THE GRADIENT - MEDIA KIT

Christina Acosta Robinson

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Christina Acosta Robinson (Natalia) has appeared on Broadway as Donna Summer in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical. Regional credits include A Raisin in the Sun at Yale Repertory Theater; Everybody Black at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Once on this Island at Cincinnati Playhouse, The Wiz at Sacramento Music Circus; Summer: The Donna Summer Musical at La Jolla Playhouse; A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Guthrie Theater; Caroline, or Change at Tantrum Theater and Syracuse Stage; Seven Guitars at Two River Theatre; The Piano Lesson at Hartford Stage; Romance in Hard Times at Barrington Stage Company; The Color Purple at Milwaukee Repertory Theater; The Unfortunates and My Fair Lady at Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Ragtime at the Arvada Center; Death of a Salesman at Yale Repertory Theatre; The House of the Spirits at Mixed Blood Theatre and The Exonerated at Pittsburgh Playhouse. She received an MFA in Acting from Yale School of Drama.

Stephen Cefalu, Jr.

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Stephen Cefalu, Jr. (Clients 1-8) is thrilled to be making his Rep debut. Regional credits include the world premiere of Mary Page Marlowe (Steppenwolf Theatre Company), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Redtwist Theatre, Jeff Nomination: Best Supporting Actor), End Days (Windy City Playhouse), A Man’s World, In A Word, Damsels, Brotherhood (Williamstown Theatre Festival) and PerkUp PerkUp (City Theatre). Television and film credits include Shameless, Law & Order: SVU, Evil and This Afternoon. He trained at Yale School of Drama.

William DeMeritt

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William DeMerrit (Louis), a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, recently starred as the lead in the film and world-premiere solo show The Catastrophist by Lauren Gunderson, based on the work of virologist Nathan Wolfe. He has been featured in HBO’s Emmy-winning film The Normal Heart, the critically acclaimed web series The Outs, Person of Interest, Law & Order: SVU, NCIS: NO and HBOMax’s The Flight Attendant. Other credits include Indecent, Merry Wives of Windsor and the US premiere of Shakespeare in Love (as Will) at Oregon Shakespeare Festival; The Death of The Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (Signature Theatre); Twelfth Night (Yale Rep); We the Invisibles (Humana Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville) and Sense and Sensibility (Dallas Theatre Center). He is also the creator and star of the New York Innovative Theatre Award-winning solo show Origin Story. Upcoming projects include Netflix’s The Noel Diary. @demeritt, www.williamdemeritt.com

Stephanie Machado

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Stephanie Machado (Tess) is thrilled to be making her Rep debut! Recent credits include Measure for Measure (Fiasco Theater/Actors Theater); All’s Well That Ends Well and Much Ado About Nothing (Classic Stage Company/Play On Shakespeare Festival); An Enemy of the People, Indecent and Assassins (Yale Repertory Theatre); Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (McCarter Theatre); For A Brief Moment I was Something Else (Here Arts); and Christina (Cleveland Play House). She is a recipient of the Olivier Thorndike Award in Acting from Yale and the Greer Garson Award in Acting from SMU, and is a Jerome L. Greene Fellow. She is a proud member of Actors Equity Association. MFA Acting Yale School of Drama, BFA Acting SMU.

Yousof Sultani

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Yousof Sultani (Jackson) is thrilled to be making his Rep debut! He was most recently seen on stage/screen in This Is Who I Am, a joint production by Woolly Mammoth, PlayCo, Guthrie, A.R.T and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Other credits include A Thousand Splendid Suns (Arena Stage), And Then There Were None (Drury Lane), Photograph 51 (Court Theatre), Heartland (InterAct Theatre), Miss Bennet: Christmas At Pemberley and Guards At the Taj (Milwaukee Repertory Theater), The Doppelgänger: An International Farce and The Fundamentals (Steppenwolf Theater), United Flight 232 (House Theatre), Disappearing Number and Inana (TimeLine Theatre), Othello (Chicago Shakespeare Theater) and The Hundred Flowers Project (Silk Road Rising). Film credits include Glass House. Television credits include The Brave (NBC), Empire (FOX) and Chicago Fire (NBC). Yousof received his BFA in Performance from Virginia Commonwealth University. He will be dedicating his performance to his father, Wahid Sultani.

