CREATIVE
Yohana Ansari – Thomas / Josh
Yohana Ansari-Thomas explores the boundaries of architecture and performance, often operating in the space in-between. He studies the two at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to acting, Yohana works as a designer, choreographer, and teaching artist. His work investigates alternative dramaturgical methods through architecture and their potential for new political, environmental, and spatial trajectories. He is from Chicago and now based on the divide between Berkeley and Oakland. Thank you to Katja, Shotgun, and TheatreFIRST for letting me tag along. yohanadesign.com
Michelle Navarette / Pilar
Michelle Navarrete is a Bay Area native, and is honored to be back with TheatreFIRST and working with Shotgun Players for the first time! She was last seen with TheatreFirst in Participants and Stop Kiss. Some past Bay Area credits include: In The Heights (Custom Made Theatre); Dead Dogs Bone, Trailer Park God’s (FaultLine Theatre); Richard III (Impact Theatre); James and the Giant Peach (Bay Area Children’s Theatre); The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (The Aluminous Collective). Some NYC credits: Sonnets For an Old Century; The House of Bernarda Alba; Richard II. Training: BFA in Theatre from Marymount Manhattan College.
Radhika Rao / Lali
Radhika is delighted and honored to contribute to this beautiful show. She identifies as an actor, storyteller, director, writer, and educator. Her recent performances have been with Cutting Ball Theater (‘Timon of Athens’), African American Shakespeare Festival (Richard III), San Francisco Shakespeare Festival (‘Hamlet’), Central Works Theater (’Strange Ladies’), Farah Yasmeen Shaikh Dance (‘The Forgotten Empress’), Leela Improv, and Eth-Noh-Tec Storytelling. She specializes in creating curriculum that integrates theatre into diverse learning situations including universities, schools, corporations, and community spaces. Collaborators include American Conservatory Theatre, Cutting Ball Theater, Enacte, SF Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Adyen, Cisco, UC Hastings School of Law, Stanford University and Samuel Merritt University. She is a lecturer at University of San Francisco. www.radhikarao.org
Neiry Rojo / Dani
Neiry Rojo is grateful for the introduction to the TheatreFirst/Shotgun family (2 in 1, what a deal) whilst working on this production. Rojo has previously worked with Marin Theatre Company, SF Playhouse, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz Shakespeare, The Cutting Ball Theatre, PlayGround, Ross Valley Players, Los Altos Stage Company, The Breadbox Theatre (RIP), Quantum Dragon Theater, and more. Favorite roles include #46 in MTC’S The Wolves (also directed by Morgan Green), Trinculo in Half Moon Bay Shakespeare Company’s production of The Tempest, Queen Elizabeth I in SCS’s production of The Beard of Avon, and Marela in RVP’s Anna in the Tropics. She works as a teaching artist with the American Conservatory Theater and holds a Master’s in Theatre Arts from UC Santa Cruz.
Kimiya Shokri / Zoe
Kimiya Shokri is a Bay Area born and raised artist and activist, making her Shotgun Players and TheatreFIRST debut. She most recently played Masha in Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” at Saint Mary’s College of California, where she is graduating from on May 25, 2019. A selection of other acting credits include Lou Salome in the west coast premiere of “Chaste: An Awful Comedy,” Templeton in “Charlotte’s Web,” as well as supporting roles in “Twelfth Night” and “Lysistrata.”She is currently working as an assistant director and dramaturg for “Cabaret,” directed by Jon Tracy. She is also the assistant director and dramaturg for the world premiere of Zahra Noorbaksh’s “On Behalf of All Muslims,” directed by Lisa Marie Rollins. For her own directing work, Kimiya has received recognition of special achievement by the KCACTF National Festival for the student written one-act, “Lockdown.”
Kimiya would like to thank her family, friends, loved ones, and mentors for all the love and support they have shown her over the years. A great many thanks as well to the teams at TheatreFIRST and Shotgun Players, committed to representing diverse voices, bodies, and stories on stage.
Regina Leon / Dani (Understudy)
A theatre graduate of San Francisco State University, Regina Leon is primarily an actress and a dancer. She’s studied at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York and has worked with NCTC since she was in high school. Her notable credits include: A Midsummer Nights Dream (Titania), Three Sisters (Irina), Cymbeline (Imogen), and Sucia (Sucia).
