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TEAM Artists

Designer/Artist

Brenda is a New York-based artist and costume designer for stage and film. Her career began as an assistant on and off-Broadway working with designers from William Ivey Long to Ann Roth. She received an MFA in design from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. There she had the opportunity to work with theater and film directors with whom she would develop long-term collaborative relationships.

Brenda’s design career started in the independent film and theater scene and overtime matured into larger ventures with many of her collaborators. She has had the opportunity to work in many genres and styles and do projects as varied as SNL, Oscar Nominated and Golden Globe Winner: THE DISASTER ARTIST, and THE WOLF HOUR with Naomi Watts. Her upcoming projects include Sian Heder’s CODA and Simon Rich’s AN AMERICAN PICKLE directed by Brandon Trost.

Brenda has also designed numerous off-Broadway and regional plays. Many with Rachel Chavkin and the New York theater company THE TEAM. She has also worked with Lyndsey Turner, Daniel Aukin, Heather Christian, and Annie Tippe and most recently designed Dave Malloy’s and Rachel Chavkin’s MOBY DICK at A.R.T.

Brenda resides downtown NY with her husband, baby boy and two cats.

Performer/Artist

Denée Benton is a Tony Award-nominated actress who stars as Peggy Scott in the critically acclaimed HBOMax series, “The Gilded Age”. She was last seen in the new Peacock feature film, “GENIE”, and the independent feature, “Our Friend”, which premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. She previously starred as ‘Ruby’ in the second season of Lifetime’s acclaimed television series “UnREAL”.

She recently returned to Broadway as Cinderella starring in the hit revival of the Tony Award Winning production of “Into The Woods”, a role she originated last year in the Encores!, City Center, Production, for which she garnered rave reviews. She also starred as ‘Eliza’ in Broadway’s Tony Award-winning musical “Hamilton” and is well known for starring as ‘Natasha’ in the Broadway production of “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812”. For “The Great Comet”, Benton was nominated for the 2017 Tony Award, Drama League Distinguished Performance Award, Theatre World Award, and Lilly Award. She had previously played the role of ‘Natasha’ at the American Repertory Theater and starred as ‘Nabulungi’ in the West End and U.S. national tour of “The Book of Mormon”.

Benton is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University.

Performer/Artist

Eric Berryman is a Baltimore born, NYC based artist whose main medium tends to be acting. He is involved in work that he believes his great-grandmother would dig. Recent theatrical credits: Alien/Nation (Williamstown Theatre Festival); The B-Side: Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons, A Record Album Interpretation (Wooster Group/St. Ann’s Warehouse-Drama Desk Nomination); MOBY DICK, A Musical Reckoning (A.R.T.); Detroit Red (ArtsEmerson-Elliot Norton Award); Toni Stone (Roundabout Theater). Recent Film/TV credits: “Bonding,” “Marriage Story” (NETFLIX); “Evil” (PARAMOUNT+); “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”, “Empathy Inc” (AMAZON); “Motherless Brooklyn.” Training: The Baltimore School for the Arts; BFA: Carnegie Mellon University

Stage Manager/Artist

Jhanaë Bonnick-McDonnell (she/her/hers) is a Caribbean-American AEA Stage Manager and Administrator who is passionate about the power of language, education, and community. Committed to cultivating the future of the industry and the world, Jhanaë finds her most fulfilling work is on material steeped in working towards collective liberation in ways both big and small. She is a core leader in Everybody Black – a new membership organization whose goal is to make the American Theatre Industry not only anti-racist, but pro-Black and she was recently selected for the inaugural list of “Women to Watch on Broadway.” Credits include – With the TEAM: Reconstruction and Primer for a Failed Superpower. Broadway: Caroline, or Change, Slave Play, Hadestown, Gary, Six Degrees of Separation, and The Cherry Orchard. Select Off-Broadway: Octet, Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire. Select Regional: Lempicka. BA SUNY New Paltz. @jhanaekcb

Performer/Artist

With the TEAM, Frank co-wrote and performed in Architecting and Particularly In the Heartland. Frank is also a member of Elevator Repair Service, with whom he performed in Gatz and The Select (The Sun Also Rises). In 2015, Frank will be performing on tour with Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company in Straight White Men. Other credits include the world premieres of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay with Seattle’s Book-It Repertory Theater (Seattle Times Footlight Award) and Red Speedo by Lucas Hnath at the Studio Theatre in Washington DC. Frank is the creator of The Holler Sessions, a one man show about jazz, for which he partnered with the TEAM to create and produce. The Holler Sessions premiered at On the Boards in Seattle in January 2015. Holler will make its European premiere at the Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival in The Netherlands in August 2015 and its New York premiere in January 2016. Film credits include: Almost Family (2014) and B.U.S.T (2010). Frank went to NYU and is from East Lansing, MI.

