LA MAMA - Key Persons
Agosto Machado first met Ellen Stewart in 1961 and is one of her oldest living "Babies." At La MaMa, Machado has performed work by Jackie Curtis, John Vaccaro's Play House of the Ridiculous, H.M. Koutoukas, Jeff Weiss, Paul Foster, Charles Allcroft, Jim Neu, Chris Tanner and finally John Jesurun. A lifelong friend of Mario Montez, the two performed together in work by Jackie Curtis and Jack Smith. In Machado's words, "I feel so blessed."
AGOSTO MACHADO We have learned over the years of the Coffeehouse Chronicles that he has an intimate knowledge of and connection to nearly every speaker and group presented. Among his favorites he names Jeff Weiss, H.M. Koutoukas, Jackie Curtis, Jim Neu, Charles Allcroft, Chris Tanner and the late Great Ethyl Eichelberger. Plus he does a wicked good impersonation of the late Ellen Stewart…
AIDAN HART is a senior at NYU Tisch, and would like to thank his friends and family for their support, La Mama for the opportunity, and everyone involved in MUD for a gorgeous process.
Alejandro Rodríguez, aka Lady Quesa'Dilla, is a native Tejan@ from the El Paso and Ciudad Juárez border. Their work is at the intersection of cultural identity, drag, and community. The Brown Queen, an autobiographical solo performance about growing up queer in the southwest, premiered at HERE Arts Center in the spring of 2010. Recent solo performances include My Tia Lupe and The Faggot in the Pink House. Rodríguez has performed in New York City, El Paso, Chiapas, and Montreal. Rodríguez is a member of The House of Bushwig, as Lady Quesa'Dilla, duties include Volunteer Coordinator for the annual Bushwig Festival. Rodríguez is an Information and Referral Specialist at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center in Manhattan; and is a Teaching Artist in the Bronx and in Brooklyn. Rodríguez holds a BA in Theater from The New School for Liberal Arts, and an MA in Performance Studies from New York University, and is an alum of The Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics. Lady Quesa'Dilla was the 2014 Miss Coney Island Queen of Drag.
Job Titles:
- Digital Marketing Manager
Job Titles:
- Financial Consultant / PARENTE DEVELOPMENT, LLC
ANN PELLEGRINI is Professor of Performance Studies and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Her books include Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race and Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (cowritten with Janet R. Jakobsen). Her most recent book - "You Can Tell Just By Looking" and 20 Other Myths About LGBT Life and People (cowritten with Michael Bronski and Michael Amico) - was a finalist for the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Non-fiction. She is also co-editor of the "Sexual Cultures" book series at New York University Press. She enjoys psychoanalysis and show tunes, and performed in "Otherwise: Queer Scholarship Into Song" (conceived and directed by Kay Turner) at Dixon Place (2013) and Joe's Pub (2016).
Job Titles:
- Professor of Theatre at Columbia University
Arnold Aronson is a professor of theatre at Columbia University in New York City. He writes on scenography and contemporary theatre. Books include The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography (revised 2nd edition), The Routledge Companion to Scenography (editor); Ming Cho Lee: A Life in Design; Looking into the Abyss: Essays on Scenography; and American Avant-Garde Theatre: A History. He has contributed chapters to several books on various aspects of theatre, and his articles have appeared in the New York Times, American Theatre, The Drama Review, Performance Research, and numerous scholarly journals in the US and abroad. Professor Aronson is a former editor of Theatre Design & Technology, and currently co-editor of Theatre and Performance Design. He has a long history with the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Space and Design, serving as President of the Jury in 1991 and 1999, curator of the U.S. exhibit in 1995, and General Commissioner in 2007.
Barbara Maier Gustern is an international known voice teacher, singer/actor, director who numbers among her students icons Debbie Harry, Diamond Galas, and John Kelly. Currently she is the vocal coach for Broady's Oklahoma. But the high light of her career is teaching Taylor Mac, especially having prepared for the 24 Hour epic and playing Mother in the production.
Ben Stroman: NYC: Perfect Teeth; The Angels of Mons. Tour: We The People (Theatreworks/USA). Regional: A Midsummer Night's Dream (St. Louis Rep). London: Henry V (RADA). Ben is currently directing The Man In The Blue Shirt (Short Film). He studied at the Webster Conservatory and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
BERNICE BROOKS (Drums) is a drummer, television producer and teaching artist. She is without a doubt one of the most versatile female drummer locally, nationally and internationally. After studying at the Conservatory of Music in Chicago with various teachers and instructors, she went on to hone her skills at various venues with different musical directors, leaders, bands and groups internationally. She has produced a television show for the last twenty years on bricartsmedia.org. titled "The Bernice Brooks Show". She has played in many commercials, theatre and many recordings. She has a long list of artists and performers that she has opened for or played with, including Shelia E., The O'Jays, Ray Charles, Tito Puente, Bill Withers, Elvis Costello, Joanne Brackeen, Etta James, Gregory Hines, Savion Glover and many others greats of Gospel, Jazz, Blues and R&B. She has been touring with MacArthur Fellow Taylor Mac for the last four years.
Bibbe Hansen is a performance artist, actress and musician. She is the daughter of Fluxus artist Al Hansen, and the mother of artist Channing Hansen and the pop musician Beck. A longtime participant in avant-garde, contemporary art communities, as a youngster Bibbe made films with Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas and released a pop record with Jan Kerouac. Currently a member of the virtual reality performance group Second Front, Hansen is writing a memoir, and she teaches and lectures on art and the creative process. Hansen read the part of Fidel alongside Mario Montez as Juanita in a 2009 staging of Ronald Tavel's The Life of Juanita Castro at Berlin's Hebbel-am-Ufer (HAU). Bibbe is represented by Gracie Mansion Gallery in New York.
Job Titles:
- Member of Charles Ludlam 's Ridiculous Theatrical Company
John Hagan has appeared in "Chang in a Void Moon" since 1983, as well as in many other plays by John Jesurun. He also has performed in works by Robert Ashley, Steve Buscemi, Sanghi Choi, DANCENOISE, Richard Foreman, Mimi Goese, Caleb Hammond, Yolanda Hawkins, William Niederkorn and Stuart Sherman among others. He can be seen as the patient taking an hallucinogenic journey in Aaron Siegel's video opera, "Tea Before You Go" (available on Vimeo and YouTube).
Black Eyed Susan is an original member of Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company and received a Villager Award and an Obie for Sustained Achievement for her work with the Company. She has also appeared in productions by Ethyl Eichelberger, Stuart Sherman, Mabou Mines, Roslyn Drexler, Jim Neu, Charles Allcroft, Samuel Beckett, Stephanie Fleischmann, John Jahnke, Christina Campanella/Stephanie Fleischmann, and Mallory Catlett.
Bob Holman has acted at La MaMa with the Creation Company and Yara Arts, where he created the title role of Captain John Smith Goes to Ukraine. His solo show, Panic*DJ!, had a run at the Club, and for several years he produced and directed Poets Theater Festivals here in conjunction with the St Marks Poetry Project. He is the founder of the Bowery Poetry Club and co-founded the Endangered Language Alliance, has taught at Columbia, NYU, Princeton and others, and has published numerous books/videos/CDs. His documentaries include Language Matters (currently streaming on PBS), The United States of Poetry, Words In Your Face, and MTV Spoken Word Unplugged. He has worked with Ralph and Casey and the Mettawee River Company since the mid-70s.
