Team
Ria Mae Binaoro, Development Manager
Ria Binaoro (she/her/hers) is excited to join WP Theater as the Development Manager. She is a native New Yorker, storyteller, director, dancer and choreographer. Ria has a BA from Pace University with a concentration in Theater Management as well as over 15 years Analyst experience for manufacturing and distribution companies. She has various credits including Director of an All-Filipina benefit performance of The Vagina Monologues and is a Featured Dancer in the Pagbubunyi concert archived in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in Lincoln Center. Currently, Ria is the co-founder of Dance Marathon Challenge, a quarterly dance workshop intended to inspire all levels of budding and professional dancers. Participants complete a back-to-back marathon of classes in one studio session, with the challenge of learning different styles and dance combinations, strengthening interpretation, stamina and versatility as a dancer.
Alisha Espinosa, Marketing Director
Alisha Espinosa (she/her/hers) is an Afro-Boricua theater maker (actor, playwright, producer, teaching artist). She is the Producing Artistic Director for the Latinx Playwrights Circle. Past Awards: Creatives Rebuild New York Artist Employment Grant and NALAC Fund for the Arts Artist Grant. Select Writer Residencies: Hedgebrook 2023, Saltonstall 2023; Audrey Residency 2022 – ’23 (New Georges); Early Career Writers Group 2021 – ’22 (Clubbed Thumb); First Stage Residency 2019 (Drama League); Diversity Cohort 2018 (NY Shakespeare Exchange). Select Acting Credits: Twelfth Night (St. Louis Shake), blooms (EST), A Skeptic & A Bruja (Urbanite), Seize the King (Classical Theatre of Harlem), Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (WP Theatre). Some of her work can be found on New Play Exchange. alishaespinosa.com
Gary Levinson, Production Manager
Gary Levinson (he/him/his) started at WP Theater with their production of What We’re Up Against. Most recently, he was the Director of Production of the Obie and Drama Desk Award winning Pearl Theatre for 10 seasons, Shakespeare on the Sound for 8 seasons, and has been with Red Bull Theater since 2015. Other productions: Post Mortem, Mercy on the Doorstep, Betrothed, Lebensraum, New York Week of Food and Wine, and The 3M Most Gifted Wrapper Contest for 7 years. In a previous life he was a propmaster, working on productions such as Matchmaker (Ford’s Theater), The Exact Center of the Universe (Century), Waverly Gallery, Collected Stories, Mrs. Klein; as well as numerous feature films, television, commercials and music videos.
Kristin Leahey, BOLD Associate Artistic Director
Kristin Leahey, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at Boston University. She has freelanced as an artist with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, O’Neill Theater Center, Trinity Repertory Theatre, Primary Stages, Classical Stage Company, Playwrights’ Center, Dallas Theater Center, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Guthrie Theater, Steppenwolf Theatre, The Goodman Theatre, The Kennedy Center, The Old Globe, the Indiana Repertory Theatre, Cleveland Play House, American Theatre Company, Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Hartford Stage, People’s Light, Ireland’s Galway Arts Festival, Teatro Vista (artistic associate), Steep Theatre (ensemble member), and A Red Orchid Theatre, among others. She holds a Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin, earned her MA in Theatre from Northwestern University, and her BA in Drama and History from Tufts University. Her publications include articles in Theatre Topics, Journal of American Drama, and New England Theatre Journal, as well as in the anthologies Teaching Performance Practices in Remote, Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy Anthology, and the Routledge Companion to Latine Theatre and Performance. Leahey is the Co-Editor of LMDA’s Review and is the Editor for a Special Issues Section of Theatre History Studies on Queer and Transgender Performance and Theatre. She recently completed a research grant from the Harry Ransom Center. She served as the Literary Manager of Wolly Mammoth Theatre, Literary Director of Seattle Rep, and was a producer with the WP 2020-22 Lab. She is a recipient of a Fulbright and will be in collaboration with the Abbey Theatre.
