People
Company
Jump-Start Performance Co. is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Founded in 1985, Jump-Start continues to produce original works for the stage.
We are working-class artists. We are writers, actors, designers, dancers, new media artists, and experimenters. We have one part-time staff person and four contractual support staff. Our artistic vision is led by a volunteer curatorial committee made up of four artistic company members.


Kim Corbin lived a bunch of places when she was a kid, ending up in SA to attend Trinity University where she got a degree in Art and Speech & Drama. A few years later she met some artists in a modern dance class. They kept in touch, working on various independent performance projects together until a couple of them felt compelled to create Jump-Start Performance Co., which has been Kim’s artistic home ever since. During these 30-plus years she has been a performer, costumer, creator of artistic work, event planner, volunteer, et cetera with the company. She remains excited and inspired by her artistic cohort and by the endless possibilities of original performance.

Sandy Dunn is one of the founding members of Jump-Start Performance Co. Over these many years at Jump-Start she has performed in, produced, choreographed and directed several shows. Long before Jump-Start she obtained a BFA in dance at Ohio State University and worked with a group of performance artists, We’re Just Like You, in Cincinnati, Ohio. After moving to San Antonio she performed with Kista Tucker of DanceArt/SA, 24th Street Theater and Urban-15 and THEN started creating performance art with a few others who were interested in starting Jump-Start. Sandy also studied Massage Therapy and Barrett Breathwork which she still practices in Austin where she currently lives in with her husband Paul when not tooling back and forth to Jump-Start on I-35.


Holly Nañes is a multidisciplinary artist that has done work as a director, writer, visual artist, stage manager, producer, performer, and more. She has lived in San Antonio for 7 years and is currently pursuing an MFA in Directing at Texas State University. Her work, love for travel, humanity, different trees, and curiosity has taken her to New York City, Provincetown & Boston, Massachusetts, Oakland & San Francisco, California, San Antonio and Lubbock, TX. She hopes to continue working and traveling while developing as an artist, creating and collaborating with other artists, and teaching within the community. She believes in humanity’s ability to contribute in a healthy and productive way towards the betterment of themselves, others, animals, the environment and generally speaking this beautiful Blue Planet. It’s up to us what’s in store for this planet. She is proud to be a member of Jump-Start and can’t wait to see what the next 5 years has in store for us.

Sheila Sisler-Currie, a long time Jump-Start Performance Company member and a multi-faceted entrepreneur with a “Let’s do it!” attitude, teeming with character and whimsy, can be found most days working and wishing she had even more time for creating.

Chuck Squier has been working and playing with Jump-Start since the ’80’s. He has served in a variety of production, company, staff, and board of directors capacities over the years. He’s still fascinated by how other people’s creativity inspires him to respond and create his own work.


Clint George Taylor has been a theatre artist in San Antonio for more than 20 years and he continues to enhance his artistic practice by working with diverse companies and solo artists and by taking advantage of workshops and classes offered in San Antonio and New York. At Jump-Start, he is a member of the artistic company, he is a teaching artist, he serves on the Curatorial Committee and he is the organization’s Social Media Coordinator.


Lilith Tijerina is a San Anto native multi-disciplinary teatrista with a focus in performance art, lighting design, and teaching. Using teatro as a medium for empowerment through storytelling, her work reflects personal experiences of oppression, trauma, and healing as a brown Chicanx artist. As a member of Jump-Start Performance Co., she finds inspiration from the company’s history as a ground-breaking radical performance space hoping to continue this legacy as a performer and teaching artist in its educational department. Lilith graduated Texas State University in 2020, obtaining a BFA in Theatre, Performance and Production and a Minor in Latina/o Studies.


Max Parilla, Monessa Esquivel, Eraina Porras, Julie Marin, Mellissa Marlowe, Jessica Arriola, Steve Bailey, Mark Blakeney, Cathleen Pollock Boehme, Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, Erik Bosse, Michael Cavazos, Laurie Dietrich, Kevin Evans, Michi Fink, Dino Foxx, Felice García, Skye Heather Daniels, Sterling Houston, Daniel Jackson, Billy Muñoz, Anita Jones Owers Baker, Danielle King, Michael Marinez, Julie Marin, Mellissa Marlowe, Lisa Mellinger, Dianne Monroe, Max Parrilla, Glenna Park, Dennis Poplin, Robert Rehm, Diana Rodriguez Gil, Annele Spector, S.T. Shimi, Amanda Silva, Susan Taylor, Fabiola Torralba, Jesse Valadez López, Michael Verdi
Board of Directors

Eduardo Juárez is a Supervisory Trial Attorney with the San Antonio Field Office of the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission where he litigates civil rights cases dealing with employment discrimination. During the 1990s, Mr. Juárez was a Trial Attorney with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and began his law career as an Associate with the law firm of Sidley & Austin in Chicago. Eduardo received a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and a law degree from the University of Michigan. A native of San Antonio’s Westside, Mr. Juárez has served as a director on several nonprofit organizations and is currently the Jump-Start board president.

Teaching Artists

Anna De Luna received her training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. She has acted in leading roles at the Guadalupe Theater, Jump-Start Performance Company, Attic Rep and appeared at the San Pedro Playhouse’s Anna In The Tropics for which she received a San Antonio Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has also been a recipient of grants from the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture and the City of San Antonio Office for Creative and Cultural Development to produce her original, one-woman shows, The AIDS Lady and My Arab Fall. Ms. De Luna has also served as a theater/arts educator for the YMCA H.Y.P.E. Program, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center’s Grupo Animo, Discover Animo, Summer Youth Camp and the 21st Century Arts Program and for Jump-Start Performance Company’s Historias y Cuentos.
Staff

Chayo Flores Zaldívar has been a staff member with Jump-Start Performance Co. since May 2005 and currently serves as Director of Operations. She is a member of the American Federation of Musicians Local 23, belongs to the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, and is a voting member for the Grammys (NARAS) and Latin Grammys (LARAS). Chayo is past Executive Director of the Academy of Tejano Artists & Musicians. Before that she was Associate Director of the Tejano Music Awards and Past President of that organization. With the support of Green Spaces Alliance, Chayo organized Labor Serena Community Garden and hosts the annual Spring Break Camp & Earth Day Celebration for school-aged children in District 5 and surrounding community. Chayo attended and completed training for Non-Profit Management at U.T. Austin in 1996 and is a graduate of the MALDEF Leadership Institute. She has extensive experience with non-profit organizations.

Sabine Widen is a nonprofit consultant with more than 20 years of experience. She holds degrees from Texas A&M University in College Station and St. Mary’s University of Law in San Antonio.

Erica R. DeLaRosa is a Teaching Artist, Theater Director, Performance Poet and Activist. DeLaRosa is a Co-Founder of the performance troupe, MAHINA MOVEMENT in New York City. She has also served as Casting Director for the independent short film, Bad Behavior. In 2013, DeLaRosa moved back to San Antonio, Texas. Now, she invests in her community & contributes her talents as a Teaching Artist with several community organizations in San Antonio and New York City. DeLaRosa is also the Founder and Producing and Education Partner of CEIBA Arts Cooperative (Communities Enlivened and Interactively Building through the Arts). Erica’s activism takes place in her poetry and drama therapy workshops in juvenile detention and adult rehabilitation centers and in producing community events and mobile classrooms in her city. She serves on the Board of Directors for San Anto Cultural Arts and as a Judge for the annual Young Pegasus Poetry Contest.