Liana Asim is a playwright/actor/director and Founding Playwright-In-Residence for Resilience Arts Collective. She is also a 2016/17 Company One PlayLab Fellow. She recently directed the world premiere of a family musical, The Hairy Scary, for The Outside the Box festival 2016. She was recently seen on stage as Mai Tamba in The Convert at Central Square Theater (winner of the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production). She also played Marcus Lycus in the Stoneham Theatre production of A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum. A 2015 BCA and Company One PlayLab Fellow, her full-length plays include Bedfellows, The King of Love Is Dead, Slut Walk or A Play About Marilyn Monroe, The Hairy Scary (musical co-written w/J. Asim and Joshua Stephen Kartes.) Her work has been developed at BCA/Company One, Boston Theatre Marathon, Fresh Ink Theatre, Davenport Studios NYC, Playwright’s Platform and Emerson College in Boston, MA. She studied performance art at Northwestern University and screenwriting and playwriting at Emerson College. She is the proud wife of author Jabari Asim, mother to five brilliant children, and grandmother of two delightful grandbabies. She believes in the power of LIVE theatre to change the world.
Tags:
Kat Nakaji (Props Master) is making her Underground Railway Theater debut. Her other Props Master credits include Carrie the Musical (SpeakEasy Stage), Bad Jews (SpeakEasy Stage), Sugar (ArtsEmerson), Baritones Unbound (ArtsEmerson), Two Dance Stories (Brandeis Theater), and The Importance of Being Earnest (The Longwood Players). She has also served as the Asst. Prop Master for Finding Neverland (The A.R.T.) and as Props Craftsperson for Waitress(The A.R.T.). When she is not around town propping shows, Kat works as the Technical Supervisor at the A.R.T. for the HRDC (Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club). She holds her BFA in Technical Theater and Design from Emerson College.
Tags:
Ariel Welch (Assistant Stage Manager) is thrilled to join The Convert team in her first production with Underground Railway Theater and Central Square Theater. She received a BFA from The Theater School at DePaul University in Chicago, IL and is excited to be back in Boston. Her recent Boston area stage management works include Dry Land and The Flick with Company One Theatre, The Wizard of Oz and Chicago with Weston Drama Workshop, Shelter of Last Resort for the XXPlaylab workshop series with Company One Theatre and The Boston Center for the Arts, and The Little Blue One with Juventas New Music Ensemble.
Tags:
Devorah Kengmana (Lighting Designer) is a New York based Lighting and Projections Designer. She received her Bachelor’s from MIT and her Master’s in Lighting and Projection Design from University of Missouri-Kansas City. Design credits include:Clybourne Park (Unicorn Theatre), Journey’s End (Kansas City Actors’ Theatre), Wylliams-Henry Contemporary Dance Company (Season Designer, 2014-15), Donna Micelli Dance Center (Lighting and Projections Designer, 2012-2015), Tom Gold at the Mahaiwe (Tom Gold Dance), and [AI] (The Brick Theatre). Assisting Credits: American Buffalo, A Christmas Carol, Angels in America (Kansas City Repertory Theatre), Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike(Kansas City Repertory Theatre, CenterStage Theatre), FLY (Projections Assistant, Florida Studio Theatre), Black Pearl Sings! (Spinning Tree Theatre), The Barber of Seville (San Francisco Opera). She has also worked with The Wooster Group in New York and just completed a three month internship with the San Francisco Opera this Fall.
Tags:
Vahdat Yeganeh (Assistant Director) is very honored to be back at CST as the assistant to Daniel Gidron. Iranian born Vahdat is the founder of Boston Experimental Theatre Company (B.E.T.). Currently Vahdat is studying and practicing the philosophy of Dialogue Among Civilizations in theatre, creating an environment for American, Iranian and Jewish artists to develop cultural and psychoanalytic dialogue among each other and spectators. Vahdat has created two new plays: SHAHNAMEH: the Persian Book of Kings (The Tale of ZAHHAK, 2015 and The First King, 2014). Mr. Yeganeh has also worked on Sadegh Hedayat’s Blind Owl (2015), and produced and directed the first American-Iranian co-production “Creatures” (2013).
Some of Mr. Yeganeh’s other work includes producing and directing Antonin Artaud’s Spurt of Blood and To Have Done with the Judgment of God (2012), Albert Camus’ The Misunderstanding (2011), Walter Davis’ There Is Another Court (2011), Friedrick Durrenmatt’s Play Strindberg: Dance of death (2007), which won him the best directing award from KCACTF (2007); working as the Production Manager and associate director for the Children’s Theatre Company in Boston (CTC 2005-2007); and directing Afshin Hashemi’s The Most Honest Murderer of the World (Iran, 2000). Vahdat has worked with The University of Massachusetts, Boston (UMASS Boston), Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis (BGSP), Boston University (BU), American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.), and Yale Repertory Theatre.
Additionally, Vahdat has worked on several films as an actor and producer. His last film project as a co-producer (Over There) was featured at the Cannes Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and won the best prize Golden Alexander at Thessaloniki International film festival for the best future movie (2008).
Tags: