Gatz

Scott Shepherd grew up in the suburbs of Charleston, SC and Atlanta, GA and graduated from Brown University in 1990.  He joined ERS in 1994.  Credits with ERS: McGurk: A Cautionary Tale; Shut Up I Tell You (I Said Shut Up I Tell You); Cab Legs; Total Fictional Lie; Gatz; No Great Society; The Sun Also Rises. With The Wooster Group: The Hairy Ape; North Atlantic; To You, The Birdie!; Brace Up!; Poor Theater (Bessie and Obie awards); The Emperor Jones; Hamlet; La Didone; Vieux Carré.

Credits with ERS: The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928) (tour); and Gatz. Jim is a longtime performer with Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players.  He also works with the English theater group Forced Entertainment.

Kate Scelsa has been a member of ERS since 2002. With ERS: The Sun Also Rises; The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928); Gatz; Show of Shows. Other NYC credits: Can I Help You (Chashama); Say Uncle! (SoHo Playhouse). Regional: Kick the Can; Macbeth; Waiting for Godot, Behind the Scenes at the Museum (Luna Stage, Montclair). Kate recently finished writing her first young adult novel.

Susie Sokol has been a member of ERS since 1992, after graduating from Yale University. With ERS: all productions since 1993. She also worked with theater artists Katherine Profeta and Sibyl Kempson. She is the senior second-grade teacher at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn where she has worked since 1993.

Sibyl Kempson performed in an early version of Gatz as Myrtle Wilson. Sibyl also writes and performs her own plays in New York and the Pocono Mountains, and collaborates as playwright, performer, and/or costume designer with New York City Players, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and Mike Iveson, Jr.

Victoria Vazquez has been a member of ERS since 1996. With ERS: The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928) (NYTW); Gatz; Total Fictional Lie (P.S. 122); Cab Legs (P.S. 122). With Richard Maxwell/ New York City Players: Caveman (Soho Rep); People Without History (The Performing Garage). Other: Pullman, WA (P.S. 122); The Voices (Tim Etchells/Riverside Studios); Wrench (Phil Soltanoff/WTF); Songs and Monologues (Mousunturm, Frankfurt); Mean Rich White Ladies (Ontological Theater); Pre-Paradise Sorry Now (NADA). Writer/Director: Wrestling Ladies (P.S. 122), The Florida Project (P.S. 122), Isabel (Dixon Place). Film & TV: “Nuovomundo”, “Late Night with Conan O’Brien”.

Gary Wilmes’s credits with ERS: Gatz. Off Broadway: Red Light Winter (Adam Rapp); Henry IV Part I; Boxing 2000; House (Richard Maxwell); Brace Up! (The Wooster Group); Bad Boy Nietzsche and Hotel Fuck (Richard Foreman). Film and Televsion: “A Mighty Heart,” “I Hate Valentine’s Day,” “Afterschool,” “The Missing Person,” “Birds of America,” “Nurse Jackie,” “Mercy,” “Numb3r’s,” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.”

Aaron Landsman has been a member of ERS since 2004. With ERS: The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928); Gatz. Off-Broadway: American Treasure (13P/Paradise Theater); Cowboys & Indians (Soho Rep); The Florida Project (P.S. 122). Original plays/performances created: Appointment (TITAN, Prelude09); Open House (Foundry Theatre Commission); What You’ve Done (DiverseWorks, NPN Commission); Desk (Chashama); Love Story (FuseBox Festival).

Frank Boyd is from Michigan.  Gatz is Frank’s first show with ERS.  Recent credits include Architecting (Public Theater, PS122, Barbican); Particularly In the Heartland (PS 122).  Film/TV: “B.U.S.T.,” “Kripplebush Rd.,” “Guiding Light.”  BFA, New York University.

Laurena Allan has performed extensively in downtown New York.  She performed internationally as Wife in Richard Maxwell’s House.  She is the creator of “Laurena’s Pancake Party” and currently resides in Seattle, WA.

Annie McNamara has worked with ERS for five years and debt collectors for ten. With ERS: The Sound and The Fury (April Seventh, 1928); Gatz. Recent Credits: That Pretty Pretty, or, The Rape Play (Rattlestick); Port Authority Throw Down (Culture Project); God’s Ear (New Georges). She holds an MA from Brown & is a notary public.

A.R.T.: Gatz. Member of Elevator Repair Service and has appeared in the U.S. and internationally in its productions of Gatz, The Select (The Sun Also Rises), The Sound and the Fury, and No Great Society. Other New York credits: The  Temperamentals (Barrow Group); over two dozen productions with the adobe theater company and performances at Clubbed Thumb, Andhow!, Soho Rep, HERE, New Georges, and Theatreworks/USA. TV/Film credits: Louie, Robot Stories, Dumped!, and Love God. He is a graduate of Yale University.

Ben Williams, a native of Culleoka, TN, has worked for ERS as an actor, sound designer, technical director, and production manager since 2004. Credits with ERS: The Sun Also Rises; The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928); No Great Society and Gatz. Recent projects include: Walse-Fantasie, a solo dance for Mikhail Baryshnikov (voice-over); American Treasure by Julia Jarcho for 13P (PM&TD); Chain City, a video installation by Elizabeth Diller for the Venice Biennale (voice-over); and the Summer Institute at the Performing Garage (Sound, TD).

