Climate Theater Resident Artists 09- 10

Abi Basch is a playwright of movement-based plays and performance installations.  Her works include Foreign C., Voices Underwater, fEaR oF a FüHrEr, Lucy Dies in Fives, and PRESERVATION (A BIRD MUTATION), and have been produced by companies and festivals such as Ontological-Hysteric Theater (New York), Theaterhaus Hildesheim (Hildesheim), Intransitos Gallery (Berlin), Theatre Without Stages (St. Petersburg), Patravadi Theatre (Bangkok), Synchronicity Performance Group at 7 Stages (Atlanta), Serendipity Theatre (Chicago), Salvage Vanguard Theater (Austin), Refraction Arts Project’s Fusebox (Austin), Soap Factory (Minneapolis), and Playwrights Foundation with The Jewish Theatre (San Francisco).  Her plays have received staged readings at MultiStages (New York), hotINK! (New York), Bay Area Playwrights Festival at Magic Theatre (San Francisco), Centerstage (Baltimore), Hyde Park Theatre (Austin), Brave New Works (Atlanta), and Transeuropa (Hildesheim).  She has received two Jerome Fellowships from the Playwrights’ Center, a Fulbright Fellowship, and an Alexander von Humboldt German Chancellor Fellowship. She is a founding member of German/American physical theater company Kinderdeutsch Projekts and a member of the Dramatists Guild.  She holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA in Playwriting from UT Austin, and was recently a guest professor at the University of Hildesheim. www.abibasch.com & www.kinderdeutsch.org

Rebecca Cross  On a quest to inhabit the parts of herself left vacant and unexplored, Rebecca decidedly took off her disguise as creative director of an internationally sold girls' clothing line (MissMatched Inc., seen in NYTimes, Elle, Nylon) and moved to London. Performing in ancient underground establishments (Bush Hall, 12 Bar Club) and surviving torrid relationships proved to be just the trick to find a more eminently satisfactory experience of self. When she returned to her homeland of San Francisco, she met her band, the Saints. They toured the west coast casting song and spell upon many a venue (Yoshi's, Red Devil Lounge, Soho) and recorded their debut album released in May 2009. Now embarking on an entirely new sonic landscape, the quest is very much in its infancy and few things are known; two of which are to steer clear of mathematics and real estate.

Larissa Garcia is an actor and comedienne trained at UFBA School of Drama (the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil). While still a student, she made her first contact with improvisational theater, a life changing experience. For her, improv is not only a way to do theater but also a way to approach it: having been so extremely exposed on stage, with no rehearsed script, allowed her to be more alert and present in any stage situation.

Over this last year, she has done the original solo pieces A (Bearded) Lady (by Billie Cox) and Memoirs of a Virgin (by Mario Echevarria), being awarded Best Actress for both performances. She is thrilled to be developing a fresh new piece as a resident at the Climate. As an actor, Larissa uses her body as the main tool to communicate what she wants. She is a passionate professional who sees art and its metaphors as the one place in which all human emotions meet. 

Mina Morita (Director) currently holds the Bret C. Harte Directors’ Fellowship at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where she has assistant directed Itamar Moses’ Yellowjackets with director Tony Taccone; Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) and Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore with director Les Waters; and You, Nero with Amy Freed and Sharon Ott. Mina is currently assistant directing Tony Kushner’s Tiny Kushner with Tony Taccone. She serves on the board of directors for Shotgun Players, is a member of the Asian American Theatre Company’s artistic committee,?? worked as a director and business manager at Kaiser Permanente's Educational Theatre Programs,?? and was one of the original founders of Active Arts: Theatre for Young Audiences. She holds a degree in directing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she was the recipient of the Founders Award for Excellence.? 

Jodi Power, originally from Indianapolis, IN, has lived in Albuquerque,NM, Cody, WY, Northampton,MA and the Bronx, NY. Whether dancing nationally for various top 10 artist, or internationally to Dakar, Senegal, she has been performing for the past 15 years.  Her latest accomplishments were performing as an acrobatic goat in "Renard"  for the Oakland Opera, a b-girl/stilter/rollerskating clown in"Kamikazee Heart" at the Brava Theater, and touring France and Germany with Borts Minorts as a sychronized LED back-up dancer.  She currently performs with Earth Circus and Velocity Circus, while teaching for Acrosports and Young Audiences.  She is also a nanny for Petie a few days out of the week.

