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The Children
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ELLIOT NORTON AWARD: Outstanding Actress, Paula Plum
ELLIOT NORTON NOMINEES: Outstanding Actress, Karen MacDonald, and Outstanding Production, Mid-size (Elliot Norton Awards 2020) Scenic Design: Cristina Todesco Lighting Design: Jeff Adelberg Sound Design: David Remedios Costume & Wig Design: Rachel Padula-Shufelt Properties: Madeline Hartrich Stage Manager: Rachel Sturm |
Photos by Maggie Hall Photography
It falls to this wondrous cast, with expert timing and toxic delivery, under Boice's intricate direction, to fulfill the author's ends. Kirkwood's writing has been described as Caryl Churchillian or Harold Pinteresque but is more in keeping with the work of Edward Albee, as in his A Delicate Balance with its own atmosphere of existential dread...this play is a stunner."
–Susan Mulford, South Shore Critic
...[Boice is] a director whose work has become must-see theater...[Karen] MacDonald and [Paula] Plum's chemistry is beyond words...Boice knows what she’s doing, as does her design team. I wondered throughout why they weren’t doing more with lighting throughout the play. I wasn’t wondering by the end of it. [Playwright] Kirkwood and Boice both sense when to hold back and when to push forward. When to delight in the human comedy and when to make it obvious that the stakes are too high for easy and instant gratification."
–Ed Siegel, WBUR-The ARTery
...an affecting drama, thanks to a combination of the playwright's excellence at her craft, Director Bryn Boice's focus, and the trio of Elliot Norton Award-winning actors whose portrayals constitute a collective master class...Boice gives The Children a pace that mirrors real life. Moments of mundane conversation tick by at average speed, while awkward silences when conversation lags drag the second hand on a slow rotation. Suddenly, hot button topics flare up, quickly accelerating the dialogue and ratcheting up the emotion. In each instance, the actors react accordingly, with unmatched verisimilitude. Plum and MacDonald respond to each other as scene partners almost as if they are two halves of one person...and Allen finds a nuanced way to show that Robin connects with something in each of them."
–Nancy Grossman, Broadway World
[A] strong production...there are lighthearted moments peppered throughout...Director Bryn Boice is attuned to the script's nuances, and knows when to sprinkle bits of humor into what the Epistle of Jude calls, "the blackness of darkness." But be forewarned, this is a play that wards off sunshine. It commands us to drum up courage in the face of discomfort...The three performers work masterfully with one another."
–Robert Israel, The Arts Fuse
Kirkwood throws several difficult moments at the cast and director Bryn Boice responded to them with composed aplomb. Apropos of nothing, the actors are made to line dance a routine that Hazel made up at a party years ago. Under a lesser director, this scene could have been embarrassing or haphazard. Instead, Boice made the incorporation of the choreography make sense to the scene...We saw Rose, Hazel and Robin celebrating life with their bodies. Boice treats the preparation and eating of food, smoking of cigarettes, and excretion of bodily waste the same way: affirmations of life."
–Kitty Drexel, NETheatreGeek
Admissions
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Scenic Design: Patrick Lynch
Lighting Design: Steve McClellan Sound Design: Charles Cofone Costume Design: Amanda Downing Carney Properties: Jess Hill Stage Manager: Jenna Worden |
[A] knock-out cast...director Bryn Boice, Commonwealth Shakespeare’s associate artistic director, adds the laser-sharp focus."
--Channing Gray, The Providence Journal
[E]ntertaining whiplash. In her Gamm debut, Director Bryn Boice...gets the tone and texture of the action and the ideas just right, coming from a place of understanding for the characters and their feelings. Moreover, the actors portraying those feelings could not be better."
--Kathie Raleigh, The Independent
[E]xceptional performances...Right from the beginning it is very clear that this play is going to pull no punches...[Wendy] Overly and [Deb] Martin are absolutely hysterical...Jacob Osborne is perfect...Jim O'Brien is excellent...[Karen] Carpenter gets to deliver a heartbreaking moment toward the end that really resonates...Sets by Patrick Lynch and costumes by Amanda Downing Carney perfectly create the world...Every single detail is meticulously crafted in a way that is thoroughly satisfying."
