Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art | playmakersrep.org | 919.962.7529

Letter from Viv. Vivienne Benesch, Producing Artistic Director

Dear Friends,

Greetings and Welcome!

A year ago, who could have predicted that our season’s exploration of the American Dream would resonate quite so profoundly? The journey has been one of reflection, challenge, and discovery, revealing both the enduring ideals and harsh realities embedded in the fabric of our nation. It’s also been a season filled with virtuosic performances, stunning design, great artistry, and meaningful opportunity for connection inside our theatre and well beyond. Little Shop of Horrors feels like the perfect cherry on top: an iconic cult classic musical that lets our company shine and serves as both a cautionary tale and a poignant celebration of resilience, ambition, and heart.

We are thrilled to have the incomparable Jeffrey Meanza back on his home turf to direct this gritty and verdant musical along with music director Alex Thompson and choreographer Tristan André, both favorites here at PlayMakers. They, along with the truly creative creative team and cast, have tended to and grown a dynamic, energized, and gritty world that pulsates with urgency and emotion, mirroring both the survivalist spirit and deep heart at the core of this show.

But we’re still not done (we’re happily never done…)! We have a sharing of Faculty work in development happening the first week of May and, if you are in town at the end of July, we invite you back for another beloved classic musical, Pippin, brought to life by the immensely talented young artists of our Summer Youth Conservatory. Their passion, dedication and talent will fill your heart and lift your spirits while breathing new life into another timeless tale of self-discovery, magic, and ambition.

Your support of the arts fuels all this work, and I extend our deepest gratitude for your presence, engagement, and support. Theatre thrives on connection — between artists and audiences, between stories and society — and your participation makes this shared experience truly meaningful. That connection is at the heart of our knockout 2025/26 season of Theatre that Moves. We can’t wait to experience it with you.

Enjoy the show!

Vivienne

Abridged Constitution

PlayMakers Staff

Friends of PlayMakers

Corporate and Foundation Partners

Desktop Computer Version of playbill available he re

Welcome, welcome, welcome!

We are so happy to have you in this space with us.

When I first immigrated to the United States in 1994, America seemed like a land of bounty – full of wonder and opportunity under the banner of “The American Dream.” After living here for over 30 years, I’ve learned that this dream means very different things to different people. As our society evolves, we grapple with questions about whether that opportunity is equally afforded to all, what success truly means, what we value, and how we balance rugged individualism with collective responsibility.

This season at PlayMakers, we have invited you to join us on a journey that we hope challenged, entertained, and inspired. The American Theatre provides a unique space to explore the American Dream – where ideas come to live and breathe, allowing the nuances of our shared ideals and our differences to be examined. What a gift to our community that we have a company like PlayMakers to offer this space for reflection, dialogue, and change.

We hope you will continue to join us throughout this season and beyond. Your support is crucial in bringing these powerful stories to life, enriching our community, and protecting the magic of live theatre. Share your experiences here with your friends, follow us on social media, and consider a donation – however you choose to support, we are truly grateful to have had you with us this season. We look forward to seeing you at the next.

Peace,

Jackie Tanner, Chair

Donate

PlayMakers Advisory Council

Jackie Tanner, Chair

Betsy Blackwell, Patrick Brennan, Deborah Gerhardt, Susan Gross, Amy Guskiewicz, C. Hawkins, Zach Howell, Lillian Jenks, Duncan Lascelles, Stuart Lascelles, Robert Long, emeritus, Graig Meyer, Julie Morris, Paula Noell, Jodi Patalano, Diane Robertson, Wyndham Robertson, Haley Swindal, Jennifer Werner, Mike Wiley

About the Authors

A gifted artist lost in his prime, Howard Ashman was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1950. In 1974, he graduated from Vermont’s Goddard College and earned an MFA from Indiana University before relocating to New York, where he was co-Artistic Director of the WPA Theatre. There he conceived, wrote, and directed his musical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater with composer Alan Menken. This was followed by the team’s Little Shop of Horrors which became a sensation and international success. Ashman collaborated with composer Marvin Hamlisch for the 1986 musical Smile, before reuniting with Menken for Disney’s animation renaissance by way of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. During work on Aladdin, Ashman died of AIDS, just prior to Beauty and the Beast’s release. Ashman’s numerous awards include two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, four Grammys, a Drama Desk Award, and a London Evening Standard Award.

Alan Menken was born in New York City in 1949. Rethinking a career track in dentistry, Menken graduated with a music degree in 1972 from New York University. One of the most celebrated American composers, after Ashman’s death, Menken partnered with lyricist Tim Rice for Disney’s Aladdin and Jack Feldman for the live action musical Newsies. He joined Stephen Schwartz on the Disney projects Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and David Zippel on Hercules, returning to the stage with the Broadway version of Beauty and the Beast. Additional works include A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden, Disney’s Enchanted and Tangled, Spellbound, and Broadway’s The Little Mermaid, Sister Act, Aladdin, and A Bronx Tale. Menken has won eight Academy Awards, a Tony, ten Grammys, seven Golden Globes, and a daytime Emmy Award.

Dramaturgy Fellow Series

Window Shopping

by Lexi Silva

Finishing out PlayMakers’ American Dream season is Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s Little Shop of Horrors, a comedic musical exploration of social corruption, class, and capitalism. The ‘24-’25 season presented a curated variety of perspectives on identity both individual and national, and an interrogation of the validity of the defining philosophies of the American Dream. This melting pot season quilted together a variety of genres, tones and timelines that became increasingly more topical as the most recent presidential election unfolded. So how do Audrey and Seymour and Doo-Wop melodies and puppets fit into the scheme of things?

On the surface Little Shop is fun, campy, and a little gory, but the underlying themes of greed, corruption and nature vs. urban development provide subversive social commentary through the lens of delightful, celebratory queerness. Director Jeffrey Meanza asserted on the first day of rehearsal that while the musical can be packaged and presented as a wonderful “bon-bon,” this production leans into honesty, grit and the horrors that permeate life on Skid Row. Meanza sets this Little Shop in a 1970’s facsimile of New York City where crime and civil unrest are on the rise, and everyday people are struggling to get by. This landscape asks audiences to consider what happens when, ostensibly, the only way to beat your circumstances is to join them? Can anyone truly win when forfeiting your integrity is seemingly the only way to survive? Characters rise to these challenges differently: Seymour gives in to Audrey II’s bloodlust to escape a hard-knock life, Mr. Mushnik capitalizes on the newfound success, Orin’s already-corrupt character carries on until he’s met with karmic retribution sooner than the rest, all while Audrey dares to dream beyond her circumstances. Though all of humanity eventually meets a bitter end in the play, I am most inspired by how love and connection is a salve that motivates persistence despite hardship. There is a deeply affecting honesty in that.

Amid an ongoing recession and an impending trade war started on our own soil, these considerations fiercely confront America in our current moment. Meeting this heaviness with laughter and joyous musical expression is just as subversive as the poignant questions at the heart of Little Shop. From a distance, if you squint, America might seem like a shining city upon a hill. Upon closer inspection, however, some might find it more akin to a little shop of horrors–it depends on your point of view. This season at PlayMakers is a prolonged reflection on the American dream across genres and perspectives. Just because we’re approaching curtain call on the ‘24-’25 season doesn’t mean that the question of the American Dream will be leaving our minds anytime soon.

