Cast + Creative Team
Becca Blackwell (they/them) (MOTOR), is an NYC-based trans actor, performer and writer. Existing between genders, and preferring the pronoun "they," Blackwell works collaboratively with playwrights and directors to expand our sense of personhood and the body through performance. Some of their collaborations have been with Young Jean Lee, Half Straddle, Jennifer Miller's Circus Amok, Richard Maxwell, Erin Markey, Sharon Hayes, Theater of the Two Headed Calf and Lisa D'Amour. Film/TV includes: "High Maintenance," "Ramy," “Marriage Story,” “Shameless,” “Deadman's Barstool,” and “Jack in the Box.” They have toured their solo shows They, Themself and Schmerm and Schmermie's Choice across the US. Blackwell was a recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Artist Award, the Franklin Furnace award and the Creative Capital Award.
BeccaBlackwell.com
Headshot Credit: Max Bernstein
Keith Randolph Smith (he/him/his) (MIKEY) Broadway: Jitney; American Psycho; Fences; Salome; King Hedley II; Come Back Little Sheba; The Piano Lesson. Off-Broadway: Paradise Blue (Signature); Lockdown (Rattlestick); Tamburlaine (TFANA); Intimacy (New Group); Fabulation (Playwright’s Horizons); Holiday Heart (MTC); Midsummer Night’s Dream (Delacort). Regional: A Human Being of a Sort (WTC); How To Catch Creation (Goodman); Before It Hits Home (Arena Stage); Water by the Spoonful ( Old Globe); Sunset Baby (City Theatre). Television: The Good Fight: Onion Sportsdome; Law and Order; Law and Order CI; Law and Order SVU; Cosby; I’ll Fly Away; NY Undercover; One Life to Live. Film: Malcolm X; Girl Six; The Warrior Class; Path to Paradise; Backstreet Justice; Dead Dogs Lie; Fallout; Anesthesia; Steve; Journeymen. Video game Voice Acting: Grand Theft Auto V; GTA IV; GTA The Lost and the Damned.
Lana Dieterich (she/her) (MISS CANDACE) A veteran actor of Austin theatre for 40 years, Lana received the 2003 Critics’ Table nod as Best Actress in a Comedy, and she is a four-time B. Iden Payne award winner and company member of Hyde Park Theatre, where she appeared most recently as Maxine in Death Tax (2019). She was once selected by Austin Chronicle critics as Best Name to See in a Theatre Program. Film credits include Waiting for the Miracle to Come, starring Willie Nelson (2018); I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Any More, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (2017); Jake Oelman’s Dear Sidewalk (2013); Bryan Poyser’s Love and Air Sex (2013) and Lovers of Hate (2010); Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation (2006); Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Teeth (2007); Mark Bristol’s The Monster Hunter (1999); the Zellner brothers’ Plastic Utopia (1997); and Disney’s Blank Check (1994).
Headshot Credit: Kenny Gall
Nate Miller (MAC, he/him) is a Brooklyn based Actor/Producer & founding member of Lesser America Theatre Co. A Milwaukee native, he is a graduate of Marquette University & The Juilliard School’s Drama Division. Broadway: “JUNK” at LCT. Off Broadway: “India Pale Ale”, “Ripcord”, “Of Good Stock” at MTC, “Love and Information” at NYTW, “Peter and The Starcatcher” at New World Stages. Regional: Actors Theatre of Louisville, La Jolla Playhouse, Playmakers Rep, The Wilma Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center. FILM: Either Side of Midnight, Another Kind. TV: The Code, The Goodwife (CBS), Us & Them (FOX). Twitter/Instagram: @iamnatemiller
iamnatemiller.com // lesseramerica.com
Catherine (Cat) Palacios (she/her) (JULIE ), is a 4th year B.A. in Theatre and Dance major with an emphasis in Performers Process at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also pursuing a certificate in Japanese. Recent credits include Poppy in Sow and Suckling (UT New Theatre), R in 12 Ophelias (Texas theater and dance), Abby Greene in Chickens in the Yard (Vortex Rep), Cassandra in Women of __ (a song not song) (Texas theater and dance), Lester Stilwell in Matawan (Texas theater and dance), in addition to several other projects. Her future plans are to move to Los Angeles and continue her professional career in Acting and Filmmaking.
