PROGRAM 5*

Purgatory by Domenick V Danza

Don’t Harm the Animals by Joanna Pickering

*Shows in this block include Equity Members appearing with permission of Actor’s Equity Association without benefit of an Equity contract in this off-off Broadway production.

Purgatory BIOS

JOSEPH MENINO* (JERRY)  New York: Phoenix Theatre Ensemble: includes Murrow (www.murrowtheplay.com); Don Juan in Hell, Agamemnon Home, Art, Iphigenia at Aulis, Hapgood, Antigone; Jean Cocteau Repertory (10 seasons); Theater for the New City: To Life, Daylight Precision; Actors’ Temple: Last Jew in Boyle Heights; Red Caravan Company: Measure for Measure; Hudson Guild Theatre: -30-;  Metropolitan Playhouse: The Sea Lady, Shadow of Heroes; Live Source Theatre Group: Suddenly; Willow Theatricals: Boys of a A Certain Age; Shakespeare Forum: Merchant of Venice; Axis Theater Co.: Woyzeck; New York Classical Theater: Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night; Regional: Greenbrier Valley Theatre: Enemy of the People; Gretna Theatre: Broadway Bound; Arkansas Repertory (2000 – 2015). Television: American Genius: Hearst v. Pulitzer (NatGeo).  Film: Hamlet/Horatio, Forbidden Cuba, Forgetting Sandy Glass. 

KARLA HENDRICK* (ANGELA) is a NYC-based actor, director, voiceover artist and master teaching artist.  As a member of The Drilling Company Theatre (TDC), she created the role of Betty in the Off-Broadway NY Times Critic’s Pick hit, The Norwegians, and was cited by the New York Times as one of their top 25 Magical and Quirky performances.  Other TDC roles at Bryant Park Shakespeare and with Shakespeare in the Parking Lot include: Emilia in Othello, Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Gertrude in Hamlet, Maria in Twelfth Night.  Karla is a member of Bobby Moresco’s The Actors’ Gym, recently appearing in a staged reading of Amanda Moresco’s Where the Numbers End: A Hell’s Kitchen Love Tragedy at Theatre 555; other NYC and regional theatre appearances include King Lear, Blithe Spirit, The House of Blue Leaves, Candide, Our Country’s Good, and as the title role in The Heiress.  Film appearances include Household Accounts and Avow, both written and directed by the late, great Bill C. Davis based on his plays.  Karla’s proud to be a Master Teaching Artist with Roundabout Theatre Company and the Metropolitan Opera Guild.  

BARBARA HAAS* (ELAINE)  Brooklyn girl, regional & NYC stages since the 60s, including the Wilma, ART, Penobscot, Great Lakes Shakespeare Fest., various Cleveland, Boston & Florida theatres.  Film/TV, Aida Melfi – THE SOPRANOS, also Daredevil, Synecdoche, Law & Order, Keeping the Faith, Two Family House, a buncha others.  4 films at festivals this summer.  Trained at Neighborhood Playhouse, and with Lenore Dekoven, Tom Fulton, & Seeing Place Theatre.  Awarded Boston's Best '91 – The Shadow Box.  2 supportive daughters, 5 grandchildren.  Beholden to The Entertainment Community Fund (aka Actors Fund) for nourishing  performance artists culturally, physically, spiritually, educationally, socially, financially.  TTE mngmt. 

KATHLEEN HUBER* (MILLIE)  NY Stage: The Crusade of Connor Stephens (Best Supporting Actress: Midtown International Theatre Festival), Gigi, Tamara, Harvest, Coriolanus, Hamlet, A Scent of Flowers, The Madwoman of Chaillot, Richard III, A Name for a Ghost to Mutter.  Regional: Paper Mill Playhouse (An Ideal Husband), Pasadena Playhouse (The Beaux’ Stratagem), Opera Cleveland (A Little Night Music), Music Theatre Wichita (Wizard of Oz, Thoroughly Modern Millie), American Heartland Theatre (Lettice and Lovage), Foothills Theatre (Doubt), Stages St. Louis (The Music Man), Two River Theatre (Importance of Being Earnest), and the Pennsylvania, Orlando, Virginia, and Alabama Shakespeare Festivals (Richard III, All’s Well That Ends Well, Merry Wives of Windsor). Her short stories have appeared in Seventeen, Highlights for Children, Young World, and Jack and Jill. With her husband, Jerome Martin Schwartz, she recently completed the English translations of Four Plays by Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Available on Amazon.com.  Contact:

COLEEN COSGROVE* (JANICE) loves The Chain Theatre. Earlier this year, she appeared in Domenick Danza's Exit...Stage Right as part of The Chain's One Act Festival. Her short web episode Fun with Nan:Yuppie Go Home was an official selection in The Chain's 2019 Film Festival. (Check out Nan on Colleen's YouTube channel.) Her one-act The Stoop played The Unchained Theatre Festival in 2014. She also appeared in Lynda Crawford's A Procession of Clouds, a 2013 Unchained Festival finalist. Thanks to Domenick and Mary Linehan for another chance to play. Yuppie Go Home: https://youtu.be/JtUUsk6lZCI. 

