As You Like It

Michael Sexton is the Artistic Director of The Shakespeare Society in NYC. He made his Two River debut last season with Henry V. He recently directed Kelly Masterson’s Edith with Jayne Atkinson and Jack Gilpin at the Berkshire Theater Festival and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus with Jay O. Sanders at The Public Theater. He has directed New York premieres of plays by Rinne Groff, Will Eno, Marsha Norman, Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, Ain Gordon, Rogelio Martinez, Victor Lodato, Phil Porter, Chloe Moss, Marin Gazzaniga, Eric Gamalinda, and Rosemary Moore. His work has been seen at Red Bull Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, MCC Theater, Classic Stage Company, Soho Rep, PS122, The Old Globe, Portland Center Stage, Playmakers Rep, Rising Phoenix Rep, SPF and the Cherry Lane Alternative. For The Shakespeare Society, he has programmed and directed events featuring John Douglas Thompson, Adam Gopnik, Michael Cerveris, Stephen Greenblatt, Martha Plimpton, James Shapiro, Robert Pinsky, F. Murray Abraham, Richard Easton, Trevor Nunn, Denis O’Hare, Kathleen Chalfant, Estelle Parsons, Michael Cumpsty and others. He has been a frequent guest artist at NYU’s Graduate Acting Program, The Juilliard School, and Columbia University, where he has directed the works of Shakespeare, Molière, Ostrovsky, Tirso de Molina, Brian Friel, Stephen Adly Guirgis and Suzan-Lori Parks. He has taught theater and Shakespeare at Princeton University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NYU. He co-edited with Tim Page Four Plays by Dawn Powell.

Brett J. Banakis Off Broadway: What’s It All About? (New York Theatre Workshop, Co-Design with Christine Jones); Titus Andronicus directed by Michael Sexton (Public Theater); Tamar and the River (Prospect Theater Co.); Happy Birthday, Lovers, Children, and Three Men on a Horse (TACT, The Actor’s Company Theater); The Little Death: Vol. 1 (Ontological, Incubator Arts Project). Regional: Oklahoma!, The Lion in Winter, Edith, and A Class Act (Berkshire Theatre Festival); Bashir Lazhar (Barrington Stage); Upcoming: And Baby Makes Seven (New Ohio). As Associate Set Designer: If/Then, The Last Ship, Hands on a Hardbody, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (Broadway). Awards: Robert L. B. Tobin Director-Designer Showcase of OPERA America; “Young Designer to Watch,” Live Design Magazine. Education: NYU, UCLA

Tilly Grimes is a European stage designer currently working between London, Paris, and New York. Awards include the Balsamo Grand for Emerging Immigrant Artists, the Irish Arts Design Award, and Irish Times Theatre Award. American theater: Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Westport Country Playhouse, Trinity Repertory Company, Boston Lyric Opera, La MaMa, Shakespeare on the Sound, Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, New World Stages, HERE Arts Center, New Georges, Cherry Lane Theatre, The Juilliard School, and the Curtis Institute. She previously designed Two River’s productions of As You Like It, Present Laughter and Henry V and is delighted to be back at “team two river.” Tilly is also co-artistic director of London/Parisian Theatre Company ‘SavageCharm’ and teaching artist at Brown University. She received her MFA from NYU Tisch.

Seth Reiser designs for theater, dance, music, and installations across the United States. Recent NYC credits include: Come and Back Again with David Dorfman Dance at BAM and now touring; The Bad Guys at Second Stage; The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs at The Public Theatre; the Obie Award-winning production of The Lily’s Revenge at HERE Arts; Dutch A/V at La MaMa; Reggie Watts and Tommy Smith’s RADIO PLAY at PS 122. Regionally his work has been seen at: Portland Center Stage, Trinity Repertory, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Berkeley Repertory, Seattle Repertory, The Denver Center Theatre Company, On the Boards, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Woolly Mammoth, American Repertory Theater, and Playmakers Repertory. Seth received his MFA from NYU/Tisch. He lives in Rochester, NY with his wife Mary and daughter Marion. www.sethreiserdesign.com

 Brandon Wolcott is returning to Two River after previously designing sound for As You Like It and Henry V, for which he also composed original music. Selected credits include: New York: The Record (with 600 Highwaymen, original score), The Good Person of Szechwan and Titus Andronicus (The Public Theater), Kiss the Air (Park Avenue Armory), The Mystery of Irma Vep, The Maids (Red Bull Theater), The Tenant, Confidence Man (Woodshed Collective), So Much Mad in Me (with Faye Driscoll), Hit the Wall (Barrow Street), Manhattan Theatre Club, Lincoln Center, The Joyce, La MaMa, DTW, PS122, 3LD, Juilliard, New Ohio, New Georges. Regional: Great Lakes, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, The Magic.

Ben Toth is the composer for the musical of Sleepless in Seattle, which recently completed its world premiere at California’s Pasadena Playhouse and is now aiming for a West End bow in late 2014. The National Symphony Orchestra premiered Ben’s setting of Sylvia Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song,” sung by Cheyenne Jackson at the Kennedy Center’s sold-out 2013 New Year’s Eve Gala. This past August, Cheyenne performed this again with the Boston Pops, conducted by Keith Lockhart at Tanglewood, and he’ll give the LA premiere at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in April. Grammy/Tony winner Duncan Sheik, Tony winner John Lloyd Young, and Grammy nominee Jane Monheit have also performed Ben’s music. Ben wrote the songs for a production of Twelfth Night, performed Off-Broadway in 2010 and featured in a New York Public Theater gala honoring multi-Tony Award winner Jack O’Brien. Songs from Ben’s collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon have been showcased as part of the opening concert of the MacDowell Colony’s Centennial Celebration as well as in performances at New York’s Symphony Space. Ben composed the score for writer-director Josh Radnor’s Liberal Arts, a feature film starring Radnor, Allison Janney, Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins, and Elizabeth Olsen. The film premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and recently opened in select cities around the world. Ben received a BA from Brown University, and studied composition, voice, piano, and orchestral conducting at the Eastman School of Music. He makes his home in New York and Los Angeles and is repped by Buddy Thomas at ICM Partners.

Sarah Taylor Ellis is a composer, music director, and teaching artist based in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. Sarah is the composer of the musical comedy Intern the Musical (libretto by Julia Robertson), and her family musical Thank You, Mr. Falker (libretto by Andrew Bentz) was presented as part of the 2011 LA Festival of New American Musicals. Her musical adaptation of The Yellow Wallpaper (libretto by Lane Williamson) will be produced by Pallas Theatre Collective in the 2014 DC Capital Fringe Festival. Pallas has also commissioned Ellis and Williamson to write a Jane Austen-inspired musical for the 2016 meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America. Sarah’s music directing credits include Intersections: The Music of Ellis and Williamson at 54 Below, Indigo Theater Project’s Intimate Apparel at Signature Theatre, and Fellowship! A Musical Parody of the Fellowship of the Ring at Hollywood’s Steve Allen Theater. Sarah is currently a teaching artist in music composition and music direction for Roundabout and Harlem School of the Arts. Her theater criticism and scholarship has been published in Studies in Musical Theatre, L.A. Weekly, and Stage and Cinema. Sarah holds a B.A. in Theater Studies/Music and English from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Theater and Performance Studies from UCLA.

Valerie Gladstone is honored to be back at Two River Theater.  Her Broadway credit highlights include Mothers and Sons, The Seagull with Kristin Scott Thomas, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, and Thurgood with Laurence Fishburne. Off-Broadway: stop. reset., The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, First Breeze of Summer at the Signature Theatre; Having Our Say at McCarter Theatre; A Christmas Carol, A Raisin in the Sun/Clybourne Park at Dallas Theater Center. Film and television credit highlights include The Deuce, Maggie’s Plan, Fading Gigolo, The Black List, Madam Secretary, Person of Interest, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Normal Heart, and Black Swan. In her latest venture, she is the artist behind Brooklyn Dollworks, proprietors of art dolls.

