Sooner/Later

Mary Bacon

Mary is happy to be working on Allyson Currin’s wonderful play directed by the terrific Lisa Rothe. Mary’s been seen on and off-Broadway, and favorites include Tom Stoppard's Rock ‘n’ Roll and Arcadia (Broadway), Horton Foote's The Roads to Home with Hallie Foote and Harriet Harris (off-Broadway) and Harrison, TX with Hallie Foote and Jayne Houdyshell (off-Broadway). Other favorites include Charles Busch's The Tribute Artist and the premiere of Happy Now at Yale Repertory Theatre and Primary Stages, Giant at The Public Theatre, Becky Shaw at Second Stage, The Eccentricities of a Nightingale at The Actors Company Theatre and the Lucille Lortel- and Drama Desk-nominated Women Without Men at the Mint Theater Company, among many others. Regional theatres include the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Hartford Stage Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Westport Country Playhouse, McCarter Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Old Globe Theatre, Denver Center, Dorset Theatre Festival, the Chautauqua Theater Festival and others. Television and film include The Mist, Blue Bloods, Elementary, Blacklist, Madam Secretary, Boardwalk Empire, The Good Wife, Mildred Pierce and PBS’s American Experience, with recurring roles on Law & Order’s SVU and Criminal Intent. She holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon.

Todd Cerveris

Todd is pleased to return to Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park where he last performed in King Lear (with the inimitable Joneal Joplin) and The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged). His Broadway credits include South Pacific and Twentieth Century. Other New York appearances include the world premiere productions of Southern Comfort; Almost, Maine; Somewhere, Someplace Else; Dick in London; and The Booth Variations (co-author). First national tours include War Horse, Spring Awakening and Twelve Angry Men. Regionally, he has worked at Arena Stage, Old Globe Theatre, Denver Center, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Cleveland Play House and Philadelphia Theatre Company, among others. His television and film work includes Homeland, Allegiance, The Affair, White Collar, Nurse Jackie, Law & Order and One True Thing. His solo production, Let Me Spell It Out For You, which he wrote and performed, was awarded Best Storytelling Production at the 2017 United Solo Theatre Festival in New York. Todd is an alumnus of The Acting Company and holds an MFA from the University of California San Diego… which officially qualifies him as a Master of learning lines and blocking.

Olivia Cygan

Olivia is delighted to make her Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park debut! She is a New York-based actor and a proud native of Chicago, where recent credits include the world premieres of The Burials at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Feathers and Teeth at Goodman Theatre, as well as The Gift Theatre Company’s production of Richard III at Steppenwolf. She has also had the pleasure of working with TimeLine Theatre Company, Piven Theatre Workshop, Hamlet Isn’t Dead and others. Television credits include Gotham on FOX. Olivia is a recent graduate of Northwestern University and has trained at the Stratford Festival, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and with Kristin Linklater in Scotland. Love to MPPP, GG, W. @oliviacygan 

Allyson Currin

Allyson is pleased to return to Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, having premiered her play High School Alien here as a part of the young audiences program in 2015.  Other playwriting credits include The Silver Belles (Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre), Unleashed! (The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), The Carolina Layaway Grail (The Welders), Caesar and Dada (WSC Avant Bard), Hercules in Russia (Doorway Arts Ensemble), The Dancing Princesses (Imagination Stage), Treadwell: Bright and Dark (American Century Theatre), Benched (Pinky Swear Productions), Church of the Open Mind and The Subject (Charter Theatre), Learning Curves (Washington Shakespeare Company), and Amstel in Tel Aviv and Dancing With Ourselves (Source Theatre Company). She has received two Helen Hayes Awards nominations for Outstanding New Play for Church of the Open Mind and Amstel in Tel Aviv. She is a Founding Member of The Welders, a D.C.-based playwrights’ collective, which received the Helen Hayes Awards’ John Aniello Award for Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company. She has premiered other original works at The National Museum for Women in the Arts, The Strathmore Arts Center, The Landsburg Theatre, The Tivoli, Washington Jewish Theatre and others, as well as a national tour of The Interior Castle with “musica aperta.” She is also an actor with numerous film, television and stage appearances. Visit www.allysoncurrin.com. @allysoncurrin 