--Andria Tieman, Broadway World
Topical, thought-provoking...directed with impeccable care"
--Don Fowler, Warwick Online
Directed with skill and sincerity by Bryn Boice...[at first, her] direction seems to lean toward an outward-facing presentational physical comedy, but as the language of the scene sinks in, we realize that the style works perfectly. Subsequent scenes with every character maintain this high-energy, fast-paced approach that serves the comedy, while the impact of the words and the script serve their own purpose. Think “All In The Family” – if those episodes wallowed too deep into the serious issues they explored, the show would have been a drag, preachy and ultimately overbearing, but a brisk, comedic approach allowed the serious moments to land that much harder – and so it is with Admissions."
--Terry Shea, Motif Magazine
My Fascination with Creepy Ladies
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Lighting Design: Bridget K. Doyle
Costume Design: Theona White Scenic, Properties, Sound and Movement: The Company Stage Manager: Gabriella Barbuto |
Right at the outset, a voiceover informs us: 'We’re trying to spook you.' And at that, as well as at casting a shadowy spell, the piece succeeds. One person in the front row on opening night was visibly and audibly shaken by the conclusion of “Berenice,” wherein the macabre contents of an innocuous-seeming wooden box scatter-dance across the stage...What I most admire, given Anthem’s stated aim to 'spook' us, is that its approach is so barebones and tersely atmospheric. Eschewing gory effects, “Creepy Ladies” allows Poe’s febrile yet precise language to provoke our discomfiture and dread."
--Carolyn Clay, WBUR's Artery
Most adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe don't take the seminal American writer seriously...but [director] Bryn Boice is deadly serious, and we do mean deadly, in 'My Fascination with Creepy Ladies,' which investigates Poe's obsession with the deaths of beautiful women in stories like 'Ligeia' and 'The Raven'...As a Poe devotee, I found it fully engaging...Lots of fine acting."
--Ed Siegel, WBUR (via FB)
Their deliveries may be different—Olivia Z. Cote’s Poe is quavering while Christine Power’s Poe proclaims, Luz Lopez’s Creepy Lady creeps while Siobhan Carroll’s Creepy Lady intimidates—but they are all fragments of the same characters, pieces of the same narrator. The effect is, indeed, creepy. As the audience, you are often surrounded, as if you’re inside a funhouse of mirrors that refuses to show your own reflection. It’s an impressive use of theater. I’m delighted by the choreography, Bridget K. Doyle’s lighting, and Theona White’s costume design...an exact, chilling, and obsessive love letter to Poe, the macabre, and the work he brought into the world."
--Gillian Daniels, New England Theatre Geek
Last Night at Bowl-Mor Lanes
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Scenic Design: James J. Fenton
Lighting Design: Jeff Adelberg Sound Design: David Wilson Costume Design: Becca Jewett Properties: Emme Shaw Assistant Director: Stephen Zubricki Stage Manager: Julie Marie Langevin |
Photos: Nile Scott Shots
If you saw Actors Shakespeare Project’s all-female “Julius Caesar,” O.W.I.’s lamentably-neglected “Red Velvet,” or her Norton Award-winning turn for Commonwealth Shakespeare with two Caryl Churchill one-acts, you recognize director Bryn Boice’s talent, and she mines the humor, the love and the longing of the piece and allows the warmth of the characters to shine through."
--Rich Fahey, On Boston Stages
...[E]ven a casual bowler can see that Symes, director Bryn Boice, and scenic designer James J. Fenton have gotten the atmospherics right. Fenton’s set is a spot-on simulacrum of a stuck-in-the-1950s bowling alley, from the jukebox in the corner to the overhead “Bowl-Mor’’ sign with the “M’’ dangling upside-down to the row of multicolored bowling balls lined up on a rack.
Boice also got the casting of the leads right: Ruth and Maude are played by Nancy E. Carroll and Paula Plum, twin treasures of Boston theater who long ago earned, and still deserve, the adjective 'inimitable'."