Director & Founding Artistic Director

RACHEL CHAVKIN received the 2019 Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Director of a Musical for “Hadestown.” She is a director, writer, and dramaturg, as well as the founding Artistic Director of Brooklyn-based ensemble The TEAM, whose work has been seen all over New York (including the Public Theater and PS122), nationally, the UK (including the National Theatre in London, and multiple collaborations w/ the National Theatre of Scotland), and Festivals across Europe, Australia, and Asia. The TEAM’s consensus-drive collaborative creation process was the subject of a feature-length documentary by Emmy Winner Paulette Douglas.

Selected work: Dave Malloy’s “Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812” (Ars Nova, ART, Broadway), Matt Gould and Carson Kreitzer’s “Lempicka” (Williamstown, La Jolla, Broadway), Caryl Churchill’s “Light Shining in Buckinghamshire” (New York Theatre Workshop), Marco Ramirez’s “The Royale” (Old Globe, Lincoln Center), Bess Wohl’s “Small Mouth Sounds” (Ars Nova, Off-Broadway, national tour), Sarah Gancher’s “I’ll Get You Back Again” (Round House), and multiple collaborations with Taylor Mac including “The Lily’s Revenge, Act 2” (HERE). Her upcoming projects include the direction of the feature film “Shrew’s Nest” and the new musical “Gatsby”. She is a proud Usual Suspect of the NEW YORK Theater Workshop, and a member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC).

Performer/Artist

In a career spanning more than fifty years, André De Shields has distinguished himself as an unparalleled actor, director, and educator.

He is the triple-crown winner of the 2019 awards season, having won the Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Grammy, and Tony Awards as Best Featured Actor in a Musical, for his unanimously critically acclaimed performance as Hermes, Messenger to the Gods, in “Hadestown.” The Actors’ Equity Foundation followed suit with the Richard Seff Award, which honors veteran stage actors’ best supporting performances of the year. He greeted 2020 with the win of his first Grammy Award, also for “Hadestown.”

Prior to his Tony Award, De Shields was best known for his show-stopping performances in four legendary Broadway productions: “The Wiz,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’” (Emmy Award), “Play On!,” and “The Full Monty.” He is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, and SDC. Ubuntu!

Writer

Eisa Davis (she/her) is a writer, composer, and performer who is on the writing team for Reconstructing. A recipient of a Creative Capital Award, an Obie for Sustained Excellence in Performance, the Herb Alpert Award in Theater, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play Bulrusher. Davis wrote and starred in the stage memoir Angela’s Mixtape. Other works include Paper ArmorUmkovuHip Hop AnansiSix MinutesThe History Of Light (Barrymore nomination), Warriors Don’t CryRamp (Ruby Prize), ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||:The Essentialisn’t, and Mushroom. A multivolume series of her plays is soon to be published by 53rd State Press. She led the 2021 black femme celebration of Kathleen Collins’ work AFROFEMONONOMY // WORK THE ROOTS, and she has recorded two albums of her original music — Something Else and Tinctures — and has enjoyed a multi-decade career as a performer on stage and screen. Current projects for the stage include the libretto for an opera adaptation of Bulrusher and the music and lyrics for Devil In A Blue Dress. An alumna of New Dramatists, she has received residencies, awards, and fellowships from the Hermitage Artist Retreat, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Helen Merrill Foundation, the Van Lier and Mellon Foundations, New Dramatists, and Cave Canem. Davis was born and raised in the Bay Area and lives in Brooklyn. eisadavis.com

Co-Founder

Stephanie Douglass is a performer, farmer, writer, and trainer. She is a co-host of This Much Is True and of Do Not Submit, Englewood, and tells stories throughout the U.S.

