Guest Players
Kevin R. Free (Sriracha, D&D 5e) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work as an actor, writer, director, and producer has been showcased and developed in many places, including FringeNYC; National Black Theater; The New Black Fest; The Moth Radio Hour; Project Y Theater; Flux Theater Ensemble; the Queerly Festival (of which he is now the curator), and The Fire This Time Festival, where he served as Producing Artistic Director for 5 years, winning an Obie for his work in 2015. He is also an accomplished voice actor, having voiced over 300 audiobooks and creating the voice of Kevin from Desert Bluffs on the popular podcast Welcome To Night Vale. Recent Directing Credits include Pipeline at Mile Square Theatre (named one of New Jersey’s top ten productions of 2019 by NJ.com); The Last Five Years and Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar & Grill both at Portland Stage in Maine; Topdog/Underdog at University of Arkansas; GLORY! at Dixon Place; Wendy and the Neckbeards at Colby College, and Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet at Nevada Conservatory Theater. More info - www.kevinrfree.com and on Twitter @kevinrfree.
René Goddess Johnson (Nokuzola, D&D 5e) is a queer, black, South African, woman, who has been navigating assimilation, white terrorism, and a temporary loss of self pride since arriving in Maine in 1991. Her areas of interest include the intersection of the arts in movements for social justice and racial equity. As an embodied equity consultant, she works closely with the public, with artists of many genres, with minority communities, youth, and nonprofit organizations throughout the state of Maine, to develop creative opportunities focused on inter organizational collaboration. These moments of coming together and creating art, is the common denominator that connects all of her work. Find her on IG @renegoddess, @geelshow + geelshow.com, and @embodiedequityconsulting + embodiedequityconsulting.com.
Matthew Minnicino (Playwright, D&D 5e) is a playwright, adaptor, actor, educator, and storyteller based in Manhattan. He has written frequently for theatre, and has managed to earn a Helen Hayes nomination, the Arts & Letters Prize, a Jeffrey Melnick New American Playwright Nomination, and has been a several-time O'Neill New Play Conference semifinalist. He has created text for dance theatre, web series, short film, immersive theatre, installation art, and more; his essays have been published by HowlRound and The Dramatist (for which he was Literary Associate at one point). He is an alumnus/current member of a decent number of fancy residencies, writers' groups, labs, and things. He is also a perennial teacher, working with organizations in New York and Virginia. He also DMs two D&D games in his minimal spare time. Find out more about him at www.mattminnicino.com, which is sorely in need of an update.
Whitney Lehn Meltz (???, Alias: Wick, Blades in the Dark) is a scenic designer, prop artisan, and colorful genderqueer cryptid based in Las Vegas, NV. They can mostly be found smeared with paint in the scene shop of the Nevada Conservatory Theatre, where they are a resident scenic artist and designer whilst pursuing their Master’s degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. They are eagerly spending this year exploring the relationship between themself and theatre/art/storytelling, as they are currently One Stressed Grad Student in Search of a Thesis Topic. Whitney’s sanity saving hobby is the sporadic D&D campaign still running from their undergrad days, in which they play one half of a pair of kenku twin siblings. Keep up with the shenanigans at meltzdesign.com, or @whitney_lehn_meltz on a sometimes forgotten Instagram.
Ran Xia (Ellery Crow, Alias: E17, Blades in the Dark) is a Shanghai born, Brooklyn based playwright, director, and sound designer. Resident Director at the Tank (inaugural Artist of the Year Award 2019), where her directing credits include: Independent Study (by Ben Gassman), The Tallest Man in the World (by Ailís Ní Ríain), her own play In Blue, and most recently, Howard Rubenstein's new adaptation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, as a theatrical cinematic hybrid production. Recipient of Drama League × Beatrice Terry Residency 2021-2022, alumnus of Pipeline Playlab 2020, and a usual suspect at Exquisite Corpse Co. Sound design credits include: Islands of Contentment (Hypokrit), Zoetrope (ECC), Black Revolutionary Theatre Workshop's podcasts, etc. She'll be directing Orlando by Sarah Ruhl at Barnard College in Fall 2021. Ran is extremely grateful to Nick for being her Gene Wilder in this D&D world of pure imagination.
Elliot Peterson (GM, Blades in the Dark) is a freelance theatre electrician in the DC area. She works at several regional theatres like Signature Theatre and Arena Stage. They are a co-producer, player, and occasional GM on Moon Harbor Heroes, a Masks: A New Generation actual play podcast, and a player on Paradigm Academy, another Masks podcast. When she's not playing bi disaster characters, they can be found GMing Powered by the Apocalypse games with friends on a regular basis. Elliot can be found on Twitter and on Instagram @elliotylen.
Gina Femia (The Virgin, Bluebeard's Bride; Coney Shiversville, Thirsty Sword Lesbians)'s work has been seen/developed at MCC Theater, Playwrights Horizons, EST, The Flea, Page 73, Playwrights’ Center, CTG, Theater of NOTE, Panndora Productions, among others. Plays include ALLOND(R)A (2019 Kilroys List, Winner: Leah Ryan Prize, Runner-up, Yale Drama Prize), THIS HAPPENED ONCE AT THE ROMANCE DEPOT OFF THE I-87 IN WESTCHESTER (2019 Kilroys List Honorable Mention), We Are a Masterpiece (Winner: The Doric Wilson Award, Stage Rights publishing), The Mermaids' Parade (Finalist, American Blue Ink Award, Semifinalist, The Relentless Award, Finalist, Princess Grace Award), For The Love Of (Original Works Publishing), and The Violet Sisters (Great Plains Theatre Conference).
