ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
MARYA SEA KAMINSKIPRESENTS
MANAGING DIRECTOR SHAUNDA McDILLWRITTEN BY ANNALISA
DIAS & RONEE PENOI
PITTSBURGH PUBLIC THEATER PLAYWRIGHTS-IN-RESIDENCE
WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 2023
HELEN WAYNE RAUH REHEARSAL HALL
The Carlisle Project references death, violence, intergenerational Indigenous trauma, and genocide. This reading may not be appropriate for all audiences.
PITTSBURGH PUBLIC THEATER
about the cast and crew
JEFF BAREHAND MAN 2
Jeff Barehand (Gila River/Navajo) is President/CEO of Sky Bear Media. He studied film production at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe. He co-founded the award-winning filmmaker non-profit the Olympia Film Collective, of which he is the current Board President. He was chosen as one of five filmmakers in Washington State to be a 2018 SuperFly filmmaker for the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) and currently serves on Washington State’s Filmworks Board of Directors and Film Leadership Council, which administers the $15 million film incentive program. He was recently honored with an Inspired Native grant for his “Creative Artistry and Service to Community” from the Evergreen Longhouse, Eighth Generation, and the NDN Collective. Jeff recently played the role of “White Feather” in the Lyric Theatre’s production of the Native American pop musical Distant Thunder. He’s performed locally in his hometown of Olympia, WA in Les Miserables, Evita, Hair, Buddy! The Buddy Holly Musical, and The Full Monty. He is married to Shana Greenberg Barehand (Mono) and they have four children.
VICKI OCEGUERA WOMAN 1
Vicki Oceguera is a New York based actor, singer, and puppeteer. She is a proud member of the Qawalangin Tribe. Selected credits include national tours of Ajijaak on Turtle Island and Jim Henson’s Dinosaur Train Live!, directed by John Tartaglia. Off-Broadway credits include Disney’s Winnie the Pooh Show, The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show, and Treasure Island. Regional credits include Elf (Emily Hobbs), Grease (Jan), and James and the Giant Peach (Aunt Sponge). www.vicki-oceguera.com
KHOLAN STUDI MAN 1
Kholan Studi was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Kholan’s roles include They Don’t Talk Back by Frank Kaash Katasse and Bingo Hall by Dillon Chitto with Native Voices at the Autry, Elias Boudinot in Sovereignty by Mary Katherine Nagle with Marine Theater Company. Kholan took part in Perseverance Theatre’s production of Spirit of the Valley by Frank Kaash Katasse. Kholan lent his voice to Native Voices at the Autry Presents: The Adventures of Super Indian by Arigon Starr. Kholan was an understudy for Between 2 Knees by the 1491’s where he lived every actors nightmare by taking the stage for part of the run at both Yale Repertory and Seattle Repertory. Kholan would like to thank his friends and family for their endless support.
APRIL ORTIZ WOMAN 2
April Ortiz’s Broadway credits include In The Heights. National Tours include In The Heights, Cats, La Cage Aux Folles. Regional credits include Between 2 Knees (OSF), In The Heights (PCLO), TUTS (Kennedy Center), Distant Thunder (Lyric Theatre), TouchTones (Arden Theatre), Medea Macbeth Cinderella (Yale Rep), Sunsets & Margaritas, Barrio Babies (Denver Center). Off-Broadway credits include Tio Pepe/Somewhere (Public Theatre), The View Upstairs (Culture Project). TV & film credits include Father of the Bride I & II, The Majestic, Uncoupled, Fosse/Verdon, Instinct, Golden Girls, Everybody Loves Raymond.
CHELSEA ZENO WOMAN 3
Chelsea performs with the ultimate Disney tribute band, The Little Mermen. Her favorite credits include playing Shareen in Distant Thunder at the First Americans Museum, Vanessa in In the Heights at TUTS, and Esmeralda in Hunchback of Notre Dame with Fuse Productions. TYG!
ANNALISA DIAS PLAYWRIGHT
Annalisa Dias is a Goan-American transdisciplinary artist, community organizer, and award-winning theater-maker working at the intersection of racial justice and care for the earth. She is Director of Artistic Partnerships & Innovation at Baltimore Center Stage and a Co-Founder of Groundwater Arts.
