COME JOIN US VIRTUALLY! FOR READINGS OF NEW PLAYS AND SCREENPLAYS CURATED AND CAST BY FULLER ROAD ALUMS AND GUESTS via ZOOM! Each reading benefitS a charitable organization chosen by the featured playwright.
Finding opportunity in the midst of momentous times!!
NEXT UP: "The Difference Between Big Girls and Little Girls" by Serena Berman
on Sunday, May 3rd from 5 to 7.
Directed by Jackson Gay. Stage managed by technical wizard Rob Chikar. Our terrific cast includes: Heidi Armbruster, Georgia K. Cohen, Andrea Negrate, and Emma Yaniger. For each reading we will encourage donations for a different charitable organization chosen by our featured playwright.
Serena has chose to help raise funds and awareness for The Urban Justice Center's #Homeless Can't Stay Home Project.
Please join us for the free reading of this amazing play and consider donating to this fundraiser.
Seating is limited so registration is required.
When: May 3, 2020 05:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/…/register/WN_hax_Y4dfSTW-RPnqLlyMiw
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
Serena Berman is a playwright, actress, and producer. Her work has been developed with Ars Nova (Play Group 2019-2020), Westport Country Playhouse, Williamstown Theater Festival, Less Than Rent, and more. She was a semifinalist for the 2020 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship and a two time finalist at the Samuel French OOB Festival. She is currently Director of Performance at LES gallery Chinatown Soup, where she produces theatre and organizes political activism events. As an actor, favorite credits include Set it Up (Netflix), Diaspora (NY Premiere), Murder at the Gates (Steven Sater), and Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales (Voice of Lucy – ABC). BFA NYU Tisch. www.serenaberman.com
The 2018 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Drama goes to.....
Martyna Majok
Cost of Living
An honest, original work that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection through two pairs of mismatched individuals: a former trucker and his recently paralyzed ex-wife, and an arrogant young man with cerebral palsy and his new caregiver.
New Neighborhood is coming to Fuller Road Artist Residency to work on Invictus Mingus by Frank Harts, May 23-29, 2017, with Jackson Gay, Christopher Geary, and Nicholas Hussong!
About Invictus Mingus (working title)
It’s 1966. Tomorrow legendary Jazz maestro Charles Mingus is to be evicted from his cluttered New York City apartment. Tonight though he drinks wine; cuts up with his crew on the bass and talks love, Hitler, racism, and politics with a twenty-something Jewish documentary filmmaker. This while his five-year old bi-racial daughter plays in piles of treasure and junk absorbing it all.
FULLER ROAD announces the 2014 artists for two consecutive female theater directors of color artist residencies.
(Nov. 17, 2014, Newbury, VT). Fuller Road, a new non-profit artist residency program located in Newbury, VT announced the slate of artists for its 2014 inaugural residencies devoted to female directors of color.
The directors chosen for Fuller Road’s two inaugural retreats are Elena Araoz (New York), Jennifer Chang (Los Angeles), Leah C. Gardiner (New York), Kym Moore (Rhode Island), Lisa Portes (Chicago), Colette Robert (New York), Diane Rodriguez (Los Angeles) and Laurie Woolery (New York). Fuller Road will host two consecutive residencies running from Dec. 3 - Dec. 7 and Dec. 10 - Dec. 14, 2014.
“Directing can be a solitary endeavor,” said Jackson Gay, who co-founded Fuller Road with fellow artists Dan Butler and Richard Waterhouse. “Rarely do you find yourself in the same room with other directors where the focus and care is on you - both personally and artistically. The American directing field can be especially challenging for women and artists of color, which is why we chose to design our inaugural residencies for these theater professionals.”
“The director retreats are intended to foster lively group interaction and to present individual work for feedback and director driven exploration, using their fellow Fuller Road directors as actors and dramaturgs” said Fuller Road co-founder and director Jackson Gay.