Program Notes

“Mr. Big Stuff”: Little Shop of Horrors Serves Up the Seventies

By Gregory Kable, Dramaturg

“I’m going to love these discarded Americans. That is going to be my work of art.”

–Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Our season has been devoted to exploring variants of the American Dream. So how does this concluding work about an insatiable carnivorous alien plant fit that framework? One answer lies in returning to our recent production of Death of a Salesman. On the occasion of that play’s fiftieth anniversary, Arthur Miller observed of his protagonists the Lomans,“they exist in a spot that probably most Americans feel they inhabit–on the sidewalk side of the glass looking in at a well-lighted place”. Miller’s image unearths the core of this science-fiction horror musical as vividly as it evokes his postwar tragedy, for beneath its rock ‘n’ roll, comic book exterior, Little Shop speaks to the truth of its time.

Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s cult classic opened Off Off-Broadway at the intimate WPA theatre in 1982. At that point, the creative partners were themselves outsiders, attempting since the previous decade to establish a career. Guest director and longtime PlayMaker Jeffrey Meanza has set this production in that tumultuous era, whose characteristics parallel our own. The seventies were dominated by international war, stark domestic divisions, and an uncertain economy. Patriotic fervor clashed with civil unrest; the pursuit of pleasure with the spectre of poverty. It was a climate of extremes and, in response, Musical Theatre was bursting at the seams.

Liberated from the conventions of its classical period, that “golden age” bookended by Oklahoma! and Fiddler on the Roof, the genre swung between introspection and exhibitionism (Company and Cats), sincerity and irony (A Chorus Line and Chicago) and cheerfulness and misanthropy (Annie vs. Sweeney Todd). And it’s one of its many achievements that Little Shop found common ground amid diverging trends.

That synthesis is especially notable given the humble origins of the material and production. The 1960 source film was a quickie from legendary producer-director Roger Corman, a maverick who, abandoning the studio system, became yet another outsider. Corman’s horror comedy, famously made on a micro-budget and at breakneck speed, utilized an existing set, a story lifted from his previous picture A Bucket of Blood, and a company of actors who were part of Corman’s rotating stable of talent. Its debut was inauspicious as the second feature of a double bill playinglesser theatres and drive-ins, and was largely dismissed by the few critics deigning to attend, one patronizing review joking, “horticulturalists and vegetarians will love it, especially on Arbor Day”. Despite the invention distinguishing the filmmaking, the piece was expected to vanish without a trace.

But thanks to late-night television followed by the nascent home video market, the film, like its plant, grew to unexpected proportions. Howard Ashman first encountered the movie as a boy in suburban Baltimore and that memory led to a lifelong obsession to translate it to the musical stage. In doing so he reshaped the work considerably, pruning the plot, strengthening characters and relationships, amplifying the latent Faust story about selling one’s soul for mortal desires, and, along with Menken, setting the whole to a score so joyfully infectious that to label it pastiche is libelous.

In the spirit of Corman’s opposition to Hollywood, Ashman and Menken bucked Broadway’s drift toward size and scale, which culminated in the dominance of the British Megamusical, beginning with that U.S. premiere of Cats a scant fivemonths after Little Shop. Instead, Ashman and Menken were miniaturists making a virtue of modest resources, and through their tenacity and shared integrity adopting the role of David to Broadway’s Goliath. This stance impacted both Little Shop‘s transfer Off-Broadway rather than further uptown, and proved decisive in their focus on the fine points of construction in purging Disney of the bloat which had capsized its projects preceding Ashman and Menken’s The Little Mermaid in 1989.

Attention to detail also enabled the team to magnify themes. As science fiction and horror have always confronted our profoundest hopes and fears, Ashman and Menken give Little Shop a seventies spin by taking on its inequities, most prominently the hazards of capitalism. Throughout his body of work, Ashman consistently championed the oppressed and disenfranchised, and his special contribution to the alien invaders and monstrous mutations of American popular culture is his botanical aberration whose color suggests envy, and whose nightmarish appetite is a literal embodiment of that accelerating cycle of commodity and consumption.

Little Shop combines independent and genre cinema, classical literature, bubblegum music, and political science for a giddily subversive experience. And in the show’s compassion and heart, the themes extend further still. “Monsters are our children,” reminds the literary theorist Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “and they always return. These monsters ask us how we perceive the world, and how we have misrepresented what we have attempted to place. They ask us to reevaluate our assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, our perception of difference, our tolerance toward its expression. They ask us why we have created them.” From the seventies to present-day America, then, and from outer space to our state, let Little Shop of Horrors assert its relevance while working its particular magic.

Little Shop of Horrors

Books and Lyrics by Howard Ashman

Music by Alan Menken

Directed by Jeffrey Meanza

Music Director
Alex Thompson

Choreographer
Tristan André

Original Vocal Arrangements by
Robert Billig

New Arrangements by
Michael Kosarin

Orchestrations by
Danny Troob

Scenic Designer
Regina García

Costume Designer
Grier Coleman

Lighting Designer
Charlie Morrison

Sound Designer
Morgann Russell

Vocal Coach
Tia James

Dramaturg
Gregory Kable

New York Casting by
Pat McCorckle, CSA (McCorckle Casting, LTD)

New York Casting by
Rebecca Weiss, CSA (McCorckle Casting, LTD)

Stage Manager
Sarah Smiley

Assistant Stage Manager
Aspen Blake Jackson

April 9-27, 2025

Based on the film by Roger Corman, Screenplay by Charles Griffith
Originally Produced by the WPA Theatre (Kyle Renick, Producing Director)
Originally Produced at the Orpheum Theatre, New York City by the WPA Theatre, David Geffen, Cameron Mackintosh, and the Shubert Organization

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (BROADWAY VERSION)
is presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI).
All authorized performance materials are also supplied by MTI.
www.mtishows.com

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
was originally
Directed by Howard Ashman
with
Musical Staging by Edie Cowan

VIDEO AND/OR AUDIO RECORDING OF THIS PRODUCTION IS A VIOLATION OF UNITED STATES COPYRIGHT LAW, AN ACTIONABLE FEDERAL OFFENSE AND IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED

This production is generously supported by the PAIR-A-DACHS Fund
Alex Thompson is the recipient of The Cody Fund for PRC
Maya Jacobson is the recipient of the Louise Lamont Endowment Fund

The Professional Theatre of the Department of Dramatic Art Kathryn Hunter-Williams, Chair, Vivienne Benesch, Producing Artistic Director Produced in association with the College of Arts and Sciences The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Actor Bios

in Alphabetical Order

Seymour: Robert Ariza*
Orin: Jim Bray*
Audrey II: Micaela Shanyce Bundy
Mr. Mushnik: Jeffrey Blair Cornell*
Ensemble/Puppeteer: Matthew Donahue
Ensemble/Puppeteer: Elizabeth Dye
Crystal: Shayla Brielle G.*
Audrey: Maya Jacobson*
Chiffon: Breia Joelle Kelley
Ronnette: Shelby Sykes

Stage Managers: Sarah Smiley* Aspen Blake Jackson*

*Appearing through an Agreement between this theatre and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

UNDERSTUDIES
Understudies never substitute for listed players unless a specific announcement is made for the appearance at the time of performance.
For Seymour/Orin – MATTHEW DONAHUE
For Audrey – ELIZABETH DYE
For Audrey II – NATE JOHN MARK
For the Trio – MENGWE WAPIMEWAH

Setting:
Skid Row

Time Period:
1970’s

Little Shop of Horrors will be performed with a 15 minute intermission.

