Team
Murphy Lorenzo Applin Jr., viBe/WP Pages to Stages Administrator
Murphy Lorenzo Applin Jr. (they/them) is a director, actor, writer, and musician from Philadelphia, PA and currently based in Brooklyn. Recent directing credits include Aftermath: Analyzing Anguish (Flea Theater), Dependence Day (The Tank), and Yami (Lincoln Center Education). They can be seen on screen in The Other Two (HBO Max), and Diarra From Detroit (BET+). They have also performed in Restoration In Progress (NYU), as well as Love Birds: or how to mend a broken heart in a day (The Gatekeeper’s Collective) and Ceremonies for Alligator Bites (The Tank). They are also a current teaching artist with viBe Theater Experience, as well as Classical Theater of Harlem. BFA Acting, University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
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.
Rebecca Martínez, BOLD Associate Artistic Director
Rebecca Martinez (she/her) is a creative producer and a director who focuses on new plays and musicals and uses adaptation to envision classic plays through a contemporary lens. She recently served as the Cohort Collaborations Director for One Nation/One Project, supporting public art and health projects across the U.S. Recent Off-Broadway credits: Public Theater’s Mobile Unit: Much Ado About Nothing; The Comedy of Errors (also co-adapter; Drama Desk Nomination, Outstanding Adaptation, LATA Awards for Outstanding Adaptation and Theatrical Concept). At WP: Dirty Laundry (WP Theater / Spark Theatricals), Bite Me (WP Theater / Colt Coeur), Sancocho (Latinx Playwrights Circle / Sol Project / WP Theater). Regional projects include: Sancocho (Geva Theater), In Her Bones (Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center), Living and Breathing (Two River), Somewhere Over the Border (Syracuse Stage & Geva Theatre). Martínez has directed and developed new work with Signature Theatre, the O’Neill, Latinx Playwrights Circle, the Sol Project, NAMT, INTAR, Working Theater, The Playwrights Realm, among others. Affiliations: member of the Obie Award-winning Sol Project Collective, Proud WP Directors Lab Alum, 2021 TCG Rising Leaders of Color, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, INTAR’s Unit52, New Georges Affiliated Artist, Drama League Directing Fellow, member of SDC. Commissions: Artist-in-Residence (Radical Evolution), SEED Directing Commission (Public Theater) Awards: Colorado Henry Award for Directing; four Portland, Oregon Drammy Awards; Lilla Jewel Award for Women Artists. rebeccamartinez.org
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.
CQ Quintana, Leader, Writer’s Lab
CQ Quintana [pronouns: any/all] is a queer nonbinary writer with Cuban blood and New Orleans roots based on Canarsee and Munsee Lenape land in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. Across genres, CQ’s writing centers on human connection and proclaims, you are not alone. Developed and produced nationwide, CQ’s plays include END OF PLAY (INTAR/NYSCA NewWorks Lab Commission), The 126-Year-Old Artist (Audible), The Genderless Play Experiment (Carthage College New Play Initiative), Beastgirl, based on the chapbook by Elizabeth Acevedo with music by Janelle Lawrence (Kennedy Center), AZUL (Diversionary Theatre), Scissoring (INTAR; published by Dramatists Play Service), and more. Television writing credits include AMC’s Orphan: Black Echoes, Fox’s Alert: Missing Persons Unit (Seasons 2 and 3), and ABC’s The Baker and the Beauty. CQ’s fiction, poetry, and hybrid creative nonfiction is featured in Foglifter, Third Coast, Jacar Press, and BOMB Magazine, among others, and CQ is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Lucas Artists Program at Montalvo Arts Center, Café Royal Cultural Foundation, MacDowell, Van Lier New Voices, QUEER|ART, WP, Playwrights Realm, and Lambda Literary. For more, visit www.cquintana.com or subscribe to Prosebuds, a Substack featuring CQ’s work and showcasing the multi-genre writing community.
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 and BOLD New Work Development Associate
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.)
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.
Katherine Wilkinson, Co-Facilitator: Directors Lab
Katherine Wilkinson is a Brooklyn-based director, writer, educator, and theatremaker. She is the 2024–2028 Leader of the WP Directors Lab and a faculty member at Columbia University School of the Arts. A recipient of the Opera America Tobin Director-Designer Prize, she is also a New Georges Affiliated Artist, Orchard Project Greenhouse Lab alum, and Susan Blackburn Prize nominee.
Her work has been developed and presented with organizations including Ars Nova, HERE Arts Center, La Jolla Playhouse’s WOW Festival, MCC Theater, Clubbed Thumb, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Signature Theatre, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Miami New Drama, The Watermill Center, and The Oklahoma Contemporary, among others. Her production of ODDS ARE by Smita Russell received the Excellence in Fringe Award at the Edinburgh Fringe (2025).
Katherine has directed, taught, and facilitated at institutions including Columbia University, Harvard University, The Juilliard School, New York University, Duke University, Rutgers University, Bard College, and the University of Queensland. She previously served as Interim Head of Directing at Texas Tech University and has worked as Associate or Assistant Director to Anne Bogart, Sam Gold, Whitney White, JoAnne Akalaitis, Oliver Butler, and Andy Blankenbuehler.
She holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia University and a BA in Performance Studies from UNC Chapel Hill. www.katherinewilkinson.com