Brian Belovitch has appeared on New York stages for more than three decades. Recently he was Alice, First Lady of Earth in Charles Ludlam's Conquest of the Universe or When Queens Collide at LaMama to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Ridiculous Theatre. His Ridiculous debut was as Lamia, the Leopard Woman in Ludlam's Bluebeard. Belovitch is a 2000 GLAAD award nominee for his Off-Broadway autobiographical play Boys Don't Wear Lipstick. He has worked alongside legendary East Village artists and performers including Penny Arcade, Anthony Ingrassia, Pork, Sweet Dreams, Lypsinka (John Epperson), Ballet of The Dolls, and Hapi Phace. Brian founded Queer Stages, an LGBTQ play reading group that revisits historical and groundbreaking works. In film and television, Belovitch has appeared in The Irishman, Nor'easter, Silent Prey, Q&A, The Deuce, Homeland, and The Americans. His forthcoming memoir Trans Figured: My Journey from Boy to Girl to Woman to Man will be published by Skyhorse in Fall 2018.
Carmelita Tropicana, a persona born at the WOW Café, is a writer and performer. Her works have been presented nationally and internationally including: The Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Performance Space, New York; and Vermont Performance Lab, Vermont. Tropicana's awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Obie award, Anonymous was a Woman, and a Creative Capital grant for a collaboration with Branden Jacobs Jenkins. She is an editor with Holly Hughes and Jill Dolan of Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the WOW Café Theater. Her longtime collaborators are film makers/directors Ela Troyano and Uzi Parnes.
Carol Nelson has been doing theatre in NYC for many years, appearing in many venues. She has worked at LaMama, Theatre for the New City, Irish Repertory Company and Wings Theatre. She was a founding member of the 4th E. Theatre Company which worked on East 4th Street for many years. She has originated roles in plays by Robert Patrick, Terry Talley and Clint Jeffries. Also, and favorite, she appeared in many plays written for her by her late husband of 31 years, playwright Steven Nelson.
CHING VALDES-ARAN started out as a dancer and has evolved into acting/directing. She has worked internationally, regionally and extensively in NYC on Broadway/Off-Broadway/Off-Off Broadway and guest starred in numerous films, television and music videos mostly recently in the last album of the late David Bowie. Awards include the OBIE, The Fox Foundation Fellowship, The Charles Bowden Award from New Dramatist, the Asian Cultural Council Writing Fellowship, the Spencer Cherashore Award, Ma-Yi Theater's Award for Artistic Excellence, PACCAL's Leadership Award for Arts & Theatre and a U.S. Congressional Award in Art and Culture. Ching is a member of the Actors' Center Workshop Company, the NYTW Usual Suspect, and the Lincoln Center Directors' Lab and serves in the advisory board of Ma-Yi Theater Company. She is also a painter.
CHRIS RAEL has led the world pop group Church of Betty for almost 30 years. He met John Vaccaro through Penny Arcade in the late nineties. The trio became close, traveling to Italy several times in the late nineties/early 2000s. Chris considers John one of the great art mentors of his life. In 2002, Church of Betty released the album ‘Tripping With Wanda', the title track of which is about John‘s raunchy, feminine alter-ego Wanda Sue Lipshitz. John loved the song, which remains notorious among many of his friends.
Claire Buckingham is a New York based actor. Past work with John Jesurun includes Distant Observer: Tokyo/New York Correspondence, Shadowland Live!, Stopped Bridge of Dreams (La MaMa E.T.C), Chang In A Void Moon (Incubator Arts), and Firefall (Dance Theatre Workshop). Film Credits include: Amish Witches (Lifetime), Moving Violation (Image Bearer Pictures), Abduct (Xavier Cha), The Ghosts (Sue de Beer),Casters (Erin Gould), and Planet X (Jacob Hensberry). BFA: NYU Tisch Experimental Theatre Wing.
Conrad Ventur is an artist living and working in New York. In 2010 he befriended drag performer Mario Montez. They collaborated on a series of photographs and videos together until Mario's passing in September 2013. Montez' participation in the underground film and theater scenes of the 60s and 70s will be explored in a documentary directed by Ventur. Examples of Ventur's work with Montez are held in the permanent collections of The Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art.
Daniela Dima graduated Directing at I.A.T.C. "I.L. Caragiale" Bucharest in 1987 and directed shows on several Romanian stages. In 1990 she was lucky to be among the young actors and directors who participated in the unique experience of Andrei Serban's Greek Trilogy at the National Theatre Bucharest, as an assistant and chorus member. She became Andrei Serban's constant collaborator as co-adaptor, co-translator and assistant or associate director on most of his many international theatre and opera productions. She attended post-graduate studies at Formation Internationale Culture Paris/Université de Bourgogne and Université de Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle in 1995-1998.
David Cale most recently wrote the solo play Harry Clarke, starring Billy Crudup, which premiered at the Vineyard Theatre, transferred to Minetta Lane Theater as the first stage production of Audible and received the 2018 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show. David's solo musical memoir, We're Only Alive for A Short Amount of Time, for which he wrote the book, lyrics and co-composed the music with Matthew Dean Marsh, recently premiered on the Mainstage of the Goodman Theatre, Chicago and will begin performances at The Public Theater on June 13th. David has appeared in several episodes of Chang in a VoidMoon and John's web series Shadowland.
DEIRDRE O'CONNELL‘s recent stage work includes Fulfillment Center (MTC), Judy (New Ohio Theatre), Little Children Dream of God (Roundabout), By the Water (MTC; Lucille Lortel Award nomination), The Way West (Labyrinth Theater Company production, directed by Mimi O'Donnell; Steppenwolf Theatre production directed by Amy Morton), Scarcity (Part of The Hill Town Series) Rag and Bone (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), A Family For All Occasions (directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman), Thinner Than Water (Labyrinth Theater Company, of which she is a proud member), The Vandal (Flea Theater); Magic/Bird (Longacre Theatre); Circle Mirror Transformation (Playwrights Horizons; Obie and Drama Desk Awards); In The Wake (Public Theater and Mark Taper Forum; Los Angeles Ovation Award, The Richard Seff Actor's Equity Award, Lucille Lortel nom.); In The Blood, The Poor Itch, ‘Tis Pity She's a Whore (Public Theater); Pyretown (Keen Company); Manic Flight Reaction, Spatter Pattern Moe's Lucky Seven (Playwrights Horizons); End Days (Ensemble Studio Theatre); Looking For The Pony (Vital Theatre Company); Cave Dweller, Love and Anger (New York Theatre Workshop; Drama Desk nom.); Big Dance Theater's Antigone (Classic Stage Company); Two Headed (Women's Project Theatre); Fugue (directed by Judith Ivey at Cherry Lane Theatre); Mud (Signature Theatre Company); The Geography of Luck, Three Ways Home, Stars in the Morning (Dramalogue Award, Los Angeles Critics Award), Etta Jenks (Dramalogue Award, Los Angeles Theatre Center); The Front Page (Lincoln Center); A Lie of the Mind (Promenade Theater) and all of the major plays by Anton Chekhov at Chekhov at Lake Lucille.
Job Titles:
- Director of Artistic Operations
Job Titles:
- Facilities and Rentals Manager
DONALD EASTMAN's work has been seen at major theatre and opera companies across America and in our neighborhood where he is a frequent collaborator at La MaMa. He made his debut here with 3 Solo Pieces by Winston Tong and has since designed for Tom Eyen, Ellen Stewart, James Neu, Theodora Skipitares, Michael Gorman and George Ferencz. Donald received an OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence in Set Design and is a grantee of the NEA.
It's hard to know where to begin AGOSTO MACHADO‘s CV. We have learned over the years of the Coffeehouse Chronicles that he has an intimate knowledge of and connection to nearly every speaker and group presented. Among his favorites he names Jeff Weiss, H.M. Koutoukas, Jackie Curtis, Jim Neu, Charles Allcroft, Chris Tanner and the late Great Ethyl Eichelberger. Plus he does a wicked good impersonation of the late Ellen Stewart……………….
