AISLING ARTS, INC. Bryn Manion is a co-founder of Aisling Arts, Inc., the Astoria-based theater company. Her recent directing credits include the first two parts of her Forcetrilogy, Me & Ruth, The Beggar’s Opera, When the Levee Breaks, Macbeth, A Few Hallelujahs, Love’s Labour’s Lost and Twelfth Night. As a performer, Bryn has performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and The International Performance Arts Symposia. Favorite roles include Rosaura in Life’s a Dream,Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Mephistophiles in Dr. Faustus, Betty in Cloud Nine,and Wheeler in Angel City. Bryn teaches acting at the Drama Studio in Springfield, MA when not busy with her commitments with Aisling Arts in NYC. Wendy Remington, co-founder of Aisling Arts, oversees much of the planning and development of the company. In addition to her acting work off-off Broadway, she has acted and designed extensively with the company and recently adapted and directed their production of Life is a Dream. She coordinated the tour for Aisling Arts’ Free Shakespeare Project, an initiative to bring free performances of Shakespearean comedies to low-income communities in Massachusetts. Wendy graduated with honors from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she studied theater and elementary education. She studied acting with Deborah Kampmeir and clown with Jim Calder at the Michael Howard Studios in NYC, completed the Shakespearean acting program at the London Academy of Performing Arts and studied the LeCoq movement technique with David Gaines.
ELLEN BECKERMAN is the artistic director of LightBox, and has directed the company’s productions of Shutter, Gull, Charles L. Mee, Jr.’s Orestes, Fanatics, Hamlet, Embarkation, the workshop of Mother Courage and Her Children and the upcoming Ajax at The Culture Project in February-March 2006. She is a 2003-2005 recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors, a Drama League Directing Fellow and a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. Other directing credits include The Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Soho Rep and the Ontological Theatre. Ellen is a member of the 2005 Soho Rep Writers/Directors Lab. In 1998, she spent 8 months in Thailand creating plays with a Thai acting ensemble and teaching at Chiangmai University. She is a graduate of Princeton University.

SCOTT CARGLE is the founder and artistic director of The Shakespeare Project, a company that brings free performances in the parks to underserved communities in all 5 boroughs of NYC every summer, serving more than 45,000 people since that time. Since 1993, he has adapted and directed outdoor productions of Romeo & Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, Coriolanus, The Winter’s Tale, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Othello. He created a new show with masks and puppets called Falstaff (2002), based on Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry V, and with Ralph Lee co-wrote and produced a puppet adaptation of Don Marquis’ archy & mehitabel poems, called communications from a cockroach (2001). He currently produces the annual Play Outside! Festival of Free Outdoor Theater, which presents 10 different performing arts groups in 22 parks all over NYC. He sits on the Board of A.R.T./New York.
TIM CUSACK is co-artistic director of Theatre Askew. For Askew he most recently conceived, co-directed, co-adapted, choreographed, and appeared as Caligula in the company's live serialized version of the BBC classic I, Claudius. He had previously appeared with the company as Ariel in The Tempest and as Tim Jackson-Smith in the GLAAD Media Award-nominated Bald Diva!, a performance named one of the best of the year by Theater Mania. A founding member of RAKKA-THAMM!!! Theater Company he directed productions of Rosencranz and Guildenstern... at the Westbeth and The Bacchae on the pre-gentrified Christopher Street pier for that company. After leaving RKTM! in 1994, he was associated with several theatres, most notably Todo con Nada for which he curated the RidicuFest, a celebration of the Ridiculous aesthetic in 2000. For that festival he directed a site-specific production at the Show World porn palace of Charles Ludlam's Der Ring Gott Farblonjet. Previously for Nada he had conceived a gay bathhouse version of What Did He See? in the Richard Foreman Festival. His solo show Stunt Man, created in collaboration with Rachel Kranz and Sarah Lambert has been seen at Nada, FringeNYC, and New York Theatre Workshop. He is co-author of a study guide for high school and college students about the gay rights movement and can be rented in the award-winning film short My Polish Waiter on the video compilation Boys in Love.
JEREMY DOBRISH is the artistic director of adobe theatre company which he co-founded in 1991 and for whom he has written and/or directed over 20 plays, including Notions In Motion, The Handless Maiden, Blink Of An Eye, Superpowers and Orpheus & Eurydice – all of which are published by Broadway Play Publishing along with Eight Days (Backwards) which was produced by the Vineyard Theatre (dir. Mark Brokaw). Recent Off Broadway directing credits include the musical The Joys Of Sex at Variety Arts (excellence in directing – NYC Fringe Festival); The Tutor, a musical starring Anthony Rapp at The York; Class Mothers ’68, a one-woman show starring Priscilla Lopez (Drama Desk nomination); and The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare (Abridged) at Century Center. Current and upcoming projects include writing the book for the musical version of Eddie and The Cruisers for Studio Canal, and directing Stewart Lane’s In The Wings at the Promenade Theatre, Michelle Carter’s Ted Kaczinsky Killed People With Bombs and the musical Paul Revere by Ben Winters and Steven Sislen for Theatreworks USA. Jeremy has taught playwriting, directing and audition workshops at Princeton, NYU, Juilliard, Fordham, Washington Irving High School, through Young Playwrights and in Prague. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, SSDC, and the Vineyard Theatre’s Community of Artists.
