R&D Groups

Teddy Bergman (director) is a New York based director and actor. As an artistic director of Woodshed Collective, he has co-conceived productions of Twelve Ophelias (Director), The Confidence Man (Producer), and The Tenant (Director), among others. His work as a director has also been seen at Clubbed Thumb and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. As an actor he originated the role of Fighting Prawn in the Tony Award Winning play Peter and the Starcatcher. He has also recently completed filming Fading Gigolo written and directed by John Turturro and starring John Turturro, Woody Allen, Sofia Vergara, Sharon Stone, and Liev Schrieber. Other acting work includes - Theater: Philip Goes Forth (The Mint), Sex Lives of Our Parents (2nd Stage), Peter and the Starcatcher (NYTW), Seven Minutes in Heaven (HERE), Hell House (St. Ann's), I.E. (The Flea), I Was Tom Cruise (Fringe NYC, Best Play Award), and regionally at Williamstown, Huntington, and La Jolla. TV: "Law and Order: SVU," "As The World Turns." Film work includes: Listen Up Phillip, Fading Gigolo, Hairbrained, Julie and Julia, Little Big League, Honeymoon in Vegas, and Hairbrained.

Director

Tommy Smith (playwright)'s plays include Zero, (Ensemble Studio Theatre; d. Billy Carden), PTSD (E.S.T.; d. Billy Carden), White Hot (HERE Arts Center; d. May Adrales & West Of Lenin, d. Braden Abraham), Pigeon (E.S.T.; d. Billy Carden), The Wife (Access Gallery; d. May Adrales), Sextet (Washington Ensemble Theatre; d. Roger Benington), Caravan Man (Williamstown Theatre Festival, music & lyrics by Gabriel Kahane, d. Kip Fagan), Demon Dreams (Magic Futurebox, music by DJ Spooky, d. Kevin Laibson), A Day in Dig Nation (PS 122, co-written and d. Michael McQuilken), Air Conditioning (Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference; d. Steve Cosson), among others.

Writer

Maggie-Kate Coleman (playwright) is a Brooklyn-based playwright, librettist, and lyricist. Recent work includes Story of an Hour (Lyrics – Irondale), Field Trip: A Climate Cabaret (Lyrics - Superhero Clubhouse/Marfa Dialogues NYC), From a Childhood (Book & Lyrics - Montclair/NYC), all written in collaboration with Erato A. Kremmyda. Her musical Pop! (Book & Lyrics - Yale Rep/Studio Theatre/City Theatre Pittsburgh, etc. - music by Anna K. Jacobs) garnered 3 Connecticut Critics Circle Awards and 7 Helen Hayes nominations. Current projects include book for Lightning Man (music by Jeffrey Dennis Smith, lyrics by Shoshana Greenberg), and lyrics for a song cycle with composer/lyricist Daniel Maté. She is a founder and co-curator of BASTARD PLAYGROUND, a monthly gathering for genre-flexible artists of live performance in residence at The Drama League, and is the Senior Program Representative for the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. MFA NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Writer

Erato A. Kremmyda (composer) is a New York based composer, originally from Athens (Greece). Currently focusing on theater and film, she works across genres and countries. Theatre (selected): Agamemnon (Irondale, NYC), The Dot (Bios, Athens), We Are Theatre (Cherry Lane Theatre, NYC), Wagon Wheel (Loewe Foundation Development Award, Planet Connections, NYC), Field Trip: A Climate Cabaret (Superhero Clubhouse/ Marfa Dialogues NYC), Kassia (K.E.T., Athens), Vanya (2 Great Jones, NYC), Revolution Trilogy (Columbia Stages, NYC), From a Childhood (Montclair, NYC). Film (recent): Terra Tradita (Italy), 500 kilometers to summer (China), Three Candles (NYC, Olympia Dukakis). Erato is a Fulbright fellow, a core member of Bastard Playground (Drama League) and a member of the Dramatists Guild and ASCAP. Graduate: Tisch (M.F.A/scholar), Steinhardt, NYU (M.M), Athens University, Athens Conservatory (Distinction). Erato is the supervising music composer and sound designer for the 2013 "World Wide Lab, A Directors Feast" (Irondale).WWW.ERATOAKREMMYDA.COM.

