Production Details

“Gratitude” explores truth, discomfort, and blessings: a cloth of hidden scars, liminal spaces, and unexpected wings. From working all night restaurants and mental health agencies to over two decades in the classroom. From close calls and pitfalls, love stories and activism, to prayers, recovering, and laughing. This multidisciplinary story of tough stuff and dreams, angels, rebels, and healing - always finds its way to gratitude. For what’s good, funny as hell, and beautiful. First conceived in 2017, this solo work continues to evolve - like a bird building a nest. *Contains some difficult themes. For mature audiences.

Audience members are invited to a reception with the artists following the performance on Thursday June 8.

Lisa Frias has been a Bay Area performing artist for over thirty years. She is a core member, choreographer, and performer in The Medea Project: Theater For Incarcerated Women directed by Rhodessa Jones, and has been with the company since 1995. Performances include the National Summit on HIV and Viral Hepatitis in Washington D.C. in 2012, “Birthright?” (a collaboration with Planned Parenthood) at Brava Theater in 2014, and “When Did Your Hands Become a Weapon?” at Brava in 2018. With Medea she co-facilitated a series of workshops for teachers working with incarcerated individuals through the Arts In Corrections program of the California Arts Council in 2021. In 2001 Frias earned her MA in Creative Arts Education at SFSU with her thesis project entitled “Just Mama: the Joys, Struggles, and Redemption of Single Motherhood”, which included free childcare for all participants. She completed her MFA in Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts at CIIS, with the first iteration of “Gratitude” performed at Stage Werx in 2017. She also directed Jerry Metzker’s “Mercy Buckets” at The SF Fringe Festival in 2011, has had recurring roles in Antonio’s Closet Productions films, and has created original music for plays such as “Mud”, and “Mud Angel” produced by Theatre Ground Up at The Marsh. Frias danced with award winning Fogo Na Roupa for over twelve years, as well as co-directing As Pernas Com Alma Dance Company with Tammy Ryan. She also has performed with Tania Santiago’s Aguas Da Bahia, and Susana Arenas’s Arena Dance Company, and participated in World Arts West’s Ethnic Dance Festival. She has been the director of T.R. Pollicita Middle School’s Dance Department since 2002.

Artist Biographies

Rhodessa Jones Director
Rhodessa Jones is Founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women and HIV Circle, a performance workshop established at San Francisco County Jail in 1989, designed to achieve personal and social transformation with incarcerated women and women living with HIV. She has also been the Artistic Director of Cultural Odyssey since 1979. Rhodessa Jones is a 2022-23 Pew Fellow, selected by the Pew Foundation, engaging in an artist’s residency in Philadelphia where she is writing her handbook “Nudging the Memory” and involved in community collaborations with local performing and media artists. In 2018-2022 Jones was a Frank Rhodes Visiting Professor at Cornell University, and in 2017 she was awarded the prestigious Montgomery Fellowship at Dartmouth College where she presented lectures and led workshops for the college’s 2017 Fall semester. Jones received a Theatre Bay Area Legacy Award in 2016, presented to individuals that have made “extraordinary contributions to the Bay Area theatre community.” Rhodessa has directed and produced the following Medea Project productions: “Reality is Just Outside the Window” 1991 “Food Taboos in the Land of the Dead” 1992 “A Place at the Table, a taste of Somewhere Else” 1994 “Buried Fire” 1996 “Slouching Towards Armageddon – A Captive’s Conversation on Race” 1998 “Can We Get There by Candlelight” 2001 “Birthright?” 2012-2015 “When Did Your Hands Become a Weapon?” 2018