| Creative Team |
| Marya Mazor (Director) performed in her first play at age 4, then began acting in shows that toured in schools with her mother, a story-theater performer. As a high school student, she wrote a play that was part of the Young Playwrights Festival in New York, which introduced her to the professional theatre world. After college, she attended the Yale School of Drama where she received an MFA in directing. For 10 years, she ran a theatre in New York, Voice & Vision, that developed and produced plays by and about girls and women. She also has worked as a director of stage shows for the Disney Parks. Last year, Marya directed Aladdin for the Disney Cruise Lines, and got to cross the Atlantic Ocean while conducting technical rehearsals. She has directed plays at many regional theatres, including The Long Wharf Theatre, New York Stage & Film Company, the Chance Theater and Voice & Vision in New York. She also directed a short film, The Winged Man, featuring Ana Ortiz of "Ugly Betty, "written by playwright/screenwriter José Rivera (Motorcycle Diaries). She is the mother of two teenagers, Asa and Zelda. |
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| Alby Potts (Musical Director/Arranger) loves music. He began playing his first instrument in elementary school, and knew right away he wanted to be a professional musician. He played his first paying job in the eighth grade, and has been working ever since. Alby's first piano teacher taught lessons in her house, which her husband had built by hand around a gigantic tree. He made it out of found lumber, stones, and junk, and the tree trunk and lower branches were in the living room. She had two grand pianos and the roof leaked when it rained, but nobody seemed to mind. Alby wrote a piano concerto when he was 13 and his junior high music teacher, "RO", was great because he played it with the school orchestra. Teachers that encourage their students are the best! It makes a difference for the rest of your life, just like discipline and practicing. Enjoy the show! |
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| Ann Sheffield (Set Designer) is a teacher! She loves that her life path led her to the classroom again and that she gets to teach others about her field, set design. When she was younger, she didn't even realize she could put her love of storytelling together with her love of art. But voila! Here we are… While at Occidental College as an art major, she dabbled in all the arts. By singing in the school choir, she got to meet other students who were in the theatre department. Except for the occasional appearance in a musical, performing wasn't really her thing. However, a very nurturing professor suggested that she design the production of Hot L Baltimore. With that challenge, the whole world of design opened before her. She was lucky to continue her studies at the Yale School of Drama, working under renowned Professor Ming Cho Lee. After graduation in 1987, she lived and worked in New York, designing for various regional theatres and assisting Tony award-winning designer Tony Walton. Eventually, she made her way back to California and is currently a professor at Cal State Fullerton, where she tries to be as inspiring to her students as others have been to her. She hopes you enjoy Ivy+Bean as much as I've enjoyed working on it! |
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| Angela Balogh Calin (Costume Designer) is very excited to be back to SCR where she has designed costumes and/or sets for nine TYA shows and more than 35 other productions, including The Whale, Trip to Bountiful, Circle Mirror Transformation, Crimes of the Heart and Ordinary Days. She also designed sets and costumes for SCR's Educational Touring Productions from 1998 to 2008. Calin has designed more than 60 productions for Denver Center Theatre Company, A Noise Within Theatre, Milwaukee Rep., The Old Globe, Pasadena Playhouse, Georgia Shakespeare and many local theatres and in her native Romania. She has worked extensively in film and television in the U.S. and Romania, having design credits with I.R.S. Media, Cannon Films, PBS, Full Moon Entertainment and Romanian Films. She graduated with an MFA in set and costume design from the Academy of Arts in Bucharest |
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| Brian Gale (Lighting Designer) saw his first professional play at the Ahmanson Theater in 1972. It was Cyrano De Bergerac starring Richard Chamberlain. It spurred him to take a drama class, instead of shop, and he memorized the "Nose Speech" for his project. He wished he hadn't waited until high school to get the 'theater bug.' He is so happy you are starting earlier than he did! Gale's first professional lighting design was with SCR. He designed the lighting for Equus in 1978. The next year, he became a lighting designer for Disney. He designed Lighting for Fantasmic and Candlelight, as well as stage shows and parades at Disneyland. He continues to work for Disney on the Electrical Parade at Tokyo Disneyland and stage shows in Shanghai, the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood and many Disney movie premieres including Pirates of the Caribbean I thru V. |
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| Jeff Polunas (Sound Designer) is a Los Angeles-based sound designer. He attended Mt. San Jacinto and MiraCosta colleges and majored in music theory and recording. He decided to get back into theater, on a production of West Side Story, where he mixed a show for the first time. He then continued his education at San Diego State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in theater. Jeff earned his MFA in sound design at UC-Irvine and looks forward to the opportunity to keep composing music and designing for theater and dance. Jeff is currently the production sound engineer for Cal State Fullerton's Department of Theatre and Dance. Jeff has designed for 10 different universities and colleges. This is his fourth sound design at SCR; he previously designed Anastasia Krupnik, Junie B Jones… Batman Smells! and Between Us Chickens. Jeff loves the challenge of creating original music. |
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| Kelly Todd (Choreographer) grew up in Los Angeles and started dancing seriously when she was 15, which is pretty late for a dancer. But, by the time she was 17, she was choreographing musicals and hasn't stopped since. She went to UCLA where she got a BA in theater and then spent many years teaching young people in Los Angeles and New York City. She moved to New York to train with some of the best dance teachers in the country, including Josh Bergasse, who was the choreographer of the TV show "SMASH." She is not new to the SCR family; previously she worked on two productions with the Summer Players, Suessical and Annie, and she will be choreographing The Light in The Piazza, which opens at SCR in January. She has been a proud resident artist at The Chance Theater in Anaheim for nine years. |
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| Kathryn Davies (Stage Manager) grew up in Nova Scotia, Canada, where she studied piano, ukulele, recorder and tap dance. Her parents took her to see a lot of shows and she decided to become a stage manager when she was in 12th grade. Her high school drama teacher, Mr. Drew, inspired her to do this. Throughout the years, she has studied French, Italian, German and Spanish, which also has helped her to work on big opera productions. She is very grateful to her parents for making her keep up with her music lessons because if she hadn't, she wouldn't be able to do what she does now. Today, Kathryn gets to work with amazingly creative actors, directors, designers, singers, musicians and film stars in several countries.
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