Ropes

Bárbara Colio is a Mexican playwright and director. Her plays have debuted in Spain, Portugal, France, the United States, England, Italy, Argentina, Peru, and different locations in Mexico. Among other honors, her Cuerdas (Ropes) won the 2009 Mexican National Fine Arts Prize for Playwriting. Her play Pequeñas Certezas (Little Certainties) won the María Teresa León International Prize in Spain in 2004. Her Usted está aquí (You Are Here) earned the 2009 Victor Hugo Rascón Banda Prize and the 2011 APT Prize for best journalistic play. Originally from Mexicali in Baja California, Mexico, she was awarded the Gold Medal as distinguished Bajacalifornian. Her plays El día más violento (The Most Violent Day) and Carnada (Live Bait) have been produced by the National Theatre Company of Mexico. She has been resident writer at the Royal Court Theatre in London, UK; at the Writers Room and the Lark Play Development Center, both in New York, US; and in Spain via the Iberoamerican Fund for Dramaturgic Creation. Thanks to her constant work, she is member of the National System of Art Creators in her country. She founded her own theatre production company: BarcoDrama, with which she has staged and directed three of her most recent plays, and engaged in collaborations with foreign theatre companies. She resides in Mexico City. Visit: www.barbaracolio.com

Maria Alexandria Beech is a Venezuelan-American writer living in New York. Alex was included in the Lark Play Development Center’s residency at New York Stage and Film in 2015. In 2014 she was invited by Primary Stages to the Perry-Mansfield New Works Festival with her play Infinity Pond, which was co-commissioned by Primary Stages and Theater Masters. Infinity Pond was also included in the 2014 Palm Beach New Play Festival. Her play Good Friends was selected for the 2014 Crossing Borders festival at Two River, where it was performed in English and Spanish (in her own translation). Good Friends was also included in the 2014 New American Voices Festival. Her play Breaking Walls was produced at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Her play Swipe, Tap, and Touch was produced by Primary Stages and Brandeis Theater Company. Her two-woman show What Are You Doing Here? was nominated for several awards at the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity. Her one-act plays and musicals have been produced in South Korea, New York, Chicago, and at Barrington Stages. Alex was a member of the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages (Class; Charity; Bonds; Swipe, Tap and Touch; Good Friends; and The Islands). She is a former member of the Hispanic Playwrights Lab at INTAR (Gloria). Her translations, commissioned by the Lark Play Development Center in New York, include Luis Ayllon’s The Camels, Hitler in My Heart by Noe Munoz Morales, and Barbara Colio’s Ropes, which was included in the 2013 Crossing Borders festival at Two River. In August 2014, Alex directed Cuerdas, the original version of Ropes, at the Latino Fest at Queens Theatre. Alex earned a BA (cum laude) and MFA in playwriting from Columbia University, and MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from New York University. Her awards include the Aspen Theater Master’s Visionary Award (2009). Alex is a member of the Aspen Institute Scholars Program. She received the Outstanding New Script Award at the Planet Connections Theater Festivity for What Are You Doing Here? (2011), which will be published by Indie Theater Now. Her translation of Barbara Colio’s Ropes and her play Infinity Pond were nominated for the LA-based Kilroys’ List.

Lisa Rothe was nominated for SDC’s Joe A. Callaway Award for Direction for Hold These Truths by Jeanne Sakata, produced by Epic Theatre Ensemble in NYC (also produced at the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, the SoloNova Festival in NYC, PlayMakers Rep in North Carolina, and ACT Theatre in Seattle). Recent projects: Dear Elizabeth by Sarah Ruhl (People’s Light & Theatre Company); Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Chautauqua Theatre Company); Penelope by Ellen McLaughlin and composer Sarah Kirkland Snider (Playmakers Rep); Ada, a new opera about Ada Byron, by composer Kim Sherman and librettist Margaret Vandenburg, presented as part of the Center for Contemporary Opera’s Development Series. Lisa has workshopped, developed, and directed hundreds of new plays and musicals, working with many award-winning writers. In NY, she has directed and/or developed work with the Lark Play Development Center, New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theater, Epic Theatre Ensemble, New Georges, the Women’s Project, Primary Stages, The Foundry, Ensemble Studio Theatre, 52nd Street Project, Naked Angels, BAM, Summer Play Festival, NYMF, Midtown International Theatre Festival (Best Director), National Actors Theatre, Keen Company (Keen Teens), Orchard Project, Voice & Vision, HERE, Dixon Place, and has taught and directed at NYU’s Graduate Acting Program, Yale School of Drama, The Juilliard School, Chautauqua Conservatory, ESPA at Primary Stages, Queens College and many other training programs across the country. Lisa is a graduate of NYU’s Graduate Acting Program and Director’s Lab, as well as a Drama League alum, Fox Fellow, alum of the Women’s Project Director’s Lab, a member of the National Theater Conference and recently served on the Board of the League of Professional Theatre Women as VP of Membership. For five years, Lisa was the Director of Global Exchange at the Lark, where she provided expanded opportunities for playwrights, aimed at advancing new work to production nationally and globally.

