(Ted Driscoll) Broadway: Our Mother’s Brief Affair, Wit. Off-Broadway: Of Good Stock (MTC), The Who and The What (LCT3), Belleville (NYTW), Somewhere Fun (Vineyard), Cradle and All (MTC), The Seagull (CSC with Dianne Wiest), That Pretty Pretty, Steve & Idi (Rattlestick), Smudge (WP Theater) Regional: Seminar with Jeff Goldblum, 33 Variations with Jane Fonda (Ahmanson), Scenes From Court Life, War, Elevada (Yale Rep). Greg was a Playwriting Fellow at The Juilliard School and has an MFA in acting from NYU.
(Jean) Broadway: It Shoulda Been You, Once, Sunday in the Park With George, Chicago, Assassins, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Ragtime. Off-Broadway: Taming Of The Shrew (Public Theatre), Wings (2ST), Music In The Air (Encores), Road Show (Public Theatre). Regional: McCarter Theatre, Kansas City Rep, The Huntington, The Citadel. Film & TV: You Must Be Joking, Sugar, Baby Mama, King of California, The Good Wife, Dirt, Law & Order, Veronica Mars, Bull, Submissions Only.
(Bobby/DJ) Broadway: The Farnsworth Invention, I’m Not Rappaport, Not About Nightingales, Mamma Mia, Picnic and Hedda Gabler. Off-Broadway: Insignificance, Dinner With Friends, Saturday Night, Outward Bound (Drama Desk Nom), You Never Can Tell and Black Snow. Film: Bridge of Spies, We the Animals, Brooklyn’s Finest, The Family Stone. Television: The Affair, The Good Wife, Veep, Damages, Blue Bloods, Elementary, Conviction, Sleepy Hollow. Love to Andrea always and ever.
(Carver) Theater credits include: peerless by Jiehae Park (Yale Rep), The Last Match (City Theatre Company), Rich Girl (The Old Globe), The Understudy (McCarter Theatre), Ed, Downloaded (Denver Center Theatre), Leslye Headland’s Bachelorette (Studio Theatre), Red (Asolo Rep & Maltz Jupiter Theatre), She Stoops To Conquer (Williamstown Theatre Festival) and various workshops with Ars Nova, LCT Directors’ Lab, O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Sundance Theatre Lab. TV/Film credits include: Elementary, The Good Wife and The Mend. MFA: NYU Graduate Acting.
(Co-Producer) Ars Nova is committed to developing and producing theater, comedy and music artists in the early stages of their professional careers. Our unique development programs are designed to support outside-the-box thinking and cross-pollination to encourage innovative work. Dubbed by the New York Times as a “fertile incubator of offbeat theater,” Ars Nova blurs genres and subverts the status quo. With our feverish bounty of programming, we are the stomping ground and launching pad for visionary, adventurous artists of all stripes. By providing a safe environment where risk-taking and collaboration are paramount, Ars Nova gives voice to a new generation of artists and audiences, pushing the boundaries of live entertainment by nurturing creative ideas into smart, surprising new work.
