Yellowjackets 08/09 - Berkeley Repertory Theatre

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2008–09 season > Yellowjackets > Who’s who

who’s who

Itamar Moses, Playwright
Tony Taccone, Director
Annie Smart, Scenic Design
Meg Neville, Costume Design
Obadiah Eaves, Original Music & Sound Design
Alexander V. Nichols, Lighting Design
Madeleine Oldham, Dramaturg
Steve Rankin, Fight Director
Michael Suenkel *, Production Stage Manager
Karen Szpaller *, Assistant Stage Manager
Amy Potozkin, Casting Director
Mina Morita, Assistant Director
Wayne Kochanek, Assistant Fight Director

Cast (in alphabetical order)

Shoresh Alaudini, Damian / Mr. Nelson
Jahmela Biggs, Tamika / Ms. Robbins
Alex Curtis, Ryan / Mr. Franks
Ben Freeman, Avi / Mr. Ivanov
Lance Gardner, James / Rashid
Amaya Alonso Hallifax, Alexa / Ms. Alvarez
Kevin Hsieh, Sammy / Mr. Ling
Adrienne Papp, Gwen / Mom
Craig Piaget, Trevor / Mr. Terrence
Brian Rivera, Guillem / Mr. Behzad / Officer Sanchez
Erika Salazar, Sarine / Ms. Earl

Tony Taccone

Director

Tony Taccone is in his 12th year as artistic director of Berkeley Rep, where he has staged more than 35 shows, including world premieres by Culture Clash, Rinde Eckert, David Edgar, Danny Hoch, Geoff Hoyle and Quincy Long. Taccone recently made his Broadway debut with Bridge & Tunnel, which was universally lauded by the critics and won a Tony Award for its star, Sarah Jones. He also staged the show’s record-breaking off-Broadway run, workshopped it for Broadway at Berkeley Rep and directed Jones’ previous hit, Surface Transit. He commissioned Tony Kushner’s legendary Angels in America, co-directed its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum and has collaborated with Kushner on six projects. Their latest piece, Brundibar, featured designs by beloved children’s author Maurice Sendak. It debuted at Berkeley Rep and then traveled to Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven and the New Victory Theatre in New York City, where it sold out its run and was nominated for two Drama Desk Awards. In 2004, his production of David Edgar’s Continental Divide transferred to the Barbican in London after playing the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Rep, La Jolla Playhouse and England’s Birmingham Rep. Taccone frequently works in Ashland, where he has also directed Coriolanus, Othello, Pentecost and the American premiere of Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy. At present, he has two hit shows touring the nation: Danny Hoch’s Taking Over and Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking. His regional credits include Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arizona Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre and San Francisco’s Eureka Theatre, where he served six years as artistic director before coming to Berkeley Rep. Taccone has served on the faculty at UC Berkeley, sat on the board of Theatre Communications Group and acted as a regional representative for the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.

Itamar Moses

Playwright

Itamar Moses is the author of the full-length plays Bach at Leipzig, Back Back Back, Celebrity Row, Completeness, The Den, The Four of Us, Outrage, the musical Reality! (with Gaby Alter) and various short plays and one-acts. His work has appeared off-Broadway and elsewhere in New York, at regional theatres across the country and in Canada, and is published by Faber & Faber and Samuel French. Itamar holds an M.F.A. in dramatic writing from New York University and has taught playwriting at Yale and NYU. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, MCC Playwrights’ Coalition and Naked Angels Writers Group, and is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. Itamar was born in Berkeley and now lives in Brooklyn.

Annie Smart

Scenic Designer

Annie Smart is from London where she designed sets and costumes for numerous productions including Fen, A Mouthful of Birds, Not Quite Jerusalem and others at The Royal Court; and Black Snow, The Father, The Mountain Giants, Say It with Flowers and The Skriker at The National Theatre. Her Bay Area credits include A Doll’s House, Night and Day and Threepenny Opera at A.C.T.; An Ideal Husband, Othello, Man and Superman and The Tempest at California Shakespeare Theater; The Right Kind of People and Tir Na n’Og at the Magic; A Long Day’s Journey Into Night at San Jose Rep; Brooklyn Boy and Theophilus North at TheatreWorks; and Big Love, Fêtes de la Nuit, Heartbreak House, Honour, Suddenly Last Summer, Taking Over, To the Lighthouse and others at Berkeley Rep. She also designed the sets for KQED’s The Josh Kornbluth Show. Annie works nationwide and currently teaches costume design at UC Berkeley.

