Nephelie Andonyadis
Designer

Nephelie is a theatre artist and teacher, and a member of the Cornerstone ensemble. With a background in performance and architecture, she made the transition to stage design at Yale University’s School of Drama where she earned her M.F.A. She was an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan and is a Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Redlands. She has worked with Cornerstone since 1995 and has designed either scenery or costumes for many plays with many communities across California, including Fellowship, Bliss Point, Café Vida, Jason in Eureka, Plumas Negras, Flor, Los Illegals, Sid Arthur, Boda de Luna Nueva and the touring production of California the Tempest. Designs at regional theatres include South Coast Repertory, Seattle Repertory Theatre (Public Works), The Getty Villa and CAPUcla (with SITI Company), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland Center Stage, Center Theatre Group, The Acting Company, The Guthrie Lab, The Court Theatre and Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, among others. She is the recipient of the University of Redlands’ Hunsaker Innovative Teaching Award and the NEA/TCG Design Fellowship.

Shá Cage
SDCF Lloyd Richards New Futures Fellow, Director

Shá Cage  is a renaissance artist/activist who directs and produces theater and film. Her work has taken her across the U.S. to Japan, South Africa, England, Bosnia and Canada. Raised in Mississippi, she splits her time between Minneapolis and Los Angeles and has been called a change-maker and one of the leading artists of her generation. She also writes plays and poetry and has experienced a successful career as an award winning actor. 

Recent theater productions she's directed include: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Everybody, Joselyn Bioh's African School Girls, and Bob Marley's Three Little Birds, adapted by Michael J. Bobbitt. Recent films include: the feature documentary for PBS/TPT titled Underbelly that spotlights healing and activism in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, Kiss the Tiger's Grown Ass Woman, horror short, You're Home Now, and At the Corner of Experimental Doc series.  

Seen last on stage as Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet at the Guthrie Theater, she holds Emmy and Ivey awards, TCG and McKnight Fellowships, and is the recent Lloyd Richards New Futures Fellow with Cornerstone Theater based in LA. Her last play, Hidden Heroes, about the Black female computer scientists of NASA was produced by Stages Theater in 2019. She has been called a mover and maker, and has been using Art & Equity praxis to consult and elevate Black and Brown narratives through Tru Ruts for over 20 years.

Juliette Carrillo
Director, Writer

For Cornerstone, Juliette has directed community collaborations Los Faustinos by Bernardo Solano (Watts), As Vishnu Dreams by Shishir Kurup, (Hindu community) Touch the Water by Julie Hebert (LA River community), Lethe by Octavio Solis  (seniors and their caregivers) and It's All Bueno by Sigrid Gilmer (Pacoima). Juliette was an Artistic Associate at South Coast Repertory Theatre for seven years. She directed regularly in their season and ran the Hispanic Playwright's Project, collaborating with Latino writers across the country. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, she has directed theater extensively throughout the US. Some of her favorite collaborations have been directing the  World Premiere of Lydia, by Octavio Solis,  West Coast premiere of  Pulitzer Prize winner, Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz, the World Premiere of References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot by Jose Rivera, and the West Coast premiere of Sam Shepard's Eyes for Consuela. She has directed for South Coast Repertory, the Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Repertory, Denver Theater Center, Yale Repertory Theater, Arizona Theater Company,  Alliance Theatre, TheatreWorks, Laguna Playhouse, New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, Actor's Theatre of Louisville an as well as workshops in New York theatres such as New York Theatre Workshop, The Public, INTAR and The Women's Project. Juliette is a recipient of several awards, including the prestigious National Endowment of the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Directing Fellowship and the Princess Grace Award. She also participated in American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women, where she wrote and directed her first short film, Spiral, which played in nine film festivals around the country and in Europe, garnering finalist recognition in several. She is currently developing a full-length screenplay and developing several theater projects in the Los Angeles area and nationwide. Plumas Negras is her first full-length play. www.juliettecarrillo.com

Paula Donnelly
Director of Engagement

Paula Donnelly began working with Cornerstone in 1998 as a stage manager and joined Cornerstone's Ensemble in 2000. Community-collaborations she stage managed for Cornerstone include Los Biombos in Boyle Heights, AKA in Beverly Hills, For Here or To Go?, a city-wide bridge show, at the Mark Taper Forum, Peter Pan in Cleveland, and Crossings at St Vibiana's Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles. She also was the stage manager for Cornerstone Ensemble shows Foot/Mouth (produced in multiple malls around Southern California) and Erik Ehn's Mary Shelley's Santa Claus. As a stage manager she has worked with Taper, Too, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, PCPA TheaterFest and other regional theaters. In 2003 Paula became Cornerstone’s Institute Director, planning and producing the annual Institute Summer Residency and Intensives. As Director of Engagement, Paula teaches and shares Cornerstone’s methodology, works to strengthen community relationships post-production, and to contribute to the expansion of community-engagement practices in theater. She helps imagine and implement engagement values in all aspects of our work. Paula loves the state of California, her home city of Los Angeles and the many people and stories contained therein.