Deborah Hecht previously worked at Two River Theater as Vocal Coach on My Wonderful Day and Much Ado About Nothing. Broadway: Cabaret (upcoming), Bridges of Madison County, Hands on a Hard Body, Golden Boy, Venus in Fur, Evita, Spider-Man, Driving Miss Daisy, A Free Man of Color, A Life in the Theatre, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Finian’s Rainbow, The Seagull, Cyrano, Long Day’s Journey into Night, The Crucible, Mary Poppins, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Angels in America, numerous others. Off-Broadway: Lincoln Center (most recently Blood and Gifts), The Public Theater (including many Shakespeare productions in Central Park), Signature Theatre (including the recent Angels in America), Manhattan Theatre Club, New York Theatre Workshop, Vineyard, others. Regional: Yale Rep, Long Wharf, Seattle Rep, Berkeley Rep, many others. England: RSC, National. Film: Leaves of Grass, The Producers, Kinsey, Stardust, others. Faculty: NYU Grad Acting, Juilliard.

J. Steven White is pleased to return to Two River (where he previously fight directed Lives of Reason, Guadalupe in the Guest Room, Camelot, As You Like It, and On Borrowed Time) and to be working again with his former colleagues from productions at The Public Theater, where his fight work has been seen in 22 shows including Julius Caesar, The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, King Lear, A Language of Their Own, and Cymbeline with Liev Schreiber and Michael C. Hall, whom Mr. White trained at NYU Graduate Acting. Broadway includes The Pillowman, Bombay Dreams, Uncle Vanya, A View from the Bridge, Golden Child, The Lion in Winter with Laurence Fishburne, All My Sons, as well as Shogun: The Musical (Assistant Director). His fights have been seen on the stages of every major New York theater including MTC, CSC, Playwrights Horizons, Roundabout, and the Irish Repertory Theatre. He has worked at McCarter on six productions including The Convert. He is the fencing master for the Tulsa Ballet where he staged the fencing sequences in Edwaard Liang’s production of Romeo and Juliet.​ Mr. White spent 11 seasons at American Conservatory Theater, where he began his teaching career 44 years ago. He is on the faculties of the Stella Adler Studio and the Graduate Acting Program at NYU-Tisch. He wants to go on record that he is in love with Red Bank and the Jersey Shore.

Samantha Barrie, CSA is thrilled to be working with Two River Theater. Other casting credits include over 60 productions at The Old Globe including seven seasons of the Summer Shakespeare Festival, and Hartford Stage Company. She is a Casting Society of America Artios Award winner and four-time nominee. Other credits include artistic departments of Roundabout Theatre Company, The Public Theater and National Artists. She is the founder of Frozen Rope Productions, and is currently in development for a play about Toni Stone, the first woman to play professional baseball in the Negro League. She holds a BA in Arts Management and Theatre & Film Production from NYU.

Terri K. Kohler Two River: As You Like It. New York: In the Blood, The Death of the Last Black Man…, Chéri (Signature Theatre); Can You Forgive Her?, Indecent (Vineyard Theatre); Red Speedo, Scenes from a Marriage, Belleville, The Black Eyed (New York Theatre Workshop); Mother Courage, Doctor Faustus, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The School for Lies, The Forest (CSC); Futurity (Soho Rep/Ars Nova); Washeteria, We Are Proud…., Orange, Hat & Grace (Soho Rep); Pretty Filthy, In the Footprint, Paris Commune, The Great Immensity (Civilians); The Designated Mourner, In Darfur (Public Theater); Garden of Earthly Delights, Angel Reapers (conceived by Martha Clarke). Select regional: Parable of the Sower (ArtsEmerson); Good Men Wanted (NY Stage and Film); Wild Swans (ART/ Young Vic); Oedipus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, La Dispute, The Sound of a Voice (ART). Usual Suspect (NYTW), Associate Artist, The Civilians.