The Musicians

Conductor/Piano: Alex Thompson
Drums: Vince Moss
Guitar: Warren Sharp
Bass: TJ Richardson

Act One

Prologue (Little Shop of Horrors):
Chiffon, Crystal, Ronnette

Skid Row (Downtown):
Company

Da–Doo:
Chiffon, Crystal, Ronnette

Ya Never Know:
Mushnik, Chiffon, Crystal, Ronnette, Seymour

Somewhere That’s Green
Audrey

Closed for Renovations:
Seymour, Audrey, Mushnik

Be A Dentist:
Orin, Chiffon, Crystal, Ronnette

Mushnik and Son:
Mushnik, Seymour

Feed Me (Git It):
Seymour, Audrey II

Now (It’s Just the Gas):
Seymour, Orin

Act Two

Call Back in the Morning:
Seymour, Audrey

Suddenly, Seymour:
Seymour, Audrey, Chiffon, Crystal, Ronnette

Suppertime:
Audrey II

The Meek Shall Inherit:
Company

Finale (Don’t Feed the Plants)
Company

PROFESSIONAL ACTOR TRAINING PROGRAM

Class of 2026
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Robert Ariza

Seymour

PlayMakers: Debut.

Broadway: Deaf West revival of Spring Awakening.

Off-Broadway/New York: The Visitor (The Public Theater), Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Lincoln Center), Soot and Spit (New Ohio Theatre), Spamilton (The Triad).

Tour/International: Hamilton (Chicago), Les Misérables (North America), Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 (Shanghai).

Regional: The Cape Playhouse, Virginia Theatre Festival, Adirondack Theatre Festival, Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, Kansas City Starlight, Geva Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Olney Theatre Center, Hangar Theatre, Goodspeed Musicals, Maltz Jupiter Theatre, and Music Theatre Wichita.

TV: Elsbeth, FBI (CBS), Poker Face, Girls5Eva (Peacock), Pose (FX).

Cast Recordings: The Visitor, The Theory of Relativity.

www.robertariza.com

Jim Bray

Orin

PlayMakers: Company member in their first season. Death of a Salesman.

New York/International: Workshop Theatre Company, New Light Theatre Project, Dixon Place. Sympathy Jones (NY Studio Cast Album), Grease (European Tour), among others.

Regional: Curse of the Starving Class (Theatre Raleigh); Elf (NC Theatre); A New Brain (Jennie T. Anderson Theatre); 33 1/3 (Dobama Theatre); The Music Man (Cain Park); Blood Drive (Barrington Stage); Fallen Angel (Bay Street Theatre); The Musical Theatre Project; Forestburgh Playhouse; Porthouse Theatre.

Directing: Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike, Cinderella, You Can’t Take it With You, The Stonewater Rapture, Dream With Me (film), Kinky Boots (assoc. dir.).

Education: MFA in Acting- Kent State University. Jim has previously been on faculty at University of Northern Iowa, Stephens College, East Carolina University. He serves as Teaching Assistant Professor of Theatre in the Department of Dramatic Art at UNC Chapel Hill.

www.jimbray.net

Micaela Shanyce Bundy

Audrey II

PlayMakers: Debut.

Regional: Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (Theatre Raleigh); Gypsy, Oklahoma (The Prizery).

Concert: Featured Vocalist in Andrea Bocelli Tour 2024 (Raleigh, NC), Freedom Series (North Carolina Symphony), Oprah Winfrey’s 2020 Vision Tour, and White House – In Observance of Black History.

Education: Micaela is a classically trained vocalist, voice coach, and arts leader. She graduated from North Carolina A&T State University, where she studied music education with a concentration in voice, and Winthrop University, where she received a Master of Arts in Arts Administration.

Jeffrey Blair Cornell

Mr. Mushnik

PlayMakers: Jeff is celebrating his 30th consecutive season acting with PlayMakers. The Christmas Case of Hezekiah Jones, Murder on the Orient Express, Much Ado About Nothing, The Legend of Georgia McBride, Hamlet, Emma, Native Gardens, Julius Caesar, Ragtime, How I Learned to Drive, She Loves Me, Bewilderness, My Fair Lady, The Tempest, Sense and Sensibility, Angels in America, Cabaret.

New York: Two by Two, Down to Earth, Serious Business.

Regional: Guthrie Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Paper Mill Playhouse, Geva Theatre Center, among others.

Education/Other:Carbonell Award nominations for Best Actor – Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me and Falsettoland (Caldwell Theatre – FL). Studied at HB Studios in New York with Uta Hagen, Austin Pendleton, and Elizabeth Wilson and received his MFA from the PATP/UNC-Chapel Hill. Serves as Teaching Professor/Associate Chair in UNC’s Department of Dramatic Art.

Matthew Donahue

Ensemble/Puppeteer

PlayMakers: Company member in his second year of UNC’s Professional Actor Training Program with the Department of Dramatic Art. Death of a Salesman, The Christmas Case of Hezekiah Jones, Murder on the Orient Express, Every Brilliant Thing, Much Ado About Nothing. Stupid F**king Bird, The Lonsome West (PlayMakers/DDA Ground Floor).

Regional: Little Shop of Horrors(Virginia Theatre Festival);The Fox; Peter and the Starcatcher (The Commonweal Theatre Co.); Gypsy, Oklahoma! (The Prizery).

University: The Three Musketeers, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Hands on a Hardbody, et al. (ECU/Loessin Playhouse).

Education:BFA Acting, East Carolina University.

Elizabeth Dye

Ensemble/Puppeteer

PlayMakers: Company member in her second year of UNC’s Professional Actor Training Program with the Department of Dramatic Art. Confederates, Death of a Salesman, The Christmas Case of Hezekiah Jones, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, The Game, Much Ado About Nothing. The Taming, Stupid F**king Bird (PlayMakers/DDA Ground Floor).

University: Cabaret, Animal Farm, Three Sisters, Violet, Henry IV Part One (University of Evansville)

Education:BFA Theatre Performance at the University of Evansville.

Shayla Brielle G.

Crystal

PlayMakers: Debut.

Shayla is honored to join this amazing cast and crew to bring life to Little Shop of Horrors! Favorite credits include Ain’t Too Proud – First National Tour, Mamma Mia, and All Shook Up.

Maya Jacobson

Audrey

PlayMakers: Debut.

Off-Broadway/New York: Fidler Afn Dakh (The National Yiddish Theatre, directed by Joel Grey), Amerike the Golden Land (The National Yiddish Theatre)

Regional: Beautiful: the Carole King Musical (Asolo Repertory Theatre), A Crucible 001 (Bard), Fiddler on the Roof (Paper Mill Playhouse), Fun Home (Studio Theatre), Fiddler on the Roof (The Lyric Opera of Chicago), A Walk on the Moon (George Street Playhouse).