Ars Nova was honored with a 2015 OBIE Award and a 2015 Special Citation from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle for their sustained quality and commitment to the development and production of new work. Notable past productions include: 2016 Best Musical winner Futurity, by César Alvarez with The Lisps; the critically-acclaimed world premiere of Small Mouth Sounds by Bess Wohl currently enjoying a commercial transfer; Time Out NY’s “Best of 2014,”Jacuzzi by The Debate Society; Drama Desk nominated Charlatan by Vinny DePonto and Josh Koenigsberg; the award-winning smash-hit Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Malloy (Broadway transfer Fall 2016); Jollyship the Whiz-Bang by Nick Jones and Raja Azar; the world premiere of the 2009 season’s most-produced play boom by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb; Drama Desk and Outer Critic Circle nominated From Up Here by Liz Flahive; audience favorite Dixie’s Tupperware Party by Kris Andersson; and star-makers At Least It’s Pink by Bridget Everett and Kenny Mellman; and Freestyle Love Supreme by Anthony Veneziale and Lin-Manuel Miranda. ArsNovaNYC.com
(Playwright) Zoe Sarnak Works include: Secret Soldiers (with Marsha Norman), Afterwords (Village Theatre Beta Series Production 2018, Playwrights Horizons-MTF lab), The Years Between (with Kirsten Guenther, T-Fellowship), Across the Great Divide (with Michele Lowe, Transport Group’s 20th Century Commission), Galileo (with Danny Strong, Michael Weiner and dir. Michael Mayer), Teddy & Max (with Brian Crawley), A Crossing (with Josh Bergasse, Barrington Stage Company commission) and musical short films Landed, Alma Mater, and Hold Your Peace. (with Emily Kaczmarek, New York Film Academy commissions). Awards include: 2018 Jonathan Larson Grant Finalist (with Emily Kaczmarek, winners to be announced), Davenport Songwriting contest winner, NY Stage & Film’s Founders Award finalist, Fred Ebb Award finalist, two time Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award Honoree, Women’s Project Lab Artist, SWAN song contest award. Residencies include: The Public Theater at Vineyards Arts, Goodspeed Writers Colony, Williamstown Theatre Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, McCarter Theater Residency, Prospect Theatre Company, Eugene O’Neill Artist Residency, and Rhinebeck Writers Retreat. Music featured: NY Times Live, Lilly Awards, Women of Note, Cutting Edge Composers and more. Education: Harvard University.
(Playwright & Lisa) Lisa Lampanelli shot her fifth stand-up special, “Back to the Drawing Board,” which premiered June 26, 2015 on EPIX and was nominated for a 2015 Grammy Award for “Best Comedy Album.” In the special, Comedy’s Lovable Queen of Mean showed off her radically different look after having lost more than 100 pounds. That weight loss, which she has maintained for over four years, inspired her to write Stuffed since, having been every size from 2 to 26, she has firsthand knowledge of the food and body-image struggle.
Lisa became a household name when she joined 17 other celebrities on the fifth season of NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” where she advanced to the final four in the competition, raising $130,000 for her chosen charity, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. She also starred as a regular on “Bounty Hunters,” CMT’s first-ever animated series, and recently stole the show on an episode of CBS’s “2 Broke Girls,” helmed by “Sex and The City” creator, Michael Patrick King. She also was recently accepted into and attended the Yale Summer Conservatory for Actors in New Haven, CT.
Lampanelli joined the ranks of comedy greats with her 2009 HBO comedy special, “Long Live the Queen,” and that same year, released her autobiography, Chocolate, Please: My Adventures in Food, Fat and Freaks (Harper Collins). Lisa was also a monthly writer for the Women column in Playboy Magazine and is a contributor to the blog for Kripalu, the world-renowned yoga and meditation retreat center.
Lisa’s rise to the top of the comedy food chain began in 2002 when she was the only female comedian invited to skewer Chevy Chase on the NY Friars Club Comedy Central Roast. She soon became known as the “Queen of the Roasts”, going on to lambaste such names as Pamela Anderson, Jeff Foxworthy, William Shatner, Flava Flav, David Hasselhoff and, most recently, Donald Trump. Due to her success as a roaster, in 2009, Lisa was asked to serve as Roastmaster for the highly rated Comedy Central Roast of friend and fellow comic, Larry the Cable Guy.
One of the few white comedians to perform on BET’s “Comic View,” Lisa has clearly cemented her huge crossover appeal. She went on to appear on Comedy Central’s “Last Laugh 2005” and her one-hour special that year, “Take It Like a Man,” was a hit with the comedy network yet again. The CD and the DVD of the same name hit #6 on the comedy charts. Then, in January 2007, Lisa’s second one-hour special, “Dirty Girl,” debuted on Comedy Central and Warner Bros. Records, and reached #4 on the charts. Soon thereafter, “Dirty Girl” was nominated for a Grammy Award for 2007’s “Best Comedy Album”.