MICHAEL JOHN GARCÉS’ directing credits include Kissing Fidel (INTAR) and The Cook by Eduardo Machado (Hartford Stage, INTAR); Grace by Craig Wright (Woolly Mammoth); Finer Noble Gases by Adam Rapp (Rattlestick); The Dear Boy by Dan O’Brien and The Triple Happiness by Brooke Berman (Second Stage); Light Raise the Roof (NY Theatre Workshop), Force Continuum (Atlantic), Snapshot Silhouette (Children’s Theatre, MN), and Breath, Boom (Huntington Theatre, Yale Rep) by Kia Corthron; Recent Tragic Events by Craig Wright (Playwrights Horizons, Woolly Mammoth); When the Sea Drowns in Sand by Eduardo Machado (Humana Festival); N.E. Second Avenue by Teo Castellanos (Coconut Grove Playhouse); ¡Siempre México con nosotros! in collaboration with Sna Jtz’ibajom in Chiapas, Mexico. His plays have been produced by American Place, P.S.122, INTAR, Twilight Theatre Company, LAByrinth, La Mama, HERE, Collaboraction and Flush Puppy Productions (Chicago), and juggerknot theatre (Miami), among many others. Upcoming productions of his plays include Acts of Mercy (Rattlestick), points of departure (INTAR) and audiovideo (Directors Project Fall Showcase). Awards include the Alan Schneider Director Award, the Princess Grace Fellowship and Special Projects Grant, TCG New Generations: Future Leaders Grant, a playwriting fellowship from the Mark Taper Forum, a NYFA Artists’ Fellowship for Playwriting, a Van Lier Directing Fellowship and a Drama League Director’s Project Residency. He is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and a member of SSDC.
JULIE HAMBERG’s most recent directing work has been on Vital Theatre Company’s Main Stage in NYC. There, she directed the premiere of Dear Vienna by Catherine Allen; the first production in NYC since 1952 of Robert Sherwood’s anti-war comedy Idiot’s Delight (OOBR Award for Excellence); monologues in This Is Your Brain On…; the premieres of Shawn Hirabayashi’s Funny (OOBR Award for Excellence) and Jane Shepard’s Ducks Crossing. She also served as Vital’s Associate Artistic Director from 2003 through 2005 and remains an Artistic Associate. In NYC, Hamberg directed plays in development or to production for: NYSF/The Public, EST, New Georges, Circle Rep Lab, Six Figures, the NY Fringe Fest, the Westbeth and others. As a four-time alumnus of the Lincoln Center Theater’s Directors Lab, she was awarded a fully-staged Workshop Production of Simon Fill’s Post Punk Life. Hamberg also served as assistant director at MTC, The Public Theatre, and most recently as a Drama League Fellow assisting Daniel Sullivan on Shaw’s Major Barbara for the Roundabout Theatre on Broadway.
JEFF JANISHESKI will become Associate Artistic Director at Classic Stage Company this summer, as a recipient of the TCG New Generations/Future Leaders Fellowship. At CSC, Jeff will continue to produce artistic and educational events: from the On the Verge emerging artist program to the new high school workshop series. Jeff most recently directed Animals That Live in the Mirror (an adaptation of a Jorge Luis Borges short story) at Classic Stage Company and Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind at Riverside Church. He has also directed at a variety of venues in New York (Chashama, the Cherry Lane Alternative Theatre and GAle GAtes), in Massachusetts (the KO Festival and Thornes Theatre), and at several theatres in Tokyo. He trained in Japan in butoh and noh and in 2003 he launched the biennial, international New York Butoh Festival (www.CAVEartspace.org). In 2003, Jeff worked with Mark Hall Amitin to organize Visions for a Changing Theatre, an exhibition and series of panels hosted by NYU to celebrate experimental theatre from the 1960s to the 1990s. Currently an adjunct lecturer at Dowling College’s Department of Drama, Jeff has taught theatre at Fordham University and Smith College. He is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA directing program.
