February 26th - 8pm
February 27th - 7pm* *with panel afterward! TADA! Theatre [Note: This is not a production by TADA! Theater.] |
Articulating the Arts: Folk City Scenes ™The Folk City registered trademark is used with permission.
THANK YOU to all who attended and made this event a
SOLD OUT SUCCESS! Articulating the Arts
is Articulate Theatre Company's signature benefit event. It brings together our Company members and guest artists with unique works of art to use as a springboard and source of inspiration for new theatre works. Our first session focused on playwrights taking one image and giving us "A Thousand Words." The second session took the images "Off The Wall" and put them on the stage! For our third AtA, we decided to move from the visual arts to the musical arts, specifically Folk Music! |
Our Guest Artists
Articulating the Arts was created to help our ensemble learn more about other artistic disciplines and use the inspiration gained from that to create new theatrical works. But we enjoy sharing our sandbox, and so we invited guest artists to come and work with us. For more info on guest playwrights, directors, actors, entertainers and panel members, please see below!
Entertainers and Guests
Carla Cantrelle - half of the duo "Wolf & Cantrelle"
Carla Cantrelle has been singing folk material professionally since she was a teenager, performing in bars and coffeehouses in NYC, as well as upstate New York. After spending six years in Nashville singing songwriters’ demos, doing backup singing, and performing with her pop group, The Little Twisters, she returned to her home town of New York. An actor and writer as well as a singer, she has sung in theatrical productions at Dixon Place, Fez, the Zipper Theatre, Union Pool and Big Sky Works, as well as at the Cherry Lane Theater in As it is in Heaven, a musical play she has also performed at the Edinburgh Festival and Maine. She was hired as the female singer for a radio musical written for All Things Considered on NPR radio. Currently, as part of the folk duo Wolf & Cantrelle, she performs for Concerts in Motion, an organization that provides professional musical entertainment at hospitals, senior centers, schools, and community centers. |
Josh Wolf - half of the duo "Wolf & Cantrelle"
Josh Wolf, a visually impaired/legally blind guitarist/singer songwriter has been performing with Blue Wolf, an NYC based blues band since 1987. Blue Wolf performs in bars, street fairs, and at corporate events in the Tri-state area. Josh also performs acoustic folk throughout the city in a variety of venues, and partners with Carla in performing popular and folk concerts organized by Concerts in Motion. Over the last several years Josh has also performed and collaborated with organizations serving the blind and visually impaired such as the Lighthouse Guild for the Blind. 
Anna Libbie Grossman - Sound Designer
Anna's work has included theatrical sound design, composition, live foley performance, and performance art. Her work has been featured with the Drilling Company in Bryant Park Shakespeare and Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, IRT, and the Under St. Marks. Most recent credits include Boxcar at The Tank, and Emily's Will with The Tempest Ladies. Anna is thrilled to be working with Articulate again after working as audio engineer for their Circling Back event earlier this year! http://www.annalibbiegrossman.com |
The Playwrights
Rhea MacCallum - Babe I Hate to Go, inspired by Leaving On A Jet Plane (John Denver)
Rhea is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and script consultant, whose plays have been produced across the United States and six continents. Her work has been produced by companies such as Write Act Repertory, Shelterbelt, EBE Ensemble, ACME Theatre Productions, Theatre Encino, Whitefire Theatre, Boxfest Detroit, Cheeky Monkey Theatre Company and the Women’s Theatre Project. Her play The 7th Disorder won TADA! Youth Theater’s 15th Annual One-Act Playwriting Contest and Independence Day won Best Drama at the LADmatters Film and Theatre Festival. She was honored to participate in the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and was named a finalist by the Actors Theatre of Louisville for the Heideman Award for her play, Yesterday Once More. Her work has been included in collections published by Smith & Kraus, Junket Publishing, JAC Publishing, Heuer Publishing, Original Works Publishing, Pioneer Drama, themonologueshop.com and nowcasting.com. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, International Centre of Women Playwrights and a Lifetime Member of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights. Rhea earned her BA from USC and her MFA from the Actors Studio Drama School in New York City. 