Stephanie is a Moth GrandSLAM Champion. She was the head writer for OLN’s “Outside Magazine’s Ultimate Top Ten,” and is currently a staff writer for The Paper Machete. In 2014, she had the pleasure of co-producing The 25th Annual Chicago’s Biggest Liar Contest. Off-stage, she is the Farm Enterprise Director for Growing Home, Inc., which uses organic farming to train and empower Chicagoans with barriers to employment.

She spends her off-season working with Cyahafi Blooms, developing sustainable programming for rural women, in southwestern Uganda.

Composer/Artist

JJJJJerome Ellis is a composer, poet, and performer. His current practice explores blackness, music, and disabled speech as forces of refusal and healing. 

photo by: Gema Galiana

Stage Manager

(he/they) Upcoming: I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan (The Atlantic); Previous Credits include -Broadway: The Ferryman, Head Over Heels. Recent New York: An American Soldier (PAC NYC), I Love You So Much I Could Die (NYTW), Amusements, School Pictures (Playwrights Horizons), The Appointment (Lightning Rod Special), Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova), Only An Octave Apart (St. Ann’s Warehouse); as well as previous productions at MCC, Second Stage, The Public, MTC, and Juilliard. Regional & Opera: La Calisto (The Glimmerglass Festival), Henry V, Penelope (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival), and A Wrinkle in Time, Annie Salem (NYS&F). Many thanks to The TEAM Staff, the Reconstructing Creative team, and especially Ada and Kiara. 

Designer/Artist

Katherine Freer is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, organizer, and educator. Her artistic practice lives at the intersection of story, technology, and civic engagement. It is rooted in joy, curiosity, mutual learning, and the pursuit of justice for all living beings. She is a core collaborator with All My Relations Collective, Projections Design Instructor at University of the Arts (Philadelphia), and a Teaching Artist with Roundabout Education. She is a proud member of Wingspace Theatrical Design and United Scenic Artists Local 829. katherinefreer.com

Co-Founder/Performer

Jill is a founding member of the TEAM and created/performed roles in A Thousand Natural Shocks, Particularly in the Heartland, Architecting, Mission Drift, and Primer For A Failed Superpower. She has been on the TEAM Board of Directors from its inception. As part of the TEAM’s Petri Projects, she wrote and performed An Exit Ticket, based on her experiences as an NYC DOE special education teacher. Jill originated roles in the premiere of Tectonic Theatre Company’s Uncommon Sense, appeared in the indie feature Feast Of The Epiphany, and recorded several YA audiobooks. These days she is the Education Manager for Funny Girls, a program of The Harnisch Foundation. Jill was an NYC Teaching Fellow, earned her MST at Pace and BFA at NYU. 

Performer/Artist

Theatre: Hadestown (Broadway, The National Theatre London, The Citadel, New York Theatre Workshop); Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway, Kazino, Ars Nova); An Octoroon (Theatre for a New Audience, Soho Rep, PS 122), Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma! (Bard SummerScape), Taylor Mac’s A 24 Decade History of Popular Music: 1900’s-1950’s (New York Live Arts with Under the Radar), The TEAM’s Mission Drift, Primer for a Failed Superpower, and the upcoming Reconstruction; and 15 years with Reverend Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping.  TV/Film: Showtime’s Escape At Dannemora; Amazon’s upcoming limited series Underground Railroad and movie Master.  MFA: NYU Graduate Acting

Performer

With the TEAM, Brian Hastert has created roles in Mission Drift (The National Theatre (London), Culturgest (Lisbon), Edinburgh, NYC), Particularly in the Heartland (Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh)), and A Thousand Natural Shocks, and helped develop Primer for a Failed Superpower, Waiting for You on the Corner of…, and the TEAM/National Theatre of Scotland collaboration Anything That Gives Off Light. Other recent performance credits include the world premier of All My Fathers (La MaMa), the New York premier of Tectonic Theatre Project’s Uncommon SenseOf Good Stock (Manhattan Theatre Company). TV: Happy!, The Deuce, Allegiance, Flesh and Bone, The Good Wife, I Love You… But I Lied, The Vampire Leland (pilot). Radio: Twelve Years (BBC4). MFA – Yale School of Drama. As an educator, Brian created the Acting for Film, Television, Voice Over, and Commercials BFA program at Pace University.

Brian is the host of the Local Selection podcast, in which he is on a quest to make local level democracy sexy. Other evidence of professional shenanigans can be found at brianhastert.com.

