2011/12 season > Ghost Light > Who’s who
who’s who
Tony Taccone, Playwright
Jonathan Moscone, Director
Todd Rosenthal, Scenic Design
Meg Neville, Costume Design
Christopher Akerlind, Lighting Design
Andre Pluess, Sound Design
Maya Ciarrocchi, Video / Projection Design
Alison Carey, Dramaturg
Michael Suenkel *, Production Stage Manager
Leslie M. Radin *, Assistant Stage Manager
Nicole Arbusto / Joy Dickson, Casting
Amy Potozkin, Casting
Cast
Danforth Comins, Loverboy
Ted Deasy, Basil
Peter Frechette, Film Director
Bill Geisslinger, Prison Guard
Isaac Kosydar, Ensemble
Peter Macon, Mister
Christopher Liam Moore, Jon
Tyler James Myers, Boy
Sarita Ocón, Ensemble
Robynn Rodriguez, Louise
Tony Taccone
Playwright
Tony is artistic director of Berkeley Rep, where he has staged more than 35 shows—including world premieres by Culture Clash, Rinde Eckert, David Edgar, Danny Hoch, Geoff Hoyle, Quincy Long, Itamar Moses and Lemony Snicket. Tony took two shows from Berkeley Rep to Broadway: Sarah Jones’ Bridge & Tunnel, which won a Tony Award for its star, and Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking, which set box-office records in Berkeley before enjoying a six-city national tour. He commissioned Tony Kushner’s legendary Angels in America, co-directed its world premiere at the Taper and has collaborated with Kushner on seven projects including Brundibar and Tiny Kushner. Two of Tony’s recent shows transferred to London: Continental Divide played the Barbican in 2004, and Tiny Kushner played the Tricycle Theatre last fall. His many regional credits include Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arena Stage, the Eureka Theatre, the Guthrie, the Huntington, OSF, The Public Theater, Seattle Repertory Theatre and Yale Rep. Known as a director, he recently turned his hand to playwriting, and two of his scripts premiered this year: Ghost Light and Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup.
Jonathan Moscone
Director
Jonathan has just completed his 11th season as artistic director of California Shakespeare Theater, where he most recently directed Shaw’s Candida. His other Cal Shakes credits include the world premiere of John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven by Octavio Solis, which was a recipient of the inaugural NEA New Play Development Award; Happy Days; The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Much Ado About Nothing; The Seagull; and Twelfth Night. For Berkeley Rep, he has directed Ghosts and Our Town. He is the first recipient of the Zelda Fichandler Award from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation for “transforming the American theatre through his unique and creative work.” Jonathan’s regional credits include ACT, Alley Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, Goodspeed Musicals, the Huntington, Intersection for the Arts, Intiman, Magic Theatre, Milwaukee Rep, OSF and San Jose Repertory Theatre. Jonathan is a recipient of a Stanford Graduate School of Business Center for Social Innovation Fellowship and is an adjunct faculty member with ACT’s MFA program. He currently serves as a board member of Theatre Communications Group.
Todd Rosenthal
Scenic Design
Todd received the 2008 Tony Award for August: Osage County and a 2011 Tony Award nomination for The Motherfu**er with the Hat. His current and upcoming designs include As You Like It at OSF, August: Osage County at Sydney Theatre Company and the National Theatre in London, The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Theatre Royal Waterford in Ireland, Close Up Space at MTC, Clybourne Park and A Parallelogram at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Stephen King and John Mellencamp’s Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, Roman Holiday at the Guthrie, The Seagull at the Goodman Theatre and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway. Todd was an exhibitor at the 2007 Prague Quadrennial and the lead designer for Mythbusters™, the Explosive Exhibition. He’s the recipient of the 2009 Lawrence Olivier Award, 2011 Los Angeles Times Ovation Award and the 2009 Michael Merritt Award for Excellence in Design and Collaboration. Todd is an associate professor at Northwestern University and a graduate of Yale School of Drama. Visit toddar.com.