Television: Mordeo (Crypt TV)

Education/Awards: Boston Conservatory. Great American Songbook Competition National Finalist of 2013.

Breia Joelle Kelley

Chiffon

PlayMakers: Debut.

National Tour: A Bronx Tale (2019/2020)

Regional: Bull Durham: The Musical (Theatre Raleigh), Elf: The Musical (NC Theatre), Mamma Mia (Theatre by the Sea/North Shore Music Theatre), Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Forestburgh Playhouse)

Workshop: The Inferior Sex by Jacqueline E. Lawton

Education: BFA Music Theatre – Elon University (Class of 2019)

Shelby Sykes

Ronnette

PlayMakers: Debut.

Regional: The Color Purple (Revival Theatre Company), Once On This Island (Open Space Cafe Theatre), Into The Woods (City Arts Theatre), The Wiz (CAPAC), Seven Guitars (Scrapmettle Performing Arts), Nunsense (The Barn Dinner Theatre)

Tours: The Color Purple National Tour (John Doyle) Film: Whatever It Takes

Education/Awards/Other: Manhattan School Of Music, Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity for Women

Jeffrey Meanza

Director

An actor, director and educator, Jeffrey Meanza has spent the better part of two decades working at two of the country’s most celebrated regional theatres, overseeing the artistic, educational and community engagement efforts of the organizations. As a member of PlayMakers’ resident acting company, he appeared in What the Constitution Means to Me, Murder on the Orient Express, Hamlet, Angels in America, Into the Woods, Lisa Kron’s Well, Amadeus, Assassins, and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, among others, and directed Misery, The Legend of Georgia McBride, The Cake, and Guys and Dolls. From 2015 to 2021, he served as the Guthrie Theater’s associate artistic director, overseeing the theater’s education and community engagement initiatives, the literary team, casting, and the theater’s professional training programs, as well as helping to guide the work on the Guthrie’s three stages. During his tenure, Meanza managed the expansion of educational programming to serve over 35,000 students annually, including creating an artist residency program that put full-time teaching artists in high school classrooms throughout Minnesota. In addition, under his leadership, the Guthrie piloted a new Fellowship program that offers paid training opportunities for emerging leaders to experience work at one of the nation’s leading regional theaters. In 2021, Meanza returned to PlayMakers Repertory Company as Associate Artistic Director, overseeing the theater’s artistic, educational and engagement operations. Jeff is currently the Executive Director of the State Theatre in Modesto California. He holds an M.F.A in Acting from the Professional Actor Training Program at UNC-Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Theater and Performance Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Alex Thompson

Music Director

PlayMakers: She Loves Me, My Fair Lady, Sweeney Todd, Into The Woods (Associate Music Director). Ragtime (Keyboard 2). The Drowsy Chaperone (SYC Music Director 2023), The Prom (SYC Music Director 2024).

Off-Broadway/New York: All Hallows Eve (Connelly Theatre).

Regional: Selected Credits: Kinky Boots (Norwegian Creative). Perfectly Imperfect (Marigny Opera House, New Orleans LA); A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, The Color Purple, West Side Story, Godspell, The Wiz, Working, Hairspray (Hope Repertory Theatre); The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Connecticut Repertory Theatre); Assassins (Pallas Theatre Collective, Washington D.C.).

Education/Awards/Other: Wilde Award winner for Best Music Direction, The Color Purple (Hope Repertory Theatre), 1st Runner-up for BroadwayWorld’s 2022 Regional Award for Best Music Direction & Orchestra Performance for A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Hope Repertory Theatre). Former accompanist for UNC’s Music and Theatre departments. Co-producer, mixer/engineer and arranger/pianist, Growing Up (the debut EP from Broadway’s Mia Pinero, PlayMakers alum).

Tristan André

Choreographer

PlayMakers: Company member from 2016-2019. They Do Not Know Harlem, Ragtime, Life of Galileo, She Loves Me, Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood, Leaving Eden, My Fair Lady, Twelfth Night, The Crucible.

PlayMakers Mobile: A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Measure for Measure.

Regional: The Amen Corner (Shakespeare Theatre Company); As You Like It (Public Works).

Education: MFA Professional Actor Training Program, UNC-Chapel Hill; BFA in Theatre, University of Memphis.

www.tristanandre.com

Regina García

Scenic Designer

PlayMakers: Debut.

Regina is a Chicago-based scenic designer from Puerto Rico. She has had long standing relationships with the Latinx Theatre’s renowned Teatros including Repertorio Español, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, Teatro Vista and Pregones Theater. She received a nomination for the Henry Hewes Design Award for her work on the Obie-Award winning satire, Between Two Knees, written by the 1491’s and presented by the Perelman Performing Arts Center, NYC. Regina is also a Fellow of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers, a Regional Associate member of the League of Professional Theatre Women; and company member with Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in Chicago; and Boundless Theatre Company (San Juan/ NYC). She is the Head of the Scenic Design program at The Theatre School, DePaul University. Regina is the recipient of USITT’s 2025 Distinguished Achievement Award in Scenic Design. Recent completed projects: Indiana Rep, American Players Theatre, Cleveland Play House, Alley Theatre; with upcoming productions at Asolo Rep, PlayMakers and People’s Theatre in NYC

Grier Coleman

Costume Designer

PlayMakers: Misery, Julius Caesar, Life of Galileo, Dot, The Crucible, Disgraced.

Regional: Credits include shows at Miami New Drama, Weston Playhouse, Virginia Theatre Festival, Shakespeare on the Sound, Virginia Stage Company, and Yale Repertory Theater.

Education: Seventeen seasons at The Juilliard School designing Drama, Dance, and Opera; NYU, Colombia, The New School, Washington College, Auburn University, University of Virginia. BFA: UNC-Chapel Hill; MFA: Yale School of Drama. United Scenic Artist 829.

ww.griercoleman.com

Charlie Morrison

Lighting Designer

PlayMakers: The Legend of Georgia McBride, Assassins, Red, An Enemy of the People, Noises Off, Big River, As You Like It, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Underpants.

NYC/National and International Tours: Disney’s The Little Mermaid, A Christmas Story: The Musical, Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical, A Chorus Line, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Miss Saigon, Aida, The Producers, Legally Blonde, Man of La Mancha, Guys and Dolls, Groovaloo, Hello, Dolly!, My Fair Lady, The King and I, Spelling Bee, Gypsy, 42nd Street, Smokey Joe’s Cafe, The Who’s Tommy, Titanic, The Music Man and many others.

Regional: Paper Mill Playhouse, Guthrie Theater, Shakespeare Theatre Company (D.C.), Goodspeed Musicals, Seattle Repertory, Seattle 5th Avenue, Broadway Sacramento, Theatre Under the Stars, Dallas Summer Musicals, Kansas City Starlight, Pittsburgh CLO, George Street Playhouse, North Carolina Theatre, PlayMakers Repertory, Tulsa Opera and many others. TV: Finding Magic Mike for HBOMax. Charlie is the recipient of two Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Lighting.