Nikki Anderson – Joy / Costume
Nikki Anderson-Joy is a costume designer originally from the Pacific Northwest and lives now in the Bay Area. This is her second time working with TheatreFIRST. She recently designed Cinderella for the African American Theatre Company (AASC) and AASC last season production Jitney. She was a Theatre Bay Area Finalist for Costume Design for Jitney. She graduated from the Academy of Art University in 2014 and since has assisted on plays around the Bay, including Bereaved at Crowded Fire and Waiting for Gadot at the Marin Theatre Company. She is returning in May as a costume assistant at the San Francisco Opera. Her next project is the New Conservatory Theatre Center for their production of The Mystery of Love and Sex. http://nikkiandersonjoy.squarespace.comAlex Dillon / Stage Manager
Alex Bailey Dillon is a newly local stage manager thrilled to be working with both Shotgun and TheatreFIRST for the first time! After a year in Chicago apprenticing at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company (The Minutes, The Burn, Guards at the Taj), Alex moved to the Bay Area in January. Stage management credits include A White Girl’s Guide to International Terrorism, graveyard shift, Zenith (SF Playhouse), She Persisted: The Musical, Shrek Jr., and Legally Blonde Jr. (Bay Area Children’s Theatre). Many thanks to this wonderful cast and crew!
Laura Espino / Dramaturge
Laura has performed in various Bay Area theaters such as the The Magic Theatre; Custom Made Theatre; Contra Costa Civic Theatre; City Lights Theatre Co.; New Conservatory Theatre Center, Novato Theatre Co.; Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley. And the Mesa Arts Center in Arizona. Favorite past credits include:Nogales; The Clean House; In Love & Warcraft; A Streetcar Named Desire; andSpring Awakening. Laura was previously the Casting Associate at Marin Theatre Co. and is now a teaching artist with the SF Opera Guild. She is a TBA Award nominee and a SF Bay Area Critics Circle recipient. A San Francisco native living in the city with her partner in crime: 6 yr. old daughter, Eva.
Katja Rivera / Director
Katja Rivera, a proud Los Angeles native, studied theatre at LA City College Theatre Academy and the Drama Studio London at Berkeley. After getting her Equity card she took a ten year mommy hiatus from acting, returning with Shotgun’s production of Silence and the Storyteller. Other Shotgun productions include Three Sisters (Anfisa), We Won’t Pay (Antonia), and King Lear (the Fool). She’s also acted with the Magic Theatre, Theatre Rhinoceros, Center Rep, and Geoffrey Chaucer & Co. Her directing debut was with Shotgun Players (The Winged Man). She directed Animal and Kiss in Shotgun’s Champagne Staged Reading Series. Other directing credits include Eastenders Rep, Subterranean Shakespeare, Boxcar Theatre, Quantum Dragon, Douglas Morrison, Custom Made, RPE in Danville, and SF Playground. She is proud to be a member of AEA, Shotgun Players, and SF Playground. The Invisible Project, which she cowrote with Evelyn Jean Pine, is in development with SF Playground.
Geetha Reddy / Playwright
Geetha Reddy is a playwright and filmmaker working in the Bay Area. Her plays Safe House and On a Wonderverse were selected for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Safe House premiered at SF Playhouse. She wrote HeLa (TheatreFIRST) in collaboration with Lauren Gunderson and Blastosphere! (Central Works Theater) with Aaron Loeb. Me Given You, Girl in a Box, and On a Wonderverse were part of the Playwright’s Foundation’s In the Rough reading series. Her plays have also appeared in the San Francisco Fringe Festival, the Santa Rosa Quickies Festival, the Best of PlayGround Festival, the Just Theatre Lab series, and the Crowded Fire Matchbox series. Her short film Obit appeared at LA Shorts, NY Indie Fest, Bend Film Festival, the GI Film Festival, and many others. She is a five-time recipient of PlayGround’s Emerging Playwright Award and a June Anne Baker Prize winner. Geetha is a member of the Dramatist’s Guild and a former resident playwright at the Playwright’s Foundation, and she is currently under commission (through the Gerbode Foundation) on an adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities for Shotgun Players and TheatreFIRST.
Kristoffer Barrera / Sound
Kristoffer Barrera set foot on his theatrical journey at Laney College in Oakland as a generation one Fusion Theater member. He has collaborated on and off stage with many East Bay and SF theater companies and is honored to throw down as TheatreFIRST’s production manager and resident sound designer for another exciting season. He says this cast and crew is cooking up the goodness! For. That. Day.
Stephanie Anne Johnson / Light
I am a second-generation theater practitioner who has been a lighting designer working locally, nationally, and internationally for over forty years. Locally, I have worked with Cultural Odyssey, Afro Solo, Ubuntu Theatre, and many other groups. My mixed media art work was exhibited in two one-person shows in San Francisco. I have written and performed a one-person show entitled Every Twenty-One Days: Cancer, Yoga, and Me.In the realm of education, I am a professor and founding faculty member of the Visual and Public Art Department at Cal State University, Monterey Bay. I serve on TheatreFirst’s Board of Directors and The Farm is my third production here. Recently I was nominated for a Theatre Bay Area (TBA) award for the lighting design for HeLa which was produced at TheatreFirst.
My work can be seen online at www.lightessencedesign.com.
