Gallathea

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By John Lyly
Directed by Emma Rosa Went
A Benefit Reading Presented In Collaboration with Red Bull Theater

First performed in 1588, John Lyly's Gallathea is a queer love story set inside the landscape of classical myth. In order to avoid becoming dinner for a sea monster, Gallathea and Phillida are sent into the forest dressed as boys. Meanwhile, three shipwrecked brothers set out to seek their fortunes, Cupid stirs up his usual trouble, nymphs fall for mortals, and Neptune–God of the Sea–waits to make his move. This playful pastoral of love, desire, and finding yourself is an affirmation of identity–joyfully reclaimed for 2021.

EMMA ROSA WENT (Director) is a Brooklyn-based theatre director. New York work includes: Initiative (Playwright's Realm, Ink'd Fest;) Old Names for Wildflowers, Courage! To the Field! (The Tank;) Much Ado About Nothing (The Brick;) as well as Dixon Place, Trans Lab at WP, The Access Theatre, LPAC Lab, and other venues. Regional/other: As You Like It, Richard III (Scranton Shakespeare Festival;) Campfire Festival at Boise Contemporary Theatre, Barn Arts. Assisting includes: Measure for Measure (TFANA;) Much Ado About Nothing (Oregon Shakespeare Festival;) Othello (Colorado Shakespeare Festival;) The Jammer (Atlantic). Previously: SDCF Observership, OSF FAIR Program, Sokoloff Creative Arts Fellow. Currently: Resident Artist at Town Stages. Co-founder of The Renovationists and Easy Leap Theatre Company. SDC Associate Member. BA Sarah Lawrence College. www.emmawent.com  

By Sharon Bridgforth
Directed by Signe V. Harriday

Stage Manager CHRIS DE CAMILLIS   

Casting Director VICTOR VASQUEZ    

Using traditional storytelling and nontraditional verse to chronicle the course of love returning in the lifetimes of one woman-loving-woman named bull-dog-jean, the bull-jean stories. give cultural documentation and social commentary on African-American herstory and survival. Set in the rural South of the 1920s, the bull-jean stories. herald the spirit of African-American people. 

SIGNE V. HARRIDAY (Director) (she/her) is a fierce visionary and powerful storyteller who crafts theatre that awakens our individual and collective humanity. As a director, multidisciplinary artist, activist, and facilitator, she uses theatre as a catalyst to ask questions about who we are and who we are in relation to others. Co-founder of MaMa mOsAiC, a women of color theater company whose mission is to evoke positive social change through female centered work. Co-founder of Million Artist Movement, a collective of artists committed to Black liberation. Co-founder of the award-winning synchronized swimming team, The Subversive Sirens. Associate Company Member of Pillsbury House Theatre. Founder of Rootsprings Coop, a retreat center for BIPOC artists/activists/healers. She earned her MFA in Acting at the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard and Moscow Art Theatre. Recent credits: Hidden Heroes, and assisting on Floyd's. Current projects: Director of Dining with the Ancestors, Associate Director of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower, Director of Supadupa Kid, Choreography for Love of Silver Water, Playwright for Dysmorphia. www.SigneHarriday.com 

By Laura Schellhardt
Directed by Cait Robinson

Casting Director ERICA A. HART   
Cast: ARIELLE L. GOLDMAN

After a reckless car accident kills her twin brother, young Charlotte McGraw becomes a fascination to others when it appears she has received an eerie power from his dying kiss.  Over the course of a hot summer, a continuing chain of odd events leaves the residents of a small Ohio town stopped in its tracks – as they learn to fear the literal kiss of death beneath their everyday facades.  

CAIT ROBINSON (Director)  (she/they) is a New York-based theater director. Recent productions include The Clean House at Portland Stage Company, Pinocchio at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Proclamation: World Sick and Proclamation: Unite at American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), and Gidion’s Knot and False Flag (world premiere) at Dramatic Repertory Company. Cait has directed workshops at Cincinnati Playhouse, A.R.T., Portland Stage, The Lark, and New Repertory Theater, among others, and heads the college Summer Intensive Program at Cape Cod Theatre Project. Cait spent two years as the Senior Directing Fellow at Cincinnati Playhouse, and is an alum of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, SDCF Observership program, Directors Lab West, American Conservatory Theater fellowship program, Portland Stage Company internship, Celebration Barn Theater, and Bowdoin College. Associate member, SDC. www.Cait-Robinson.com 

Produced by special arrangement with
THE DRAMATIC PUBLISHING COMPANY of Woodstock, Illinois. 

