic policy, he co-developed the new DasArts Master curriculum and specific Feedback Techniques for creative processes in the arts. After several years as artistic and general director of the Dampfzentrale Bern, a venue for Dance and performing arts in the Swiss Capital, he took the position of coordinator for “Dans in Brugge”, a unique alliance of different cultural institutions in the region. For Concertgebouw Brugge and Cuultuurcentrum Brugge he curated the season program for contemporary dance and the international festivals December Dance and Bits of Dance.

Next to that, he launched himself as an independent cultural agent active in different international contexts of performing arts. He regularly participates in juries and commissions for programming, funding and artistic education.