Meg Neville
Costume Design
Meg is a costume designer based in the Bay Area. Her Berkeley Rep credits include Closer, Dinner with Friends, Eurydice, Ghosts, In the Wake, The Life of Galileo, Suddenly Last Summer, TRAGEDY: a tragedy and Yellowjackets. As an associate artist at Cal Shakes she has designed numerous productions, including Happy Days, An Ideal Husband, John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, King Lear, Macbeth, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, The Tempest, Twelfth Night (Bay Area Critics Circle Award) and A Winter’s Tale, among others. Her other Bay Area credits include work at ACT, Joe Goode Performance Group, the Magic, San Francisco Opera Center and San Jose Rep. Meg’s regional and New York credits include the Yale Rep and Second Stage productions of Eurydice, First Lady at Yale Rep, Orfeo & Eurydice with Chicago Opera Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Sueño at Hartford Stage, Three Tall Women at Center Stage and The Time of Your Life at Atlantic Theater Company, as well as works at NYSF, Portland Stage and South Coast Rep. Meg has an MFA in theatre design from Yale School of Drama and is the recipient of the Richard Senio Award for Excellence in Costume Design and the Leo Lerman Award for Costume Design. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and three children.
Christopher Akerlind
Lighting Design
Christopher has created the lighting for over 600 theatre, opera and dance productions worldwide. He returns to Berkeley Rep where he designed Antony and Cleopatra, The Life of Galileo and The Triumph of Love. His Broadway credits include 110 in the Shade (Tony nomination), Awake and Sing (Tony nomination), The Light in the Piazza (Tony, Outer Critics and Drama Desk Awards), Porgy and Bess, Seven Guitars (Tony nomination), Superior Donuts and Top Girls. His recent work includes Jonathan Moscone’s production of Amadeus at the Alley, Martha Clarke’s new piece Angel Reapers at the Joyce Theater, the world premiere of Philip Glass’ Appomattox for San Francisco Opera, Ariadne auf Naxos at Opéra National de Bordeaux, King Lear at The Public/NYSF, Sleeping Beauty Wakes for LJP/McCarter Theatre and the Wexford Festival Opera’s 2010 season. Christopher is the recipient of an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence and the Michael Merritt Award, and has received nominations for many other awards.
Andre Pluess
Sound Design
Andre’s Broadway credits include 33 Variations, The Clean House, I Am My Own Wife and Metamorphoses. His other credits include numerous productions for About Face Company (artistic associate), Court Theatre, the Goodman, Lookingglass Theatre Company (artistic associate), Northlight Theatre, Steppenwolf, Victory Gardens Theater (resident designer) and many other Chicago and regional theatres. His recent projects include Cymbeline at the Shakespeare Theatre, Equivocation at Arena Stage, Ghost Light and The Merchant of Venice at OSF, Macbeth and Titus Andronicus at Cal Shakes (where he is an artistic associate), Palomino at Center Theatre Group, Sex with Strangers at Steppenwolf and Stage Kiss at the Goodman, as well as the score for the film The Business of Being Born. Andre has received a Barrymore Award, a Drama Critics Circle Award, Drama Desk and Lortel nominations, multiple Joseph Jefferson Awards and Citations and an LA Ovation Award for composition and sound design.
Maya Ciarrocchi
Video / Projection Design
Maya is a video artist and projection designer. She has created projections for performance with such artists as Ping Chong, Merce Cunningham, Bebe Miller and Donna Uchizono, as well as for regional theatre. Her work has been exhibited in New York at Chashama, the Chocolate Factory, Dance Theater Workshop, Sasha Wolf Gallery and Westbeth Gallery, as well as Artisphere (VA), Borderlines Film Festival (UK), Hammer Museum (CA) and Moving Pictures Festival (Canada). Maya has received residencies from Kala Arts Institute, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Ucross Foundation. She was awarded a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) in 2006. Maya earned a BFA in dance from SUNY Purchase and an MFA in computer art from the School of Visual Arts.
