YPT Company

YPT Company Members are staff, artists, alumni and board members who support and enhance the pursuit of YPT’s mission with their efforts and insights. They demonstrate a commitment to the health and vitality of YPT and are valued members of the organization. 

Randy Baker is a director, playwright and the co-Artistic Director of Rorschach Theatre.  In addition to directing with Rorschach, he has directed for Young Playwrights’ Theater, Source Theatre, The Inkwell, First Draft, NCDA’s Actors Repertory Theatre, First Draft, Wayward Theatre, Cherry Red Productions and Theater J.  Plays he has written and produced include Dream Sailors, After the Flood and Circus of Fallen Angels, as well as a number of short plays including Paolo and Francesca, Beit Jala, Crunch, The Rabbit and The Snake and A Lonely Dictator on the Eve of Revolution.  He is currently developing the plays Forgotten Kingdoms and The Burning Road.  

Jessica Burgess is the Artistic Director of The Inkwell, Washington DC’s new play development resource (www.inkwelltheatre.org). Her directing credits include productions at Young Playwrights’ Theater, Active Cultures, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Adventure Theatre, Catalyst Theater, Forum Theatre, Hatchery Festival, Imagination Stage, Round House Theatre’s Kitchen, Rorschach Theatre, Solas Nua and The Inkwell. As a teaching artist, she has staged productions at Imagination Stage, Theatre Lab and National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts. She serves on the board of Active Cultures, and on the Artists’ Councils of Round House and Forum Theatres.

Cecilia Cackley is a DC based puppeteer, director, stage manager and teaching artist. She has worked with Rorschach Theatre, GALA Hispanic Theatre, and dog and pony dc, among other area theaters. Directing credits include 4.48 Psychosis, A Most Notorious Woman and The Malachite Palace for the Capital Fringe Festival, as well as the YPT New Play Festival and Fall Express Tour. When not teaching third grade at Tuckahoe Elementary, she creates and performs with her company Wit’s End Puppets, which can be found at www.witsendpuppets.com.

Suzanne Edgar is a longtime YPT supporter. She performed student work in four Express Tours. Her favorite roles include Celetunia the Celery, and the Hare in an adapted version of The Tortoise and the Hare. Suzanne also taught playwriting for YPT at two summer camps. Currently, she brings the joy and empowerment of playwriting to her students in DCPS as a special educator.

Mary Hall Surface is a playwright and director specializing in theater for families and multi-disciplinary collaborations.  A DC theatre community member since 1989, her producers include Round House Theatre, Arena Stage, Folger Theatre, the National Gallery of Art and twenty-two productions at the Kennedy Center. Internationally, her work has been featured in productions and festivals in Germany, Canada, Japan, Peru, France, Taiwan, Sweden and Ireland. Nominated for four Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play and five Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Direction, she received the 2002 award for her musical, Perseus Bayou. She is the artistic director of INTERSECTIONS: A New America Arts Festival at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

Jasmin Danielle Johnson is a Michigan State graduate holding a BA in Theater. She has been involved in theater since the age of thirteen, and plans to pursue an MA in Creative Writing in Fall 2012. Recently, she was seen as Captain Kirk in DC’s Capital Fringe Festival 2011 and was a company member of YPT’s Express Tour 2011. She can be seen in Imagination Stage’s early childhood production Mouse on the Move in January 2012, as well as Doorway Arts Ensemble’s production of Hercules in Russia in February 2012. She is grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow amongst the YPT family for the next year. 

Ryan Maxwell is a DC-based director, photographer and stage manager. In DC, he has directed for YPT (New Play Festival, New Writers Now!, Express Tour), Flying V (Science Fiction Double Feature), and Adventure Theatre (upcoming spring tour of Just A Dream). This year, stage managing has taken him from DC (Adventure Theatre’s If You Give a Cat a Cupcake, directed by Jerry Whiddon, Flying V’s Become What You Are and INCURABLE with Wayward Theatre/Capital Fringe) to Singapore and Malaysia (Adventure Theatre’s Just A Dream, co-produced with Singapore Repertory Theatre). Before landing in DC, Ryan was Artistic Associate at Commonwealth Shakespeare Company in Boston and Assistant Director for Anthony Rapp’s Without You at the 2010 New York Musical Theatre Festival.