Dr. Aniko Szucs is a New York and Philadelphia based dramaturg and scholar. She holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University and an M.F.A. in Dramaturgy and Theatre Studies from the University of Theatre, Film, and Television of Budapest. Currently she is a Mellon Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature at Haverford College. Dr. Szucs was the resident dramaturg of the Vígszínház (Comedy Theatre) in Budapest between 2000 and 2005. As a dramaturg and translator, she also worked at Portland Center Stage and the Arena Stage in Washington, DC, at the DiCapo Opera and the Hourglass Group, both in New York. With Andrei Șerban, Dr. Szucs worked on three productions: The Three Sisters and Angels in America at the National Theatre of Budapest, and Richard III at the Radnóti Theatre, also in Budapest.
Job Titles:
- Founding Member of the Talking Band
Ellen Maddow is a founding member of the Talking Band. she will perform in and compose music for its newest work, CITY OF NO ILLUSIONS, BY Paul Zimet at The Downstairs, February 8-24. Recent plays written and composed include, FUSIFORM GYRUS - A SEPTET FOR TWO SCIENTISTS AND FIVE HORNS, FAT SKIRT BIG NOZZLE (with Louise Smith), BURNISHED BY GRIEF, THE GOLDEN TOAD ( with Paul Zimet), She recently performed in Clare Barron's Dance Nation at Playwrights Horizons. She was a member of the Open Theatre, and is an alumnus of New Dramatists. She has been a giant fan of Ralph's since 1973.
GABRIEL BERRY was in a castle in Budapest (then a workers' museum) overlooking the Danube when a voice spoke to her."Go to New York and be a costume designer" it instructed. OK, she thought. Good idea. it was late 1978. She got the next train out of town, made her way back to her home in North Carolina, packed her bags and moved to New York. She arrived in early 1979. She moved into a loft on The Bowery sharing space with musicians, dancers and painters. Within a few months she met Ellen Stewart, made her New York debut designing the costumes for Charles Ludlam's The Enchanted Pig and became the costume designer in residence at LaMaMa E.T.C. A list of artists she collaborated with at this time includes John Albano, Christopher Alden, Ken Bernard, Ed Bullins, Du-Yee Chang, Donald Eastman, Tom Eyen, Maria Irene Fornes, Ron Link, Mabou Mines, Robert MacBeth, Leonard Melfi, Anne Militello, Tom O'Horgan, Robert Patrick, James Rado, Gerry Ragni, Andrei Serban, Elizabeth Swados, Julie Taymor, John Vaccaro, Mac Wellman and Mel Wong. Companies and venues included Coney Island USA, Dance Theater Workshop, Danceteria, The Pyramid Club, The Ridiculous Theatrical Company Theater For the New City and ,of course, LaMaMa.
GARY WANG (Bass) has been playing professionally in New York City for more than twenty-five years, performing, touring, and recording with artists including Anat Fort, Taylor Mac, Ben Monder, Chris Cheek, Matt Ray, Madeleine Peyroux, T.S. Monk, Molly Ringwald, and Dena DeRose, amongmany others. Gary has also been involved in composing and music production, most recently with his own solo project Shapes On Parade, with two albums released on Bandcamp in the last two years. He is a member of the San Francisco-based band The Invisible Cities, and has also contributed production and overdubbing work to projects by numerous artists, including Michael Leonhart, Sam Sadigursky, and Goh Nakamura. Gary also composed and recorded the music for several recent collaborations with choreographer Kakuti Lin and the Full Circle Dance Company.
GORDON BRESSACK spent ten years with the Play-House of the Ridiculous playing featured parts in about twenty plays including three European tours, one of which resulted in the entire company being arrested for obscenity. He later went on to become a playwright and a film and television writer earning three Emmy Awards for his work on Animaniacs and Pinky & The Brain. He also won the WGA Award for animation writing. Next month Cargo, the animated film he wrote with his son, comes out on DVD and the play he wrote and directed, Murder, Anyone? is currently running in Los Angeles.
GREG GLASSMAN (Trumpet) has shared the stage and recording studio with some of the greatest voices in jazz, including Clark Terry, Marcus Belgrave, Roswell Rudd, Sheila Jordan, Oliver Lake, Sherman Irby, and John Esposito. He has performed around the world with a diverse array of artists including The Skatalites, Oscar Perez's Nuevo Comienzo, and Burning Spear. Glassman's current focus is his quintet, co-led with Stacy Dillard, which holds a residency of 8 years at Fat Cat in Greenwich Village.
Greg Mehrten has worked with John Jesurun off and on for more than 20 years, performing in many episodes of Chang in a Void Mood, as well as playing the Father in Shatterhand Massacree in Berlin in 2004. He was a member and co-Artistic Director of Mabou Mines from 1980-1991
Gwen Fabricant is a visual artist, living and working in New York City. She designed and made the costumes for all of The Open Theatre works. Her long friendship with Jean-Claude informs her work as a painter.
GWENDOLYN ALKER is a teacher, scholar, dramaturge and curator of events that seek to move between the theory and practice of performance. She has been on the faculty in the Drama Department at Tisch School of the Arts since 2003 and is currently the program's Director of Theatre Studies. She is just finishing up her term as Editor of Theatre Topics, where she most recently oversaw the publication of a special issue entitled "Latinx Performance." As a curator, she created and organized the New York Fornés Festival in 2010, and has sought to promote Fornés' legacy in myriad ways over the last decade. She has been published in Theatre Journal, Drama Therapy Review, TDR, Dance Research Journal, and HowlRound, and is the former managing editor of Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory.
Job Titles:
- Assistant
- Technical Director
Jason Jenn is an interdisciplinary multimedia artist, performer, writer, director, producer, video editor, creative consultant, and avowed protean-of-many-trades. He also goes by the moniker Troubadour Trixter to engage in creating provocative, uplifting, and imaginative performances for stage and video. In recent years he has toured in association with presenting staged interpretations of queer poetry by Harold Norse, James Broughton, Paul Monette, Jean Cocteau, and C.P. Cavafy. He trained and worked with performance theatre maverick Rachel Rosenthal for 7 years. He so enjoys his friendship with fellow theatrical cohort and acappella singer, Robert Patrick, that he produced Bob's three most recent one-man shows and is working on a documentary film about Bob's influence on/involvement in the current LA Underground Theatre scene.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of the BOARD
Joe E. Jeffreys is a drag historian and videographer. He teaches theatre studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Drama Department and has published on female and male impersonation in academic journals, encyclopedias, book anthologies and the popular press. His drag happy videos have been screened at festivals internationally and at museums and galleries including the Tate Modern, the Museum of Arts and Design and Howl! Happening.
JOE E. JEFFREYS is a multi-platform performance scholar and drag historian. He has taught Theatre Studies at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Department of Drama for over fifteen years and is published in encyclopedias, academic journals including TDR and Theatre History Studies and book anthologies. His verite video work has screened at festivals worldwide from Plovdiv, Bulgari to Mumbai, India and museums including the Tate Modern (London), MOMA (NYC), The Museum of Arts and Design (NYC) and as part of the new Whitney Museum of American Art's opening celebrations. It can also be seen in several award winning documentaries including Robert Oppel's Uncle Bob, Beth B's Exposed and Robert Jame's upcoming Ruminations on the work of Cockette Rumi Missabu. Jeffreys is recipient of funding from the Jerome Foundation and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
JOHN BARILLA is an actor,singer, and voice-over artist who was born and raised in the same small town as John Vaccaro, Steubenville, Ohio. He studied theater at Kent State University and has worked as a professional actor for over 45 years. He was a member of the Playhouse Of The Ridiculous from the mid 70's until it's final days. He recently performed the musical June Cool Alive at Pangea and is working on the play Prague 1912 which will be performed at Theater For The New City this fall directed by George Ferencz.