Meg Neville

Costume Designer

Meg Neville is a costume designer based in the Bay Area. Her Berkeley Rep credits include Closer, Dinner With Friends, Eurydice, Galileo, Suddenly Last Summer and TRAGEDY: a tragedy. As an associate artist at Cal Shakes, she has designed numerous productions, most recently An Ideal Husband and King Lear. Her other Bay Area credits include work at A.C.T., Joe Goode Performance Group, the Magic, San Jose Rep and San Francisco Opera Center. Meg’s regional and New York credits include the Yale Rep and Second Stage productions of Eurydice, First Lady at Yale Rep, Orfeo & Eurydice with Chicago Opera Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Sueno at Hartford Stage, The Time of Your Life at the Atlantic Theater Company and Three Tall Women at Center Stage, as well as works at South Coast Rep, Portland Stage and New York Stage and Film. Meg has an M.F.A. in theatre design from Yale School of Drama, where she won the Leo Lerman Award for costume design, and now lives in San Francisco with her husband and three children.

Obadiah Eaves

Original Music & Sound Designer

Obadiah’s music and sound have appeared at Berkeley Rep in 9 Parts of Desire, Heartbreak House and The Pillowman. On Broadway, he designed sound for Come Back, Little Sheba; The Lieutenant of Inishmore; and Shining City; and has designed dozens of off-Broadway and regional productions at other venues. He won a 2007 Bay Area Critics Circle Award for his work on Heartbreak House, a 2005 Lortel Award for 9 Parts of Desire (Manhattan Ensemble Theater, Berkeley Rep and national tour) and an Audelco Viv Award for Fucking A at The Public. Obadiah’s music can also be heard on HBO, Nickelodeon, Discovery, TLC and in Fisher-Price toys. He has appeared as a session violinist and mandolinist in numerous film and television scores, and his band, Big Hair, has released two nationally distributed CDs.

Alexander V. Nichols

Lighting Designer

Alexander V. Nichols has created scenic, video and lighting designs for numerous Berkeley Rep productions, as well as companies and artists including A.C.T., Alley Theatre, Arena Stage, Hong Kong Ballet, Huntington Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Mark Taper Forum, OSF, National Theater of Taiwan, San Francisco Ballet, Boston Ballet, Alvin Ailey, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Alberta Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Singapore Dance Theatre, ODC/SF, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Kronos Quartet, Paul Dresher Ensemble and Rinde Eckert. He served as resident designer for the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Pennsylvania Ballet, Hartford Ballet and American Repertory Ballet, and lighting director for American Ballet Theatre. He’s also designed for choreographers Christopher d’Amboise, Val Caniparoli, Ann Carlson, Sonya Delwaide, Marguerite Donlon, Dominique Dumais, Jean Grand-Maitre, Joe Goode, Bill T. Jones, Graham Lustig, Mark Morris, Matjash Mrozewski, David Nixon, Kevin O’Day, Kirk Peterson, Stephen Petronio, Dwight Rhoden and Michael Smuin.

Steve Rankin

Fight Director

Steve Rankin last staged the fight sequences for Mother Courage at Berkeley Rep. He received high critical acclaim playing Poins and staging the fights for the Tony Award-winning production of Henry IV, Parts I and II at Lincoln Center. Most recently he staged fights for Antony and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Steve’s Broadway credits include Anna Christie, Dracula: the Musical, The Farnsworth Invention, Getting Away With Murder, Jersey Boys, The Real Inspector Hound, The Who’s Tommy, Twelfth Night and Two Shakespearean Actors; he has numerous off-Broadway and film credits. Regionally, Steve has worked at Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Ahmanson Theatre, The Alley, Asolo Theatre Company, Center Stage, GEVA, La Jolla Playhouse, The Mark Taper Forum, The Old Globe, the Metropolitan Opera, Philadelphia Drama Guild, Seattle Opera, San Diego Opera and Virginia Stage Company. He is an associate artist at the Old Globe Theatre as an actor and fight director.