Lisa appeared in the David Chase-directed feature film, “Not Fade Away.” She also appeared in “Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector” and had a featured role in “Delta Farce,” opposite Bill Engvall, Larry the Cable Guy, and D.J. Quall. She also starred in the hilarious documentary, “The Aristocrats,” and played a more maternal version of herself in the Owen Wilson vehicle, “Drillbit Taylor.”
(Director) Upcoming Chekhov’s Three Sisters (Studio Theatre in association with New Neighborhood). Recent projects include Transfers by Lucy Thurber (New York Stage & Film); Much Ado About Nothing adapted with Kenneth Lin (Cal Shakes); Workshop of Suzanne Vega’s Lover, Beloved, An Evening with Carson McCullers with music by Vega and Duncan Sheik (Rattlestick and Rattlestick West LA); George Brant’s Grounded (Alley Theatre); Jen Silverman’s The Moors (Yale Rep); These Paper Bullets! Adapted from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing by Rolin Jones with music by Billie Joe Armstrong (Atlantic Theater Company, Geffen Playhouse, Yale Rep – Critics Pick Time Out NY, Best Production and Adaptation LA Sage Awards, Best of 2015 Time Out Los Angeles, Connecticut Critics Circle Award Best Production and Best Director); I Saw My Neighbor On The Train And I Didn’t Even Smile by Suzanne Heathcote (co-production New Neighborhood / Berkshire Theatre Festival); Elevada by Sheila Callaghan (Yale Rep); The Insurgents by Lucy Thurber (Labyrinth Theater Company); 3C by David Adjmi (Rattlestick/piece by piece/Rising Phoenix); Lucy Thurber’s Where We’re Born – The Hilltown Plays (Rattlestick); Rolin Jones’s The Jammer (Atlantic Theater Company) and The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow (Atlantic and Yale Rep, Connecticut Critics Circle Award Outstanding Production of a Play); A Little Journey (Mint Theater Company, Drama Desk nomination Outstanding Revival of a Play); Other Desert Cities; August: Osage County; Red and Kenneth Lin’s Intelligence-Slave (Alley Theatre). Jackson is a founding member of New Neighborhood. She is the Director of Artistic Programming for Fuller Road Artist Residency and teaches directing at Yale College. BFA University of the Arts. MFA Yale School of Drama. Jackson is from Sugar Land, Texas.
(Stacey) Ann Harada originated the role of Christmas Eve in Avenue Q on Broadway and the West End. Other Broadway includes Cinderella, 9 to 5, M Butterfly, Seussical, Les Misérables (revival). Recent Off – Broadway includes Brooklynite (Vineyard Theatre) and Love, Loss, and What I Wore (Westside Theatre). Regionally: 42nd Street and Mamma Mia (MUNY), and God of Carnage (George Street Playhouse) FILM: Youth in Oregon, Sisters, Trouble, Admission, Hope Springs, and The Art of Getting By. TV: “The Jim Gaffigan Show,” “The Good Wife,” “SMASH,” “30 Rock,” “House of Cards,” “Master of None.”
(Katey) Zainab Jah’s Recent credits include: Maima, Eclipsed, Broadway; title role of Hamlet, (The Wilma Theatre), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo N Juliet (Classical Theatre of Harlem), The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, (Atlantic Theater, NYC), Prudence The Convert, Josephine, Ruined, A Doll’s House ( Williamstown Theatre Festival), Helen of Troy, Trojan Women, (Classical Theatre of Harlem), In Darfur, (The Public Theatre /NYSF), Peter Sellars’ Children Of Herakles, ( European Tour). Film / TV credits: New York, I Love You (Short), “Law & Order SVU,” Outliving Emily (with Andre Braugher and Philicia Rashad), Along Came Love, with Vanessa Williams. Awards: Philadelphia Critcs’ Circle Best actress Award (Hamlet ) Los Angeles Stage Alliance Ovation Award Best Featured Actress (The Convert); San Francisco Bay Area Critics’ Circle – Outstanding Performance Female Featured Role (Ruined); and Best Featured Actress, Philadelphia Critics’ Circle Featured Actress Award (The Convert).