RONEE PENOI PLAYWRIGHT
Ronee Penoi (Laguna Pueblo/Cherokee) is a composer, arts presenter, facilitator and activist. She is developing two new musicals, The Carlisle Project and #RESIST with collaborator Annalisa Dias under the banner of FLORA MUSICALS, and is a two-time recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Individual Artist Fellowship for her musical composing work. Her music has been heard at Dickinson College/Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, Hopkins Center for the Arts (Dartmouth College), The Tank (NYC), the Berlind (McCarter Theater), CulturalDC’s Mead Theater Lab, banished? Productions, bodiography dance, and more. She is a Sundance Institute Interdisciplinary Program Grantee, and has been commissioned by Pittsburgh Public Theater and Baltimore Center Stage. Ronee is currently Director of Artistic Programming at ArtsEmerson, Boston’s leading presenter of contemporary world theater. Prior to that appointment, she was Producer at Octopus Theatricals, advancing the work of many outstanding artists from development, to production, to touring in the US and internationally. These artists and projects include Byron Au Yong and Aaron Jafferis (Activist Songbook), DeLanna Studi (And So We Walked), Phantom Limb Company (Falling Out), Ripe Time (Haruki Murakami’s Sleep), Homer’s Coat (An Iliad by Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson), Christine Jones’ Theatre for One, Poland’s Song of the Goat Theatre, and many more. Ronee is a two-time ISPA (International Society for Performing Arts) Global Fellow, and has been an APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals) Leadership Fellow and TCG (Theatre Communications Group) Rising Leader of Color. Ronee is a proud New England Foundation for the Arts National Theater Project Advisor, and is Co-Lead of First Nations Performing Arts with Emily Johnson (Y’upik). She is on the board of The Producer Hub, is a core collaborator with Groundwater Arts, and is a Co-Founding Member of The Industry Standard Group, which looks to expand investment opportunities for BIPOC commercial producers. Other prior roles include NNPN Producer-in-Residence at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Senior New Play Producing Fellow and Directing Fellow at Arena Stage, and Assistant Stage Manager for the national tour of Anna Deavere Smith’s Let Me Down Easy. Ronee also spent three years with the Consensus Building Institute, a non-profit specializing in facilitation and mediation services. Her current anti-racism practice builds upon a decolonization framework and embraces systems change as a key component of that work. She graduated with honors from Princeton University with a degree in Music with certificates in Vocal Performance and Theatre & Dance.
SIOBHAN BROWN DIRECTOR
Siobhan Juanita Brown (Keesuty8ee Elm) is from Roxbury, Mass., and is a citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. She lives on her ancestral homelands on the southern coast of Cape Cod. She holds a BFA degree in Performing Arts and African American studies from Emerson College and is a graduate of the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University. Performance credits include Suzan-Lori Parks’ The America Play at A.R.T., The Emancipation of Valet de Chambre at Cleveland Play House, Studs Terkel’s American Dreams: Lost and Found with the Acting Company, Medea and Antony and Cleopatra for Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of A Negro with Brandeis Theatre Company and several seasons with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. She has worked extensively in arts education as the former Associate Director of Education at Citi Performing Arts Center and Director of School & Teacher Programs at Actors’ Shakespeare Project, as well as teaching for the Strand Theatre, CSC, and the Acting Company. Siobhan wrote A Piece of Silver based on recorded conversations with her maternal and paternal grandmothers who are Mashpee Wampanoag and African American, respectively. She has worked with the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project as a student of the language since 2005. From 2013 to 2021 Siobhan was a language apprentice and member of the founding teaching team of Weetumuw Katnuhtôhtâkamuq, the first Wôpanâak language and culture immersion school providing academic and Indigenous education using a Montessori pedagogy for decolonization and language reclamation.
TIFFANY UNDERWOOD HOLMES MUSICAL DIRECTOR
Tiffany Underwood Holmes is a music director and accompanist based in the Baltimore/ Washington Metro. Recent credits at venues including The Kennedy Center, Rep Stage (Columbia, MD), Baltimore Center Stage, and many others. Recent and upcoming world premieres include Big River (new TYA adaptation), Show Way, and The Dragon King’s Daughter
JOSEPH PIERCE DRAMATURG
Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation citizen) is Associate Professor at Stony Brook University and author of Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 18901910 (SUNY Press, 2019); co-editor of Políticas del amor: Derechos sexuales y escrituras disidentes en el Cono Sur (Cuarto Propio, 2018) and the 2021 special issue of GLQ, “Queer/Cuir Américas: Translation, Decoloniality, and the Incommensurable.” Along with S.J. Norman (Wiradjuri) he is co-curator of the performance series Knowledge of Wounds.
CORY GODDARD STAGE MANAGER
Cory Goddard has worked in Pittsburgh theater for the past 19 years. They have made performances with Quantum Theatre, PICT Classic Theatre, Bricolage Production Company, Kinetic Theatre, The REP, Kelly Strayhorn Theatre, Texture Ballet, and The Colonial Theatre (RI). When not making theater they can usually be found listening to records, tending their too many plants or adventuring with their sister. This is their first project with The Public and they are stoked. Cory is a graduate of Baldwin Wallace College.
UP NEXT
Frida... A Self Portrait
EXTRAORDINARY ONE-WOMAN TOUR DE FORCE
JUNE 7-25 ppt.org | 412.316.1600
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s legendary life unfolds before us in this exquisite, muscular retelling of the ways she wielded her creative genius to survive a debilitating accident, to embody a magnificent parade of historical moments, and to transcend her passionate marriage to Diego Rivera. Terrific and turbulent, she lived boldly, loved wildly, and painted prolifically to see herself and the world around her more clearly. With stunning stagecraft and irresistible charm, Brazilian American writer and performer Vanessa Severo illuminates Frida’s story with her own experience, unearthing powerful common ground between them and inviting us to experience Kahlo’s rare genius firsthand.
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