About
Bios
Staff
ALISA FARENZENA (Outreach Director)
Alisa has a strong background in drama, having performed in numerous other short plays. Her most recent theatrical experience was playing Kathryn Elizabeth Lynde Powers in the premiere of Yvonne Marie Li’s The Silver Solution, a short play that came out of the 2005 Innovations playwriting workshop. Aside from acting, Alisa enjoys writing and editing. She has worked for several other publications, including the Sunset Beacon and the California Patriot, a magazine at the University of California at Berkeley. She will graduate from Cal this May and currently serves on the board of the San Francisco Young Republicans.HANA KADOYAMA (Production Stage Manager)
has been involved in the performing arts for the past ten years. She has acted, directed, assistant directed, and stage managed many shows; most recently she assistant stage managed Brigadoon with the Stapleton Theatre Company. Hana is currently a freshman at Smith College, where she is an active member of the drama program.BRIANNA LEE (Literary Manager)
A recent graduate of UC Berkeley in Mass Communications, Brianna is headed off to graduate school next year in international relations. Having been published in numerous literary publications, she is a frequent writer and playwright.DAN MEAGHER (Marketing Director)
A native of the city, Dan is both an award-winning marketing director and actor. Dan has worked for numerous Bay Area television and radio stations such as KPIX, KGO, KFRC, and X-100. He recently returned to the city after being the Director of Marketing and Coordinator of the acclaimed Oklahoma City University Summer Music Program, where he received The 2007 Marketing Director Grand Prize Award from the state's Frontier Marketing Association. Dan has been seen on stage in the Bay Area with Broadway By The Bay, 42nd Street Moon, the Willows Theatre and received a Drama-Logue citation for his work in the revival of Tony 'N Tina's Wedding. He has worked around the nation appearing with Maine State Music Theatre (MA), Allenberry Playhouse (PA), Broadway Palm Theatre (FL) as well as the national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.GORDON MEI (Box Office Manager and Website Designer)
Gordon is a student from Cal who engages in various forms of the visual side of the creative arts. He enjoys writing and reading short stories, plays, and poetry, and is exploring his more recent developing interest in theater.BENJAMIN PIIRU (House Manager/Assistant Outreach Director)
started writing plays, short stories, and poetry only three years ago, but it has quickly become one of his favorite pastimes. He wrote, directed, and acted in several plays for the theater groups Youth for Asian Theater and Innovations. He is currently compiling a book of his poetry, and is also working on two novels. Benjamin is working on getting his degree in English and hopes to teach high school in the future.DAVID TRAN (Technology Director and Webmaster)
David never writes a bio. Ever.LAUREN D. YEE (Executive Director and Founder)
is a native San Franciscan and a long-time supporter of arts education. As a playwright, Lauren has received commissions from Minneapolis’s Theatre Mu, New York’s O’Neill Festival, and San Francisco’s PlayGround. She was a finalist for the 2008 Jerome Fellowship and a finalist for the Humana Festival’s 2007 Heidemann Award. Within the Bay Area, her work has been developed/produced by Asian American Theater Company, City Lights Theatre Company, Bindlestiff Studio, Three Wise Monkeys, Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, and PlayGround. Meriwether Publishing, Brooklyn Publishers, and Smith & Kraus has published her work. BA: Yale University, English and Theater Studies.MENTORS
CHRISTOPHER CHEN (Sexy Knees) Chris is a playwright who was born and raised in San Francisco. His play Into the Numbers, about author Iris Chang, was presented at the 2007 Bay Area Playwrights Festival in San Francisco, The Lark Play Development Center and hotINK International Play Festival in New York, Theatre Mu’s New Eyes Festival in Minneapolis, and will be presented at the Silk Road Theater Project in Chicago later this year. This April, his new play Anomienaulis will be presented at Teatro Esperanza. Additionally, he has had works performed at the Asian American Theater Company, S.F. Fringe Festival, U.C. Berkeley, S.F. State, and Brooklyn College. He is one semester away from completing his M.F.A. in Playwriting at S.F. State, and is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley. He is also a proud alumnus of Lowell High.
ANNE DOHERTY (Within the Wall of Sand) is the artistic director of Not Quite Opera Productions, a company devoted to the development of original musical theater. Their hit show Absolutely San Francisco played to packed houses in 2006. Aside from directing, Anne composes and writes plays. Her works have been produced in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. She began her career as an actress, working with such luminaries as Jim Belushi, John Malkovich, Tina Packer, Stuart Gordon, and Milan Stitt. She holds an MFA in playwrighting from UCLA and a degree in theater and music from Smith College.
