This January 13 – 15 we’re bringing you our second annual Matchstick Series: Strange Tongues, a night of short plays, inspired by 7 works of poetry, and imagined by the PlayLab class of 2016. The event will take place at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the historic home for groundbreaking works of poetry, music, theater, and visual arts.
We’ve enlisted an out-of-this-world roster of designers, directors, and actors to create these pieces with our playwrights. Learn all about them below. Tickets are limited and won’t go on sale until late December, but you can get early access by making a tax-deductible year-end-donation to Pipeline. Learn More!
CREATIVE TEAM
Producer…………………………….Natalie Gershtein
Stage Manager…………………………..Kristy Bodall
Music Director/Composer…………………Chris Ryan
Production Designer…………….Christopher Bowser
Costume Designer………..Heather McDevitt Barton
Production Assistants…Zach Donovan, Jenna Rush
DIRECTORS
Alison Beatty
Sash Bischoff
Liz Carlson
Tom Costello
Felicia Lobo
Jesse Thurston
Sarah Elizabeth Wansley
ENSEMBLE
MEET OUR DIRECTORS
Alison Beatty has been the School Artistic Director at the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School for the past 6 years, where she is responsible for programming, producing, and overseeing a robust season of student shows as well as 2 Atlantic for Kids productions annually. She has had the pleasure of directing and/ or choreographing several ATC for Kids shows, including: The Velveteen Rabbit, Camp Kappawanna, Ivy and Bean the Musical (National Tour), Tilly the Trickster, The Hundred Dresses, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, Miss Nelson is Missing, No Dogs Allowed, Really Rosie, Strega Nona, The Big Stew, and You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown in addition to collaborating on many projects including plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Brecht in theaters throughout NYC. As a faculty member of the Atlantic, Alison teaches Company Class, in which she mentors the advanced level students through forming their own theater company and producing an inaugural production as an ensemble, and Moment Lab. She is currently pursuing an M.Ed. and M.A. in Psychological Counseling at Columbia University.
Sash Bischoff is a director whose credits include The Visit (Resident Director of upcoming China Tour with the original Broadway cast), Shrek (National Tour), Long Division (Portland Center Stage), Candyland: The Last Train to Babylon (Ars Nova), Life (Ars Nova), Taboo (Ars Nova), The White Party (Clubbed Thumb), Babs the Dodo (Williamstown), Swept (Williamstown), Talk to Me of Love (Williamstown), Cold (Williamstown), Seven Categories (Williamstown), The Old Fever-New Things (Terra Nova), #Serials (The Flea), Mine (Chautauqua), The Milkman, The Paperboy, Evening TV (Ugly Rhino), Anything for You (Atlantic), A Social Event (Atlantic), Urinetown (PST), and She Loves Me (PST). 2015-16 R&D Group Member, 2011 SDC Traube Fellow, 2015 Beatrice Terry Residency Finalist, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab Member. Upcoming: Associate Director of the International tour of Shrek, Assistant Director of The Gabriels at The Public, The Age of Man (NYU Grad), The White Party (National Black Theater). BA Princeton University.
Liz Carlson is a is a director and producer in New York City and the Artistic Director for Naked Angels. Her primary focus is the development of new plays and musicals. Liz has worked at Ars Nova, The Dramatists Guild, EST, The Flea, Keen Company, Manhattan School of Music, MTC, The New Group, New York Stage & Film, Playwrights Horizons, The Playwrights Realm, Signature Theater Company, Studio 42, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and more. MFA: The New School for Drama. 2013 Drama League Directors Project Fellow.
Tom Costello has been a freelance director since graduating from NYU/Tisch. He has directed Pipeline’s productions of Sleepless City by Tim Chawaga, Shakespeare the Dead by Alex Mills (Dream Up Festival), and Bubble and Squeak by Evan Twohy, which was a finalist in the 2011 Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival. He has been a Resident Director at The Flea since 2011, where he has directed Smoke by Kim Davies, The Wundelsteipen (and other difficult roles for young people); #serials@theflea: Lucifer ex Machina by Sevan K. Greene, Undesirables by Jeff Ronan; The Flying Latke (co-director, 2011). Elsewhere, he has directed Libra Theater Company’s The Thirteenth Commandment by Joshua H. Cohen and has directed numerous productions for Atlantic Acting School where he is also a member of the faculty.
Felicia Lobo is a Brooklyn based director and co-artistic director of Insomnium Theatre Company. Recent directing adventures include Night of the Living Beanie Babies (Insomnium), Abduct, Transfer, Deliver (Ampersand Artists) and The Love of the Nightingale (Insomnium). Other recent theatre work includes The Exalted (BAM Next Wave, Dir. Anne Bogart), The Mermaiden; or, the Monogamy (SSSS, Dir. Andrew Neisler) and The Gray Man (Pipeline, Dir. Andrew Neisler). She is also an Artistic Associate with Pipeline and is forever grateful for their dedication to Serious Make Believe. BFA: NYU Tisch Drama, Atlantic Acting School.
Jesse Thurston is a director and performer. For Pipeline, he has helped to develop plays by Salty Brine, Sarah Einspanier and Jeremy Wine. He has also recently directed for Atlantic Theatre Company, Tiny Rhino and Bookshop Workshops. He is a company member of Story Pirates and a proud graduate of Northwestern University.
Sarah Elizabeth Wansley is a New York-based director. She received her MFA in Directing from UCSD under acclaimed Romanian director Gabor Tompa and a BA in English from Columbia University (summa cum laude). At UCSD she radically re-imagined Seamus Heaney’s The Burial at Thebes and Brecht’s Drums in the Night, developed site-specific work for La Jolla Playhouse’s WoW festival and directed for UCSD’s Wagner New Play Festival. In New York, Sarah has directed at EST / Youngblood, The Flea Theater and the NY Fringe. As Artistic Director of Aporia Theater she directed Patrick Barrett’s Follow Me Down and her own translation of Büchner’s Woyzeck. Lincoln Center Directors Lab (2011), Drama League Directing Fellow (2015).
