West Pier / Quai Ouest by Bernard-Marie KOLTES directed by Jay Scheib

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
PERFORMANCES BY

Vanessa Burke (Co-Producer / Sound Operator / Singer)
was most recently seen as Ophelia and Horatio in The Hamlet Project at LaMaMa e.t.c. She's having a great time playing a few different roles in this production, too, and would like to thank everyone involved for their hard work. Special thanks to her family for their constant love and support.

Tom Day (Abad)
has appeared in such theatre productions as In The Blood, Stripped, and FunBox. He has also been spotted on Law & Order, Law & Order: C.I., and All My Children as well as the film Disappearing Acts. Tom thanks Quiggs, Mleem, Baa, Louchy, Bloops', Bisc and Bangst for their love and support.

Marina Garcia-Gelpe (Cecile)
lives and works as a junior high school teacher of language Arts in NYC. She has been a movement worker with United Farm Workers of America with Cesar Chavez, and the American Indian Movement with Dennis Banks. She has worked actively for Women’s Welfare Rights, with the Black Panther Party, and worked on many Presidential Campaigns. Onstage, she has worked with Holly Near, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Will Geer and Daniel Valdez of Teatro Campesino and was a member of Teatro Las Cucarachas, performing at universities and prisons, including San Quentin. For the last 15 Years, she has taught elementary school in New Mexico and California. Her favorite theatre roles include Madame Rose in Gypsy. Julie in Showboat, Frume Sarah in Fiddler on the Roof, Ella Peterson in Bells are Ringing, and featured roles in Ain’t Misbehavin, South Pacific, Big River, The Music Man, and Follies, all with Musical Theatre Southwest. She has also been featured in two one-woman shows on San Francisco Television and has been a cabaret performer and songwriter for the last 30 years.

Dan Illian (Rodolfe)
New York favorites: Drums et. al, in Self Defense (New Georges) Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard (Salt Theater), Selden & Rosedale in The House of Mirth (The Charm School), Benedict Arnold in The American Revolution (Inverse Theater) and Leo in Summer Play (Clubbed Thumb). Dan was a member of the Guthrie Theater Acting Company for four seasons, favorites: Gerald in A Woman of No Importance, (dir. Garland Wright), Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice (dir. Risa Brainin) and Florizel in The Winter’s Tale (dir. Douglas Hughes). Other Regional credits: Claude in An Empty Plate at the Café du Grande Boeuf, Schon & Jack the Ripper in The LuLu plays and Sgt. Cuff in The Moonstone.

Krassin Yordanov (Fak)
Recent New York theater works include Dr Rank in I'm So Sorry for Everything-adptation of Henrik Ibsen's Doll's House at The Performing Garage; Lord Rivers in Andrei Serban's Richard The Third by William Shakespeare at La Mama ETC and Pozzo in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket.

Michael Stumm (Koch)
lives and works in New York City. You can see him in the movies in Swoon, Ernest Goes to Africa, The Golden Boat, and I Shot Andy Warhol. On stage he's worked with Michael Greif, James Lapine, Richard Foreman, Peter Sellars, and for 15 years with Liz Lecompte at the Wooster Group. For the past 5 years he's been teaching at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College.

Aimee Phelan (Claire)
Is delighted to be working with Jay Scheib again after performing in his productions of Fernsehen/Ein Vormittag in der Freiheit at Berlin's Volksbuhne, 3 Stock Theater, and The Power of the Dog (Ilona) at Columbia University's Horace Mann Theatre. She recently played Masha in The Three Sisters directed by Cindy Croot for the Chekhov Now Festival at the Connelly Theatre. As a dancer she has worked for and been inspired by Bill T. Jones, The Martha Graham Dance Co., Maja Lorkovic Dance Theatre. In 2002 she attended workshop/classes with Pina Bausch's Tanz Theatre Wuppertal at the Theatre de la Ville in Paris. She is a 2001 graduate of Columbia University's School of the Arts.