Originally produced January 2008 by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington D.C., Howard Shalwitz, Artistic Director. The K of D was originally developed at ACT Theatre, Seattle, Wash. Subsequent development of The K of D was supported by the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center during a residency at the National Playwrights Conference of 2006. It was further developed at the Virginia Premiere Theatre in September 2007. 

 By Eliana Pipes
Directed by Cristina Angeles

Stage Manager KACEY GRITTERS    

Casting Director VICTOR VASQUEZ    
Cast: ALECA PIPER  

In a society where a chasm has opened up between rich and poor — one Black girl has fallen into the abyss. As a result, GIRL embarks on a cross-country roadtrip in a converted Van: by day she’s lifestyle blogging as a #VanLife influencer, and by night she’s shooting down Amazon delivery drones to loot the contents — desperate to claw her way into American prosperity. But when she shoots down something she shouldn’t have, she’s forced to reckon with the cost of her ambition. She may be able to run from society, but she can’t escape the systems that are ingrained within her.

CRISTINA ANGELES (Director) (she/her) is an Afrolatina director, writer, and theater maker, whose mission is to create empathy and conversation by directing new plays and musicals, as well as socially conscious adaptations of classics that place women of color at the forefront. Her work challenges the preconceived notions of what the American Theater can be, while confronting the intersections between our public, private, and political selves. Cristina holds a BA in Theatre from Barnard College at Columbia University and was the 2019-20 Roundabout Directing Fellow. She has worked in the Williamstown Theatre Festival Directing Corps, the SDCF Observership Program, and as an assistant director at The New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theater, and on Broadway. Today, Cristina is an Associate Artist at Roundabout Theatre Company, a 2020-21 Drama League Directing Fellow, and the Founding Artistic Director of Checkmark Productions, an NYC based company dedicated to BIPOC artists and the telling of their stories in theater and film. Checkmark most recently produced Eliana Pipes’s DREAM HOU$E (2019 Leah Ryan Prize, 2019 O’Neill Finalist) at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest directed by Cristina, and is currently developing “TONI,” a new series inspired by the life of Marie Antoinette written and directed by Cristina. 

By Enda Walsh
Directed by Taylor Haven Holt

Stage Manager  KALEIGH BERNIER  

Casting Director ERICA A. HART   

Cast: TARA HALPERN  

At the age of 6, a girl leaves her bedroom and family home and walks. She never stops. Until now. Enda Walsh's short play A Girl's Bedroom was first performed at the 2015 Galway International Arts Festival, and was revived at the 2016 Galway International Arts Festival alongside two other short plays by the same author – Kitchen and Room 303 – under the collective title Rooms.  

TAYLOR HAVEN HOLT (Director) (she/her) is a New York-based director, choreographer, and recently the Resident Director on the First National Tour of Hamilton. Select directing: Urinetown (Steinhardt), All of My Blood by Robert Norman (Corkscrew Theatre Festival), My Only Friend is Jesse... by Cary Gitter (EST), Balloon Boy by Billy Recce (Green Room 42 / NYMF), The Battle of Coney Island by David Jacobi (Theater Masters, Aspen & NYC), (un)real by Elizabeth Lee (Gene Frankel). Select associate/assistant directing: Cirque du Soleil's Paramour (Lyric Theater), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (First National Tour), Hand to God (Booth Theater & MCC), Murder Ballad (Union Square Theater & MTC), Boy George's Taboo (Brixton Club House, London). Adjunct Professor: Vocal Performance Program at NYU’s Steinhardt. SDC Associate and two-time SDC Observership Recipient. BA/MA: NYU. www.TaylorHavenHolt.com