New York Stage and Film & Vassar College Announce Upcoming 2015 Powerhouse Season
Contact:
Rick Miramontez / Scott Braun / Michael Jorgensen / Matthew Troillett
rick@oandmco.com / scott@oandmco.com /michael@oandmco.com / matthew@oandmco.com
212-695-7400
Marcia Clark
marcia@shamelesspromotions.com
845-528-6647
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE
NEW YORK STAGE AND FILM & VASSAR COLLEGE
ANNOUNCE
THE UPCOMING
2015 POWERHOUSE SEASON
NEW WORKS FROM
DUNCAN SHEIK, JOHN GUARE,
STEPHEN TRASK, AYAD AKHTAR, NICKY SILVER, BETH HENLEY
& MANY MORE!
New York, NY (May 4, 2015) – Vassar and New York Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Theater proudly announces its 31st year of championing new works, with a full season of stories that take audiences from a South Sea island to center court at the US Open and beyond. Running June 26 to August 2 at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY the complete lineup of two mainstage plays, three musical workshops, two play workshops, and a two-part reading series includes: a new play by award-winning company The Debate Society, new musicals by Michael John LaChiusa and Duncan Sheik, an unforgettable evening of Tennessee Williams-inspired short plays by six leading playwrights, including John Guare and Beth Henley, directed by leading Williams authority Michael Wilson, a new Rick Elice and Stephen Trask musical, new plays by Nicky Silver and Ayad Akhtar, apprentice company performances, and more.
Casting will be announced at later dates. Subscriptions will be available online May 12, and single tickets will go on sale online May 26. For additional information and a full schedule of events, visit: powerhouse.vassar.edu
Johanna Pfaelzer, New York Stage and Film’s Artistic Director, said: “As we celebrate the extraordinary successes of past Powerhouse projects in NYC and around the country this year, we eagerly anticipate the arrival of this enormously exciting group of theater artists for our 31st Powerhouse season.”
ABOUT THE 2015 POWERHOUSE THEATER SEASON
Mainstage Productions:
THE UNBUILT CITY | July 1 – July 12
By Keith Bunin
Directed by Sean Mathias
On a cold afternoon in February, Jonah knocks on the door of a townhouse in Brooklyn Heights. He’s come to persuade Claudia to sell her famously secret art collection to a university archive. Instead she turns the tables and reveals to him a series of mysteries about the nature of love, legacy and the untold history of the city.
Keith Bunin (The Busy World is Hushed, The Credeaux Canvas, Sam Bendrix…) returns to Powerhouse with this world premiere directed by Tony Award nominee Sean Mathias (Indiscretions, Waiting for Godot/No Man’s Land).
THE LIGHT YEARS | July 23 – August 2
Written by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen
Developed and Directed by Oliver Butler
Made by The Debate Society
The award-winning play-making company The Debate Society (Jacuzzi, Buddy Cop 2, Blood Play) crafts a haunted love story spanning 40 years. Set at the Chicago World’s Fairs of 1893 and 1933, The Light Years revolves around Steele MacKaye, a forgotten visionary theatrical impresario commissioned to design and build the Spectatorium, a 12,000 seat theater at the 1893 fair. His audacious vision – and its life-changing consequences – paint a spectacularly vivid world of forgotten futures and the indomitable spirit of invention.
Musical Workshops:
RAIN | July 10 – 12
Book by Sybille Pearson
Music and Lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa
Based on the short story by Somerset Maugham
Directed by Barry Edelstein
1924. Two married couples find themselves quarantined on a small island in the South Pacific during a torrential storm. Enter Sadie Thompson, a woman with a dark past and a bottle of good whiskey. Secrets are revealed and sexual tensions ignite and explode in this new musical adaptation of the classic Somerset Maugham story.
From five-time Tony-nominated composer and lyricist Michael John LaChiusa (Giant, The Wild Party, Marie Christine), Tony-nominated writer Sybille Pearson (Baby, Giant) and director Barry Edelstein (Nathan Englander’s The Twenty-Seventh Man, Steve Martin’s The Underpants).
LOVING V. VIRGINIA | July 17 – 19
Book and lyrics by Marcus Gardley
Music composition by Justin Ellington
Direction and additional lyrics by Patricia McGregor
Conceived by Patricia McGregor
A soulful, period musical set in the early days of the civil rights movement. In 1958, Mildred and Richard Loving, a black woman and white man, married in Central Point, Virginia, violating their state’s laws against miscegenation. Their Romeo and Juliet love story ignited a firestorm in their communities, and sparked a landmark Supreme Court case. Their love — and their fight – paved the way for future generations to seek equality.
From the award-winning team of Marcus Gardley (The House That Will Not Stand, Every Tongue
Confess), Justin Ellington (The Seven, Stagger Lee), and Patricia McGregor (Hurt Village)
NOIR | July 31 – August 2
Music by Duncan Sheik
Book by Kyle Jarrow
Lyrics by Kyle Jarrow and Duncan Sheik
Directed by Rachel Chavkin
A heartbroken man never leaves his apartment, consoled only by the music on the radio. Through the thin walls, he hears almost every word of the couple next door—and before long, his eavesdropping becomes an obsession. Soon he finds himself drawn into a web of lust, lies, deceit and danger.
Tony and Grammy Award-winning composer Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening, American Psycho) collaborates with Kyle Jarrow (Whisper House, A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant) and Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812) on this lush and mysterious new musical inspired by radio plays and classic film noir.
Inside Look Play Workshops:
DESIRE | July 2 – 5
SIX NEW PLAYS BASED ON STORIES BY TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
by Elizabeth Egloff, Marcus Gardley, Rebecca Gilman, David Grimm, John Guare, and Beth Henley Directed by Michael Wilson
Six of our best contemporary playwrights collaborate in a unique evening of short plays, inspired by a master American storyteller. Many of Williams’s stories were early sketches for his celebrated plays, and capture the same roiling emotions of people at life's turning points, clinging to love to salve their lost innocence or their shadowy loneliness. Celebrated director Michael Wilson (The Orphans Home Cycle, Broadway's The Trip to Bountiful) returns to Powerhouse where his prior work includes Mother of Invention, Mr. Melancholy and Servicemen.