Job Titles:
- Director of Audience Development
Jordan Beswick trained with Michael Moriarty, Mira Rostova, Stephen Strimpell, Sandy Dennis, Shelley Winters, Sally Kirkland, Frederick Combs, Earl Hyman, Amy Wright, William Hickey, and Guy Stockwell and was a finalist for membership at the Actors Studio. Vocally he trained with Marni Nixon, and William & Irene Chapman. He studied playwrighting with Robert Patrick and Milan Stitt. His directing credits include productions in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Belgium, Berlin, Brazil, and North Carolina of his own plays, as well as those by noted playwrights Robert Patrick, Paula Vogel, Claudia Shear, Lanford Wilson, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Albert Innuarato, Jane Willis, Lyle Kessler. His plays have been presented in such venues as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington D.C.), the Riverside Studios (London), the Lucernaire (Paris), the Manufacture des Abbesses (Paris), the West Bank (NYC), the Celebration Theatre (West Hollywood). As an acting instructor he's worked at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute (New York - 4 years), Studio VO/VF (Paris - 13 years), the Institut für Schauspiel Film und Fernsehberufe (Berlin - 10 years, present), the Manufacture des Abbesses (Paris - 3 years, present), the Actors Centre (London - 3 years, present), Film Workshop and Laboratory (NC - 3 years), Greensboro Performing Arts (NC - 1 year). In casting he's worked alongside such respected casting directors as Douglas Aibel (DEAD MAN WALKING, THE YARDS, SIGNS, THE CRADLE WILL ROCK, A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES), Sheila Jaffe & Georgianne Walken (DENICE CALLS UP, THE DAYTRIPPERS), Avy Kaufman (FORTY SHADES OF BLUE), and independently (URBANIA, GETTING TO KNOW YOU, DEAD DOG, YOU BELONG TO ME, SEASIDE); and his theatre casting credits include numerous productions for such award winning venues as the Vineyard Theatre, the Drama Department, BAM/Next Wave Festival, New York Stage and Film. Literary assignments included reading and evaluating scripts for New Dramatists, Circle Rep, New York Theatre Workshop and Second Stage. Jordan is a proud member of the Casting Society of America (C.S.A.)
Joyce Aaron Funk is an actor, director and Teacher. She is a graduate The Neighborhood Playhouse where she studied with Sandford Meisner Martha Graham. She received an Obie in 1975/76 for her performance in acrobatics which directed and co-wrote with Luna Tralo. She is a member of the Open Theater for many years , Working closely with Joseph Chaikin and touring internationally. She lived and worked with Sam Shepard after he cast her in his first play, Up to Thursday, at the Cherry Lane Theater. She was original production of American Hurrah by Jen Claude Itallie and played it at the Royal court Theater in London. She worked with Peter Brook at the Bouffes in Paris and Jerzy Grotowski in Denmark. She lived in Amsterdam for a number of years where she taught and directed in the Dutch theater and TV and ran her own private workshops. In 2002 she performed in Happy Days by Samuel Beckett, directed by Joseph Chaikin at the Cherry Lane Theater. Working with Joseph Chaikin was a source of unending inspiration.
JUDY ALTMAN did her fist play in New York City with John Vaccaro at LaMama. It was a Christmas Play called XXX's. After that a few more off-off Broadway plays and then off to L.A. where she worked in T.V. and Film. and did Stand-up Comedy, a One Woman Show THURSDAY'S CHILD, she wrote and directed at the Players Club and in Paris, France.She also wrote a Play called SEX, also done at the Players Club. She is also proud to be the Great-niece of Fanny Brice.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director of Development
KAYLA JUNTILLA is in her third year at New York University where she is studying acting at the Experimental Theatre Wing studio in Tisch School of the Arts. She'd would like to thank Gwendolyn for this opportunity, and to dedicate this performance to her mother.
KENNETH BERNARD is an author, poet and playwright. He has received Guggenheim, Rockefeller, NEA, NEH, NY Creative Artists Public Service, and New York Foundation for the Arts grants. He is the author of eleven books, including the novel From The District File, and Clown at Wall: A Kenneth Bernard Reader. John Vaccaro directed many of Mr Bernard's plays including The Moke Eater, Nite Club, The Magic Show Dr Mag-ico Monkeys of the Organ Grinder, The 60 Minute Queer Show, Fin Du Cirque.
Job Titles:
- Accounts Manager & Indigenous Initiative Coordinator
Kim Gambino is a NYC based theater artist. Credits with The Talking Band Theater Co.: The Peripherals directed by Ken Rus Schmoll (Dixon Place), Delicious Rivers by Ellen Maddow, Imminence by Paul Zimet (La Mama e.t.c.) and The Parrot (The Flea). With Puppeteer Ralph Lee and the Mettawee Theatre Co.:The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Valentine and Orson, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and Peace (St. John's Cathedral, Lincoln Center, New England Tours). Ghosts Wonder What Went Wrong by Eric Ehn, Connie Cogden and Sibyl Kempson and dir. by Mary Easley (GPTC), love(plural) by Kristine Haruna Lee (New Georges), Night Vision by Ruth Margraff and Fred Ho (HERE), She She She directed by Elena Araoz (New Ohio Theatre). Everyday Americans (Target Margin), Modjeska Dispatch by Sibyl Kempson (Gershwin Hotel), Bug by Tracey Letts (Bluebarn Theatre). Film: Laws of Gravity, When It's Over, Prolix. TV: Officer Larson on Law and Order. Kimgambino.com
Kristine Haruna Lee is a theater maker whose work navigates non-linear playwriting and the construction of visually rich performance landscapes with her company harunalee, hailed by the New York Times as "So full of impulses and splendid, fractious energy". Recent plays with harunalee include Memory Retrograde (The Public's Under The Radar Festival) to the left of the pantry and under the sugar shack (La MaMa Club) and War Lesbian (Dixon Place TONY LGBT Critic's Pick). Her play Suicide Forest directed by Aya Ogawa will premiere at the Bushwick Starr in February. Since 2008, she has been proudly performing with the Mettawee River Theater Company, and most recently co-wrote their shows Before the Sun and Moon and The Ring Doves. She's a recipient of the MAP Fund Award, the Lotos Foundation Prize for Directing, New Dramatists Van Lier Fellowship, and has been a member of Interstate 73, The Public's Devised Theater Working Group, Ars Nova Maker's Lab, and BAX AIR. She is an affiliated artist with New Georges and currently in the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. MFA Brooklyn College for Playwriting with Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney, BFA NYU Tisch Experimental Theater Wing.
Job Titles:
- Archive Digital & Special Projects Manager / GOLDSTEIN HALL PLLC
- Manager of Digital and Special Projects
LILY LIPMAN is a senior at NYU Tisch. She'd like to thank her family and friends for supporting her and La Mama for this incredible opportunity.
Job Titles:
- Founder and Director of Pomegranate Arts )
Pomegranate Arts productions include Einstein on the Beach (Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, Lucinda Childs), Shockheaded Peter (Improbably Theater), Book of Longing (Leonard Cohen Philip Glass), Dracula: The Music and Film (Kronos Quartet), Available Light (Frank Gehry, John Adams, Lucinda Childs), Taylor Mac's 24-Decade History of Popular Music and Holiday Sauce. In addition to creative producing partnerships with artists, Pomegranate Arts produces the international tours for Bassem Youssef, Batsheva Dance Company and Sankai Juku. Prior to forming Pomegranate Arts in 1998, she was responsible for performing arts productions of Philip Glass, Twyla Tharp, Spalding Gray, Diamanda Galas, Elizabeth Streb, Karen Finley, Roger Guenveur Smith, Lisa Kron and Meryl Tankard. Linda has served on the board of directors of The Association of Performing Arts Presenters, artistic advisory board of Celebrate Brooklyn, consultant for Creative Capital and lives in Montclair, NJ.