(Britney) Jessica is thrilled to be making her Off-Broadway debut in Stuffed! New York Theatre credits include: The Digger (La MaMa), The Blood Brothers (The Brick), The Quake (Ideal Glass), The Disembodied Soul and Buddy Becker’s Uncut Flick (NY Fringe). Web Series: “Down Dog and Carolers.” Jessica is a Yale graduate and a recent Rockwell scholar at ESPA/ Primary Stages. She is a member of the rock band My Dear Mycroft and the improv team The Jessica’s. Jessica is thrilled to be making her Off-Broadway debut in Stuffed!
(Performer) Monica Bill Barnes is a choreographer, performer, and the Artistic Director of Monica Bill Barnes & Company, a NYC based contemporary dance company. Barnes founded MBB&CO in 1997 with the mission to celebrate individuality, humor, and the innate theatricality of everyday life. The company creates full-length shows that tour the country’s biggest stages and tiniest rooms, bringing dance where it doesn’t belong. Her work has been performed in venues ranging from Upright Citizen’s Brigade to The BAM Opera House, and has been presented in more than 75 cities throughout the US. Current projects include a collaborative show with radio host Ira Glass that combines radio stories and dance, Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host, a collaboration with author/visual artist Maira Kalman creating a guided Museum Workout, and Happy Hour, the world’s first-ever karaoke office party dance show featuring Barnes and her dancing partner, Anna Bass.
(Performer) Anna Bass, Associate Artistic Director/Performer, has worked with MBB&CO since 2003, performing all over the country on stages ranging from public fountains and city parks to comedy clubs and Carnegie Hall. Anna wears the grey suit in Happy Hour, tours the country with Monica and Ira Glass in Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host and juggles many of MBB&CO’s day-to-day operations. She also served as company Rehearsal Director, Assistant Choreographer for productions at The Atlantic Theater, The Public Theater and Yale Repertory Theater and a roller-skating mouse alongside comedian Mike Birbiglia in This American Life’s The Radio Drama Episode at the BAM Opera House. Anna hails from Forest, Virginia, where she studied almost every dance style from classical ballet to country line dancing. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
(Lighting Designer) Jane Cox has designed with MBB&CO for more than a decade, and her collaboration with the company is central to her creative life. In 2014 Jane was nominated for both the TONY and the Drama Desk awards for her work on Machinal, and she also designed All The Way on Broadway. In 2013 Jane was awarded the Henry Hewes Design Award for her work on The Flick. Other recent designs in NYC include Picnic and Dinner with Friends for the Roundabout, Passion at CSC and The Whale at Playwrights Horizons. Opera designs include Sydney Opera House, Houston Grand Opera and New York City Opera. Jane has a long-standing relationship with The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and has been teaching about light and design at Princeton University since 2007.
(Set/Costume Designer) Kelly Hanson is an original company member of MBB&CO, and has been collaborating with Monica since 2001. She is also an Emmy-nominated Art Director for television. Kelly currently spends most days directing art for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Kelly was born in Bryan, TX, earned her MFA in Set Design at University of California, San Diego and joined the New York community in 2001. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, two children and a big black dog.
