Khalif J. Gillett is a Los Angeles-based writer, director, and actor. His work seeks to expand the narratives of Blackness, queerness, and Latinidad through poetry, surrealism, and satirically anachronistic period pieces. Khalif is an alumnus of the Labyrinth Theatre Company’s Intensive Ensemble, a Candela Playwriting Fellow, and a finalist in the Nuyorican Poet Café’s Theatre Festival. His past directing credits include IN THE HEIGHTS, GREASE, PIPELINE, and BEETLEJUICE. Khalif seeks to educate those without resources to study the arts and believes knowledge to be a form of reparations. He wants to empower the marginalized and underprivileged to tell their own stories to create healthy ways of processing their realities. Finally, he feels that marginalized joy is a radical act of resistance and that a story doesn’t have to be painful for it to be impactful.