Credits with ERS: The Sun Also Rises; The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928); Gatz. Other recent appearances: Richard Maxwell’s Ode to the Man Who Kneels (Performing Garage, NY; European tours); Sarah Michelson’s Dover Beach (Chapter Arts, Cardiff, Wales); Sibyl Kempson’s Crime or Emergency (Soho Rep and PS 122, NY; Fusebox Festival, Austin, TX); Erin Courtney’s Black Cat Lost (Soho Rep, NY).

Dr. Ross Fletcher is the Chief of Staff of Washington DC’s VA Medical Center. Gatz is his first show with ERS.

Steve Bodow, a founding member of ERS, co-directed the company’s shows from 1994 to 2005, including Cab Legs; Total Fictional Lie; and Room Tone. He is Head Writer and Supervising Producer for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” the comedy-news TV program, where he has won six Emmys and a Peabody Award, and was a writer of the show’s best-selling America: The Book. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Wired and many other publications.

Sarah C. Hughes joined ERS in 2007 and works full time for the company, managing the office. On tour with ERS: The Sun Also Rises; The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928); Gatz. She is a resident artist with Odyssey Productions, and a founding member of Superhero Clubhouse theater collective. Off-Broadway: The Misanthrope, Dartmouth College Residency 2007 & 2008 (New York Theatre Workshop); Godot in New Orleans, 365 Days/365 Plays (The Classical Theater of Harlem). Other: SHC’s Mercury (The Tank); SHC’s Neptune (Dixon Place; The Flux Factory). Sarah is a graduate of Dartmouth College.

A.R.T: thirty productions in fifteen years at A.R.T. as Artistic Coordinator/​​Resident Stage Manager. Broadway: Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Misery, It’s Only a Play, The Glass Menagerie. Off-Broadway: Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven; The Hard Problem, Pride’s Crossing, Lincoln Center; Much Ado About Nothing, NYSF/​Delacorte; The Total Bent, Public Theater; Parable of the Sower, Public Theater Under the Radar Festival; Oliver Twist, TFNA. For Esch, Tommy, Jeremy, and Jan.

Louisa Thompson’s New York credits include: Manic Flight Reaction (Playwright’s Horizons); Fat Pig, The Distance from Here (MCC Theatre); The Roaring Girle, (The Foundry Theatre Company); Suitcase, [sic] (Obie and Hewes Awards), Molly’s Dream, The Year of the Baby (Soho Repertory Theatre); Tulpa (Target Margin Theatre), Max and Ruby, Walk Two Moons, First in Flight, Just so Stories (Theatreworks/USA); Arabian Night, Tex Arcana Waltz, No. 11 Blue and White (The Play Company).  Regional Credits: The McCarter Theatre, The Papermill Playhouse, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, La Jolla Playhouse; The Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis; Philadelphia Theatre Company; Actor’s Express; Geva Theatre; Triad Stage; The Empty Space Theatre; Yale Repertory Theatre; The Juilliard School, and Bard College.  M.F.A. from Yale School of Drama.  Currently an Associate Professor at Hunter College New York.

Mark Barton’s credits with ERS: The Sun Also Rises; The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928); Gatz. Off Broadway: Circle Mirror Transformation; The Shipment; Chair; Paradise Park; All The Wrong Reasons; No Child...; Thom Pain (based on nothing). Other NYC credits: Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company, Theater for a New Audience, NYTW, Signature Theater, Target Margin, Salt Theater, New Georges, Clubbed Thumb, P.S. 122, HERE. Regional: Yale Rep, L.A. Center Theater, Woolly Mammoth, A.R.T., Lookingglass, Syracuse Stage, Asolo Rep, Southern Rep, Hangar Theater.

Ben Williams, a native of Culleoka, TN, has worked for ERS as an actor, sound designer, technical director, and production manager since 2004. Credits with ERS: The Sun Also Rises; The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928); No Great Society and Gatz. Recent projects include: Walse-Fantasie, a solo dance for Mikhail Baryshnikov (voice-over); American Treasure by Julia Jarcho for 13P (PM&TD); Chain City, a video installation by Elizabeth Diller for the Venice Biennale (voice-over); and the Summer Institute at the Performing Garage (Sound, TD).

Ariana Smart Truman is a theater and event producer, specializing in fundraisers for non-profits.  She has worked with ERS, The Wooster Group, Radiohole, Collapsable Giraffe, Soho Rep, Science Project, Yehuda Duenyas, Montclair State University’s Peak Performance and Too Far’s Wild Animus. She co-founded The Wooster Group’s Summer Institute with Kate Valk.

B. D. White has also worked for Manhattan Class Company on Some Girl(s), Frozen, Fat Pig, Runt of the Litter, A Letter from Ethel Kennedy, The Mercy Seat, Scattergood, Intrigue With Faye, Bright Ideas, The Distance From Here, What of the Night, Colder Than Here, Nixon’s Nixon, and The Wooden Breeks.  Other off-Broadway credits include:  Temporary Help, Cheat, Hard Feelings, Aloha Las Vegas, Birth of the Boom, The Strange Case of Mary Todd Lincoln, Bitter Lemon, Nuyorican Stories, Night of the Assassins, St. Lucy’s Eyes, Leaving Queens, Underneath the Lintel, Sophie Tottie and Bell, Songs of Paradise, Buicks, and Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran.  Brian has also toured with Jam on the Groove, the Hip-Hop dance Musical, The Core Ensemble, and the Elevator Repair Service production of Gatz.