Composer

Sam Pinkleton (director) is a New York City-based director and choreographer. Recent choreography credits include Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play (Playwrights Horizons), Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (Kazino), Buyer and Cellar (Barrow Street/Rattlestick), Spring Awakening (Olney Theater Center), Love Machine (Incubator), and The Material World (Dixon Place). He is co-director of The Dance Cartel's long-running ONTHEFLOOR at the Ace Hotel and was Associate Director for Nicky Silver's The Lyons on Broadway. He is a core company member of dance-theater company Witness Relocation and teaches Bustin' Moves and other lowbrow dance classes at NYU/Playwrights Horizons. As a director and/or choreographer, Sam has also developed new work with the Vineyard Theatre, The O'Neill, Joe's Pub, Primary Stages, Atlantic Theater Company, Ars Nova, Dixon Place, La MaMa, NYU, and Pittsburgh City Theatre. Current/Upcoming projects include choreographing Marie Antoinette (Soho Rep), directing Fix Me, Jesus (Abingdon Theater Company), and choreographing the stage adaptation of Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief for Theatreworks USA. WWW.SAMPINKLETON.COM.

Director

Juliana Francis Kelly (playwright) is a writer, an actor, and a doll maker. As an actor, she has originated roles for legendary and emerging experimental artists, including Reza Abdoh (as a founding member of the internationally renowned Dar A Luz Company); Richard Foreman (for whom she received an OBIE Award); and for Anne Bogart, Karin Coonrod, Young Jean Lee, Alec Duffy, Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, Lear DeBessonet, Normandy Sherwood, Hal Hartley, Charlotte Braithwaite, Marie Losier in collaboration with Guy Maddin, Bryan Doerries (for Outside the Wire/Theater of War), and David Michalek (Lincoln Center Festival). Her own plays have been produced in the U.S. and Europe. Her first play, Go Go Go, was directed by Anne Bogart for PS 122, and reprised at The Institute of Contemporary Art for London International Festival of Theater. Other plays include Box, directed by Tony Torn and performed at The Women's Project, PS 122, and The Fontanon Festival in Italy; The Baddest Natashas, also directed by Torn and performed at The Ontological Theater and published by Open City Magazine; Saint Latrice, at PS 122 (for which she received a Sundance Screenwriters Fellowship.) Ms. Kelly is also a doll maker. One of her dolls is installed at the American Museum of Natural History's Interactive Educational Wing.

Writer

Tony Torn (director) is an actor and director known for his extensive work with Reza Abdoh and Richard Foreman, and for being the founding director of Reverend Billy and The Church Of Stop Shopping. Other directing credits include The Red Rose (an adaption of Shakespeare's History Plays focusing on Queen Margret), Two By Synge, Party Time, and This Strange Attachment (Leopold Zappler), The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time and Sop Doll! (Lee Ann Brown), Door Wide Open (based on the letters of Jack Kerouac and Joyce Johnson), The Baddest Natashas and Box (Juliana Francis Kelly). He is also an award winning filmmaker whose feature, Lucky Days ( Co-Directed with his sister Angelica) won best film at the Coney Island International Film Festival. Tony recently made his Broadway debut as Rusty Trawler in Truman Capote's Breakfast At Tiffany's, and is currently developing an adaptation of Alfred Jarry's Ubu trilogy featuring the music of cult band Pere Ubu.

Director

Sean Cunningham (playwright)'s plays include Drama Desk-nominated God Hates the Irish, the two-part Sherlock Holmes cycle, and the musical Herbert Hoover: Tanned, Rested, and Ready to Rock (co-created with Alex Timbers) for a joint production of both the Page to Stage and Edge series at La Jolla Playhouse: each of these shows was fortunate enough to feature a score by Michael Friedman. He has written for a variety of publications on topics ranging from serial killers to the battle between rival porn parodies of The Jersey Shore, interviewed people varying from Oscar winners to Wu-Tang Clan members (specifically, Ghostface Killah), collaborated with President George H.W. Bush's former director of economic policy on a play, and been hired to write three screenplays (one of which required him to spend extensive time in Luxembourg - yes, it actually exists). A winner of the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize from Yale Drama School and a graduate of Princeton University, he is the Editorial Director for the recently launched theater magazine CHANCE and was once an editor at Maxim for Kids (honestly).