--Don Aucoin, The Boston Globe
The soon-to-be-razed bowling alley of the title is authentically rendered by scenic designer James J. Fenton, and definitely one of the top three reasons to recommend the production. The other two are the grande dames of Boston theater, Nancy E. Carroll and Paula Plum, who take on the characters created by Symes to pay homage to women 'of a certain age.'...Director Bryn Boice draws crisp performances from the cohesive cast and keeps the ball rolling (sorry!) apace, making the game feel like it's happening in real time."
--Nancy Grossman, Broadway World
Audience members are immediately thrust into a sense of place with James J. Fenton’s incredible set...[so] ingenious is its construction that the actresses – wait for it – actually bowl during the course of the 90-minute piece, no easy feat...Plum and Carroll shine in their roles, and with each other...Director Boice keeps the action flowing."
--Michele Markarian, Theatre Mirror
Universe Rushing Apart:
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ELLIOT NORTON AWARD for
Outstanding Director, Large Theater TOP TEN of 2018: The Boston Globe & StageSource Scenic Design: Cristina Todesco Lighting Design: Jen Rock Sound Design: Dewey Dellay Costume Design: Nancy Leary Properties: Sally Tomasetti Assistant Director: Courtney Plati Stage Manager: Jenna Worden ASM: Rachel Corning |
Photos by Evgenia Eliseeva
Director Bryn Boice expertly envelops us in a very Churchillian mood — a kind of spell, really — in the rewardingly disconcerting double bill of “Blue Kettle’’ and “Here We Go.’’ The same five actors appear in both plays in this Commonwealth Shakespeare Company production, presented at Babson College’s Sorenson Center for the Arts. Boice draws finely calibrated performances from the entire quintet, who range from Boston theater luminaries Karen MacDonald and Maureen Keiller to Ryan Winkles (a fixture at Lenox’s Shakespeare & Company) to Sarah Mass and Siobhan Carroll.
...Finally comes a devastating scene of an extremely old or sick man being helped to get dressed and undressed by a caregiver. Director Boice boldly pushes the scene to the breaking point. As the wrenching, utterly human sequence repeats over and over again, not a word is spoken, and not a word is needed."
--Don Aucoin, The Boston Globe
...[T]ender and exhilarating...Boice stages the two plays on an almost bare stage where ensemble members dressed in scrubs scoot white Styrofoam set pieces into different arrangements. Sound designer Dewey Dellay’s score — which ranges from the anxious to the magisterial but is never overwhelming — provides an emotional barometer, as an excellent ensemble of five goes through the absurdist motions of the plays, supplying both ironic commentary and genuine emotion that the linguistic trickery might in lesser hands obscure."
--Carolyn Clay, WBUR
...beautifully acted...Bryn Boice, the director, shows a deep understanding of the two plays."
--Jane Baldwin, Capital Critics Circle: "A First Rate Revival of Two of Caryl Churchill's Plays"
This was a year when women, prominently including women of color, directed a hefty percentage of the impactful stage productions that are likely to linger in the memory as we head into 2019.
This year, it was female directors, as often as not, who embraced challenging subject matter or took chances with form. For example, in Bryn Boice’s Commonwealth Shakespeare Company staging of “Universe Rushing Apart: Blue Kettle and Here We Go,’’ a pair of one-act plays by Caryl Churchill about deceit, identity, language, and mortality, Boice kept spectators off-balance by enveloping them in a hypnotic, vaguely disquieting aura throughout."
