CREATIVE TEAM

Claudia Rankine (Creator / Writer) is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Don’t Let Me Be Lonely. She is also co-editor of American Women Poets in the Twenty-First Century: Where Lyric Meets Language and American Poets in the Twenty-First Century: The New Poetics (Wesleyan University Press). A recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poetry, the National Endowments for the Arts, and the Lannan Foundation, she is the Henry G. Lee Professor of English at Pomona College.

Melanie Joseph (Creator / Director) is the founding Artistic Director of The Foundry Theatre where she has co-created, dramaturged and/or directed 9 of the company's premieres which have collectively been awarded 6 Obie Awards and 2 Drama Desk nominations. Artists with whom she has collaborated include playwrights Kirk Lynn, W. David Hancock, Carl Hancock Rux and Alice Tuan. She is currently collaborating on new projects with playwrights Marcus Gardley, Kirk Lynn and dancer/choreographer Karen Getz. She is the recipient of the Skirball Kennis' T.I.M.E. individual artist prize and a Lucille Lortel Award for Artistic Producing. Joseph is also an active participant in the World Social Forum.

Shawn Sides (Director) credits include Lipstick Traces (Foundry [at Ohio Theatre], Walker Arts Ctr, Wexner Ctr, DiverseWorks-Houston, On the Boards-Seattle, UCLA Live, SommerSzene-Salzburg), Get Your War On (59E59/UTR Festival, Philadelphia Live Arts, Ballroom Marfa, Bumbershoot- Seattle, Woolly Mammoth-DC, Galway Arts Festival, Kiasma-Helsinki, Edinburgh Fringe [Total Theater Award, Best New Work by an Ensemble]). Coming up: The Method Gun (NYC Spring ’10), Cat Lady by Kristina Wong (LA, Fall ’10). Shawn is a founder and co-producing artistic director of Rude Mechanicals in Austin, Texas.

Sarah Nina Hayon (Performer) Recent credits: Take 10 Festival (Rattlestick), Sunsets and Margaritas (The Denver Theater Center). Off-Broadway: KIDSTUFF (Partial Comfort Productions); Widows (Reverie NY Premier, dir. Hal Brooks); Rearviewmirror (Reverie, dir. Carl Forsman, Drama Desk Nomination), At War: American Playwrights Respond to Iraq (The Fire Dept, Erica Gould), Night Over Taos (INTAR dir. Estelle Parsons). NYC Theater includes: LAByrinth Theater Company, The Public Theater, HERE, La Mama, The Lark, CSC, The Flea, EST, New Dramatists. TV & FILM: "SATC", "Law & Order," "Avatar" (dir. James Cameron.) Sarah is a co-creator of the playwrighting development group The 24Seven Lab. Proud member of LAByrinth Theater Company, Partial Comfort Productions, founding member of The Fire Department.

Geoff Abbas (Sound Design) Raised outside Rochester, NY and schooled at Hope College; Geoff has been with his wife Kristen since 1997, The Wooster Group since 1999,his sons Benjamin/Gideon since 2003/2007 and is pleased to be working on his first production with The Foundry Theatre.

Kell Condon (Video Design) graduated from Bard College with a B.A. in Film and Theater. Since moving downstate, he has worked with The Wooster Group, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, The United Broadcasting Theater Company, and ConLab. Recently he designed the set and video for the United Broadcasting Theater Company’s James V.

Casey Llewellyn (Stage Manager) is a queer theater-maker interested in making new work out of non-traditional text, movement scores, and community. Currently she is  the assistant editor of Play A Journal of Plays and is developing an adaptation of Chris Kraus’ 'I Love Dick' for production next year.  In the past, she has stage managed Lee Breuer's Pataphysics Penyeach for the Under the Radar Festival, Hippolytus dir. Sharon Fogarty at Barnard College and attended Columbia University for her B.A. in theater directing. 

The Foundry Theatre was formed in 1994 as a producing theatre fed by an artists think tank. We commission, develop, premiere and tour new works that merge the expoloration of social and political questions with unusual theatrical forms. These productions have been recognized with eleven Obie Awards (most recently for Ariana Reines' 'Telephone,' and three Drama Desk nominations for 'Unique Theatrical Experience.' Simultaneously, The Foundry hosts public dialogues which bring artists together with other public thinkers to investigate the workings of a changing polis. These public dialogues, in tandem with artistic projects born out of them, brought The Foundry a special Obie Award citing the company for 'creating envelope-pushing work and taking on some of the thorniest issues of the world we inhabit.' Most recently The Foundry was honored with TCG's national Peter Zeisler Award in recognition of 'innovative practice and a dedication to freedom of expression."