ALEXANDRA LOPEZ is a producer, director and drama instructor. Directing credits include: Our Lady of the Fat Asses, Generic Latina and Traversing Jacob (INTAR/NWL), Compensation: A Liturgy of Fact (NY Int’l Fringe Festival), The Tempest Project (Judith Shakespeare Company) and various youth theatre productions. Alexandra is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab.
MATTHEW MAGUIRE is a co-artistic director of Creation Production Company, which he founded with Susan Mosakowski in NYC. The company has produced 47 original works for the stage in New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Berlin, Washington, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Seattle, among other places. His directing work includes the creation with Philip Glass and Molissa Fenley of A Descent Into the Maelström for Australia’s Adelaide Festival, The Imaginary Invalid for the Long Beach Opera, Manhattan Theatre Club’s Downtown Uptown Festival, three plays by Jeffrey Jones, and the Bang on a Can Festival’s Van Gogh Video Opera. His plays have been produced at La Mama, the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage and all over NYC, in Los Angeles by The Son of Semele Ensemble (LA Times Critic’s Choice), the Walker Art Center and at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Honors include the America Award for Outstanding Play, multiple Bessie Awards, a Hammerstein Fellowship, a McKnight Fellowship, and numerous commissions. New plays in the works are the full-length version of Luscious Music, and a new musical, Laughing Pictures, with composer Daniel Levy. His plays have been published by Sun & Moon Press, Performing Arts Journal, TheatreForum, and Back Stage Books. Maguire is a tenured full Professor of Theatre at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, where he directs the playwriting program and teaches acting. He also teaches an annual playwriting workshop at Yale.
ANNA MCHUGH has spent the last year producing, directing and choreographing for Body Temple, creating original interactive theatrical experiences synthesizing technology with live performance. She is the founder of Vital Experience, a unique theatrical production company that creates original performances to raise funds and awareness for environmental and educational organizations. She recently directed The Ecstatic Night produced by Body Temple at the Brooklyn Lyceum; conceived, directed and performed Freedom Break, part of PWP’s [Banned] Burlesque at Collective: Unconscious; choreographed and performed Illumination at The White Wave Dance Festival; directed No Such Roses part of 2004 Fringe Festival; and was assistant director to Swetnam The Woman Hater, part of the Shakespeare Project’s 2004 Play Outside! Festival. McHugh is a theatre artist inspired to create art that is celebratory and devotional in spirit. Provoked by world culture and sacred ritual, she hopes to ignite the collective imagination in storytelling magic.
CHRIS MIRTO has produced and directed Six Characters in Search of an Author (Collective Unconscious), Women TBA, Polaroid Stories (Evidence Room, LA), The Insanity of Mary Girard and Real World: NYC . He has also directed Pterodactyls (Stella Adler) and The Lovers. He has assistant directed at P.S.122, Evidence Room (LA), and Theatre of Note (LA). As an actor he has worked most recently with Richard Foreman in The Gods Are Pounding My Head at the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre. In fall 2005, he will produce Eat Me by Jacqueline Wright in an LA to NY transfer. In 2006 he will direct the NY premiere of Wright’s Bing. He is currently producing Olsen Terror by Chris Wells in Dixon Place’s Warning: Not for Broadway alternative music theatre festival, directing George F. Walker’s Tough as part of a Walker Festival produced by Sightlines Theatre Company, and adapting Hamlet into the No-Hamlet Project. He is a 2004 graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, studying primarily at the Stella Adler Acting Studio.
ELAINE MOLINARO recently founded Culture Connection Theater through which she directed and produced Opera Buffoonia at the Play Outside Festival in September 2005. She directed a workshop of Prometheus Bound for the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, the premiere of The Longshot for Circle East at chashama and As You Like It for Marist College. Selected other directing and choreography credits include: Black by Joyce Carol Oates, The Gingham Dog, Stop Kiss, Orphans and A MidSummer Night’s Dream as well as two original creations, Facing Open Fields and Be Silent Be Still, originally produced by Peculiar Works. She assistant-directed and choreographed After Sorrow for Ping Chong and Co., Censored!!! for Brian Jucha’s Via Theater and The Seagull for the George Street Playhouse. Elaine has been an adjunct theater professor at Rutgers University and has taught acting for the Westfield Young Artists’ Cooperative Theatre and Voice & Vision theater company. She earned her MFA in directing from Rutgers University, her BA in theater from Northwestern University and studied theater and dance at the Sorbonne in Paris. She was also member of the Mid-Hudson Ballet Company.