Lisa McNulty, Producing Artistic Director
Lisa McNulty (she/her/hers) is an award-winning Broadway, off-Broadway and regional theater producer who recently celebrated ten years as the Producing Artistic Director of WP Theater. Under Lisa’s leadership, WP has been awarded Drama Desk, Lortel, and OBIE Awards for institutional excellence, and has proudly provided an Off-Broadway home to hundreds of extraordinary Women+ artists. Lisa comes to WP from Manhattan Theatre Club, where she served as Artistic Line Producer for eight seasons, working on more than 30 productions both on and off Broadway, including plays by Lynn Nottage, Sarah Treem, Harvey Fierstein, and Tarell Alvin McCraney, among many, many others. Lisa has a long history with WP Theater. She was originally hired by the company’s founder, Julia Miles, as the Literary Manager from 1997-2000, where she dramaturged work by María Irene Fornés, Julie Hébert, and Karen Hartman, among others, and in 2004, she returned to WP as its Associate Artistic Director, working on projects with artists including Diane Paulus and Dierdre Murray, Rinne Groff, and Lisa D’Amour. From 2000-2004 she was McCarter Theater’s Producing Associate, and her independent producing career includes projects with Sarah Ruhl, Todd Almond, Lucy Thurber and Lear Debessonet. Lisa’s leadership is underwritten by the BOLD Theater Women’s Leadership Circle, an initiative to support and promote women’s theater leadership funded by Helen Gurley Brown Foundation.
Julianna Azevedo Mitchell, Audience and Community Engagement Manager
Julianna Azevedo Mitchell (she/her) is a Brazilian actor and arts administrator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is a co-founder of The Barn at Lee, a nonprofit dedicated to creating programs for emerging performing artists. Most recently, she has worked at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and The Diller-Quaile School of Music. Julianna holds a BFA in acting from the Experimental Theater Wing at NYU-Tisch, and a master’s degree in integrated marketing with a focus in nonprofit management.
Ayana Parker Morrison- Co-Facilitator, Producer’s Lab
Ayana Parker Morrison (she/her) is a Creative Producer in theater, live events, and across digital platforms. After graduating from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in Acting and a minor in Africana Studies, she shifted her focus to develop new projects that speak to the spectrum of stories from the African Diaspora. Ayana was the inaugural Producing Fellow with New York Theater Workshop’s 2050 Administrative Fellowship and an alum of the WP Producer’s Lab 21-22′ cohort. As Manager of Artistic Production at MCC Theater she produced many groundbreaking pieces including BEES & HONEY, WET BRAIN, and NY Times Critic’s Pick WOLF PLAY. As current Creative Producer at Checkmark Productions, she develops work and cultivates community amongst the industry’s most exciting emerging artists of the global majority. Select freelance producing credits include TENDER NAPALM at HERE Arts Center, SAINTS OF FAILURE, a solo show performed in Fort Greene’s Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, and NY Times Critic’s Pick EUREKA DAY with Colt Coeur. She is currently developing SELF PORTRAITS by Phillip Howze with the Bushwick Starr. Ayana is also a public speaker sharing her philosophy on Culturally Responsive Producing and her expertise as an industry leader on various platforms across the country.
Michael Sag, Managing Director
Michael (he/him/his), in his 6th season at WP, was most recently the general manager for Williamstown Theatre Festival’s 62nd season (2016) which included four world premieres (one of which, Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living, won the Pulitzer prize for Drama), one American premiere and two revivals. Prior to that, Michael worked in commercial general management on and off Broadway since 2001 including production of: Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella, All The Way, Bullets Over Broadway, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, Driving Miss Daisy, August: Osage County, The Producers, Hairspray, Little Shop of Horrors, Sweeney Todd, and Stomp. In addition, from 2006 to 2009, Michael headed a representative office in Shanghai out of which several Asian touring projects were launched. Michael is currently an adjunct professor at Montclair State University and serves as both the President of the Association for Non-Profit Theater Companies and of Congregation Shomrei Emunah in Montclair, NJ.
Hannah Sgambellone, Associate Production Manager
Hannah Sgambellone is a director, producer, and production manager. She is currently the Junior Producer with Fault Line Theatre, and recently served as the technical director for The Acting Company’s 2022-2023 National Tour. She received B.A’s in English and in Theatre from Xavier University in 2019, and completed internships with Taproot Theatre and the Berkshire Theatre Festival. While in college, she was the co-founder and artistic director of The Regular Theatre in Cincinnati, OH, with whom she produced eight shows and directed five. Favorite NYC credits include Scene Partners (The Vineyard Theatre), Chornobyldorf (Prototype Festival 2024), Love and Science (City Center), Robin & Me (Abingdon Theatre Co.)
