Ensemble
Nephelie Andonyadis
Designer
Nephelie Andonyadis
Designer
(Designer) With a background in performance and architecture, Nephelie 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 joined the faculty of University of Redlands in 2001. Concurrent with her teaching, she maintains actively engaged with many regional and ensemble theatre companies with whom she designs sets and/or costumes. At Cornerstone, she has designed Jason in Eureka, Los Illegals, 3/7/11: A Lincoln Heights Tale, Boda de Luna Nueva and Sid Arthur. Through her ongoing relationship with South Coast Repertory, she has designed in every season since 1998 including Saturn Returns. Other theaters include Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland Center Stage, Center Theatre Group, The Acting Company, The Guthrie Lab, The Court theatre and many others. She is the recipient of the University of Redlands’ Hunsaker Innovative Teaching Award and the NEA/TCG Design Fellowship.
Juliette Carrillo
Director
Juliette Carrillo
Director
For Cornerstone, Juliette has directed community collaborations Los Faustinos by Bernardo Solano, As Vishnu Dreams by Shishir Kurup and Lethe by Octavio Solis, as well as Literature-to-Life productions The House on Mango Street and Warriors Don't Cry. 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 West Coast premiere of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner, Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz at South Coast Repertory, the World Premiere of References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot by Jose Rivera, also at South Coast Repertory, and the West Coast premiere of Sam Shepard's Eyes for Consuela at the Magic in San Francisco. She has directed for the Alliance Theatre, TheatreWorks, Laguna Playhouse, New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, Actor's Theatre of Louisville and for the Mark Taper Forum's New Work Festival, 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 writing a full-length screenplay and developing several theater projects in the Los Angeles and Bay areas.
Paula Donnelly
Director of Engagement
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 broader focus is to continue sharing Cornerstone’s methodology, to strengthen Cornerstone’s relationships post-production, and to guide Cornerstone's efforts in contributing to and facilitating expansion of the field of community-based theater. Paula loves the state of California, the city of Los Angeles and the many people and stories contained therein.
Marcenus “M.C.” Earl
Actor
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 John Garcés
Artistic Director
Michael has been at Cornerstone since 2006. Directing credits at the company include Café Vida by Lisa Loomer, Making Paradise by Tom Jacobson, Shishir Kurup and Deborah Wicks La Puma, 3 Truths by Naomi Iizuka, Someday by Julie Marie Myatt, attraction by Page Leong, and The Falls by Jeffrey Hatcher (at the Guthrie Theater). For Cornerstone he has also written Consequence, out of story circles with students, teachers, administrators and parents in South Kern County, and Los Illegals, created in residence with communities of day laborers and domestic workers. Los Illegals was subsequently produced by Teatro Bravo in Phoenix; it is published in Theatre Magazine (Yale School of Drama/Duke University Press - More info on this Publication). Directing credits at other theaters include, most recently The Convert by Danai Gurira (Woolly Mammoth Theatre), Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Motherfucker with the Hat (South Coast Repertory) and red, black and GREEN: a blues by Marc Bamuthi Joseph (REDCAT and The Brooklyn Academy of Music), and he has worked at many theaters across the country. His full-length plays include THE WEB (needtheatre), points of departure and customs (INTAR Hispanic American Arts Center) and Acts of Mercy (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater); a solo performance, agua ardiente (The American Place); short plays include Grief (Active Cultures), hymn in three parts (Chalk Rep), inhabited and in the Zone (Red Fern Theatre Co.), tostitos (EST Marathon of One-Act Plays), on edge and the ride (Humana Fest.), audiovideo (The Directors Project) and sandlot ball (Mile Square). He collaborated with composer Alexandra Vrebalov on the oratorio Stations, which received its premiere at the Rhode Island Civic Chorale and Orchestra and was also performed at the NOMUS Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia. Michael is on the executive board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. He is a recipient of the Rockwood Arts and Culture Fellowship, the Princess Grace Statue, the Alan Schneider Director Award, a TCG/New Generations Grant, the Non-Profit Excellence Award from the Center of Non-Profit Management and is a Southern California Leadership Network Fellow. He is a company member at Woolly Mammoth and a proud alumnus of New Dramatists.
Sigrid Gilmer
Playwright
Sigrid Gilmer
Playwright
Sigrid’s full-length plays include The Great White Way, Ball Game, Slavey and Axiom. The Great White Way began at the Flea Theatre’s Pataphysics Workshop led by Paula Vogel, in March of 2006. A workshop production was produced in Los Angeles at the Metro Gallery and as part of Exquisite Acts and Everyday Rebellion-Cal Arts Feminist Art Project. Sigrid has worked with Cornerstone Theater (The Brothers, 2009; A Space Between, 2008; Phantoms at my Table, 2008; Head Trip, 2008; The Sweep, 2007), Watts Village Theatre Company (Axiom, 2008), Clubbed Thumb Theatre Company (Slavey, 2008) and Playwriting Center of Theatre Emory (Brave New Works, 2009). Sigrid has a B.A. in theatre from Cal State LA (1997), where she studied with Jose Cruz-Gonzalez, and a M.F.A. in playwriting from Cal Arts (2005), where she was mentored by Suzan-Lori Parks and Erik Ehn. Before graduate school she lived in New York where she worked as a theatre administrator at HERE Arts Center (1998-2002). Sigrid has been a Jerome, PONY Fellowship, New Victory Garden’s IGNITION, and Kesselring finalist (2006, 2007 & 2008). She has studied theatre in Japan, Rwanda and the University of Iowa. Current obsessions include: American history, Reality TV, whiteness, the mind and the Misfits. Sigrid lives in Los Angeles.