THE LAST MATCH | July 17 – 19
Written by Anna Ziegler
Directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch
The semifinals of the U.S. Open are underway. Sergei Sergeyev, an up-and-coming Russian phenom, and Tim Porter, a great American superstar in the twilight of his career, do battle under the lights on center court. As the intense, back-and-forth action unfolds, Anna Ziegler (Photograph 51, BFF) and Gaye Taylor Upchurch (Bethany, Simon Stephens’ Bluebird) take us inside the minds of these two extraordinary players to contemplate athleticism, masculinity and marriage. And by match point, much more has been won and lost than a game of tennis.
Reading Festival #1 | June 26 – 28
Junk by Ayad Akhtar, directed by Doug Hughes
a boy put this girl in a cage with a dog and the dog killed the girl by Clare Barron
The Dizzy Little Dance Of Russell DiFinaldi by Stephen Belber
The Profane by Zayd Dohrn
15 Minutes Book by Rick Elice, Music and Lyrics by Stephen Trask & Peter Yanowitz, directed by
Trip Cullman
Reading Festival #2 | July 31 – August 2
The Brother(s) by Colman Domingo
Open Road Music and lyrics by Paul Scott Goodman, Book by Paul Scott Goodman & Joseph Hendel
Talk To Me Of Love by Meghan Kennedy
White Noise, White Light by Nicky Silver
Plus additional projects to be announced soon.
The season also includes productions by participants in the noted Powerhouse Theater Training Program. Young actors, playwrights, and directors from around the country and internationally, along with an exceptional faculty of artists, comprise an important component of the Powerhouse artistic community.
Now in its 31st year, Powerhouse Theater is a collaboration between New York Stage and Film and Vassar College dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development and production of new works for theater and film. The Powerhouse program consists of an eight-week residency on the Vassar campus during which more than 250 professional artists and 50 apprentices in the Powerhouse Training Program live and work together to create new theater works. Recent highlights at Powerhouse include Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway-bound Hamilton; Bright Star, an original musical from Steve Martin and Edie Brickell; The Fortress of Solitude, Itamar Moses, Michael Friedman and Daniel Aukin’s musical adaptation of the best-selling novel by Jonathan Lethem, and Richard Greenberg’s The Babylon Line. Many additional shows from past seasons have found their way to Broadway, Off-Broadway, and theaters nationwide, including Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet and The Humans (Roundabout Theater); The Invisible Hand by Ayad Akhtar (NYTW), Found by Hunter Bell, Lee Overtree and Eli Bolin (Atlantic Theater Co), Michael Mayer and Peter Lerman’s Brooklynite (Vineyard Theater), Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash’s Murder Ballad (Manhattan Theater Club); and Pulitzer finalist Nathan Englander’s The Twenty-Seventh Man (The Public Theater; Old Globe Theater);. Other projects developed at the Powerhouse include the Tony Award-winning Side Man and Tru; the multi-award-winning Doubt by John Patrick Shanley; the groundbreaking Broadway musical American Idiot, and A Steady Rain, produced on Broadway in 2009 with Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig.
New York Stage and Film (Johanna Pfaelzer, Artistic Director; Thomas Pearson, Executive Director; Mark Linn-Baker, Max Mayer, Leslie Urdang, Producing Directors) is a not-for-profit company dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development of new works for theater and film. Since 1985 New York Stage and Film has played a significant role in the development of new plays, provided a home for a diverse group of artists free from critical and commercial pressures, and established itself as a vital cultural institution for residents of the Hudson Valley and the New York metropolitan region www.newyorkstageandfilm.org.
Vassar College (Ed Cheetham, Tom Pacio, Producing Directors) is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential, liberal arts college founded in 1861. Consistently ranked as one of the country’s best liberal arts colleges, Vassar is renowned for its long history of curricular innovation, and for the natural and architectural beauty of its campus. More than 50 academic departments and degree programs — from Anthropology to Cognitive Sciences to Urban Studies — encompass the arts, foreign languages, natural sciences, and social sciences, and combine to offer a curriculum of more than 1,000 courses. Vassar College is sited in New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley in Poughkeepsie, NY. www.vassar.edu
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ARTIST BIOS
Mainstage
Keith Bunin (Playwright, The Unbuilt City) was born and raised in Poughkeepsie, NY. His plays include The Credeaux Canvas, The World Over, and The Busy World Is Hushed, all of which premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons; The Principality of Sorrows, which was first produced Off-Broadway by Pure Orange Productions; and Sam Bendrix at The Bon Soir, which premiered at City Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse. His play Vera Laughed premiered here at NYSAF, and many of his other plays were first workshopped here. He wrote the screenplay for the film Horns, based on the novel by Joe Hill, and he is currently writing screenplays for Likely Story, Disney Pictures, Fox Searchlight, and CBS Films. He was also a writer for the HBO TV series “In Treatment.” He is a graduate of Goddard College and Columbia University.
Sean Mathias (Director, The Unbuilt City) productions have received global acclaim from Northern Ireland to New Zealand. They have visited many international cities including Paris, Sydney, Cape Town, Los Angeles, New York and London and have played on various stages including the Royal National Theatre, the Music Centre Los Angeles, the Kennedy Centre Washington DC, Berkeley Rep, the Sydney Opera House, the Market Theatre Johannesburg, the Oliver Tambo Hall in the township of Khayelitsha, South Africa as well as the London Fringe, the West End and Broadway. He has directed classic plays by Anhouilh, Beckett, Chekhov, Cocteau, Coward, De Filippo, Ibsen, Pinter, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Strindberg and Williams as well as works by contemporary writers Samuel Adamson, Pam Gems, Richard Greenberg, Ronald Harwood, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Edna O’Brien, Bernard Pomerance, Martin Sherman and Stephen Sondheim. He has won an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, a Prix de la Jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival, a Critics’ Circle Award and an Evening Standard Award as well as nominations for the Olivier and Tony Awards. He was Artistic Director of the Theatre Royal Haymarket for 2009/2010 where his legendary production of Waiting For Godot starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart smashed all box office records and the debut production of Breakfast at Tiffany’s enjoyed a sensational run prior to playing on Broadway. In 2013 he co produced and directed two plays in rep on Broadway which comprised Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Pinter’s No Man’s Land. He is the author of the plays Cowardice, Infidelities, A Prayer For Wings, Poor Nanny, Swansea Boys and of the screenplay The Lost Language of Cranes. He directed the movie Bent.
