Creative Team |
Kent Gash (Director)
is making his SCR directorial debut. In addition to directing the acclaimed world premiere of Robert O’Hara’s Barbecue (The Public Theater), his other New York productions include Broke-ology (The Juilliard School); Miss Evers’ Boys (Melting Pot Theatre, off-Broadway premiere); Call the Children Home (Primary Stages); Duke Ellington’s Beggars Holiday (York Theatre Company); and the off-Broadway revival of Home. His regional productions include The Mountaintop (Trinity Repertory Company); The Legend of Georgia McBride (Marin Theatre Company); Wig Out! (Studio Theatre, Washington, D.C.); The Comedy of Errors (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); and in 2018, The Wiz (Ford’s Theatre). Gash directed Harriet’s Return starring Debbie Allen (Geffen Playhouse-Kennedy Center co-production). Elsewhere, his credits include August Wilson’s Seven Guitars (Marin Theatre); Mahalia (Cleveland Play House); The Brothers Size (McCarter Theater IN-Festival); Wig Out! (Sundance Theatre Institute); Native Son (world premiere, adapted and directed for Intiman Theatre); and Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Arizona Theatre Company). For Theatre Virginia, Gash directed the first African-American production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. His other directing credits include August Wilson’s Radio Golf, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and King Hedley II; and Suzan Lori-Park’s Topdog/Underdog (Trinity Repertory Theatre, New Repertory Theatre; winner, Elliot Norton Award, Best Director, 2004-05). Gash is the former associate artistic director of both the Alliance Theatre and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and is founding director of the New Studio on Broadway, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
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Edward E Haynes (Scenic Design)
is excited to be working on Gem of the Ocean. His regional credits include School for Scandal, Having Our Say and Carpa Clash (Mark Taper Forum); Solomania and All Wear Bowlers (Kirk Douglas Theatre); Two Trains Running, Crowns, Fraternity and The Gospel at Colonus (Ebony Repertory Theatre); Native Son (Intiman Theatre); Emergency! (Geffen Playhouse); Voir Dire and From the Mississippi Delta (Trinity Repertory Company); Having Our Say and All Wear Bowlers (Berkeley Repertory Theatre); My Fair Lady (The Hollywood Bowl); God of Carnage, Radio Golf, Gem of the Ocean and Sleuth (Alliance Theatre); Tunisia, Blues for an Alabama Sky and Aaronville Dawning (Alabama Shakespeare Festival); and many productions he can no longer remember. His television credits include MTV’s “Spring Break” (2011, 2012); “Hip Hop Harry” (Discovery Kids/TLC); and “Culture Clash” (Fox TV). Haynes is the proud father of twins, Denis and Wesly, and husband to director Elizabeth Bell-Haynes.
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Susan Tsu (Costume Design)
is an award-winning costume designer whose designs have graced the stages of major League of Resident Theatre venues in the United States as well as international theatres the world over. Her production highlights include the hit musical Godspell, The Joy Luck Club, a first-time collaboration between Chinese and American companies touring the Pacific Rim, and The Balcony at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre. She is the recipient of many awards including the 2016 Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement, the NY Drama Desk, NY Drama Critics, NY Young Film Critics, L.A. Distinguished Designer awards and a Kennedy Center Medal of Achievement. Her designs have been seen internationally in China, Russia, the Pacific Rim and the Czech Republic and have been in numerous exhibitions, books and publications. Tsu co-curated the national and student exhibitions for the 2007 Prague Quadrennial, and was artistic director for the USITT-USA-PQ 2011 exhibition. She was co-curator of the USA designers submitted to Costume at the Turn of the Century: 1990-2015 and is chief curator for a new exhibition featuring the work of emerging designers: Innovative Costume of the 21st Century: The Next Generation, premiering in Moscow in 2019. Her current design assignments include Shakespeare in Love at South Coast Repertory and The Book of Will at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Tsu headed the costume programs at Boston University and the University of Texas at Austin before joining the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University, her alma mater.
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Dawn Chiang (Lighting Design)
started her lighting design career at South Coast Repertory, where she designed 10 productions including The Time of Your Life, which opened the Fourth Step Theatre (now known as the Segerstrom Stage). On Broadway, she designed the lighting for Zoot Suit, was co-designer for Tango Pasion and associate lighting designer for Show Boat, The Life and the original Broadway production of La Cage Aux Folles. Off-Broadway, she has designed for the Roundabout Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Club and co-designed the first two seasons of the Encores! concert musical series at City Center. Chiang was resident lighting designer for New York City Opera and has worked for the concert tours of Paul Anka, The Carpenters, Diana Ross and Loggins and Messina. She has designed the lighting at numerous other regional theatres including the Mark Taper Forum, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Guthrie Theater, Alliance Theatre and Arena Stage. She has earned two Drama-Logue Critics Awards, two Lighting Designer of the Year awards (Syracuse Area Live Theatre) and nominations for the San Francisco Drama Critics Award, Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Award and the Hewes Design Award from American Theatre Wing.