Lisa Rothe

Lisa is thrilled to be making her Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park debut. Her New York credits include Hold These Truths (Epic Theatre Ensemble and The Sheen Center) for which she received a nomination for the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society's Joe A. Callaway Award for Direction; Science Fair with mezzo soprano Hai-Ting Chinn (HERE Art Center); A Daughter and Some Sons by Lucy Thurber (New York University’s Graduate Acting Program) and has developed and directed a multitude of new plays with The Lark, as the Director of Global Exchange. Regionally, Lisa has directed for The Guthrie Theater, PlayMakers Repertory Company, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, People's Light, Two River Theater, A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle and Indiana Repertory Theatre, among others. Future projects include In My Chair by Eva DeVirgilis (Virginia Repertory Theatre) and Colony Collapse by Stefanie Zadravec (Barnard College). Along with composer Kim Sherman and librettist Margaret Vandenburg, Lisa has been developing a new opera about Ada Byron (Ada), which was presented at the Center for Contemporary Opera’s Development Series. She received her MFA from New York University, is a Co-President of the League of Professional Theatre Women, a Co-Artistic Director of The Actors Center in New York City, an Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop, an Audrey Fellow with New Georges, a Drama League alum, a Fox Fellow recipient, a member of the National Theatre Conference and a proud member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. Visit www.lisarothe.com. @OliveTodd

Narelle Sissons

Narelle’s Broadway credits include All My Sons (Roundabout Theatre Company). Off-Broadway work includes How I Learned to Drive, Stop Kiss, In The Blood, Kit Marlowe, Dutch Heart of Man and Julius Caesar (Delacorte Theatre) at The Public Theater. She has designed many productions for Classic Stage Company, Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages, Epic Theatre Centre, New York Theatre Workshop, The Acting Company and Soho Repertory Theatre, among others. Narelle has designed Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped the A Train (New York and London productions) and The Little Flower of East Orange (directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman) for LAByrinth Theater Company. She also designed Mabou Mines DollHouse for St. Ann’s Warehouse and Spoleto as well as the world tour (running since 2006). International credits include David Hare’s version of Galileo (Theatre Festival Baltic House, St. Petersburg, Russia) and The Syringa Tree (Vienna, Austria and Frankfurt, Germany). Opera credits include Der Ferne Klang (Bard SummerScape). Narelle is a Fulbright Specialist and has received Drama Desk and American Theatre Wing nominations, two Helen Hayes Awards nominations, a Garland Award and a Leon Rabin Award. She teaches Scenography at Carnegie Mellon University and was an exhibitor at the Prague Quadrennial in 2007 and 2011. 

Theresa Squire

Theresa designs costumes for theatre, dance and film. Theresa recently designed FOUND! at Philadelphia Theatre Company, The Traveling Lady at Cherry Lane Theatre, and Small Engine Repair and Lost Girls at MCC Theater. Theresa has designed at Atlantic Theater Company including The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling, Make Me and Dusk Rings a Bell, among others. Other New York credits includes design for Signature Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages, 2econd Stage Theater, Keen Company, Hourglass Group (Beebo Brinker Chronicles), Barrow Street Theatre, The Flying Machine, Cherry Lane Theatre, Epic Theatre Ensemble, DR2 Kids Theatre, Tami Stronach Dance, Parsons Dance, The Irish Repertory Theatre (Man and Superman), The New Group (Rafta, Rafta...) and Soho Repertory Theatre (Blasted). Regional credits include Merrimack Repertory Theatre, iTheatrics (national tours), Chautauqua Theater Company and Dorset Theatre Festival. Her costumes were seen on Broadway in High Fidelity and The Lieutenant of Inishmore.

