ABOUT

Mieke D, MFA, Equity Think Tank 

Mieke D (they/she) is a current member of the Equity Think Tank at PowerTools. As former Executive Assistant, they supported PowerTools’ Executive Director, coordinated events, researched, wrote, designed outreach and presentations, and acted as thought partner with our consultants. Mieke’s rich history with holding healing circles, working with youth, and teaching (see all below) allow her to deeply understand our work. They are now a member of the Equity Think Tank.

As an educator and cultural worker, Mieke aspires to destabilize rigid definitions of race, gender, and nationhood, while celebrating the inherent resilience and intelligence of the body. Mieke co-keeps Healing Circles in the Restorative Justice tradition with Planning Change. As a member of the Organizing Committee of Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists (PAPA), Mieke is co-organizing a political education series entitled MOVING THROUGH SHAME TOWARDS RESILIENCE: A Healing Justice approach to Internalized Racism for Philly-based Asian Artists. When not at PowerTools, Mieke teaches documentary theater, personal storytelling, dance theater, improvisation and collective devising skills to youth and professionals. Current partners include Ping Chong & Company, Pig Iron Theater Company, and University of the Arts.

As an artist, Mieke devises dance, theater, and performance art that is personal and political, comedic and earnest, “hilarious and disturbing.” Having been compared to a medieval fool, this artist is “able to speak truth to power with grace, wit and necessity.”  Mieke’s latest project is a site-specific, whimsical, and interactive hero's journey (designed for one person at a time) that takes audiences throughout a West Philadelphia cemetery to find wonder in the face of grief and play within landscapes of loss. They are a 2021 Leeway Art & Change Grant recipient, as well as a recipient of the Network of Ensemble Theaters’ Remote Connection and Virtual Exploration Grants.

As a mixed-race genderqueer femme of Asian and European descent, raised Boston-Irish, Chinese-Indonesian, Dutch, mixed, and white by an old New England lineage and a lineage of culture-weaving immigrants, Mieke stands firmly within the multiplicity of being a white-passing mixed race person in America. They enter conversations about dismantling racism with humility, curiosity, and a commitment to healing racialized harm as a part of the long and exuberant journey towards racial justice.

Mieke currently serves as Director of Community Programs at People’s Light Theater in Malvern, PA.