Josh Costello
Josh Costello is MTC’s Artistic Director of Expanded Programs, and directed Lovers and Executioners in the Fall of 2007. He was the Education Director at Marin Shakespeare Company, and has taught at ACT, Cal Shakes, SF Shakes, UC Riverside, Cal State Long Beach, South Coast Rep, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Hollywood. Josh has directed dozens of plays up and down the west coast, including House of Lucky at The Magic, Hamlet at Shakespeare-by-the-Sea in LA, and his adaptation of The Rover for The Chance Theater in Orange County and for a live television broadcast on LA and Orange County's PBS affiliate. He collaborated on Romeo and Juliet: A Fire Ballet at The Crucible in Oakland. Josh was the founder and first Artistic Director of Impact Theatre. He holds a BFA in Theatre from Boston University, and an MFA in Directing from the University of Washington, Seattle.
Brady Boyd
Brady G. Boyd earned a BA in Theatre Performance from Notre Dame de Namur University where he was the Emerging Artist Talent Scholarship recipient for three years. For NDNU, he appeared in Dead Man Walking, (Guy Gilardi) Taming of the Shrew, (Petruccio) The Actors Voice, (Todd) Fiddler on the Roof, (Constable) Much Ado About Nothing, (Claudio) A Christmas Carol, (Young Marley) and Passages of Martin Luther King. (JFK) His senior year, he was an Irene Ryan Nominee for the American College Theatre Festival. For Windsor's Shakespeare on the Green (2005-6) he was cast in Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night and Taming of the Shrew. Other credits include Othello and Taming of the Shrew at Marin Shakespeare Company and as Michael Cassio in College of Marin's production of Othello. Most recently, he appeared in the west coast premiere of Based on a Totally True Story at New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. Brady is a member of Theater Bay Area.
Daveed Diggs
Daveed appeared in MTC's 2007 School Tour production of A Short History of Nearly Everything, playing the role of Charles Darwin. Full bio coming soon.
Lia Fischer
Lia Fischer is an accomplished performer and teacher. She has been seen on stages throughout the country like Second City, The Playground Theatre, The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, and been a mainstage performer with The Chicago Comedy Company. She has taught youth throughout the Bay Area and Chicagoland including San Jose Rep, Apple Tree Theatre in Chicago, Peninsula Youth Theatre in Mountain View, SF Shakespeare Festival in San Francisco, and is ecstatic to now be working with Marin Theatre Company for the second summer in a row. Lia has trained at the American Conservatory Theatre, is a graduate of Second City's Conservatory, and holds a BFA in Theatre from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Blanca Florido
Blanca is a very active performer and director/choreographer in Marin, and holds degrees in both theatre and music. She most recently directed The Boyfriend and is choreographing A Little Night Music for Novato Theater Company and Oliver for Stapleton Theatre. She teaches jazz dance at Dance With Sherry Studio. As a performer, Blanca appeared in dozens of stage plays and operas in Florida and on national tours before moving to California, where her most recent role was Queen Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her favorite memory is working with George Abbott as the lead in his last production, Frankie at the Coconut Grove Playhouse. Her opera roles have included Adele in Die Fledermaus and Musetta in La Bohème. She is also active in voiceover, and in her spare time Blanca coaches actors, singers and dancers, often being called by other directors as a scene and dialog coach.
Gary Grossman
Gary has been involved in his passion for the theatre since the tender age of 14, where he debuted in The King and I. Gary was recently seen at Marin Theatre Company in Lovers and Executioners as Guzman. He has recently completed his MFA in acting at Cal State University Long Beach, where he performed in the world premieres of The Dante Club”, as J.T. Fields, and in Panama, as Grandma at Cal Rep. Since coming to the Bay area, Gary has taught at Berkley Rep, Sonoma Rep, Marin Theatre Company and has designed a curriculum to teach drama techniques to at-risk teens in Marin county for Alter Theatre. He has also showed a talent for a wide variety of roles, which include Roy Cohn from Angels in America, to Touchstone in As You Like It, at Sonoma Repertory this past summer. Gary has also performed and taught at various improvisation comedy groups throughout his career in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Kim Harmon
Kim Harmon is a movement-based performance artist and educator based in San Francisco. She holds MA and MFA in Interdisciplinary Activist Performance from The Experimental Performance Institute and a BA in Theatre Arts from the University of Oregon. Recent performance credits include 51802 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (with the Erika Shuch Performance Project), and her devised sequence parts is parts: at CounterPULSE, Grey Area Gallery, and Space Gallery. Kim brings a history of teaching acting, directing, writing, and devised movement in Oregon and Los Angeles to her current acting and drama classes at MLK Middle School and Bayside Elementary through MTC's Expanded Programs Division, as well as dance and music classes at the MTC Summer Theatre Conservatory. Kim performed a comprehensive production of parts is parts: installations at the San Francisco Fringe Festival.
