Daniel Alley
Daniel Alley is a music director, pianist, and vocal coach specializing in opera and musical theater and would love to talk to you about theatre.
Adam Bock
Adam Bock’s plays include Phaedra (Shotgun Players), A Small Fire (Playwrights Horizons, Drama Desk nomination), book for We Have Always Lived in the Castle, with music by Todd Almond (Yale Rep), The Flowers (About Face Theatre), The Receptionist (MTC, 2008 Outer Critics nomination, Best Plays of 2007-2008, The Evidence Room with Megan Mullally), The Drunken City (Playwrights Horizons, 2008 Outer Critics nomination), The Thugs (Soho Rep, 2007 OBIE Award for Playwriting), The Shaker Chair (2005 Humana Festival), Swimming In The Shallows (Shotgun Players, Second Stage Uptown, 2000 BATCC Award, Clauder Prize), Five Flights (Encore Theatre and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 2002 Glickman Award, ACTA nomination, Osborn nomination), Marcy Comes Home, and The Typographer’s Dream (Encore Theatre/Shotgun Players). Mr. Bock is the resident playwright at Encore Theatre, and a Shotgun Players Artistic Associate. He is a NEA grantee, a three-time resident at Yaddo, a former member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, a NYTW Usual Suspect, and a TDF Open Doors mentor. Mr. Bock’s plays are published by Samuel French, Dramatists Play Service, and Playscripts, Inc. He is a proud member of New Dramatists.
Patrick Dooley
Patrick started Shotgun Players in 1992 in the basement of a pizza parlor with a few friends and a desire to make great theatre that was also affordable. Before that he received a B.A. in English from James Madison University, in Virginia. While there, he cut his theatre teeth as a founding member of the American Shakespeare Center. Since then, Patrick has directed over 40 plays and overseen the production of nearly 100 others. In 2007, he led an effort to make the Ashby Stage the first 100% solar-powered theater in America. He is married and has three beautiful daughters.
Ciera Eis
Ciera Eis is a theatrical director and producer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ciera is interested in socio-political new work, emerging playwrights and artists, and experimenting with space and form in theater. She is especially drawn to directing and producing queer femme narratives, heightened comedy, mental health and catharsis of trauma. Her love for adventure is seen in her work through her exploration of unconventional theater space and forms, which has led her to dabble in site-specific and immersive work, heightened comedy, and multiple media mediums. She most recently directed The Official Unicorn Hunters’ Guide which won Best in Show in Shortlived VIII. Ciera has assistant directed and aided in new play development at companies such as A.C.T., Magic Theatre, The GroundFloor at Berkeley Rep, CustomMade Theater, and PianoFight. She is the Co-Artistic Director, Producing of FaultLine Theater, the creative producer of Pint Sized Plays at PianoFight, and is the New Works Producer of the Undiscovered Works Festival at Custom Made Theater Company.
Karina Gutiérrez
Karina Gutiérrez's work concentrates on the intersection of politics and performance, more specifically how digital interventions, institutionalization efforts, and historical narrative affect the development and sustainability of social and politically engaged performance companies and collectives in the Americas. She is a recent Doctoral graduate of Stanford University’s Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, where she served as the inaugural Artistic Director of The Nitery Experimental Theatre (NEXT), student director, and undergraduate mentor. Gutiérrez additionally served as a Scholar-in-Residence at El Centro Chicano y Latino, a Co-Graduate Coordinator at the Woman’s Community Center, and a Diversifying Academia, and a Recruiting Excellence (DARE) Fellow. Upon graduation Dr. Gutiérrez was awarded the Carl Webber Prize for integration of Creative Practice and Scholarly Research.
William Hodgson
William Thomas Hodgson, co-Founder of Oakland Theater (formerly Ubuntu Theater Project, www.oaklandtheaterproject.org), and most recently a 3-year company member with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His acting credits include roles at theaters across the nation, including Berkeley Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, TheaterWorks, CalShakes, Mixed Blood Theater, and more. He is recognized as an important voice in the lively conversation about equity, diversity and inclusion in the arts. He also writes, directs and teaches.
Dave Malloy
Dave Malloy is a composer/writer/performer/orchestrator. He has written thirteen musicals, including Octet, a chamber choir musical about internet addiction; Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on a slice of Tolstoy’s War & Peace (12 Tony nominations, including Best Musical, Score, Book, and Orchestrations); Ghost Quartet, a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey; Preludes, a musical fantasia set in the hypnotized mind of Sergei Rachmaninoff; Little Bunny Foo Foo, a forest entertainment for small people; Three Pianos, a drunken romp through Schubert’s “Winterreise”; Black Wizard/Blue Wizard, an escapist RPG fantasy; Beowulf—A Thousand Years of Baggage, an anti-academia rock opera; Beardo, a reinterpretation of the Rasputin myth; Sandwich, a musical about killing animals; and Clown Bible, Genesis to Revelation told through clowns. He has won two Obie Awards, a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, a Theater World Award, the Richard Rodgers Award, an ASCAP New Horizons Award, and a Jonathan Larson Grant, and has been a MacDowell fellow and Composer-in-Residence at Ars Nova and the Signature Theatre. Future projects include an adaptation of Moby-Dick. He lives in Brooklyn.
