PRODUCER
DIRECTOR: Rockabye and Not I
Octavio Solis is a playwright and author whose works have been mounted in theatres across the country such as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the California Shakespeare Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Hartford Stage, the Alley Theatre, the Dallas Theater Center, the Center Theatre Group, Yale Repertory Theatre, and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. He worked as a voice actor and consultant on the Disney/Pixar film Coco. His short stories have been published in Zyzzyva, Catamaran, Huizache, and the Chicago Quarterly Review. Solis has received numerous awards including the United States Artists Fellowship for 2011 and the 2014 Pen Center USA Award. His book Retablos is published by City Lights Publishing.

PRODUCER

Kimberly Colburn is the CEO and Co-Founder of Protagonist Events, a company specializing in fun and facilitation via corporate events and team-building games. She is a skilled event manager, producer, administrator, and community builder. Trained as a theatre producer and story editor, she is the resident dramaturg for the South Carolina New Plays Festival. Previously, she was the Literary Director of South Coast Rep, where she co-directed the Pacific Playwrights Festival and led the CrossRoads commissioning program. She has managed digital, hybrid and in-person events for Soulpepper Theatre, the University of Toronto’s Robotics Institute, AGEWELL, the Canadian Robotics Council, LA Wine Fest, the Humana Festival, CanCOVID, and many more.

https://www.protagonist-events.com/

DIRECTOR
Act Without Words II

Artistic Director of Ashland New Plays Festival. Professor of Acting/Theatre at Southern Oregon University. Jackie has worked as an actor, director, and producer in theatre, film, and media with companies such as Roundabout Theatre Company, Denver Center Theatre Company, National Geographic, Modern Media (Head of Production), Venice Theatre Works (Associate Artistic Director), and Shakespeare Santa Barbara (Producing Director). Jackie is the author of the book Answers from the Working Actor published by Focal/Routledge, and spent more than a decade at Backstage Newspaper, where she was Contributing Editor. She earned her MFA from the National Theatre Conservatory at the Denver Center Theatre Company and her BFA from UC Santa Barbara. She is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA.

SOUND DESIGNER

Todd Barton is a sonic adventurer, composer, tutor and performer of abstract, freely improvised electronic music. For four decades he was Composer in Residence for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and also taught Electronic and Computer Music, and Composition at Southern Oregon University. His concert music has been performed by the Oregon Symphony Orchestra, Britt Festival Orchestra, Rogue Valley Symphony and the KRONOS Quartet.

COSTUME DESIGNER

Sonya Berg is a non-binary Costume Designer and Fabricator. They are dedicated to creating complex visual worlds through understanding the role of dress in society.

Their theater works include: Rossum’s Universal Robots (2023) Cutting Ball, King Lear (2019) Walt Disney modular-theater, Fight Song (2019) Hollywood & Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, Sweat the Opera (2019), The Wolves (2018). Their film works include: Apotheosis (2021), Nomad (2021), Get Kissed or Die Brian (2020), and Circle Opens (2018). They have been working in The OSF Costume Shop since 2022.

They hold a BA from Oberlin College, and an MFA in Costume Design from CalArts.

ARTIST (Program videoplates)
Cody A. Bustamante has exhibited throughout the United States. His work is in numerous collections including the Portland Art Museum, University of Texas, Microsoft, Bank of America, Oregon Health Sciences University, Oregon State University, Southern Oregon State University, and the University of Oregon. A recipient of The Ford Family Foundation Fellowship/Djerassi Foundation Fellowship, he’s had residencies at Majestic Art Foundation & University of Texas, San Antonio, Artist on Location, Kathmandu, Nepal, University of Houston, University of Guanajuato, National Park Service, Crater Lake. He lives and works in Jacksonville Oregon and is an Emeritus Professor of Art at Southern Oregon University.
Website: Codyabustamante.com
Instagram: Cab97520

PERFORMER
Act Without Words II

Alina Cenal is Cuban American, actor, dancer, director, and teacher who has been dancing through life with energy and passion in everything she does. Her career extends over 40 years in television, theater, and film.