Christie Winn is a San Francisco based pianist, vocalist and songwriter. During her studies at San Francisco State University (B.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts and Music), she became a founding member of Jezebelle, a four-part,  all-female a cappella ensemble, singed to Warner/Discovery Records and Rondor Publishing. In 1995, she began her collaboration with Mobius Operandi, an electro-acoustic, improvisational ensemble lead by musical instrument/sound sculpture designer and builder, Oliver DiCicco. During her 12 years with the ensemble she released two CD’s “What Were We Thinking” and “The End of the Dial” in addition to performing in the multi-media spectacles, “Exit Vacaville” and “Xibalba” presented at SOMARTS Theater.  

Christie Winn has released two CD’s,  “Further Away From Here” and “Closer to Home” along with co-writer and sound designer extraordinaire, Steve Bissinger. She currently writes and arranges for her own band in addition to singing harmonies with “Mr. Lonesome and The Bluebelles” a guitar and vocal trio dedicated to the performance of obscure songs form the 20’s through the 40’s. Apart from her own recordings, she has appeared on the CD’s of The Waybacks, Katy Stephan, Phil Crumar and the Wonderfuls, Karina Denike, and The Cult Inside My Head. 

Christie Winn is currently co-writing the musical, “All At Sea” with playwright , Pamela Winfrey and the work is scheduled to be performed on the S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien in the  Fall of 2010. She is also a proud resident artist at the Climate Theater.

Tanya Vlach

The same day Hurricane Katrina hit, Tanya Vlach was driving on the other side of the country in Northern California on her way to one of the largest arts festivals in the world. At dusk she was found unconscious from a traumatic accident. Tanya barely c ame out alive, losing her left eye in the tumble, among other injuries.

Becoming this intimate with death, Tanya is driven by the consciousness of the fragile nature of life and her work is imbued with this sense of urgency.  5th generation San Franciscan, Tanya considers herself a trans-disciplinary artist, having an extensive background in dance, theater, visual, and literary arts.  Founder of COLIBRITA Production Company, she has produced and curated several multidisciplinary events throughout the Bay Area.  

Joshua Walters is an internationally acclaimed comedic beatboxing performer whose work has appeared on ABC, HBO, MTV and NPR. Walters performs in the Bay Area, New York, Berlin and Jerusalem to audiences ranging in age from 9 to 90. In his one man show, Madhouse Rhythm (2008), Walters uses humor to reframe his own experience with Bipolar Disorder. A member of the Berkeley Poetry Slam Team and beatbox collective The Vowel Movement, Walters now regularly hosts, as well as performs. Walters also speaks nationally as a mental health educator.  

Miriam Wolodarski is a theater maker who believes in performance as contemplative practice for both creator and observer. She holds an MFA in Contemporary Performance from Naropa University and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Uppsala Universitet. Her work integrates forms ranging from classical theater to dance, multi-media installation, circus, and puppetry, while remaining true to the ideals of a poor theater in which the simple mystery and generosity of live human presence is key. Recent projects include working with the astounding Barbara Dilley in the Dharma Art dance ensemble Desolate Delight, writing/ directing/  performing Aliens on ICE: borderline dreaming in America and developing United Nations Dance Jeopardy, a dance-machine answering service, with her long-time collaborator and sister Gabrielle.  Her original solo piece ismene’s(a)wake will premiere in January 2010 at the Women on the Way Festival in SF.  Miriam is founding member of the performance collective Birds of a Feather. 

Climate Theater Resident Artists 08-09   

Jessica Heidt is the Artistic Director of Climate Theater.  Prior to stepping in at Climate she served as Associate Artistic Director at Magic Theater for 9 years where she directed several mainstage productions including world premieres by Betty Shamieh (The Black Eyed, Territories) and Chantal Bilodeau (Pleasure and Pain) and an long list of developmental readings and workshops. She has also directed for many other Bay Area companies including Aurora Theater, AlterTheater, Encore Theater, ABYDOS, Playground and more. She teaches at the San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking, the University of San Francisco, San Jose State University, and for ACT’s Artreach program.  SF Weekly named her Best Theater Director 2007. 