Oliver Butler (Director/Developer, The Light Years) is a founder and co-Artistic Director of The Debate Society with whom he has co-created and directed 8 full-length plays since 2004, most recently Jacuzzi at Ars Nova. Oliver directed the recent premiere of Will Eno’s The Open House (OBIE Award for Direction; Lortel Award, Best Play) at the Signature Theatre Company. Other recent projects include directing the City Center Encores! Off-Center production of Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick…Boom! starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom and Karen Olivo, and Bad Jews (Long Wharf). Oliver is directing the upcoming world premieres of Daniel Goldfarb’s Legacy at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, An Opening In Time by Christopher Shinn, and Timeshare by Lally Katz in Melbourne (The Malthouse). He is a Sundance Institute Fellow and a Bill Foeller Fellow (Williamstown).
Hannah Bos (Writer/Performer, The Light Years) is a founder and co-Artistic Director of The Debate Society. She has co-written and starred in all of the company’s plays, most recently Jacuzzi. She starred in the premiere of Will Eno’s The Open House at the Signature Theatre Company (Drama Desk Award, Ensemble; Lortel Nomination, Featured Actress). Regional credits include the premieres of Will Eno’s Gnit and Lisa Kron’s The Veri**on Play at Humana Festival, Andrei Serban’s Lysistrata, Three Farces and a Funeral and Janos Szasz’ Marat/Sade (all A.R.T). Hannah recently starred in an episode of the hit web series “High Maintenance” and is a co-creator of the web series “Timeless Seasons” which played at the LA Comedy Shorts Festival and Rooftop Films. Films include How to Follow Strangers and Next Life. Hannah is a Sundance Theatre Institute fellow and a recipient of The Six Points Fellowship. B.A. Vassar College, M.F.A from The Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University/Moscow Art Theater.
Paul Thureen (Writer/Performer, The Light Years) is a founder and co-Artistic Director of The Debate Society, co-writing and starring in all of the company’s plays, including Blood Play (Obie Award, Acting) and Jacuzzi. Other recent NYC performances include Annie Baker’s Uncle Vanya (Soho Rep), Jenny Schwartz’s 41-Derful (Clubbed Thumb) and Steven Levenson’s Core Values (Ars Nova). Regional: The Description of the World, Façade, and Pulcinella (Theatre de la Jeune Lune) and The Odyssey Experience (McCarter). TV: “The Late Show with David Letterman” (recurring), “The Revolution” (History Channel). Paul is a Sundance Institute Fellow. B.A. Vassar College.
The Debate Society (The Light Years) is an Obie Award winning, Brooklyn based company that creates new plays through the collaboration of Hannah Bos (writer/performer), Paul Thureen (writer/performer) and Oliver Butler (director/developer). The Debate Society’s plays include Jacuzzi (Ars Nova; publication forthcoming from Samuel French), Blood Play (Bushwick Starr/Under The Radar/Williamstown Theater Festival; Samuel French), Buddy Cop 2 (Ontological-Hysteric Incubator; Samuel French), You’re Welcome (The Brick; published by Playscripts), Cape Disappointment (PS122; published by Samuel French and in Play A Journal of Plays), The Eaten Heart, The Snow Hen, and A Thought About Raya. The Debate Society trio are recipients of a 2012 Obie Grant, 2013 Obie Award (Paul Thureen; Performance – Blood Play), NEFA National Theater Project Grant, Sundance Institute Fellows, winners of a 2010 “Village Voice Best of Award” for “Best Argument for Devised Theater” and were the 2012-14 Ars Nova Company in Residence. They are proud faculty members of The National Theater Institute.
Musical Workshops
Michael John LaChiusa (Composer/Lyricist, Rain) is a five –time Tony Award nominated composer, lyricist and librettist for his Broadway productions of The Wild Party, Marie Christine and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. LaChiusa’s acclaimed off-Broadway musicals have been seen at The Public Theater and Lincoln Center in NY and include Giant, Queen of the Mist (Outer Critic’s Circle Award, Best Musical), See What I Wanna See, First Lady Suite, Bernarda Alba, Hello Again, Little Fish, and Four Short Operas: Break, Agnes, Eulogy for Mr. Hamm, Lucky Nurse. His new musical First Daughter Suite will premiere at The Public Theater in NY Fall 2015. LaChiusa has been commissioned by Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival among others and has penned Lovers & Friends: The Chautauqua Variations for CLO and Send (who are you? I love you) written for Audra McDonald at HGO. LaChiusa’s revues of his own work include la..la…LaChiusa (Joe’s Pub), Hotel C’est l’Amour (Blank Theatre), and most recently Heartbreak Country: Michael John LaChiusa’s Stories of America (Jazz at Lincoln Center). LaChiusa’s awards include an Obie, Gillman Gonzalez-Falla, Kleban Foundation, Dramatists Guild, and 2008 & 2009 Daytime Emmy Awards. LaChiusa teaches at NYU and Columbia University. He is a resident of New York City.