Alison Carey
Dramaturg
Alison is the director of OSF’s American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle, a 10-year initiative to create up to 37 new plays sprung from moments of change, inspiration or conflict in American history. She’s also the cofounder, with Bill Rauch, of Cornerstone Theater and, as resident playwright, helped to develop the company’s signature style of adapting classic plays into modern, community-specific contexts and wrote more than 25 of the company’s productions for stages across the country, including Arena Stage, Great Lakes Theater Festival, Long Wharf, NYSF, Pasadena Playhouse, the Taper, Yale Rep, the World Shakespeare Conference, as well as the shuttered mother plant of Bethlehem Steel, a dirt-floor cattle-sale barn in Oregon and a crowded California shopping mall. Alison holds a BA from Harvard University.
cast
Danforth Comins *
Loverboy
Danforth is delighted to make his debut at Berkeley Rep with this production of Ghost Light. In nine seasons at OSF he has performed in over 20 plays including as Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice, Bertram in All’s Well That Ends Well, Bo in Bus Stop, Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Coriolanus in Coriolanus, Mark Antony in Julius Caesar and Orlando in As You Like It. He has worked in many other regional theatres, including Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Geva Theatre Center, PCPA Theaterfest (the title role in Hamlet) and the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Later this year he will revisit the title role in Hamlet for Utah Shakes’ fall season. He has an MFA from the University of Illinois and was a professor of theatre at Pacific Lutheran University.
Ted Deasy *
Basil
This is Ted’s first appearance at Berkeley Rep. After playing Richard Hannay in the national tour of The 39 Steps, Ted rejoined the company at OSF. His five seasons with OSF have included roles in As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, The Pirates of Penzance and Rough Crossing, among others. His recent regional credits include Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing at American Players Theatre and Father Flynn in Doubt at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Ted’s other regional credits include All’s Well That Ends Well at Utah Shakes; Anna Karenina, Cyrano de Bergerac, Mary Stuart, Sueño and others at Milwaukee Repertory Theater; Dial M For Murder at Geva; Evie’s Waltz at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis; Private Lives at Indiana Repertory Theatre and Syracuse Stage; and productions at Delaware Theatre Company, the Old Globe and Yale Repertory Theatre.
Peter Frechette *
Film Director
Peter has appeared at American Conservatory Theater, Cape Playhouse, George Street Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, the Mark Taper Forum, the Old Globe, OSF, Powerhouse/New York Stage & Film, South Coast Repertory and Williamstown Theatre Festival, among others. His recent New York credits include productions at the Cell, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Galapagos Art Space, Manhattan Theatre Club, Naked Angels, the New Group, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Roundabout Theatre Company and Vineyard Theatre, among others. He has directed Blue Window for New York University and the Atlantic School and Fat Kids on Fire by Bekah Brunstetter for Pipeline Theatre Company. Peter has received Drama Desk, LA Drama Critics Circle, LA Weekly, Obie, Outer Critics Circle and Theatre World Awards; two Tony nominations (Eastern Standard and Our Country’s Good); two Lortel nominations (The Dazzle and Valhalla); and an Emmy nomination (Thirtysomething). He taught acting at NYU from 2008 to 2010.
Bill Geisslinger *
Prison Guard
Bill previously appeared at Berkeley Rep in Continental Divide: Mothers Against/Daughters of the Revolution, Dinner with Friends and The House of Blue Leaves. In 23 seasons at OSF, he has appeared in over 50 productions and was most recently seen as Bill Fordham in August: Osage County and the Prison Guard in Ghost Light. He has also been seen at Artists Repertory Theatre, the Barbican in London and Birmingham Repertory Theatre in England, Denver Center Theatre Company, the Huntington Theatre Company, Intiman Theatre, LJP Long Wharf Theatre, the Old Globe, Portland Center Stage, South Coast Rep and Virginia Stage Company. Bill’s film and TV credits include Cheers, Dead by Sunset, Imaginary Crimes, News Radio, Nowhere Man, The Skin of Our Teeth (American Playhouse), St. Elsewhere and A Thousand Heroes.
Isaac Kosydar
Ensemble
Isaac was part of the ensemble for Ghost Light’s debut at OSF. At Southern Oregon University he played Colonel George in Johnny Johnson, Dwight in Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Ephraim Smooth in Wild Oats and Longaville in Love’s Labour’s Lost. For Coastal Act Productions he played the Beast in Beauty and the Beast and the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Isaac received a BA from Southern Oregon University.