Writer

Mary Kathryn Nagle (playwright) was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and an honorary member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. She graduated summa cum laude from Tulane Law School where she was the recipient of the Judge John Minor Wisdom Award. Upcoming productions include AMERINDA's presentation of Miss Lead at 59E59 from January 13-26, 2014. Her play Sliver of a Full Moon was presented at the Annual Convention of the National Congress of American Indians in Tulsa, Oklahoma – in celebration of the recent passage of the Violence Against Women Act and the Act's recognition of American Indian Nations' inherent sovereignty to protect their citizens on tribal lands. Nagle is a member of the 2013 Emerging Writers Group at the Public Theater, where she wrote and developed Manahatta. Manahatta was recently featured in the Public Theater's 2013 NEW WORK NOW! new play festival.

Writer

Jeanine Oleson (interdisciplinary artist) is an artist whose practice incorporates interdisciplinary uses of performance, photography, film/video, and publicly-based work, often collaboratively. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Rutgers University. Oleson has exhibited at venues including: Exit Art, NY; Beta Local, San Juan, PR; X-Initiative, NY; Grand Arts, Kansas City, MO; Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY; L.A.C.E., Los Angeles; Monya Rowe Gallery, NY; Samson Projects, Boston, MA; John Connelly Presents, NY; H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City Museum of Art, MO; Participant, Inc., NY; MOMA/PS 1, Queens, NY; Pumphouse Gallery, London; White Columns, NY; and Art in General, NY. Oleson has received a Franklin Furnace Fellowship and a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant in 2009; Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Regrant, 2008 and 2009; and Professional Development Fellowship, College Art Association, 1999-2000. She's also been in residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Smack Mellon Studio Program, NY. Oleson is an Assistant Professor of Photography in the Department of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons the New School for Design. WWW.JEANINEOLESON.COM.

Interdisciplinary Artist

Riti Sachdeva (playwright) is a theatre maker, dancer, and cultural worker. Acting highlights include work with Disney Channel, HBO, National Hispanic Cultural Center, and performances of her original plays in LA, Toronto, and NYC. Her work has been developed and/or produced by The Joseph Papp Public Theater, Minneapolis PlayWrights Center, Kennedy Center, MT Works, Planet Connections Festival, Center for Regional Studies (UNM), and the Lincoln Center Director's Lab. Sachdeva is primary instigator ofmidNite's cHiLd Productions. HTTP://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/MIDNITESCHILD.

Writer

Robbie Sublett (playwright): As a writer, You Better Sit Down: tales from my parents' divorce produced off Off-Broadway at The Flea and at the Williamstown Theatre Festival (published by Dramatists Play Services) and the solo show Calacas produced at Clurman Festival of the Arts in NY (optioned by Amanda Lipitz Productions). Additionally, multiple sketch comedy shows at the Upright Citizen's Brigade. As an actor, Broadway: Other Desert Cities (Lincoln Center). Off-Broadway/NY: You Better Sit Down, American River (Lesser America, NYIT Best Actor nom.), American Songbook (Jazz at Lincoln Center), Perfect Harmony, Gone Missing, Mabou Mines' FINN, Zayd Dohrn's Long Way Go Down. Regional: Emerson College; Williamstown; Chicago Shakespeare; NJ Shakespeare. Film: I Don't Know How She Does It, White Irish Drinkers, Hachi: A Dog's Tale, Mystery Team, Lifelines. TV: "Perception", "Golden Boy", "The Good Wife", "Speed Racer: The Next Generation", "Casper's Scare School", "Team Umizoomi", "Video Game Princess" animated pilot. The Civilians: Associate Artist. NYU: BFA-Stella Adler.

