MEET THE MAKERS
Barbara Barclay (Playwright) is a multi-disciplinary artist living in SoHo, NYC, since 1973. She made her career as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and photographer before taking up playwriting. Following two decades of dramaturgical work with Peculiar Works Project, her first solo work, JOE & BUBBLE BOY, was performed in benefits at Coney Island USA and The Piano Store theater. Her first short play, LANGUAGE GAMES, was selected by NYC’s Rogue Theater Festival in 2020. A film version was exhibited in AD ABSURDUM: THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF ABSURDITY 2020 and in the 2020 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The film has been selected for over a dozen film festivals and has received several awards, including Women Empowerment Award and Women Awareness Award (Rome Women Festival), Best Short Script (4th Dimension Independent Film Festival, Ubud, Bali), Best Women Empowerment Film (New Wave Short Film Festival, Munich), and Best Women Short (Rotterdam Indie Film Festival). Her short plays INTUITIVE LEAP and ANIMAL MAGNETISM followed, creating THE HARE TRILOGY, and were also filmed. She added intermezzo scenes for live actors in between the three films for week-long runs at both Wild Project and Frankel Theater. ANTIGONE IN ANALYSIS was commissioned by La MaMa for a December 2024 staged reading. It received a 2025 Puffin Foundation grant and will premiere at La MaMa in March 2026.
Ralph Lewis (Director) is a producer, director, writer, and actor who creates multi-disciplinary performances as a co-director of Peculiar Works Project. Post-Pandemic: Antigone in Analysis (La MaMa @ Great Jones); The Great Climate Change (Howl! Happening); In Memoriam: Astor Place Riots (Under St. Marks); The Hare Trilogy (Wild Project, Frankel Theater); Good Jew (Museum of Jewish Heritage); Birth of Broadway (BroadwayCon, Hudson Yards Coterie); and Railroad Christmas (Episcopal Actors' Guild). Pandemic work includes: Smile Like A Knife (Ego Actus Theatre); Astor Place Riots (NY Adventure Club); and 3 short films: Language Games (Edinburgh Festival Fringe online), Intuitive Leap (Irondale's On Women Festival), and Animal Magnetism (Anthology Film Archives). Pre-Pandemic: AFTERPARTY (222 Bowery); Two Jane Jacobs (Cherry Lane Theater); Planet X (Black Mountain College, NC); 3 Robert Heide Plays (Howl! Happening); 2 Climate Change Theater Actions (Artichoke Arts); and America's first play, Androboros (Fraunces Tavern Museum; Overthrow Boxing Ring), among others.
Alana Amram (Composer) is a multidisciplinary artist, sound designer, and multi-instrumentalist who has been performing and recording for over two decades. She tours and collaborates with a wide range of artists including Hunx & His Punx, Habibi, Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek, Vanishing Twin and The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. As a solo artist with her band The Rough Gems and through her family's musical projects, Alana has created an expansive body of work across music, film, and performance. Her compositions and sound designs have been featured in numerous films, reflecting her distinctive voice and commitment to storytelling through sound and art.
Rachel Cohen (Choreographer) has made and performed interdisciplinary work in New York City for 30 years, in the orbits of seminal creative communities: Mary Anthony Dance Theater, Galapagos Art Space, Cave, Norte Maar, The Construction Company, ChaShaMa, Triskelion Arts, and Ruth Zaporah's Action Theater improvisation. In 2003, she founded performance company Racoco Productions. The New York Times' John Rockwell listed If the Shoe Fits, Rachel's collaboration with composer Chris Becker and visual artist Olek, among NYC's dance highlights of 2005. Rachel has been Harvard's Clifton Visiting Artist, a Field Dance Fund Fellowship awardee, and a Women in Motion commissioned artist. She has developed projects for diverse audiences and environments, in NYC including Symphony Space, World Financial Center, Incubator Art Space, Creedmore Psychiatric Center, Slipper Room, and Socrates Sculpture Park, and in New Mexico, Maryland, France, England, Czechia, Poland, India, and Vietnam.
Grace Martin (Costumes) most recently designed costumes for Peculiar Works Project's Freedom's Last Stand at Target Margin's Doxsee Theater as well as two workshops of the play at The Tank Attic and Arts on Site, and has collaborated on many other PWP projects, including Floydada in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Monuments, a revival off Caffe Cino's last show, performed on Cornelia Street, and Afterparty: The Rothko Studio in the loft of the landmark Bowery building where he once painted. After studying costume design at Temple University, she became a member of IATSE local 764. When she's not working with PWP, she is working as a costumer for film/TV. Her favorite credits include: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, At Home with Amy Sedaris, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Life List, and The Equalizer.