(Host) Robert Saenz de Viteri has been working with MBB&CO and Ira Glass since 2013. He began working in theater as an audio script assistant to Anna Deavere Smith while she developed Let Me Down Easy. He has created performances and toured productions throughout the world with the Obie Award winning Nature Theater of Oklahoma. As a director in New York he has worked at the Ensemble Studio Theater, The Flea, The Atlantic Theater, Office Ops, and Access Theater where he directed the NYTimes Critic’s Pick production of Michael & Edie. In 2014 he joined Ira Glass and This American Life producing Episode 528, “The Radio Drama Episode” live on stage at BAM. He recently created The Spiritual Life of Modern America, based on Knut Hamsun’s mostly unread book of the same title and the experiences of many people moving to America. The show premiered at the Brageteater in Norway.
Monica Bill Barnes & Company is a contemporary American dance company that brings dance where it does not belong. We create and produce each work entirely from its own rulebook—dancing to radio interviews on the biggest stages in the world, hosting a weekly show in a crowded office party, or leading a choreographed exercise routine in an art museum. Within each of these new contexts and borrowed environments, we constantly find humor in our awkward, everyday triumphs and failures. The company consists of a team of collaborators – Artistic Director/Choreographer, Monica Bill Barnes; Associate Artistic Director/Performer, Anna Bass; designers Kelly Hanson (Set/Costume) and Jane Cox (Lighting); and the newest company member, Robbie Saenz de Viteri (Creative Producing Director). Together, this team creates the most unlikely experiences for every kind of audience. MonicaBillBarnes.com
Gibney Dance, founded in 1991, is a trailblazing organization whose mission is to bring the possibility of movement where it otherwise would not exist. Through three interrelated fields of action—Center, Company, and Community Action—Gibney Dance is “Making Space for Dance” in studios, on stages, and in underserved shelters and schools. GibneyDance.org
The Joyce Theater. founded in 1982, was created by dancers for dance. Today, The Joyce is considered one of the premiere performance venues for dance and attracts an annual audience of more than 140,000. Since its inception, The Joyce has welcomed over 270 New York City-based, national and international dance companies to its stage. It would be difficult to imagine the dance world today without The Joyce Theater. In addition, The Joyce now oversees DANY (Dance Art New York) Studios, eleven affordable studios, located at 38th Street and Eighth Avenue, that are appropriate for rehearsals, auditions, classes and workshops. Joyce.org
(Playwright) Martyna Majok (pronounced “my-oak”) was born in Bytom, Poland, and aged in Jersey and Chicago. Her plays have been performed and developed at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Marin Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Williamstown Theatre Festival, LAByrinth Theatre Company, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Women’s Project Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The John F. Kennedy Center, Dorset Theatre Festival, New York Stage & Film, Yale Cabaret, The Playwright and Director Center of Moscow, Round House Theatre, Satori Group, Red Tape Theatre, and The LIDA Project, among others. Awards include the inaugural Women’s Invitational Prize at Ashland New Play Festival, Marin Theatre’s David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize, New York Theatre Workshop’s 2050 Fellowship, Aurora Theatre’s Global Age Project Prize, National New Play Network’s Smith Prize for Political Playwriting, Jane Chambers Student Feminist Playwriting Prize, and The Merage Fellowship for the American Dream. Commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, Marin Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The New Yorker website, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and The Foundry Theatre. Publications by Samuel French and Smith & Kraus. Residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm, Fuller Road, and Ragdale. BA: University of Chicago; MFA: Yale School of Drama. Martyna is currently part of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwright Program at The Juilliard School. She has taught playwriting at Williams College, Wesleyan University, SUNY Purchase, and as an assistant to Paula Vogel at Yale. Alumna of EST’s Youngblood. Member of Women’s Project Lab, Ars Nova’s Uncharted, The Dramatist Guild, and New York Theatre Workshop’s Usual Suspects. Martyna was the 2012-2013 NNPN playwright-in-residence at NJRep. She is the 2015-2016 PoNY Fellow at the Lark Play Development Center.