Narelle Sissons Broadway: All My Sons at Roundabout Theatre. Off-Broadway: How I Learned to Drive [original production] and Stop Kiss [original production], In the Blood [original production], Kit Marlowe [original production], Julius Caesar and Little Flower of East Orange [original production] at The Public Theater. Also in NYC, many productions with: Mabou Mines, LAByrinth Theatre Company [co-member], Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Epic Theatre Ensemble, The Women’s Project, and CSC (Entertaining Mr. Sloane) [Drama Desk nomination]. Regional: Kansas City Rep: Into the Woods, directed by Moises Kaufman; Woolly Mammoth: The Clean House [Helen Hayes nomination for Best Scenic Design]; Shakespeare Theatre: The Taming of The Shrew [Helen Hayes nomination for Best Scenic Design]; ArtsEmerson: Mabou Mines DollHouse [Elliot Norton Award nomination, Outstanding Design]; ACT: Side Man [Backstage West Award]; Repertory Theatre of St Louis: Bad Dates [Kevin Kline Award nomination for Best Scenic Design]; Dallas Theater Center: An Ideal Husband [Leon Rabin Award nomination for Best Scenic Design]; and Maltz Jupiter Theatre: The King and I [Carbonell Award nomination for Best Scenic Design]. International: Jesus Hopped the A Train, director Philip Seymour Hoffman, London and New York; Mabou Mines DollHouse, director Lee Breuer, USA and World Tour. Also: The Syringa Tree in Vienna Austria and Frankfurt Germany, No Child at the Edinburgh Festival and recently Socrates: A Banquet in Prytaneion at VAT Theatre Estonia. Grants and Exhibitions: Fulbright Specialists grant, exhibitor at Prague Quadrennial 2007 and 2011. Ms. Sissons is a graduate of Central St Martins and The Royal College of Art in London and she is an Associate Professor and a Design Option Coordinator in the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University.

Theresa Squire designs costumes for theater, dance, and film. Theresa recently designed Nora at the Cherry Lane, and Small Engine Repair and Lost Girls at MCC. Theresa has designed at the Atlantic Theatre Company including The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling, Make Me and Dusk Rings a Bell among others. Other credits include Signature Theatre Company; Playwrights Horizons; Primary Stages; Second Stage, Keen Company; Hourglass Group including Beebo Brinker Chronicles; Merrimack Repertory Theatre; Barrow Street Theatre; The Flying Machine; Cherry Lane; Epic Theatre Company; DR2 Kids Theatre; iTheatrics (national tours); Chautauqua Theatre Company; Dorset Theatre Festival; Tami Stronach Dance; Parsons Dance; Irish Rep, most recently Man and Superman; The New Group including Rafta, Rafta...; and Soho Rep including Blasted. Her costumes were seen on Broadway in High Fidelity and The Lieutenant of Inishmore.

Mary Louise Geiger New York: Broadway: The Constant Wife (Roundabout Theatre Company, American Airlines Theatre). Off-Broadway: Forever, Oedipus at Palm Springs (NYTW); Shatter (Urban Stages); Bauer (59E59); My Mother Has 4 Noses (Duke); Killing of Sister George, Natural Affection, Beyond Therapy (TACT, Beckett Theatre); This Bitter Earth, Les Carillons (NYCB); Good Television, The New York Idea (Atlantic Theatre Company); Kindness, The Blue Door, The Busy World Is Hushed (Playwrights Horizons); The Morini Strad, Olive and the Bitter Herbs (Primary Stages); Mabou Mines DollHouse, Red Beads (Mabou Mines); Violet Fire (Bam Next Wave Festival, National Theatre, Belgrade). Regional: Miami New Drama, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ACT Theatre, Fifth Avenue Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Huntington Theatre Company, Studio Theatre. Awards: Helen Hayes, IRNE, NYSCA individual artist grant Training: Yale School of Drama.