Edna Barrón is a director, playwright, sound designer, and performer.  A recent graduate of the Performing Arts and Social Justice program at the University of San Francisco, her studies were focused on the bird's eye view of social and political theater.  She has had the privilege to assistant direct bay area resident, Roberto Varea's version of "Marisol," and Serbia's well-known activist, Dijana Milosevic's "Necromancers." Her writing and directing credits include an adaptation of USC's writer and English professor, David St. John's work, "The Face," her short play, "Lost in a Dream," and her most recent writing in "The Understory," of 2008.  Edna considers her other life love to be music; she is a long-time dj volunteer and board operator at KUSF, 90.3 FM, SF's underground radio station.  She has worked on many shows with SF sound designer/musician, David Molina, and through that experience, has attained a greater love for the musical aspect of theater.  As she has a deep appreciation for the underdogs of music, her sound design has been consistently provocative and she hopes to continue growing in that direction.  Edna's current promotional work for the Climate Theater's Tuesday night 'Music Box Series' has given her the opportunity to be head administrator for the theater's new 'Resident Artists' Program.'  She is very excited to add her own temperature to the Climate.

Tim Barsky is a flute-beatboxer, traditional Jewish folklorist, and hip-hop artist.  He is a graduate of Brown University with a degree in Islamic & Judaic religious studies, who has also studied at the Berklee School of Music, and with the renowned Chassidic folklorist and archivist Fishel Bresler.  A musician-composer and playwright-performer, he was recently awarded a $50,000 Gerbode Emerging Playwright's Grant for Track in The Box, a hip-hop and circus based play which premieres in fall 2009.  Best known for his cult-hit The Bright River- a mass transit tour of the afterlife, he has also been a guest artist and lecturer at the Royal College of Art (London), Stanford University, RISD, & Oberlin College, and a beatboxing instructor in SF juvenile detention facilities.  As a circus director and performer, he has worked with a who's who of bay area circus troupes.  He is artistic director of City Circus (citycircus.org), lead artist for EveryDay Theatre (everydaytheatre.org), & a co-founder of Vowel Movement Beatboxers (thevowelmovement.com).  A former artist-in-residence at AS220 in Providence RI, he is currently an artist-in-residence at the Climate Theater in San Francisco. 

Brandi Brandes was musically raised on marching band - the foundation of a love for dramatic percussion-based music and an understanding of music as a community-based art form. Since moving to San Francisco from Minneapolis in 1997, she has had the great opportunity to experience and explore percussion of the world for a wide array of audiences, beginning with the opportunity to study with SF Ballet percussionist David Rosenthal and Machete Ensemble arranger/composer/director John Calloway while earning a B.A. Music degree with emphasis in Jazz & World Percussion. She has performed with the Tennessee Valley Orchestra, Punk Rock Orchestra, Arabic oud/Flamenco guitar player Ahmed Drief, Venezuelan vocalist Rennea Couttenye, Be The Groove percussion ensemble, Nobody from Ipanema, the Du Uy Quintet, and a broad range of pick-up performances, including timpani, congas and vibraphone for Petula Clark at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre. Theatrical orchestra credits include Territories at the Magic Theatre (featuring a solo-performed original score), West Side Story, The Wiz, Killing My Lobster, and Fiddler on the Roof. 

Michelle Maxson is an actress originally from the Bay Area.  She has recently moved back after eight years in New York, where she performed at numerous Off and Off-Off Broadway venues including The Cherry Lane, Culture Project, INTAR, Ensemble Studio Theatre, HERE Arts Space, The Ontological-Hysteric, 78th St. Theatre Lab, as well as workshops and readings with New York Theatre Workshop, Long Wharf, The Lark, and American Repertory Theatre.   She worked with Isadora Productions as an actress, associate producer and artistic collaborator on Becoming Natasha, an original theatre piece about sex trafficking, which performed in New York, Chicago, and Canada.  She is co-founder of SPi Theatre Company, where she co-wrote the original play UNWON and produced the West Coast premiere of Jumping the Gun by celebrated Hungarian playwright Gabor Gorgey.  Michelle has taught undergraduate acting at the University of Tennessee, conflict resolution in NYC public schools, and is currently the Program Director for Rising Voices, an arts mentorship program for formerly incarcerated women age 18-25.  Michelle has written her first solo show, developed with Gretchen Cryer and performed Off-Broadway as a work-in-progress at the Theatres at 45 Bleecker as part of the Pillowfight Festival.  

Adrian Cervantes Mejia is originally from the Southern California City of Riverside, part of the Inland Empire.  He is one of four boys, born to an amazingly supportive couple of first generation Mexican Immigrants.  Having spent the past seven years living intermittently in Humboldt County, he is happy to now call San Francisco his home.  He earned his BA from Humboldt State University in 2003.  Adrian was the first recipient of the Kennedy Center for the Arts Diversity Scholarship, and earned his MFA in Ensemble Based Physical Theatre from The Dell'Arte International in 2006.  Having toured up and down the West coast as an ensemble member of The Dell'Arte Players Company, traversed the jungles of Chiapas Mexico as a volunteer artist with Clowns Without Borders, and performed in street festivals of Northern Europe with Teatro Pachuco, Adrian is happy to have work close to home.  He has just finished his first summer tour with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and is grateful for such a wonderful working experience, as well as the opportunity to be exposed to so much of the Bay Area theatre community in one big swoop.  Adrian was recently invited to be an artist in residence at the Climate Theater, and he is excited and curious to see what kind of work such a talented and varied group of individuals will create.