Daniel Mori is a multi-disciplinary artist and theatrical technician, with specialties in puppetry and stage management. He has designed, built and performed puppets for The Smithsonian’s Discovery Theater, Adventure Theatre, Synetic Family Theatre and, most recently, Wit’s End Puppets.

 

Kenny Neal has designed sound for YPT for two years and is thrilled to become a company member! His theatrical sound design has also been heard in productions by Active Cultures, Victorian Lyric Opera Company, Capital Fringe Festival, Rockville Musical Theatre, and at venues like Round House Theater, Woolly Mammoth, The Apothecary, and Silver Spring Stage, and soon in The Snowy Day at Adventure Theatre. Off-stage, his audio and film scoring has been heard in local festivals, including DC Shorts Film Festival. Kenny is an educational media producer for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Jennifer L. Nelson is Director of Special Programming at Ford’s Theatre and former Producing Artistic Director of the African Continuum Theatre. For twenty years she was with Living Stage Theatre Company at Arena Stage. She served two terms as President of the League of Washington Theatres and is a past board member of Theatre Communications Group (TCG).  She is a recipient of a Helen Hayes Award for Most Outstanding New Play. Ms. Nelson is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.  She happily worked with Karen Zacarias in the earliest years of YPT and has since directed many YPT plays.

Wendy Nogales has worked at many area theaters, including: Discovery Theatre, Adventure Theatre (Resident Actor), Round House Theatre, GALA Theatre, Signature Theatre, Arena Stage, Olney Theatre, Dog and Pony DC, Factory 449, Wit’s End Puppets. Wendy can be seen in Family Health Quest, a multimedia museum experience that is part of a permanent exhibit at the Natural Science Center of Greensboro, NC. She also plays Danielle in Troublesome Gap, an online radio show. Wendy received an Outstanding Actress Nomination by the Baltimore Theatre Awards for her work in Bicycle Country, and had the honor of collaborating with Signature Theatre and Tony Winning Playwright Quiara Hudes on a workshop and staged reading of 26 miles.

Sarah Olmsted Thomas is very honored to be a company member with YPT. She has worked with Spooky Action Theater, Faction of Fools, Synetic Theater, WSC Avant Bard, Maryland Shakespeare Festival and Factory 449.  She studied physical theater with Le Samovar École de Clown (Paris) and the Pig Iron Theatre Company (Philadelphia).  B.A., Sarah Lawrence College.

Alex Perez is an improv/sketch comedian and professional Actor. Partial Theater Credits: Much Ado about Nothing(Folger Shakespeare Theater), Royal Hunt of the Sun (Washington Shakespeare Co.), Haroun and the Sea of Stories(Theater Alliance), MacBird and Hellzapoppin (American Century Theater), Christmas Carol (Vpstart Crow), Lu-Lu Fabulous (Phoenix Theater), The Oracle (African Continuum Theatre) and numerous Express Tours with Young Playwrights’ Theater. Alex has also done Film/Commercial work and has recently performed with Washington Improv Theater (W.I.T.) in DC and in New York.

Fatima Quander: Young Playwrights’ Theater: New Plays Festival 2011, 2010, 2009, Express Tour Spring and Fall 2009, and countless New Writers Now! performances and in-school workshops. Regional: Everyman Theatre Company: A Raisin in the Sun (Beneatha), Theater of the First Amendment: 24, 7, 365 (Shavondra), Folger Elizabethan Theatre: Much Ado About Nothing (Margaret), The Kennedy Center: Locomotion (Ms. Edna, Ms. Marcus, et al), Kite on the Wind: A Tale of Pakistan (Dadi), Imagination Stage: Junebug and the Reverend (Ms. Williams, Tasha), Tribute Productions: Coming Home (Young Lilly), Discovery Theater: African Roots/Latino Soul (Mama, et al), Retratos (Jasmín). National Tour: Color Me Dark: A Story of the Great Migration North (Nellie Lee). Education: MFA Acting, Actors Studio Drama School, New School University, BA Theatre Arts, Beloit College.