Writer

Melissa Crespo (Director) is a NYC based director of theater, opera and film with a focus on new work. She has developed work at: The Lark, Atlantic Theatre Company, Two River Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Ars Nova and Labyrinth Theatre Company. Upcoming: Wickedest Woman by Jessica Bashline (Strange Sun Theatre), Daughters of the Rebellion by Guadalís del Carmen at Montclair State University, and Native Gardens by Karen Zacarías co-produced by Syracuse Stage, Geva Theatre Center and Portland Center Stage. Recent credits include: graveyard shift by Korde Arrington Tuttle (San Francisco Playhouse); Pedro Pan by Rebecca Aparicio & Stephen Elkins (NYMF); In the Blue Hour by Martina Potratz (Lil’ Explosions); Brother Toad by Nathan Louis Jackson (Kansas City Repertory Theatre); The Review or How to Eat Your Opposition by Donnetta Lavinia Grays (WP Theatre); eat and you belong to us by mj kauffman (NYU Tisch); ¡Figaro! (90210) by Vid Guerrerio (The Duke on 42nd Street & LA Opera); ABC Talent Showcase (Disney NYC); Destiny of Desire by Karen Zacarías (Garden Theatre); Tar Baby by Desiree Burch with Dan Kitrosser (Edinburgh Fringe Festival & London Vault Festival); Fellowships & Residencies: Time Warner Fellow (WP Theatre); Usual Suspect (NYTW); The Director’s Project (Drama League); Van Lier Directing Fellow (Second Stage Theatre); Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow (Arena Stage). Melissa received her MFA in Directing from The New School for Drama. http://www.melissacrespo.com

Director

Melissa Crespo (Director) is a NYC based director of theater, opera and film with a focus on new work. She has developed work at: The Lark, Atlantic Theatre Company, Two River Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Ars Nova and Labyrinth Theatre Company. Upcoming: Wickedest Woman by Jessica Bashline (Strange Sun Theatre), Daughters of the Rebellion by Guadalís del Carmen at Montclair State University, and Native Gardens by Karen Zacarías co-produced by Syracuse Stage, Geva Theatre Center and Portland Center Stage. Recent credits include: graveyard shift by Korde Arrington Tuttle (San Francisco Playhouse); Pedro Pan by Rebecca Aparicio & Stephen Elkins (NYMF); In the Blue Hour by Martina Potratz (Lil’ Explosions); Brother Toad by Nathan Louis Jackson (Kansas City Repertory Theatre); The Review or How to Eat Your Opposition by Donnetta Lavinia Grays (WP Theatre); eat and you belong to us by mj kauffman (NYU Tisch); ¡Figaro! (90210) by Vid Guerrerio (The Duke on 42nd Street & LA Opera); ABC Talent Showcase (Disney NYC); Destiny of Desire by Karen Zacarías (Garden Theatre); Tar Baby by Desiree Burch with Dan Kitrosser (Edinburgh Fringe Festival & London Vault Festival); Fellowships & Residencies: Time Warner Fellow (WP Theatre); Usual Suspect (NYTW); The Director’s Project (Drama League); Van Lier Directing Fellow (Second Stage Theatre); Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow (Arena Stage). Melissa received her MFA in Directing from The New School for Drama. http://www.melissacrespo.com

Director

Michael Leibenluft (director) directed Gold No Trade and Mud/Bone Collective's bilingual Mandarin/English production of The Subtle Body by Megan Campisi at Dixon Place. The production has been awarded a TCG Global Connections Grant to tour to the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center in November 2013. Michael recently served as a directing resident at Playwrights Horizons where he assistant directed the New York premieres of The Whale, The Flick, Far From Heaven. As a directing fellow at American Theater Company in Chicago, Michael was a main contributor to the revision of columbinus, a documentary play about the 1999 shootings in Littleton, Colorado. From 2010 to 2012, he served as an instructor at the Shanghai Theatre Academy where he directed North Bank Suzhou Creek, a new musical about Jewish refugees in Shanghai during WWII. Michael graduated from Yale University as a double major in Theater Studies and East Asian Studies. He is a 2010 recipient of a China Fulbright Research Grant as well as a member of the 2013 Lincoln Center Director's Lab. Michael is developing a stage adaptation of Sholem Abramovitsch's Benjamin the Third for the Target Margin Theater Lab, and he is collaborating with choreographer Megan Kendzior on Treats, a dance theater piece for the Bowery Arts+Sciences series.

Director