David Zayas (he/him) (SNAKE) is best known for his role as Angel Batista on the Golden Globe®-nominated psychological drama “Dexter.” David was recently seen as "Sal Maroni" on the Fox series Gotham, "Sheriff Aguirre" on the Netflix series Bloodline, "Eduardo Magana" on the Hulu series Shut Eye, and "El Alma del Diablo on Deadly Class (Syfy). His other recent television credits include Saint George (FX), Seven Seconds (Netflix), Blue Bloods (CBS), Quantico (ABC), and The Guest Book (TBS). While working on the crime drama The Beat, Zayas met Emmy Award®-winning television writer and producer Tom Fontana, who went on to create the role of "Enrique Morales" on HBO's Oz especially for him. On film, he has starred in The Expendables, Skyline, 13, Michael Clayton, Sixteen Blocks, The Savages, Bringing Out the Dead, The Yards, Undefeated, Wit, Angel, and The Interpreter. David also starred opposite Helen Hunt in the indie feature Ride, starred opposite Ellen Page and Allison Janney in the feature Tallulah, and appeared in the film remake of the 1982 movie musical Annie opposite Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz. David stars in the recent feature, Shine and as 'Sgt. Kesper' in the upcoming feature, Body Cam (Paramount Players). A former New York police officer, Zayas began his acting career with LAByrinth Theater Company in 1992. He has starred in more than thirty theater productions, most with The LAByrinth Theater Company, including: “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train,” “In Arabia We’d All Be Kings,” “Our Lady of 121 St.,” and the Pulitzer Prize®-winning “Anna in the Tropics” on Broadway.
Lane Stanley (he/they) (PLAYWRIGHT) is a director, playwright, filmmaker, and producer. Lane has won Best Director from Baltimore City Paper's Best of Baltimore 2016, The Bad Oracle, and DC Metro Theatre Arts, and received the Mayor's Individual Artist Award. They have had pieces produced and read by 19 theaters in 9 states, including The Barter Theater, Kitchen Dog Theater, and Island City Stage. They have been developed at the HBMG Foundation’s National Winter Playwrights Retreat and the Valdez Theater Conference. Their short films have shown at the REEL Recovery Film Festival in New York and Los Angeles, and the TRANSforming Cinema Film Festival in Sheffield, UK. They are currently in post-production for their first feature film Addict Named Hal after running a successful $22,000 Kickstarter to partially fund principal photography. They were featured in the New York Times and USA for their direction of a grunge-era, gender-bending Hamlet. Lane recently completed their MFA in Directing at the University of Texas at Austin, where they directed Matawan by Dan Caffrey and MotherWitch by Travis Tate. Lane is now based in Los Angeles, California.
lanemichaelstanley.com
Headshot Credit: Rob Eves
Maya Quetzali Gonzalez (she/her) (Voicing STAGE DIRECTIONS) is a Mexican-American artist and arts worker. She recently graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied directing, choreography, and producing as a Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholar. She is the Program Outreach Associate at the MAP Fund.
mayaquetzali.com
Graham Schmidt (he/him) (DIRECTOR) is a Brooklyn-based theater director, dramaturg, and teaching artist. From 2007 – 2015, Graham served as resident director of the company he founded, Breaking String Theater Co. (Austin, TX). Graham’s work with Breaking String included re-imaginings of canonical plays (The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, Ghosts), international collaborations (Dulcey and Roxy at City Hall), contemporary and brand new American plays (The Beyoncé by Eliza Bent, Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness by Timothy Braun, The How And The Why, by Sarah Treem), and annual new plays festivals that he produced from 2011 - 2013. Graham has directed and developed work at institutions including the National Winter Playwrights’ Retreat, the Blue Theater, the Off Center, Salvage Vanguard Theater, the Lark Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Flea Theater, Egg and Spoon Theatre Collective, and the Wild Project. He has assistant directed under Brant Pope, Robert Ramirez, and Chay Yew. MFA, UT-Austin. Graham serves as Associate Director of Chay Yew’s Cambodian Rock Band. He teaches acting in the BFA Acting program at Brooklyn College, and lives across the street from Prospect Park with his wife, Antoinette, and their impossibly delightful staffy-lab mix, Scout.
