Bio

Donna Kaz aka Aphra Behn is the author of UN/MASKED, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour (Skyhorse, 2016), which follows her surprising 25 year journey as a survivor of domestic violence at the hands of the Oscar winning actor William Hurt, and her subsequent life as a feminist activist. She has been published in Ms. Magazine, The Sun, Lilith, Turning Wheel, Step Away Magazine, Trivia: Voices of Feminism, Western Press Books, Mason’s Road and Hawai’i Review (Ian MacMillian Award). A 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee, Kaz is also the recipient of residency fellowships from Yaddo, Djerassi, The Blue Mountain Center, CAP21, Wurlitzer and The Ucross Foundation. In 2017 she will receive Venus Theatre’s Lifetime Achievement in Theatre Award. As a member of the Guerrilla Girls she used the pseudonym Aphra Behn and created over 25 posters, sticker campaigns, street theatre actions and performances addressing gender parity, reproductive rights, violence against women, pay equity and more. When the Guerrilla Girls split in 2001 she became artistic director of Guerrilla Girls On Tour and focused the new group on creating touring theatre and residency programs for communities wishing to address local issues with humor and humanity. For Guerrilla Girls On Tour she wrote and directed “Feminists Are Funny,” “Silence Is Violence,” “History of Women In Theatre: Condensed” and “If You Can Stand the Heat: The History of Women and Food.” These comedies have received over 100 performances around the world at the Women Playwrights International Conference/Stockholm, Trinity College/Dublin, The Spit Lit Festival/London, Palais du Tokyo/Paris, Penn State, University of Alabama, Busan Biennale/South Korea, UNLV, the first International Women’s Arts Festival/UK, University of Hawaii and University of California to name a few. In 2008 Aphra Behn played General Tokimasa in Nagoya Musume Kabuki’s production of Kamakura Sandaiki in Japan becoming the first American actress to appear on a kabuki stage in over 200 years. Aphra Behn has written for Women and Hollywood, Gender Across Borders, Girl Drive, The Dramatist, Art Journal, Women and Performance and Reading Contemporary Performance: Theatricality Across Genres. She has been interviewed by the LA Times, London Times, Mother Jones and has appeared on NPR.

Donna Kaz @donnakaz

Aphra Behn @GuerrillaGsOT

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