David Castaneda (Lighting Designer) has shed light on at least 500 productions including numerous peculiar projects over decades of association with the creative partners of PWP. Such works include Manna-Hatta, Floydada, Androboros, AfterParty, Can You Hear Their Voices?, The Hare Trilogy, Before I Wake and multiple developments of Freedom's Last Stand. Bright moments in NYC include Broadway Irena's Vow (Tovah Feldshuh), Directors Company Murder in the First (Chad Kimball), Helen Hayes Marvin's Room (T.R. Knight), Abingdon Theatre, NY Fringe Festival. Regional illuminations include Albany/Berkshire Ballet (MA), Broadway Rose (OR), Virginia Stage Co (VA), Round Barn Theatre (IN), ArtisTree (VT), Next Stage (MS), Temple Theatre (NC), Ocala Civic (FL), Hofstra University (NY), Theatre Winter Haven (FL), Cape Fear Regional Theatre (NC), Merrimack Rep (MA), Carousel Dinner Theatre (OH), Millbrook Playhouse (PA) and many musicales 'de Misi' in Bogota, Colombia. David radiates from University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Evan Frank (Sets) is an award-winning New York-based scenic and video designer. Recent scenic designs include Wounded at Soho Playhouse, The Weir at Centenary Stage and Street Theater with TOSOS where he is the resident scenic designer. Recent video designs include Diva Therapy and Meltdown at Theatre for the New City, and Cinderella at Ocala Civic Theatre. Upcoming work includes Twelfth Night with Oak Park Festival Theatre and Romeo and Juliet with Catskill Mountain Shakespeare. MFA-CMU, efrankdesign.com.
Catherine Porter (Producer) is Co-Founder/Artistic Director of Peculiar Works Project, with whom she has served as producer, writer, director, teaching artist, fundraiser, bookkeeper, and/or performer in 100+ site-specific plays and performance events, featuring the work of scores of cross-disciplinary artists annually since 1993. Works have been in various non-theater spaces in NYC, as well as locations in Bulgaria, Michigan, and Philadelphia, PA. As a teaching artist, Catherine has co-led master classes in site-specific, multi-disciplinary, and promenade theater for Trinity/La MaMa, Pace, Fordham, Illinois State, and New Bulgarian University. In addition to her PWP work, she has acted with such Off-Off companies as La MaMa, Concrete Temple Theatre, Flux Theatre Ensemble, TOSOS, Theatre Askew, The Forge, and Aisling Arts; and appeared Off Broadway with En Garde Arts in Mac Wellman's award-winning Crowbar. Catherine has served as Co-President and Treasurer for the League of Professional Theatre Women, is Board Secretary for the Alliance of Theatres/New York, and is on the board of Concrete Temple Theater. She is a member of Actor’s Equity Association. @catpeculiar
Barry Rowell (Producer, he/him) is a co-founder of Peculiar Works Project. He has written or directed numerous PWP productions,including the 2025 world premiere of Freedom's Last Stand, the 2013 epic promenade performance Manna-Hata at the James A. Farley post office. With partners Ralph Lewis and Catherine Porter, he created the OBIE Award-winning OFF Stage: the West Village Fragments and the East Village Fragments. He was part of the artistic team that developed promenade performances at the Varna International Theater Festival and at New Bulgarian University in Sofia. He is one of eleven playwrights who adapted the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh for The Forge. His play Floydada was a finalist in the 2011 Texas Playwrights Festival and was in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival; his Before I Wake was presented by Theatre of NOTE in Los Angeles, and his 10-minute play, Dialogue in 3 Parts, was a finalist in the Creative Mechanics’ inaugural Stage This! festival and is available in the published collection on amazon.
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (Presenter) is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theatre. La MaMa's 64th Season, LA MAMA NOW, focuses on creating solidarity and building community, exploring ways to build connections for cross-sector coalition and invite artists, activists, organizers and community members into the creative process La MaMa has been honored with 30+ Obie Awards, dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie Awards, Villager Awards, the 2018 Regional Theatre Tony Award, and most recently a 2023 New York Drama Critics' Circle Special Citation. We are a creative home to artists and resident companies from around the world, many of whom have made lasting contributions to the arts, including Blue Man Group, Bette Midler, Ping Chong, Jackie Curtis, Robert De Niro, André De Shields, Adrienne Kennedy, Cole Escola, Bridget Everett, Harvey Fierstein, Diane Lane, Charles Ludlam, Tom Eyen, Spiderwoman Theater, Tadeusz Kantor, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Meredith Monk, David and Amy Sedaris, Stephanie Hsu, Julie Taymor, Kazuo Ohno, Tom O'Horgan, Andrei Serban, Liz Swados, and Andy Warhol. La MaMa's vision of nurturing new artists and new work from all nations, cultures, races and identities remains as strong today as it was when Ellen Stewart first opened the doors in 1961.
