Arianna Ortiz is a Peruvian-American actor, writer and filmmaker. Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, she studied theater at The California Institute of the Arts (CALARTS). She has appeared in countless episodes of television, films, and on stage. In 2025, she was part of the cast of the smash festival hit Fucktoys (SXSW Special Jury Prize, Newfest Grand Jury Prize). She was critically acclaimed for her work in Edson Oda’s 2020 Sundance-winning sci-fi drama Nine Days (Sony Pictures Classics) opposite Winston Duke (Us, Black Panther).

She produced and starred in The Wound, a hit short film at festivals that boasts an engaged international audience online. Her dark thriller screenplay, Mama, Don’t, was selected for the 2022-23 cohort of NYWIFT’s The Writer’s Lab, funded by Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman. She received the 2024 Stowe Launch Advanced Development Fellowship for her comedy feature script The Bastard Children of Javier Ortiz, which was also selected for The 2024 Latine List by The Black List and NALIP. Both features are currently in development as part of a Texas trilogy of stories that range from the harrowing to the darkly comic.

She is currently set to direct the feature adaptation of Stephanie Alison Walker’s stage play The Abuelas, which is in active development.

Rachel Stander is a Los Angeles-based independent producer working in narrative film. Stander’s first feature, Scrap, world premiered at the Deauville American Film Festival in France and co-starred Anthony Rapp and Lana Parrilla. Her follow-up feature, Victorian Gothic thriller Séance, premiered at the Newport Beach Film Festival. Other work highlights include the short films Such A Pretty Girl, The Birthday Gift, and Run Wild, shot on 16mm film.

Stander is the Los Angeles Co-Chair for Women Independent Producers, where she also serves as the Programs Coordinator, and was selected as a 2025 Stowe Producers’ Lab Fellow. Through her company, A Season of Rain, Stander shepherds projects from development through delivery, and she has a proven record of fostering respectful, inclusive workspaces. Under her leadership, both Scrap and Séance were awarded the Reframe Stamp, a mark of distinction for projects that have demonstrated gender-balanced hiring across a production. Stander champions bold, character-driven films that combine intimate emotional truth with a provocative thematic edge: grounded indies with teeth.

Stephanie Alison Walker is an internationally-produced, award-winning playwright. She is committed to radical truth-telling in her work. Her plays are known for humor in darkness, the personalization of the political, complex characters, and the exploration and dramatization of the strength of women. American Home (about the 2018 housing crisis) was the inaugural winner of American Blues Theatre’s Blue Ink Award. She has written two plays about the mothers and children of the disappeared in Argentina. The Madres was the 2019 Winner of the prestigious Francesca Primus Prize and semi-finalist for the CTG/Humanitas Prize for playwriting. Her follow-up play The Abuelas was the winner of the Ashland New Plays Festival, premiered at Teatro Vista and was a Chicago Tribune Critic’s pick. Friends with Guns, about liberal gun ownership, was an O’Neill Finalist and an L.A. Times Critics Choice, which described it is as a “savage feminist parable.”

She will make her Steppenwolf Theatre Company debut in the Fall of 2026 with with her newest play, Adirondack Chair Circle, which tackles book banning moms. Her short plays have been anthologized by Smith & Kraus and three of her full-lengths are published by Broadway Publishing, Inc. Stephanie is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild, Honor Roll Playwrights, and is an alumni member of the Playwrights Union in Los Angeles.

Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel is an award-winning actor, filmmaker and producer originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has recurred on FX’s Fargo, guest-starred on NBC’s Chicago Med, and co-starred on Showtime’s The Chi and Fox’s Empire. She can also be seen starring in the film Single Car Crashes, Brittani Ward’s directorial debut. Named as one of the “Theatre Workers You Should Know” by American Theatre Magazine, she has been seen on stage around the U.S. including Marriott, South Coast Repertory, Steppenwolf, Goodman, Chicago Shakespeare, Court, Lookingglass, Steep, and Teatro Vista Productions, where she serves as an Artistic Collective member and Associate Artistic Director.

Cruz brings her extensive producing experience from the world of theatre to the screen. In 2025, she Executive Produced the short film, The Birthday Gift, in which she also starred, and most recently produced a series of five micro short films for a project called BOTH. For three consecutive years, she was featured as one of Newcity’s “Players 50: The Fifty People Who Really Perform for Chicago” and was recently inducted into their Hall of Fame.

Paula Pizzi is an Argentinian actor, writer, translator and director. Her extensive stage work includes: How to Eat an Orange (La Mama Experimental Theater), Catherine Filloux’s one woman show about visual artist and activist Claudia Bernardi, her childhood in Argentina under the military junta, and her subsequent work digging up the past. She originated the role of the nurse in the Pulitzer prize winning Off-Broadway production of Wit (Manhattan Class Company, Union Square Theatre, Long Wharf Theater, Geffen Playhouse – Ovation Award nomination), Devil of Choice (Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2019), underneathmybed (Rattlestick Theater), Face Cream (Ensemble Studio Theater), Where’s My Money (LAByrinth Theater Company, Manhattan Theater Club), Another Part of the House (Classic Stage Company), Dark Rapture (Pope Theater), Dating Dummies (LAByrinth Theater Company).

Pizzi’s screen credits include Stockade, Facetime, Almost Anonymous, The Smurfs, Frágil, Lloró, City of Angels, Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, Extraño Desencuentro (Argentina), Las 24 Horas (Argentina), and Música Total (Argentina). Pizzi is a proud member of LAByrinth Theater Company where she led Education from 2018 till 2023. She’s also a member of New Circle Theatre Company, Barefoot Theater Company and the Playwrights Directors Unit at the Actors Studio (PDU).