Joining the Fuller Road Female Directors of Color residencies will be will special guest artists who will lead sessions in their area of expertise. Inaugural Fuller Road Guest Artists are Maria Goyanes, Associate Producer, Public Theater; Jennifer Kiger, Associate Artistic Director, Yale Repertory Theatre and Director of New Play Programs of Yale’s Binger Center for New Theatre; Liesl Tommy, Freelance Director and Associate Director at Berkeley Rep; and Stephanie Ybarra, Director of Special Artistic Projects, Public Theater and Producing Artistic Director for Cherry Lane’s Mentor Project.
Participants were nominated from across the United States by a committee that includes, among others, David Henry Hwang, Philip Himberg, Robert O’Hara, and Chay Yew.
(Nov. 17, 2014, Newbury, VT). Fuller Road, a new non-profit artist residency program located in Newbury, VT announced the slate of artists for its 2014 inaugural residencies devoted to female directors of color.
The directors chosen for Fuller Road’s two inaugural retreats are Elena Araoz (New York), Jennifer Chang (Los Angeles), Leah C. Gardiner (New York), Kym Moore (Rhode Island), Lisa Portes (Chicago), Colette Robert (New York), Diane Rodriguez (Los Angeles) and Laurie Woolery (New York). Fuller Road will host two consecutive residencies running from Dec. 3 - Dec. 7 and Dec. 10 - Dec. 14, 2014.
“Directing can be a solitary endeavor,” said Jackson Gay, who co-founded Fuller Road with fellow artists Dan Butler and Richard Waterhouse. “Rarely do you find yourself in the same room with other directors where the focus and care is on you - both personally and artistically. The American directing field can be especially challenging for women and artists of color, which is why we chose to design our inaugural residencies for these theater professionals.”
“The director retreats are intended to foster lively group interaction and to present individual work for feedback and director driven exploration, using their fellow Fuller Road directors as actors and dramaturgs” said Fuller Road co-founder and director Jackson Gay.
Joining the Fuller Road Female Directors of Color residencies will be will special guest artists who will lead sessions in their area of expertise. Inaugural Fuller Road Guest Artists are Maria Goyanes, Associate Producer, Public Theater; Jennifer Kiger, Associate Artistic Director, Yale Repertory Theatre and Director of New Play Programs of Yale’s Binger Center for New Theatre; Liesl Tommy, Freelance Director and Associate Director at Berkeley Rep; and Stephanie Ybarra, Director of Special Artistic Projects, Public Theater and Producing Artistic Director for Cherry Lane’s Mentor Project.
Participants were nominated from across the United States by a committee that includes, among others, David Henry Hwang, Philip Himberg, Robert O’Hara, and Chay Yew.
About the Directors
Elena Araoz directs theater and opera. Recent productions include Mac Wellman’s Wu World Woo and Horrocks and Toutatis too (Sleeping Weazel at ArtsEmerson), Architecture of Becoming by Kara Corthron, Sarah Gancher, Virginia Grise, Dipika Guha, and Lauren Yee (Women’s Project at City Center), Natalia Naman’s Lawnpeople (Cherry Lane Mentor Project), Lucia di Lammermoor (Opera North), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Prague Shakespeare Festival), La traviata (New York City Opera at BAM, original production by Sir Jonathan Miller), Falstaff (Brooklyn Philharmonic at BAM), Latin Lovers (Glimmerglass Opera), Li Tong's The Power (Beijing), The Price (Northern Stage), Naomi Wallace’s The Fever Chart (Underground Railway Theatre), Carl Djerassi’s plays Phallacy and Three on a Couch (Redshift Productions), Jaclyn Villano’s plays The Company We Keep (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre) and Unanswered, We Ride (Edinburgh