Laurie Keith
Laurie Keith received a BFA in Acting from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, with a minor in Broadcast News Journalism. She has also completed a Masters degree in Classical Acting from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She has studied with David Mamet, William H. Macy, Felicity Huffman and Cameron Manheim at the Atlantic Theatre Co. in NYC. She has taught in the Bay Area for the past 8 years. Her teaching credits include; Marin Theatre Company, Judy Berlin’s Kids on Camera, Marin Shakespeare Co., Foothill Theatre Co., New Conservatory Theatre Center and The Yes Program for Children’s Theatre. She has performed Off-Broadway at the Grove St. Playhouse, Atlantic Theatre Co., and LA MaMa ETC, where she wrote and directed an original one act. Her work is published in The Best Women’s Monologues ’98 (Smith &Kraus). Laurie toured 40 states performing with The National Theatre for the Performing Arts. She has also performed in the SF Bay Area with the Marin, San Francisco, Sierra, and Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festivals, as well as with Pacific Alliance Stage Co., Theatre Works and the Mountain Play Association. Television credits include; Pandora (Lifetime), A Private Affair (BET), Full (PBS), and New Living (KRON). Commercial credits include, Pearle Vision, Yahoo! and Levi’s. Her most recent voice over credits include, California State Fair and Lone Mountain Credit Union.
Jef Labes
Jef has been happily writing songs for musicals over the past 25 years and has had productions of The “It” Girl, The Odyssey, Tik Tok of Oz, Peer Gynt, Diana, the Musical, Little Women, Lickety Split, Rumpelstilskin, Bye Bye Bin Laden, Shoes, Alice Altogether, and Alice Underground. He teaches music to elementary students at the Dover School in San Pablo, and performs weekends at several Bay Area hot spots, including Bing Crosby’s in Walnut Creek, and Martuni’s in San Francisco. His best-known work has been with Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Saturday Night Live, and Heathcliff the Cat.
Susannah Martin
Susannah is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. For five years she served as the Joint Artistic Director of Paducah Mining Co., a San Francisco-based theatre ensemble that produced acclaimed work by established playwrights and devised original pieces on such complex matters as domestic terrorism, spousal abuse, and poverty in America. Ms. Martin has been honored to receive two Dean Goodman Choice Awards for directing in 1999 and 2002. Recently she assistant directed for London-based theatre artist Irina Brown on Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, and directed a critically acclaimed production of Strindberg's Miss Julie at UC Davis.
Julia McNeal
An award-winning actress, Julia McNeal has been appearing on stage and screen in New York, Los Angeles and regionally for over 20 years. Bay Area credits include: Enid in Roulette at the SF Playhouse, Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire at Pacific Alliance Stage Company, Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Actors Theatre of San Francisco, Alma in Summer and Smoke at Center Repertory Theatre, and as Stella Kerouac and Carolyn Cassady in Marin Theatre Company's Visions of Kerouac. Julia was a founding member of the Obie Award-winning, Cucaracha Theatre in NYC, where she originated many roles including Edie in Richard Caliban's Famine Plays. Other New York theatre credits include the acclaimed Requiem for a Heavyweight at the Kraine Theatre and Neena Beber's Tomorrowland at Soho Rep. Los Angeles: Elsa in Ellen McLaughlin's Days and Nights Within. (DramaLogue Award)Regional: Viola in Twelfth Night, Monmouth, ME; Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker, Louisville, KY. Notable screen credits include: Pearl in Hal Hartley's The Unbelievable Truth, Sarah in Steve Kloves' Flesh and Bone, Annie, in Adrienne Shelly’s Urban Legend, as well as appearances on Law and Order and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
Julia has been a teacher and director for MTC’s summer conservatory for the last 4 years. She is a Guest Artist at Tamalpais High School, where she recently co-directed an acclaimed production of Dead Man Walking. Other teaching credits: Acting: Windhover Center for the Performing Arts in Massachusetts; Yoga: Dance Space Center, NYC. She also coaches private students – both adults and teens. Training: B.A. in Dramatic Arts from Dartmouth College; Meisner Technique with Chris Fields in L.A.; Linklater Voice Technique and Shakespeare with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MASS; Classical Scene Study with Ada Brown Mather, NYC; Modern Scene Study with Anthony Abeson, NYC. Dance: Jazz and Modern with Lynn Simonson, Sasha Soreff and others, NYC; Ballet with Stefan Wenta, L.A.