Artist

Jake is co-owner of the The Lighting Syndicate, a theatrical lighting installation company for Off-Broadway theaters including The Atlantic Theater, The Vineyard Theater, The Cherry Lane Theater, The Rattlestick Theater and The Daryl Roth.

Designer

With the TEAM: Primer for a Failed Superpower, Anything That Gives Off Light, RoosevElvis, The Holler Sessions, Waiting For You on the Corner of…, Mission Drift, Architecting, Particularly in the Heartland, A Thousand Natural Shocks.  Other designs include: Time and the Conways (American Airlines Theatre, Old Globe) Indecent (The Cort Theatre, The Vineyard, La Jolla Playhouse, Yale Rep); The Royale (Lincoln Center, Old Globe); Stage Kiss, 100 Saints You Should Know (Playwrights Horizons); Marie Antoinette (ART, Yale Rep, SoHo Rep); Three Pianos (NYTW, ART).

Writer/Performer/Artist

Modesto “Flako” Jimenez is a Dominican-born, Bushwick-raised, multi-hyphenate artist. His work exists in and explores the intersections of identity, language, mediums, cultures, and communities found in his personal life and beyond. Flako’s recent work includes Taxilandia, a multifaceted Bushwick community tour and poetic experience from the back of a taxi cab that earned the NY Times Critics Pick. Flako is the founder of ¡Oye! Group, a nonprofit that serves as an incubator for artists both native and immigrant to New York City. Flako has been selected as a Princeton Hodder Fellow for 2023-2024. In 2021, Flako received a Jerome Foundation Fellowship and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts award in performing arts and theater. Flako is currently working on Mercedes, a multi-disciplinary art experience exploring the relationships between matriarchy and ancestors, familial bonds and inherited trauma, and how our identity can impact our mental health.

Designer/Artist

Marika Kent (she/her) is a Brooklyn based lighting designer. Recent & upcoming: Ulysses; Seagull (Elevator Repair Service), Get Your Ass in the Water… (The Wooster Group), Sweeney ToddClyde’sChoir BoyGem of the Ocean; School Girls, or the African Mean Girls Play (Portland Center Stage), Fences (Trinity Rep), POTUS (Arena Stage), Bernarda’s DaughtersAmani (National Black Theater), Catch as Catch Can (Playwrights Horizons). Marika teaches design at NYU’s Playwrights Horizons Theater School and is a proud member of USA Local 829. www.marikakent.com

Performer/Artist

Libby is an actor living in Brooklyn. With The TEAM, Libby has created and performed the role of Ann and Elvis in RoosevElvis, Catalina in Mission Drift, Carrie Campbell in Architecting, and Sarah Springer in Particularly in the Heartland (named Best Actress at the Dublin Fringe Festival for her performance as Sarah). Libby is currently creating roles in Primer for a Failed Superpower and Drive/Discipline (a collaboration with Taylor Mac). She is super excited for the upcoming tour of RoosevElvis. The show will perform in London at The Royal Court, The Walker in Minneapolis, and A.R.T. in Boston.  Libby has performed all over the country, New York, and abroad (BAM, the Public, The Vineyard, PS122, CSC, Judson Church, St. Marks Church, The Barbican, The Almeida, the National, The Royal Lyceum, Lisbon, Coimbra, Salzburg, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Baton Rouge, Philly, Nashville). She has helped to develop projects with the National Theatre of Scotland, The Foundry, Clubbed Thumb, New George’s, Tectonic, Yale Rep, Soho Rep. Some favorites: The Laramie Project Cycle (directed by Moisés Kaufman and Leigh Fondakowski), 27 by Abi Morgan (dir. Vicky Featherstone), Death of a Salesman in collaboration with Siti Company directed by  Leon Ingulsrud, and Astrov in Rachel Chavkin’s Uncle Vanya.

She also starred in B.U.S.T written by Frank Boyd and directed by David Call (Winner Special Jury Prize, Dallas Film Festival). She has taught at NYU, the New School, PACE, Sarah Lawrence, LSU, and Vanderbilt University. She played division 1 soccer  at Clemson University where she got a degree in history. Libby received her MFA from Louisiana State University. She comes from Nebraska.