Sybille Pearson (Librettist / Playwright, Rain) Sybille Pearson wrote the book for the musical Baby, with a score by Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire, for which she received a Tony Award nomination. She collaborated with Michael John LaChiusa on the musicals Giant and Rain. Ms. Pearson is the author of the plays Sally and Marsha; Phantasie; Watching The Dog; Unfinished Stories; True History and Real Adventure, a play with music by Mel Marvin; Be Bold, commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum; and Promise Me, produced by the Mark Taper Forum. She has won the Berrilla Kerr Award for Playwriting, the Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, recipient of a Rockefeller Playwrights Fellowship and a U-Cross Fellowship, an Artist-In-Residence at the Vineyard Theater in New York City. She is a Professor at NYU, teaching musical theatre writing, and has been a panelist for the O’Neill Center and the Sundance Institute. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Barry Edelstein (Director, Rain) is Artistic Director of The Old Globe in San Diego. He is a director, producer, author, and educator and a leading American Shakespearean. His Globe directing credits include The Winter’s Tale, Othello, and the West Coast premiere of The Twenty-seventh Man, a play he directed in its world premiere in New York. As Director of the Shakespeare Initiative at The Public Theater (2007-2012), he oversaw all of the company’s Shakespearean productions and programs, and he staged Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice. He was also Associate Producer of the Al Pacino Merchant of Venice on Broadway. He was Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company (1998-2003). His book Thinking Shakespeare is the standard text on American Shakespearean acting. He is also the author of Bardisms: Shakespeare for All Occasions. With Rain, Mr. Edelstein proudly continues a more than twenty year relationship with New York Stage & Film.
Marcus Gardley (Playwright/Lyricist, Loving V. Virginia) is a poet-playwright who is the current recipient of the 2014 Glickman Award. He was the 2013 James Baldwin Fellow and the 2011 PEN Laura Pels award winner for Mid-Career Playwright. The New Yorker describes Gardley as “the heir to Garcia Lorca, Pirandello and Tennessee Williams.” His play The House that Will Not Stand was commissioned and produced by Berkeley Rep and had subsequent productions at Yale Rep and the Tricycle Theater in London. He is an ensemble member playwright at Victory Gardens Theater where his play The Gospel of Loving Kindness was produced in March and won the 2014 BTAA award for best play/playwright. In 2014, his saga The Road Weeps, the Well Runs Dry about the migration of Black Seminoles (a tribe of African American and First Nations People) from Florida to Oklahoma had a national tour. He has had several productions some of which, include: Every Tongue Confess at Arena Stage (starring Phylicia Rashad and directed by Kenny Leon) and On The Levee, which premiered in 2010 at Lincoln Center Theater 3. He is the recipient of the 2011 Aetna New Voice Fellowship at Hartford Stage, the Hellen Merrill Award, a Kellsering Honor and the Gerbode Emerging Playwright Award. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale Drama School and is a member of The Dramatists Guild. Gardley is a professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Brown University.
Justin Ellington (Composer, Loving V. Virginia) Broadway: Other Desert Cities (Lincoln Center/Booth Theater) Off-Broadway: Fetch Clay Make Man (New York Theatre Workshop), Other Desert Cities (Lincoln Center Theatre), The Break Of Noon, The Pride (MCC), The Seven (New York Theater Workshop). Regional: Detroit ’67 (Kenny Leon’s True Colors), Stagger Lee(Dallas Theatre Center), The Comedy of Errors (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Clementine In the Lower Nine (TheaterWorks), Gee’s Bend (Cincinnati Playhouse), Fetch Clay Make Man, Are You There Mcfee? (McCarter Theater), King Hedley II, Shakespeare’s R&J, Topdog Underdog, (Alliance Theatre), The Seven (La Jolla Playhouse), As You Like It (Stratford Shakespeare Festival), Conversations With Ice (Cosmic Theater Amsterdam). Other credits: As You Like It (Bravo Network), Here You Go (Short Film), Fallen (Short Film). Awards: 2010 Grammy Award winner, 2011 ASCAP Award winner.
Patricia McGregor (Co-Creator/Director, Loving V. Virginia) Born on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands, Patricia McGregor is a director, writer, and deviser of new work. She has twice been profiled by The New York Times for her direction of new plays. Recent directing credits include the world premiere of Stagger Lee at Dallas Theater Center, the world premiere of The House That Will Not Stand at Yale Rep, brownsville song (b-side for tray) at Lincoln Center, Raisin In The Sun, Winter's Tale, and Spunk at California Shakespeare Theatre, and the world premiere of Hurt Village at Signature Theatre Center. Other directing credits include Holding it Down, Blood Dazzler, In the Cypher, Jelly's Last Jam, Romeo and Juliet, Adoration of the Old Woman, Four Electric Ghosts, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. Patricia co-founded the performance collective Angela's Pulse with her sister, choreographer Paloma McGregor. She attended the Yale School of Drama where she was a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow and Artistic Director of the Yale Cabaret.
Duncan Sheik (Composer/Lyricist, Noir) – 2007 Tony Awards for “Best Orchestration” and “Best Original Score”, 2008 Grammy Award for “Best Musical Show Album” for Spring Awakening. Current works in development include; American Psycho, at the Almeida Theatre in London December 2013, Because of Winn Dixie at the Arkansas Repertory Theater in December 2013, Hans Christian Andersen classic The Nightingale at La Jolla Playhouse, Alice by Heart, inspired by Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland at The National Theater in London 2012. Previous productions include Spring Awakening (8 Tony Awards), Whisper House at The Old Globe, Nero, Another Golden Rome at Powerhouse Theater. In the mid 1990s Sheik’s self-titled Atlantic Records debut spent 52 weeks on the Billboard 200 and earned him a Grammy Award nomination for “Best Male Vocal”, RIAA Certified Gold. Albums include “Duncan Sheik” (1996), “Humming” (1998), “Phantom Moon” (2001), “Daylight” (2002), “White Limousine” (2006), “Brighter/Later” (2007), “Whisper House” (2009), “Covers 80” (2011). Sheik is currently working on his next solo album.