GrahamSchmidt.com
Thomas Dieter (he/him) (STAGE MANAGER) SM credits include: The Way of Water, Crying on Television (Play-PerView); The Confession of Lily Dare (Primary Stages); for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, The Loophole (Public Theater); The Secret Life of Bees (Atlantic Theater Company); Before the Meeting, A Human Being of a Sort (Williamstown Theatre Festival). In addition to stage management, Thomas is also a writer, performer and education consultant, advising leaders across the country on best practices in adult-education and contextualized instruction.
thomasdieter.com
Victoria Teague (Producer, Co-Creator of AYE DEFY)
Mirirai Sithole (Founder of AYE DEFY)
BeccaBlackwell.com
Headshot Credit: Max Bernstein
Keith Randolph Smith (he/him/his) (MIKEY) Broadway: Jitney; American Psycho; Fences; Salome; King Hedley II; Come Back Little Sheba; The Piano Lesson. Off-Broadway: Paradise Blue (Signature); Lockdown (Rattlestick); Tamburlaine (TFANA); Intimacy (New Group); Fabulation (Playwright’s Horizons); Holiday Heart (MTC); Midsummer Night’s Dream (Delacort). Regional: A Human Being of a Sort (WTC); How To Catch Creation (Goodman); Before It Hits Home (Arena Stage); Water by the Spoonful ( Old Globe); Sunset Baby (City Theatre). Television: The Good Fight: Onion Sportsdome; Law and Order; Law and Order CI; Law and Order SVU; Cosby; I’ll Fly Away; NY Undercover; One Life to Live. Film: Malcolm X; Girl Six; The Warrior Class; Path to Paradise; Backstreet Justice; Dead Dogs Lie; Fallout; Anesthesia; Steve; Journeymen. Video game Voice Acting: Grand Theft Auto V; GTA IV; GTA The Lost and the Damned.
Lana Dieterich (she/her) (MISS CANDACE) A veteran actor of Austin theatre for 40 years, Lana received the 2003 Critics’ Table nod as Best Actress in a Comedy, and she is a four-time B. Iden Payne award winner and company member of Hyde Park Theatre, where she appeared most recently as Maxine in Death Tax (2019). She was once selected by Austin Chronicle critics as Best Name to See in a Theatre Program. Film credits include Waiting for the Miracle to Come, starring Willie Nelson (2018); I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Any More, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (2017); Jake Oelman’s Dear Sidewalk (2013); Bryan Poyser’s Love and Air Sex (2013) and Lovers of Hate (2010); Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation (2006); Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Teeth (2007); Mark Bristol’s The Monster Hunter (1999); the Zellner brothers’ Plastic Utopia (1997); and Disney’s Blank Check (1994).
Headshot Credit: Kenny Gall
Nate Miller (MAC, he/him) is a Brooklyn based Actor/Producer & founding member of Lesser America Theatre Co. A Milwaukee native, he is a graduate of Marquette University & The Juilliard School’s Drama Division. Broadway: “JUNK” at LCT. Off Broadway: “India Pale Ale”, “Ripcord”, “Of Good Stock” at MTC, “Love and Information” at NYTW, “Peter and The Starcatcher” at New World Stages. Regional: Actors Theatre of Louisville, La Jolla Playhouse, Playmakers Rep, The Wilma Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center. FILM: Either Side of Midnight, Another Kind. TV: The Code, The Goodwife (CBS), Us & Them (FOX). Twitter/Instagram: @iamnatemiller
iamnatemiller.com // lesseramerica.com
Catherine (Cat) Palacios (she/her) (JULIE ), is a 4th year B.A. in Theatre and Dance major with an emphasis in Performers Process at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also pursuing a certificate in Japanese. Recent credits include Poppy in Sow and Suckling (UT New Theatre), R in 12 Ophelias (Texas theater and dance), Abby Greene in Chickens in the Yard (Vortex Rep), Cassandra in Women of __ (a song not song) (Texas theater and dance), Lester Stilwell in Matawan (Texas theater and dance), in addition to several other projects. Her future plans are to move to Los Angeles and continue her professional career in Acting and Filmmaking.
