Celebrating the life and art of Václav Havel
New York City, October through December 2006

Biographies: Directors

Hilary Adams

Hilary Adams
(Director, Tomorrow) Hilary Adams is a 2004 Drama Desk nominee for Outstanding Director of a Play (Works Productions’ Moby Dick), also nominated for Outstanding Play and Featured Actor. Recent work includes Moonlight and Magnolias (Associate Director, Alliance Theatre / MTC), Hamlet, Beauty and the Beast, and Mickey Mouse is Dead (Hangar Theatre Lab), Sex & Sealing Wax (Midtown International Theatre Festival), Peter Pan (CT Repertory) and Romantic (NJ Rep). Recent highlights include a 2005 Drama League Summer Directing Project Fellowship, and two MTC Directing Fellowships Assistant Directing for Lynne Meadow (Moonlight and Magnolias) and Mark Brokaw (Reckless). Also on Broadway, Hilary assisted Richard Jones (Titanic), David Henry Hwang (Flower Drum Song) and Robert Falls (Aida). This fall Hilary will be Assistant Directing for Lynne Meadow on The American Pilot. Member SSDC; First Look Theatre Company (NYU); VP board of directors, The NY Coalition of Professional Women in the Arts & Media. www.hilaryadams.com

Henry Akona

Henry Akona
(Assistant artistic director, The Havel Festival; director, A Butterfly on the Antenna) Henry Akona was the assistant artistic director of UTC61’s NEUROfest which also contained his piece, Tabula Rasa (composer and director). Other New York productions include The Architecture of Sight (director) and Pandora’s Box: A vaudeville (composer and director) for High Fidelity Theater. Before moving to New York, he was an assistant director at the Guthrie Theater. He will direct part of Susan-Lori Parks’s 365/365 Festival with marcy Arlin for Immigrants’ Theater Project in March 2007. More at henryakona.com.

Andrea Boccanfuso
(Director, The Garden Party; Producer, Mistake) Member—Oracle Theatre, Inc. Board, MFA—SUNY Purchase. Among her favorite directing credits: The Lover (Harold Pinter), The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (Jane Wagner), Red Cross (Sam Shepard). Resident Lighting Designer—the Janiec Opera Company, Associate Lighting Designer—IMCD Lighting, Founding member—Loblolly Experimental Theatre. She discovered and fostered her love of directing through The New Voices Program, a forum for new works to workshop in preparation for full performance.

Glory Sims Bowen

Glory Sims Bowen
(Director, An Evening with the Family) Directing credits include: Anomal (ATA), Avolan (Looking Glass Theatre), The Tempest, Measure For Measure, The Snow Queen, Foursome (Ionesco Festival), Jack or the Submission, tryin t' touch the sun (Spotlight On Festival), Golem Stories (Chashama). A devoted supporter of the arts, Ms. Bowen serves as Artistic Director of The Midtown International Theatre Festival, and of Where Eagles Dare Theater. She is an alum of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab 2006. Contact her at FHBproductions@aol.com or review her portfolio at www.fhbtheaterproductions.biz.

Eva Burgess
(Director, Largo Desolato)
Eva Burgess is a theatre director, teacher and acting coach. Her directorial work has been seen in NYC, Los Angeles as well as in Moscow and Bosnia-Hercegovina. In New York, she has been an Artist in Residence at HERE Arts Center, where she developed Angelina; a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab directing the ‘cyber-opera’ Cyber Alice; and was part of the late Joe Chaikin workshop. In New York her work has also been seen at Dixon Place and at Nicu’s Spoon Theater, amongst others. Eva has been collaborating with Russian playwright Ksenia Dragunskaya including, A Feeling of a Beard (The American Living Room, HERE Arts Center, New York) and The Flood (DOC Theatre, Moscow). Before moving to New York, she lived and worked in Bosnia-Hercegovina, founding Rea Silvija, a women’s based theatre company, which devised two works for the stage, toured Bosnia and Ireland and performed in Geneva at the U.N. In Los Angeles, Eva was co-Artistic Director at Theatre of NOTE, which produces new short-form theatre. While at NOTE she was involved with producing new work by many Padua Hills Playwrights including Murray Mednick, John O’Keefe, Leon Martell, Ki Gottberg, Joe Goodrich, as well as Glen Berger, and others. In Los Angeles she also studied with and worked for performance artist Rachel Rosenthal.

Edward Einhorn

Edward Einhorn
(Artistc director, The Havel Festval; director The Memo and Audience) Edward Einhorn has been the Artistic Director of Untitled Theater Company #61 since he founded it in 1992. He curated the The Ionesco Festival, the first-ever festival of Ionesco’s complete works, and Untitled Theater’s 24/7 Festival. Perhaps most prominently, he wrote and directed the Off-Broadway production, Fairy Tales of the Absurd, which The New York Times called "almost unbearably funny."