Stowe Nelson New York: Iphigenia in Aulis (Classic Stage Company); The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek, The Wayside Motor Inn (Signature Theatre); Small Mouth Sounds (Ars Nova); Buyer & Cellar (Barrow Street Theatre); Our New Girl (Atlantic Theater Company). Regional: Tinkers to Evers to Chance (Merrimack Rep); 4000 Miles (Actors Theatre of Louisville); Clarkston (Dallas Theater Center); An Iliad (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival); Under the Skin, Blithe Spirit, Ghosts (Everyman Theatre). Proud member of USA829 & Wingspace Theatrical Design. More info: www.wingspace.com/stowe.

Daniel Kluger produces music and sound design for theater and film. He recently did the orchestrations for Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma! at Bard SummerScape. Other credits include: New York: The Mystery of Love and Sex, Nikolai and the Others (Lincoln Center), Significant Other, The Common Pursuit (Roundabout), Marjorie Prime, Iowa, Your Mother’s Copy of the Kama Sutra (Playwrights Horizons), Lost Girls, The Nether, The Village Bike, Really Really (MCC), I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard, Women or Nothing (Atlantic Theater Company), You Got Older (Page 73), Somewhere Fun, The North Pool (Vineyard), Tribes, Hit the Wall (Barrow Street Theatre), How to Make Friends and then Kill Them, The Few, Ode to Joy, The Correspondent (Rattlestick). Regional: The Old Globe, Mark Taper Forum, La Jolla Playhouse, Long Wharf, Pig Iron, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, People’s Light & Theatre, American Players Theatre. www.danielkluger.com. Faculty: NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Justin David Provoncha has been performing Magic & Circus since age 5 and after 30 years he’s still at it. He is a Professional Circus Teacher and Performer at the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts. He is the lead Project Manager for Circadium, the very first Professional Circus School in the US. He owns his own entertainment company, Mystery Circus Arts, which focuses on interactive Magic & Circus Entertainment. Justin is also a Lead Performer in the Funicular Circus featuring Tight Wire as Art Installations for museums, nature conservatories, and elite private events around the world.

Annie Henk is an actor, voice-over artist, and casting consultant. As an actor, she appeared at Two River in Pinkolandia. Other acting credits include regional productions of Ritu Comes Home (InterAct Theatre Company, Philadelphia); Enfrascada (Renaissance Theaterworks, Milwaukee); Adriana Sevahn’s one-woman show Taking Flight, Gladys in The Cook (Stages Repertory Theatre, Houston). NYC: Pinkolandia and other plays at INTAR, Working Theater’s La Ruta, Purple Rep, Red Fern, ReEntry with American Records, Clubbed Thumb, Mabou Mines, Nibras, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Resonance Ensemble, Foundry Theatre, New Georges, Collaboration Town, and 52nd Street Project. Film/Web: That’s News to Me, That’s What She Said, White, East WillyB, Entre Nos. Narration: Starbound, The Madonnas of Echo Park, Sunstroke, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, and others. Member: AEA, SAG-AFTRA, proud LARKee. As a consultant, she has collaborated with casting on various projects with theaters such as Clubbed Thumb, Working Theater, and People’s Light & Theatre, and she cast the Lark’s US/Mexico Program from 2013-2015.

Alison Hassman Two River: Ropes, Pinkolandia, Crossing Borders Festival. New York: Hamilton, The Nutcracker (New York City Ballet, Lincoln Center), Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Cherry Lane, Westside Theatre, 59E59, the York, 24 Hour Play Company. Regional: McCarter, Theater Horizon, Trinity Rep, Bristol Riverside, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Premiere Stages, Philadelphia Theatre Company. Huge gratitude to Jean and Nicole. As always, for CW and AS.