francisca da silveira, TOW Playwright in Residence
francisca is a Cape Verdean-American playwright, tv writer and Boston native whose work has been featured in ArtsBoston, The LA Times, The Boston Globe and American Theatre Magazine. In 2023, her play CAN I TOUCH IT? enjoyed a Rolling World Premiere at Company One Theatre (Boston), Rogue Machine Theatre (Los Angeles), and Cleveland Public Theatre (Cleveland). Her play PAY NO WORSHIP was a 2023 Finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and received its World Premiere at InterAct Theatre Company (Philadelphia) in April 2023. Her play NOT-FOR-PROFIT (OR THE EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION PLAY) will receive its World Premiere with Cleveland Public Theatre in Fall 2024. da silveira was a 2020-2021 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow, a member of The Public Theater’s 2020-2023 Emerging Writers Group, a 2022-2023 Jerome Fellow with the Playwrights’ Center, a member of The Apollo Theater’s 2023 New Works Initiative Cohort, and a 2023 NYSCA commission recipient with The New Group (NYC). she is currently the 2024-2025 Tow Playwright-in-Resisence with WP Theatre (NYC), where her play MINOR·ITY will receive its World Premiere in Spring 2025, co-produced by commissioning theatre Colt Coeur (NYC). In TV land, da silveira was in the writers’ room for HBO’s Season 3 of INDUSTRY and in development with HBO. She holds a BFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MSc in Playwriting from the University of Edinburgh.
Cori Thomas, Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence
Cori Thomas (she/her/hers) is an award winning playwright and screenwriter. Produced plays: LOCKDOWN; WHEN JANUARY FEELS LIKE SUMMER; CITIZENS MARKET; MY SECRET LANGUAGE OF WISHES; PA’S HAT and more. Produced and Developed at: WP Theater; Rattlestick Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Page 73, Ensemble Studio Theatre; City Theater Co. Pittsburgh; The Goodman Theater; Pillsbury House Theater; Mixed Blood; Horizon’s Theater, Mosaic Theatre Co.; and others. She has won the American Theater Critics Osborn Award; Edgerton Foundation Prize; Was a 2017 runner up for The Dramatist Guild Horton Foote Playwriting Award; is a two time Theodore Ward Prize winner. Cori is a New Dramatists Resident. She has been awarded Fellowships at O’Neill National Playwrights Conference; Sundance Theater Lab; MacDowell Colony; Bogliasco Foundation; Baryshnikov Arts Center; and more. Film and TV Projects include: Original screenplay for HBO Films and Tribeca Productions; JuVee Productions; and more.. Cori is presently co-writing the memoirs of Sex Trafficking victim Sara Kruzan for Knopf/Random House. Founder: The Pa’s Hat Foundation a 501c(3) in 2012. Pa’s Hat is an organization focused on helping former child soldiers and other marginalized citizens of Liberia, West Africa with educational and work related assistance. Ongoing volunteer at San Quentin State Prison with the anti-violence program No More Tears. Board of Directors: of New Dramatists, Pa’s Hat Foundation, Project FEEL, and No More TearsSQ. Cori is represented by Leah Hamos and Vernalis Co at The Gersh Agency, Kirsten Jacobson at Good-Fear Eve MacSweeney at Fletcher and Co. LOCKDOWN is scheduled for Spring 2021 at Milwaukee Rep.
Michael Valladares, Business and Company Manager
Michael Valladares (he/any) is a playwright, performer, and dramaturg. Writing credits include Mad Little Reefers (2022, FreshFruitFestival at The Wild Project, NYC); Sometime When Everything Has Changed (2021, Theatre in the Open & Herter Park Amphitheater, Boston); and roped (2020, Pentameters Theatre, London). Previously, he served as a Marketing Coordinator for Concord Theatricals and an Associate Editor for Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the America’s Review: The Journal of Dramaturgy. Production dramaturgy credits include Kate Hamill’s Little Women at Cherry Lane Theatre, Chekhov’s Swan Song at Pentameters Theatre, and the 2021 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. He’s also freelanced as a teacher at Boston Children’s Theatre and as an artist and technician at Double Edge Theatre. He believes that imagination is liberation.
Sofia Ubilla, BOLD New Play Development Consultant
Sofia Ubilla is a South Florida-born, NYC based Costa Rican theatre artist and administrator. Past directing credits include Aztec Pirates, or the Insignificance of Life on Mars (Chain Theatre), Sweat (SUNY Brockport), Seance, Emperor of 10th Avenue (INTAR Theatre), Saguaros (JACK), The Girls (Dixon Place), Valor, agravio y mujer and Cloud Tectonics (Fordham University). Past assistant and associate directing credits include Dirty Laundry (WP Theatre), we are continuous (Geva Theatre), Los empeños de una casa, La Conducta de la Vida (Repertorio Español), Somewhere Over the Border (Syracuse Stage), To the Bone, Antigonick (Fordham University). She was the Spring 2023 Directing Fellow at Geva Theatre and has worked on a variety of projects with Bay Street Theatre, AENY, Hedgepig Ensemble, Latinx Playwrights Circle, Latine Musical Theatre Lab and Microteatro Miami. She graduated from Fordham University with a BA in Theatre and Spanish Studies. |www.sofiaubilla.com|