Marcenus “M.C.” Earl
Actor

M.C. first came to Cornerstone as a community member back in 1993 during the company's Watts Residency when he appeared in Love of a Nightingale and Breaking Plates. Other community collaborations M.C. has appeared in include Broken Hearts, For Here or To Go?, For All Time and the ongoing Beyond the Diagnosis, Cornerstone's partnership with Gilead Sciences, Inc. to promote HIV/AIDS awareness through theater. M.C. is a graduate of USIU San Diego's B.F.A. Acting Program.

Michael John Garcés
Artistic Director

Michael has been a Cornerstone ensemble member since 2006.  Directing credits at the company include The Rivers Don't Know by James McManus (produced by City Theatre Company at the Pittsburgh Playhouse); Highland Park is Here by Mark Valdez (a virtual production; subsequently presented at the Latino Theatre Company's "Re:Encuentro 2021"; The Highland Park Independent Film Festival; and the International Community Arts Festival in Singapore & Rotterdam); Native Nation (commissioned and presented by ASU Gammage) and Urban Rez by Larissa FastHorse; California: The Tempest by Alison Carey; Plumas Negras by Juliette Carrillo; Café Vida by Lisa Loomer; and What Happens Next by Naomi Iizuka (a La Jolla Playhouse "Without Walls" production in association with Cornerstone). Plays he has written for Cornerstone include Magic Fruit, the "bridge" project of the multi-year Hunger Cycle which brought together the many communities of the cycle; Consequence, out of story circles with students, teachers, administrators and parents in South Kern County; Los Illegals, created in residence with day laborers and domestic workers; and The Forked Path, a collaboration with the Van der Hoeven Kliniek and Stut Theatre in the Netherlands, which was performed at the Net Even Anders Festival in Utrecht and The International Community Arts Festival in Rotterdam. Michael has developed and directed several works by Marc Bamuthi Joseph: the just and the blind, with composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center and ArtsEmerson), /peh-LO-tah/ a futbol freedom suite (premiere at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, subsequently at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago), red, black and GREEN: a blues, in collaboration with artist Theaster Gates (various venues including The Brooklyn Academy of Music and REDCAT), and the break/s (premiere at Humana Festival and The Walker Arts Center). Directing credits at other theaters include The Play You Want by Bernardo Cubria (The Road Theatre); Seize the King by Will Power (The Alliance); Larissa FastHorse's The Thanksgiving Play (The Geffen Playhouse); The Royale by Marco Ramirez (Arizona Theatre Company); and Epic by Ellen Struve (The Great Plains Theatre Commons); and Wrestling Jerusalem by Aaron Davidman (premiere at Intersection for the Arts; other productions include The Guthrie Theatre, Cleveland Public Theatre and Phildadelphia Theatre Company). His full-length plays include south (Great Plains Theatre Commons), THE WEB (needtheatre), points of departure and customs (INTAR Hispanic American Arts Center) and Acts of Mercy (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater); as well as a solo performance, agua ardiente which ran Off-Broadway at The American Place Theatre as part of "Dreaming in Cuban"; and short plays include Las Llamadas and every step (24 Hour Plays: "Viral Monologues"); americanas (Mixed Blood Theatre - "DJ Latinidad's Latino Dance Party") and A Parable (Great Plains Theatre Commons). Michael is a recipient of the 2020 Doris Duke Artist Award, the Princess Grace Statue, the Alan Schneider Director Award, the Rockwood Arts and Culture Fellowship, a TCG/New Generations Grant, the Non-Profit Excellence Award from the Center of Non-Profit Management, is a Southern California Leadership Network Fellow and a proud alumnus of New Dramatists. He serves as executive vice president of the executive board of SDC, the theatrical union for stage directors and choreographers.