Job Titles:
- Founding Member of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company
Lola Pashalinski is a founding member of The Ridiculous Theatrical Company where, with writer/director Charles Ludlam, she created 17 roles in 13 years. She received two Obie awards for her work with the company. Since leaving the Ridiculous in 1980, Lola worked extensively Off-Broadway and regionally in productions directed by Lee Breuer, Richard Foreman, JoAnne Akalaitis, Les Waters, Anne Bogart, David Gordon, and Neil Bartlett, among others. With her life-partner Linda Chapman, she wrote and performed Gertrude and Alice: A Likeness to Loving, receiving her third Obie in 2000. Lola made her Broadway debut in Fortune's Fool with the late Alan Bates. She's appeared in many films and on television, including most recently Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close directed by Stephen Daldry.
Job Titles:
- Newfoundland Writer, Artist
Magie Dominic, a Newfoundland writer, artist and actress, studied at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh and lives in New York. Her memoirs "The Queen of Peace Room" and "Street Angel" have been nominated for the Canadian Women's Studies Award, Book of the Year Award-ForeWord Magazine, The Judy Grahn Award and received the Silver Medal from the Independent Publishers Book Award. She was nominated for the Vanderbilt/Exile Short Fiction Award. She is one of the early members of the Off-Off Broadway movement and was co-Curator of the Astor Gallery Lincoln Center exhibition "Caffe Cino and Its Legacy" in 1985. She has established "The Magie Dominic / Caffe Cino Collection" at New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Her writing and art archives are with New York University Fales Library Permanent Collection. She co-authored "H. M. Koutoukas Remembered by His Friends" a collection of stories about the pivotal playwright H.M. Koutoukas. She has one daughter Heather Rose. Her artwork has been exhibited in Toronto and New York including a presentation at The United Nations.
Job Titles:
- Building Superintendent Asst
Job Titles:
- Managing Director
- Member of the BOARD
Job Titles:
- Experiments Reading Series Coordinator
MATT RAY (Arranger, Music Director, Piano) is a Brooklyn-based pianist, singer, songwriter, arranger, and music director. His arrangements have been called "wizardly" (Time Out NY) and "ingenious" (NY Times), and his piano playing referred to as "classic, well-oiled swing" (NY Times) and "to cry for" (Ebony). For his work on Taylor Mac's show A 24-Decade History of Popular Music he and Mac shared the 2017 Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired By American History. Notable live performances include playing at Carnegie Hall with Kat Edmonson, playing the Hollywood Bowl with reggae legend Burning Spear, and touring the Caribbean and Central America with his piano trio as a US Department of State Jazz Ambassador. His show Matt Ray Plays Hoagy Carmichael featuring Kat Edmonson premiered at Lincoln Center's American Songbook series in 2018. Other work includes music directing The Billie Holiday Project at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, recording for and appearing in the hit film Can You Ever Forgive Me? with Justin Vivian Bond, Lincoln Center with Joey Arias, Edinburgh Fringe with Lady Rizo, music directing Taylor Mac's Obie award winning play The Lily's Revenge at the HERE Arts Center in New York, and co-writing songs for and performing in Bridget Everett's one-hour Comedy Central special Gynecological Wonder as well as Everett's hit show Rock Bottom. Matt has released two jazz albums as a leader: We Got It! (2001) and Lost In New York (2006); and one album of original pop/folk material called Songs For the Anonymous (2013). mattray.nyc
Job Titles:
- Producer of the Foundry Theatre
Melanie Joseph is a theatre maker and founding Artistic Producer of The Foundry Theatre. For her work with The Foundry, she has twice been honored with the Ross Wetzsteon OBIE for "creating cutting edge work" and "engaging artists in some of the thorniest issues of the world we inhabit." She is a recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Prize, the Skirball Kennis T.I.M.E. Artist prize, a Lucille Lortel Award for Artistic Producing, and has twice been awarded the Duke/ Mellon Mentorship grant for mentoring "theatre leaders of tomorrow." Joseph holds a BA in Literature from the University of Western Ontario and a Post-Baccalaureate degree in Pre-Medicine from the City University of New York. melanie@thefoundrytheatre.org
Job Titles:
- Artistic Director
- Member of the BOARD
MICHAEL ARIAN‘s life and education began when, in 1967 as a 19 year old, he won an ABC Network scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After not being asked back for year two of the scholarship, creative thinking brought him to a job where he met Kenny Hill. Kenita-as he came to be called brought him to La Mama for the first time to see a Jackie Curtis play. Finding it the funniest thing ever-he soon joined the company beginning 18 years of working in NYC and touring all around Europe with The Playhouse of the Ridiculous and La Mama where he had the pleasure of meeting Gabriel Berry. Including work at Theater for a New City, La Mama, Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte and Off-Broadway, he counts his association and touring with Hair in Germany and Spain and the various authors and actors he met here and abroad as being some the best things that ever happened to him all coming out of his association with La Mama and the great Ellen Stewart. It's hard to know where to begin.
Michael McGrinder's first production, a double-bill of one-act plays, was given life 50 years ago-possibly to the day, dates are uncertain, but it was in February 1967 at The Playwrights Workshop. He later began showing his work at the Old Reliable Theatre Tavern. His plays were also produced at such leading Off-Off venues as here at La Mama, Bastiano's Cellar, The Playbox Studio, and at The Library Theatre of Lincoln Center-as well as high schools and colleges. And prisons. (He was not a resident.) In 2006 he led a Coffee House Chronicle with a panel from The Old Reliable. He published Proscenium, a newsletter which The Village Voice described as "Off-Off talking to itself." He thinks it was a compliment. He also hosted a weekly cable TV show of the same name presenting excerpts from Off-Off shows and interviews with the production's writer, director and actors. Michael McGrinder's plays have been published by The Smith, And/Or Books, Breakthrough Press and Dramatics Magazine, and in the anthology The Scene.. His concern for the preservation of vital plays from the early years of Off-Off-Broadway led to his founding The Old Reliable Press, online as oldreliableprss.com. The Press has to date published plays by Robert Patrick, William M. Hoffman, Guy Gauthier, Ilsa Gilbert, Stanley Nelson and Phoebe Wray. He has several projects in the works, including a memoir about his involvement with early Off-Off. He has a growing list of books available online at amazon.com and smashwords.com.
Michal Gamily is an Israeli born actress, activist, producer director . Michal Gamily was 19-years-old when she refused to serve in the Israeli army in the occupied territories. She has worked as an actress in film, TV and on stage in both Israel and the United States. For the last 22 years, Michal has worked for LaMama ETC as an actress, producer and archivist. Founder of No Visa Productions, Michal s produced the Contemporary Israeli Dance Festival at LaMama. For the past 4 years Michal is the Series Director of the Coffeehouse Chronicles.
MICHELLE MEMRAN is a documentary filmmaker and journalist. For nearly twenty years she has worked as a reporter and researcher in New York City and has written for numerous publications. She is currently finishing a documentary feature called The Rest I Make Up - her deeply personal journey with the visionary Cuban-American playwright Maria Irene Fornes after Fornes had stopped writing due to dementia. The film began in 2003, almost by accident, as the two friends discovered that a camera could pick up where the pen left off. Michelle has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and twice served as an artist-in-residence at Brown University.
