Fe Bongolan is a Bay Area activist, writer, and visual and performing artist. An alumna of San Francisco State, she did not discover theater until her last year of college, and to this day it consumes her life. After performing with the Asian American Theater Company and Teatro Campesino, in 1992 she began to work with The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, and immediately became involved as a community artist, working alongside founder and director Rhodessa Jones. In 28 years with the Medea Project, Bongolan developed as actor, writer, dramaturge and assistant director to Jones, helping female inmates and ex-offenders find their voice and develop their writing for performance in jail, throughout the community and on the stage. In her words, “Even in my visual art explorations, I was searching for the path that had vital meaning and impact on the world. It was with the Medea Project that I found that road.”

Performer, teacher, and director Rhodessa Jones was born in 1948 in Bunnell, Florida to migrant farmworker parents. As a child, she traveled with her family – which included her brother, the revered choreographer Bill T. Jones – up and down the eastern seaboard doing farmwork. Jones is Co-Artistic Director of the critically acclaimed performance company, Cultural Odyssey. She founded The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, an award-winning performance workshop now in its 23rd year. A recipient of a USA Artist Fellowship, Jones has conducted the Medea Project in South African prisons, working with incarcerated women and training correctional personnel and local artists. Jones is an author, and her work has been documented in numerous articles and books. At the University level, she was named Frank H.T. Rhodes Chair at Cornell University (2018-2021), and while a Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, she was invited to join August Wilson, Cornel West, Yo-Yo Ma, and Anna Deavere Smith as a Montgomery Fellow, fostering “the advancement of the academic realm of the College in ways that will significantly add to the quality and character of the institution.” She has participated in residencies at Brown University and Scripps College Humanities Institute. Jones has received many awards and honors, including an Honorary Doctorate from California College of the Arts, SF Bay Guardian’s Lifetime Achievement Award, SF Foundation Community Leadership Award, Non-Profit Arts Excellence Award by the SF Business Arts Council, and an Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theater. In 2020, Jones voiced the character “Lulu” in Disney/Pixar’s SOUL, which was nominated for three Oscars and won for Best Animated Feature. In addition, the film won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score.