cast

Shoresh Alaudini

Damian / Mr. Nelson

Shoresh Alaudini is a recent graduate of the performing arts and social justice program at the University of San Francisco. He has been blessed to work with incredible and inspiring talent at The College Players, Crowded Fire Productions, Golden Thread Productions, Shotgun Players, USF and Lick Wilmerding High School, and served as an understudy for Berkeley Rep’s acclaimed musical Passing Strange. Shoresh’s film credits include the 2007 Sundance Film Festival selection Strange Culture, and various short films with students from CCSF, UC Berkeley and USF. Shoresh writes and produces material in collaboration with several young film and theatre directors and performers in the Bay Area, and was the first recipient of the Beach Blanket Babylon Scholarship For the Arts in the acting category in 2002.

Jahmela Biggs *

Tamika / Ms. Robbins

Jahmela Biggs is a recent graduate of the American Conservatory Theater Master of Fine Arts Program. She has appeared as Martha Cratchit in A.C.T.’s mainstage production of A Christmas Carol, as Alicia in Alliance Theatre’s We Are Antigone and as Vera in Shotgun Players’ West Coast premiere of Bulrusher. Her M.F.A. performances at A.C.T. include Anna in The Government Inspector, Angelique in George Dandin, Cassandra in Cassandra, Helena in A Midsummer Nights Dream, Proserpine in Candida, Mayme in Intimate Apparel, Mrs. Campbell in The Man Who Climbed The Pecan Trees and Tammy in The Wendy Play. Jahmela is the recipient of an A.C.T. Merit Scholarship and a Bob and Susan Green Scholarship, and is a Black Women In Film Scholar. Last year, she studied in the Prima del Teatro training program in San Minato, Italy. Jahmela received her B.A. in theatre from Spelman College.

Alex Curtis

Ryan / Mr. Franks

Alex Curtis is proud to return to Berkeley Rep for the premiere of Yellowjackets, having participated in the show’s 2007 UC Berkeley workshop as Ryan and Mr. Ivanov. Recently, he appeared in Three at Un-Scripted Theater Company, A Very Special Money and Run Winter Season Holiday Special at Impact Theatre and Within the Wall of Sand with the San Francisco Young Playwrights Festival. He is also a founding company member of The Threshold Project. Alex received the 2007–2008 Sara Huntsman Sturgess Memorial Prize for outstanding artistic accomplishment in theatre and performance studies from UC Berkeley, where he is completing simultaneous degrees in business administration and theatre & performance studies. This spring he will direct a commedia dell’arte as part of UC Berkeley’s 2008–2009 season.

Ben Freeman

Avi / Mr. Ivanov

Ben Freeman is pleased to continue working with Berkeley Rep on Yellowjackets, having participated in last fall’s reading at UC Berkeley. His previous acting work includes credits with Butterfield 8 Theatre Company, Crossroads Theatre, Crowded Fire Theater Company, Playhouse West, Town Hall Theatre Company, Theatre Anomaly and the Willows Theatre Company. Ben’s favorite credits include Alan Strang in Equus, Edmund in King Lear and Sweeney in Sweeney Todd. This past spring, he made his directorial debut with Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen at the Bentley School, where he graduated this past June. Ben studied theatre at the National High School Institute at Northwestern University last summer, and will attend Brown University next fall.

Lance Gardner *

James / Rashid

This is Lance’s first onstage appearance at Berkeley Rep; he previously served as an understudy for Passing Strange. Last season he worked with Marin Theatre Company as Don Lope in Lovers and Executioners and Steve in A Streetcar Named Desire. At the Magic Theatre, Lance performed in the world premiere of Rust. He is a member of San Jose Repertory Theatre’s Red Ladder Theatre Company and has worked with TheatreWorks and the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. He has also performed locally with City Lights and Pear Avenue Theatres. When not on stage as an actor, Lance can be seen on stage playing drums with his rock band, Vae Victis.

