A Room in the Castle

Lauren M. Gunderson has been one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015, topping the list thrice including 2022/23. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I and You and The Book of Will, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award and a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is a playwright, screenwriter, musical book writer and children’s author who lives in San  Francisco. She graduated from NYU Tisch as a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. LaurenGunderson.com 

Kaja Dunn (Resident Intimacy Director) Folger Theatre: Metamorphoses, The Winter’s Tale, Our Verse In Time To Come (The Reading Room Festival); Arena Stage: American Prophet; Denver Center for the Arts: Choir Boy, 5thAve; ACT Theatre (Seattle): Choir Boy; St. Louis Rep.: Private Lives, Confederates; Two River Theatre: Wine In The Wilderness; Penumbra Theatre: Sugar In Our Wounds; Broadway: A Strange Loop (Assoc. Intimacy Director); Television: The Best Man, Final Chapters, Harlem, The Equalizer; Awards: Kennedy Center American Theatre Award, Playwrights Project Excellence in Arts Education; Publications: Arden Contemporary Shakespeare, Intimacy Direction For Theatre, Theatre Symposium, HowlRound. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training (UK). Carnegie Mellon University: Associate Professor.

Cincinnati Shakespeare Company was founded in 1993 by a group of passionate and visionary young artists, and over the past three decades has evolved into a permanent fixture in Cincinnati’s arts community. The first season consisted of five productions in multiple venues; today, CSC presents more than 250 performances of nine productions annually in its downtown theatre and through touring productions across the region. In 2017, CSC opened the brand new $17.5MM Otto M. Budig Theater in Cincinnati’s historic Over-The-Rhine, helping to distinguish the company as the only professional classical theater between Chicago and New Jersey.

Samantha Reno (Scenic Designer) Folger Theatre: debut. Cincinnati Shakespeare Company: Frankenstein, Kindred Spirits, The Play That Goes Wrong, Much Ado About Nothing, The Amen Corner, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Cincinnati Opera: Fierce; Merrimack Repertory Theatre (Lowell, MA): Gaslight. B Street Theatre (Sacramento): The Newlywed Game, A Great Migration, Dance Nation, A Year With Frog and Toad, Popcorn Falls, The Forever Question. Off-Broadway: New York Classical Theatre: The Rewards of Being Frank. www.samanthareno.com

Max Doolittle (Lighting Designer) Folger Theatre: The Winter’s Tale, King John, Amadeus, The Merry Wives of Windsor. Design work at other Washington DC theaters includes: Ford’s Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Olney Theatre Center, Signature Theatre, Mosaic Theatre, Theatre Alliance, Theatre J, Rep Stage, Kennedy Center/Second City, Imagination Stage, Forum Theatre, Adventure Theatre, Constellation Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Academy for Classical Acting, Pointless Theatre Company, NextStop Theatre. Design work at New York theaters includes: Ars Nova, Juilliard School, New Ohio Theatre, New World Stages. Design work at regional theaters includes: Geffen Playhouse, Kitchen Theatre Company, Great Lakes Center for the Arts, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Fulton Theatre. Television: Anderson Cooper 360, Piers Morgan Live (Light Direction). Cruise Ships: Wine Lovers, The Musical.

Robert Carlton Stimmel (Projections Designer) Folger Theatre: debut. Regional: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company: Twelfth Night, Frankenstein, Julius Caesar, The Amen Corner, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Wrecking Ball, Gaslight, Trouble in Mind, As You Like It, Little Women, The Living Dead, The Comedy of Errors, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Hamlet, Every Christmas Story Ever Told; Merrimack Repertory Theatre: Frankenstein, Gaslight, Elephant and Piggie, Little Red Riding Hood; Los Angeles Fringe Festival: Earworm.

International: Prague Shakespeare Company: Twelfth Night

Sarah O’Halloran (Sound Designer) Folger Theatre: Nathan the Wise, in association with Theater J. Ford’s Theatre: Mr. Lincoln; Everyman Theatre: Queens Girl: Black in the Green Mountains, Sense and Sensibility, Be Here Now, Proof, Dinner with Friends; Theater J: Prayer for the French Republic, The Hatmaker’s Wife, This Much I Know, The Chameleon, Gloria: A Life, Two Jews Walk into a War, Compulsion, Talley’s Folly; Olney Theater Center: The Brothers Paranormal, The Humans, Our Town, Labour of Love; 1st Stage: The Phlebotomist, The Brothers Size, Swimming with Whales, Trevor, When the Rain Stops Falling; Studio Theatre: Cry it Out; Rep Stage: The Glass Menagerie; E2: The 39 Steps, The Heidi Chronicles, Things That Are Round; Mosaic Theater: In His Hands, The Return; Theater Alliance: A Chorus Within Her. 

Daryl Eisenberg (Casting Director) Folger Theatre: Numerous productions since 2013; Theater J: Hester Street; The Kennedy Center: Voices Festival Productions, Spells of the Sea. Broadway: Gettin’ the Band Back Together. Off-Broadway: Bedlam, That Parenting Musical, White Rose. Regional: Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park: Rutka; Tennessee Performing Arts Center: Florida Georgia Line’s May We All; Broadway in Chicago: Heartbreak Hotel; Cape Cod Theatre Project. Film/television: The Cathedral (MUBI), Menorah in the Middle (Hulu), The MisEducation of Bindu (Peacock), Shadows (HBO), Angry Neighbors (Lionsgate), Hey, Viktor. Audio: Limetown, The Callisto Protocol: Helix Station, Shipworm, City of Ghosts, Falling in Love with Mr. Dellamort, Verdict, High-Risers, Chutzpah. Artios-nominated Member of Casting Society of America. www.ebcastingco.com. IG: @EBCastingCo. 

Shana Laski (Assistant Director) Folger Theatre: The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest with Round House Theatre. Round House Theatre: Artistic Apprentice, Jennifer Who Is Leaving (Assistant Director), Radio Golf (Dramaturg); Spooky Action: Sonnets for an Old Century; Cogent Theatre Company: Closer; Rorschach Theatre; Expats Theatre, Theatre Prometheus, and others.    @shana.laski  shanalaski.com.  

Hope Villanueva (Production Stage Manager) Folger Theatre: Hamlet, The Reading Room Festival. Berkeley Repertory Theater and Baltimore Center Stage: Mexodus; Soho Rep: The Fires; Signature Theatre: King of the Yees; Olney Theatre Center: A Nice Indian Boy, Our Town; Woolly Mammoth: BLKS; Kennedy Center: The Dragon King’s Daughter, The Day You Begin; The Second City/Kennedy Center: Twist Your Dickens; Mosaic Theatre: Private, Marie and Rosetta, The Vagrant Trilogy, Paper Dolls, Queens Girl in Africa; Studio Theatre: Hand to God, Choir Boy.  New York: Romy & Michele: The Musical; American Repertory Theatre: WILD A Musical Becoming; The Bourbon Room: Rock of Ages Hollywood; Barrington Stage: Blues for an Alabama Sky; Honolulu Theatre for Youth, Resident PSM. Off-Broadway: Who’s Your Baghdaddy? National Tour: Rock of Ages, Young Frankenstein, My Fair Lady, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s Bellobration. 

Jenna Lynn Keefer (Assistant Stage Manager) Folger Theatre:  Metamorphoses, The Reading Room: The Cuban Vote; Compagnia de’ Colombari: REVELATION; Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics: Little Amal at the Capitol; Constellation Theatre Company: Desperate Measures, Incognito; Taffety Punk Theatre Company: La Salpêtrière; Spooky Action Theatre: The Realistic Joneses. Regional: Baltimore Center Stage: The Medicine Show, Our Town; The Peabody Institute: Cendrillon, Other Side of the Story; Olney Theatre Center: A Christmas Carrol; Hope Repertory Theatre: Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, It’s a Wonderful Life, Every Brilliant Thing, The Importance of Being Earnest, A Year with Frog and Toad. Television: CNN Biden Town Hall.

Rylie Vann (Assistant Lighting Designer) Folger Theatre: debut. Signature Theatre: Just in Time, Broadway in the Park; Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival: In the Heights.