Stephen Buescher

I am passionate about Ensemble Theater! 

As a teaching artist in the Brown/Trinity Rep. Consortium, Yale School of Drama, and recently the University of Connecticut I am in a position to expose many young Actors, Playwrights, and Directors to the ideas of Ensemble. I am currently doing this on a small scale and would like to broaden my scope to include many other Universities and organizations such as ATHE. I want to expose people involved in Theater Training to the teaching, performing and practice of Ensembles so that the future of American Theater sees this way of working as a viable/vital option. I believe that to gather groups that already claim themselves as Ensemble artists is one step, and inspiring artists to go the road of Ensemble is another. I am interested in both! 

I am interested in having more people of color at the table. Not only at the table that exists but to have the organization reflect in values and inclusion the way different cultures “meet” and converse. I would also like to reach out to Deaf artists and other artists with disabilities. As someone who is conversational in ASL and has toured with a predominantly Deaf company for several years, I know that coming to the table is only the beginning of inclusion and that it is a lot of hard work to have equal access. It means the consciousness of the organization would have to expand. 

I am eager to be part of the core of the group to help advocate and share best practices with the field. 

I am fully prepared to listen, act, demand, and celebrate!

Sabrina Hamilton 

Sabrina Hamilton is the Artistic Director of Ko Theater Works, and the Ko Festival of Performance, for which she also serves are Resident Lighting Designer. Named for the 49th hexagram of the I CHING, the ancient Chinese Book of Changes. “Ko” means “Revolution,” and the central images is of a shedding of the skin – molting.  At Ko, we seek to shed traditional structures for creating and producing performance as the first step towards creating alternatives.  Founded by a core group of artists in 1991, the organization has always been dedicated to fostering innovative artistic collaborations in order to create work that draws from both comic and tragic traditions, mixing them with innovative uses of design and technology, in an atmosphere conducive to deep collaboration. We create pieces that are a springboard for community dialogue, ones that consider themes and issues vital to our civic and personal lives. For the past sixteen summers, the Ko Festival has been a place where the type of work described above is presented. It also offers rehearsal residencies where this kind of work can be made, and a series of training intensives and internships where people can learn to make this work. Each year the Festival is organized around a theme, like “Stories of Illness and Healing” or “The Immigrant’s Story” or “The Document, the Documenter, and the Documented.” All performances are accompanied by lobby displays that contextualize the work and facilitated, post-performance dialogues with the artists and the audience on the theme as it has been manifested in that evening’s performance.  We have presented the work of many ensembles, particularly NET members, and were delighted to focus our 2003 KOFEST on Ensemble Theatre and host the 2003 NET Gathering/Festival. Over the years, a large number of our workshop leaders and rehearsal residency artists have also been ensemble or NET members and we continue to select NET artists to perform. 

At the beginning of her career Sabrina Hamilton forged her own version of a graduate program in ensemble theatre by working in various capacities and studying with seminal ensembles like the Talking Band, the Roy Hart Theatre, Ping Chong & Company, Meredith Monk & the House, the Performance Group and the Polish Lab Theatre. Subsequently, she worked for many years with the New York ensemble Mabou Mines as Lighting Designer, Production Manager, Stage Manager, Performer, and Assistant Director.   Prior to co-founding Ko Theater Works, she was a member of or ongoing collaborator with Cypher Collective, Pilgrim Theatre, VOICETheatre, ABIA, the Skyboat Road Company, plus Bloodgroup Theater in London and Theater Zebrochene Fenster in Berlin. Other ensembles whose work she has lit include Touchstone Theatre, the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, Impact Theatre, and Britain’s Hesitate and Demonstrate. Ensembles she’s lit at the Ko Festival include Artspot Productions, NaCL/Strike Anywhere, Cornerstone Theatre. Split Britches, Progress Theatre, the Mettawee River Theatre Company, Pilgrim Theatre, Pontine Movement Theatre, Fay Simpson & Company, the Uniart Company of Romania, and she has presented the work of many more. 

Additional credits include work at the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Goodman Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum and 6 years as Route Lighting Designer for New York's Village Halloween Parade under the direction of Ralph Lee. International lighting credits include work in Bologna, Florence, Milan, London, Grenada, Geneva, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Amsterdam, Brussels, Cardiff, Edinburgh, at the Bristol Old Vic, the Theatre Academy in Tampere, Finland, and at the International Theatre Festival in Havana, Cuba. Recently she has been touring as the Lighting Designer for LOW, written and performed by Rha Goddess, directed by Chay Yew. Her directing work, primarily original pieces, has been seen in New York, Berlin and throughout New England.  