Kyle Jarrow (Playwright/Lyricist, Noir) is a Brooklyn-based writer who creates work for the stage, film, and television. His plays have been performed across the US, Canada and the UK. He won an Obie Award for the Off-Broadway hit A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant. Other works include Whisper House (also written with Duncan Sheik), Gorilla Man, Love Kills, Hostage Song (with Clay McLeod Chapman) and the upcoming Fallout (with Nick Blaemire) and Ana and the American Dream (with Josh Schmidt). Kyle wrote the film Armless, adapted from his play of the same name, which was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival. He has developed television projects for FOX, FX, CW and MTV networks. Kyle also plays in the rock band Sky-Pony, a collaboration with his wife actress Lauren Worsham.
More info on Kyle at www.landoftrust.com.
Rachel Chavkin (Director, Noir) Rachel Chavkin is an Obie Award-winning, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel nominated director, and the Artistic Director of Brooklyn-based ensemble, the TEAM (www.theteamplays.org). Selected projects: RoosevElvis (PS122’s COIL festival), Small Mouth Sounds (Ars Nova), Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (World Premiere – Ars Nova; Kazino – commercial transfer, The New York Times, Time Out New York and New York Post Critics’ Picks); British artist Chris Thorpe's Confirmation (Warwick Arts Centre and Battersea Arts Centre, 2014 Edinburgh Festival Fringe First Award, Top 10 Shows at the Edinburgh Fringe – American Theatre); Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (Northern Stage, UK national tour); Meg Miroshnik's The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls (Yale Rep); The Royale (The Old Globe); and multiple collaborations with Taylor Mac, including his extravaganza The Lily’s Revenge (World Premiere (Act II) – HERE). NYTW Usual Suspect, Artistic Associate at London's Gate Theatre and Classic Stage Company, alum of Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab, Drama League Directors Project, Women’s Project Director’s Lab, and New Georges Affiliate Artist. She has also taught extensively at NYU, Pace, and other colleges. B.F.A. NYU, M.F.A. Columbia. Upcoming: Preludes (LCT3), Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (American Repertory Theater), RoosevElvis (American Repertory Theater), and multiple projects at The Public.
Play Workshops
Elizabeth Egloff(Playwright, Desire) Elizabeth Egloff has worked with Michael Wilson before, on Ether Dome, produced in 2014 by La Jolla Playhouse, Hartford Stage, and the Huntington Theater. Currently she is working on a new play-commission. Other plays include Wolf-Man, Community of Heaven, The Devils, Phaedre, She Took to Her Bed, and The Swan. On television, her controversial screenplay for The Reagans (with Judy Davis and James Brolin) was nominated for an Emmy for “Best Screenplay.” Other awards include the Helen Merrill Award, Lila Wallace Foundation Writer’s Award, the Weissberger Prize, Oppenheimer Award, and the Kesselring Prize. Ms. Egloff is a member of New Dramatists, the Dramatists Guild, and the League of Professional Theatre Women, and is a graduate of Yale Drama School. She is married to set designer Jim Youmans, and they have 2 lovely sons, Will and Timur.
Marcus Gardley (Playwright, Desire) is a poet-playwright who is the current recipient of the 2014 Glickman Award. He was the 2013 James Baldwin Fellow and the 2011 PEN Laura Pels award winner for Mid-Career Playwright. The New Yorker describes Gardley as “the heir to Garcia Lorca, Pirandello and Tennessee Williams.” His play The House That Will Not Stand was commissioned and produced by Berkeley Rep and had subsequent productions at Yale Rep and the Tricycle Theater in London. He is an ensemble member playwright at Victory Gardens Theater where his play The Gospel of Loving Kindness was produced in March and won the 2014 BTAA award for best play/playwright. In 2014, his saga The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry about the migration of Black Seminoles (a tribe of African American and First Nations People) from Florida to Oklahoma had a national tour. He has had several productions some of which, include: Every Tongue Confess at Arena Stage (starring Phylicia Rashad and directed by Kenny Leon) and On The Levee, which premiered in 2010 at Lincoln Center Theater 3. He is the recipient of the 2011 Aetna New Voice Fellowship at Hartford Stage, the Hellen Merrill Award, a Kellsering Honor and the Gerbode Emerging Playwright Award. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale Drama School and is a member of The Dramatists Guild. Gardley is a professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Brown University.
Rebecca Gilman (Playwright, Desire) Rebecca Gilman is an Artistic Associate at the Goodman. Ms. Gilman’s plays include Luna Gale, A True History of the Johnstown Flood, Dollhouse, Boy Gets Girl, Spinning Into Butter, Blue Surge (all of which were commissioned and originally produced by the Goodman), The Glory of Living, The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and The Crowd You’re in With. Ms. Gilman is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Harper Lee Award, The Scott McPherson Award, The Prince Prize for Commissioning New Work, The Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, The Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright, The George Devine Award, The Theatre Masters Visionary Award, The Great Plains Playwright Award and an Illinois Arts Council playwriting fellowship. Boy Gets Girl received an Olivier nomination for Best New Play and she was named a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for her play, The Glory of Living. She is a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild of America and a board member of the ACLU of Illinois. She received her MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa. Ms. Gilman is an associate professor of playwriting and screenwriting at Northwestern University as part of its MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage program. She is the recipient of a Global Connections Grant by Theatre Communications Group and an American Scandinavian Foundation Creative Writing Grant for the development of a new play in conjunction with Göteborgs Dramatiska Teater in Gothenburg, Sweden: Rödvinsvänster (Red-Wine Leftists): 1977.
David Grimm (Playwright, Desire) David Grimm is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His play Tales From Red Vienna was produced at Manhattan Theatre Club, starring Nina Arianda and Kathleen Chalfant. Other current and recent project highlights: dialogue for Matthew Barney’s art film, River of Fundament, book and lyrics for the rock opera, Mozart, and book for the Broadway musical Manhattan Madness, with music by Harry Connick Jr., to be directed by George C. Wolfe. Plays include: Measure for Pleasure (Public Theatre, GLAAD Award nomination); The Miracle at Naples (Huntington); The Learned Ladies of Park Avenue (Hartford Stage); Kit Marlowe (Public Theatre, GLAAD Award nomination); Sheridan, Or Schooled In Scandal (La Jolla); and Enough Rope (Williamstown; starring Elaine Stritch); He has received commissions from Roundabout Theatre Company and The Public Theater, among others. He has developed work at the Sundance Theater Lab, Old Vic New Voices, and NY Stage & Film. MFA – NYU, BA -Sarah Lawrence. Teaching: Yale School of Drama, Brown University, Columbia University, and NYU.