Performer/Artist

BROADWAY: War Horse (Lincoln Center); OFF-BROADWAY: An Octaroon (Theater for a New Audience), Antony and Cleopatra (Public Theater, RSC Swan Theatre), Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (Kazino), Mission Drift (co-writer/performer. Connelly Theater). NEW YORK/REGIONAL: An Iliad: Guerrillas at Troy (Continuum Company, Florence, Italy), Henry V (Two River Theater); Ash Girl (Connelly Theater), Martian Chronicles (Fordham Alumni Co); Land O’Fire (Wings Theater); September 12th (Nuyorican Poets’ Café); Fitz and Walloughs Get it in the End (NYC Fringe). INDIE FILM: His first film Mixed Up is currently being submitted to the festival circuit (more at mixedupfilm.com), Queen of GloryTime After, King Theo Live!. Ian earned his MFA from NYU Tisch School Grad Acting Department. Ian is a founding member of NYC’s edgy, sketch comedy troupe FUCT (more at www.fuctnyc.com). >website  >facebook

Director/Artist

Zhailon Levingston is a Louisiana-raised storyteller, director, and activist. He is a Board Member for the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, which he co-created, and teaches the Theatre of Change course at Columbia University.

He is a Music Mentor Fellow and has done work with Idina Menzel’s A Broader Way Foundation. His directing credits include: Neptune (Dixon Place, Brooklyn Museum), The Years That Went Wrong (Lark, MCC), The Exonerated (Columbia Law School), Chariot Part 2 (Soho Rep., for The Movement Theatre Company), Mother of Pearl (LaGuardia Performing Arts Center). He is the associate director of Primer for a Failed Superpower with Tony Award winner Rachel Chavkin, and Runaways at The Public Theater with Sam Pinkleton. Most recently, he directed Chicken & Biscuits which premiered on Broadway in 2021 and Patience which premiered at Second Stage UPTOWN Summer of 2022. Zhailon is also the former resident director at Tina: The Tina Turner Musical on Broadway and the associate director of Hadestown in South Korea.

Performer/Designer

Jake Margolin has co-written and/or performed in five TEAM plays: RoosevElvisMission DriftWaiting for YouArchitectingand Particularly in the Heartland. 

With his husband Nick Vaughan he makes interdisciplinary visual art. In 2014 Nick & Jake moved to Houston, Texas to research and develop a series of installations about 19th century LGBTQ histories from Texas and the surrounding states. Nick & Jake maintain collaborations with choreographers Faye Driscoll and Yoshiko Chuma. Their website is www.nickandjakestudio.com

Composer/Artist

James Harrison Monaco is a storyteller, writer, and musician. He is one half of the music-storytelling duo Jerome & James (jamesandjerome.org). His shows are frequently directed by Rachel Chavkin, Andrew Scoville, and Annie Tippe. Recent James & Jerome projects include: The Conversationalists (The Bushwick Starr), Ink (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Under The Radar Festival), Piano Tales (Lincoln Center, MASS MoCA, La MaMa, etc.), Aaron/Marie (Under The Radar Festival, Ars Nova), and They Ran and Ran and Ran (HERE Arts). Other storytelling projects include Tales for Telling (Ars Nova) and Reception (HERE Arts, The New Ohio). He is a New Writer in Residence at Lincoln Center Theater, and he has received residencies with The Public Theater, The Sundance Institute, The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, New York Theatre Workshop, and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, among others. He also works as a professional translator of Spanish and Italian, a fiction writer, a dramaturg, a drummer, and a composer.

photo by Jacquelyn Pascucci

RECONSTRUCTING Designer

Lawrence E. Moten III (he/him/his) – [Broadway] Chicken & Biscuits (Circle In The Square); [NYC] The White Chip (MCC) Covenant (Roundabout), Patience (2ST Uptown), Stargazers, STEW (Page 73) Behind The Sheet (EST);  [Regional] Henry 6: One & Two (Old Globe), Gem of The Ocean (Two River), Metamorphoses (Folger Shakespeare Theatre), Black Cypress Bayou (Geffen) Bulrusher (McCarter & Berkeley Rep), Silent Night, Cosí Fan Tutte & Faust (Wolf Trap Opera), Proof, The Brothers Size, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (American Players), King James, Twelfth Night, Trouble In Mind (Old Globe), Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily (Alley Theatre), Blues For An Alabama Sky (McCarter & Guthrie), Appropriate & The Little Foxes (South Coast Rep), Christmas in Connecticut (Goodspeed Musicals), it’s not a trip, it’s a journey & We Declare You A Terrorist… (Round House), How I Learned What I Learned & Native Son, Hamlet (Playmakers Rep)