Hamilton has served on the Editorial Board of Theatre Topics, and is on the Lighting Commission of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), for whom she has headed their Portfolio Review program and where she is now their International Liaison.  She was also named as the USITT representative to the Lighting Design Working Group of OISTAT, the international parent body of USITT and served as one of the members of the Scenofest organizing team at the past two Prague Quadrennials. Hamilton has served on a N.E.H. panel, the "New Forms" panel for Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers panel. She holds a B.A. from Hampshire College and double M.F.A. in Directing and Lighting Design from the UMASS/Amherst. She has been on the faculties of Hampshire, Williams and Trinity Colleges, and Long Island University, and served as the Program Director of the M.F.A. Theatre Program at Towson University for 2006-7.

Ryan Hill

Ryan brings a clear understanding of the goals and values of NET and a demonstrated commitment to contributing to those mandates.  He is based in the Midwest, giving NET continued representation in a region with a high percentage of possible member companies.  He has also contributed tremendously to the Membership Committee over the past year with insight and commitment. He is always willing to take on tasks and would be a wonderful working board member.  

His company is young (3 years), and would ensure NET keeps the needs of emerging groups in mind, since retainment goes hand in hand with recruitment.

 His computer technical skills have proven useful, including knowledge of graphic design software as well as various administrative and online resources.

Two ways in which Ryan is unique and would fill a gap in the board – he is from the Midwest, a region that is not very well represented and where we need to have board members in a region that is chock full of ensemble theater’s. He is already part of the membership committee and has been working to gather ensembles in this region. He is also part of the LGBTQ community – which is not well represented at the present time.  

A writer and ensemble theatre artist, Ryan’s work has been seen on stages in New York, Berlin, Minneapolis and Beijing.  

Born and raised in northern Wisconsin, he attended university in St. Paul, Minnesota before moving to Berlin, Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship.  In Berlin, he collaborated with the experimental performance group Lubricat, among others.            

After Germany, he relocated to New York, where his work was staged by several small companies.  He also produced independent projects under the company name ‘the locustfactory’.   

He is an alumnus of director Robert Wilson's Watermill summer program in Long Island, and appeared in the U.S. premiere of the Wilson/Tom Waits musical version of Woyzeck at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2002. 

After moving to Minneapolis in 2003, Hill collaborated with 15 Head: a theatre lab on their productions of Sacred Space and Vacationland! before founding Sandbox Theatre. 

He wrote and directed Sandbox’s inaugural show, Victoria in Red, which opened in June of 2005.  Since then, he has either written, directed, designed or performed in every Sandbox production.  The ensemble’s latest creation is War With The Newts, opening in October, 2007, for which he is co-directing, designing sets, creating masks and performing. 

In addition to working with Sandbox, his short works continue to be staged in Minneapolis and New York. 

Published work includes The Ferry, a 2004 Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Play Festival winning play.

Tad Janes

Tad Janes hails from Fairmont, located in the hills of West Virginia. Tad went on to graduate with honors from West Virginia University with a BFA in Acting and Directing.  He then moved to Chicago, where he resided for 5 years.  In Chicago, Tad honed his theatre skills as actor, director, producer, designer, and creator.   

With an ensemble of eight actors (some from Second City), Tad and company created the sketch comedy/improve troupe “They Must Know Somebody,” produced productions such as the Jeff Nominated musical “The Drunkard,” and produced ensemble created plays “House of Disarray” and “Living Free on Planet Three.”  With this company, Big Pig Productions, Tad was an actor, director, and producer.  

In 1991-2, Tad was an original member of the Contemporary American Theatre Festival acting company.  Artistic Director Ed Herendeen specifically called on Tad because of his work ethic and dedication to ensemble creation for this company.  

In 1993, Mr. Janes was a founder in the creation of a new theatre project in Frederick, MD.  The goal of the company was to bring theatre artists together in a mid-sized town with little professional theatre and “set up shop” as an ensemble theatre.  This theatre would be multi-faceted; housing a theatre school for young actors, sketch/improve troupe, a touring educational outreach program for school children, and a professional ensemble that bring eclectic works of theatre art to the region while also creating original works for local premiere.  

