Meet the “Galilee, 34” Creative Team

Davis McCallum studied Shakespeare at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar before directing numerous plays around New York and nationwide. Now, McCallum leads an accomplished creative team as the director for Galilee, 34 by Eleanor Burgess. The world-premiere production runs April 21-May 12 on the Julianne Argyros Stage as part of the Pacific Playwrights Festival.

The Artistic Director of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival for the last decade, McCallum is an award-winning director with notable New York City credits that include Greater Clements and The Harvest (Lincoln Center Theatre), Lewiston/Clarkston (Rattlestick), Fashions for Men and London Wall (Mint Theater), The Whale and Pocatello (Playwrights Horizons), Water by the Spoonful (Second Stage) and February House (The Public Theater), among many others. McCallum earned a Callaway Award nomination for The Whale, which won a Lortel Award for Best Play, and Water by the Spoonful won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His regional credits include Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Dallas Theater Center, The Old Globe, Guthrie Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Williamstown Festival and the Humana Festival, among others. McCallum graduated from Princeton and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Set Designer Sandra Goldmark has credits from Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Transport Group, Shakespeare and Co. and Syracuse Stage, among others. She is one of the foremost practitioners of sustainable design, teaching a class in circular and sustainable design and production at Barnard College and serving as Senior Assistant Dean for Interdisciplinary Engagement at the Columbia Climate School. Goldmark is a co-creator of the Sustainable Production Toolkit, a sustainability resource for performing arts organizations. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times of London, the BBC, MSNBC, Salon.com and many others. A graduate of Harvard and Yale, Goldmark is the author of Fixation: How to Have Stuff Without Breaking the Planet.

Costume Designer Dina El-Aziz makes her SCR debut, adding SCR to regional credits that include Los Girl (Dartmouth), Selling Kabul (Northern Stage, Seattle Rep and Williamstown Theatre Festival), English (Barrington Stage), Layalina(Goodman Theatre), Unseen (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), This is Who I Am(Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Guthrie Theater, American Repertory Theater), Noura (Guthrie Theater and The Old Globe) and When Monica Met Hillary (Miami New Drama). El-Aziz’s off-Broadway credits include Munich Media and Weightless (WP Theater), The Vagrant Trilogy (The Public Theater), Heartland (Geva Theater/59E59) and First Down (Noor Theater/59E59), among others. She earned an MFA in Design for Stage and Film from NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts.

Josh Epstein (Lighting Designer) returns to SCR after designing lighting for The Canadians and M. Butterfly. Other local credits include The Inheritance and The Legend of Georgia McBride (Geffen Playhouse), Little Shop of Horrors (Pasadena Playhouse) and November (Mark Taper Forum). Epstein has designed at regional theatres all over the nation, including Guthrie Theater, Goodman Theatre, Arena Stage, Trinity Repertory Company, Baltimore Center Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse and Alliance Theatre. He is an ensemble member at IAMA Theatre Company and on the faculty of Chapman University. Epstein won LA Ovation and Knight of Illumination Awards and is an artistic council member of the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference. He received an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Bray Poor (Sound Designer) returns to SCR for the first time since designing sound for Completeness in the spring of 2011. His Broadway credits include Appropriate, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Take Me Out, True West, The Glass Menagerie, The Real Thing, In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) and American Plan. Poor’s most recent design came off-Broadway, with The Ally at The Public Theater. His other productions include designs at Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Soho Rep, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage, Signature Theatre, and Atlantic Theatre Company, among many others. Poor spent two years on an Art Residency in Mexico and has designed all over Europe and Latin America. He received an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Sound.

Dramaturg Charles Haugland worked with Burgess at Huntington Theatre Company, where his dramaturg credits include works with Craig Lucas and Lydia Diamond, among numerous others. At Huntington, Haugland created the audio play series Dream Boston. His published dramaturgy credits include publications by TCG Books, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and in the New England New Play Anthology. Haugland’s SCR debut comes after working as a freelance dramaturg for Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, Trinity Repertory Theatre and Company One.

Galilee, 34 highlights one of the most famous stories in history with wit and intelligence. The healer from Nazareth is dead—and his followers are determined to keep sharing his message. The problem is the Roman Empire wants them out of the picture. And they don’t have a leader. And they can’t quite agree on exactly what that message is. Burgess takes us back to the start of a world-changing movement for a deeply personal look at those who made it happen.