CAST
CREATIVE
Awele
Awele is thrilled to be working on her second production with TheatreFIRST! She celebrates what it means to be human, in the moment, speaking your truth, forgiving, and a social justice warrior! She gives honor to the ancestors for their blessings. Her African ancestry DNA is Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Benin, Mali and Bantu. Some of her favorite performances include: the world premiere of Nambi E. Kelley’s XTIGONE (Spirit/Old blind Woman) at African American Shakespeare Company, The Winter’s Tale (Antigonous/Old Shepard), directed by L. Peter Callender, City Council Meeting (Aide/ensemble) co-created by Erika Chong Such, Mallory Catlett, & Aaron Landsman, , Philip Gan Kotanda’s The Wash, Jamaican Project (Wife) with Carl Lumbly, The Story directed by Margo Hall (Detective/ensemble) at SF Playhouse, The Othello Papers (Cleopatra/Ensemble) by Robert Henry Johnson, and her internationally acclaimed solo show, Rage Is Not A 1-Day Thing! (Ellen Sebastian Chang /Benny Sato Ambush), past readings of Waafrika 123 at the Breaking the Binary Symposium (CalShakes/Berkeley Rep), and CalShakes’ Glass Menagerie (Amanda understudy).“She has mesmerized audiences around the world as a storyteller from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Musikverein in Vienna, Tsinchu Teacher’s College in Taiwan, Suriname (U.S. Dept. of State Tour), Russia, Australia, France, Canada to TED-Ed, and Stanford University. Her featured award-winning CDs include, Tell That Tale Again, This Land Is Your Land, plus the Oregon Public Radio recording of The Undiscovered Explorer: Imagining York with Danny Glover, and Trailblazers: African Americans in the California Gold Rush. She is a voice-over artist/narrator in an episode of the award-winning documentary, Have You Heard From Johannesburg and the voice of Rose on PlayStation2, Legend of the Dragon. Film credits include Ella Hill Hutch in MILK (Gus Van Sant, FOCUS Films. Awele is proud of her high school drama students who were invited to perform in Edinburgh Scotland August 2017. Visit Awele.com
Justin Howard / Anton
Leela Kiyawat / Dee
Leela Kiyawat is so excited to be a part of this production! She is fifteen years old and is a sophomore at Oakland School for the Arts, where she is in the Playwriting/Directing department. Her past work includes Fiddler on the Roof (Sprintze), The Wiz, The Sound of Music, and The Little Mermaid with Berkeley Playhouse, and Footloose (Wendy Jo), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Once upon a mattress, and Broadway on Broadway with Oakland School for the Arts. She recently wrote the script for and directed a thirty minute adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s All Summer in a Day, which was produced on the Ashby Stage. Leela is the Education Director for Bay Area Zeta Players, a teen run theatre company. Leela sends her love to her family, friends, and her dog, Nobi. Enjoy the show!
Unity Tambellini-Smith / Tara
Unity is thrilled to be taking part in developing and acting in her first professional show, The People’s History of Next. She is a Junior at Contra Costa School of Performing Arts in Walnut Creek, California, where she is majoring in Theatre. She has been acting since age six. Some of her past roles include Sandy in Grease, Therapist and “A” in Metamorphoses, and Martha in The Secret Garden. In addition to theatre she enjoys singing, writing, drawing and snuggling her cat, Rory. She would like to give special thanks to her theatre teachers, Directors AeJay Mitchell and Melissa Martinez, for helping shape her as an artist, and also to Jon Tracy and TheatreFirst for making this wonderful opportunity possible. Lastly, she would like to thank her family and friends for their love and support.
Ben Euphrat / Video Designer
Ben wears a lot of hats. He works as an actor, multi-instrumentalist, music director, sound designer and video designer throughout the country. TheatreFirst audiences will know his video and composition work from Between Us, as well as T1’s promotional videos. His most recent stage work was acting in The Siegel at City Lights, and acting, accompanying, and assistant music directing Shakespeare in Love at Marin Theatre. He has also worked as an actor, musician, and music director (usually all three at once), at Shotgun Players, Central Works, Center Rep, The Magic, SF Playhouse, TheatreWorks and ACT, to name a few. And he has a new solo album coming out early 2019! Find it and more at BenEuphrat.com.
Jon Tracy / Director
Jon works internationally as a director, playwright, designer, educator and facilitator. He is the recipient of the Kennedy Center Meritorious Achievement Award, fifteen North Bay Arty Awards, a Sacramento Elly Award, two Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards, a Theatre Bay Area Award, Solano College Theatre Alumni Award and is a grant recipient from Theatre Bay Area, Shotgun Players’ Bridging the Gap and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the Artistic Facilitator for TheatreFirst, Co-Artistic Director of Groundswell: The International Theatre Intensive a proud member of SDC, the union for stage directors and choreographers. www.jontracyplays.com
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!
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.com