Crystal Finn
Crystal Finn (Playwright) is an actor and writer. Her plays include Ms. Lilly, produced for Clubbed Thumb’s directing fellowship and directed by Josiah Davis, Find Me Here, also with Clubbed Thumb, directed by Caitlin Sullivan, The Faire produced by Fault Line Theater, and Becoming Liv Ullman, which was a hit at the NY Fringe Festival and went on to the New Ground Theater Festival at Cleveland Playhouse. Much of Crystal’s writing is inspired by the many new plays she has been fortunate enough to perform in, including over twenty world premieres. For WP theater, Crystal was seen in Munich Medea: Happy Family by Corinne Jaber, directed by Lee Sunday Evans. She is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb where she has been developing and performing new work consistently for over a decade, including most recently Derangements by Nadja Leonhard-Hooper, Cold War Choir Practice by Ro Reddick, Deep Blue Sound by Abe Koogler, and Plano by Will Arbery. Crystal won a Theater World Award for her Broadway debut in Birthday Candles by Noah Haidle and was nominated for a Lucille Lortel award for her performance in Cold War Choir Practice. She is a recipient of the NYSCA arts grant with Fiasco Theater and is currently writing a commission for the company. She is originally from Grass Valley, California.
Emily Young
Emily Young (Director) is an original company member of Fiasco Theater, with whom she has appeared in numerous productions, and now directs and co-directs. Directing credits with Fiasco include: Bartleby (The Old Globe), The Knight of the Burning Pestle (co-director, co-pro Fiasco/Red Bull); The Stand In (workshop at BAX), The Lucky Chance (Fiasco reading series), Sight Unseen (Fiasco reading). Regionally: Palimpsest (In the Works, In the Woods/Forestburgh Playhouse), Spring Awakening (Ohio Northern University). As an actor, Broadway: How I Learned to Drive (u/s), Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson; Off-Broadway with Fiasco and others: The Verge, The Comedy of Errors, Orlando, Pericles, Merrily We Roll Along, The Servant of Two Masters, Twelfth Night, Into the Woods, Measure for Measure, Cymbeline; Regionally: The Old Globe, Folger Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Long Wharf, Menier Chocolate Factory. Film/television: Living with Yourself, The Knick, God of Love. Education: MFA, Brown/Trinity Consortium.
Fiasco Theater
Fiasco Theater (Co-Producer) is an ensemble theater company based in NYC that offers dynamic, joyful, actor-driven productions, and the highest quality, accessible, and affordable training for emerging artists. Fiasco produces annual programming by developing shows through GroundWork, our internal development series, as well as year-round readings and workshops that are open to the public; including the workshop production initiative Without A Net (WAN), which bravely stages a production for audiences with brief rehearsal and minimal resources. Partner theaters in NYC have included Classic Stage Co, TFANA, New Victory, and at Roundabout Theatre where Fiasco serves as the first-ever Company in Residence. Fiasco training programs offer emerging artists the chance to train in Fiasco’s joy-based, actor-centered approach to theater-making.
Fiasco’s first production, Cymbeline, staged in a downtown NYC loft in 2009, was a run-away success: it was presented Off-Broadway twice, for nearly 200 performances and honored with the 2012 Off-Broadway Alliance Award for best revival. Fiasco’s Into the Woods garnered another Off-Broadway Alliance Award, as well as the 2015 Lucille Lortel Award for Best Revival. The national tour of Into the Woods received the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Visiting Production and LA Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Direction and Best Ensemble. Cymbeline, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure and Into the Woods have all been New York Times Critics’ Picks. Merrily We Roll Along (2019), The Knight of the Burning Pestle (2023) and Pericles (2024) were collectively nominated for four Drama Desk awards, two Off-Broadway Alliance awards, and a Lortel Award. Fiasco’s work has been experienced by over 200,000 audience members in New York City and around the country. The New York Times has called Fiasco “a force to reckon with in the American theater.”
Fiasco has been commissioned by the Old Globe and created a podcast of Aditi Brennan Kapil’s Measure for Measure in collaboration with Next Chapter Podcasts. They have been in residence with NYU-Gallatin, TFANA, New Victory Labworks, Duke University, Marquette University and LSU and developed work with the Colorado New Play Festival, Sundance Theatre Lab, the Orchard Project, SPACE on Ryder Farm and the Shakespeare Society.