Fringe). War Music (which Araoz adapted from Christopher Logue, staging the bloodiest scenes from the Trojan War) was commissioned by Aurea Ensemble and performed at FirstWorks Festival, New York Institute for the Humanities, and Chicago Humanities Festival. Upcoming, Elena has been commissioned to write and direct a new script for The Rose Theatre in Omaha, she is developing two devised pieces as part of her 2050 Fellowship at New York Theatre Workshop, and she is co-directing a new opera which will have its first workshop with New Georges’ Audrey Residency. New play workshops include Megastasis by Kia Corthron (Yale University, Brooklyn New Works, and upcoming New York Theatre Workshop), Tiny People by Christopher Oscar Peña (Two River Theatre), River of Gruel by Sibyl Kempson (New Dramatists), Madame Ho by Eugenie Chan (Great Plains Theatre Conference), Hilary Bettis’ plays Dakota Atoll (New York Theatre Workshop), Mexico (Project Y), and Alligator (Great Plains Theatre Conference), and upcoming Obra Negra by Flavio González Mello translated by Carmen Rivera (Lark’s México/US Exchange). www.elenaaraoz.com
Jennifer Chang is a founding member and the Artistic Producing Director of Chalk Repertory Theatre. Most recently, she directed LA Times Critic's Choice, Animals Out of Paper by Rajiv Joseph for East West Players. For the Chalk Rep she has directed Lady Windermere's Fan, Gallery Secrets: Prom Season, The Debate Over Courtney O'Connell of Columbus, Nebraska, and acted in various FLASH Festivals,Hell Money, Stray, and Three Sisters. Other directing credits include: Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them (Artists at Play), Fortinbras (USC) and Our American Story (Japanese American National Museum and East West Players Educational Tour). As an actor, she has worked with East West Players, South Coast Rep,Company of Angels, Mixed Blood Theatre, Fulton Opera House, and the National Asian American Theatre Company, among others. You can also see her in Film/TV and Commercials. Education: MFA, UCSD/ La Jolla Playhouse. BFA, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Proud member of SDC, AEA, SAG-AFTRA. She was a semifinalist for CTG's Richard Sherwood Award. www.changinator.com
Leah C. Gardiner New York theater credits include: generations(Soho Rep); Pitbulls (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater); The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Atlantic Theater Company); Born Bad (Soho Rep, U.S. premiere, Obie Award); Kent, CT (Zipper Theater); The Ghost of Enoch Charlton (Keen Company); Bulrusher (Urban Stages, World Premiere and Pulitzer finalist). National: Antony and Cleopatra, Othello (Houston Shakespeare Festival); By the Way Meet Vera Stark (Alliance Theater); Fences (Oregon Shakespeare Festival);Sucker Punch (Studio Theatre, U.S. Premiere); Clementine in the Lower Nine(TheatreWorks, World Premiere, top 10, 2012); The Last Five Years (Crossroads Theatre Company); A Streetcar Named Desire (Pillsbury House Theatre); Piano Lesson (Madison Rep); Blue Door (South Coast Repertory, World Premiere and Pulitzer finalist); Topdog/Underdog (Philadelphia Theatre Company); Birdie Blue(City Theatre); Orange Flower Water (Contemporary American Theatre Festival); The Flag Maker of Market Street (World Premiere, Alabama Shakespeare Festival); Angels in America, Parts I and II (Connecticut Repertory Theatre); (Re-staging Director) Broadway’s The Normal Heart (Arena Stage, American Conservatory Theater); National Tour, Wit (Kennedy Center, Ordway, among others). Writer, Director: Cultures Collide (Sony Entertainment); Short Film Director: The Belle of New Orleans (Alliance Theater); Film producer: Mother of George, best cinematography, Sundance, 2012. Ms. Gardiner holds an M.F.A. in Directing from the Yale School of Drama.