Amanda Mitchell
Amanda Mitchell has been acting and teaching throughout the Bay Area for the past 3 years. She is a teaching artist with TheatreWorks, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Woman's Will, Peninsula Youth Theatre, New Conservatory Theatre and, now, Marin Theatre Company. As a performer, Amanda has had the privilege of working with such companies as California Conservatory Theatre, Town Hall Theatre Company, AtmosTheatre, theatreQ, Broadway West and Theatre of All Possibilities. After graduating with a BA in Theatre, Amanda is thrilled to spend her days teaching and directing young actors from all over the Bay Area.
Christopher Morrison
Christopher Morrison is a director/performer/choreographer who has many
international and local credits. He has performed with Cirque du Soleil, was
the Outreach Coordinator for the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, taught in
Bathurst Australia and is now an Artist in Residence at the Los Angeles
County High School for the Arts. He has just completed his first short film
(written and directed) Less Than Kind which is a Sundance hopeful.
Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
Peter Sinn Nachtrieb is a San Francisco-based playwright whose works include boom, Hunter Gatherers, Colorado, Meaningless, and The Amorphous Blob. Hunter Gatherers received the 2007 American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg New Play Award for best new play to premiere outside of New York and the 2007 Will Glickman Prize for best new play in the Bay Area. His work has been seen at Ars Nova and SPF in New York, the Bailiwick in Chicago, W.H.A.T. in New England, Dad’s Garage in Atlanta and the Magic Theatre, Killing My Lobster and Impact Theatre in the Bay Area. He is currently under commission from Encore Theatre Company (SF) and South Coast Rep and is a 2008 Resident Playwright at the Playwrights Foundation, San Francisco. Peter holds a degree in Theater and Biology from Brown and an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He likes to promote himself online at www.peternachtrieb.com
Ryan O'Donnell
Ryan O'Donnell has taught in the Bay Area and in Chicago for 10 years, specializing in improvisation, scene study, playwriting, and storybuilding. He has directed plays with kids of all ages -- most recently directing Oliver at Marin Theatre Company’s summer camp. Along with teaching at Marin Theatre Company, he also is currently on the faculty at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where he does outreach in juvenile halls with at-risk youth. He is an actor who performs regularly, and holds an MFA in Acting from DePaul.
Jon Tracy
Jon Tracy works works with such companies as American Conservatory Theatre, Magic Theater, Aurora Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Z Space, AlterTheater, Woman's Will, New Conservatory Theatre, Oberlin Dance Collective, Missouri St. Theatre, Napa Valley Repertory Theatre, Harbor Theatre, Traveling Lantern Theatre Company and the San Francisco, Marin, Stinson, Napa and Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festivals. He is the recipient of the Kennedy Center Meritorious Achievement Award, fifteen North Bay Arty Awards, and a Sacramento Elly Award and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. A graduate of Solano College Theatre’s Actor Training Program, Jon is an Affiliate Artist with The Foothill Theatre Company, a Company Member of PlayGround, The Director of Artistic Development for The SF Playhouse, and a founder of Darkroom Productions.
Anthony Veneziale
Anthony Veneziale is the Associate Artistic Director and a founder of Back House Productions in NYC (www.backhouseproductions.org). Stage credits include: Servicemen (The New Group); Seven Rabbits on a Pole (Urban Stages), The Lake’s Edge (ATF) and Freestyle Love Supreme (Ars Nova). Veneziale is the creator of Freestyle Love Supreme, an improvised hip-hop rap show that has toured the US Comedy Arts Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and this summer in Montreal at the Just for Laughs Festival. TV credits: All My Children (ABC); Sex and the City (HBO) Very Funny Live (TBS): Film: Che! (dir. Steven Soderbergh) and The Top Floor (an independent film which he also directed). Anthony is currently working on a new version of The Electric Company with Sesame Workshop and has lent his voice to many TV and radio commercials. He recently appeared in MTC’s The Subject Tonight is Love.
