Who are the Directors?

WORLDWIDE LAB MEMBERS

Jocelyn Yuchia Chang is a Taipei-based theatre director, playwright and curator. She is also an energy healer and meditation leader. Her theater research focuses on being “present” in acting and directing. She has been the Artistic Director of ESP-I Performing Arts Group in Taiwan since 2009. (Taipei, Taiwan)

 

 

Chang Nai Wen works internationally as a director. Her work is driven by a belief in direct dialogue to create a diversity of stories rarely told on stage. Since 2008, Chang has created site-specific and participatory formats that bring borders of any sorts into question with her company Sisyphos, der Flugelefant (SdF) in Berlin. In addition, she has developed a method of co-directing with the international directors’ collective the World Wide Lab in New York, Rome, Syros and Taipei since 2011. Chang is a member of the International Forum of Theatertreffen in Berlin, the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab in New York, a board member of Berlin Independent Performing Arts Association (LAFT Berlin) and a founding member of the World Wide Lab.

Laura Caparrotti has a Master degree in Performing Arts, Cinema and Theatre History from the University “La Sapienza” in Rome. She also studied independently with Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo. After ten years of professional theatre in Italy, she relocated to New York, where she collaborated with Carnegie Hall, The Kitchen,  Cherry Lane Theatre, The Walter Reade Theater, the cell, Flea, The Embassy of Italy in DC, Vassar College and Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimo’, among other venues. She is also a playwright, a journalist, a teacher, a lecturer, a consultant and dialect coach for Italian (HBO Boardwalk Empire).  She is member of the Director’s Lab at Lincoln Center, of the SDC, League of Professional Theater Women and the Founding Artistic Director of the Italian Theater Company in NY Kairos Italy Theater. In 2013, Laura created In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, the first Italian Theater Festival to take place in all 5 NY Boroughs. Laura is the recipient of the 2016 Dante Award from the American Association of Teachers of Italian for her work on spreading Italian Culture in the United States. Celebrating almost 30 years of professional theater, nowadays Laura continues to work as a director, actress, journalist, teacher, lecturer, consultant, dialect-coach, curator with an Italian accent.

Evan T. Cummings is a New York City-based director who specializes in new work and international collaboration. He is a company member and director with The Private Theatre where he directed readings of Blue Heart Afternoon by Nigel Gearing and A. Rey Pamatmat’s noir play The Shotgun Message and workshopped a new project exploring small town America. Evan has assisted at Pittsburgh CLO and Dallas Theatre Center, and directed at Queens Theatre, The Culture Project, The Lark, Geva Theatre, and The Walnut Street Theatre. Evan was a Directing Fellow at Geva Theatre and was an SDCF Observer for Davis McCallum on Samuel D. Hunter’s CLARKSTON. With the World Wide Lab, Evan co-directed his own original play Imperium, in Rome, and, in Taipei, co-created the site-specific festival In Transit. Evan is a graduate of the drama school at Carnegie Mellon University, an SDC Associate, and a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. (New York City)

 Annie G. Levy is a theatre maker whose work often revolves around modern mythology, historical turning points and scientific breakthroughs. Annie is a founding member of World Wide Lab and has co-directed as part of the collective since 2011. She has also created and directed new work with theatre incubator warner | shaw, the Northwood Theatre Company and various other NYC theatres, including City Center, Dixon Place, HERE, The New Ohio Theatre, Theatre at the Tank and Access Theatre. Annie has received a FAIR assistantship at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, was the 2012 Paul Artist Resident at Indiana University, Bloomington and was a 2010 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Uptown/Downtown Artist. She is a member of the Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab and an associate member of SDC. Annie is currently the head of the MFA Directing Program at the University of Alabama. (New York City and Tuscaloosa, AL)

Esther Jun is originally from Edmonton, Alberta, but studied acting in Vancouver and New York City. She moved to Toronto in 1999 where she did mainly commercials and television. Deciding she would be better off making her own work, she packed up and moved to London, England in 2003, where she completed her BA (Hons) in Directing at Drama Centre London. Upon her second return to Toronto and after much letter writing, volunteering and generally introducing herself to anyone who would listen, Esther began working with a diverse range of companies across Ontario such as fu-Gen, Cahoots, Obsidian, Nightwood , Soulpepper and Buddies in Bad Times. In 2015 Esther finally returned to her first love, the classics, and was a Neil Munro Intern Director at the Shaw Festival and in 2016 was part of the Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction at The Stratford Festival. New Play Development however, keeps pulling her back in and she is currently the Assistant Artistic Director of Tarragon Theatre. (Toronto, Canada)