John Guare (Playwright, Desire) has written House of Blue Leaves (4 Tonys, Obie, Drama Critics Circle), Six Degrees of Separation (London’s Olivier Award for Best Play, NY Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, for which he also wrote the screenplay), Landscape of the Body, A Few Stout Individuals, A Free Man of Color (all published by Grove Press), Lydie Breeze, and Lake Hollywood, among others. He wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Louis Malle's Atlantic City, won a Tony for his libretto to the musical Two Gentlemen of Verona, and was nominated for multiple Tonys for his play Four Baboons Adoring the Sun and his libretto to Sweet Smell of Success. His adaptation of His Girl Friday premiered at London's National Theater and his play Are You There, McPhee? premiered at the McCarter Theatre in 2012. He has won the PEN/Laura Pels Master Dramatist Award, the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and an Obie Award for sustained excellence.
Beth Henley (Playwright, Desire) Beth Henley was born in Jackson, Mississippi. Her plays have been produced internationally and translated into over ten languages. Crimes of the Heart (The Golden Theatre) and The Wake of Jamey Foster (Eugene O'Neill Theatre) were performed on Broadway. Off-Broadway productions include: This Miss Firecracker Contest, Am I Blue, The Lucky Spot, The Debutante Ball, Abundance, Impossible Marriage, and Family Week. Her play Ridiculous Fraud was produced at McCarter Theatre as well as South Coast Repertory Theatre. Ms. Henley’s newest work The Jacksonian premiered at the Geffen Theatre in January 2012 to great acclaim. Robert Falls directed and the cast included Ed Harris, Bill Pullman, Amy Madigan and Glenne Headly. It was most recently premiered Off-Broadway at the New Group. Beth Henley was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play for Crimes of the Heart. Other awards include: American Theatre Wing 1998 Award for Distinguished Achievement in Playwriting; Susan Smith Blackburn Finalist for Crimes of the Heart and Ridiculous Fraud; Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award 2000; New York Stage and Film Honoree, 2007; ATHE Career Achievement Award, 2010. Ms. Henley has the honor of serving as Theatre Arts Presidential Professor at LMU, Los Angeles. She is a member of The Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Dramatist Guild and the Academy of Arts and Science.
Michael Wilson (Director, Desire) returns to NYS&F where he directed the premieres of Mr. Melancholy and Servicemen, as well as developed plays by Jane Anderson, Tom Donaghy, Eve Ensler, and James Lecesne, among other. One of the foremost directors of Tennessee Williams in America, he directed the New York premiere of Williams’s The Red Devil Battery Sign and the 2011 Roundabout Theater Company revival of The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore. In addition, as part of an unprecedented ten-year Williams Marathon at Hartford Stage, Wilson directed The Glass Menagerie (also A.R.T./Alley, Elliot Norton Award Outstanding Revival); A Streetcar Named Desire (also Alley, PlayMakers Rep); Summer and Smoke (also Paper Mill Playhouse); Camino Real ; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ; The Night of the Iguana; A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur; and Eight by Tenn, a four hour, two-part repertory of one-act plays, including the premieres of “The Palooka” and “The One Exception.” Wilson also staged Orpheus Descending for the Alley. On Broadway, he directed the 2013 Tony Award winning revival (as well as the Los Angeles CTG/Ahmanson and Boston ArtsEmerson engagements) of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful starring Cicely Tyson and made his screen directorial debut with the 2014 Emmy nominated Lifetime/Ostar Productions television film of The Trip to Bountiful, for which he was nominated for DGA and NAACP/Image Best Director Awards. Also on Broadway, he directed the Tony nominated Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, Dividing The Estate, and Enchanted April, as well as the RTC revival of Old Acquaintance. Off-Broadway, he directed the premieres of Christopher Shinn's What Didn't Happen (Playwrights Horizons) and Picked (Vineyard Theater), Tina Howe’s Chasing Manet, Eve Ensler's Necessary Targets, Jane Anderson's Defying Gravity, and Foote’s The Carpetbagger’s Children (Lincoln Center Theater), The Day Emily Married (Primary Stages), and The Orphans’ Home Cycle (Signature Theater), for which he received 2010 Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards. He has directed at our nation’s major theaters, including Hartford Stage where as Artistic Director from 1998 to 2011 he commissioned and developed numerous new works, including Quiara Alegria Hudes’s 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner Water By the Spoonful. He is currently editing his first indie feature Showing Roots starring Uzo Aduba, Adam Brody, Maggie Grace, Elizabeth McGovern, and Cicely Tyson.
Anna Ziegler (Playwright, The Last Match) Anna Ziegler’s plays have been produced at Seattle Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Magic Theatre, EST, New Georges, and Theatre503 (UK), among others. Upcoming productions include Photograph 51 on the West End directed by Michael Grandage and starring Nicole Kidman, The Last Match at The Old Globe and City Theatre, A Delicate Ship at The Playwrights Realm, and Another Way Home at Theater J. Workshops/Residencies: The Sundance Theatre Lab, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Cape Cod Theatre Project, Arena Stage, PlayLabs at The Playwrights’ Center, Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s New Works Festival, Lark Playwrights’ Workshop, McCarter Theatre Center’s Playwrights Retreat, The Araca Group, Old Vic New Voices, and many more. Awards: STAGE award, Weissberger Award (finalist), Edgerton New Play Prize, Douglas T. Ward Playwriting Prize. Publications include DPS editions of BFF, Life Science and Photograph 51. Ms. Ziegler has a B.A. from Yale University and an M.F.A. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Website: annabziegler.net.