Steph Del Rosso

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Steph Del Rosso (Playwright) is thrilled to be premiering The Gradient at The Rep. Steph is a playwright, fiction writer, film and television writer, and educator. She is a winner of the 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award. Her work has been produced or developed at The Kennedy Center, Studio Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Alliance Theatre, The Lark, Victory Gardens, Los Angeles Theatre Center, New York Stage and Film, Ojai Playwrights Conference and others. She has been a writer-in-residence at SPACE on Ryder Farm, Caldera Arts, the Aspen Ideas Festival and the Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal. Steph is the former Shank Playwriting Fellow at The Public Theater, a Theater Masters Visionary Playwright, an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writers’ Group, and a New Georges Affiliated Artist. Her plays are published by Dramatists Play Services Inc. She teaches playwriting at NYU.

MFA: UC-San Diego. stephdelrosso.com

Amelia Acosta Powell

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Amelia Acosta Powell (Director, Associate Artistic Director) is a producer and director originally from Denver. Before she joined Hana S. Sharif’s team in St. Louis, Amelia was the Line Producer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and prior to that, the Artistic Associate and Casting Director at Arena  Stage in Washington, DC. She also has various credits as a freelance producer, director and casting director. She is a proud alumna of the Allen Lee Hughes Fellowship, a steering committee member of the Latinx Theatre Commons, a member of the Casting Society of America, a founding member of Closer Look Arts Collective, and an inaugural grantee of Theatre Communication Group’s Rising Leaders of Color. She has been an adjunct faculty member at Webster University Conservatory of Theatre Arts and has taught master classes at The Growing Studio NYC, Brown University/Trinity Rep, The Catholic University of America, Howard University, The George Washington University, American University, The Actors’ Center, Creative Acts and more. She holds her bachelor’s and her master’s degrees from Georgetown University.

Carolyn Mraz

She/They

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Carolyn Mraz (Scenic Designer) has collaborated on over 70 world premiere new works including Off-Broadway musicals, immersive events, performance art and international tours. Some favorite design challenges have been a magic show, a spaceship, a sexy lounge in the hull of a decommissioned ferry, a rock musical staged in a church sanctuary and a collapsible performance tent. Carolyn earned five Hewes Award nominations in New York City (Cabin, Spaceman, I’ll Never Love Again and The Black Crook) while also working across the east coast on Kid Prince and Pablo (Kennedy Center, DC), The Sound of Music (Northern Stage, VT), The Wolves (Philadelphia Theatre Company, PA) and Pay No Attention to the Girl (Spoleto Festival USA). Carolyn is a longtime associated artist of Target Margin Theater and Clubbed Thumb in NYC and A Host of People in Detroit. Carolyn just moved to LA and teaches at Cal State Fullerton. For a visual peek, please visit www.cmraz.com.

Raquel Barreto

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Raquel Barreto (Costume Designer) is a Brazilian-born designer working in theatre, dance and opera. Her costume designs have been seen Off-Broadway at Theatre For A New Audience (Julius Caesar), in five seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and regionally at the Guthrie Theater, Denver Center, Mark Taper Forum, Alley Theatre, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Kirk Douglas Theater, Pasadena Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, Arena Stage DC, Berkeley Repertory, Actors Theater of Louisville, Portland Center Stage, The Folger Theater, Syracuse Stage, California Shakespeare Theater, Cornerstone Theater, the Magic Theatre, Latino Theater Co, Jacob’s Pillow dance festival and many others. Raquel is an Associate Professor in Live Design and Production at UT Austin, and a member of USA 829. www.raquelbarreto.com

Mextly Couzin

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Mextly Couzin (Lighting Designer) returns to The Rep after designing Mojada in the 2019-20 Mainstage season. A lighting designer based in New York and Los Angeles, credits include working for Clubbed Thumb and Atlantic Theatre Company in New York, and regionally at The Old Globe, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Kansas City Repertory Theatre and San Diego Symphony. She holds a Pure Mathematics Bachelor’s degree from UC, San Diego and an MFA in Lighting Design also from UCSD.

