Get Your Knee Off Our Necks

Bruce E. Johansen is a Frederick W. Kayser research professor emeritus for Communication and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he taught and researched from 1982 to 2019, then retired with emeritus status. He has published fifty-two books in several fields: history, anthropology, law, the Earth sciences, and others. Johansen’s writing has been published, debated, and reviewed in many academic venues, as well as in many popular newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Times and National Geographic.

Adebowale Akande is one of the world’s top contributors and productive cross-cultural researchers for research publications. He has held faculty appointments at several international universities. In 1998, he was appointed the first black full professor at a white most prestigious university in South Africa. Akande’s major research interests vary but mainly focus on relationships among transnational self-esteem, learning, power, political influence, prejudice. He is also known as a popularizer of cross-cultural studies.

Traber Burns worked for thirty-five years in regional theater, including the New York, Oregon, and Alabama Shakespeare festivals. He also spent five years in Los Angeles appearing in many television productions and commercials, including Lost, Close to Home, Without a Trace, Boston Legal, Grey’s Anatomy, Cold Case, Gilmore Girls, and others.

Adenrele Ojo is an actress, dancer, and audiobook narrator, winner of over a dozen Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2018. She made her on-screen debut in My Little Girl, starring Jennifer Lopez, and has since starred in several other films. She has also performed extensively with the Philadelphia Dance Company. As the daughter of John E. Allen, Jr., founder and artistic director of Freedom Theatre, the oldest African American theater in Pennsylvania, is no stranger to the stage. In 2010 she performed in the Fountain Theatre’s production of The Ballad of Emmett Till, which won the 2010 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Ensemble. Other plays include August Wilson’s Jitney and Freedom Theatre’s own Black Nativity, where she played Mary.

Janina Edwards, an Earphone Award–winning narrator, is a graduate of the acting program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Kevin Kenerly, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, earned a BA at Olivet College. A longtime member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has acted in more than twenty seasons, playing dozens of roles.

David Linski (a.k.a. David Ligudzinski and David Atlas) is a graduate of the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, Australia. He has numerous voice-over credits, an extensive theatrical résumé, and has starred in short and feature films both in the United States and Australia.

David Colacci is an actor and director who has directed and performed in prominent theaters nationwide. His credits include roles from Shakespeare to Albee, as well as extensive work on new plays. As a narrator, he has won numerous Earphones Awards, earned Audie Award nominations, and been included in Best Audio of the Year lists by such publications as Publishers Weekly, AudioFile magazine, and Library Journal. He was a resident actor and director with the Cleveland Play House for eight years and has been artistic director of the Hope Summer Rep Theater since 1992.