Gaye Taylor Upchurch (Director, The Last Match) Off-Broadway: Nancy Harris's Our New Girl (Atlantic Theater); Laura Marks’s Bethany with America Ferrera (Women’s Project, Lortel nomination for Best New Play); Lucy Thurber’s Stay (Rattlestick Theater, Obie Award for Hilltown Play Cycle); Simon Stephens’s Harper Regan with Mary McCann (Atlantic Theater, NY Times Top Ten Production 2012); Simon Stephens's Bluebird with Simon Russell Beale (Atlantic Theater). Regional: World premiere of Melissa Ross’s Of Good Stock (South Coast Rep); Bethany (Old Globe); She Loves Me (UNCSA). Her work has been seen at Culture Project, La Mama, Juilliard, and Lincoln Center Institute among others, and she has developed new work at New Dramatists, Playwrights Realm, NY Stage & Film, The Kennedy Center, Playwright's Center, LCT Director's Lab, and SPACE on Ryder Farm. She is an alumna of The Women’s Project Directors Lab, The Drama League and North Carolina School of the Arts. Upcoming: An Iliad (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Theater); Animal by Clare Lizzimore (Studio Theater).
Readings
Rick Elice (Librettist, 15 Minutes: A New Musical) co-wrote Jersey Boys (winner 2006 Tony Award, 2007 Grammy Award and 2009 Olivier Award for Best Musical) with Marshall Brickman. His play, Peter and the Starcatcher, received nine 2012 Tony Award nominations (including two for Rick), and won five, more than any play of the season. It’s currently on tour across North America. Also on Broadway, Elice wrote The Addams Family (with Marshall Brickman, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa), gearing up for a run in the West End. A new musical, Magnificent Climb (written with Will Van Dyke) will premiere next season at MCC in New York. Upcoming projects include Make Believe (music and lyrics by Benj Pasek & Justin Paul) for Disney Theatricals; Ring a Ding Ding (songs from the Sammy Cahn catalogue, directed by Casey Nicholaw), Mad Hot Ballroom (music by Jeanine Tesori, directed by Jerry Mitchell), and a new version of a Rodgers & Hart musical, directed by Rob Ashford.
Peter Yanowitz (Composer/Lyricist, 15 Minutes: A New Musical) was a founding member of both The Wallflowers (Virgin) and Morningwood (Capitol). Other artists he has recorded/performed with include Natalie Merchant, Wilco, Yoko Ono, Allen Ginsberg, Weird Al Yankovic, Nina Nastasia, Money Mark, and Ryan Jarman. Yanowitz wrote and performed a workshop of his one man show, Walking in Soho, at the 2013 New York Musical Theatre Festival.
Stephen Trask (Composer/Lyricist, 15 Minutes: A New Musical) is the composer and lyricist of Hedwig and The Angry Inch, which he also co-created with our client John Cameron Mitchell. In its original incarnation at the off-off-Broadway Jane Street Theater, Hedwig and Stephen won an Obie Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical, two GLAMA Awards and Entertainment Weekly’s Best Soundtrack Award, and the musical was nominated for Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding New Musical, Best Lyrics and Best Music and for the Grammy Award for Best Cast Album. Hedwig was developed into a feature film released by Fine Line Features and was produced last season on Broadway starring Neil Patrick Harris, for which it won four Tony Awards, including for Best Revival of a Musical.
Trip Cullman (Director, 15 Minutes: A New Musical) Select NYC: Joshua Harmon's Significant Other (Roundabout), Halley Feiffer's I'm Gonna Pray For You So Hard (Atlantic), Simon Stephens's Punk Rock (MCC), John Robin Baitz's The Substance of Fire (Second Stage), Tarell Alvin McCraney's Choir Boy (MTC), Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash's Murder Ballad (MTC and Union Square Theater), Paul Weitz's Lonely I'm Not (Second Stage), Leslye Headland's Assistance (Playwrights Horizons), Adam Bock's A Small Fire (Playwrights Horizons, Drama Desk nom.), Adam Rapp's The Hallway Trilogy: Nursing (Rattlestick), Headland's Bachelorette (Second Stage), Bert V. Royal's Dog Sees God (Century Center), Bock's The Drunken City (Playwrights Horizons), Jonathan Tolins's The Last Sunday In June (Rattlestick and Century Center), Bock's Swimming In The Shallows (Second Stage). London: Bock's The Colby Sisters… (Tricycle). Regional productions at the Geffen, Alliance, Old Globe, South Coast Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Williamstown Theater Festival.
Ayad Akhtar (Playwright, Junk) Ayad Akhtar’s plays include Disgraced (Broadway, American Theatre Company, LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater, 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and 2013 Obie Award for Extraordinary Achievement), The Who & The What (LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater and La Jolla Playhouse), and The Invisible Hand (The Repertory Theater of St. Louis, New York Theatre Workshop). Also a novelist, Akhtar is the author of American Dervish, published in 2012 by Little, Brown and Company, published in 20 languages worldwide. He co-wrote and starred in The War Within (Magnolia Pictures), which was released internationally and nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. As an actor, Akhtar also starred as Neel Kashkari in HBO’s adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book Too Big to Fail. He studied at Brown University and Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
Doug Hughes (Director, Junk) Recent Broadway productions include Outside Mullingar, The Big Knife, An Enemy of the People, Born Yesterday, Elling, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Oleanna, the Tony-nominated revival of The Royal Family, A Man for All Seasons, Mauritius, the Tony-nominated revival of Inherit the Wind, A Touch of the Poet, Frozen (Tony nomination, Best Director), and Doubt, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Director. Recent Off-Broadway productions include The City of Conversation, Death Takes A Holiday, The Whipping Man, An Experiment With an Air Pump, Flesh and Blood, and Defiance. In addition to the Tony, he has been awarded Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel, Obie and Callaway Awards for his productions.