MIGDALIA CRUZ is a Bronx-born, award-winning playwright, lyricist, translator, and librettist of more than 50 works including: El Grito Del Bronx, Salt, Yellow Eyes, Satyricoño, & Latinos In La-La Land, produced in venues-across the U.S. and abroad-including INTAR, BAM, Mabou Mines, Old Red Lion, National Theater of Greece, Houston Grand Opera, Ateneo Puertorriqueño, Teatro Vista, and CollaborAction. An alumna of New Dramatists, she was named the 2013 Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright, and was awarded a 2016 NYFA grant for playwriting. Migdalia was nurtured by Sundance, the Lark, and by María Irene Fornés at INTAR. She was a writer-in-residence at Latino Chicago Theater Company from 1990-1998, premiering several plays including: Miriam's Flowers, Lucy Loves Me, Dreams of Home, Cigarettes & Moby-Dick, Fur, Che-Che-Che: a latin fugue in 5/8 time, and Lolita de Lares, which received a 20th anniversary production at Chicago's Urban Theater Company in 2016.
2017-18 Projects: FRIDA at Long Beach Opera & Cincinnati Opera; El Grito Del Bronx and Cigarettes & Moby-Dick at Rose Bruford School with Chaskis Theatre (London); Hooded Tears: E28H/OMPF BlackLivesMatter at various venues across the U.S.; Orlando, 2a.m., part of the "After Orlando" series (U.S./U.K.); A Crossover Dream, an ACTF Kennedy Center Commission for the 100th JFK Centennial; Never Moscow about Chekhov, consumption, marriage and the writing of Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard; and her modern translation of Macbeth for OSF's Play On! She was a guest artist at UNM in Fall 2017. In Spring 2018, she will teach at Princeton, which has also commissioned her to write a one-act play for the Latinx Commons Convening honoring María Irene Fornés, organized by Brian E. Herrera. In Summer 2018, Migdalia will teach her third year of the Fornés Playwriting Workshop at Notre Dame University (Chicago) in conjunction with Anne García-Romero. Since her only child, Antonia, is off to CalArts for a BFA in acting, she feels blessed to have work and takes none of it for granted-especially the words.
Nancy Cooperstein Charney's acting career began during the Second World War when she was asked to perform with Youth Aliyah an organization that was set up to help get Jewish children out of Germany. Youth Aliyah raised millions of dollars in this country and helped many children flee Germany to get to safer ports. Her professional acting career began when she was 11, at the Somerset Playhouse, in Somerset, MA. where she acted with Edward Arnold, Zazu Pitts and others. Her relationship with Jean Claude van Itallie began when they were both students at The Neighborhood Playhouse in NYC. Nancy went on to act in Jean Claude's MYSTERY PLAY at the Cherry Lane Theatre, and his adaptation of MEDEA at Amherst College.
Nancy graduated from Bennington College with a degree in Theatre, and did graduate work at Columbia University. They have become life long friends. Nancy was a member of the WORKING THEATRE, and Andre Gregory's MANHATTAN PROJECT. As a Rockefeller designated Master Teacher, she taught acting to students in NYC Public schools, prisoners on Rikers Island, drug addicts at Phoenix House, to private students in NYC, and in colleges and Universities around the country, including Princeton, Amherst, Bennington and The University of North Carolina. Nancy worked as an assistant on many Broadway shows, and with her husband Jordan Charney and David Rothenberg, produced Viet Rock Off Broadway. Highlights of her later career, include her Los Angeles winning Documentary, Pioneer Women and the Wilbur Award and Emmy-nominated Showtime film Snow in August, from a book by Peter Hamil. Nancy was a director on the television series The Wonder Years and directed an ABC Afternoon Special about the dangers of drinking and driving. On Broadway, she produced Lanford Wilson's Pulitzer Award, multi Emmy nominated award winning play, Tally's Folly.
Neal Kirkwood, pianist, composer and educator, lives and works in New York City. He has composed for jazz and contemporary music chamber ensembles, as well as solo voice, chorus and orchestra. He has written over 200 works for various ensembles, and received notable commissions, including the New York State Council for the Arts Commission. As a jazz pianist, Neal Kirkwood performs, tours and records with many artists. He has played with alto saxophonist Pony Poindexter, drummer Mike Clark and vocalists Bobby McFerrin, Chris Connor, and Abby Lincoln. More recently, Kirkwood has been performing with Art Spiegelman, graphic artist, in Wordless, touring Brazil, London and Paris, and the USA. As bandleader, Neal Kirkwood's recordings include The Neal Kirkwood Octet, The Chromatic Persuaders and Extrospection, on Timescraper, and a solo piano CD, Time's Circle, produced by Present Eye Music. A new trio recording, featuring all original Kirkwood compositions, is currently being prepared for release in 2018. He currently leads a 17-piece jazz band, called The Neal Kirkwood Big Band, featuring the stupendous talents of NYC's most stellar jazz musicians. Mr. Kirkwood has composed music for, and performed with, many of New York City's creative and experimental theater ensembles, including puppet/mask-maker Ralph Lee's touring company, play-write Jim Neu, directors Anne Bogart and Joseph Chaiken. Recently premiered, in 2016, was Kirkwood's song cycle "Mexico City Blues" including the suite "The Art of Kindness," based on poetry by American poet Jack Kerouac, and composed for 16-voice chorus with jazz orchestra. Mr. Kirkwood has a MA in composition from Mannes College of Music in New York City, where he studied primarily with composer Charles Jones. He is currently on the faculties of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and Third Street Music School in New York City.
Job Titles:
- the Club Programming Director & La MaMa Moves! Curator
NICKY PARAISO has been Director of Programming at The Club at La MaMa since 2001 and is also Curator for the twelfth annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival running May 18-June 4, 2017. He has been an actor/performer in the NY downtown theater, dance and performance scene since 1979, working with Jeff Weiss & Richard C. Martinez, Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks, Anne Bogart, John Jesurun, Dan Hurlin, Dan Froot, Jessica Hagedorn, Robbie McCauley, Laurie Carlos, Richard Elovich, Fred Holland, and Mary Shultz, among others. Nicky's one-man shows have been presented at La MaMa, Dixon Place, BACA Downtown, Performance Space 122, Dance Theater Workshop, Pillsbury House Theater (Minneapolis), the 4th Int'l Festival of Cabaret (Mexico City), the KO Festival (Amherst College), Dublin Theatre Festival and the Initiation Performance Festival (Singapore). Paraiso's awards include a New York Dance & Performance BESSIE Award, a Spencer Cherashore Fund grant, a NY Innovative Theater Award, and a BAX Arts and Artists in Progress Arts Manager Award. Nicky is happy to be part of this celebration of John Vaccaro & The Play-House of the Ridiculous.
Job Titles:
- Co - Director
- Director and Performance Artist
Niegel Smith is a Bessie Award winning theater director and performance artist. He is the Artistic Director of NYC's Obie Award winning theater, The Flea; board member of A.R.T./New York; and ringleader of Willing Participant (www.willingparticipant.org) an artistic activist organization that whips up urgent poetic responses to crazy shit that happens. His theater work has been produced at The Alley Theater, The Barbican, Classical Theatre of Harlem, The Flea Theater, The Goodman Theatre, HERE Arts Center, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, The Invisible Dog, Luna Stage, The Melbourne Festival, Magic Theatre, Mixed Blood, New York Fringe Festival, New York Live Arts, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, Playwrights Horizons, Pomegranate Arts, The Public Theater, St. Ann's Warehouse, Summer Play Festival, Todd Theatre and Under the Radar, and his participatory walks and performances have been produced by Abrons Arts Center, American Realness, Dartmouth College, Elastic City, The Invisible Dog, Jack, The New Museum, Prelude Festival, PS 122, the Van Alen Institute and Visual AIDS. He often collaborates with playwright/performer Taylor Mac and with artist Todd Shalom.