Now in it’s 14th year of production, Maryland Ensemble Theatre produces six mainstage productions per year, running each show for six weeks for a total of 108 performances.  The Fun Company family theatre company (a MET subsidiary) produces 5 performances with 25 performances per year for a matinee series and tours 4 different productions into the school system while also offering workshops.  The Comedy Pigs (sketch/improv) troupe performs over 25 gigs per year, writing original sketch comedy and songs, and MET’s Ensemble School teaches over 250 students over a year’s time the craft of acting and the values of ensemble theatre.  MET is housed in a 8,000 sq. ft. facility that features a 100 seat convertible black-box theatre with real theatre seats, a rehearsal hall, scene shop, costume shop, box office, dressing room, and concessions area.    

In 2001, Tad finished his MA in Arts Administration at Goucher College where he got instruction from such pillars of the arts community as Joan Channick (Managing Director Long Wharf, former Assistant Director of Theatre Communications Group) and Lendre Kearns (Marketing Director, La Jolla Playhouse).  

Currently, Tad is Producing Artistic Director with Maryland Ensemble Theatre and is on faculty at Frederick Community College where he is Program Manager of Drama and Production Manager for the Jack B. Kussmaul Theatre.  Tad is a member of Rotary International, former board member of the Frederick Arts Council, is on the Frederick Council for Downtown Revitalization, and was on the board that created Frederick’s Arts and Entertainment District.

Oanh Ngyuen

In 1999, Oanh co-founded The Chance Theater, where he is currently Artistic Director. Recent recipient of the Arts Orange County Outstanding Individual Artist of 2007, his most cherished projects as a director are Undeclared..., Is Pepperoni a Vegetable?..., The Stroop Report, But I Don't Feel Grown Up, Three Days of Rain (O.C. Register's Top Ten of 2002 and Best Directors of 2002), Bash, Lee Miller: The Angel and The Fiend (commissioned by and performed at the Getty Museum), The Fantasticks, Lord of the Screen (O.C. Weekly Nominee - Best New Play), Goodnight Children Everywhere (Nominated for 6 O.C. Weekly Awards, including Best Production and Best Director), Tape, Closer Than Ever (L.A. Times Critic's Choice), Porcelain (2006 GLAAD Media Award Nomination - Outstanding L.A. Production, Back Stage West Critic's Pick, O.C. Register's Top Ten of 2005, Nominated for 3 O.C. Weekly Awards, including Best Production and Best Director), Cabaret (Back Stage West Critic's Pick), The Laramie Project (Recipient of 2005 Arts Orange County Grant), The Last Five Years, Into The Woods (Back Stage West Critic's Pick), Inventing Van Gogh, Frozen, and Sunday in the Park with George. Among a number of national commercials, Oanh's television and film credits include "American Dreams", "Party of Five", "The Beast", "Andy Richter Controls the Universe", "The Closer", Jonathan Frakes' "Clockstoppers", "All In" starring Michael Madsen, third billing in Jean Jacques Annaud's "Two Brothers" starring Guy Pearce, and "Rush Hour 3" starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.  

Oanh Nguyen, the founder and Artistic Director of The Chance Theater Repertory Company, was described in 2005 as a "visionary" and "passionate philosopher of the theater who can talk aesthetics tirelessly for hours and sometimes irk the thin-skinned with his incessant Socratic questioning of their premises."  [LA Times]  Under Nguyen's creative guidance, the professional nonprofit Chance Theater Repertory Company has become one of the most prolific, award-winning theater organizations in Orange County, recently receiving a special LADCC Award for Outstanding 2006 Season.   As the Chance is a ensemble-driven theater, many of NET's Core Values and aim towards furthering the exposure, significance and magnitude of ensemble work are identical.    His leader leadership skills and artistic sensibilities  is attested by the accomplishments and growth of the Chance Theater since it's conception in 1999.  Finally, he brings a drive to learn.  Oanh sees serving on the NET Board as a tremendous honor and opportunity to raise his awareness and understanding to different types of ensembles, processes, and ideas of theater.  