Stephen Belber (Playwright, The Dizzy Little Dance of Russell DiFinaldi) Stephen Belber’s plays have been produced on Broadway and in over 25 countries. They include Match, Tape, Don’t Go Gentle, Dusk Rings a Bell, McReele, Finally, Geometry of Fire, Fault Lines, Carol Mulroney, A Small, Melodramatic Story, One Million Butterflies, The Power of Duff and The Muscles In Our Toes. He was an Associate Writer on The Laramie Project, and co-writer on The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. Movies include Tape (directed by Richard Linklater), The Laramie Project (Associate Writer), Drifting Elegant, Management, starring Jennifer Aniston, and Match, starring Patrick Stewart, the last two of which he also directed. Television credits include “Rescue Me,” “Law & Order SVU,” and pilots for F/X, FTVS and HBO.
Nicky Silver (Playwright, White Noise, White Light) is the author of The Lyons (Cort Theaer, Broadway), Too Much Sun, Pterodactyls, Fat Men in Skirts, Raised in Captivity, Free Will & Wanton Lust, The Maiden’s Prayer, The Eros Trilogy, The Food Chain, Fit to be Tied, My Marriage to Ernest Borgnine, The Altruists, Beautiful Child, Three Changes and The Agony & The Agony. He is the recipient of The Kesslering Prize and The Oppenhiemer Award as well as four nominations for the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards each. His plays have been produced most notably at The Vineyard Theater (eight premiers, including The Lyons, which transferred to Broadway in 2012), and Playwrights Horizons, as well as across Europe and both North and South America.
Zayd Dohrn (Playwright, The Profane) plays include Outside People (The Vineyard Theatre/Naked Angels), Want (Steppenwolf/First Look), Sick (Berkshire Theatre Festival), and Reborning (The Public/SPF). His work has been produced and developed across the country, including at Playwrights Horizons, The Atlantic Theater Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, Chautauqua, The Orchard Project, South Coast Rep, New York Theatre Workshop, Theatre for One, Kitchen Dog, and the Royal Court Theatre of London. He received his MFA from NYU and was a two-year Lila Acheson Wallace Fellow at Juilliard. He currently teaches playwriting and screenwriting at Northwestern University. www.zayddohrn.com.
Clare Barron (Playwright, a boy put this girl in a cage with a dog and the dog killed the girl) Clare Barron is a playwright and performer from Wenatchee, Washington. Her plays include You Got Older, which received its world premiere last fall with Page 73, directed by Anne Kauffman, and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize; Baby Screams Miracle (Clubbed Thumb Summerworks); “Solar Plexus” (EST’s Marathon of One-Act Plays); and Dirty Crusty. She is the recipient of the 2014 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship, the Paula Vogel Award at the Vineyard, and Sloan commissions from EST and MTC for new plays about science. She is a member of Youngblood, an Affiliated Artist with Target Margin, an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and is currently pursuing her MFA at Brooklyn College. As an actor, Clare appeared in the world premiere of Heidi Schreck’s The Consultant (Long Wharf) and traveled to Beirut to play Mae in an Arabic-English production of María Irene Fornés’ Mud.
Meghan Kennedy (Playwright, Talk To Me of Love) Meghan Kennedy is a playwright out of Brooklyn. Meghan’s play Too Much, Too Much, Too Many received its world premiere at the Roundabout Theater in New York in 2014 with a cast led by James Rebhorn. Dramatists Play Service recently published the play. Meghan is currently developing a newly commissioned play Talk To Me of Love for the Roundabout. She is also under commission from The New York State Council of the Arts/New Georges Theater in New York. Her play Light is the winner of the 2012 David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize. Her newest play Heavenly Cosmic was recently workshopped at Ars Nova Theater in New York. Meghan’s plays have been developed and produced around the U.S., Sweden and Ireland. She is a three-time nominee for the Suzan Smith Blackburn Prize, was a Core Apprentice at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis and was a member of the Page 73 writing group, Interstate 73. She is a current member of the Ars Nova Play Group.
Colman Domingo (Playwright, The Brother(s)) Colman Domingo’s new play Dot received its world premiere at the Humana Festival directed by Meredith McDonough this past spring. Dot will premiere Off Broadway at The Vineyard Theater directed by Susan Stroman. Mr. Domingo’s plays have been produced by The Vineyard Theater, Public Theater, Baltimore Centerstage, Tricycle Theater (London), Brisbane Powerhouse (Australia) and Theatreworks among others. He recently directed A Band of Angels for New York City Children’s Theater and will helm August Wilson’s Seven Guitars for Actors Theater of Louisville. The West End and Broadway actor is an Olivier, Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League nominated, OBIE, Lortel and GLAAD award winning artist. Mr. Domingo is on the board of The Vineyard Theater and is a NYTW Usual Suspect. Colman recently co-starred in the Academy Award nominated film Selma as Ralph David Abernathy.
Paul Scott Goodman (Composer/Writer, Open Road) – Born and raised in Glasgow, moved to London and then L.A. before settling in NYC in 1984. Produced work includes: Alive in the World; Bright Lights Big City; ROOMS: A Rock Romance (book co-written with Miriam Gordon, Outer Critics Circle Best Score nomination); G-d Save the New Wave; Son of A Stand Up Comedian; Domestica. He lives and works in Soho, New York.
Joseph Hendel (Writer, Open Road) is a director, writer, and performer based in NYC. Directing: The Inner Circle, a new opera by Daniel Felsenfeld (The Brick Theater’s “F*ckfest”), The Roundheads and Peakheads by Brecht (Moonrover, Brooklyn), Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe (Georgetown Gilbert and Sullivan Society), and readings of new plays at LAByrinth Theater and the cell. He is the writer/director of Beware the Ides of Monday, a mashup of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and Julius Caesar that premiered at the cell in 2014, and is finishing up writing a new play which he will direct in Gniezno, Poland later in 2015. He is a student of master clown/commedia teacher Chris Bayes, and performs weekly with the musical improv group Aquarius at the Magnet Theater in Manhattan. He holds a B.A. in Music from Yale University.
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