Fernando Romero was born in El Salvador to peasant parents, and immigrated to the U.S. when he was 11 years old. In high school, he was a YPT student and later became an employee of the organization. YPT Founder Karen Zacarias gave him the opportunity to be a cast member of the 2000 Express Tour, which changed his life and made him realize that he loved acting. He went on to pursue an acting degree at Antioch College. After graduating from college, Fernando came back to YPT, and, for the past five years, he has been a YPT actor.

Chelsey Schuller, a costume designer, made her debut with Young Playwrights’ Theater with the 2011 Express Tour. She enjoys working with theater for young audiences and hopes to inspire creativity in future generations. Chelsey’s recent DC area costume design credits include Tinsel and Bone with Rebollar Dance at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, the Full-length Play Series at the 2011 Source Theatre Festival, A Year with Frog and Toad at Adventure Theatre, Juno and the Paycock at Washington Shakespeare Company,  A Wrinkle in Time at Round House Theatre (Associate Costume Designer), as well as Church and Linus and Alora at Single Carrot Theatre. Chelsey earned an MFA in costume design from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Deb Sivigny has been designing in the DC area for over a decade.  She designed costumes for two Express Tours and is thrilled to be part of the YPT Company. As a freelancer, she has worked at Rorschach Theatre, Imagination Stage, Theater J, Forum Theatre, The Hub, Adventure Theatre and the Kennedy Center, among others. She also works at Georgetown University as a faculty Artist in Residence, is a company member at both Rorschach and the Inkwell and a member of USA 829. She has degrees from Middlebury College and the University of Maryland.

Vanessa Strickland a proud company member of Young Playwrights’ Theater. She has performed with YPT inside and outside of the classroom since 2009 and recently served as a YPT Community Ambassador. Vanessa is continually amazed and inspired by the work of YPT and its student playwrights and strives to always honor the playwrights’ words.  Vanessa works as an actor in the DC/MD/VA area at large, and is also a company member at the Maryland Ensemble Theatre. In her spare time, she works as a freelance makeup artist, acting- and puppeteering coach. You can follow her adventures at www.vanessastrickland.net.

Andrés Talero is excited to be a part of the fantastic YPT family and staff. Andrés is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park and has a B.A. in Theatre.  He has worked as an actor in the DC metro area for several years. He began working with YPT in the 2006 New Play Festival, where he was challenged and moved by the words of young aspiring playwrights. Since that performance, Andrés never passes on an opportunity to bring DC students’ voices to life. More importantly, however, he looks forward to sharing them with all of you.

Michelle Tang Jackson is a proud YPT Company Member, writer, and performer. She serves as an affiliated teaching artist with the Shakespeare Theatre Company and has taught for the Smithsonian Institute and Arts-Bridge’s Shakespeare Alive program at theMondaviCenter in California. She performs with the Faction of Fools, a theatre company devoted specifically to Commedia dell’ Arte. She developed a training workshop entitled Tactical Teaching: Strategies for Engaging Students of Diverse Talents and wrote and produced the interactive educational show Ballads Unbound. Michelle holds a B.A. in Theatre and a B.A. in English from the University of California at Davis.

 

Dawn Thomas is a professional actor and teaching artist.  She earned an MFA in Acting from Indiana University Bloomington and a BFA in Acting from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  Dawn is a member of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s educational acting troupe, Bill’s Buddies.  In the DC area, Dawn has worked as an actor with YPT and Unexpected Stage Company and in the Midwest at Brown County Playhouse.  Credits include Measure for Measure (Isabella), Marisol (Marisol), How the Other Half Loves (Fiona Foster) and  A Phoenix Too Frequent (Dynamene).

Patrick Torres is a professional educator and theatre director and is the current Middle and High School Program Director at Theatre Action Project (TAP) in Austin, TX.  Prior to joining TAP, he served as the Associate Artistic Director of Young Playwrights’ Theater. In 2009, he was named a Young Leader of Color in the field of arts education by the Theatre Communications Group. Patrick has a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Southern Mississippi.

Alex Vernon has been an actor with YPT since 2008, both in the super-fun in-class workshops as well as the annual Fall Express Tours. He recently performed with Adventure Theatre in their Singapore/Malaysia tour of Just a Dream: The Green Play. He holds a BS in Theatre from Middle Tennessee State University.

YPT’s Company also includes the Board of Directors, staff and Student Advisory Council.