Erin Mei-Ling Stuart
Erin Mei-Ling Stuart is a lifelong performer and theater artist with a passion for collaborative and multidisciplinary work. Erin was the founder and director of EmSpace Dance (2000-2017), a dance-theater company where she's done most of her directing. In 2018, she directed 6 New Plays' production of Brian Thorstenson's Wakefield. With Shotgun Players, Erin has performed in Henry V, Kill the Debbie Downers, Iron Shoes, Nora, brownsville song, and The Forest War. Erin has also performed with Berkeley Rep, Central Works, Killing My Lobster, Crowded Fire, Word for Word, and Playwrights Foundation. She is a proud company member of Mugwumpin and detour dance. Erinmstuart.com
Anna Moench
Anna Ouyang Moench is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. Her plays have been produced at the Geffen Playhouse, the Playwrights Realm, East West Players, InterAct Theater, and many other theaters across the country and around the world. Anna is a 2020 Steinberg Award winner and the recipient of a Gerbode Special Award in the Arts commission for a new play that will be produced at Magic Theater in 2022. She has been commissioned by NAATCO for a new play premiering in 2021. In television and film, Anna has worked with Netflix, Apple TV+, HBO, UCP, eOne, PictureStart, and Universal. Anna lives in Los Angeles with her family.
Mina Morita
Mina Morita is the Artistic Director of Crowded Fire Theater. A celebrated new plays director, she has worked at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Magic Theatre, Center REPertory Company, American Conservatory Theater, Campo Santo, Shotgun Players, Playwrights Foundation, TheatreFirst, Ferocious Lotus, Bay Area Children’s Theatre, Berkeley Playhouse, and Crowded Fire with such creators as Anna Deavere Smith, Star Finch, J.C. Lee, Christopher Chen, Lauren Gunderson, Philip Kan Gotanda, Young Jean Lee, Idris Goodwin, Susan Soon He Stanton, Lloyd Suh, Dave Harris, Amelia Roper, Adam Chanzit, Sean San Jose, Min Kahng, Wes Nisker, and Dustin Chinn. She is a recipient of Theatre Bay Area’s [TBA] Outstanding Direction of a Musical in 2014 and nominated by TBA for Outstanding Direction of a Play in 2017, as well as Shellie Awards Best Director in 2018.
Diana Oh
Oh is the creator and performer of {My Lingerie Play} with National Underground Installations and concert staged in an effort to provide a safer, more courageous world for women, queer, trans, and non-binary humans to live in, Clairvoyance (her yearlong installation, concert series, and tree planting in Harvard Yard, the Boston Public Library, Institute of Contemporary Art, Harvard Arboretum and A.R.T.), The Infinite Love Party: an intentional barefoot potluck dinner, dance party, and sleepover for qtpoc and their allies (Bushwick Starr), Asian People Are Not Magicians (mic.com) and My H8 Letter 2 the Gr8 American Theatre (The Public Theater). tv/film: Queering, How To Be Single (with dakota johnson), New York Is Dead (Tribeca Film Fest with Ana Gasteyer), Hey Yun (feat. on Janet Mock), Unicornland (feat. Medium). Oh tours with their art in unexpected spaces and enjoys not fitting into boxes. The New York Times calls Oh “irreverent,” you can call her “friend.”
Eliana Pipes
Eliana Pipes is a playwright, actor and filmmaker. She received the Academy Gold Fellowship, she’s a member of the Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellows class, and the winner of the National Latinx Playwriting Award. Her writing is high concept, playful, and political, and she’s interested in the ways that identity is constantly being negotiated. She has a BA in English from Columbia University, and she’s just completed coursework on her MFA in Playwriting from Boston University.
Cathleen Riddley
Cathleen Riddley is an award-winning actor who has performed at many Bay Area theaters, including SF Playhouse, African American Shakespeare Company, TheatreWorks, M.T.C., and A.C.T.—to name a few. Cathleen is a member of Theatre Bay Area, a PlayGround company member, and an associate artist with Alter Theater. She is an alumna of the Juilliard School, a certified ASL interpreter and has an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. A project close to her heart is working with incarcerated men in San Quentin in their violence prevention program called No More Tears/Healing Circle.
Mary Ann Rodgers
Mary Ann Rodgers is an award-winning actor, director, and educator. As an actress, she has performed with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival as Gertrude, Livermore Shakespeare Festival as Titania, and Ross Valley Players as Grace in William Inge's Bus Stop, just to name a few. Mary Ann was recognized by the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle for her acting in Pack of Lies (dir: Molly Noble) and for her direction of The Cocktail Hour at Ross Valley Players. In addition to her impressive career acting on the stage, she is also known for her extensive work in the world of performing arts as an educator and director.