Davis Robinson

Davis Robinson is founder and artistic director of Beau Jest Moving Theater, a company he formed in 1984 to create movement-based theater pieces with a core ensemble of actors (www.beaujest.com). As director, co-writer, and frequent performer, his work with Beau Jest includes Motion Sickness, Ubu Roi, The Cardiff Giant, War of the Worlds, and “Krazy Kat”, winner of the 1995 Boston Theater Award. In June of 2006 they presented their newest work, Samurai 7.0, inspired by the Akira Kurosawa  film. He is an Associate Professor of Theater at Bowdoin College in Maine where he teaches acting, directing, comedy, and ensemble work. His interest in movement, improvisation, and ensemble grew out of his training with Tony Montanaro and Jacques Lecoq. He directed Angels In America, Enemy of the People,  In the Heart of America, and Book of Days for Bowdoin College, and Antony and Cleopatra, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and You Can't Take It With You for the Theater at Monmouth. Music/theater collaborations include Don Dinicola's opera Ubu Roi and Laura Harrington/Roger Ames’ Martin Guerre for the North Shore Music Theater/NOMTI festival. Davis directed the New England premiere of Epic Proportions at the Lyric Stage in Boston, and The Late George Apley for Emerson College. He is the author of The Physical Comedy Handbook, now in its fourth printing, and can be found every summer at the Celebration Barn Theater in Maine where he teaches workshops in Comedy for Actors and Collaboration.

I have a 30 year history of involvement in ensemble theater, going back to my earliest experiences with original troupes in college that toured schools and festivals, touring in other companies from Ralph Lee’s Mettawee Theater and The Living Poem Theater in the early 80’s, to the forming of my own group, Beau Jest, in 1984. Three out of my 5 original actors are still performing with the company, most recently at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC with our production of Samurai 7.0. I’ve studied with Jacques Lecoq and Tony Montanaro, Kristin Linklater, Ronlin Forman, Mark Morris, and Jonathan Wolken, so I have a pretty broad historical perspective on the range of work people are doing, its origins and permutations.

As a teacher, I am head of the theater program at Bowdoin College, where students are encouraged to create original work through the introduction of classes in physical theater, ensemble collaboration, comedy, theater styles,  and independent projects. Many have gone on to intern with professional ensembles, and some are beginning to form their own, here and in Europe. So the ensemble theater movement is a very exciting and important organization I would like to encourage and support in any way I can. As someone who sits in between the academic and the professional world, my membership on the board may help lend institutional expertise and resources (Bowdoin does book touring productions, which I have input on, and I have access to all of its resources). I also teach every summer at the Celebration Barn in So. Paris, an international center for training and encouraging the development of original work, clowning, ensemble work, and physical theater. Its an organization that I think will be joining NET soon, and a natural partner for presenting work every summer as well.

My company, Beau Jest, would love to engage with other ensembles at future festivals and conferences. I also belong to, the Association of Theater Movement Educators, a group working to develop an on-line publication and possibly a peer reviewed journal with articles about new developments in the field of movement theater. I hope to be writing for them, as well as developing a new book on Creative Collaboration and jump-starting material. Going to meetings, staying in touch with the scene nationally, and helping to promote, write about, and further develop the ensemble theater network is something I love to do.

Mark Seldis

Mark Seldis is Producing Director of The Ghost Road Company with whom he co-created and directed the workshop productions of Excavate the Monster at 24th Street Theatre and Duck[t] Tape Soup at Shakespeare Festival/LA. Mark also produced the tour of Clyt at Home to Amherst, MA and the various incarnations of Ghost Road’s Four Dervishes. Most recently, he co-directed Ghost Road's week of Suzan-Lori Park's 365 Days/365 Plays. In March 2005, he directed the world premiere of Ken Urban’s The Absence of Weather for Moving Arts at LATC, and in September 2006, he directed one of The Car Plays for Moving Arts. In 2005, he directed the LA Stage Alliance’s Ovation Awards Ceremony at the Orpheum Theatre and has done so each subsequent year.  On behalf of Ghost Road, one of the Hub Partners, he is helping coordinate the Los Angeles productions of Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Plays/365 Days.
 
Mark is a native of Los Angeles. He has worked at or with many of the city’s cultural institutions, including The American Film Institute, The Music Center, Center Theatre Group, IFP/West, The Los Angeles Stage Alliance, and countless theatre companies and artists around the city. 

In 1999, after already working for ten years making ensemble theatre, I attended an early gathering of what would become NET, in San Francisco.  I attended the NET gathering prior to my first (and so far, only) TCG Conference.  What I discovered in this first exchange was a room full of kindred spirits and I left that gathering with a renewed energy and commitment to ensemble theatre.  In each subsequent NET gathering and festival I attended, I came away with a larger view of not only the work of my colleagues in the field but of my own work. 