He is the author of the modern Oz novels Paradox in Oz and The Living House of Oz (Hungry Tiger Press), The Golem, Methuselah and Shylock: Three Plays by Edward Einhorn (Theater 61 Press) and the upcoming picture book on probability, A Very Improbable Story (Charlesbridge). Most recently, he wrote and directed the puppet play Unauthorized Magic in Oz at St. Ann’s Warehouse and the Looking Glass Theatre, which The New York Times called "exquisitely ingenious" and "truly enchanting."

Michael Gardner
(Director, Mountain Hotel) Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of The Brick, Michael is adapter and director of The Kung Fu Importance of Being Earnest, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, In a Strange Room (Top Ten Plays, 2004—Time Out NY), and Notes from Underground, among others. He continues to co-curate and co-direct The Brick’s many festivals. Many thanks to Edward and Untitled Theater Company #61. www.bricktheater.com

Yolanda Hawkins

Yolanda Hawkins
(Director, The Increased Difficulty of Concentration) a founder of True Comedy Theatre Company, works in New York alternative theater as actor, director and theater artist. She has directed works at La Mama, Chashama, Home, Dixon Place and the Dublin Fringe Festival, including Improvisation in UTC61’s Ionesco Festival and Quattro Gatti’s Byron and Emily Go to Work. She has also created solo performance pieces at Chandalier, P.S. 122 and Side Shows By the Sea Shore.

Ian W. Hill

Ian W. Hill
(Director, Temptation) Ian has, as a stage director/designer with his company Gemini CollisionWorks, created nearly 50 productions since 1997, including several original works. He has performed in almost 100 NYC productions in the past 17 years as well as designing for dozens of other film and theatre artists in the USA and abroad. His films as director include the short How Did You Manage to Steal a Car from a Rolling Train? and the featurette Deep Night.

Tanya Khordoc

Tanya Khordoc
(Co-director/designer/performer, Motormorphosis) is Co-Artistic Director of Evolve Company. Tanya has performed, designed, and directed puppet theater at venues such as HERE, St. Ann’s Warehouse, the Puppeteers of America National Festival, the Eugene O’Neill National Puppetry Conference, and the Children's Museum of Manhattan. She has previously collaborated with Untitled Theater Co. #61 in the 24/7 Festival and on Unauthorized Magic in Oz. Her next project is the multimedia show Secrets History Remembers.

Jeffrey A. Lewonczyk

Jeffrey A. Lewonczyk
(Director, Guardian Angel) As Associate Director of The Brick, Jeff has contributed to almost all of the theater’s artistic endeavors since 2003. As Artistic Director and founder – with Hope Cartelli – of Piper McKenzie Productions, he is creator of productions such as the Bizarre Science Fantasy dance-theatre series (including its most recent installment, Sexadelic Cemetery), and Cursed Captives of the Voodoo Lounge, a new monthly serial at Lucky Cheng’s. He also writes freelance theater reviews and acts.

Robert Lyons

Robert Lyons
(Director, Protest) Robert Lyons is a writer/director, who’s work includes the critically acclaimed No Meat No Irony, and the downtown hit PR Man (featured in American Theatre magazine, currently in develop.m.ent with Zephuros One Films in LA). Other New York productions include: Creature of the Deep, Dream Conspiracy, Bunko, Vater Knows Best, and The Naked Anarchist. Commissioned adaptations range from Dostoevsky (The Possessed and The Fever) to Jay McInerney (How it Ended). In a recent profile in TIME OUT/NY, his original writing was characterized as "Ralph Nader channeling Preston Sturges.” He is represented by Rosenstone/Wender. Robert is also the founding Artistic Director of the OBIE Award winning Soho Think Tank @ the Ohio Theatre, where he has produced, presented, and developed innumerable productions since 1994. Under Robert’s leadership, the Ohio Theatre has become widely recognized as a pillar of the downtown theatre community.

Kay Matschullat
(Director, The Conspirators) Matschullat most recently directed the world premiere of The Beauty Inside by Catherine Filloux at NewGeorges Theater. She also directed Filloux’s Eyes of the Heart, which won the Kennedy Center New American Play Award (NAP), for The National Asian American Theater Company. This year, she has also directed for The Red Bull Theater and URBAN STAGES. Matschullat’s directing credits include the world premiere of Derek Walcott’s To Die for Grenada, the New York premiere of Walcott’s Pantomime, the world premiere of Ariel Dorfman’s Widows (another NAP winner). Formerly, she served as a resident director at Williamstown Theatre Festival where she also produced 4 seasons of new plays. Ms. Matschullat has directed repertory and new plays in production and workshop in major regional theatres around the country including Boston Shakespeare, SouthCoast Repertory, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the New York Shakespeare Festival.

In television, she has acted as Producer/Director of nationally broadcast videos for the National Organization of Women, Consultant for the Academy-Award nominated film documentary, War Room, Researcher on PBS award winning series Eyes on the Prize, Vietnam: A Television History, and Bill Moyers’ Journal.

A full-time faculty member at Tisch School of the Arts, she is director of the Style and Character Advanced Training Studio at Tisch. She previously taught at the Lincoln Center Institute and Princeton University. She has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Directing Fellowship, a Theatre Communications Group Grant,a Samuel Rubin Foundation production grant and is a Fulbright Senior Specialist.