Smith is co-director of the critically acclaimed ‘A 24-Decade History of Popular Music', winner of the Kennedy Prize in Drama, Bessie Award, the Edwin Booth Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He was also the associate director of the Tony Award winning musical FELA! - restaging that production in London, Lagos and its world tour, assistant directed the off-broadway production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and both the Broadway and off-Broadway productions of Tony Kushner's Caroline, or Change. He has worked on the artistic staffs of The Public Theater, Trinity Repertory Company and Providence Black Rep. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Smith has received residencies, grants and/or fellowships from Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the MAP Fund, New York Stage and Film, Sundance Theatre Lab, Theater Communications Group, Tucker Foundation, Van Lier Fund and VoxFest. Before surviving high school in Detroit, he grew up in the North Carolina piedmont, fishing with his dad, shopping with his mom and inventing tall-tale fantasies with his two younger brothers. www.niegelsmith.com
OMRI ARIAV is a directing student at NYU Tisch, Playwrights Horizons Theater School. He grew up in Israel and left it to prevent the marriage of his art to his politics. Omri's passion is for theater as imaginative ritual: a space for the transformation of personal experience into communal gatherings which emanate wonder. He would like to thank you.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director of Archive
American designer PAUL STEINBERG studied at the Pratt Institute and Central Saint Martins. He collaborates regularly with opera directors Christopher Alden, David Alden, Robert Carsen and Richard Jones. His work has been commissioned by companies including the English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival, Netherlands National Opera, The Bavarian State Opera, Paris Opera, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera. Steinberg is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. He is an Arts Professor in the graduate theatre design program at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
Job Titles:
- Artistic Director of Talking Band
Paul Zimet is Artistic Director of Talking Band. He wrote and directed The Room Sings, The Golden Toad (with Ellen Maddow), Marcellus Shale, New Islands Archipelago, Radnevsky's Real Magic, Imminence, Belize, The Parrot, Star Messengers, Bitterroot, Party Time, Black Milk Quartet and New Cities. He also directed many new works for Talking Band including Fat Skirt Big Nozzle, and The Walk Across America for Mother Earth by Taylor Mac. OBIE award for direction, and three OBIE awards for work with the Open Theatre and Winter Project directed by Joseph Chaikin; The Frederick Loewe Award in Musical Theatre; and a Playwrights' Center National McKnight Fellowship. Playwright alumnus of New Dramatists. Associate Professor Emeritus in Theatre, Smith College. Upcoming - in June, performing in This Was the End (Mallory Catlett) at Mabou Mines; July, resident artist at La MaMa Umbria International Symposium for Directors.
PENNY ARCADE debuted at 18 in John Vaccaro's explosive Playhouse of the Ridiculous at seventeen. She was a regular at LaMama Etc and an escapee from Andy Warhol's Factory scene at 20. Penny Arcade (born Susana Ventura) emerged in the 1980s as a primal force on the New York downtown theatre scene and was an originator in solo text based performance art. She grew as both a an improvisor and writer to bring the political and sociological brand of high camp and street-smart rock and roll showmanship she learned at Vaccaro's knee into her own work which has been winning over international audiences ever since. Since 1992 she has collaborated with former architect and video producer Steve Zehentner in all her theatre work and since 1999 they have co-helmed The Lower East Side Biography Project, an oral history video project which broadcasts every Monday at 11pm on Manhattan neighborhood Network. Also a poet and essayist, her writing has been published in numerous newspapers, journals and catalogs: Film Culture, Found Object, Verses That Hurt, Please Kill Me (The Oral History of Punk), Out of Character, Raves, Rants and Monologues from America's Top Performance Artists, Monologues for Women, Monologues for Cold Reading, Writing Your Own Monologues. Bad Reputation a selection of her scripts with essays on her work by Sarah Schulman, Steve Zehentner and Professor Stephen Bottoms was published by Semiotexte in 2010
Ralph Lee is a theatre designer, director, actor and puppeteer. He is Artistic Director of the Mettawee River Theatre Company, which, for over forty years, has annually produced original theatre works incorporating masks and puppetry, live music and text, drawn primarily from myths and folk stories of the world's many cultures. The plays are presented primarily in rural communities in upstate New York and New England. His chief artistic collaborator in this enterprise is his wife, Casey Compton. Mr. Lee has created masks, puppets and props for theatre and dance far and wide, including the Living Theatre, the Metropolitan Opera, Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Shari Lewis and Saturday Night Live (he created the Land Shark). He was a member of the Open Theatre, Joseph Chaikin Director, for five years. In 1974 Ralph Lee co-founded the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade with Theater for the New City; he directed the Parade for its first 12 years. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine since 1985. He was instrumental in the creation of the Mayan theatre company, Sna J'tz Ibajom, in Chiapas, Mexico, and worked there annually from 1989 - 2000. He has been on the faculty of NYU since 1987 and was the Jim Henson Artist-in-Residence at UMD in 2007-08. Awards and fellowships include a Fulbright, two Obie Awards, a DTW Bessie Award, two American Theatre Wing Design Awards, a New York State Governor's Arts Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
In 1975, Casey Compton joined forces with five fellow graduates of Bennington College to form the Mettawee River Theatre Company in order to bring theatre to the rural communities of upstate New York and New England. Since 1976 she has collaborated with Mettawee's Artistic Director Ralph Lee to transform folk-tales, mythology and traditional stories from all over the world into theatre. Casey's work for the company has taken many forms: she has designed and built costumes for all Mettawee productions; she acted in Mettawee shows from 1975 - 85; since 1979 she has been Managing Director. In addition, Casey has worked with Ralph to produce numerous parades and celebrations, from the first Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in 1974 to assorted extravaganzas all over New York City.
Job Titles:
- Digital Marketing & Strategy
Rob McFadyen is a NYC-based actor. He has performed with Ralph Lee and Casey Compton's Mettawee River Theatre Company for 7 seasons. Other theatre credits includes shows with Portland Stage, Berkshire Theatre Group, Michigan Shakespeare Festival, Primary Stages, The Performance Network Theatre and many others. MFA Brandeis University.
ROBERT HEIDE studied theater at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. In New York, he attended acting classes with Stella Adler and Uta Hagen. At the Actor's Studio, his mentors in the Playwrights/Directors Unit were Harold Clurman, Estelle Parsons, and Horton Foote. His first play, Hector, was initially produced by the Living Theater at the Cherry Lane Theater on a bill with plays by Jean Cocteau and the poet Kenneth Koch. Later, Hector was produced Off-Broadway by Lee Paton Nagrin at New Playwrights Theatre with Heide's second play, West of the Moon.