photo by Jacquelyn Pascucci

Stage Manager/Production Manager

As Production Stage Manager for The TEAM, Dave recently completed an international tour of Particularly in the Heartland this past fall. Recent New York credits include The Bacchae workshop (dir. Joanne Akalitis, The Public), Particularly in the Heartland (The TEAM @ PS 122), 365 Plays/365 Days (The Public), El Conquistador (NYTW), Everything’s Turning Into Beautiful (New Group), Bone Portraits (Stillpoint Prod), Children of a Lesser God (Keen Company). Regional: Dulcy (Dorset Theatre Festival), Sleuth (Dorset Theatre Festival). Next up, Dave will be Stage Managing The Conscientious Objector for Keen Company, a new play by Michael Murphy. Training: University of Rochester International Theatre Program, McCarter Theatre Center.

Co-Founder/Performer/Costume Designer

Kristen Sieh is a founding member of The TEAM, with whom she has written and performed in RoosevElvisArchitecting, A Thousand Natural Shocks, Particularly in the Heartland, and Mission Drift (contributing writer). Broadway: The Band’s Visit.  Off-Broadway:  The Public Theater (Fortress of Solitude, February House), Atlantic Theatre Company (The Band’s Visit)Classic Stage Company (Iphigenia in Anne Washburn’s Iphigenia in Aulis), Playwrights Horizons/Clubbed Thumb (Men on Boats) The Foundry (O, Earth), Half Straddle (Ghost Rings), Pig Iron (Viola in Twelfth Night)Ripe Time (The World is Round at BAM), Elevator Repair Service (Gatz, The Sound and the Fury, etc.), Banana, Bag & Bodice (Beowulf…), The Builders AssociationThe New Group, The O’Neill Center, The 52nd St. Project, and others.  Regional credits include Syracuse Stage, Denver Center Theater, Long Wharf, The A.R.T., and Baltimore CenterStage.  TV: “Orange is the New Black,” “House of Cards,” “The Blacklist,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and “Law & Order.”

Designer

Nick Vaughan has co-written and/or designed five TEAM plays: RoosevElvisMission DriftWaiting for YouArchitectingand Particularly in the Heartland. 

With his husband Jake Margolin he makes interdisciplinary visual art. In 2014 Nick & Jake moved to Houston, Texas to research and develop a series of installations about 19th century LGBTQ histories from Texas and the surrounding states. Nick & Jake maintain collaborations with choreographers Faye Driscoll and Yoshiko Chuma. Their website is www.nickandjakestudio.com

Performer, Writer, Reconstructing Process Director

Jillian Walker (Gogo) writes and performs sacred texts to break the brutal boundaries of the colonial imagination. Her work has taken the form of plays, musicals, sacred lecture-sermon-concert gatherings, and prayerformances for remembrance and liberation. She draws deeply on her training as an initiated iSangoma Priestess, her background in dramaturgy (MFA Columbia), and the ongoing work of Black feminist thinkers to bring process-driven performance to life.
Her works include The Whitney Album (Soho Rep), Sarah’s Salt. (developed at MCC Theater, Roundabout Theater Company; Honorable Mention for the Relentless Award; finalist for the 2019 Bay Area Playwrights Festival). Songs of Speculation (Third Coast’s inaugural “Audio Unbound” competition winner); and “Blue Ink: A Night with Jillian Walker” performed at Joe’s Pub. Her ancestor-revering work, SKiNFoLK: An American Show (co-presented by The Bushwick Starr and National Black Theatre) was a NY Times Critics’ Pick, a “Best Orchestrations” Antonyo Award-winner, and appears on the 2020 Kilroys List. It is published by 53rd State Press.

Jillian is currently co-conspiring with The TEAM as a writer/performer and Process Director on Reconstructing. www.thisisjillianwalker.com

Collaborators

The TEAM is thankful to work with a large network of artists for both our productions and Petri Projects Program. To learn more about the artistic teams behind our plays please visit each individual show’s page in the “Shows” section of our site.