MARY LINEHAN (DIRECTOR) is an actor and director based in NYC.  Select NYC Acting: Post-Infest (coming 2023); Ophelia (Hamlet, Bryant Park Shakespeare), Hermia (Midsummer…, The Drilling Company), Stoned (Cannes Short Film Corner), My New Pants. Select NYC Directing: -30- (Best Director Nomination, Hudson Guild WinterFest), Goblins and Gates (OSPAC), Competence is Key (The Theater Project), Mine Flowers (Vaclav Havel Library Foundation), Buried Child (Insomniac Productions). Thanks to TTE and Evelyn.  “You have to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.”  ALL my love to KP. 

SAMANTHA DIBARI (STAGE MANAGER) is a junior theater major with a concentration in stage management at Ramapo College of New Jersey. This is her first stage management job for a show in NYC! Credits from stage management at Ramapo include The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (ASM), DNA by Dennis Kelly (SM), Marisol by Jose Rivera (SM), and Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco (ASM). In Fall 2023, she will be stage managing Cabaret for Ramapo. Previously she was a production intern at Bergen County Players Inc. in Oradell, NJ, for their production of Ragtime the Musical in 2022. She would like to thank her family, friends, and professors for all of their support! 

DOMENICK V. DANZA (PLAYWRIGHT) teaches Drama with the NYC Department of Education. Before that he was Director of Education at Chicago Dramatists, The Cleveland Play House, and Virginia Stage Company. He studied playwriting at Chicago Dramatists, Primary Stages, The Barrow Group, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. His plays have been a part of Chicago Dramatists Ten-Minute Workshops, Circle Theater’s New Works Festivals, The Second City Training Center, and Voice Theatre’s 10-Minute Play Festival. His short works have been published in Canyon Voices, Crawdad, Goddard College’s Pitkin Review, and Dramatic Publishing’s 35 in 10, and his play I Am Macbeth is available through Next Stage Press. Read his latest theatre adventures on www.morethantheplay.blogspot.com. 

*Equity Members appearing with permission of Actor’s Equity Association without benefit of an Equity contract in this off-off Broadway production.

JOANNA PICKERING (Playwright, Actress) is an award-winning actress and writer. Her plays have sold out in New York City, London and Paris, and are available at The Drama Book Shop. In 2022/23 Bad Victims sold out at The Courtyard Theatre in London, directed by Erica Gould (Neil Labute/Theresa Rebeck) starring Pickering and Richard Emerson (West End Chess, ENO Coliseum) and was reviewed as “Sarah Kane meets Noel Coward.” In 2022, The Endgame first showcased off-Broadway at New Perspective Theatre, directed by award-winning Illana Stein, and then moved to Paris to The Big Funk Company. In 2021, Truth, Lies and Deception ran to sold out audiences at Le Pave D'Orsay Theatre in Paris, with Pickering performing a lead role and receiving national press. Most recently, Pickering won Best Actress at New York Women in Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Awards and The Actors Awards for her film work in Diva. She is a member of The Actor’s Studio Playwright Directors Unit, Theatre 68, The Actors Gym, The International Centre Of Women Playwrights, The League of Professional Female Playwrights, and is represented by 3 Arts Entertainment/Talented in Paris/SAG.

MELODY BROOKS (Director) is the founder and Artistic Director of New Perspectives Theatre Company and an award-winning producer, director and dramaturg who has worked in the professional theatre and various educational institutions for 40 years. Brooks received the 2023 "Lee Reynolds Award" from the League of Professional Theatre Women, the "Trailblazing Women and Arts Institutions Award" from Rhythm Color Associates and the "Spirit of Hope Award" from Speranza Theatre Company for her career-long support of women and BIPOC theatre artists. She is a member of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) and has been a member of LPTW since 2009.

AOLANI LOPEZ (Stage Manager) (she/her) is a rising junior at Tufts University. She was previously a NextGen intern with Classic Stage Company which sparked her interest in the behind-the-scenes aspects of theatre. She is currently a summer production intern at New Perspectives Theatre Company. 

MARK GARDENER (Composer) is an English rock musician, singer and guitarist with the band Ride. The band is one of the key pioneers of shoegaze, an alternative rocksubgenre that emerged to prominence in the United Kingdom during the early 1990s. The band's first two albums, Nowhere (1990) and Going Blank Again (1992) have been critically acclaimed as two of the greatest shoegaze albums of all time. The latter's lead single, "Leave Them All Behind" became the band's most commercially successful song, reaching No. 9 on the UK Singles Chart. Both Going Blank Again and its 1994 follow-up, Carnival of Light, peaked at No. 5 on the UK Albums Chart.  Gardener has written many solo albums as well as producing for other bands and writing music for film and TV. He recently wrote the soundtrack for award-winning film Upside Down – The Creation Records Story, which picked up a MOJO Vision Award for his work.

ERWIN FALCON (Sound effects) is the founder and CEO of Kid Kestrel LLC, an independent multi-media creative company.

DEBBIE ELLIS (Photographer, artwork) is a British photographer specializing in music, editorial, portrait, lifestyle and fashion photography. She has been published in I-d, N.M.E. GQ, Kerrang!, The Guardian, The Independent, Drapers, BBC introducing, Underground England, Bido Lito, Fred Perry, Loaded, City Life, Time Out, Louder Than War, Manchester Evening News and many online publications.