Morgann Russell

Sound Designer

PlayMakers: They Do Not Know Harlem, A Wrinkle in Time, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Summer Youth Conservatory).

Tia James

Vocal Coach

PlayMakers: Company member for 6 seasons. Actor: Much Ado About Nothing, Clyde’s, Hamlet, Blues for an Alabama Sky, A Wrinkle in Time, Julius Caesar, Native Son. Vocal coaching includes Misery, They Do Not Know Harlem, The Legend of Georgia McBride, Stick Fly, Ragtime, How I Learned to Drive, Life of Galileo, Bewilderness, She Loves Me, Skeleton Crew, Sherwood, Jump, Your Healing is Killing Me. Director: Crumbs from the Table of Joy, How I Learned What I Learned, As You Like It, Macbeth (PlayMakers Mobile), and Constellations (PlayMakers Ground Floor).

Broadway: The Merchant of Venice.

Off Broadway/New York: The Winter’s Tale, The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare in the Park).

Regional: Much Ado About Nothing (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company); Richard III (Allentown Shakespeare); Loving and Loving (Stella Adler Studios); Much Ado About Nothing (Two River Theatre); Civilization [All You Can Eat] (Woolly Mammoth Theater).

Television: Nurse Jackie, Treme.

Teaching / Coaching / Directing: UNC-Chapel Hill, NYU Graduate Acting, NYU Dance, Atlantic Acting School, Montclair University.

Education / Awards: MFA NYU Tisch Graduate Acting Program, BFA Virginia Commonwealth University; Miller Voice Method Teacher Certification. Recipient of the 2014 NYU Graduate Acting Diversity Mentorship Scholarship, 2003 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship winner for Best Actor; 2019 Michael Chekhov/Zelda Fichandler Scholarship.

Gregory Kable

Dramaturg

PlayMakers: Associate Dramaturg, 1997 to present. Productions include Native Gardens, A Wrinkle in Time, She Loves Me, Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood, My Fair Lady, Sweeney Todd, Peter and the Starcatcher, An Enemy of the People, Into the Woods, Private Lives, Clybourne Park, Red, Angels in America, Topdog/Underdog, The Subject Was Roses, Uncle Vanya, Violet: A Musical and Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde.

Regional: American premiere of Pentecost, Le Bourgeois Avant-Garde (Yale Repertory Theatre).

Directing: Love’s Labour’s Lost, A New Musical, Playing for Time, Lulu, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Sunday in the Park with George, Danton’s Death, Closer, The Lady From the Sea, Balm in Gilead, Jesus Christ Superstar, Therese Raquin, Hair, American Buffalo, Miss Julie, Curse of the Starving Class, Camino Real.

Faculty: Department of Dramatic Art, UNC-Chapel Hill.

Education: MFA, Yale School of Drama.

Pat McCorckle

New York Casting

Broadway: Over 50 productions including On The Town, Amazing Grace, End of the Rainbow, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, She Loves Me, A Few Good Men.

Off-Broadway: Highlights; Clever Little Lies, Shear Madness, Tribes, Our Town (Barrow Street), Freud’s Last Session, Toxic Avenger, Almost Maine, Driving Miss Daisy.

Feature Films: Year by the Sea, Premium Rush, Ghost Town, The Thomas Crown Affair, Die Hard with a Vengeance, School Ties, etc.

Television: Twisted, Humans for Sesame Street, Hack (CBS), Californication (Emmy Nomination), Max Bickford (CBS), Chapelle’s Show, Strangers with Candy, Barbershop and many more.

www.mccorklecasting.com

Sarah Smiley

Stage Manager

This is Sarah’s 13th season with PlayMakers, since first joining the company in 2005. She has worked professionally for over 30 years in the entertainment and theatrical industries, in theme parks and road houses in eight states and the U.K. She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association and has been active in USITT and the Stage Managers’ Association. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa.

Aspen Blake Jackson

Assistant Stage Manager

PlayMakers: Confederates, The Christmas Case of Hezekiah Jones, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Murder on the Orient Express, Much Ado About Nothing, Clyde’s, They Do Not Know Harlem, Native Gardens. The Prom, The Drowsy Chaperone, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Summer Youth Conservatory).

Aspen is thrilled to be returning for her third mainstage season. She graduated from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BA in Vocal Performance and Dramatic Arts. Aspen has also thoroughly enjoyed spending the last three summers serving as the Production Stage Manager for our Summer Youth Conservatory program of which the most recent production, The Prom was a hit!

Music Theatre International

Licensing

Music Theatre International (MTI) is one of the world’s leading theatrical licensing agencies, granting theatres from around the world the rights to perform the greatest selection of musicals from Broadway and beyond. Founded in 1952 by composer Frank Loesser and orchestrator Don Walker, MTI is a driving force in advancing musical theatre as a vibrant and engaging art form.

MTI works directly with the composers, lyricists and book writers of these musicals to provide official scripts, musical materials and dynamic theatrical resources to over 100,000 professional, community and school theatres in the US and in over 150 countries worldwide. MTI is particularly dedicated to educational theatre, and has created special collections to meet the needs of various types of performers and audiences. MTI’s Broadway Junior® shows are 30- and 60-minute musicals for performance by elementary and middle school-aged performers, while MTI’s School Editions are musicals annotated for performance by high school students.

PlayMakers Leadership

Vivienne Benesch

Producing Artistic Director

Vivienne is in her ninth full season as a company member and Producing Artistic Director with PlayMakers, where she has helmed productions of The Game, Hamlet, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Storyteller, Dairyland, Life of Galileo, Leaving Eden, The May Queen, Three Sisters, Love Alone, RED and In The Next Room. In her time with the company, she is particularly proud to have produced 13 world premieres and launched PlayMakers Mobile, a touring production aimed at reaching under-served audiences around the Triangle.

For 12 seasons, she served as Artistic Director of the renowned Chautauqua Theater Company and Conservatory, presiding over the company’s transformation into one of the country’s best summer theatres and most competitive summer training programs. Vivienne directed both the world premiere of Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles for Detroit Public Theatre and, in 2022, its Broadway production starring Debra Messing. She has also directed for the Folger Shakespeare Theatre (Helen Hayes nomination for best direction 2019), The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Trinity Repertory Company, NY Stage & Film, and Red Bull Theatre, among others. As an actress, Vivienne has worked on and off-Broadway, in film and television, at many of the country’s most celebrated theatres, and received an Obie Award for her performance in Lee Blessing’s Going to St. Ives. Vivienne is a graduate of Brown University and NYU’s Graduate Acting Program.

As an educator, she has directed for and served on the faculty of some of the nation’s foremost actor training programs, including The Juilliard School, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Professional Actor Training Program, Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Program, and at her alma mater, NYU’s Graduate Acting Program. She is the 2017 recipient of the Zelda Fichandler Award given by the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation.

Maura J. Murphy

Director of Operations

Maura is here for her ninth full season, returning after a 23-year hiatus. In that time, she honed her administrative skills at Duke, NCSU and of course, Carolina. She was production stage manager for PlayMakers from 1993-1996 and general manager from 1996-1999. Education: EdD and MS in Higher Education Administration, NCSU; BA in Drama, Muhlenberg College.