--excerpt from Don Aucoin's Boston Globe feature: "Female Directors Provoked and Excelled in Leading Roles"
Henry VI part 2
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Scenic and Costume Design: Brooke Stanton
Violence Design: Matt Dray Sound Design: Bryn Boice Properties: Sophie Garner Stage Manager: Rachel Corning |
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Photos by Nile Scott Studios
Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabarti
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Scenic Design: James J. Fenton
Lighting Design: Alex Fetchko Costume Design: Becca Jewett Sound Design: Angelica Alvarez Props Design: Linda McConchie Assistant Director/Dramaturg/Fight Director: Jessica Scout Malone |
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Photos by M.L. Flowers Chavez, James J. Fenton and OWI Theatre
Anthem Theatre Company artistic director Bryn Boice is bringing the same poignant immediacy to Aldridge's singular odyssey that distinguished her all-female edition of "Julius Caesar" for Actors' Shakespeare Company last year. [Producer] Riesenberg and Director Bryn Boice have assembled a crackerjack team of actors and designers to give full voice to Lolita Chakrabarti’s piece...Boice showed her skills with an ensemble piece in her all-female “Julius Caesar” at Actors Shakespeare Project earlier in the season, and this is another fine effort and another milestone for OWI in its development as a troupe." Excellent production...Highly recommended." |
Julius Caesar
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Scenic Design: Cristina Todesco
Lighting Design: Jen Rock Costume Design: Rebecca Jewett Sound Design: Amy Altadonna Props Design: Abby Shenker Fight Choreography: Lauren Squier Movement: Bryn Boice Stage Manager: Sam Layco |
Photos: Maggie Hall for Nile Scott Shots
Call this “Julius Caesar” a gender-bending experiment if you like, but ASP under Bryn Boice’s taut direction is strikingly calling into question audience preconceptions about [what] it means to be a leader or a follower, the nature of alliances, the enormity of war and the power of both friendship and love. As such, this staging becomes an exploration of which Shakespeare would likely approve.
Director Boice endows her staging with an incisive sense of ritual and metaphor – especially as soldiers purposefully put down their weapons near the close. A chant convincingly states that “This (Brutus) was woman!” Likewise theatergoers — male and female — are likely to say of ASP’s exquisite staging “This is ‘Julius Caesar.'”
-Jules Becker, The Jewish Journal
...director Bryn Boice establish[es] a foreboding mood while suggesting the patterns of fatefulness that will subsequently run through her darkly compelling [all-female production]...it’s intriguing to see how Boice reworks the end of “Julius Caesar’’ so that Antony’s famous final encomium to Brutus (“This was the noblest Roman of them all . . . nature might stand up and say to all the world ‘This was a man’ ’’) so that it registers not just as a victor’s tribute to the vanquished but as a broader statement of female solidarity."
-Don Aucoin, The Boston Globe
Under the direction of Bryn Boice, the world of Rome, ruled by the god-like Julius Caesar played by a confident, self-absorbed Liz Adams, is totally inhabited by women.
To watch this experimental portrait of an Amazon-like kingdom is to question the conventional wisdom that women are more gentle, kind and forgiving than men...
[The cast is led by] a powerful Marya Lowry [as Brutus], Bobbie Steinbach in a devious and mesmerizing performance [as Cassius]...[and] Marianna Bassham as the most effective Mark Antony to have played the role in recent memory...Her declarative delivery of Antony’s funeral speech that builds from sympathy for the perpetrators to riling up the populace is a marvel of intention, crafty choice of words, and vocal timbre, all the more terrifying for its’ success."
-Iris Fanger, Wicked Local
"The Actors’ Shakespeare Project production of 'Julius Caesar' features women in all of the parts, a female director and an all-woman design team to boot. And, if anything, it is darker and more foreboding than any production of 'Caesar' I’ve seen..."
-Rich Fahey, OnBostonStages.com
Henry IV Part 1
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Scenic, Properties, Costume Design: Brooke Stanton
Violence Design: Matt Dray Sound Design: Bryn Boice Choreographer: Peter DiMuro Stage Manager: Rachel Corning |
PHOTOS: Nile Scott Shots
I, Snowflake
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Lighting Design: Kelly Martin
Snowflake's Costume Design: Stephanie Brownell Sound Design: Bryn Boice Props Design: Mary Sader Movement: Bryn Boice |
Photos: Bryn Boice
The ensemble work in this production is selfless, and gorgeous. The all-lady cast gives of themselves unconditionally. We receive a deeply personal and personalized performance from them. Boice’s staging is inventive and enables the ensembles character work to blossom...Julee Antonellis delivers her mime work as Snowflake with excellent control...Her Pierrot is no pining fool. She actively seeks to understand, and be understood. She represents everyone who feels voiceless.
For a show that was created, soup to nuts, in under 3 months I, SnowFlake is damned impressive on any scale. It pulls from a large community, and speaks to an even larger one. Which is why it should go on tour...[and] deserves to be seen by as many people as possible in the next four years."