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Lindsay Jones (Original Music and Sound Design)
returns to SCR where he previously designed Once, The Madwoman in the Volvo; One Man, Two Guvnors; Smokefall; and Vesuvius. He designed and composed for the Broadway productions of Bronx Bombers and A Time to Kill. His off-Broadway credits include Bella, Bootycandy (Playwrights Horizons), Mr. Joy (LCT3), Privacy, Dry Powder, Barbecue (The Public Theater), Top Secret (New York Theatre Workshop) and Discord (Primary Stages).His regional credits include the Guthrie Theater, Hartford Stage, Alliance Theatre, Goodman Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, La Jolla Playhouse and Arena Stage. His international work includes Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada and Royal Shakespeare Company in the U.K. He has received seven Joseph Jefferson Awards and 24 nominations; two Ovation Awards and three nominations; a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award; three Drama Desk Award nominations; two Helen Hayes Award nominations; and many others. His film scoring credits include Magnolia Pictures’ The Brass Teapot and HBO Films’ A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin (2006 Academy Award for Best Documentary, Short Subject). lindsayjones.com.
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Shawn Duan (Projection Design)
is a New York-based projection designer and media consultant. He was the video designer for Chinglish on Broadway and for the SCR and Berkeley Repertory Theatre co-production of the show. His off-Broadway and New York credits include Knickerbocker and Before Your Eyes (The Public Theater). His regional credits include Chasing Rainbows, FLY and Miss Saigon (Flat Rock Playhouse), Refugia (The Guthrie Theater), Tarzan (North Shore Music Theatre), Buyer and Cellar (Pittsburgh Public Theater), Shakespeare in Love, Twelfth Night, Vietgone and The Comedy of Errors (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), I Sing the Rising Sea, The Great Gatsby and The Other Place (Virginia Stage Company), Vietgone (Seattle Repertory Theatre) and The Mountaintop (Trinity Repertory Company). His opera credits include Prima Donna (New York City Opera) and Benjamin Button the Opera (Symphony Space). He designed for national and international tours for An Evening with Pacino, PJ Masks Live!, Alvin and the Chipmunks Live!, Super Why! Live!, Yo Gabba Gabba! Live! and for the Las Vegas shows Frankie Moreno: Under the Influence, Paul Zerdin: Mouthing Off and Puppet Up: Uncensored.
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Judith Moreland (Dialect Coach)
has performed as an actor both on and off-Broadway and has worked with many theatre companies including the New York Shakespeare Festival, Playwrights Horizons, Ensemble Studio Theater Los Angeles and Shakespeare Festival/LA. This past spring, she originated the role of Gloria in the Fountain Theatre’s world premiere of Building the Wall by Robert Schenkkan. She was a company member at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater for many years and won a Bay Area Theater Critics Award for her performance in ACT’s production of Miss Evers’ Boys. She just finished directing Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon for Capital Stage Company in Sacramento. Her other directing credits include Three Sisters and The Kentucky Cycle at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, where she is currently a faculty member and teaches acting, voice, speech and dialects. She is the co-creator of UCLA’s Professional Program in Acting for the Camera. Moreland has also taught at Stanford University, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the British-American Drama Academy in Oxford, England. judithmoreland.com
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Ken Merckx (Fight Chorography)
has choreographed fights and taught actors combat for film, television, and at universities all across the country. He is presently a faculty member at AMDA College and Conservatory of Performing Arts (Hollywood). He is the resident fight choreographer for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Great Lakes Theater (Cleveland), Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival and A Noise Within (Los Angeles). Merckx received his MFA in acting from University of Illinois and his BA in theatre studies from the University of Washington.
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Jamie A. Tucker (Stage Manager)
is excited to be returning to SCR after three years away. Tucker completed his MFA in dance, specializing in stage management, at UC Irvine in 1994, and his MBA in marketing from the University of Redlands in 2014. He is currently a professor of stage management and production management at CSU Fullerton. At SCR, he has stage-managed or assisted on more than 60 productions. Some of his favorites have been the world premieres of Three Days of Rain, The Violet Hour, The Dazzle, The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow and Mr. Marmalade. His other favorites include Elemeno Pea, Jitney, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Crimes of the Heart, Fences, Anna in the Tropics, The Trip to Bountiful, A View from the Bridge, Chinglish, Death of a Salesman, Hamlet and The Light in the Piazza. He had the pleasure of working seven seasons on La Posada Mágica and six seasons at the helm of A Christmas Carol. If you can’t find him in the theatre, he is likely to be riding his bike through the canyons of south Orange County. He is a proud member of Actors’ Equity.
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Alyssa Escalante (Assistant Stage Manager)
is excited to be working on her first SCR production. Her stage management credits include Hold These Truths (Pasadena Playhouse), The House in Scarsdale, My Barking Dog, The Missing Pages of Lewis Carroll, Happy Days, Se Llama Cristina, R2, Cassiopeia, Creation (Theatre @ Boston Court), The Secret Garden (MainStreet Theatre Company), The Haunted House Party, Mojada: a Medea in Los Angeles (Getty Villa), Criers for Hire (East West Players) and Cash on Delivery (El Portal Theatre). She also toured the U.S. with Placas: the Most Dangerous Tattoo. Additionally, Escalante is the database manager and administrative associate at Cornerstone Theater Company. She graduated from Occidental College with a BA in theatre. She is tremendously grateful to her family for their constant love and support.
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