Currently she is developing Lorca’s Yerma into music-theater with composer Liz Swados and adapting Alfred de Musset’s Don’t Trifle with Love for Red Bull Theater.

Grant Neale
(Director and set designer, Redevelopment) is co-Artistic Director of Nomad Theatrical Company. Directing includes: Miss Julie, Richard III, Tennessee Williams' The Two Character Play, and Sharr White's The Last Orange Dying. Other favorites: Twelfth Night, Exit the King, The Family Show by Randy Neale. Performed in over 200 plays (U.S. and international). A former member of Jean Cocteau Repertory and The Ridiculous Theatrical Company, he teaches the Meisner Approach and Movement for Actors.

Issac Rathbone

Isaac Rathbone
(Producer/technical director, The Garden Party; co-director, Mistake) is a Producer/Director/NY-based playwright. Credits include productions in Manhattan, including the Kraine; CSNY; Brooklyn Lyceum; and South Oxford Space. His work has been performed at Theatre Three in Port Jefferson, NY; SUNY Brockport; Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Alaska; and FringeNYC 2006. He is a founding member of Oracle Theatre Inc., and resident playwright. His adaptations of Japanese folktales are presented as part of OTI’s WOLF Family Series.

Jennifer Rathbone

Jennifer Rathbone
(Co-director, Mistake and assistant director, The Garden Party) (AEA Member) As a BFA graduate from Hofstra University in Theatre Production and an MFA graduate from SUNY Purchase Design Technology, she has been involved in varied aspects of theatre. Select Credits include: T.Schreiber Studio's How I Learned To Drive (Lighting, 2006 NYIT Awards Nominee "Outstanding Lighting Design"); SLDT (Lighting Designer); Oracle Theatre’s WOLF: Japanese Folk Tales … ; Home and The Death of Tintagiles (Director). She also teaches students in disciplines of theatre arts/design.

Amy Trompetter

Amy Trompetter
(Co-director, The Beggars Opera) Amy Trompeter builds, directs and performs puppet operas, outdoor pageants, indoor spectacles, and hand-puppet shows. Recent credits include directing and designing Malcolm Williamson’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince for Kentucky Opera ’05 and The Barber of Seville at St. Ann’s Warehouse ’03, touring to Festspielhaus St. Polten, Austria, ’07. Upcoming work includes a new music theater and puppet adaptation of Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades with Moscow-based composer Alexander Bakshi and director Kama Ginkas ’08-‘09. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Barnard/Columbia Theatre Department and teaches with Bard Prison Initiative. www.amytrompetter.com

Barry Weil

Barry Weil
(Co-director/designer/performer, Motormorphosis) is Co-Artistic Director of Evolve Company. He has created puppets, masks and creatures for productions that include Hope & Anchor, Unauthorized Magic in Oz, Screaming Shrubbery, Uktena and Feast of the Dead. He has also inhabited the man-eating plant in so many productions of Little Shop of Horrors that he's starting to sprout leaves. In addition, Barry is the assistant director/theatre coordinator for Levels, Long Island's acclaimed cultural center for teenagers.

Randy White
(Director, Unveiling) Shaw’s Pygmalion (Shakespeare Santa Cruz), Glen Berger’s O lovely Glowworm (Portland Center Stage) and Underneath the Lintel (15 months off-Broadway), Gogol’s The Government Inspector (Fordham University), Kirsten Greenidge’s Proclivities (Guthrie/U of Minnesota BFA program) and Sans-Culottes in the Promised Land (Humana Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville), Our Town (Cardinal Stage Company), Carson Kreitzer’s Self Defense (New Georges, NYC), Joe Fisher’s Thunderbird (Cherry Lane Theatre Mentor Project), Dan Dietz’s Temp Odyssey (NYC SPF Festival), Sondheim’s Into the Woods (Yale Dramatic Association) and Sweeny Todd (Penn), Lyubimov’s The Dawns are Quiet Here (Harborfront Theatre, Toronto), West Side Story, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Show Boat, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1776, Nothing Sacred, and Romeo and Juliet.

Randy was associate director on David Edgar's Continental Divide (Oregon Shakes, Berkeley Rep, Londons Barbican), an assistant on Disney's The Lion King, and a resident director at New Dramatists for two years.

Sergei Zemtsov
(Co-director, The Beggars Opera) Sergei Zemtsov is a director, actor and Dean of the Acting Department at the Moscow Art Theatre School. Selected acting roles include Meluzov from Talents and Worshipers by Ostrovsky, Vlas from Country People by Gorky, Becket from Becket by Anouilh, and Pasha from Chinzano by Petrushevskaya, which toured Poland, Latvia, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, Holland, Finland, England, Portugal, Sweden, Great Britain, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, USA, winning grand prize at the German Theatre Festival in 1990 and a showcase at the Humana Festival in Lousiville, Kentucky 1991. He taught at Ecole du Passage in Paris, the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA, and now runs the actor’s program for students from the United States at the Moscow Art Theatre School in conjunction with the O’Neal Moscow Art Theatre.

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