Barbara Samuels

Barbara is pleased to be making her Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park debut. She is a New York-based lighting designer for new performance. Her recent New York credits include Against The Hillside (Ensemble Studio Theatre); Acquanetta (Beth Morrison Projects); The Rape of The Sabine Women (The Playwrights Realm); Esai’s Table (Cherry Lane Theatre Mentor Project); Orange Julius (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater/Page 73 Productions, Henry Hewes Design Award nomination); Don’t Look Back (directed by Daniel Fish/Performance Space 122 Coil/Chocolate Factory Theater); Caught (The Play Company, Drama League nominee); O, Earth (The Foundry Theatre, Henry Hewes Design Award nomination); Kate Benson’s OBIE Award-winning Great Lakes… (New Georges/Women’s Project Theater); and Julia Jarcho’s OBIE Award-winning Grimly Handsome. Select regional designs include A Quiet Place (Curtis Opera Theatre); The Rape of Lucretia (Curtis Opera Theatre) and Arnie, Louis and Bob (Trinity Repertory Company). Barbara has ongoing collaborations with Lee Sunday Evans, Jordan Fein, Melissa Kievman, Portia Krieger, Katie Pearl and Dustin Wills, amongst others. She has toured nationally and internationally with Vim Vigor Dance. Barbara holds a BA from Fordham University and an MFA in Lighting Design from New York University. Proud member of USA Local 829.

Joe Payne

Previously, Joe designed Native Gardens, Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash and Pride and Prejudice at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Currently, he is head of sound and projection design at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville, and at Clarence Brown Theatre Company. He has designed projections and sound, and/or composed music for 18 seasons at Utah Shakespeare Festival, for 10 years at Pioneer Theatre Company (Salt Lake City, Utah) and for four years at Virginia Stage Company, as well as at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Round House Theatre (Bethesda, Maryland), Salt Lake Shakespeare, The Neo-Futurists (Chicago, Illinois), Indiana Repertory Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Egyptian Theatre (Park City, Utah), Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Utah Symphony, Utah Opera and the Fulton Opera House (Lancaster, Pennsylvania). For more information, visit www.paynesound.com.

Stephanie Klapper

Stephanie is thrilled to continue her collaboration with Blake Robison and the Playhouse, having cast A Prayer for Owen Meany, Disgraced, A Christmas Carol, Jane Eyre, All the Roads Home and Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery last season, and Shakespeare in Love, Mr. Joy and Be Here Now this season. Previously for the Playhouse, she cast The Secret Garden; Sex with Strangers; Mad River Rising; Native Gardens; The Revolutionists; To Kill a Mockingbird; Mothers and Sons; Bad Dates; Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club; Safe House; Tenderly: The Rosemary Clooney Musical; Circle Mirror Transformation; Peter and the Starcatcher; Buzzer; Fly; Seven Spots on the Sun; Clybourne Park; 4000 Miles; Pride and Prejudice; and A Delicate Ship as well as Shipwrecked! An Entertainment; The Book Club Play; Leveling Up; Abigail/1702; A Christmas Carol; The Three Musketeers; and The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead. Her work is frequently seen on Broadway, off-Broadway and regionally, as well as on film and television. She has many exciting projects running and upcoming. Stephanie is a member of the Casting Society of America.

Brooke Redler

Brooke is pleased to return for her third season with Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Her off-Broadway credits include Breathing Time, The Faire and From White Plains (production stage manager, Fault Line Theatre). Regional theatre credits include Million Dollar Quartet, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Summerland, Native Gardens (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park), Hair: Retrospection, Stillwater, The Whipping Man, August: Osage County, Cabaret and five seasons of A Christmas Carol (production stage manager, Kansas City Repertory Theatre); Peter and the Starcatcher and Richard II (Utah Shakespeare Festival); Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Center Stage in Baltimore); and The Drowsy Chaperone, Is He Dead? and Harry the Great (Creede Repertory Theatre). Assistant stage management credits include Our Town; A Flea in Her Ear; Clay; Jitney; and Love, Janis (Kansas City Repertory Theatre); and work at Starlight Theatre, Stages St. Louis and Heart of America Shakespeare Festival. Brooke also has worked in opera, with credits including Moscow, Cherry Town and Medea (PSM, Opera Long Beach) and Frida, Die Fledermaus and Tosca (ASM, Cincinnati Opera). She also spent two seasons at The Santa Fe Opera.