Michael Garcia
Administrative Associate, Director

Michael is an arts administrator and director that works along the intersection of community- and civic-engaged arts. He’s currently working with theater artists Mark-n-Sparks on their project The Most Beautiful Home… Maybe, which examines affordable housing and the national housing crisis. He’s worked with Cornerstone Theater Company in varying artistic and administrative capacities for years, most recently as the associate director of What Happens Next, a collaboration with veterans, and for Native Nation, the culmination of a 2-year engagement process with native folks in the Phoenix metropolitan area, in which he also served as the Engagement Associate. He recently joined the Cornerstone staff as Administrative Associate as well as joining its ensemble of artists. In his work he’s traveled nationally and internationally, visiting elementary schools in El Salvador as the tour manager for the Urban Latin Dance Theatre company CONTRA-TIEMPO; and as a stage manager for an ice opera festival at The Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman. Another highlight was touring as stage manager for Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s /peh-LO-tah/ to the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Kennedy Center. He has a BA from the University of California, Irvine, and transferred there from Rio Hondo Community College. He lives in Whittier, CA.

Peter Howard
Actor, Playwright, Director

Peter Howard is a founding member of Cornerstone Theater Company. Born and raised in Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard College with a degree in English and American Literature and holds a M.F.A. from the Department of Drama of the University of Virginia. With Cornerstone, Peter has performed in, written or otherwise collaborated on scores of productions in Los Angeles and around the country. As a playwright, his Cornerstone credits include Zones (an original, audience-interactive play exploring interfaith themes), an American Muslim adaptation of You Can't Take It with You (the first adaptation ever approved by the Kaufman and Hart estate), a bilingual adaptation of Lorca's Blood Wedding (Boda de Luna Nueva: New Moon Wedding), created for the small California agricultural communities of Western Stanislaus County, and Lunch Lady Courage, inspired by Brecht and set in the world of urban public school food service. His regional theater work includes productions at the Mark Taper Forum, Williamstown Theatre Festival, American Repertory Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf, the Guthrie, Woolly Mammoth and South Coast Repertory. In 2011, Peter received a Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship for Distinguished Achievement. Peter also works as a teaching artist, director and facilitator of community dialogue in a variety of Los Angeles youth arts programs. He has served on staff of the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), where he created a series of plays for youth audiences that use theater as a springboard for dialogue on challenging human relations topics (such as immigration, bias crimes and the Native American mascot issue), and he has directed the participatory youth script development and performance programs of a number of regional theatres including the Mark Taper Forum (the Speak to Me program) and the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles (Will Power to Youth).  

Nikki Hyde
Stage Manager

Nikki began her relationship with Cornerstone as a LA County intern in 2005 during the Faith Cycle Bridge show, A Long Bridge Over Deep Waters. Since then, Nikki has served on the stage management teams of over 10 Cornerstone shows, spanning the Justice and Hunger cycles, and the Institute Summer Residency. She has also had the pleasure of working for Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Merola Opera Program, Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, among other companies. She is a proud Michigan native and a graduate of the University of Southern California.

Lynn Jeffries
Costume/Scenic/Puppet Designer

Lynn Jeffries has been a member of Cornerstone Theater since 1986, and has designed sets, costumes or puppets for over 60 Cornerstone productions. Her regional theater work includes designs for Arena Stage, The Guthrie, Long Wharf Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Repertory, and TheatreWorks. In an ongoing collaboration with puppeteer/performance artist Paul Zaloom, she has built puppets, dramaturged, designed, and puppeteered on numerous projects, including The Mother of All Enemies, The Abecedarium, The Adventures of White-Man, and the film Dante's Inferno. She has also performed solo shadow puppet shows in nightclubs with the neo-vaudevillian folk/jazz band, The Ditty Bops. Other recent puppet designs include Culture Clash's Peace at the Getty Villa, Project Wonderland and The Gogol Project at the Bootleg Theater, and To Kill a Mockingbird and Don Quixote at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Lynn has won a Theatre LA Ovation Honor and a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for puppet design; a Backstage West Garland Award and a Drama-Logue Award for scenic design; and a Backstage West Garland Award for costume design.

Geoff Korf
Lighting Designer

Geoff has worked professionally as a free-lance lighting designer for the past twenty years. His designs have appeared on Broadway as well as at many regional theatres including The Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Repertory, The Geffen Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Globe, Long Beach Opera, The Minneapolis Children's Theatre Company, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, Seattle Repertory Theatre, The Goodman Theatre and The Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Geoff first came to Cornerstone as the lighting designer for Rushing Waters in 1992. Since then he has designed more than 20 Cornerstone productions including: An Antigone Story, Los Biombos/The Screens, and For Here or To Go?I. Geoff is the head of the design program at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he teaches lighting design. He is a native of Southern California, and a graduate of California State University, Chico, and the Yale School of Drama.