-Kitty Drexel, New England Theatre Geek
Bryn Boice’s I, SNOWFLAKE is part elegant choreo-poem, part verbatim accounts...[of] post-election shock...The witnesses, all dressed alike in crisp white shirts, black leggings and cradling iPhones, lament the sorrows we all grieve about: global warming, violence, genocide, nuclear annihilation and so much more and more and more.
They’re dogged by a resilient little mime (the sensational Julee Antonellis) who is buffeted about and dispatched numerous times (most chillingly gunned down like Trayvon Martin and his many, many successors). Boice wisely balances the terrible sorrows and fears with humor and cheek.
Boice offers the best dissection I’ve yet encountered of the insidious, seemingly faultless male catcall, “Smile,” which is punctuated by Caitlin Jones’ stellar rendition of Leslie Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.” The ensemble of ten extraordinary women utilizes metaphor, music, fluid movement and righteous indignation to drive home their hopeful (thank goodness) message: Each snowflake is unique and fragile by itself but thousands of snowflakes together can bring a city to a halt."
-Beverly Creasy, Boston Arts Review
Much like a snowstorm, I hope it spreads and remains utterly devastating. See it while you have the chance."
-Gillian Daniels, NE Theatre Geek
Twelfth Night of the Living Dead
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Scenic Design: Jessica Pizzuti
Lighting Design: Kayleigha Zawacki Costume Design: Rebecca Jewett Sound Design: Jess Malone Blood Props Design: Johnny Kinsman Fight Choreography: Matt Dray Movement: Bryn Boice |
Photos: Bryn Boice
What happens when a genuine Shakespeare troupe puts on a nuanced, well-acted performance of Twelfth Night, where the characters get attacked by zombies, like in the film Night of the Living Dead?
Surprisingly, it’s intelligent, hilarious fun. It’s gross and disgusting, but also compelling and deep. Did I mention hilarious? At the end of the performance you’ll be left stunned. What just happened?
The actors clearly know what they are doing, without a weak performance in the cast. Erica Jade Simpson takes the lead, as the first zombie of many, with physical comedy that is laugh out loud funny...and every line in the play is taken from Twelfth Night."
--Johnny Monsarrat, Boston Events Insider
By injecting blood and guts into the play, Boice and the cast [cast] aside the shackles of historical importance to bring us an energized update on Shakespeare. If you can handle the flying brains and the squirting blood, this production could serve as a gateway drug to fall in love with the Bard anew."
-Craig Idlebrook, New England Theatre Geek
Romeo VS. Juliet
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Directed by Bryn Boice
Costumes, Props: Bryn Boice and Johnny Kinsman Music sourced from The Library of Congress |
PHOTOS: Tess Wenger
THE BARD MEETS BASEBALL: Romeo and Juliet staged as a vaudeville comedy"--feature by Joel Brown for BU Today
DIRECTING EXPERIENCE
The Children** Lucy Kirkwood Speakeasy Stage Company
Admissions** Joshua Harmon The Gamm Theatre (R.I.)
A Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare Commonwealth Shakes (Apprentice Co.)
Blue Kettle & Here We Go* Caryl Churchill Commonwealth Shakespeare Company
Henry VI part 2 William Shakespeare Commonwealth Shakes (Apprentice Co.)
Red Velvet Lolita Chakrabarti Office of War Information/BCA
Julius Caesar William Shakespeare Actors’ Shakespeare Project
Henry IV part 1 William Shakespeare Commonwealth Shakes (Apprentice Co.)