Amaya Alonso Hallifax

Alexa / Ms. Alvarez

Amaya Alonso Hallifax is thrilled to make her Berkeley Rep debut in Yellowjackets. A Berkeley native, she has appeared locally with Porchlight Theatre Company, Shotgun Players, TheatreFirst, Upon These Boards and Word for Word. Regionally, she’s worked at the Guthrie Theater, Mixed Blood Theatre and Teatro del Pueblo, among others. Amaya dances with Ginga Brasil, holds a B.F.A. in acting from the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theatre Actor Training Program and studied at the London International School of Performing Arts and the Globe Theatre in London.

Kevin Hsieh

Sammy / Mr. Ling

Kevin Hsieh is excited to make his first appearance at Berkeley Rep. He most recently appeared in theatre Q’s production of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. His other credits include All My Sons with Filbert Steps Productions, Chekhov in Yalta with Dragon Productions, The Last Night of Ballyhoo and The Rainmaker with Northside Theatre Company, Native Eyes with the Silicon Valley Moon Festival and Things Unsaid with the Jon Sims Center for the Arts. While attending UC Berkeley, he performed with Theatre Rice; before that, he was a finalist in two consecutive California state high school speech and debate championship tournaments, representing Leland High School of San Jose.

Adrienne Papp

Gwen / Mom

Adrienne Papp is delighted to make her Berkeley Rep debut in Yellowjackets. A Bay Area native, Adrienne is no stranger to Berkeley theatre. She was the understudy for Mrs. Bumble in Berkeley Rep’s production of Oliver Twist and starred as Tracey Ackhart, Miss Late Teen Colorado, in Impact Theatre’s Colorado. Adrienne has appeared in UC Berkeley productions including La Casa de Bernarda Alba—in which she played Angustias—and The Vagina Monologues. She received her B.A. in theatre and performance studies from UC Berkeley this past fall.

Craig Piaget

Trevor / Mr. Terrence

Craig previously worked with Berkeley Rep during the workshop process for Yellowjackets and as the understudy for the title role in Oliver Twist. He has also performed with Shakespeare Santa Cruz’s school tour, Shakes To Go, as Touchstone in As You Like It and Trinculo in The Tempest, was a member of the theatre’s 2005 acting company and spent three years performing in their winter pantomimes. Craig is a founding member of Pi: The Physical Comedy Troupe, a San Francisco-based clown troupe that has been performing throughout the Bay Area since 2005. He received his B.A. in theatre from UC Santa Cruz, was an acting intern at Shakespeare Santa Cruz and is a graduate of the Clown Conservatory at the San Francisco Circus Center.

Brian Rivera *

Guillem / Mr. Behzad / Officer Sanchez

Brian Rivera is excited to make his Berkeley Rep debut. Most recently, he played the Kralahome in The King and I for Sierra Repertory Theatre. Brian has toured with the San Francisco Mime Troupe in Doing Good, and throughout California and France in Word for Word’s Immortal Heart, which won the 2004 Bay Area Critics Circle Awards for best ensemble performance, best director and best drama production. Brian’s other work includes Coyote in Shotgun Players’ Love is a Dream House in Lorin, the title role of Macbeth for the Sacramento Shakespeare Festival and Tajomaru in Sierra Rep’s Rashomon. This year, he made his directorial debut with Lambda Players’ Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches. Brian has trained with the British American Drama Academy in Oxford, England and holds a B.A. in drama from San Francisco State University.

Erika Salazar

Sarine / Ms. Earl

Erika is both proud and humbled to make her Berkeley Rep debut with Yellowjackets. Her past Bay Area credits include Esther in the West Coast premiere of Cartoon with Impact Theatre; King of the Jinn in Island of Animals with Golden Thread Productions; Marriage of Figaro with Center Repertory Theatre, which won a Bay Area Critics Circle Award for best ensemble; Olivia/Maria in Twelfth Night with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival; and many staged readings and workshops with other local theatres including the Magic and Shotgun Players. Erika’s other favorite credits include playing Moon/Muerte in a bilingual Blood Weddings/Bodas de Sangre, Terry in Extremities and Mother in Machinal. Erika is also a member of the sketch comedy group Funny But Mean, and holds a B.F.A. from the New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida.

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.