Two of the new members of the Shakespeare Lab
photos from imdb
The Public Theater Shakespeare Lab starts today and runs through July 24.
Lemon Andersen, Nathan Darrow, Paloma Guzmán, Zainab Jah, Lanna Joffrey, Modesto Lacén, Rebecca Lowman, William Mapother, Leslie Silva, Ryan Brooke Taylor, Molly Ward, and Victor Williams were selected from hundreds of applications to participate in this year’s program.
These are people to watch! They are among the best classical actors of their generation, and they are getting some of the best follow-up training here.
Under the direction of Barry Edelstein, The Shakespeare Lab immerses a carefully-selected company of professional, mid-career actors in a six-week intensive exploring the rigors, challenges, and joys of performing Shakespeare. The Shakespeare Lab is a unique opportunity for working American actors in mid-career to hone their craft and expand their classical skills. It aims to build a strong and diverse collective of classically trained actors which will expand The Public Theater’s community of artists.
The Lab’s workshops in Shakespearean performance are led by some of the most respected figures in American classical theater training, including Christopher Bayes, Lisa Benevides, Barry Edelstein, Robert Perillo, J. Steven White, Grace Zandarski, Janet Zarish and others. Guest artists, including eminent members of The Public Theater community and other leading Shakespeareans, will frequently visit the Shakespeare Lab.
The Shakespeare Lab was founded in 1995, and in the 14 years since, numerous members of the Shakespeare Lab Company have gone on to secure roles in the Park, at The Public Theater, on and off-Broadway, and in regional theaters. The Lab is the cornerstone of a busy summer of Shakespeare-related activity at The Public Theater, including the production of Twelfth Night, directed by Daniel Sullivan (June 10 to July 12, 2009); Shakespeare Lab Jr., a program of free, one-week Shakespeare workshops for New York City schoolchildren; and Summer Shake-Up, a one-day celebration of Shakespeare at the Delacorte Theater for New York City schoolchildren and their families.
Here are brief descriptions of the participants.
LEMON ANDERSEN is a critically acclaimed and award-winning renaissance artist. As a poet he has the greatest number of appearances on HBO’s “Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry”—seven times in five seasons. He is also an original cast member of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. He won a Tony Award for his writing and performance, as well as a Drama Desk Award nomination. He has been a mainstay in the spoken-word and theater scene for the past decade, performing in and selling out venues such as the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Apollo Theater, Chicago Theater, Hollywood’s Kodak Theater, and Philadelphia’s Live 8 Theater. His film credits include The Soloist and Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna, Sucker Free City, She Hate Me, and Inside Man. His theater and writing credits include Slanguage (New York Theater Workshop) and the book Ready Made Real: Poems.
NATHAN DARROW’s professional work includes productions of The Little Dog Laughed, Taking Sides, Translations, To Kill A Mockingbird, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Romeo and Juliet, The Pillowman, King Henry V, The Retreat from Moscow, The Game of Love and Chance, and Much Ado About Nothing, among others.
PALOMA GUZMÁN received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon where her Shakespeare credits include the role of Celia in As You Like It under the direction of Di Trevis (RSC, NT). Her TV and film credits include “Law & Order,” “Gossip Girl,” and the recent film Confessions of a Shopaholic. She was most recently seen in Michael’s Greif’s production of Boys’ Life at Second Stage.
ZAINAB JAH. Recent credits include Tranced (Azmera) at Merrimack Rep, Intimate Apparel (Mayme) at W.H.A.T, Trojan Women (Helen) with Classical Theatre of Harlem, In Darfur at The Public Theater, and Veronica Jonkers in the national tour of Athol Fugard's Valley Song. Film and TV credits include principal roles in “100 Center Street,” directed by Sidney Lumet, Dinner Rush with Danny Aiello, and “Law & Order.” Jah is a two-time winner of the Fresh Fruit Award for Acting for Nick Mwaluko’s plays Waafrika (2007) and S/HE (2008).
LANNA JOFFREY. Recent credits include Jason Grote’s 1001 (Denver Center, Denver Post Ovation Award), Nine Parts of Desire (Lyric Stage, Carmel O'Reilly, IRNE Award for Best Solo Performance) and Joffrey’s documentary play, Valiant (Tamilla Woodard, NY Fringe Festival Performance Award, NY Innovative Theatre nomination). Other credits include Metamorphoses (Capital Repertory, Maggie Mancinelli-Carter), Five Kinds of Silence (Boundless Theatre, Tlaloc Rivas), The Snow Queen (Urban Stages, Daniella Topol), Mac Wellman’s Cellophane (The Flea, Jim Simpson), Like I Say (Len Jenkin), Saviana Stanescu’s Waxing West (Jonathan Silverstein), Homeward Bound (Shannon Fillion), Marko The Prince (Immigrants Theatre Project, Marcy Arlin), Dancing at Lughnasa (Wendy Dann) and Israel Horovitz's Security and A Mother's Love. She has collaborated with Karen Finley on Lanna’s solo piece, Rain (The Flea). Film credits include Breathtaking, Security, The New Americans, So She Fell Silent and Someday Soon.