Shishir Kurup
Actor, Writer, Director, Composer

Shishir is an award-winning director, actor, writer and composer born in Bombay, India and raised in Mombasa, Kenya and the U.S. For Cornerstone’s Hunger Cycle he acted in Café Vida by Lisa Loomer's, directed Seed: A Weird Act of Faith by Sigrid Gilmer, directed Love on San Pedro by James McManus and wrote Bliss Point. In the years before the Hunger Cycle he directed Michael John Garces' first play for Cornerstone, Los Illegals, wrote and directed On Caring for the Beast, was the lyricist for Cornerstone's Making Paradise: The West Hollywood Musical and directed Lynn Manning's The Unrequited in the community of Watts, Los Angeles. He has acted in numerous Cornerstone shows and has written over a 250 songs for various Cornerstone productions. The songs he wrote for the Medea portion of Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella, a production originally created, as collaboration between Cornerstone Theater and The Actor's Gang in 1998, was part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2012 season. Over the past four seasons, Shishir has directed Quiara Hudes,’The Happiest Song Plays Last and Water by the Spoonful Director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has also directed and acted at regional theaters around the country to name a few: Playmaker’s Rep, Quantum Theatre, Lark Theatre, Silk Road Rising, The Cockpit Theatre, East West Players and Dell” Arte School. A few of Shishir’s acting credits for television and film include: True Blood, NCIS, Bones, Lost, Heroes, Sleeper Cell, NYPD Blue, Monk, Alias, The West Wing, Chicago Hope, E.R., Trigger Effect and Coneheads. Shishir’s theater awards and nominations include: TIME/A.S.K. Award (one of only six nationwide awardees), Princess Grace Apprenticeship Award, Kennedy Center Award, TCG/Alan Schneider Directing Award finalist, two time Herb Alpert Award nominee, L.A. Weekly Award, LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award nominee, Garland Awards, Drama-Logue Awards. Education: BFA, University of Florida, Gainesville. MFA, University of California, San Diego. His one-man shows Assimilation and Exile: Ruminations on a Reluctant Martyr (the latter a commission from Highways Performance Space) have been seen in countless cities and universities nationally and internationally, including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Austin, London and Manchester, England. His essay “In-Between-Space” appears in “Let’s Get It On: The Politics of Black Performance”, published by the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Assimilation is published by Rutgers Press in the anthology “Bold Words: A Century of Asian American Writing.” He was profiled in author Mei Ling Cheng’s book: “In Other Los Angeleses: Multicentric Performance Art.” His solo performance piece Sharif Don’t Like It examines the fallout from the USA Patriot Act and the disappearance of over two thousand South Asian and Arab Muslims. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Florida, Gainesville and a Master of Fine Arts from University of California, San Diego. His most profound, instructive and daily inspiration, however, is his daughter Tala Claye Ananya Perl Kurup.  

Bruce Lemon
Associate Artistic Director

Bruce Lemon is a storyteller born and raised in Watts, CA. As a child, his father made him write stories and read them aloud in the hallway as punishment for lies and mischief. He’s still in trouble. Host of 89.3 KPCC In-Person’s UnheardLA. Associate Artistic Director/Ensemble with Cornerstone Theater Company. Artistic Director of Watts Village. Company member of Illyrian Players and Collaborative Artists Bloc . Actor, writer, director, producer, creative collaborator. Hobbies include: Holding a mirror up to America, rabble rousing, chasing dreams, working for the reimagining of his community, and listening to the kids.

http://www.brucealemonjr.com/

Page Leong
Actor, Director, Choreographer

John Nobori
Sound Designer

John Nobori is a California-based sound designer and engineer. His work has been heard in plays produced by such organizations as Cornerstone Theater Company, The Getty Villa, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  Other recent credits include Center Theatre Group’s production of Elliot: a Soldier’s Fugue and South Coast Repertory’s production of Orange. He has been nominated for several awards for excellence in sound design, including an Ovation Award for his work on The Golden Dragon at Boston Court Pasadena. BA University of California, Irvine. www.noborisound.com

