Erin Austin: Bookwriter
Erin Austin is a playwright, screenwriter, and producer. Recent credits include collaborations with Tellin’ Tales Theatre, Greenhouse Theater, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Dramatists, and American Theatre Company. She’s a co-founder of Living Room Playmakers (LRP): a collective that writes and produces site-inspired theatre. MFA in Writing for the Screen + Stage at Northwestern University. erinlaustin.com
Noa/h Fields: Composer & Lyricist
Noa/h Fields is a writer and teaching artist from SoCal now living in Chicago. They are queer, nonbinary and hard-of-hearing. Composer credits: WONDERWORLD and Meat Cute (Brown University). In addition to composing for theatre, they write poetry. Their chapbook WITH is out from Ghost City Press.
Thrisa Hodits: Co-Director
Thrisa Hodits: Director. Regionally Thrisa has directed a touring production with the Lyric Opera Unlimited and has co-directed at American Repertory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Thrisa has worked as an assistant director at the Fisher Center at Bard College, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Writers Theatre, Victory Gardens and The Goodman Theatre. Thrisa is a proud graduate of Loyola University Chicago.
Tekki Lomnicki: Bookwriter
Tekki Lomnicki is the Artistic Director of Tellin’ Tales Theatre. She has written and performed two critically-acclaimed full-length plays, over 26 solo performance pieces, and starred in the award-winning film, The Miracle. She taught youth at Chicago’s Gallery 37 and adults at the Victory Gardens Training Center. She is a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship in New Performance Forms, the 2008 3Arts Award in Theatre and the 2010 Grigsby Award for Excellence in Solo Performance.
Ben Raanan: CO-Director
Ben Raanan is a disabled director hailing from Chicago who specializes in creating work with, for, and about those with disabilities. Favorite credits include: Crumble: Lay Me Down Justin Timberlake, Antigone-born against., The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love Suicide, and Eleemosynary (Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati), Mockingbird (Falcon Theatre), Falling, King Oedipus, and I and You (The Theatre School at DePaul. In June, Ben will be completing his masters in directing from DePaul which will culminate with his thesis production The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Aside from being a director, Ben is a teaching artist specializing in the Hunter Heartbeat method of teaching theatre for people with autism. Thank you to all the members of the team for bringing him on to such an important project.
Jacob Watson: Artistic Producer
Jacob Watson is a theatre artist, educator, and researcher. He has been a researcher at Harvard’s Project Zero and a program manager for interdisciplinary learning initiatives at Columbia College Chicago. Jacob is a founding member of the FYI Performance Company, where he co-conceived and directed Gray Area: a new play about consent. He has created performances with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Redmoon, Theatre Unspeakable, FYI, Piven Theatre Workshop, Chicago Home Theatre Festival, and Erasing the Distance. Jacob holds an Ed.M. in Arts in Education from Harvard University and a B.A. in Theatre from Northwestern University. www.jacobcwatson.com