Caitlin Hart / Founder & Artistic Director

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Caitlin Hart (she/her) Caitlin Hart is a theatre director and certified intimacy professional working in theatre and film. She holds a B.A. in Theatre Arts and completed the Atlantic Theatre company’s two-year Professional Acting Conservatory in NYC. Some favorite directing credits include Indecent by Paula Vogel (Michigan Premiere, Broadway World 2023 Best Director & Best Play Nominee), Romeo and Juliet (Broadway World 2018 Best Play Nominee), Macbeth (Broadway World 2017 Best Play Nominee) and The Revolutionists (Broadway World 2023 Best Director Nominee; Grand Rapids Civic Theatre). She is the Resident Director of ‘Capitol Comedy’ and helms their new touring production yearly. She has produced and directed many new plays, new play development workshops, staged readings, and instructed professional acting and intimacy choreography workshops. She is a proud associate member of SDC. You can see her resume and learn more about her theatre work at caitlinhartdirector.com.

Jocelyn Barnes / BLOSSOMING Moderator

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Jocelyn Barnes grew up in West Michigan. Her poetry focuses on a whole bunch of lived experiences, with topics ranging from coping with trauma and mental illness, dating/living/loving as a queer, fat, black woman, and finding love for herself and her community, despite colonizer standards of existence in her hometown, and country. Jocelyn is the newest host of the Drunken Retort, an open mic hosted in Grand Rapids, MI, she is a Teaching Artist with the Diatribe, and she was Retort United Grand Slam Champion of 2020. Her main goal in life is to empower those without the ability to do so themselves and to give as much love as she wants to be given. She says she’s proof that art saves lives, and wants you to say “thank you” to a black woman today!​

Ynika Yuag / BLOSSOMING Associate Producer & Dramaturg

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Ynika Yuag is a Kalamazoo-based director, dramaturg, and production manager. In 2021, she received her B.A. in Psychology and Theatre Arts from Kalamazoo College where she graduated magna cum laude with Departmental Honors in Theatre Arts. She is a member of Face Off Theatre Company in Kalamazoo, MI where she serves as the 2022 season production manager. Selected directing credits include Kokoro (True Heart) (Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College), Dance Again (Queer Theatre Kalamazoo), and Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (Face Off Theatre Company). Selected dramaturgy credits include Pipeline (FOTC) and Student Body (Festival Playhouse), for which she received the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Certificate of Merit for Dramaturgy. She currently resides in Kalamazoo.