Gina is a 2019-2022 Core Writer with the Playwrights Center, and an Alum of EST Youngblood, Page73's Interstate 73, Ingram New Plays Lab, Parsnip Ship's Radio Roots Writer's Group, Pipeline Theatre’s PlayLab, and New Georges' Audrey Residency. Gina’s a New Georges Affiliated Artist and has received residencies with Page73, Powerhouse, NTI at the O’Neill, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and Fresh Ground Pepper. MFA, Sarah Lawrence College (Lipkin Prize in Playwriting).
Haleh Roshan (she/they; The Animus, Bluebeard's Bride) is an Iranian-American writer with hereditary neuropathy (CMT). Her work fuses leftist politics with intercultural narratives to challenge global power structures and trouble conceptions of identity and ability. Her plays A PLAY TITLED AFTER THE COLLECTIVE NOUN FOR FEMALE-IDENTIFYING 20-SOMETHINGS LIVING IN NYC IN THE 2010S and FREE FREE FREE FREE are published by Dramatists Play Service. Previous pilots include BELLWETHER (2016 Austin Film Festival Second-Round Semi-Finalist) and THE LEGITIMATE (Screen Craft Quarter Finalist).
Emma Covert (she/her; Fred Hudson, Kids on Bikes) is a theatre artist/technician and freelance photographer/illustrator, and a 2019 graduate of Franklin & Marshall College where she received her B.A. in Theatre and minored in Studio Art. When not building or fixing something or other backstage, Emma spends most of her time chasing birds or rewriting campaign notes for her various home games while her players debate the merits of every single type of french fry. She will be working as a Carpenter for Festival 56 this summer before joining the Gulfshore Playhouse as a Carpentry and Scenic Production Intern in the fall, and is thrilled to roll some dice with some awesome people!
Esther Yumi Ko (George Privanathan) is a Korean-American writer and photographer who grew up in (and escaped) New Jersey. By day, she works as an arts administrator in higher education. The rest of the time, she creates and consumes stories about hyphenated identity, liminal spaces, tech mediated communication, multiverses, and memory. During the pandemic, she socially distanced by driving through the country then wrote about it on her blog: paragraphsandpixels.com. Follow her on IG for pretty photos and Twitter for angry rants about economic injustice: @estheryumiko
Susan W. Rodgers (she/her; Helma Shrinkley, Oh Dang! Bigfoot...) is a strong, short little Irish-Indonesian force of nature. She is currently at Montgomery College, studying Theater Performance and is in their spring musical, Working. Having a deep love of Commedia Dell'arte, she has trained at Traveling Players Ensemble, and interned with Faction Of Fools DC. She also loves Halloween, and has worked at Field of Screams as a Scare Actor. She's a singer, and can sometimes be seen at the Sandy Spring Open Mic. She has GMd Oh Dang... for her friends, and wants to share that in her game, Bigfoot stole the presents for Disney World's Beast because he was in love with him. Susan is taking a pottery class with her dad, and her current goal is to be better than her dad at everything. She is already succeeding. She's @SusanWRodgers on Twitter, and @snow.whasian on Instagram and Tiktok. Everyone please take care of your mental health!! Or else.
Shannon Wade (she/her; Geraldine “Gerrie” Winters, Oh Dang! Bigfoot...; Doris Mackowiak, Brindlewood Bay) is an arts educator, puppet maker, puppeteer, clown, playwright, and many other things besides! She has been lucky enough to teach and perform with arts organizations across the country, including the Yocum Institute for Arts Education (PA), Omaha Theater Company at The Rose (NE), Portland Stage (ME), and PortFringe Theater Festival (ME). Shannon currently works as the Director of Education at STAGES Youth Theater in Portland Maine, where she often uses elements of TTRPGs to teach young people about storytelling, collaboration, and improv. When not working with kids, in a theater, or playing games, Shannon enjoys hiking, biking, stiltwalking, baking bread, and sticking googly eyes onto things.
Julia Doolittle (she/her; GM, Lancer) is a Los Angeles and New York City based screenwriter and playwright. (Plays are those things we did before the plague. They had lights, costumes, Nathan Lane?) Her work has been seen at SecondStage, Ensemble Studio Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Portland Stage, Williamstown and more. Julia was born in Reseda, CA, known only for that one Eagles song and The Karate Kid. She attended seven years of Catholic School before enrolling at Sarah Lawrence College, rated by the Princeton Review as “The exact opposite of Catholic School in every way.” Julia was very happy there. Post-graduation, she moved to New York City, worked a lot of terrible jobs and hated Andrew Cuomo before it was cool. Currently, Julia is writing for film and TV, her latest feature currently attached at a major production company. Two of her plays are slated for workshops and productions in 2022, barring Zeta variant or whatever they come up with next.