Bara Swain - To Everything A Season, inspired by Turn! Turn! Turn! (Pete Seeger)
Bara Swain’s plays and monologues have been performed across the country in more than 100 venues in 16 states. NYC theatres include the Barrow Group, Abingdon Theatre, Urban Stages, Sam French OOB Festival, Artistic New Directions, Project Y Theatre, Kaufmann Theatre, Gallery Players, Turnip Theatre, and Ego Actus. Give and Take, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Critical Care, and Prized Begonias are published in the Smith & Kraus Best Ten-Minute Plays anthologies. Her work is also published by Art Age Press, Applause Books, Original Works Publishing, Meriwether, and JAC Publications. Critical Care, produced on stage and in film, is reprinted in the new college textbook, Serious Daring: Creative Writing in Four Genres by Lisa Roney (Oxford U. Press) and serves as a key reading for the craft of playwriting. Honors include Heideman Award Finalist for Aboard the Guy V. Molinari; 2013 City Theatre National Award Finalist for Short Playwriting for The Hotel Lobbyist; and, by special invitation from Burt Reynolds, An Evening With Bara Swain, BRIFT, Jupiter, Florida, directed by Burt Reynolds. Her short plays won first prize at the International Jewish Short Play Festival, Dubuque Fine Arts Players, Multi-Arts Playwriting competition, and the Raymond J. Flores Festival. Bara currently serves at Urban Stages as the Creative Consultant, where she is expanding opportunities for theatre artists through a new play development program, Urban Stages New Pages. |
Grant Bowen - Lay Down My Sword, inspired by Study War No More (Leadbelly and various)
Grant is thrilled to be making his debut venture with Articulate Theatre Company! Grant is an actor, singer and writer. He holds a BFA in Musical Theatre from the University of Montevallo, in Alabama. In Spring of 2013, he took part in Labyrinth Theater Company's Ensemble Workshop. As a writer, his one-act play The McTrue Hollywood Story was selected for the inaugural New York New Works Festival, and he currently has a children's musical, Gary the Invincible, in development. He's contributed lyrics to The Rat Pack Undead (a parody concert) and spoken word material to the dance piece I Could Never Love Anyone... He also works as a writer for Audioworks Producers Group, writing English ADR scripts for several foreign animated series. As an actor, Grant has toured with Angelina Ballerina (Vital Theatre Company) and Miss Nelson is Missing (Two Beans Productions/Theatreworks USA). His New York credits include new works such as GRIMM: A New Musical (Hansel); Door (Parker); and Turtleback High (Romeo). 
Germaine Shames - The Betrothal, inspired by Folsum Prison Blues (Johnny Cash)
Germaine Shames, recipient of Arizona’s Fellowship in Fiction, is author of the award-winning novels, Between Two Deserts and You, Fascinating You. Writing under the pen name Casper Silk (Hotel Noir, Echo Year), she has been compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Graham Greene and P.D. James “on steroids." Following a successful career as a novelist and journalist, she wrote her first suite of short plays, Wars of the Flesh, which was voted into Tucson’s 2014 New Play Festival. Her first musical, the epic historical drama You, Fascinating You, was a finalist in the Chicago Musical Theatre Festival and has been optioned by an NYC producer. Shames’ early plays--The Degenerates, Between Two Deserts, and Capri--are in development at Tucson’s Temple of Music and Art, while The Abstract Life is in development at sheworXX. Tea with Ali was accepted into the Playmaker Festival, the Border Plays Festival, and Storefront Theatre’s 2015 short play festival, where it was awarded honorable mention. Margaret Mead Dreams in Samoan was awarded Reader’s Choice, in Women in Theatre’s Kauai Shorts. The musical comedy, Anna Karenina Lives!, was chosen for the Bechdel Group’s Reading Series in NYC and will form part of Invisible Theatre’s 2016 season. Shames holds a Master’s degree in Intercultural Studies. Her writing reflects the breadth of her worldview and fascination with the interplay of cultures, often drawing on events and settings from her sojourns abroad. Her novels, and more recently her plays, have earned her residencies at the Fundacion Valparaiso and Wildacres Retreat, three professional development grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and a scholarship to the Writers Center at the University of Arizona. Current projects include the 20s-era musical, If the Spirit Moves; the cabaret opera Vampiresa, and a stage adaptatation of the D.H. Lawrence novel, The Lost Girl. |
The Directors
Joan Kane - In the Autumn Mist, written by Robert Verlaque, inspired by Puff the Magic Dragon (Lipton & Yarrow)
Joan Kane (Director) is the founding Artistic Director of Ego Actus and recently directed I Know What Boys Want at Theatre Row, Six Characters in Search of an Author in Oslo, Norway and Kafka’s Belinda by Aldo Nicolij in Prague. Safe and what do you mean at 59e59 theaters and in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, getting four star reviews for each. Joan was named to the Indie Theatre Hall of Fame by nytheatre.com. She has directed plays and readings for the Lark Play Development Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Theater for the New City, Urban Stages, the Bleecker St Theater, the Workshop Theater, Nylon Fusion, Abingdon Theatre, Oberon Theatre, the Samuel French Short Play Festival, Planet Connections Festivity, the Midtown International Festival, the Prague Fringe Festival, the Dramatists Guild, NY Madness, the Players Club, the Lambs Club and the Actors Studio. Joan has an MFA in Directing from The New School, an MS in Museum Education from Bank Street College and is a member of The New York Madness Company, the Dramatists Guild, the League of Professional Theatre Women and the Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers. 