Kym Moore is co-founder and artistic director of The AntiGravity Theatre Project in Providence, RI. Recent directing credits include: Hype Hero by Dominic Taylor (Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference), The Gospel of Loving Kindness by Marcus Gardley at Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory; Yermedea Rawby Erik Ehn, The Factory Theatre (Boston), 95 Empire Black Box (Providence) & La Mama E.T.C. (NYC) where the production was hailed in the New York Times for its "haunting images,” as well as "energizing and frightening" performances. She directed Daniel Alexander Jones' Jomama Jones Radiate, which were the 2010 New York Times and Backstage Critics' Pick. In 2003 Pen and Brush Inc. awarded Kymfirst prize for her play, The Date. She is currently developing Time's Up, a new multimedia performance in collaboration with media artist/composer, Todd Winkler. This bold new work premieres at the Granoff Creative Arts Center at Brown University in May 2015. Recent Brown University theatre directing credits include:Hype Hero, Passing Strange, Funnyhouse of a Negro, The Other Shore, The Cook, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, and Pippin, which was recognized by Broadway World.com as one of the most “whacky and innovative” interpretations of that musical worldwide. Kym is an associate member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, the Lincoln Center Theater Director’s Lab, and serves on the faculty of the TAPS department at Brown University.
For more information please visit Kym Moore’s website: www.kymmoore.com & http://theantigravityproject.wordpress.com/
For more information please visit Kym Moore’s website: www.kymmoore.com & http://theantigravityproject.wordpress.com/
Lisa Portes is a Cuban-American director, educator and administrator dedicated to creating a 21st century theatre that incites our curiosity about this great, complex, poly-cultural world. Lisa heads the MFA Directing Program at The Theatre School at DePaul University and serves as Artistic Director of Chicago Playworks for Families and Young Audiences. Formerly she served as Associate Artistic Director of Soho Rep, Artistic Director of Theater E in San Diego and Associate Director of The Who’s Tommy. Lisa is a founding member of the Latina/o Theatre Commons. She has directed and developed work at Steppenwolf Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, Northlight Theatre, McCarter Theater Lab, Playwrights Horizons, the Public Theatre, Sundance Theatre Lab, the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference, South Coast Repertory Theatre’s Hispanic Playwrights Project, Timeline Theatre, American Blues Theatre, Silk Road Rising, Teatro Vista, Rivendell Ensemble and Next Theatre. Lisa received her B.A. in Theater from Oberlin College and her MFA in Directing from the University of California, San Diego. She is a current participant in the TCG SPARK Leadership program. Other awards include the NEA/TCG Career Development Grant, the Drama League Directors Fellowship and a Fulbright/Hays Fellowship. Lisa lives in Chicago with her husband, playwright, Carlos Murillo and their two children, Eva Rose and Carlos Alejandro.
Colette Robert is a Los Angeles native currently living and working in New York.
Recent directing credits include: Something Like Loneliness (EST Marathon), when last we flew (Diversionary Theatre, FringeNYC, GLAAD Media Award), Pluck & Tenacity (Samuel French Festival Winner) and Stockton (EST/Unfiltered). Assistant directing credits include: Appropriate (Signature Theatre), Urge for Going (Public LAB), Father Comes Home from the Wars Parts 1, 8, & 9 (Public LAB), Angela’s Mixtape (New Georges/Hip Hop Theater Festival), and The Good Negro (The Public).
Colette is a proud member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, New Georges Jam, Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, and was the Public Theater’s 2009 Van Lier Directing Fellow.
She has developed new work with EST/Youngblood, Naked Angels, The 52nd Street Project, Classical Theatre of Harlem, The Old Vic, Ma-Yi, 2g, Vineyard Arts Project, P73, Ars Nova, Women Center Stage, National Black Theatre, Space at Ryder Farm, and Sundance Theatre Lab. M.A., RADA and King’s College, London. B.A., Yale University. www.coletterobert.com
Recent directing credits include: Something Like Loneliness (EST Marathon), when last we flew (Diversionary Theatre, FringeNYC, GLAAD Media Award), Pluck & Tenacity (Samuel French Festival Winner) and Stockton (EST/Unfiltered). Assistant directing credits include: Appropriate (Signature Theatre), Urge for Going (Public LAB), Father Comes Home from the Wars Parts 1, 8, & 9 (Public LAB), Angela’s Mixtape (New Georges/Hip Hop Theater Festival), and The Good Negro (The Public).