Michael Rolleri

Production Manager

Michael is in his 38^th season with PlayMakers Repertory Company. He has been Technical Director, Project Manager, Exhibition Technician, and Lighting Designer for industrial shows in the Southeast region, as well as lead carpenter for films, the U.S. Olympic Festival, and scenic studios. He has also been a rigger in the Southeast region and has served on the executive board and as President of IATSE Local 417. Michael is a 30-year Gold Pin member of IATSE. An active United States Institute For Theatre Technology (USITT) member, he is a three-time winner at USITT’s Tech Expo. He is a full Professor/Head of the Technical Production Program at UNC-Chapel Hill and was an instructor at High Point University and Tufts University.

Education: MFA in Design and Technical Production, UNC-Greensboro.

Our Mission

PlayMakers Repertory Company is North Carolina’s premier professional theatre company, proudly in residence on the dynamic campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Our mission is to produce relevant, courageous work that tells stories from and for a multiplicity of perspectives. We believe that theatre can have a transformational impact on individuals and entire communities, and we are committed to the journey of becoming an anti-racist organization whose work is accessible to all. Inextricably linked to UNC’s Department of Dramatic Art, PlayMakers is devoted to nurturing and training future generations of artists and audiences.

Land Acknowledgment

We acknowledge that the Center for Dramatic Art is located on the unceded lands of one or more of Abiayala’s (the Americas’) original sovereign nations, the name(s) of which have not yet been affirmed. The unjust acquisition of these Indigenous lands came about through a history of racism, violence, dispossession, displacement, and erasure of cultures by settlers as part of the larger, land-centered project of settler colonialism.

As we look to the future, may. webuild upon the memories and goodwill of all who walked and labored here before us with truth, integrity, and honor. Learn more: UNC American Indian Center

PlayMakers is…

(American Theatre Magazine), PlayMakers Repertory Company is North Carolina’s premier professional theatre company, proudly in residence on the dynamic campus of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The professional company was founded in 1976, growing out of a storied 100-year tradition of playmaking at Carolina.

“One of America’s Best Regional Theatres”

At the very heart of the PlayMakers experience is one of the nation’s last remaining resident theatre companies, made up of accomplished performers, directors, designers, artisans, and technicians, and supported by exceptional graduate students in UNC’s Department of Dramatic Art. Our company works side by side with guest artists from all over the world and our alumni include Pulitzer Prize, Tony®, Emmy®, and Grammy Award® winners.

Creating Tomorrow’s Classics, Today

Producing Artistic Director Vivienne Benesch is continuing PlayMakers’ tradition of producing vibrantly reimagined classics, large-scale musical theatre, and significant contemporary work, but is also broadening the company’s reach to become a home for new play development and a true hub of social and civic discourse in the region. Her first seven seasons have already given life to twelve important new American plays.

A Hub of Engagement

PlayMakers seeks to provoke thought, stimulate discussion, and push the boundaries of the theatrical form in everything we do. Whether through our intimate @PLAY series, our mainstage offerings or our virtual line-up, we look for opportunities for direct, dynamic engagement between audiences, artists, and thinkers. We also offer a host of unique engagement opportunities designed to enrich our audience’s experience of the live arts.

Theatre for the People

PlayMakers Mobile is an initiative that seeks to contribute positively to the civic and social life of our region by taking world-class theatre out of our building and into the community. We create a streamlined production of a play and take it to schools, transitional housing facilities, and long-term treatment facilities around the Greater Triangle area. And best of all, it’s all free of charge.

Passing the Torch

PlayMakers’ award-winning Summer Youth Conservatory is the only professionally supported training program of its kind in the region. The Theatre Quest program provides camps to area middle school and high school students, while the Theatre Intensive and TheatreTech programs allow Triangle high schoolers to apprentice directly with professional directors, choreographers, musical directors, and technicians, culminating in a professional quality production on the PlayMakers mainstage for the whole community to enjoy.

Eliminating Barriers

With a commitment to eliminating barriers for attendance, PlayMakers offers All Access performances for our patrons living with disabilities. We also offer accessible $20 tickets for all performances and ticket prices are reduced to just $10 for UNC students. For more information, please contact prcboxoffice@unc.edu.

PlayMakers’ 2024/25 Season is Made Possible in Part by Grants from

Foundation Support

National Endowment for the Arts, North Carolina Arts Council, The Shubert Foundation, Fidelity Foundation, Orange County Arts Commission, The Strickland Family Foundation, UNC Parents Council

Additional Funding for Guest Artists is Provided by

Jeffrey Hayden Guest Lectureship Fund, Robert Boyer and Margaret Boyer Fund, Louise Lamont Fund, Emeriti Professors Charles and Shirley Weiss Fund

Corporate Council

Craven Allen Gallery & House of Frames, Larry’s Coffee, Mediterranean Deli, Bakery, and Catering, Metal Supermarkets Raleigh, Pineapple Sol Catering, Pinsieline Properties LLC, University Florists, Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe

Associates

Glasshalfull, Infinium Spirits

PlayMakers Repertory Company is a program of the Department of Dramatic Art, The College of Arts and Sciences, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources, recognizes PlayMakers as a professional theatre organization and provides grant assistance to this organization from funds appropriated by the North Carolina General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts. PlayMakers is a beneficiary of the Elizabeth Price Kenan Endowment and the Lillian Hughes Prince Endowment.

PlayMakers Repertory Company is a Member of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for the American theatre.

This Theatre operates under an agreement between the League Of Resident Theatres (LORT) and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

The scenic, costume, lighting and sound designers in LORT Theatres are represented by United Scenic Artists, Local USA-829 of the IATSE.

The Director and Choreographer are members of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, a national theatrical labor union.

Administration

Vivienne Benesch, Producing Artistic Director

Artistic

Jeff Aguiar, Director of Engagement
Tracy Bersley, Movement Coach/Choreographer
Chelsea James, Associate Producer
Tia James, Vocal Coach
Gregory Kable, Dramaturg
Jacqueline E. Lawton, Dramaturg
Mark Perry, Dramaturg
Gwendolyn Schwinke, Vocal Coach
Lexi Silva, Dramaturgy Fellow
Adam Versényi, Dramaturg
Andrew Wade, Assistant to Producing Artistic Director

Management

Lenore Field, Special Events Coordinator
Lisa Geeslin, Accountant
Charisse Holloway, Admin Support Specialist
Emily N. Kelly, General Manager
Zoë Lord, Company Manager
Maura J. Murphy, Director of Operations
Ella Hawn, Work Studies

Marketing & Audience Services

TJ Carr, Graphic Designer and Marketing Associate
Rebecca Edmonds, Audience Services Associate
Hannah LaMarlowe, Marketing Specialist
Thomas Porter, Box Office Manager
Rosalie Preston, Director of Marketing & Sales
Jenna Zottoli, Audience Services Manager
Ava Lytle, Cora Willis, Student House Managers
Aryan Kale, Database Assistant
Lucy Albanil-Rangel, Marketing Assistant
Micah Kennel, Student Box Office Manager
Alicia Norman, Maggie Thornton, Student Assistants
Swetha Aand, Christopher Bailey, Lynlee Collins, Kali Dao, Tygia Drewhowell, Evan Jeppson, Gali Jones-Valdez, Lindsey Kanipe, Alex Lankford, Leah Page, Kas Perez, Watson Pope, Ava Wells, Box Office and Front of House Work Studies