Brock H. Hill - In Transit, written by Robin Rice, inspired by City of New Orleans (Steve Goodman/Arlo Guthrie)
Brock is a New York based director. He is known for ensemble based, organic work. He is the Producing Artistic Director of the Planet Connections Festivity and Artistic Director of the Altruistic Theatre Company. Selected projects include: Mistakes Madeline Made, Books on Tape, Humans Anonymous (Tongue in Cheek Prod); Civilization! (Planet Connection Festivity); Choose Your Grown Adventure, Wardrobe of the Living Dead (Altruistic Theatre); Invoice (Leela Theatre Festival). |
Aimee Todoroff - Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace, written by Kelly Zekas, inspired by Suzanne (Cohen)
Aimee Todoroff is a freelance director and producer originally from Dayton, OH, currently working in New York City. She has been a part of two Obie Award-winning projects, performing in Peculiar Works Project’s Off Stage-the East Village Fragments and directing Green for the Metropolitan Playhouse’s 2010-2011 Season. She has also directed at Primary Stages, The Living Theatre, HERE Arts Center, The Westside Theater, Guild Hall and at various site-specific locations around New York City. She has directed the premieres of works by Cusi Cram, Daisy Foote, and Chris Harcum, including Rabbit Island, American Gun Show, a 5-star reviewed show in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and presented a workshop of a new play by Halley Feiffer, A Funny Thing Happened… Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Centers of New York City. As Artistic Director of the independent theatre company Elephant Run District, Aimee conceived and developed the popular Brecht in the Park Series, bringing free, outdoor performances of Brecht’s lesser knows plays to an underserved community. She also created ERD’s Stampede Labs, a curated evening of independent work that mixes the heritage of off-off broadway with the artists making today’s most exciting work. An enthusiastic collaborator, Aimee has helped develop many plays, including Turing Test by Dom DeGaetano, The Girls of Ward 3 by Tom Slot, Mighty Good Company by Tim Nolan and How to Bury a Saint by Janice Maffei. Currently, she is producing the hERD Podcast, a streaming service of plays available in March, 2016, and will direct a new adaptation of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler by Preston Lane. Aimee received her MFA in Directing from Southampton Arts, studying with Marsha Norman, Nick Mangano and Rinde Eckert, and has taken master classes with Karen Kohlhaas, Joanna Merlin, Neil LaBute and Kim Wield. Aimee was the Assistant Director under the director John Rando and the playwright David Ives for Classic Stage Company’s production of The Heir Apparent. Please visit aimeetodoroff.org or elephantrundistrict.org. |
The Actors
Lana Schwartz (Girl) - The Betrothal, written by Germaine Shames, inspired by Folsum Prison Blues (Johnny Cash)
Lana is thrilled to join the cast. Upcoming projects: Little Mary in The Women, Future Fest at 54 Below and a short film, Tracks she co-stars in will be screening at the Miami Film Festival in March. 
Charlotte Hampden* (Jenny) - In Transit, written by Robin Rice, inspired by City of New Orleans (Steve Goodman/Arlo Gutherie)
Charlotte likes to say that it has hardly been a straight road to get from there to here. It started at RADA in London, then Lee Strasberg in New York, followed by a somewhat lengthy hiatus in Brazil. Then back to New York to operate an art gallery, and finally, 20 years ago, a return to the theatre. However, as they say, it’s all usable. A few favorite roles include: Margaret Civil (A Perfect Ganesh); Henny (Bosoms and Neglect); Gunhild (John Gabriel Borkman), OOBR award; Amelia Tilford (The Children’s Hour); Sara (The Sister Rosensweig); Mrs Smith (The Bald Soprano); Mother (Blood Wedding); Queen Margaret (Richard III ); Lettice (Lettice and Lovage); Linda (Death of a Salesman); Agnes (A Delicate Balance). |
Phoebe Torres (Ella) - In the Autumn Mist, written by Robert Verlaque, inspired by Puff the Magic Dragon (Leonard Lipton/Peter Yarrow)
Phoebe is an actor, writer, and improviser with a BFA in Acting from Texas State University. She has appeared in Orange is the New Black, the Starz series Flesh and Bone, and the Off-Broadway play I Know What Boys Want. Phoebe studies improv and sketch comedy with the Upright Citizen’s Brigade and produces her sketches for the web with Chirality Films Inc. She has seen Space Jam 82 times. 
Ryan Daley (Matthews) - Lay Down My Sword, written by Grant Bowen, inspired by Study War No More (Leadbelly)
Ryan is a recent graduate of Stella Adler's 3 year actors conservatory program. Before attending Stella, Ryan attended classes at T. Schrieber studio. He moved to New York in 2010 after graduating college with a degree in Business Administration, to pursue a career in Acting. This is Ryan's first experience working with Articulate Theatre and he's excited for the opportunity to be directed by his very first acting teacher, Robert Verlaque! 
Thomas J. Kane (RJ ) - In the Autumn Mist, written by Robert Verlaque, inspired by Puff the Magic Dragon (Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow)
Tom is a late blooming actor who has taken to rhe stage like a duck to water. He began studying at HBStudio 12 years ago and never looked back. Every role he has been given becomes his latest "favorite" role! He would like to thank Cat & Joan for the opportunity to act again. A big break a leg to his castmates and a H&K to VOH! |