Colette is a proud member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, New Georges Jam, Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, and was the Public Theater’s 2009 Van Lier Directing Fellow.
She has developed new work with EST/Youngblood, Naked Angels, The 52nd Street Project, Classical Theatre of Harlem, The Old Vic, Ma-Yi, 2g, Vineyard Arts Project, P73, Ars Nova, Women Center Stage, National Black Theatre, Space at Ryder Farm, and Sundance Theatre Lab. M.A., RADA and King’s College, London. B.A., Yale University. www.coletterobert.com
Diane Rodriguez
Regional: Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage and Pyretown by John Belluso / City Theatre, Pittsburgh; Hortenisa and the Museum of Dreams by Nilo Cruz/ Victory Gardens, Chicago; Bordertown by Culture Clash (Arizoni Theatre Award Nomination Best Director) and Spic- a- Rama by John Leguizamo (Arizoni Theatre Award Nomination Best Director)/ Actors’ Theatre of Phoenix, Az.; Wait Until Dark/Mixed Blood Theatre Minneapolis; Inside Out, Book Doug Haverty /Lyrics Haverty/Adryan Russ and Our Lady of the Tortilla, Luis Santiero /Phoenix Theatre/Arizona; Heroes and Saints by Cherrie Moraga/ Borderlands Theatre; Los Angeles: Highest Heaven by Jose Cruz Gonzales; Drive My Coche by Roy Conboy; Gaytino by Dan Guerrero/Center Theatre group; La Posada Majica (4 seasons) by Octavio Solis South Coast Repertory; Good Person of Setzuan by Bertolt Brecht adapted by Tony Kusher California Institute for the Arts; Los Vecinos, A Play for Neighbors by Luis Alfaro and Diane Rodriguez Cornerstone Theatre; The Have Little by Migdalia Cruz The Group at Strasberg Sick by Erik Patterson, Playwrights Arena (LA Weekly Best Director Nominee) ; Cave Quest by Les Thomas, East West Players. In addition she’s developed the work of Lloyd Suh and Sean Lewis at Ojai Playwrights Conference, Jacqueline Lawton at Pasadena Playhouse, Oliver Mayer at Center Theatre Group, Annie Weisman at South Coast Repertory, Jessica Goldberg at Hartford Stage, among many others. Diane is Associate Artistic Director at Center Theatre Group. From 2005-2014 she was Associate Producer/Director of New Play Production (NPP) at CTG. Under her tenure NPP received two-one million dollar awards from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the support and development of new work from ensembles or collective creators. She received the 2007 Villiage Voice Obie for Performance along with fellow cast members for A Tale of Two Cities/An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks (Best Ensemble) that premiered at UCLA Live and at PS 122 in New York City. Currently she is President of the Theatre Communications Group board and lives with her husband Jose Delgado in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles.
Regional: Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage and Pyretown by John Belluso / City Theatre, Pittsburgh; Hortenisa and the Museum of Dreams by Nilo Cruz/ Victory Gardens, Chicago; Bordertown by Culture Clash (Arizoni Theatre Award Nomination Best Director) and Spic- a- Rama by John Leguizamo (Arizoni Theatre Award Nomination Best Director)/ Actors’ Theatre of Phoenix, Az.; Wait Until Dark/Mixed Blood Theatre Minneapolis; Inside Out, Book Doug Haverty /Lyrics Haverty/Adryan Russ and Our Lady of the Tortilla, Luis Santiero /Phoenix Theatre/Arizona; Heroes and Saints by Cherrie Moraga/ Borderlands Theatre; Los Angeles: Highest Heaven by Jose Cruz Gonzales; Drive My Coche by Roy Conboy; Gaytino by Dan Guerrero/Center Theatre group; La Posada Majica (4 seasons) by Octavio Solis South Coast Repertory; Good Person of Setzuan by Bertolt Brecht adapted by Tony Kusher California Institute for the Arts; Los Vecinos, A Play for Neighbors by Luis Alfaro and Diane Rodriguez Cornerstone Theatre; The Have Little by Migdalia Cruz The Group at Strasberg Sick by Erik Patterson, Playwrights Arena (LA Weekly Best Director Nominee) ; Cave Quest by Les Thomas, East West Players. In addition she’s developed the work of Lloyd Suh and Sean Lewis at Ojai Playwrights Conference, Jacqueline Lawton at Pasadena Playhouse, Oliver Mayer at Center Theatre Group, Annie Weisman at South Coast Repertory, Jessica Goldberg at Hartford Stage, among many others. Diane is Associate Artistic Director at Center Theatre Group. From 2005-2014 she was Associate Producer/Director of New Play Production (NPP) at CTG. Under her tenure NPP received two-one million dollar awards from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the support and development of new work from ensembles or collective creators. She received the 2007 Villiage Voice Obie for Performance along with fellow cast members for A Tale of Two Cities/An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks (Best Ensemble) that premiered at UCLA Live and at PS 122 in New York City. Currently she is President of the Theatre Communications Group board and lives with her husband Jose Delgado in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles.