Her solo shows, CUBA: MY RETURN and WORDS FROM A CUBAN FATHER have toured national and internationally. Most recent, Alina played Abuela Claudia in IN THE HEIGHTS at the Oregon Cabaret Theater in Ashland. Alina also directed at Southern Oregon University, performed in Chicago’s Physical Theater Festival, Oregon’s Lunacy Festival, and Chihuahua Mexico’s Festival de Payasos.

STAGE MANAGER
Imagination Dead Imagine

Sheila M. Devitt (she/her) is a San Francisco-based theatre maker: actor, director, producer & advocate, with a love of world theatre and gender parity in the arts. She is a proud member of the Actors’ Reading Collective; Theatre of Yugen; and on staff with Golden Thread Productions. Favorite roles include Titania/ Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Gertrude in Hamlet, the Nurse in Romeo & Juliet, Hermione in A Winter’s Tale, Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible, Elvira in Blithe Spirit, Estelle Rigault in No Exit, and Brother of Woman with Tragic Hair in the world premiere of Chiori Miyagawa’s This Lingering Life. Sheila has also been a soprano member of the Ashland-based Women with Wings choir.

PERFORMER
Act Without Words II

James Donlon is a celebrated international performer, master teacher, and director of physical theatre since 1970, performing his original solo programs throughout North America, Europe, and Latin America. The New York Times called Donlon’s work "an extraordinary blend of skill and lunacy”. James was on the drama faculties of The American Conservatory Theater, The Yale School of Drama, The University of North Carolina School of the Arts, The National Theatre Conservatory- Denver Center, UC-Santa Barbara, UC-San Diego, and the Oregon Center for the Arts, was film movement coach for Oscar winners Javier Bardem, Kathy Bates, Frances McDormand, and created TV fight choreography for Linda Ronstadt.

ACTOR
What/Where

Alex Giorgi is an Actor and Puppeteer from the Portland, Oregon area. He received a Bachelor's Of Fine Arts in Theater at Southern Oregon University and was seen in SOU's production of A Man Of No Importance and Into The Woods. More recently, he toured around the U.S. in Puppeteer's For Fears' Cthulhu: The Musical as Burt The Shoggoth and Cthuthu himself. He is excited to be performing in Ashland again in What/Where.

MUSICIAN: What/Where - performed by members of Puppeteers for Fears
Josh Gross is a frenetic enthusiast of all things communicable who infuses chutzpah into all he endeavors despite ardent detractors. He’s written loads of plays, novels, musicals, and songs; worked as a journalist, editor, and debate coach; performed as a standup comedian, burlesque host, ukulele terrorist, and slam poet; and can be seen in any of a dozen or so bands, including Thunderchud and Def Cougar Mellencamp; as well as the house band for Puppeteers for Fears, the musical theater troupe he founded and is the primary writer and composer for. He lives, works, and is generally up to no good in Oregon.

MEDIA (promo film)

Ness is a lifelong performer and director of stage and screen. 

She loves the great works of Beckett and is thrilled to be a part of this incredible festival.

www.lifeisshortfilms.com

LIGHTING DESIGNER
Michael Maag is the Acting Director of Production and the Resident Lighting Designer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Scenographer, Lighting and Projection Artist + Production Lead for Kinetic Light, a Disability Arts Ensemble.

Maag is an award-winning designer of lighting, video, and projection for theatre, dance, musicals, opera, and planetariums. He sculpts with light and shadow to create lighting environments that tell a story, believing that lighting in support of the performance is the key to unlocking audiences’ emotions.

His lighting and projection design for Kinetic Light’s Descent was chosen to represent the United States at the Prague Quadrennial in 2019. Recently their work Wired premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and played at the Shed in NYC.

Maag is passionate about bringing the perspective of a disabled artist to technical theatre and design. He has spoken at several theatre and architecture conferences on the importance of access for the disabled artist in technical theatre.