Summer Shapiro most recently returned from the NY Premiere of her original duo-clown show, PANTS! The Best Show Ever, in the 3rd Annual New York Clown Theater Festival, after having devised it in Hawaii and premiered it at Climate Theater, San Francisco, to sold out houses.  Before leaving for New York she premiered her original solo show In The Boudoir along side Cirque Du Soleil veteran, John Gilkey.  Summer first premiered her solo material along side Cirque Du Soleil all-stars John Gilkey and Your New Best Friends at the Climate Theater in November and December of 2007 and performed original works with John Gilkey at The Marsh, SF in June, 2007. Summer Shapiro starred along side April Wagner in Angry Gods and Lost Marbles, a trapeze clown play directed by Paoli Lacy, showing at the Magic Theater, Oct. 2007. She was one of the core company performers in The Medea Project: Theatre For Incarcerated Women, My Life In The Concrete Jungle, directed by Rhodessa Jones inside County Jail #8 and performing at the Lorraine Hansbury Theatre in San Francisco, October 2006. Concurrently, she understudied Ariel/Miranda in San Francisco Shakespeare Festival's The Tempest, directed by Ken Kelleher. She has performed original solo work at Tell It On Tuesday, Julia Morgan Center For The Arts. Played the Clown in The Bartered Bride, directed by Christopher Walker, San Francisco Legion of Honor & The Napa Valley Opera House. Junebug (clown) in The Mums circus, directed by Roy Johns at the Golden Eagle Awards, Los Angeles. Assunta in The Rose Tattoo, directed by Mel Shapiro. Completed training at The Clown Conservatory June 2006. Graduated from UCLA's The School of Theatre June 2005. And studied drama at The Samuel Beckett Center in Dublin, Ireland 2003/2004. 
www.summershapiro.com  

Sam Shaw has performed, directed, and produced improvisational theater in the Bay Area since 1998. He currently performs with Crisis Hopkins at The Climate Theater, and hosts a live version of the hit tv show The Dating Game. Sam co-founded the San Francisco Improv Co-operative (2001-06) and produced the West Coast’s longest running open improv jam, The SFIC’s Monday Night Improv Jam, weekly for five years. He has also worked locally in scripted productions with Impossible Productions (Twilight Zone, Creepshow Live!), Killing My Lobster (Tales of a Lonely Planet), Unidentified (The Book of Liz), Cassandra’s Call (Pharmarsupial, Get it Got it Good), and the Exit Theater (Ubu Roi). He is proud to have produced the Japanese improv quartet Yellow Man Group, “discovered” and managed The Babcocks, and toured the country with the troupe-in-a-van The Wild Rumpus. Sam is an alumnus of This is Pathetic (Emerson) and Gag Reflex (Wesleyan) and in 2007 made his network television debut on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. He first played games at Oddfellows Playhouse Youth Theater in Middletown, CT.

Pamela Winfrey  has been a curator, performer and writer for the past twenty years. She has written over twenty theatrical works. Her theatrical pieces have been seen at such diverse venues as Lilleth Women’s Theatre, New Dramatist's in New York, Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, and SOMARTS in San Francisco. She is a founding member of Mobius Operandi, (see above). From 1993-1997, she was one of the main collaborators and (book and lyrics) that created five large-scale theatrical productions that explored a multi-disciplinary approach to performance. “Exit Vacaville”, which was produced for two consecutive years, received rave reviews. Since that time, she has written lyrics for and performed in two Mobius CD's “What Were We Thinking” and “The End of the Dial”. She has received several playwriting awards including an individual artist grant by the Marin Arts Council(2003), a Sloan development grant for “Celestial Bodies” a play about radio astronomers (2004), a career grant from the Marin Arts Council and a grant from 321 Theatrical Management in NY for recording a new musical in 2007. 

She is a senior artist and a curator for the Exploratorium, a museum of science, art, and human perception. She has also been the Exploratorium's director of the performance program and the acting director of the arts. She is currently the lead curator for emerging art forms at Creative Capital.