The 25th Annual...Spelling Bee W. Finn & R. Sheinkin Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center
Rosmersholm Henrik Ibsen Boston University (Thesis)
Misalliance George Bernard Shaw Boston University Stages
boom Peter Sinn-Nachtrieb Boston University Stages
The Serpent Jean-Claude Van Itallie Boston University Stages
Endgame Samuel Beckett Boston University Stages
Machinal Sophie Treadwell Boston University Stages
Wonder of the World David Lindsay-Abaire Stephens College, MO
Speaking in Tongues Andrew Bovell Australian Made Entertainment (NYC)
Navy Pier John Corwin Theatre Row/InProximity Theatre (NYC)
Orange Flower Water Craig Wright Theatre 54/InProximity Theatre
*Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director, Large Theater
**UPCOMING 2019
DIRECTION of NEW WORKS, ADAPTATIONS, & DEVISED PROJECTS
Last Night at Bowl-Mor Lanes Weylin Symes Greater Boston Theatre Company
My Fascination with Creepy Ladies Bryn Boice Anthem Theatre Company
I, Snowflake Bryn Boice Anthem Theatre Company
12th Night of the Living Dead Brian MacInnis Smallwood Anthem Theatre Company/BCA
The Merry Way Bryn Boice Anthem Theatre Company
Romeo VS. Juliet Johnny Kinsman Anthem Theatre Company
No Vacancies Dan Schultz Okoboji Summer Theatre (Okoboji, IA)
Last Woman Standing Allie Kauffman, M. Timonina Boston University Stages
Sickle Abbey Fenbert Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
A Comedy of Errors, for 4 Will Ditterline, Mike Wamser Anthem Theatre Company/BCA
Puppet Love*** Mya Kagan American Globe Theatre (NYC)
No-Fault Christie Perfetti NYC Fringe Festival
Stuck Bryn Boice taxdeductible theatre/The Dare Project
***Turnip Festival of Short Plays. Honorable Mentions: Outstanding Direction, Best Play;
Winner: Best Actress. Later remounted for Ars Nova’s ANTFest (NYC).
ACTING RESUME AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
The Children** Lucy Kirkwood Speakeasy Stage Company
Admissions** Joshua Harmon The Gamm Theatre (R.I.)
A Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare Commonwealth Shakes (Apprentice Co.)
Blue Kettle & Here We Go* Caryl Churchill Commonwealth Shakespeare Company
Henry VI part 2 William Shakespeare Commonwealth Shakes (Apprentice Co.)
Red Velvet Lolita Chakrabarti Office of War Information/BCA
Julius Caesar William Shakespeare Actors’ Shakespeare Project
Henry IV part 1 William Shakespeare Commonwealth Shakes (Apprentice Co.)
The 25th Annual...Spelling Bee W. Finn & R. Sheinkin Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center
Rosmersholm Henrik Ibsen Boston University (Thesis)
Misalliance George Bernard Shaw Boston University Stages
boom Peter Sinn-Nachtrieb Boston University Stages
The Serpent Jean-Claude Van Itallie Boston University Stages
Endgame Samuel Beckett Boston University Stages
Machinal Sophie Treadwell Boston University Stages
Wonder of the World David Lindsay-Abaire Stephens College, MO
Speaking in Tongues Andrew Bovell Australian Made Entertainment (NYC)
Navy Pier John Corwin Theatre Row/InProximity Theatre (NYC)
Orange Flower Water Craig Wright Theatre 54/InProximity Theatre
*Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director, Large Theater
**UPCOMING 2019
DIRECTION of NEW WORKS, ADAPTATIONS, & DEVISED PROJECTS
Last Night at Bowl-Mor Lanes Weylin Symes Greater Boston Theatre Company
My Fascination with Creepy Ladies Bryn Boice Anthem Theatre Company
I, Snowflake Bryn Boice Anthem Theatre Company
12th Night of the Living Dead Brian MacInnis Smallwood Anthem Theatre Company/BCA
The Merry Way Bryn Boice Anthem Theatre Company
Romeo VS. Juliet Johnny Kinsman Anthem Theatre Company
No Vacancies Dan Schultz Okoboji Summer Theatre (Okoboji, IA)
Last Woman Standing Allie Kauffman, M. Timonina Boston University Stages
Sickle Abbey Fenbert Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
A Comedy of Errors, for 4 Will Ditterline, Mike Wamser Anthem Theatre Company/BCA
Puppet Love*** Mya Kagan American Globe Theatre (NYC)
No-Fault Christie Perfetti NYC Fringe Festival
Stuck Bryn Boice taxdeductible theatre/The Dare Project
***Turnip Festival of Short Plays. Honorable Mentions: Outstanding Direction, Best Play;
Winner: Best Actress. Later remounted for Ars Nova’s ANTFest (NYC).
ACTING RESUME AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