David Zayas (he/him) (SNAKE) is best known for his role as Angel Batista on the Golden Globe®-nominated psychological drama “Dexter.” David was recently seen as "Sal Maroni" on the Fox series Gotham, "Sheriff Aguirre" on the Netflix series Bloodline, "Eduardo Magana" on the Hulu series Shut Eye, and "El Alma del Diablo on Deadly Class (Syfy). His other recent television credits include Saint George (FX), Seven Seconds (Netflix), Blue Bloods (CBS), Quantico (ABC), and The Guest Book (TBS). While working on the crime drama The Beat, Zayas met Emmy Award®-winning television writer and producer Tom Fontana, who went on to create the role of "Enrique Morales" on HBO's Oz especially for him. On film, he has starred in The Expendables, Skyline, 13, Michael Clayton, Sixteen Blocks, The Savages, Bringing Out the Dead, The Yards, Undefeated, Wit, Angel, and The Interpreter. David also starred opposite Helen Hunt in the indie feature Ride, starred opposite Ellen Page and Allison Janney in the feature Tallulah, and appeared in the film remake of the 1982 movie musical Annie opposite Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz. David stars in the recent feature, Shine and as 'Sgt. Kesper' in the upcoming feature, Body Cam (Paramount Players). A former New York police officer, Zayas began his acting career with LAByrinth Theater Company in 1992. He has starred in more than thirty theater productions, most with The LAByrinth Theater Company, including: “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train,” “In Arabia We’d All Be Kings,” “Our Lady of 121 St.,” and the Pulitzer Prize®-winning “Anna in the Tropics” on Broadway.
Lane Stanley (he/they) (PLAYWRIGHT) is a director, playwright, filmmaker, and producer. Lane has won Best Director from Baltimore City Paper's Best of Baltimore 2016, The Bad Oracle, and DC Metro Theatre Arts, and received the Mayor's Individual Artist Award. They have had pieces produced and read by 19 theaters in 9 states, including The Barter Theater, Kitchen Dog Theater, and Island City Stage. They have been developed at the HBMG Foundation’s National Winter Playwrights Retreat and the Valdez Theater Conference. Their short films have shown at the REEL Recovery Film Festival in New York and Los Angeles, and the TRANSforming Cinema Film Festival in Sheffield, UK. They are currently in post-production for their first feature film Addict Named Hal after running a successful $22,000 Kickstarter to partially fund principal photography. They were featured in the New York Times and USA for their direction of a grunge-era, gender-bending Hamlet. Lane recently completed their MFA in Directing at the University of Texas at Austin, where they directed Matawan by Dan Caffrey and MotherWitch by Travis Tate. Lane is now based in Los Angeles, California.
lanemichaelstanley.com
Headshot Credit: Rob Eves
Maya Quetzali Gonzalez (she/her) (Voicing STAGE DIRECTIONS) is a Mexican-American artist and arts worker. She recently graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied directing, choreography, and producing as a Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholar. She is the Program Outreach Associate at the MAP Fund.
mayaquetzali.com
Graham Schmidt (he/him) (DIRECTOR) is a Brooklyn-based theater director, dramaturg, and teaching artist. From 2007 – 2015, Graham served as resident director of the company he founded, Breaking String Theater Co. (Austin, TX). Graham’s work with Breaking String included re-imaginings of canonical plays (The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, Ghosts), international collaborations (Dulcey and Roxy at City Hall), contemporary and brand new American plays (The Beyoncé by Eliza Bent, Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness by Timothy Braun, The How And The Why, by Sarah Treem), and annual new plays festivals that he produced from 2011 - 2013. Graham has directed and developed work at institutions including the National Winter Playwrights’ Retreat, the Blue Theater, the Off Center, Salvage Vanguard Theater, the Lark Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Flea Theater, Egg and Spoon Theatre Collective, and the Wild Project. He has assistant directed under Brant Pope, Robert Ramirez, and Chay Yew. MFA, UT-Austin. Graham serves as Associate Director of Chay Yew’s Cambodian Rock Band. He teaches acting in the BFA Acting program at Brooklyn College, and lives across the street from Prospect Park with his wife, Antoinette, and their impossibly delightful staffy-lab mix, Scout.
GrahamSchmidt.com
Thomas Dieter (he/him) (STAGE MANAGER) SM credits include: The Way of Water, Crying on Television (Play-PerView); The Confession of Lily Dare (Primary Stages); for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, The Loophole (Public Theater); The Secret Life of Bees (Atlantic Theater Company); Before the Meeting, A Human Being of a Sort (Williamstown Theatre Festival). In addition to stage management, Thomas is also a writer, performer and education consultant, advising leaders across the country on best practices in adult-education and contextualized instruction.
thomasdieter.com
Victoria Teague (Producer, Co-Creator of AYE DEFY)
Mirirai Sithole (Founder of AYE DEFY)
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