STAFF

Allyn Burrows, Artistic Director.   Actors' Shakespeare Project: All's Well That Ends Well, King Lear, Measure for Measure, Richard III, The Tempest. Off-Broadway: Bug, Killer Joe, King Lear, Louis Slotin Sonata, Closetland, Flattering Word, The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd.  Regional:   All My Sons (Actors' Theatre of Louisville), Colossus of Rhodes (American Conservatory Theatre), Twelfth Night (Long Wharf Theatre),Romeo and Juliet (Denver Center), The Heiress (Walnut St. Theatre) Five by Tenn (Speakeasy Stage), Hamlet , As You  Like It (Elm Shakespeare Company). , The Pursuit of Happiness, Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Homecoming (Merrimack Repertory Theatre), With Shakespeare & Company: Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Henry in Henry V, Oberon in Midsummer Night's Dream, Hal in Henry IV, Part I,Berowne in Love's Labors Lost. Director for Elm Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Imaginary Invalid.  Television: “Law and Order”, “Law and Order: CI”, and “Against the Law”.  Film: The Company Men, Julie & Julia, and The Windigo. Allyn is the 2006 Eliot Norton Award recipient for King Lear, Five by Tenn, and The Homecoming.

Sara Stackhouse, Executive Producer, was the Supervising Producer of four seasons of INSIDE This Old House for the A&E television network.  She served as Project Manager for cellist Yo-Yo Ma for nearly six years, where her work included educational projects, contracts, recordings, tours, scripting and staging, and collaborations with artists such as Edgar Meyer, Mark O'Connor, Bobby McFerrin, Mark Morrris, Toni Morrison, Torvill & Dean, Atom Egoyan and others.  She served as Associate Producer on eight films, including Yo-Yo Ma:  Inspired by Bach, which received international awards including several Emmys.  She was the Director of Education for NPR's From the Top for nearly six years where she designed curriculum, trained teachers, and created a national Make Your Own Radio Program and a Cultural Ambassador Program for teenage artists.  As a freelancer, Sara produced A Taste of Chanukah for PBS, PRI, and Rounder Records in 1998 and was the Executive Producer of the MIT Media Lab's Toy Symphony, an international project run by Tod Machover and featuring violinist Joshua Bell and conductor Kent Nagano.  She serves as a consultant to The Berkshire Institute for Theology and the Arts. Sara received a degree in theater from Oberlin College and interned as a director at the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre in 1992.

Lori Taylor, Project Director, was the founder of ASP’s Incarcerated Youth at Play, and also runs ASP’s community programs, after school collaborations, school partnerships, Discovering Justice through Shakespeare, and Cambridge Neighborhood Projects.  During her first season with ASP, ASP received the Social Innovations Award, the Massachusetts Cultural Council Gold Star Award, and a New England Family Institute Award for ASP Education and Outreach Programs.  Before working with ASP, Lori directed the Teacher  Residency Program at The MET (Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center) in Providence, R.I., a teacher training program that targets young adults from urban communities who aspire to be teachers.  In addition, Lori taught Shakespeare to the high school population at The MET.  She worked for nine years at The Cambridge School of Weston, where she taught history, was Dean of Faculty, and founded The Shakespeare Ensemble.  She has also traveled to Bosnia, where she taught Shakespeare. Taylor received her M.A.T. from Brown University in 1993, where she helped to create S.P.A.C.E., an arts program at the Swearer Center that does work with incarcerated women in Rhode Island.

Benjamin Evett, Founding Artistic Director, Resident Director, is the founder of the Actors' Shakespeare Project and directed the company's inaugural production, Richard III, as well as All’s Well That Ends Well and Love’s Labour’s Lost. He played Cassius in Julius Caesar, Edmund in King Lear, and the title role in Hamlet, . In 2005, he won the Elliot Norton Award for performances in Permanent Collection (Paul Barrow) and Quills (Abbe de Coulmier) at the New Rep Theatre and Richard III (Richmond) at Actors' Shakespeare Project. He was a member of the Resident Acting Company at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge from 1983 to 2003, acting in more than 50 productions including Waiting for Godot, The Bacchae, Phaedra, Ivanov, The King Stag and Six Characters in Search of an Author. He has also performed at the Huntington Theatre, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Hartford Stage Company, Missouri Repertory Theatre, Virginia Stage Company, Great Lakes Theatre Festival, Cleveland Play House and others. He has performed at the Festivale Biennale in Venice, the Festival d'Automne in Paris, at the Taiwan National Theatre and The Moscow Art Theatre. He is a graduate of Harvard College with a degree in Classics. He and Executive Producer Sara Stackhouse were selected to be part of the Executive Leadership Program for Massachusetts arts leaders at the Kennedy School at Harvard University.