RENEE PHILIPPI is Co-Artistic Director of Concrete Temple Theatre. Her work has been seen in numerous venues in and around New York City as well as at the Palace Theatre, CT; Guadalupe Arts Center, TX; Southern Theatre, MN; Williamstown Theatre Festival, MA; the Whaling Museum, Nantucket; Atlanta Arts Festival, GA; Deutsche Theater, Berlin; Tuchfabrik -Trier, Germany; The Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh. In addition to working with Spiderwoman Theatre, Renee is an alumna of The Women’s Project & Production’s Directors Forum and the Lincoln Center’s Directors Lab as well as an affiliated artist of New Georges. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Arts at St. Ann’s Puppet Lab, Mabou Mines, the Playwrights Center of Minneapolis, St. Bonaventure University and the Directors Company’s New Adaptations for the Stage program. She has been awarded several Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Grants, an AREA Award from chashama and an Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Project Commission.
GABRIEL SHANKS has directed over 50 productions at NYC’s Dixon Place, HERE, Bank Street Theater, The Red Room, Abingdon Theatre Complex, Present Company Theatorium, the Arthur Seelen Theatre, the Ohio Theatre, the Independent Theater, and Judson House, as well as productions in Washington D.C., Baltimore, Atlanta, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, Vienna and Budapest. He has directed area and world premieres by Theresa Rebeck, Brad Fraser, Patricia Smith, Daniel MacIvor, and Michael Hollinger. As artistic director of Creative Mechanics Theatre Company, he directed the acclaimed productions of Fall of the House of Usher and Edward II. Gabriel is the former artistic director of Funkopolis, where he conceived and directed Pierced, 3 Stories To The Ground, rite #55/wonderwall elegy and Bochenski’s Brain. He is the recipient of the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Award, the Eastern States Theatre Festival Best New Play Award, and the Southern Young Playwrights Award, among others. His play Overanalysis was chosen as one of the “Best Short Plays of All Time” in 2001. He is currently at work on Creative Mechanics’ next original work, Finistère.
DAVID VINING is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and attended Wadham College at Oxford University. Most recently David directed and co-wrote Wuthering High at the 14th Street Y Theater. He wrote and directed both Cracked and The Last Menagerie at HERE and Angry Rants of the Disenchanted Foreigners as part of Extreme Exchange at TALR; wrote and directed The Curse of the Smart Kid and Blue Puppies at the Ontological; Blue Puppies in Hell at the Hell Festival and also directed the premiere of Arthur Sainer’s The Burning Out of ’82 at Theater for the New City. David was a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab 2003 and is an affiliated artist and producer for Cagey Productions. His Blue Puppies Cycle will continue its development throughout 2005.
STURGIS WARNER’s directing credits include Fuente by Cusi Cram (Barrington Stage), ten minute plays by Craig Wright, Jeffrey Essmann and Saïd Sayrafiezadeh at the Humana Festival (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Swimming With Sturgeon by Ezra Goldstein (Abingdon Theatre Company), Robert Mitchell’s Vincent Van Gogh musical, Vincent (Wings Theatre), Adam Rapp’s Dreams of the Salthorse (Encore Theatre, San Francisco), Oscar A. Colon’s Becoming Bernarda (Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, in English and Spanish, ACE Award - Best Spanish Production, 2002), The Mooncalf by Elisabeth Karlin (Abingdon Theatre Company), All Fall Away by Saïd Sayrafiezahdeh (Immigrant Theatre Company), Gordon Dahlquist’s The Secret Machine (Twilight Theatre Company), and suits by Michael John Garcés (Twilight). A long time actor, he works with many playwrights developing new scripts and projects. Sturgis is a member of New York Theatre Workshop’s Usual Suspects and is artistic associate at The Lark Play Development Center.
JOSE ZAYAS is artistic director of The Immediate Theater Company, where he has directed The Germans in Paris (59e59) by Jonathan Leaf, Obscene Jesters by Sloan Macrae (HERE Arts Center), The Maid’s Tragedy (HERE), and  The Ethics of Sexual Acts by Jake Hooker (WAX), among others. Other credits include: 3 to a Session: A Monster’s Tale by Desi Moreno-Penson (Cherry Lane, DUTF winner best play) Madre (El Drama Padre) (Repertorio Español, HOLA Award), I’m With Mauricio (INTAR), Me and My Girl (Village Light Opera), Turn Four by Crystal Skillman (Avant Pop Productions), Bob…by Jake Hooker (Ontological), ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (Winner Best Production, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), And Baby Makes Seven (Unseen Theater Company), The Mikado (HRGSP). Upcoming projects: The Caterers by Jonathan Leaf (29th Street Rep), Life is a Dream (Old Dominion University), Grinch by Desi Moreno-Penson (Urban Stages). He is the recipient of a Peter Sellars Directing Award, a Drama Clan Award and a John Pasquin Fellowship. He was a Kenneth Frankel Directing Fellow at MTC and is a Drama League Directing Fellow. He is a graduate of Harvard University and has an MFA from Carnegie Mellon.