SUSAN JACKSON (Colossians 3:14) has acted the roles of real women: Jackie Kennedy, Sarah Bernhardt, and Dorothy Parker. In addition, she has most recently understudied with TheatreWorks, and performed leading roles in Wit, Three Tall Women, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She has also performed the role of Christina in scenes from Mourning Becomes Electra at Tao House in Danville, Ca. (The former home of Eugene O'Neill). She directed Mourning Becomes Electra and Desire Under the Elms, and was a guest lecturer for the American Conservatory Theatre during their production of Marco Millions. She teaches Theatre Classes at City College of San Francisco where she most recently co-directed (with a student) a self-composed piece entitled Women of Ibsen. Other plays she has written have been performed at the EXIT Theatre, and CCSF. She is an advocate for student directors and playwrights; she developed the playwriting curriculum in the Theatre Arts Department. She has had four short stories and one poem published. Currently working on a play based on Rock Hudson's wife.
MOLLY RHODES (Mary) is a dramaturg and playwright living in San Francisco. She has worked with AlterTheater in San Rafael and Magic Theatre, where Molly coordinates the literary committee and oversees the development of dramaturgy for Magic’s productions. Molly’s play For All The Babies’ Fathers was developed at Magic and the Playwrights Center of San Francisco. Molly’s play The Singularity of We was commissioned through the PlayGround Fellowship and will be part of the Best of PlayGround festival in May. She has also had several short plays developed and performed with PlayGround, American Conservatory Theatre, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the 6 Women Playwrights Festival.
DIRECTORS
KATE GORMAN (Colossians 3:14) Kate Gorman hails from Berkeley, where she is currently working in production management at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. She recently graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Theatre and Cinema-Television, where she directed such plays as Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Bat Boy: The Musical. Now that she is part of the real world, she is trying to find a way to make her degree useful. Her latest project was assistant directing the professional world premiere of The Trojan Women at the Aurora Theatre.
JESSICA HOLT (Within the Wall of Sand) recently received her Master's degree in the Theater, Dance and Performance Studies department at UC Berkeley. Throughout her tenure, she directed Paula Vogel's The Mineola Twins, George F. Walker's The End of Civilization, Bertolt Brecht's The Measures Taken, and Heiner Muller's Mauser, among others. Jessica has also worked at TheaterWorks with artistic director Robert Kelley on such plays as Proof by David Auburn and Red by Chay Yew. She is the founding director of The Threshold Project, a proud co-producing company for Within the Wall of Sand. The Threshold Project ("Theater of Becoming...") provides a home for emerging theater artists; it is dedicated to creating imaginative theater, from both classic and contemporary works, that invite audiences on challenging, transformational, and inspired journeys.
JESSICA RICHARDS (Mary) is the Associate Artistic Director at Cal Shakes and lead producer of the New Works/New Communities program. Directing credits include Arms and the Man with Commonwealth Classic Theatre Company (PA), The Seagull with the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival, Brothers for the 2006 San Francisco Young Playwrights Festival, and many shows with youth. Assistant directing: San Jose Rep, The Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, Delaware Theatre Company, and the O'Neill Playwrights Conference. She holds a bachelor's degree in theater and political science from the University of Evansville in Indiana.
DEBORAH SHAW (Sexy Knees) is a native San Franciscan who received her undergrad degree at USF and her masters and credential at SF State University. She has been a theater arts instructor and director at City College of San Francisco since 1987. She has also taught at San Jose City College and at East Bay. Deborah is a member of the board of directors at the Asian American Theater Company. She still sings with a band on occasion. Her two favorite projects are her daughters, Mia, 13, and Kaeli, 7.
FINAL SELECTION COMMITTEE
BRIANNA LEE (see Staff)
MOLLY RHODES (see Mentors)
A. P. SAITO recently immersed himself in theater, masks, and mysticism in Perú, where he served as a writer-in-residence for world-celebrated theater company El Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, as well as the Andean theater group Kusiwasi, in the Sacred Valley of the Inca. He has studied writing with June Jordan, Cherríe Moraga, Octavio Solís, Alfred Arteaga, Jeannie Barroga, Joan Holden, Arthur Kopit, and Dijana Milosevic of Serbia’s DAH Theatre. He has served as playwright-in-residence with the Asian American Theater Company’s New Works Incubator, and a playwriting intern with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. His work has been featured at the Magic Theater, SOMArts, Kearney Street Workshop, Bindlestiff Studio, Galería de la Raza, La Peña Cultural Center, UC Berkeley’s Durham Theater, the McGill Theater and the University of San Francisco, and the Million Fishes Collective. In 2003, he taught theater and poetry to Mayan youth in Ixcán, Guatemala through the ArtCorps program, and previously studied Zapotec poetry in Oaxaca, Mexico.
DEBORAH SHAW (see Directors)
LAUREN D. YEE (see Staff)
PRIMARY SELECTION COMMITTEE
HANA KADOYAMA (see Staff)
BRIANNA LEE (see Staff)
GORDON MEI (see Staff)
BENJAMIN PIIRU (see Staff)
DAVID TRAN (see Staff)
LAUREN D. YEE (see Staff)