Department of Dramatic Art

Kathryn Hunter-Williams, Chair and Associate Professor

FACULTY

Judy Adamson, Professor Emerita
Milly Barranger, Professor Emerita
Vivienne Benesch, Professor of the Practice
Tracy Bersley, Associate Professor
Pamela Bond, Assistant Professor
James Bray, Teaching Assistant Professor
Jan Chambers, Professor
McKay Coble, Professor
Jeffrey Blair Cornell, Associate Chair, Teaching Professor
Ray Dooley, Professor Emeritus
Samuel Ray Gates, Associate Professor
Julia Gibson, Professor
Douglas Hall, Associate Professor
David Hammond, Professor Emeritus
Rachel Hynes, Teaching Assistant Professor
Letitia James, Assistant Professor
Gregory Kable, Teaching Professor
Jacqueline E. Lawton, Associate Professor
Triffin Morris, Professor of the Practice
David Navalinsky, Professor
Bobbi Owen, Distinguished Professor Emerita
Laura Pates, Teaching Assistant Professor
Kathy Perkins, Professor Emerita
Mark Perry, Teaching Associate Professor
Rachel E. Pollock, Lecturer
Bonnie Raphael, Professor Emerita
Michael Rolleri, Professor
Gwendolyn Schwinke, Assistant Professor
Lexi Silva, Dramaturgy Fellow
Aubrey Snowden, Teaching Assistant Professor
Craig Turner, Professor Emeritus
Adam Versényi, Professor
Tao Wang, Assistant Professor

Administration

Weston Barker, Program Specialist
Lucas Branch, KTC Technical Director
Jocelyn Chatman, Costume Inventory Specialist
Lisa Geeslin, Accounting Technician
Taylor McDaniel, Student Services Manager
Karen Rolleri, Business Coordinator
Sarah Tackett, Business Officer

Production

Michael Rolleri, Production Manager

Costumes

Amy Evans, Costume Shop Manager
Marissa Lupkas, Wardrobe Supervisor
Matthew Mallard, Assistant Costume Director
Triffin Morris, Costume Director
Rachel Pollock, Costume Craftsperson
Manda Apony-Moriarty, Jillian Gregory, Kris Kingsolver, Jessica Land, Bailey Mae Doran, Zachery Morrison, Sally Rath, Costume Production Graduate Students
Ellie Steever, First Hand/Stitcher
Katherine Craig, Leah Schraff, Costume Shop Work Study
Arcadia Hilton, Clara “Hock” Hockenberry, Undergraduate Assistants
Natasha Harm, Wardrobe Assistant Work Study

Lighting

Benjamin Bosch, Electrics Supervisor
Nick Rodgers, Production Swing for Lighting & Sound
Alex Mitropoulos, Work Study
Mauridi “Simba” Masumbuko, Undergrad Assistant

Props

Lauren Reinhartsen, Properties Supervisor
Sam Gainer, Props Artisan Leah Jarrell, Props Undergraduate Assistant
Ava Casey, Cami Crocker, Lydia McRoy, Evan Wilker, Work Studies

Stage Management

Aspen Blake Jackson, Stage Manager
Sarah Smiley, Stage Manager
Sarah Patisaul, Production Assistant

Sound

David Bost, Sound Supervisor
Jayden Alexander Peszko, Undergrad Assistant
Nubia Orellana, Work Studies

Scenic

Brandon “Bruce” Hearrell, Production Carpenter
Gwendolyn Van Denburg, Alec Westmoreland, Production Carpenters
Corrinne LaVergne, Scenic Artist
Laura Pates, Technical Director
Diane Zimmerman, Scenic Charge Artist
Rachel Van Namen, Joel Ernst, Benjamin Fink, Roark, Technical Production Graduate Students
Gabrielle Hall, Kee Meh, Charlene Nguyen, Gabrielle Shulikov, Veta “Koa” Torres, Scenic Painting Work Studies
Connor Gould, Laurel Everett, Enoch Joo, Ian McDuffie, Kathryn Ouyang, Danielle Mou, Carpentry Work Studies

PlayMakers’ Resident Acting Company

Jim Bray
Jeffrey Blair Cornell
Samuel Ray Gates
Julia Gibson
Kathryn Hunter-Williams
Tia James
Gwendolyn Schwinke

Professional Actor Training Program:

Reez Bailey
Matthew Donahue
Elizabeth Dye
Jadah Johnson
Nate John Mark
Mengwe Wapimewah

For this Production

Chelsea James, Assistant Director
Bill Nowlin, UNCSA Lighting Assistant
Jeff AR Jones, Fight Director
Laura Pates, Production Technical Director
Roark, Brandon “Bruce” Hearrell,, Assistant Technical Director
Jessica Land, Costume Shop Manager
Jillian Gregory, Crafts Lead
Zachary Morrison, Sally Rath, Drapers
Bailey Mae Doran, Kris Kingsolver, First Hands
Naomi Eckhaus, Eva Hoke, Susan Newcomer,
Sophia Saylor, Ellison Brown, Costume Shop Volunteers
Ziqi Cheng, Light Board Operator
Harper Yang, Sound Board Operator
Destiny Carless Grant Coffey, Bo Ma, Deck Crew
Kristen Coleman, Katherine Ma, Keni Ringwood, Wardrobe
David Bost, Nick Rodgers, Jayden Alexander Peszko, Audio Engineer.

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A MORE IMPORTANT TIME TO SUPPORT PLAYMAKERS AND THE ARTS

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PlayMakers Repertory Company is a nonprofit theatre. We rely on the generosity of our community to continue delivering the Broadway-quality theatre you love. If you believe in the transformative power of theatre as much as we do, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to help theatre thrive.

You can help support and sustain all our work, both on stage and off, by making a tax-deductible gift which enables us to:

Bring innovative, entertaining, and relevant theatre to the Triangle
Serve students across the state through our award-winning educational programs
Engage with our audiences through artist and community conversations
Remain flexible, safe, and better prepared for the future

Every gift, big or small, makes a huge difference!

Ways to Give

Online

Donate

Phone or Email

Kathryn Banas
banask@email.unc.edu

919.843.2745

Mail

Send your check to:
Kathryn Banas
PlayMakers Repertory Company Development Department
Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art
CB 3235
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3235

PlayMakers is grateful to the members of the Friends of PlayMakers for their generous support. For more information about how to join this dynamic group of supporters, visit us at playmakersrep.org.