Kenny Ramos
Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship

Kenny Ramos is Diegueño Iipay/Kumeyaay from the Barona Band of Mission Indians.  He started his performing career on the kitchen table of his home on the Barona Indian Reservation in San Diego County and has since followed his passions for theater and learning around the world.  After graduating from UCLA with a BA in American Indian Studies, Kenny worked in the Los Angeles urban Native community, which led to his involvement as a community actor in Cornerstone Theater Company’s 2016 production of Larissa FastHorse’s immersive theatrical event, "Urban Rez", an artistic experience that changed the course of Kenny’s life and career.  After "Urban Rez", Kenny was invited to join the Artist Ensemble at Native Voices at the Autry, the country’s only Equity Native American theater company, where he has performed in numerous readings and workshops of plays written by Native American playwrights at the Autry Museum and at La Jolla Playhouse.  Kenny has also appeared in the world premiere productions of Randy Reinholz’s "Off the Rails" (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Dillon Chitto’s "Bingo Hall" (Native Voices at the Autry), and Mary Kathryn Nagle’s "Return to Niobrara" (The Kennedy Center, The Rose Theater Omaha).  Other regional credits include: "Crazy for You, High School Musical" (Starlight Bowl); "Joseph…Dreamcoat", "42^nd Street", "Cats, Aida" (Moonlight Stage Productions).  In 2018, Kenny created and performed original pieces about land acknowledgement and two spirit identity at Grand Performances, Southern Oregon University’s "Queer Indigenous Gathering", and UCLA’s "This is Bruin Life" in Pauley Pavilion.  Kenny has also studied Theatre of the Oppressed at the Center for Theatre of the Oppressed in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, Indigenous Contemporary Dance with Dancing Earth in Santa Fe, NM, and also participated in Cornerstone’s 2018 Institute Summer Residency in Queens, NY, where he worked on "The Cardinal: A Journey Through Flushing".  In 2019, Kenny received First Peoples Fund’s Cultural Capital Fellowship, as well as Theater Communications Group’s Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship for Exceptional Merit, in partnership with Cornerstone, becoming the first American Indian actor to receive the award.  The Fox Fellowship will support Kenny’s work on Cornerstone’s upcoming production of Larissa FastHorse’s new decolonial theatrical experience, "Native Nation", and he will join the Cornerstone Ensemble for the duration of his fellowship.  Kenny seeks to increase tribal communities’ access to theatre and to reclaim the use of storytelling and performance as a way to heal and empower Indigenous communities and reconnect everyone to the land that unites us.

Bahni Turpin
Actor

Bahni trained at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and later at the Lee Strassberg Theatre Institute. While in NY she appeared in productions at Crossroads Theater, American Place Theater, New York Renaissance Festival, and also began her film and television career with appearances on Law and Order and in the films Daughters of the Dust, The Saint of Fort Washington, Rain Without Thunder, Getting In and Theory of Achievement. Since moving to LA Bahni has become a yoga teacher, and has had numerous guest spots on television including E.R., Judging Amy, Seinfeld, The Parkers, Star Trek Voyager and Girlfriends, to name a few. Additional film credits include Brokedown Palace and Crossroads. Bahni has also had the good fortune to participate in a number of theatrical productions in Los Angeles. She was awarded a Dramalogue award for her work in Mules at the Mark Taper Forum and has appeared in several other productions at the Taper. Just prior to joining Cornerstone, Bahni became a working finalist at The Actors Studio. In joining Cornerstone, Bahni hopes to cover some new ground and bring her work to more people in new ways.

Megan Wanlass
Managing Director

Megan joined Cornerstone as its Managing Director in January 2014. She led the company through a six-year grant initiative with the James Irvine Foundation’s New California Arts Fund as well as a 5-year Strategic Plan created in partnership with the DeVos Institute. Prior to moving to Los Angeles, Ms. Wanlass was the Executive Director of SITI Company (Anne Bogart, artistic director) for 19 years. At SITI, Megan helped to create over 35 productions touring to 88 cities, 32 states and 19 countries. She has an Arts Administration Certificate from New York University, attended the Executive Program for Non-Profit Leaders at Stanford University Business School and was a member of the Arts Leadership Institute Charter Class at Teachers College, Columbia University. Megan has served on the board of Theatre Communications Group and in 2006-2008 was a mentor through TCG’s New Generations Program. Wanlass participated on Cornerstone’s winning team for the UCLA Social Enterprise Academy (2017) and participated as a speaker at convenings/conferences and as a grant panelist for APAP, NFF, NET, EMCArts, ART/NY, DDCF, and TCG. Recent multi-part anti-racism training includes: Undoing Racism workshop led by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond and Building Individual Capacity to Co-Imagine, Co-Create, and Co-Foster an Anti-Racist, Multicultural Organizational Culture, Structure and Model workshop led by Diedra Barber. She holds a B.A. in Theater from Occidental College in Los Angeles.