Jake Rodriguez
Jake Rodriguez is a sound designer and composer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Credits include Woman Laughing Alone with Salad, The Events (Shotgun Players); Sweat, Vietgone (American Conservatory Theater); A Thousand Splendid Suns (American Conservatory Theater, Theatre Calgary, Grand Theater, The Old Globe); Mr. Burns, a post-electric play (American Conservatory Theater, Guthrie Theater); Everybody (California Shakespeare Theatre); Angels in America, An Octoroon (Berkeley Repertory Theatre); we, the invisibles (Actors Theatre of Louisville); The Christians (Playwrights Horizons, Mark Taper Forum); Girlfriend (Kirk Douglas Theatre), others.
Leigh Rondon-Davis
As a performer, visual artist, and dramaturg, Leigh is Shotgun’s resident “pal about town.” Leigh has worked on a number of Shotgun productions in various roles; production credits include: Heart Shaped Nebula, The Rover, The Village Bike, CAUGHT, The Events, The Niceties, and Dry Land. They are also a company member, Make a Difference (M.A.D.) program coordinator, and Champagne Staged Reading Series co-coordinator. When Leigh isn’t running frantically around the Ashby Stage, they are a company member and executive associate at Oakland Theater Project. Leigh attended Wellesley College and was a member of Laney College’s Fusion Theatre Project.
Stew
Stew, as leader of the group the Negro Problem, has crafted witty, literate, and intelligently constructed pop music that didn't bear much resemblance to the work of his peers, and the fact he was an African-American artist working outside the widely accepted confines of "Black music" only made him seem that much more unique. After years of pleasing critics and a small number of loyal fans, Stew enjoyed remarkable success in a new medium as the musical Passing Strange -- written, composed, and starring Stew in collaboration with Negro Problem multi-instrumentalist Heidi Rodewald -- became a Broadway success that earned Tony and Drama Desk awards.
Michelle Talgarow
Michelle has been a company member since 2015. She is a Bay Area theatre-maker for over 20 years, specializing in the collaborative process in devising new work. Michelle is also a proud company member of Mugwumpin, a theatre performance collective. She also has strong roots at the EXIT Theatre in SF where two of her murals can be seen. Michelle has been fortunate to also have worked with many other local companies: The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Central Works, Impact Theatre, Ferocious Lotus, Cutting Ball Theatre, Magic Theatre, and Bindlestiff Studios.
Lisa VillaMil
Lisa VillaMil holds a Master’s in “Classical and Contemporary Text (Acting)” from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. She is a co-founder of the Transatlantic company Now What Theatre, which took her original, award-winning play Kara Sevda on tour in North America in 2017, as well as to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She is a member of the 2022 cohort of The Foundry in Philadelphia. Some notable works include: Salamander, a full-length developed and premiered in Philadelphia with Elephant Room Productions; A Christmas Carol, a new adaptation commissioned and produced by Wings of Paper Theatre Company in Philadelphia, PA; Wilds, a one act, which received its premiere in Glasgow, July 2017, and received further development in Orlando, Florida in June 2018; Le Coup de Foudre, a full-length cabaret, which received its premiere in Edinburgh, May 2017, through Adjust Productions; September 18th, a ten minute play, which won the June 2017 4x6 Fest in Tampa, Florida; Breadcrumbs, a ten minute play, which premiered through Philadelphia’s Revamp Collective in February, 2018; Different Worlds, a short play that premiered at The Secret Theatre’s Act One: One Act Festival in New York, January 2019, and was further produced by Wings of Paper Theatre Company in Philadelphia, and B3 Theater in Phoenix, Arizona.
Madison Wetzell
Madison Wetzell is a playwright based in the Bay Area. Her work includes Mediocre Heterosexual Sex (Staged reading: 2019 Problematic Play Festival, Z-Space; Finalist Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2021), and The Lost Ballad of Our Mechanical Ancestor (Staged reading: Champagne Reading Series, Shotgun Players). Her short play, The Official Unicorn Hunters’ Guide, was the winner of the audience-judged ShortLived VIII at PianoFight. Her immersive show, Two Coins for the Ferryman, co-written with Akaina Ghosh, was a twice-recipient of 3Girls Theater’s Innovators Grant and was produced at the Rathskeller in San Francisco in early 2020. Her past work includes a translation and adaptation of The Bacchae which was produced as a site-specific event in Tilden Park, Berkeley, in 2017. She is a member of the SF PlayGround writers' pool.
Beth Wilmurt
Beth is a longtime company member having acted in over ten productions from The Death of Meyerhold to her most recent, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Hamlet. She has also directed Nora and Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness. Beth has created many of her own theatrical and cabaret performances over the years and has acted extensively for several Bay Area theatre companies. Her other longtime passion has been directing choir for San Francisco Community Music Center. She currently directs a children's choir and three older adult choirs. Bethwilmurt.com