Zishan Ugurlu (Monique)
is an actress-in-residence at LaMama ETC in New York City, with which she has recently performed in numerous productions, including The Trojan Women, directed by Andrei Serban and composed by Elizabeth Swados, in which she was featured as Helen of Troy. She has toured to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Austria, Italy, and Greece with the production. With Ellen Stewart, she performed as Draupadi in Draupadi, as well as in Trancrebi and Erminia, Oedipus Rex, and Yumus. Under the direction of Robert Woodruff, she played Carmen in Godard - Distant and Right, which was awarded by the International Nanterre Theatre Festival in Paris. She has been featured in two international films, The Letter, which showed in the Cannes, Argentina, and Calcutta Film Festivals and Dog Race, which was awarded the Martin Scorsese, Grand Marnier, and W. Johnson Awards at the New York Film Festival. Other recent roles include the world premier of Dario Fo’s Peasant’s Bible at Atlanta’s 7Stages, Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, Desdemona in Othello, Ayline in The Master Builder, Antigone in Antigone, and the Featured Singer in Musica alla Turca. She has a Ph.D. in Theatre from Ankara University as well as an M.F.A. in Acting from Columbia University in New York, to which she was the first international student ever selected to enter their program. Special thanks to Ellen Stewart, Genji Ito (who is so far away, yet so close), her family (honey drops in Istanbul)..

STAFF

Laura Butchy (Dramaturg)
is happy to be working with Jay & company again after collaborating on Herakles at Chashama in 2000. An MFA candidate in dramaturgy, she has worked on numerous shows at Columbia University. Other New York work includes Shakespeare in the Park productions of A Winter's Tale and Julius Ceasar. Currently she is dramaturging Peculiar Works Projects' Don Quixote Project, a multi-media work that will take over the HERE arts center in the fall.

Leah Gelpe, (Video and Sound Design)
Leah Gelpe is an American-Israeli independent filmmaker, video artist and sound designer. She is currently making a sound design for David Rabe’s Black Monk at Yale Repertory Theatre. Her most recent work in New York City includes the sound for Robert Woodruff’s production of Saved by Edward Bond which was produced by Theatre for a New Audience, NY NY, the video and sound design of Herakles, directed by Jay Scheib at Chashama, and the sound and video design for Godard, (distant and right) written by Jay Scheib and premiering at the Ohio Theatre under the direction of Robert Woodruff. Godard (distant and right) went on to win both the peer and professional jury at the Festival des Jeunes at Theatre Nanterre des Amandiers, Paris.
Her recent regional and international credits include sound design for Ibsen’s Lady from the Sea at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle Washington under the direction of Kate Whorisky, video design for Sie Gestatten! at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (3. stock), Berlin., video design for Glass/Mohn after texts by Tennessee Williams, Paul Celan and Walter Benjamin co-produced by Pont Mühely and Theater MU in Budapest, and the sound and video design for The War Plays by Edward Bond at the Mozarteum in Salzburg Austria. Her sound play for radio based on Gertrude Stein’s Not Sightly was released in 1999 by Voys Editions and has been played on radio world wide.
Her three short films Glass Teeth, Julia, or Alone She Cries, and Also Lies, have been screened in a variety of venues including: Anthology Film Archives, Oakstreet Cinema and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Andrew Lieberman, (Room and Clothes Design)
Recent opera projects: Powder Her Face at the Long Beach Opera; L’Etoile at Glimmerglass, New York City Opera; Tears of Knife and Voice of the Forest at the Henry St. Chamber Opera; Roverto Devereux at New York City Opera; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Italian Girl in Algiers, The Rake’s Progress at Wolf Trap. Recent theatre projects: Jaques Brel is Alive and Well and LIving in Paris at Santa Fe Stages; Cascando at Division 13; I Worry at Woolly Mammoth; The Trojan Woman at Juilliard; Copenhagen at Syracuse Stage; Blacksheep Mom at PS 122; The Importance of Being Earnest at Indiana Rep; Love’s Lavour’s Lost at Shakespeare Santa Cruz. Upcoming projects: La Perichole at Long Beach Opera; Measure for Measure at California Shakespeare; West Pier for the Koltès Festival; Honk Jr! at the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre; I Worry at Santa Fe Stages, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville and Copenhagen at Santa Fe Stages. Andrew is the recipient of a 2002 Princess Grace Theatre Fellowship as well as the Princess Grace Foundation-USA’s Fabergé Theater Award

Liselle Mei (Video Collaborator / Cinematographer)
is an international writer/director. Born and raised in London, she studied film making at New York University_s TISCH School of the Arts, graduating with honors in 1996. She won the Directing Craft Award and the 1st place Wasserman Award for her graduating film, “Ana: Portrait in Days”. The film toured the world festival circuit, won the dignified Empire State Award for Best Experimental Short and a Student Academy Award nomination. Liselle has written several original feature length screenplays, worked as a freelance writer, director and videographer for various museums and institutions, as well as produced and directed a number of her own shortfilms- the most recent called “The Lower East Side Stories”- a series of four portraits of women living in the Lower East Side of New York City.