PERFORMER
Rockabye

From Shakespeare to Shepard, Hansberry to Herzog, Brecht to Beckett and everyone in between, Dee Maaske’s long career spans decades in theaters across the United States, Europe and the Middle East. Her credits include 21 seasons with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, as well as roles in a dozen major regional theaters plus the Kennedy Center. She helped to create roles in world premiers by Lillian Groag, Frank Galati and YES! Octavio Solis, among others. She has honored established playwrights spanning multiple generations, as well as helping contemporary writers to create new roles that excite audiences of all ages.

DIRECTOR/PUPPETEER
What/Where

Alyssa is a Portland-based puppeteer and all-around artist. She works with Puppeteers For Fears as a Managing Director and Lead Puppeteer, and has been with them since 2016. She has over 15 years of theatre experience across many different areas, but nowadays focuses on all things puppetry and operations management. Theatres she has worked with include Hand2Mouth Theatre, Imago Theatre, and New Room Studios (Portland, OR), and Broadway Sacramento, Capital Stage, and the Woodland Opera House (Sacramento, CA). She holds a masters degree in Puppet Arts from the University of Connecticut and a BFA in Acting from Southern Oregon University, with minors in Shakespeare Studies and Studio Arts.

STAGE MANAGER
Not I

Jake Merriman is a director/educator/actor who has also been involved with stand up comedy, sketch comedy, yelling in bands and roller derby announcing. For over the past decade he’s worked in Shakespeare Education serving highschoolers or inmates with Portland Playhouse’s Fall Festival of Shakespeare, Stages Youth Academy, Shakespeare & Company’s Fall Festival of Shakespeare and Open Hearts Open Minds. Jake Merriman is pleased to know that all those years of working on Samuel Beckett on his own can now be put to a more public use and he’s extremely grateful to be a part of this.

STAGE MANAGER
Rockaby

Directing: The Last Five Years (West Coast Premiere at the Oregon Cabaret Theatre), A Bright Room Called Day, Mister Roberts, Born Yesterday, Reckless, Bullshot Crummond.        Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Assistant Stage Manager:  The Magic Fire (World Premiere, Kennedy Center), King Lear, Uncle Vanya, Coriolanus, A Touch of the Poet, Pentecost, Tongue of a Bird. Assistant Director: The Royal Family. Mark received his BFA Southern Oregon University. He studied at The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre with Sanford Meisner. In addition to his theatre work, Mark has peaceful meditations available under his name on Insight Timer, Instagram and YouTube. www.markmezadourian.com.

PERFORMER
Not I
Amanda Moody is a quadruple-threat writer, performer, composer, and singer, known for her multi-disciplinary music theater works; the critically-acclaimed "Serial Murderess," "The Winchester Rosary," and "D’Arc, woman on fire." An accomplished songwriter, poet and librettist, her texts have been performed by voices as wide-ranging as tenor John Duykers, sopranos Laura Bohn and Pamela Z, and The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia.

Her libretti include "Bitter Harvest" (Berkeley Symphony Orchestra) and "Caliban Dreams"(West Edge Opera). Key collaborators include multi-media artist John Sanborn, director Melissa Weaver, composers Kurt Rhode, Clark Suprynowicz, Joël Lindheimer, and Jay Cloidt. She has shared stages with Jess Curtis, John Duykers, Amy X Neuburg, Jane Selkye, and Emily Bezar, and has originated singing roles in works by Miguel Frasconi, Rinde Eckert and Paul Dresher.

Her new song-cycle, “My Golden Repairs: a song-cycle of grief and longing,” is in development with director Melissa Weaver.

MUSICIANS
Imagination Dead Imagine

Quartet Nouveau Chamber Music Institute formed as a 501 c3 nonprofit organization in January 2013 with the mission of for making chamber music available to the entire San Diego community.