Donate

Friends of PlayMakers

Director’s Circle ($10,000+)

Anonymous

American Endowment Foundation
Betsy Blackwell and John Watson Jr.
Cindy and Thomas Cook
Druscilla French and Stephen M. Cumbie
David G. Frey ~
Joanne and Peter Garrett
Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund
The Farley Fisher Gift Fund
Deborah Gerhardt
Joan Gillings ~
Cynthia Strickland Graham
Susan and Dustin Gross
Garrett Hall and Zachary Howell
T. Chandler and Monie Hardwick
Mrs. Frank H. Kenan ~
Thomas S. Kenan III *
Sharon Lawrence and Thomas Apostle
Paula Noell and Palmer Page
John and Debra Ratliff
Wyndham Robertson
Coleman Ross
Schwab Charitable
Shubert Foundation
The Robert Strickland Family Foundation
The Robertson Foundation
T. Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving
Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
Alan H. Weinhouse
Jim and Bonnie Yankaskas

Angel ($5,000–9,999)

Anonymous
Patrick Brennan and Lillian Jenks
Kymberly Burkhead-Dalton and Stephen Dalton
Thomas and Holly Carr
Charities Aid Foundation of America
Munroe and Becky Cobey
Amy and Kevin Guskiewicz +
Mr. and Mrs. Matt Hapgood
Dorothy Heninger Kim Kwok
Duncan and Stuart Lascelles
Prentice Foundation
Ken Smith

Investor ($2,500–4,999)

Anonymous
Alicia and Bill Allred
Richard and Deirdre Arnold ^
Vivienne Benesch
Ed and Eleanor Burke ^
Jennifer D. Cannizzaro Adam Cifu
Susan E. Hartley
Carol Hazard and Winston Liao
Johnson & Johnson Matching Gift Program
Susan J. Kelly
Dr. Moyra Kileff and Mr. Brian Kileff
Harriet W. Martin
Louis and Jodi Patalano
Nick and Amy Penwarden
Pinsieline Properties LLC
Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc
Robert and Tobi Schwartzman +
Mrs. Carol Smithwick
Jackie and James Tanner
Jennifer Werner
Jennifer and Sandy Williams
Katherine Woodbury
Sara M. Wright

Page to Stage ($1,500–2,499)

David and Judy Adamson
Mary Altpeter +
Keith and Iris Archuleta +
Andrew and Katherine Asaro ^
Steve Benezra ^
Ed and Eleanor Burke ^
Cliff R. Butler
Ed and Virginia Cockrell +
Emerald HPC International
Cornell University Foundation
Mrs. Linda Whitham Folda and Dr. Jaroslav
Thayer Folda, III
John and Diane Formy-Duval
Dana and Robert Greenwood
Hugon Karwowski and Joanna Karwowska ^
Dr. Catherine Kuhn and Glenn Tortorici
Shirley and Tom Kunkel
Metal Supermarkets Raleigh
Paul and Linda Naylor
Abigail Panter and George Huba
Jay and Cris Preble
David Price
Andrew Sisson and Karen Levine
Dr. William L. Stewart
The Rev. Wendy R. and W. Riley Waugh +
Michael Weil and Peggy Link-Weil
Roger and Marlene Werner
Paul and Sally Wright

Backer ($500–999)

Anonymous (4)
Richard and Susan Allison
Brent R. Bailey
Christine S. Berndt
Bailey and Tammy Hoffmeister
Susan and Tony Barrella
Deborah Barrett and Charles Kurzman
Evelyn Barrow Adam C. Beck ^
John W. Becton and Nancy B. Tannenbaum
Shula and Stephen Bernard
Patricia Beyle
Dr. Stephen Shaw Birdsall
Jerri Lynne Bland
Lisa and Greg Brown
Lyndon E. Brown
Keith Burridge and Patricia Saling
Kris and Alisha Byrd
Ann and John Campbell
Philip and Linda Carl
Anne and Bayard Collins
Roy A. Cooper
Britta Couris
David Doll
Elizabeth Eagle and David Crews
Bob and Connie Eby
Thorsten A. Fjellstedt
Windi and Roger Glogowski
James P. Gogan ^
Arthur Gerber
Dr. and Mrs. Robert S. Greenwood
Elizabeth Grey
Dede Hall
Toby and Cheryl Harrell
C. Hawkins ^
David and Leslie Henson
Don and Kay Hobart
Ann Holloman
Steve and Lisa Jones
Laura Kline and David Robinson
Richard H. Kohn
Joseph J. Kusa
K.A. and Carol Lawrence
Nelda and Douglas Lay
Karen and Stephen Lyons
Dr. and Mrs. Morton D. Malkin
Michael Maness and Lois Knauff
Ann McCracken
Ed and Connie McCraw
Amy McEntee
Mary McMorris and Leonard Santoro
Dr. James C. and Dr. Susan D. Moeser
Fred and Anne Morris +
Kathryn D. Murphy
Betsy and Jefferson Newton
Linda W. Norris
Pat and Mary Norris Oglesby
David and Elizabeth Nuechterlein
David and Mary Ollila
Sarah Owens
Ariana Pancaldo and Michael Salemi
Mark and Eugenea Pollock
Jodi and Glenn Preminger
Elizabeth Raft
Vikram and Susan Rao +
Dr. William W. Smith and Brenda W. Kirby
Susan Stedman and Charles Higgins Jr.
Tim and Judy Taft
Karen and Tom Tierney
Steven A. Thompson
Nancy L. Tunnessen
Carol Uphoff
Peter Vitale and Stephen Nelson
Wegmans Chapel Hill
George Weinhouse

~ indicates deceased

^ indicates PlayMakers Sustainer

+ indicates Summer Youth Conservatory Supporter

This list is current as of February 7, 2025. If your name is listed incorrectly or not at all, please contact the PlayMakers Development Office at 919.962.4846. We will ensure you are recognized for your
thoughtful support.

Table of Contents

PlayMakers Advisory Council

About the Authors

Dramaturgy Fellow Series

Program Notes

Little Shop of Horrors

Books and Lyrics by Howard Ashman

Music by Alan Menken

Directed by Jeffrey Meanza

April 9-27, 2025

Actor Bios

The Musicians

Act One

Act Two

PROFESSIONAL ACTOR TRAINING PROGRAM

Robert Ariza

Seymour

Jim Bray

Orin

Micaela Shanyce Bundy

Audrey II

Jeffrey Blair Cornell

Mr. Mushnik

Matthew Donahue

Ensemble/Puppeteer

Elizabeth Dye

Ensemble/Puppeteer

Shayla Brielle G.

Crystal

Maya Jacobson

Audrey

Breia Joelle Kelley

Chiffon

Shelby Sykes

Ronnette

Jeffrey Meanza

Director

Alex Thompson

Music Director

Tristan André

Choreographer

Regina García

Scenic Designer

Grier Coleman

Costume Designer

Charlie Morrison

Lighting Designer

Morgann Russell

Sound Designer

Tia James

Vocal Coach

Gregory Kable

Dramaturg

Pat McCorckle

New York Casting

Sarah Smiley

Stage Manager

Aspen Blake Jackson

Assistant Stage Manager

Music Theatre International

Licensing

PlayMakers Leadership

Vivienne Benesch

Producing Artistic Director

Maura J. Murphy

Director of Operations

Michael Rolleri

Production Manager

Our Mission

Land Acknowledgment

PlayMakers is…

Creating Tomorrow’s Classics, Today

A Hub of Engagement

Theatre for the People

Passing the Torch

Eliminating Barriers

PlayMakers’ 2024/25 Season is Made Possible in Part by Grants from

Foundation Support

Additional Funding for Guest Artists is Provided by

Corporate Council