(Director) Daniella Topol’s previous WP Theater productions include: Cori Thomas’ When January Feels Like Summer, Jessica Dickey’s Row After Row, Sheila Callaghan’s Lascivious Something, Trista Baldwin’s Sand. Recent productions include: Rachel Bonds’ Five Mile Lake (South Coast Rep), Jessica Dickey’s Charles Ives Take Me Home (Rattlestick Theatre) Rajiv Joseph’s Monster at the Door (Alley Theatre), Lloyd Suh’s Jesus in India (Magic Theatre and MaYi Theatre), Carla Ching’s Sugarhouse at the Edge of the Wilderness (MaYi Theatre), Willy Holtzman’s The Morini Strad (City Theatre), Sheila Callaghan’s Dead City (New Georges) and Janet Allard and Niko Tsakalakos’ Pool Boy (Barrington Stage Company), Anna Ziegler’s PHOTOGRAPH 51 (Theatre J), Susan Bernfield’s STRETCH (People’s Light and Theatre Company). She has directed readings and workshops for a number of companies and is currently a member of the board of the Lark Play Development Center, has been a grants review panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, NY State Council on the Arts and TCG. She is an NYTW Usual Suspect, member of EST, a Women’s Project Lab alumnus, and a New Georges affiliated artist. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.
(Maks) Josiah Bania is thrilled to be making both his Rattlestick and New York City theatre debut. Regional credits include the world premiere of Ironbound, at Round House Theatre, Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Three Sisters at Yale Repertory Theatre; Loves Labour’s Lost at Chautauqua Theatre Company; The Secret in the Wings, at Yale Summer Cabaret; The History Boys at Artists Repertory Theatre; The Uneasy Chair at CoHo Theater; A Christmas Carol, and JAW: A Playwright’s Festival at Portland Center Stage. Television credits include “The Good Wife”, “Leverage”, and “The Mysteries of Laura”. Josiah holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, where he appeared as Iago in Othello, Bolingbroke in Richard II, Medvedenko in The Seagull, and Nolan in Petty Harbour.
(Vic) Shiloh Fernandez grew up in the small Northern California town of Ukiah. He moved to Los Angeles and has been in several major motion pictures and television productions. He’s proud to be making his New York stage debut in Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre and WP Theater’s premiere of Ironbound.
(Darja) Marin Ireland is a highly acclaimed actress of stage and screen. She stars opposite Corey Stoll in the independent feature GLASS CHIN, a performance for which she’s nominated for a 2016 Independent Spirit Award. She was recently seen in the indie film, THE FAMILY FANG, which debut at the Toronto Film Festival, and other recent film credits include THE PHENOM, BOTTLED UP, and 28 HOTEL ROOMS. This past year, she starred in the NBC miniseries THE SLAP, in addition to recurring roles on HBO’s GIRLS and Showtime’s MASTERS OF SEX. She will next star in the Amazon series, SNEAKY PETE. Tony Award nominated for her performance in Neil LaBute’s REASONS TO BE PRETTY, Marin recently received rave reviews for her performance in Lincoln Center Theater’s play KILL FLOOR and starred on Broadway in Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of THE BIG KNIFE, opposite Bobby Cannavale.
(Tommy) Morgan Spector Broadway: Machinal, Harvey, A View From the Bridge. Off-Broadway: Russian Transport (New Group, Drama Desk Nomination). Regional: Dissonance (Bay Street Theatre), The Lion King national tour, Enemies: A Love Story (Wilma Theatre). Television: Series Regular: “The Money (pilot),””Allegiance”, “The Broad Squad” (pilot), “Paradise Pictures (pilot). Recurring: “Boardwalk Empire,” “Person of Interest,” “Zero Hour,” “Law & Order: CI,” “How to Make It in America.” Guest Star: “Orange is the New Black,” “Do No Harm,” Film: Permission, The Bleeder, Christine, Split, The Drop, All Is Bright, Grand Street, Musical Chairs, Burning Blue, The Last Airbender. BA, Reed College; MFA, American Conservatory Theatre.