Plays produced at the Caffe Cino in New York include The Bed and Moon. At La MaMa E.T.C., the successful run of Why Tuesday Never Has a Blue Monday was followed by Heide's short plays East of the Sun, Zoe's Letter, and Statue, all performed in play festivals or benefits for La MaMa. Suburban Tremens and Increased Occupancy were produced at Westbeth Theater Center by New York Theater Strategy under the auspices of Irene Fornés and Julie Bovasso. Moon was presented in Fornés/Bovasso's first Theater Strategy Festival of Plays at the Manhattan Theatre Club. American Hamburger, Tropical Fever in Key West, Crisis of Identity and Mr. Nobody were produced at Theater for the New City. Several of his plays have been published in various editions, and a collection of all of his plays (Robert Heide 25 Plays) was published in Fall 2017 by Michael Smith's Fast Book Press, and is available on Amazon. He has co-authored more than a dozen books on American Pop Culture, including three books for Disney: Disneyana, The Mickey Mouse Watch, and Mickey Mouse the Evolution, the Legend, the Phenomenon! Other books include Box-Office Buckaroos, Home-Front America, and Starstruck, as well as guidebooks to Greenwich Village and New Jersey. All of these books are also available on Amazon. His play The Bed was filmed by Andy Warhol, and Heide wrote the screenplay for Warhol's film Lupe starring Edie Sedgwick. Both films are currently being digitized by a three-museum triumvirate: the Andy Warhol Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. His play I Shop: Andy Warhol was recently presented by the Peculiar Works Project. Three of his plays were presented in a benefit for the Actors' Fund at Howl! in the fall of 2016. He is a regular contributor to the West Village newspaper Westview News.
Rosemary Quinn is a long-time resident of New York City's Lower East Side, working as an actress, director, teacher, arts administrator and producer. She has originated roles in experimental theater productions with The Other Theater, The Talking Band, Mabou Mines, The Roy Hart Theatre and Theatre for a Two-Headed Calf, among others. She most recently appeared at The New Museum in her recurring role as Grace Tanning in Room for Cream by the Dyke Division of Two-Headed Calf. Rosemary is a member of the Roy Hart Theatre and teaches workshops at their center in France. She teaches at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and is the Director of the Experimental Theatre Wing. Rosemary has worked with Jean-Claude van Itallie over many treasured decades and has performed in a number of his plays, including Sunset Freeway, which was written for her. She directed Jean-Claude in his solo performance Confessions and Conversation at LaMama in 2016 and most recently directed the reading at The Cherry Lane of his latest play, The Fat Lady Sings.
RUBY LYNN REYNER of Stage, Screen and Rock & Roll Juke Joints. Her career spans from the 1970s to the present day. Original star of the Playhouse of the Ridiculous, Ruby was the lead in 40 John Vacarro productions including Jackie Curtis' "Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit". Ruby is a winner of the Drama Desk Award for John Vacarro's "La Bohemia, & Emmy Nominee for the HBO Documentary "Finishing Heaven". Ruby dedicates her performance to the late, great John Vacarro.
SHIELA DABNEY is an actor, best known for her co-starring role in the seminal 1987 lesbian feminist film, She Must Be Seeing Things alongside Lois Weaver, directed by Sheila McLaughlin. In 1984, Dabney won an Obie Award for her performance as Sarita in the play Sarita. She has performed in eight original plays by Maria Irene Fornes.
Job Titles:
- Archive Associate
- Resident Artist / Archive Associate
Job Titles:
- Accountant / MAURY DONNELLY & PARR, INC. Insurance
Mac is a MacArthur Fellow, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Drama, a Tony nominated playwright, and the recipient of multiple awards including the Kennedy Prize, a NY Drama Critics Circle Award, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim, the Herb Alpert in Theater, the Peter Zeisler Memorial Award, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, 2 Bessies, 2 Obies, a Helpmann, and an Ethyl Eichelberger Award. An alumnus of New Dramatists, judy is currently a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect and the Resident playwright at the Here Arts Center.
Job Titles:
- Individual Giving Officer
Tessa Flannery is an actor, voice over artist, and photographer based in Brooklyn. She is an artistic associate of Voyage Theater Company and thanks Wayne for this opportunity. Her comic one act ‘Tentacles' recently took home awards from Pittsburgh Fringe and FRIGID NY. www.tessaflannery.com
Job Titles:
- Photographer & Videographer
Timothy White Eagle is an Indigenous American ceremonial leader, visual, installation and performances artist. He is the Dandy Minions Artistic Director for Taylor Mac's "A 24 Decade History of Popular Music". In March 2020 his new evening length performance "The Violet Symphony" premieres at On The Boards in Seattle.
Tina Shepard was a member of The Open Theater, The Winter Project and The Other Theater, all under the direction of Joe Chaikin. She is a founding member of The Talking Band, formed with her colleagues Paul Zimet & Ellen Maddow when The Open Theater disbanded in 1973. Tina teaches acting and aikido at NYU/ETW.
Tom Kalin is known as a part of the "New Queer Cinema" and his work traverses diverse forms and genres, from experimental video installations to narrative feature films to activism. His features Swoon, Savage Grace and I Shot Andy Warhol explore the tension between documentary fact and dramatic truth. In short works, he often takes inspiration from literary sources, addressing issues such as displacement, urban isolation and homophobia. In these works and as a part of the collective Gran Fury, he has done significant work to change the public opinion of AIDS, simultaneously expanding the definition of activist video. He is a contributor to the catalogue raisonné of Warhol's films being produced by the Andy Warhol Film Project at The Whitney Museum of American Art.
Tom Marion first worked with Ralph in the summer of 1987 in The Wildman, and went on to perform in twelve more productions including fifteen Christmases at the Bronx Botanical Gardens with The Little Engine That Could, and countless parades and events. Tom is currently an Associate Professor of Theatre at York College CUNY, a Dedicated Linklater Instructor, and holds an MFA in Acting from Rutgers with Bill Esper.
TONY ZANETTA worked extensively in the Off Off Broadway theatre of the 1970's and 80's in plays by Andy Warhol, Jackie Curtis, Ken Bernard, Roslynn Drexler, Anthony J. Ingrassia , Wayne County and Linda Mussmann's TIME AND SPACE LIMITED. For a time in the 70's he toured the world with David Bowie, managing his ZIGGY STARDUST tours worldwide and producing the DIAMOND DOGS and YOUNG AMERICANS tours for MainMan Ltd. MainMan also produced Ingrassia's ill fated Broadway venture, FAME. After his rock and roll stint he returned to LaMaMa to work in the PLAYHOUSE OF THE RIDICULOUS with John Vaccaro in THE SIXTY MINUTE QUEER SHOW. He appeared in revivals of NIGHTCLUB and XXX'S at LaMaMa and worked with John for the next several years at LaMaMa and TNC. The last play they did together was Roslynn Drexler's PINEAPPLE FACE at TNC in the mid nineties. In the Nineties Tony began a career in Set Design an Event Production. He is currently a Visual Director and Event Producer in Manhattan.
Wayne Maugans is the Founding Artistic Director of Voyage Theater Company. Directing credits for VTC include UNVEILED by Rohina Malik (NYC & South African tour), THE PELICAN by August Strindberg, SUN by Adrienne Kennedy, INTERMISSION by Daniel Libman, MY POOR MARAT by Aleksei Arbuzov, and OBAMA 44 by Mario Fratti. Other directing includes POLAROID STORIES by Naomi Iizuka (Brooklyn College), THE TROJAN WOMEN (Atlantic Theater/NYU), UNCLE by Dean Gray and TRAILERVILLE by John Dufresne (both at Blue Heron Theatre). As an actor, Wayne has appeared on Broadway in AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, and at numerous off-Broadway and regional theaters, including 59E59, Manhattan Theater Club, Signature Theater, Actors' Theater of Louisville, The Cleveland Playhouse, Primary Stages, Yale Rep, Seven Stages, Two River Theater, and La MaMa ETC. Wayne holds a BFA in Acting from New York University and an MFA in Directing from CUNY/Brooklyn College. He is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and The Fence. www.voyagetheatercompany.org
Job Titles:
- Art Director La MaMa Galleria
ZACH BARELA has spent the last three years studying the Meisner technique at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and is excited for the opportunity to be a part of this event. He would like to thank Gwendolyn for the wonderful opportunity.