Former Company Member, Co-Founder

Jessica Almasy is a co-founder and former company member of the TEAM. During Jess’s time at the TEAM, she worked on the following works: Anything That Gives Off LightArchitectingA Thousand Natural Shocks, FasterGive Up! Start Over!Mission DriftParticularly in the Heartland, and Primer for a Failed Superpower

Davey is a writer, director and musician. His plays include SnuffWiredRuptureLiarBlackoutClutter Keeps CompanyPlaybackScavengers and The Static. His work with the National Theatre of Scotland includes To Begin, EnquirerPeter PanBe Near MeMixter MaxterBlack Watch and Home. Adaptations include Dead Man Dying by Estebán Navajas Cortés, Thieves and Boy by Hao Jingfang and The War Hasn’t Started Yet by Mikhail Durnenkov. He recently co-created and performed How to Choose with Trigger and was co-writer of The Jean Jacques Rousseau ShowDemons and The Deficit Show for A Play, a Pint and a Pint at Oran Mor, Glasgow. His short plays for Theatre Uncut include True or False and Police State, a co-production with Theatre Dot, Istanbul. He has worked with many theatre companies across Scotland and the UK, including The Arches, Traverse, Tron, Citizens, Grey Coast, Ankur, Birds of Paradise, Visible Fictions, ThickSkin, Donmar Warehouse and the National Theatre of Great Britain. Recent international collaborations have taken him to Limerick, Lisbon, São Paulo, Beijing and Montréal. Davey was Associate Director on Architecting and is a writer/Associate Director with The TEAM on Anything That Gives Off Light.

Heather Christian is the daughter of a blues musician and a go-go dancer. Primarily a songstress with “Avant-Americanan” ensemble,  Heather Christian & the Arbornauts, she can be seen regularly all over the world singing her dream hymnal songs of heart ache, time travel, space travel, bubbling, blustering, and good old fashioned feeling good. As a theater maker, she was last seen making scores for and performing in Mission Drift (winner of 2011 Fringe First and Herald Angel) at the National Theater in London, for which she was nominated for the Drama League Outstanding Performance Award. Composing credits include Gertrude Stein’s The World Is Round (BAM, NYC) for which her score received a 2014 Obie citation, Of Mice and Men (The West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds), The Burnin’ (Progress Theater) her own multi-media concert North (LaMama NYC), Daily Life Everlasting (Norwegian Theater Acadamy, Norway), Mud (IAmA Theater Company, Los Angeles), Learning in Lower Animals (DTW NYC), as well as numerous compositions for short films and dance pieces including Gregory Go Boom, which took the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year.  She is a member of the Ars Nova Uncharted 2015-2016 Play Group alongside Rachel Chavkin. She is a long time collaborator in devised theater and has worked  and performed with many theater makers including the TEAM, Jane Comfort Company, Mac Wellman, Big Dance Theater, Taylor Mac, and Witness Relocation Company, of whom she is a core member. She was recently named one of Time Out New York’s “Downtown Innovators To Watch.” Her album Cabinet was released in 2012 to much critical acclaim and she and the Arbornauts just released their sophomore record, House/Hymnwww.heatherchristian.bandcamp.com

Sarah Gancher’s plays have been produced or developed at institutions such as London’s National Theatre, Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, Budapest’s Quarter6Quarter7 Festival, PS122, Ars Nova, The Women’s Project, NYC SummerStage, The Lark, the Great Plains Theatre Conference, and Telluride Theatre, among others. Honors include the New York Stage and Film Founder’s Award and the Clifford Odets Commission. She frequently partners with devising ensembles such as NYC’s The TEAM, Colorado’s Telluride Theatre, Portland’s Hand2Mouth, and Blue Man Group, where she is a current staff writer. She collaborated with Rachel Chavkin, Heather Christian, and The TEAM on Mission Drift, which won the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe award and toured three continents, ending at London’s National Theatre. Recently: Time Warner Fellow at The Women’s Project Playwrights Lab, Playwrights’ Realm Writing Fellow, member of P73’s writing group I73 and Ars Nova Play Group. Up next: collaboration with The Bengsons at Ars Nova, and Steppenwolf’s First Look Festival. MFA: NYU.

Seán has been designing lights in, around, near, and far from New York City for years. His work has been seen at the Harvey Theatre BAM, Fools in Love, the Manhattan Ensemble Theatre, Tempest Toss’d, in concert series at Flushing Town Hall, and dance pieces around the city. He has also worked creatively and technically in feature films, music videos, and television series (HBO Real Sports, The BIG Gay Sketch Show, Flosstodamus).