MODESTO LACÉN has been working for the past 16 years as an actor, director and producer in Puerto Rico and the United States. A graduate from the University of Puerto Rico with a BA in Drama (Magna Cum Laude), his Puerto Rican Theater credits include Medea; Blue Surge; The Boys in the Band; Godspell; Picasso at the Lapin Agile; Hamlet; Othello; El Bombón de Elena; Salsa Gorda (Best Actor 2004). Film credits include Las dos Caras de Jano; El Cimarrón; Desamores; Entremedio; 12 horas; Animal; Back in the Day; Dirty Dancing 2; Kidnapped in Paradise; and Second Honeymoon, among others. In 1998 Lacen established the company Nueva Escena with which he has produced: The Little Prince: the musical; Yepeto; Art (Director); Salsa Gorda ( Actor); and Los Coyotes (Actor). In 2004 he was recognized by the Fundación Nacional para la Cultura Popular as “Emblematic Actor” for artistic excellence and variety. Other theater credits include The Caucasian Chalk Circle, To Shakespeare With Love, Celia: The Life and Music of Celia Crúz (ACE and HOLA nominations), and Requiem por Yarini (ACE nomination).
REBECCA LOWMAN received an MFA from Columbia University in 1997. Favorite roles include Rosalind in As You Like It, Christopher in Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle, Horatio in Hamlet, Meg in Crimes of the Heart, and the bellboy in first national tour of the musical Titanic. She has appeared on many television shows, including “Will & Grace,” “Without a Trace,” “Cold Case,” “Criminal Minds,” “Big Love,” “Private Practice,” and “The Shield”; she starred in an independent feature called Eve of Understanding and in the play iWitness at the Mark Taper Forum, directed by Barry Edelstein.
WILLIAM MAPOTHER. Television and film credits include “Prison Break,” “Lost,” “Criminal Minds,” “Viva Laughlin,” “K-Ville,” “Robot Chicken,” “Crossing Jordan,” “Threshold,” “The Inside,” “Line of Fire,” “Touched by an Angel,” “CSI: Miami,” “Law & Order: SVU,” Warrior, Hurt, Skip Tracer, The Burrowers, Moving McAllister, Moola, The Lather Effect, World Trade Center, The Zodiac, Lords of Dogtown, Chloe, Suspect Zero, The Grudge, The Kiss, The Pennsylvania Miners’ Story, Self Storage, Minority Report, Vanilla Sky, In the Bedroom, Mission: Impossible II, Magnolia, Trickle, Without Limits, and Born on the Fourth of July.
LESLIE SILVA performed in Chicago and Sleep Deprivation Chamber at the Signature Theatre in Washington, DC. Her other theater credits include Edmond at the Linda Gross Theater. Her television and film credits include “Numb3rs,” “CSI: Miami,” “Enterprise,” “Cold Case,” “The Agency,” “Odyssey 5,” “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” “Gideon’s Crossing,” “Girlfriends,” “ER,” “Providence,” “Homicide: Life on the Street,” “Cosby,” “New York Undercover,” Reversion, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The 70’s, and Fools Rush In.
RYAN BROOKE TAYLOR began his early performing career as a classical dancer, performing with such companies as the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Pennsylvania Ballet. Taylor is a former student of Michael Miller's The Actor's Center where he studied with many great teachers, including Loyd Richards and Per Brah. More recently Taylor has performed as Actor and Creative Team member for Julie Taymor's Broadway company of The Lion King.
MOLLY WARD. Credits include The Seagull, Romeo and Juliet, and Three Sisters at American Repertory Theater. Three Sisters also went to The Edinburgh International Festival and she was nominated for an Elliot Norton Award. Other credits include the world premiere of Theresa Rebeck's Our House at The Denver Center; Camille at Bard Summerscape; Before Breakfast at Provincetown Theater; Othello at Hartford Stage; Nobody with Rising Phoenix Rep.; Shaving the Pickle and The Shape of Metal with Origin Theater Company; Umbrella Plays in the NYFringe Festival 2008; and The Lacy Project in Ice Factory Festival 2007; As You Like It (NYFringe Festival 2000 in a parking lot, and moved to The Public Theater's New Works Now! series in 2001); The Stronger, with Chashama; and Richard Forman's Paradise Hotel (toured in Berlin, Salsburg, Copenhagen and Paris).
VICTOR WILLIAMS. He was most recently seen in the Public LAB workshop production of Philip Roth in Khartoum by David Bar Katz (dir. John Gould Rubin). He appeared as a guest artist in The Graduate Acting Program's production of Our Lady of 121st Street (dir. Michael Sexton). Other theater credits include Satisfy Me by Johnny Garcia at the Lillian Theater in Los Angeles (dir. Andrew Borba); Ohio Tip-Off by James Yoshimura at the Dallas Theater Center (dir. Kenneth Leon); and Troilus and Cressida at the New York Shakespeare Festival (dir. Mark Wing-Davey). His TV and film credits include “Fringe,” “ER,” “Girlfriends,” “Flight of the Conchords,” “The Practice,” “Animatrix,” “The King of Queens,” Copland, The Preacher's Wife, and Traci Townsend.