I am also proud of the contribution I have been able to make to the mission and work of NET and always grateful to be able to make that contribution.  Here in Los Angeles, I have continually been an active participant in the ongoing efforts of the theatre community to have dialogue, to organize, to advocate, to gain financial support, and, most importantly, to create. 

I have been fortunate to work in a variety of roles with a very diverse range of ensemble artists, from my artistic partners at The Actrors’ Gang and now at Ghost Road, to other ensembles and ensemble artists such as Culture Clash, About Productions, evidEnce Room, Roger Guenveur Smith, Lynn Manning, Poland’s Song of the Goat, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.  I would be pleased and honored to increase my involvement in forwarding the mission and goals of NET as a member of the Board. 

Nick Slie

Nick Slie is an embodiment of NET’s values and mission.  He has collaborated with many of his NET member colleagues. He is in the trenches, going into communities to both reflect and represent the issues of his community and his partner communities.  At present he is on the road with the Alternate ROOTS produced, UPROOTED: The Katrina Project, a community-based production touring cities impacted by displaced residents of New Orleans and the gulf region by hurricane Katrina.  

He is a thoughtful individual, an artist that takes risks and, most importantly, he is not afraid to ask tough questions.  

He would also bring to NET’s board technical expertise on internet/computer technology as well as video/photography skills.  Most recently, Nick videotaped the NET gathering in Maine and edited the session so that they could be posted to the web. 

Nick brings geographic diversity, representing the Deep South.  He brings aesthetic diversity: new work, political work, community-based work and aesthetic research.  He is a writer, director and performer and educator. 

Laurie Woolery

Laurie is a perfect candidate for NET’s Board of Directors.  She is a female, a Latina, an educator and a kick-ass artist.  She is very smart, has an amazing sense of humor and does not know a stranger.  As an advocate for ensembles and NET, she is ideal.  She is passionate, articulates her ideas clearly and she walks the talk of her convictions. 

Laurie loves children.  In her work, she has written and directed plays for family audiences and she has taught workshops for kids and their families. 

She is a community-based artist and believes passionately in the power artmaking has to transform communities.  In her work with Cornerstone, she has directed plays with communities such as Lesbian and Gay seniors and teens.  She is a producer and arts administrator, as well as an educator.  More than anyone else I know, Laurie knows what it means to be a teaching artist.  She shares leadership and guides young artists so that they are learning and thinking for themselves, while still playing the part of an active and present mentor.  She’s actually pretty remarkable at this and would have much to share with NET members. 

NET’s values and mission are hers, as well.  She works towards equality and diversity in her own work and artistically the breadth of interests and experimentation of her work is her hallmark. 

Laurie woolery is a director, playwright, actor and educator who has worked at South Coast Repertory, Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles Theatre Center,  Cornerstone Theater Company, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ricardo Montalban  Theatre, Deaf-West Theatre, fofo Theatre, Highways Performance Space, A  Noise Within, Sundance Playwrights Lab as well as the Sundance Children’s  Theatre. As a director and playwright, she has created and collaborated on  many new works including the world premieres of La Lista Negra,  club/underworld, 1212, Orphan Train: The Lost Children, The Snow Teen,  BLISS, I Slept With Jack Kerouac, Cootie Shots, Lapin and Lapinova and the  adaptation of Eleanor Estes’ The Hundred Dresses. Her recent play Scouting  Reality had its world premiere in spring 2006 at South Coast Repertory. Her  award winning production of Our Town won Best Scene at the 2001 Kennedy  Center’s American College Theatre Festival and her production of La Lista  Negra was a KCACTF finalist. Ms. Woolery is the Associate Artistic Director  of Cornerstone Theater Company, an active member in The Virginia Avenue

 Project, former artist-in-residence at Hollygrove Children’s Home in Los Angeles, founding member of CuCuCuevez Teatro, Instructor at Citrus College,  Glendale College, CalArts and former Theatre Conservatory Director at South  Coast Repertory.  She is also a proud member of the Lincoln Center’s  Director’s Lab West. Ms. Woolery directed Cornerstone’s first participatory  educational project 3/7/11: A Lincoln Heights Tale that takes Cornerstone’s  methodology into the school system. This past summer, Laurie directed Alison Carey’s adaptation of A Holtville Night’s Dream for the border town of Holtville as part of the Cornerstone Institute’s Summer Residency.  

Laurie is also an educator, working at Citrus College, Glendale Community College and the California Institute for the Arts (CALARTS).  She also teaches workshops and classes to children, teenagers and adults at South Coast Repertory and Cornerstone.