Bill Barclay, Artistic Associate.  Actors’ Shakespeare Project: Duchess of Malfi (Bosola), King John (Philip the Bastard), Titus Andronicus (Demetrius), King Lear (Oswald, Sound & Music Design), Hamlet (Sound & Music Design), Julius Caesar (Decius, Lucilius, Music Director), Richard III (Composer/Instrumentalist).  Bill is an actor, composer, and director at Shakespeare & Company where productions include Wordplay, Twelfth Night, All's Well That Ends Well, Rough Crossing, Antony & Cleopatra, King John, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo & Juliet, The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, Island of Slaves, Turn of the Screw, and The Goatwoman of Corvis County, among others. Regional credits include the North Shore Music Theatre, The Huntington Theatre Co., The Olney Theatre Center, WHAT, Vineyard Playhouse, Connecticut Rep, Underground Railway Theatre, ALEA III Orchestra, Aurea, The Mercury Theatre (UK), Dell'Arte (in Bali), and the 4th St Theatre and Theatre Row, NYC.  Bill is a recipient of a Meet the Composer grant for his Spherical Sounds Series of concerts and lectures, and winner of a Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship, the nation's largest grant for actors. Artist residencies include Columbia University, Purdue University, University of Virginia, and the University of Iowa.  Full length musical works: Call of the Wild (with playwright Jon Lipsky), The Mad Pirate & The Mermaid (with playwright Michael Burnet), and The Hamlet Symphony. TV:  “Brotherhood” (Showtime), “Say Brother!”, and “Basic Black” (PBS). MFA Boston University School of Theatre; graduate of the National Theatre Institute.

Sandra Cohen / Bird Graphics, Graphic Designer. Sandra has been ASP's graphic designer for over 5 years, and has also designed materials for many other publishing and theater companies as well as record labels, animators, insurance companies, t-shirt makers, etc. Sandra studied fine art at Parsons School of Design in NYC, the School of the MFA, and the Art Institute of Boston. As a painter, she received an artist fellowship from The Massachusetts Cultural Council in 2008 and was juried into The Copley Society of Art (Co|So) in 2000. Sandra was the singer and guitarist for the Boston bands Grind and Planet Queen, and currently plays drums and sings with Pink Mantis. Her fine art, graphics, and some musical links are posted at www.sandracohen.com.

Joanna K. Hoch, Manager of Patron Services and Education Projects, has been the General Manager and a performer for the past 10 years at the Weathervane Theatre, an AEA rotating repertory summer stock in Whitefield, NH. As a Stage Manager, she has worked at The Palace Theatre, Seacoast Repertory Theatre and ART (ASM), but her favorite work has been with children in theatre at both Seacoast Repertory Theatre and the Hampstead Players. Joanna has an MEd in Drama and the Arts in Education from the University of Exeter in Exeter, England.

Jennie Israel, Casting Associate. Actors’ Shakespeare Project: Helena in All's Well That Ends Well, Goneril in King Lear, Calpurnia/Trebonius/Pindarus in Julius Caesar, Elizabeth in Richard III. Other local credits include Lady Macbeth for Commonwealth Shakespeare Company; Tartuffe at New Repertory Theater; Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the Huntington Theatre; Living in Exile at the Vineyard Playhouse; Molly Maguire at the Sugan Theatre; Undine's Valediction, Summer, The Scarlet Letter and Macbeth with Shakespeare & Company. Regional credits include Yale Repertory Theatre, Actors' Theatre of Louisville, The Greenwich Street Theatre, Lincoln Center Theatre, Theatre Building Chicago, Ohio Theatre Soho, Sun Valley Shakespeare Festival, and Chautauqua Theatre Festival. Film and television credits include Rudy for TriStar Pictures, Guiding Light, and Coming to Litchfield, an independent film. Most recently Jennie directed Romeo and Juliet for The Hyperion Shakespeare Company at Harvard College.  In 1992 Jennie founded Chicago's Eclipse Theatre, still in existence today.  She has taught Shakespearean text, voice and acting at Bowdoin College, Boston College, SUNY/Purchase, The Boston Conservatory, Harvard, and is currently on the faculty of Emerson College. She holds an MFA in Acting from the Yale School of Drama.

Jason Ries, Production Manager. Actors' Shakespeare Project: Production Manager since the 2006-2007 season; Scenic Design for The Taming of the Shrew, Lighting Design for Love's Labours Lost and Much Ado About Nothing.  Locally, his favorite collaborations are with partner and choreographer Karen Krolak and Monkeyhouse on dance/illumination creations like AGROOF: an Odyssey of Amorous Adventures in B flat,& Now What?, and Always and a Day.  Prior to 2004, in San Francisco, he was Resident Designer & Director at EXIT Theatre where notable projects included instigating the ensemble devised piece in3, directing Albert's Bridge, and The Caretaker and designing The Marowitz Hamlet, Jacques du Bon Temps, and Gogol.  During his years in California, he was also fortunate to collaborate regularly with such itinerant theatre award-winners as Mark Jackson, Jake Rodriguez and Art Street Theatre (IO! Princess of Argos!, I am Hamlet, Messenger #1), Meredith Eldred and Dave Malloy (Ghostlight, Get Me Rodd Keith!), Dead Horse Ensemble (Sincerity Forever), Crowded Fire (A Murder of Crows), Trevor Allen (The Creature), and Sean Owens (Girlesque). Jason has trained in Latvia with director Sergei Ostrenko and in neon sculpture with Christian Shiess.