Laurie Woolery is a director, playwright, educator, community organizer, facilitator and producer who has worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Goodman Theatre, Cornerstone Theater Company, South Coast Repertory, Mark Taper Forum, Denver Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic, East West Players, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Inge Center for the Arts, Plaza de la Raza/RedCAT, Fountain Theater, Greenway Center for the Arts, Ricardo Montalban Theatre, Deaf-West Theatre, Highways Performance Space, Sundance Playwrights Lab as well as the Sundance Children's Theater. Laurie has developed and directed new works with diverse communities ranging from incarcerated women to residents of a small Kansas town 95% devastated by a tornado. Laurie creates site-specific work that range from a working sawmill in Eureka, California to the banks of the Los Angeles River. Laurie curated and produced a two-week festival exploring issues of hunger that brought artists, activists, community and thought leaders together. This festival “Creative Seeds” threw open the doors of Cornerstone’s methodology of community art making and invited the city of Los Angeles to engage in envisioning Cornerstone’s next cycle plays focusing on food justice, scarcity/abundance, urban/rural farmers, addiction, community gardens, and institutional food. Programming ranged from working in the fields harvesting food, planting community gardens, working soup kitchens, gathering stories through our mobile story unit, inviting community to dine at our block long dinner table to commissioning LA artists to create new work that was produced around the city. Laurie’s solo play Salvadorian Moon/African Sky was commissioned by Cornerstone Theater Company and performed in their city wide Festival of Faith. As a playwright, Laurie’s plays have been produced and tour throughout Southern California. Ms. Woolery is the former Associate Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theater Company, Theatre Conservatory Director at South Coast Repertory and former artist-in-residence at Hollygrove Children’s Home in Los Angeles. Laurie is teaches at USC, Cal Arts, Citrus College, California State University at Northridge, California State University at Los Angeles and serves on the Board of the Latino Producers Action Network, Network of Ensemble Theaters and the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America.
About the Guest Artists
Maria Goyanes is currently the Public Theater’s Associate Producer, where she is responsible for producing a full season of plays and musicals in a five-theater venue at Astor Place and the Delacorte Theater for Shakespeare in the Park. Previously she served as the Director of Special Projects at the Public, where she worked on the development and cultivation of new plays and initiatives that supported the work of a wide range of artists.For the Public, she spearheaded the Suzan-Lori Parks' yearlong “365 Days/365 Plays” festival for New York City, working with 70 theater companies and over a thousand artists. She was the Executive Producer of the OBIE Award-winning 13P (13 Playwrights, Inc.), a 13 play project founded with a collective of writers that includes Sarah Ruhl, Young Jean Lee, Anne Washburn, Lucy Thurber, and Sheila Callaghan that fulfilled its mission and imploded in the Summer of 2012. She is the recipient of the Josephine Abady Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women and was previously the Associate Producer at Trinity Repertory Company under Oskar Eustis. Maria is a proud first generation American of Spanish and Dominican descent, hailing from Queens, NY.