Sadah Espii Proctor

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Sadah Espii Proctor (Sound Designer) she/her/Espii, is a sound designer, composer, and Barrymore Award- winning media artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She works on a range of live, digital and virtual forms of storytelling. She is an alumna of Virginia Tech and received her MFA in Performance and Interactive Media Arts. Recent design credits include composition and sound design for Love Unpunished (Pig Iron) and Being/With (Nichole Canuso Dance Company), and augmented reality design for Chronicle X (The Shed) and I Have a Door Up There (Harvard University). She also designed sound for the virtual reality theatre production Pandora X, which was recognized at both Venice Biennale and SXSW. Espii has mentored and taught master classes at Cannes Festival, Institute of Documentary Film in Prague, MUTEK Montreal, Live Design, Brown University and Durban Institute of Technology in South Africa. Currently, she is teaching at Sarah Lawrence and is a graduate thesis advisor at Brooklyn College. She has designed visuals for the upcoming Futures We Dream exhibition at The Smithsonian, and will be sound designer for the Off-Broadway premiere of Is There Still Sex in the City? Espii is very excited to have her first show at The Rep and is grateful for all of the hospitality in St. Louis!

Kaitlyn Pietras

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Kaitlyn Pietras (Projection Designer) is happy to make her Rep debut. Key credits include Twilight: Gods (Lyric Opera); Lost Highway (Oper Frankfurt); A Trip to the Moon, Young Caesar (LA Philharmonic); Gun & Powder (Signature Theatre); How to Catch Creation, Mother Road, Unison, Mojada (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Revenge Song, Key Largo, Mysterious Circumstances (Geffen Playhouse); Breaking Through (Pasadena Playhouse); Smart People (Denver Center for the Performing Arts); Cuba Libre (Artists Repertory Theatre); Vietgone (East West Players, LADCC Award for Best Video Design); Flora & Ulysses, OZ 2.5 (South Coast Repertory); A Christmas Carol (Kansas City Rep); RII (Theatre @ Boston Court, LADCC Award for Best Video Design) and A Fable (Cherry Lane Theatre). Kaitlyn holds a BA in Architecture from Clemson University and a MFA in Design for Theatre from UCLA. She is a member of United Scenic Artists, Local 829 and co-owns PXT Studio with Jason H. Thompson.  Pxtstudio.com @pxtstudio

Jason H. Thompson

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Jason H. Thompson (Projection Designer) designed the Broadway production Baby It’s You! as well as international productions of Lost Highway (Frankfurt Opera), Die Walküre (Karlsruhe, Germany), Tri Sestri (Vienna State Opera), Cunning Little Vixen and Pelléas et Mélisande (Cleveland Orchestra/Vienna), Tarzan: Call of the Wild and Frozen A Sing-Along (Disney Shanghai Resort). Regional credits include Twilight: Gods (Detroit Michigan Opera Theatre/Chicago Lyric); A Trip to the Moon and Young Caesar (LA Philharmonic); Hopscotch (The Industry); Grey Gardens (Center Theatre Group); Cage Songbooks (Carnegie Hall, San Francisco Symphony and New World Symphony); Tales from Hollywood (Guthrie Theater); The Steward of Christendom (Mark Taper Forum); Great Immensity and Venice (Public Theater); Revenge Song, Mysterious Circumstances and Key Largo (Geffen Playhouse); Chavez Ravine (Kirk Douglas Theatre); Vietgone (East West Players); Stars on Ice (2007-2019) and Scott Hamilton CARES. Museum credits include The Art of Bugatti, Powered Children’s Racers, Dan Gurney: All-American, The Porsche Effect (Petersen Auto Museum), and he co-designed Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage (LACMA). He is the recipient of two Los Angeles Ovation Awards and one LADCC Award. Instagram: @pxtstudio. pxtstudio.com

Sarah Slight

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Sarah Slight (Dramaturg) is a Chicago-based freelance dramaturg. Most recent dramaturgy credits include the world premieres of The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon, directed by Jessica Thebus (Northlight Theatre); The Tasters by Meghan Brown (Rivendell Theatre); First Love Is the Revolution by Rita Kalnejais, directed by Devon de Mayo (Steep Theatre); The Burn by Philip Dawkins, directed by Devon de Mayo (Steppenwolf Theatre, SYA), and Welcome to Jesus by Janine Nabers, directed by Will Davis (American Theater Company). Alongside Jess McLeod, she is the co-adapator of a condensed version of The Project(s) by PJ Paparelli and Joshua Jaeger, which toured through Chicago Public Schools and housing conferences in 2017. For five years, Sarah served as a producer, literary manager and dramaturg at American Theater Company. She has also worked as artistic programs manager at Northlight Theatre, literary associate at Williamstown Theatre Festival and literary manager at Red Eye Theatre. She received an MFA from Columbia University and BS from the University of Evansville.