Magda Spasiano, Lead Teacher, Shakespeare on the Outs, has been working in the Boston non-profits arts education scene for over 10 years. A graduate of ASP's Teacher Institute in 2006, Magda became a regular teaching artist with the company in 2008. She is the lead teacher of Shakespeare on the Out, a year-round after school program for girls; she is a lead teaching artist on the ASP SWAT team (through which she and a team of artists conduct performance workshops in schools throughout the state); and has taught through ASP's Incarcerated Youth at Play Program. Previously, Magda served as Manager of Youth Programs at the Boston Center for the Arts and the Strand Theater. In 2004 she founded The Drama Club, Inc., a non-profit theater education organization that was enveloped by the City of Boston and became the Strand Youth Theater Project. In addition to ASP, she has served as teaching artist for The Theater Offensive/True Colors: Out Youth Theater and CitiCenter for the Performing Arts. She is an actor, having performed locally with Company One and Roxbury Rep.

Bobbie Steinbach, Artistic Associate.  Actors’ Shakespeare Project: Founding Member/Resident Company, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Winter’s Tale, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing,Coriolanus (Volumnia). She is an Artistic Associate with ASP for the 2009-10 season. Ms. Steinbach has been a longtime member of Boston’s very special theatre community as an actor, cabaret performer, teacher, and most recently, a director.  She is the recipient of the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Actress and two Independent Reviewers Best Supporting Actress awards. Regional credits include: Boston Pops at Boston Symphony Hall & Tanglewood-Keith Lockhart conductor: A Little Night Music (Madame Armfeldt), Huntington Theatre Company: Rose Tattoo (Peppina) with Andrea Martin, and Dead End (Governess), both directed by Nicholas Martin, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company: Romeo and Juliet (Nurse) and Much Ado About Nothing (Dogberry), Lyric Stage Company of Boston: Follies,The Importance of Being Earnest (Lady Bracknell), Arms and the Man, A Little Night Music (Madame Armfeldt), Spitfire Grill, Assassins, (all directed by Artistic Director Spiro Veloudos), Lend Me a Tenor, Beyond Belief, Present Laughter, New Repertory Theatre: The Clean House (2008 Elliot Norton Awards for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Design) Romeo and Juliet, A Girl’s War, The Waverly Gallery, (all directed by former Artistic Director Rick Lombardo) and Stonewall Jackson’s House. Speakeasy Stage Company: Anna in the Tropics, Boston TheatreWorks: Our Town, Coyote on a Fence, Vineyard Playhouse and Jewish Theatre of NE: The Last Night of Ballyhoo. Directing credits: New Rep's The Diary of Anne Frank, Third and Oak: The Laundromat, The Red and the Blue, Boston Theatre Marathon and Our Town at Boston Conservatory. Cabaret credits include her one-woman show, A Woman Alone Onstage With A Piano, A Stool, A Lamp, An Attractive Piano Player, A Few Cheap Theatrical Props  and a Very Big Mouth, with pianist Ron Roy, and Holidaze: A Christian, A Jew and a Ho-Ho-Ho-Mo Too, with Kathy St. George, Robert Saoud, and Jonathan Goldberg.

Laura Sullivan, Marketing Manager.  Laura was Actors' Shakespeare Project's House Manager for three seasons, and worked on additional projects including the annual Gala, the office shift from Cambridge to Somerville, and many events at the ASP before becoming the Marketing Manager in 2009. Prior to her work with ASP, Laura was a coordinator for Fidelity and worked for Aveda for eleven years, both in retail and as a General Manager of Pyara Spa & Salon, located in Harvard Square. She graduated from the University of Hartford with double major in Theater and Psychology.

Adele Nadine Traub, Manager of Artistic Operations.  Actors' Shakespeare Project: Stage Manager for The Duchess of Malfi, Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, Henry V, Love's Labour's Lost (both productions), The Winter's Tale, All's Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, King Lear (both in Boston and at LaMama in NYC), Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure and Richard III. Upcoming this season she will stage manage The Salt Girl with Boston Playwright's Theater. Other stage manager credits include It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues, Capital Repertory Theatre, Albany; Man of LaMancha and 1776, Lyric Stage; La Clemenza di Tito, Opera Boston: Seven Rabbits on a Pole. Stoneham Theater; Living Room in Africa and Dinner With Friends, Gloucester Stage Company; Life x 3. The Vineyard Playhouse; a summer with Pioneer Valley Summer Theater; The Order of Things, CentaStage; Point of Departure, Huntington Theatre Company; Kindertransport, New Repertory Theatre (Assistant Stage Manager) During her four years as Production Stage Manager at The Boston Conservatory, she worked on over 40 productions with the Musical Theater, Dance, Opera and Orchestra Departments. She received her B.A. from Brandeis University.