Jennifer Kiger is in her tenth year as Associate Artistic Director of Yale Repertory Theatre and is also the Director of New Play Programs of Yale’s Binger Center for New Theatre, an artist-driven initiative that supports the creation of new work for the American stage through commissions, residencies, workshops, and productions. Since its founding in 2008, the Binger Center has supported the work of more than 40 commissioned artists and underwritten the world premieres and subsequent productions of 18 new American plays and musicals at Yale Rep and theatres across the country. Ms. Kiger came to Yale Rep from South Coast Repertory, where she was Literary Manager from 2000–2005 and served as Co-Director of the Pacific Playwrights Festival. She was dramaturg for more than 40 new plays at SCR. Prior to that, she served as production dramaturg at American Repertory Theatre, collaborating with directors Robert Brustein, Robert Woodruff, Liz Diamond, and Kate Whoriskey. She adapted Robert Coover’s Charlie in the House of Rue and Mac Wellman’s Hypatia for the stage with director Bob McGrath. She has been a dramaturg for the Playwrights Center of Minneapolis and Boston Theatre Works and a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council. Ms. Kiger completed her training at the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University, where she taught courses in acting and dramatic arts. She is currently on the playwriting faculty of Yale School of Drama.
Liesl Tommy: Off-Broadway: Appropriate (Obie Award; Signature Theatre, Woolly Mammoth), The Good Negro (The Public Theater, Dallas Theater Center), Angela’s Mixtape (Synchronicity Performance Group, New Georges), A Stone’s Throw (Women’s Project). Regional/international: Les Miserables (Dallas Theater Center), Party People (OSF, Berkeley Rep), The White Man – A Complex Declaration of Love (DanskDansk Theatre, Denmark), Peggy Picket Sees the Face of God (Luminato Festival/Canadian Stage), Eclipsed (Yale Rep, Woolly Mammoth), A History of Light (Contemporary American Theatre Festival), Hamlet (California Shakespeare), A Raisin in the Sun, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Huntington), American Buffalo (Baltimore Centre Stage), He is Here He Says I Say (Sundance East Africa), The Piano Lesson (Yale Rep), Ruined (OSF, La Jolla, Huntington, Berkeley Rep), Crimes of the Heart(McCarter), Book of Life (Sundance East Africa), Yankee Tavern, Stick Fly (CATF), A Christmas Carol (Trinity Rep). Liesl is an Artist Trustee on the Sundance Institute Board, a Program Associate at Sundance Institute Theatre program and the Associate Director at Berkeley Rep. She was awarded the inaugural Susan Stroman Directing Award from the Vineyard Theater, the NEA/TCG Directors Grant and the New York Theatre Workshop Casting/Directing Fellowship. Liesl has guest directed at Juilliard, Trinity Rep/Brown University’s MFA Directing Program, The Strasberg Institute, and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Liesl is a proud alum of Trinity Rep Conservatory. She is a native of Cape Town, South Africa.
Stephanie Ybarra is currently Director of Special Artistic Projects at The Public Theatre, where she leads the Mobile Shakespeare Unit, and produces the Public Forum, Public Lab, and mainstage productions. Stephanie also serves as the Producing Artistic Director for the Cherry Lane’s Mentor Project and Casting Director for Two River Theatre’s Crossing Border’s Festival. Associate Managing Director of New Play Production at Yale Repertory Theatre and Interim General Manager for Two River Theatre Company round out her tri-state credits. Stephanie made her New York producing debut in 2007 with the original production of Tarell McCraney’s The Brothers Size at the Public Theatre’s Under the Radar Festival, for which she received the inaugural Producer’s Chair Award from the Foundry Theatre. Since then she served as Producing Director for Playwrights Realm, and has produced for HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova’s A.N.T. Fest, Studio 42, and INTAR. In 2012, Stephanie was awarded the Josephine Abady Award for producing from New York’s League of Professional Theatre Women, and is an alumnae of the Women’s Project Producer’s Lab.