Orly Rabinyan, trained as a director in London and in Israel. Currently she is developing Site & Recite, based on the text of The Song of Songs. Previous work includes the London premiere of Honeypot by British playwright Julia Pascal. In Tel Aviv she wrote & directed A Drop in the Sea, and adapted & directed  the play 100 as a physical piece for 13 actors. She received the Habima Award for Entrepreneurship in the Theatre for directing at a British political drama festival co-produced by Israel’s Habima and London’s National Theatre. Orly is a member of The Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. In 2011 she created a mini-lab in Tel Aviv concentrating on her adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s The Man with The Flower in his Mouth, which she continues to investigate this year at World Wide Lab event in New York. (Tel Aviv, Israel)

Vidhu SinghVidhu Singh is an Indian-born theater director and educator who lives in San Francisco. She completed a Master’s degree in Dramatic Art from the University of California at San­­­­­­ta Barbara, and a doctorate in Theater from the University ­­­of Hawaii at Manoa with a focus on Asian (Japanese, Chinese, South-East Asian and South Asian) theater. During her doctoral research in India, she became the only scholar to document a vibrant regional experimental theater movement of the 90s, focusing on three prominent theater companies, Ankanam, Rang Vidhushak and Koothu-p-pattarai. Vidhu is a graduate of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and a founding member of World Wide Lab. She has worked as the Managing Director of the Asian American Theater Company and taught theater at Foothill College. She is a resident artist at Brava Theater and a core member of Theatre without Borders. Vidhu founded RasaNova Theater in 2004 to produce bold new plays from South Asia and its diaspora. Recent productions included the smash hit Aditi Kapil’s Rickshaw Girl with Bay Area Children’s Theatre, Saviana Stanescu’s Waxing West and Shahid Nadeem’s Burqavaganza at Brava Theater, and Dancing on Glass by Ram Ganesh Kamatham selected for the National Asian American Theater Festival. (San Francisco/New Delhi, India)

Jay Stern Recent theater work include the world premieres of The Worth of Women (created with Lab director Laura Caparrotti), Hell is For Real, The Bardy Bunch: the War of the Families Partridge and Brady, and 20th Century Photograph, created with director Veronica Wigg. Through the World Wide Lab, Jay co-created the world premiere of Alien Attack! with director Chang Nai Wen at Teatro Due in Rome an adaptation of Agamemnon with director Ioli Andreadi at the Irondale Center in Brooklyn, and Love is a Cancer with Laura Caparrotti at the Apollo Theater in Syros, Greece. Jay has  directed three feature films, and is shooting his fourth feature in Wales this year. In addition, he is the producer of the Iron Mule short comedy film festival, which has been screening in New York City since 2002. (New York City)

 Laura Tesman  is a director, writer, and collaborative theater maker. Recent and upcoming projects  include the world premieres of Io (Ancient Theatre of Philippi, Kavala, Greece), La Folie by Heloise Wilson (Tow Center for the Arts), Mythos: Kuafu & Pinocchio(Guling Street Avant-Garde Theatre, Taipei City, Taiwan); Bound (4th Street Theater), and Nocturnal: Portrait of a New York Night in Nine Movements (New Ohio, FringeNYC). Works collaboratively created as a part of World Wide Lab include In Transit (435 Art Zone, Taipei City Taiwan), Echo with Chang Nai Wen and Evan Tsitsias (Apollo Theater, Syros, Greece); Kuafu with Jocelyn Yuchia Chang (Teatro Due, Rome; Circolo Everest, Milan; Opificio dei Sensi, Verona, Italy); The Story of an Hour with Jocelyn Yuchia Chang and Orly Noa Rabinyan and Volupté (Irondale Center, Brooklyn). She is the founding co-artistic director of Spleen Theater and an associate member of the Stage Directors & Choreographers Society.  She directs the BA in Theater at Brooklyn College where she teaches embodied performance, dramatic literature, and devised and collaborative theatre-making. (New York City)

Evan Tsitsias works as a director, producer, writer, performer and educator.  His plays include Strange Mary Strange,  Aftershock,  Unstuck and The Murmuration of Starlings and the musical Inge(new). His short film BAGGED aired on the CBC and DC Shorts Film Fest. He’s trained and worked internationally  (including specialty training with Augusto Boal in Forum Theatre/Theatre of the Oppressed) and is the Artistic Director/Co -Founder of the Directors Lab North and Eclipse Theatre Company in Toronto.  His work has been published in Germany, US and Canada.  He is an associate member of the SDC, a member of the Tarragon Playwrights Unit, Playwrights Guild of Canada and the Lincoln Centre and Chicago Directors Lab. He has spent 5 years at Theatre Under the Stars in Houston, where he has worked as an Associate in the Education and Community Engagement Department, has been the Artistic Assistant for the company and is also Head of the Acting Department at the Humphrey’s School of Music Theatre. He is also the Artistic Director of Eclipse Theatre Company.  www.evantsitsias.com  (Toronto, Canada/Houston,Texas)