Jeremy Morris, Producer and Lighting Design
Jeremy Morris’ most recent off-broadway lighting design was for John Patrick Shanely’s Dirty Story with LAByrinth Theatre. Previously Mr. Morris was the Projection Editor for The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui directed by Simon McBurney with Al Pacino, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi... Produced by the National Actors theatre at Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, Pace University. Previous production work includes Lighting Supervisor for Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Dance Company, domestic You Walk? tour. Lighting design for theatre and dance regionally and internationally include: Herakles directed by Jay Scheib at Chashama Theatre, NYC, Godard (distant and right) Theatre Nanterre-Amandiers, Paris; Monkey in the Middle, written by Bighde Mullins and directed by Mark Wing-Davey, Atlas Room Theatre, NYC. Mr. Morris holds an MFA in Design from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Barbara Sauermann (Stage Manager)
has worked in any capacity on and off the stage. She is a founding member of the experimental theatre company Alternative Theatre Machine (www.atm-nyc.org) and is happy to be a part of this wonderful production.

Marion Schoevaert (Translator of West Pier)
A Founding Member of In Parentheses Theater company. She has directed, translated and adapted 4 Short Plays by Samuel Beckett, The Annual Surrealist conference on Eroticism, The Interview by Michel Vinaver, West Pier by Bernard Marie Koltes, Corset by Jean Luc Lagarce, the Unknown Guest by Olivier Cadiot, Androcles and the Lion with the New York Philharmonic and an accelerated version of The Marriage of Figaro by Beaumarchais. She is alumnae of Lincoln Center Director Lab, a Member of Soho Think Tank at the Ohio Theater in NYC.
She is the co-Producer of the Koltes NY festival, the Editor and Head of Translation for the Koltes Festival where she is directing In the Solitude of Cotton Fields. Her translation of the Interview by Vinaver was published in Theater by Yale in 1997. She has also published articles such as Translations in America in Ubu (European bilangual theater magazine).

Jay Scheib, (Director)
Recent projects in Berlin include MargarethHamlet, a choregraphic evening for solo performer with guitar; an original adaptation of Aeschylus’ trilogy: ORESTEIA AMERICA AMERICA commissioned by the Exiles Festival at the Berliner Staatsbank; two plays by Lothar Trolle Fernsehen and Vormittag in der Freiheit at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, in collaboration with BAT Studio. Other international credits include: Glass/Mohn after texts by Tennessee Williams, Paul Celan and Walter Benjamin co-produced by Pont Mühely and Theater MU in Budapest; a workshop adaptation of Antonioni’s film Red Desert with Krétákor Szinhaz, Budapest; The War Plays by Edward Bond, In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields by Bernard-Marie Koltès, and a studio production titled Bartleby, Wallstreet: NEBRASKA after texts by Herman Melville, and the music of Bruce Springsteen at the Mozarteum, Salzburg Austria. New York credits include Falling and Waving, a digital opera composed by David Lang, with libretto by Ron Jones, co-produced by Brooklyn Academy of Music and Arts at St Ann’s in Brooklyn; Herakles after Euripides and Heiner Müller, at Chashama, The Power of the Dog by Howard Barker, Othello, and Mistressjulie, after texts by Strindberg.
Winner of the Richard Sherwood Award from the Mark Taper Forum and Ahmanson Theatre, L.A.. Scheib holds an A.B. summa cum laude in theatre arts from the University of Minnesota, an MFA in theatre directing from Columbia University, and an alumni of the SoHo Rep writer/director Lab in NY. Scheib is currently a guest professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

April Sweeney (Collaborator)
is happy to be making another play with Mr. Scheib. Recent performance credits include Herakles and Power of the Dog (Jay Scheib), Three Sister and Uncle Vanya (ChekovNOW Festival), The Grapes of Wrath (Arkansas Repertory Theatre), Godard (distant and right) (New York/Paris, Theatre Amandiers), The Idiot (Manhattan Ensemble Theatre). April can also be seen in Leah Gelpe’s short film Julia, or Alone She Cried.

Barbara Sauermann (stage manager)