Peter Macon *
Mister
Peter was last seen at Berkeley Rep as a witch and Donalbain in Macbeth. His Broadway credits include Drowning Crow at MTC and Twilight: Los Angeles at Lincoln Center. For OSF he’s played Fortune in Ruined, Macbeth in Macbeth, Othello in Othello, Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird and William Henry Brown in The African Company Presents Richard III. Peter has also played Aaron in Titus Andronicus at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Bill Cracker in Happy End at ACT, Oedipus in Oedipus at the Guthrie and Phillip the Bastard in King John at Shakespeare & Company. He was a member of California Shakespeare Theater for three years. Peter’s film and TV credits include Animated Tales of the World (HBO), Ashes, Chappelle’s Show, Dexter, Law & Order, The Shield, Supernatural and Without a Trace. He received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Voiceover Narration and the Herschel Williams Award for Outstanding Achievement in Acting from Yale School of Drama. Peter has an MFA from Yale and a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Christopher Liam Moore *
Jon
Christopher is a company member of OSF where he acts and directs. He has performed at American Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage, the Guthrie, Long Wharf, the Old Globe, South Coast Rep, the Taper and Yale Rep. He is a founding member of Cornerstone Theater Company and appeared in over 40 productions there. His film and television credits include The Cherokee Kid, Friends, Judging Amy, Third Rock from the Sun, Simone and Star Trek: Voyager. He was a series regular on Murder in Small Town X (Fox) and Ten Items or Less (TNT). He has won Theatre LA’s Ovation Award and Garland Awards and was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award and Connecticut Drama Critics Circle Award.
Tyler James Myers
Boy
Tyler was born in Medford, Oregon and attends Crater Renaissance Academy. Tyler appeared as Boy in Ghost Light at OSF. He has also appeared in plays at Ashland Children’s Theatre, Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater and Oregon Stage Works. He made his acting debut in a small play in eighth grade at Harvest Baptist Christian School, where he discovered his love for acting. He has been an extra in a feature film called Walk In and in a Southern Oregon University film. Tyler has taken acting classes in Ashland, Los Angeles and Portland. When not acting, Tyler enjoys his friends, music, traveling, golf, football and family.
Sarita Ocón
Ensemble
Sarita is thrilled to make her Berkeley Rep debut in Ghost Light. She most recently appeared in Night Over Erzinga with Golden Thread Productions. Her favorite performances include Electricidad with Pacifica Spindrift Players, Ghosts of the River by Octavio Solis with ShadowLight Productions and La Casa en Mango Street and School of the Americas at Teatro Visión. Her other stage credits include collaborations with African American Shakespeare Company, Bindlestiff Studio, Brava Theater Center, Cal Shakes, Hybrid Performance Experiment Collective, Playwrights Foundation, the Public Theater Residency at Stanford University, SF International Arts Festival, SF Summer Theater Festival and Stanford Summer Theater. Sarita received her BA from Stanford University and was a recipient of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts Fellowship in 2004.
Robynn Rodriguez *
Louise
Robynn was last seen at Berkeley Rep in the world premiere of David Edgar’s Continental Divide. Her performance as Connie Vine earned her a San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle Award, and the production toured to LJP, and the Barbican and Birmingham Rep (UK). She played Clytemnestra in the inaugural Roda Theatre production of The Oresteia. Robynn is a member of the resident acting company at OSF and has appeared in over 40 productions. Recently at OSF, she was in the world premiere of Ghost Light and played Barbara Fordham in August: Osage County. Robynn’s regional theatre work includes the Denver Center, the Guthrie, Intiman, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Shakespeare Theatre.
* Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States
The leaders of two renowned theatres—Tony Taccone of Berkeley Rep (right) and Jonathan Moscone of Cal Shakes—team up for the world-premiere production of Ghost Light.
(Photo courtesy of kevinberne.com)
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production sponsors
The Edgerton Foundation 2010 New American Plays Award
The commissioning and development of this production have been supported in part by The Mosse Artistic Development Fund.
season sponsors
