Meet the Creative Team of “Wish You Were Here”

Whenever a play is as personal to a playwright as Wish You Were Here is to Sanaz Toossi and her mother, trust is a vital part of the collaboration process. Some members of this creative team have worked together before on Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play English. One has designed for SCR before. Led by celebrated new plays director Mina Morita, Wish You Were Here runs Jan. 12-Feb. 2 on the Julianne Argyros Stage.

Morita is making her SCR debut. Recently named Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s BOLD Resident Director & Creative Producer, Morita previously served as the Artistic Associate at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and its center for the creation and development of new work, The Ground Floor, as well as Artistic Director at Crowded Fire Theater Company. She has also served as one of the founding members of Bay Area Children’s Theatre, as a speaker for the Getty Leadership Summit, lead facilitator for the Lotus Playwriting Retreat with Playwriting Australia and Guest Artist at Yale’s David Geffen School of Drama. In 2016, she was chosen as one of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100, for “asking questions and making provocations that will shape the future of culture.”

Afsoon Pajoufar (Scenic Design) is a New York City-based designer of stage and environment for play, opera and live performances. Some of her recent works include Cyrano de Bergerac at Pasadena Playhouse, Fuente Ovejuna at Theatre for a New Audience, Out of Character at Berkeley Rep, Molière’s Dom Juan at Fischer Center at Bard SummerScape and Word. Sound. Power. at Brooklyn Academy of Music. Pajoufar also designed for Toossi’s play, English, at Studio Theatre and Barrington Stage. Internationally, her work has taken her to Alte Münze in Berlin and Schauspiel Köln in Cologne.

Shahrzad Mazaheri (Costume Design) is an Iranian costume designer based in Washington, D.C., known for her advocacy against misrepresentation and cultural appropriation in movies and theatre. Her regional and professional credits include English, a co-production of Goodman Theatre and Guthrie Theater, English at Berkeley Rep and Someone Will Remember Us, Becky Nurse of Salem, Sweeney Todd and Sueño at Trinity Rep. In addition to her work as a costume designer, Mazaheri is a visiting teaching professor of costume design at the College of William & Mary.

Pablo Santiago (Lighting Design) returns to SCR, having previously designed for Destiny of Desire, avaaz and Quixote Nuevo, for which he earned a Best Lighting Award from Orange Curtain Review. His designs aim to find evocative images that embody the emotional moment of the show and create images that can spark the imagination of the audience to worlds beyond the stage. He has designed for performance venues around the world, including The Kennedy Center, Teatro Municipal São Paulo Brazil, LA Opera, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Geffen Playhouse and Hollywood Bowl.

Veronika Vorel (Sound Design) is, like many of her colleagues in this creative team, making her SCR debut. Her recent local work includes Cyrano de Bergerac and Little Shop of Horrors at Pasadena Playhouse, A Wicked Soul in Cherry Hill at Geffen Playhouse and Our Dear Dead Drug Lord at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. Outside of the theatre, she has worked as a sound designer at Walt Disney Imagineering in California, Shanghai and Paris. She trained in Music Composition at the Prague Conservatory of Music and received her BFA from the California Institute of the Arts and MFA from Yale School of Drama.

Ana Bayat (Cultural Dramaturg and Dialect Coach) is a jack of all trades when it comes to language, dramaturgy, culture and storytelling. Fluent in five languages and proficient in three more, she supports actors in finding and creating authentic voices and dialects when approaching linguistically diverse roles. Bayat is the playwright of the critically-acclaimed multilingual play Mimi’s Suitcase, an autobiographical coming-of-age journey exploring themes of immigration, women’s rights and human resilience. Her most recent projects as dialect coach include English at Melbourne Theatre Co., Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Barrington Stage, Studio Theatre (also as cultural and casting consultant) and The Old Globe.