Quartet Nouveau is a string quartet based in San Diego where all four musicians freelance and teach within the community. Known for their fresh approach to classical music, they hope to inspire students to play this very same music one day. The members of Quartet Nouveau all graduated from the nation's top universities with Masters and Doctoral degrees. These musicians also perform with the San Diego

Symphony, The California Chamber Orchestra, The Classics 4 Kids Philharmonic, La Jolla Playhouse, and the Old Globe. Quartet Nouveau has performed in school educational outreach concerts students from kindergarten to high school throughout southern California. For more information visit quartetnouveau.org
Photo by Robbie Bui

STAGE MANAGER
Act Without Words II

I’m a Theatre artist from El Paso Tx. Ive been working in the Rouge Valley for close to 6 years now, doing all sorts of work from acting, ushering , directing, to writing. I’m currently a stage hand at the OSF for the show Born With Teeth. I’m very excited to be working the Beckett festival this year. My dream is to one day be a respectable actor among my peers and to continue to create and build works that generations of artist can look up too and build even better foundation for the world of theater.

COMPOSER/DIRECTOR
Imagination Dead Imagine

MICHAEL ROTH, his work called "music one could imagine Ives composing had he encountered rock-and-roll and beat poetry," is a composer/sound artist whose work encompasses chamber music, film scores, experimental music/theatre and opera, and music and sound for over 300 theatre productions worldwide. THE WEB OPERA (thewebopera.com), Michael's experimental online opera, an official selection at 35 film festivals and honored as an Opera America Digital Opera finalist, was produced to raise awareness of cyber-abuse. Recent work: an ongoing Shakespeare project with Al Pacino seen throughout LA; HENRY IV featuring Tom Hanks; with Christopher Plummer, THE TEMPEST and Plummer’s solo-show; two US premieres with Tom Stoppard; and numerous with Randy Newman, including music direction for Disney's PRINCESS & THE FROG. His new opera, THE GOLEM OF LA JOLLA, examining contemporary antisemitism, aims to premiere in 2025. Michael studied with William Bolcom and has taught sound design at UCSD. He's thrilled that IMAGINATION DEAD IMAGINE, his music/theatre treatment of Samuel Beckett's text, authorized by Beckett and premiered in San Diego, LA and Prague, is a part of this festival.

DIRECTOR
Krapp’s Last Tape

Mildred Ruiz-Sapp Co-founder/core member, UNIVERSES. Playwriting/Actor: AmericUS; UNISON; PARTY PEOPLE; AMERIVILLE; BLUE SUITE; RHYTHMICITY; SLANGUAGE; THE RIDE. Acting-only: DJ Latinidad; Comedy of Errors; Unfortunates; Alfred Jarry’s UBU: Enchained. Director: The Tempest; Dare we defend. Filmmaker credit: Rising (2022_Smithsonian/Ashland IFF). Awards/Affiliations: Artist in Residence (Northwestern); Andrew Mellon Playwright (LongWharf); 2015 Doris Duke Artist Award; Oregon Shakespeare Festival Acting Company/Resident Ensemble 2012-2017; Jazz at Lincoln Center Rhythm Road; TCG Peter Zeisler Award; Pregones Theater Fellowship; BRIO Awards; Co-Founder, The Point CDC; Former Board Member (NPN)/(NET); New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect; BARD College, BA. Member: (AEA).

PERFORMER
Act Without Words II

Angel Villalobos is thankful! A recent University of California-Santa Barbara BFA graduate, he is an actor, stage director, and teaching artist for youth. Recent credits include Mother Road, Macbeth, Tartuffe, Wrench, Twelfth Night, Three Sisters, Baby with the Bathwater, Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, Black Flag, Spectral Frequencies, Durang/Durang. Salud! @villaslowbos

ACTOR
What/Where

Owen is a graduate of Southern Oregon University, and is one of the newest additions to the Puppeteers for Fears team. They are absolutely thrilled to be apart of the Beckett festival. They would like to thank all of their friends and family who have supported them on their artistic journey.

GUEST LECTURER

Katherine Weiss is the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Cal State LA. She holds her PhD from the University of Reading and her MPhil from Trinity College, Dublin. Her publications include Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive (co-edited with Seán Kennedy, 2009), The Plays of Samuel Beckett (2013), Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Art (co-edited with Robert Reginio and David Houston Jones, 2017), and Simply Beckett (2020). She is a member of the Samuel Beckett Society and, most recently, organized the 9th Annual Samuel Beckett Society Conference.