JZ Casting

JZ CASTING (Casting) Partners Geoff Josselson, CSA and Katja Zarolinski, CSA are New York-based casting directors, handling productions for Broadway, Off-Broadway and major New York and regional theatre companies, as well as film and television. Previous and current work includes productions for Arena Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Baltimore Center Stage, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Cape Playhouse, Cleveland Play House, Denver Center, Merrimack Rep, The Old Globe, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Pittsburgh CLO, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Round House Theatre, Studio Theatre, Theaterworks Hartford, and the Weston Playhouse. For more information, please visit jz-casting.com.

Jaz Hall

They/Them/Theirs

Jaz Hall (Associate Director) is a queer, non-binary, multi-hyphenate artist--director, producer, curator, performing artist, mentor and advocate. They believe in the development of new works and the centering of stories with marginalized groups at the forefront. Jaz is back in the DC-area, where they completed their ALH Fellowship at Arena Stage, after serving on the Artistic Producing team at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival during Nataki Garrett’s inaugural season, where they began as a FAIR Assistant Director in 2019. Jaz is also the creator and curator of an independent QTPOC artist platform, WOMB, the creation space. Most recently, Jaz is excited about their collaborations with the Empowered Artist Collective as a mentor and advocate to burgeoning artists, their work as the Producing Director of In the Margin and thrilled to be joining the ranks of The Rep. Jaz is a proud graduate of Howard University, where they hold a BFA in Musical Theatre.

Erica Lauren Maholmes

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Erica Lauren Maholmes (Assistant Lighting Designer) is an assistant, designer and technician for live theatre and dance. She has worked for Cleveland Play House (Lighting Apprentice), Illinois Shakespeare Festival (Master Electrician), Kansas Ballet Company (Lighting Designer) and Longwood Gardens (Performance Technician). She was a participating Lighting Designer (Group 22-Harvest) as part of the 2021 Collaborations of Merritt presented by The Michael Merritt Awards. Her design portfolio has been displayed internationally at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial as part of the Emergence Portfolio Library. She is an alumni of the Stagecraft Institute of Las Vegas, West Chester University (BA) and Illinois State University (MFA). She is a proud member of both Black Theatre Network and Design Action.

Tojo Rasedoara

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Tojo Rasedoara (Assistant Sound Designer) is originally from Madagascar and moved to the U.S in2009. In 2017, he got his bachelor’s degree from New York City College of Technology in Sound and Lighting Design. As a freelancer, his most recent work has been for Being/With (Nicole Canuso Dancing Company) in Philadelphia as a sound assistant designer, co-sound designer for a radio podcast story Soft Jade (Yale University), and last but not least, head sound designer for Citizens (Duke University). He also worked as a production assistant for Oscar De La Renta, R13, ADEAM, Self Portrait during New York Fashion Week; Carpenter (Barrow Group Theater); A/V technician (HI-Arts ) in Harriet Tubman Play and was a sound engineer for various live concerts for his church.

Shannon B. Sturgis

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Shannon B. Sturgis’ (Stage Manager) favorite theatrical experiences include Atlantic Theater Company, Shear Madness (Off-Broadway) and Altar Boyz (Off-Broadway and in The Rep’s Off-Ramp series). Other regional favorites include Westport Country Playhouse, Adirondack Theatre Festival, Totem Pole Playhouse, Victoria Theatre, Arkansas Repertory Theatre, Phoenix Theatre (in New York) and the Gretna Playhouse.

Carolyn Ivy Carter

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Carolyn Ivy Carter (Assistant Stage Manager) is overjoyed to be back at The Rep as the Assistant Stage Manager for The Gradient and Stick Fly as well as the Stage Manager for this season’s Imaginary Theatre Company productions of Tomás and the Library Lady and Puss in Boots. She is a graduate of The Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Webster University. Some of her other favorite credits include Stage Managing the ITC season here at The Rep, Stage Manager for Shakespeare in the Streets’ A Vengence and Love at the River’s Edge, Stage Manager for The New Jewish Theatre’s I Now Pronounce and Production Coordinator for Webster University Conservatory’s 50th Anniversary. Member of AEA.

Aurora Behlke

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Aurora Behlke (Webster Conservatory Assistant Director)

Kentrell Jamison

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Kentrell Jamison (Production Assistant)