Lucy recently toured East Coast Colleges with the SITI Company’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream playing the roles of Helena, Snug and Fairy. In New York and in Portland, Oregon, she has worked with International WOW, The Foundry Theatre, Theatre Askew, Andrei Serban, The Dodeska Ensemble, the Otherside Theatre, NW Children’s Theatre, NW Classical Theatre and Saga Theater company. She holds an MFA from Columbia University. Currently, she is developing the character of Margaret Mitchell for the TEAM’s, Architecting.

Nathan Wright holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University’s School of the Arts and a BA in English and Theatre from Weber State University. His plays include: Naked Fish (Theatre Masters at The Atlantic 2nd Stage in New York and at Theater Masters in Aspen, CO), Distance (Plan-B Theatre Company, Salt Lake City, UT), Cheryl Rhodes and the Old Woman (LonelyShore Productions, New York) Mission (Schapiro Theatre, New York) and Bratya (Revisionary Theatre Company, Provo, UT) for which he received The Vera Hinckley Mayhew Award for Playwriting from Brigham Young University. Other original plays include PeninsulaRevisions of a ChildhoodHomorapture and Conversations with Benjamin. Other works include collaborations on the forthcoming Architecting (with The TEAM), The Best Intentions (an adaptation of the Ingmar Bergman novel) and Moscow Express, an adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Additionally, Nathan has taught theatre and performance in high schools, studios and summer programs across the country. The second of eight children and raised a devout Mormon, Nathan is primarily concerned with exploring questions of identity and faith in his writing.

STAFF AND BOARD

Staff

Rachel Chavkin, Founding Artistic Director
Emma Orme, Producing Director
Sabine Decatur, Associate Producer
Jillian Walker, Reconstructing Process Director
Artem Kreimer, Bookkeeper

Board

  • Matt Ross (Chair)
    Producer, Stairwell Productions (Dana H, Pass Over, What the Constitution Means to Me, Animal Wisdom)
    Founder & Press Agent, Printshop Public Relations
    Board of Governors, ATPAM (Association of Theatrical Press Agents & Managers)
    Member, The Broadway League
  • Ryan West (Treasurer)
    President, West Music
    Trustee, Theatre Mitu
    Member, National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM)
    Member, National Association of School Music Dealers (NASMD)
    Member, Iowa City Area Business Partnership
    Advisory Board, MidwestOne
  • Alice Griffiths (Secretary)
    Boston Consulting Group
    McKinsey & Co
    Volunteer, Minds Matter
  • Brenda Abbandandolo
    TEAM Artist
    Member, IATSE United Scenic Artist 829
    Member, Costume Designers Guild
  • Eric Berryman
    TEAM Artist
    Member, Actors’ Equity Association
  • Jill Frutkin
    TEAM Artist
    Education Manager, The Harnisch Foundation
    Former Education Director, Stages on the Sound
    Member, Actors’ Equity Association
  • Sarah Jane Johnson
    Director of Creative Operations, The Moth
    Member, Actors’ Equity Association
  • Jason Kemper
    Business Operations Lead, North American Innovation, Accenture
    Treasurer, Ars Nova
    Board of Advisors, A.R.T.
  • Libby King
    TEAM Artist
    Assistant Professor, University of Washington
    Member, Actors’ Equity Association
  • Ian Lassiter
    TEAM Artist
    Member, Actors’ Equity Association
  • Carolyn Miller
    Co-Founder, Creative Endeavor Office
    Member, National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT)
    Board Chair, CHANGE Arts
  • Thor Perplies
    Director, US Team Lead for Treasury Sales, Citi
    Board Member, Leslie-Lohman Museum
  • Susan Rose
    Theater & Film Producer (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor DreamcoatThe Bands VisitMr. and Mrs. Loving)
    Member, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
    Member, Producers Guild of America
  • Jillian Walker
    TEAM Artist
    2020-21 Tow Playwright-in-Residence, Soho Rep
    Co-Curator, The Starr Reading Series, The Bushwick Starr
    Columbia School of the Arts Alum (MFA Dramaturgy)
    The University of Michigan Alum (BA, English Lit. & Afro/African-American Studies)
    Member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.