Peter Howard
Actor, Playwright
Peter Howard
Actor, Playwright
Peter 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) and 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 as part of the company's 2005 Summer Institute). His regional theater work includes productions at the Mark Taper Forum, Williamstown Theatre Festival, American Repertory Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf, and Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Peter has served on staff of the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), working as a facilitator, playwright and director in a variety of youth arts programs that use theater as a springboard for dialogue on challenging human relations topics. 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 Shakespeare Festival/LA (Will Power to Youth). Peter is also the author of three plays (collectively known as the Compassion Plays series) now touring southern California high schools, colleges and community groups through ENCOMPASS, a youth development organization based in the San Gabriel Valley: Wheels explores youth attitudes toward immigration; Kick explores the Native American mascot issue in high school sports; Horizon Line explores the root causes and impact of bias-motivated crime.
Nikki Hyde
Stage Manager
Nikki Hyde
Stage Manager
Nikki began her relationship with Cornerstone as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed LA County intern in 2005 during the Faith Cycle Bridge show, A Long Bridge Over Deep Waters. Shortly after completing a stage management fellowship at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival three years later, she returned to her Cornerstone roots by working on the stage management teams of For All Time, Touch the Water, On Caring for the Beast, and the Justice Cycle Bridge show, 3 Truths. She has had the pleasure of working on Broadway, as well as with Center Theatre Group, Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, Greenway Court Theatre and Company of Angels, among other LA theaters. She has also worked as a production assistant on Desperate Housewives. A proud Michigan native and a graduate of the University of Southern California, Nikki enjoys volunteering for 826LA and KPFK’s The Global Village when she’s not doing all of the above.
Lynn Jeffries
Costume/Scenic/Puppet Designer
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 also performs 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 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 Kurup
Actor, Writer, Director, Composer
Over the past few years Shishir directed Michael 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 in Spring '11 directed Lynn Manning's The Unrequited in the community of Watts. He will be writing the Hunger of Addiction play which goes up in '14. Shishir has acted in numerous Cornerstone shows, currently in Lisa Loomer's "Cafe Vida and has written over a 150 songs for various Cornerstone productions. The songs he wrote for the Medea portion of MedeaMacbethCinderella (MMC), a production originally created as a collaboration between Cornerstone Theater and The Actor's Gang in 1998, will be part of the 2012 Oregon Shakespeare Festival's season running from late April to late November 2012. He is also a solo performer and a founding faculty member of the new Applied Theatre Arts MA program in the School of Theatre at USC. Shishir’s play Merchant on Venice premiered in Chicago and appears in the anthology Beyond Bollywood and Broadway. He recieved the TIME (Time for Inspiration, Motivation and Exploration) Grant from the Audrey Skirball Foundation for his body of work. He's a Princess Grace Fellow, TCG/Alan Schneider directing finalist, two-time Herb Alpert nominee and MAP grantee. His feature film Sharif Don’t Like It (writer/director) is about the loss of Habeas Corpus and most recently the short documentary Amu's Kitchen about his mother which was created for Cornerstone's "Creative Seeds," both of which will soon be seen on Vimeo. Shishir's TV and film credits include: Bones, Lost, Sleeper Cell, Alias, Monk, Surface, Heroes, various pilots and most recently the Disney Channel movie musical, Lemonade Mouth. His most profound, instructive and daily inspiration, however, is his daughter Tala Claye Ananya Perl Kurup.
Page Leong
Actor, Director, Choreographer
Page Leong
Actor, Director, Choreographer
Member of Cornerstone for 17 years, performing, writing, directing, and choreographing in over 50 productions. Favorite roles from the Greek: Antigone in Shishir Kurup’s An Antigone Story, Medea in Bill Rauch and Tracy Young’s Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella, Odysseus in The Wanderings of Odysseus, by Oliver Taplin. Film: Bourne Legacy and Ben Affleck’s ARGO. Page so believes in the power of theater to spark our minds, hearts and lives.
Julie Marie Myatt
Playwright
Julie Marie Myatt
Playwright
Julie most recently wrote A Man Comes to Fowler, for Cornerstone’s Institute Summer Residency in the agricultural town of Fowler, California. Her play Someday premiered as part of Cornerstone's Justice Cycle in 2008. Other works include: The Happy Ones, premiered at South Coast Repertory; Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter, premiered at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and performed at the Kennedy Center as part of the Center's Fund for New American Plays; My Wandering Boy, premiered at South Coast Repertory in 2007 as part of the Pacific Playwrights Festival and produced in New York as part of the 2007 Summer Play Festival; Boats on a River, premiered at the Guthrie Theater, a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and recorded for the LA Theatre Works radio play series "The Play's The Thing"; Mr. and Mrs., premiered at the 2007 Humana Festiva; and The Sex Habits of American Women, produced by the Guthrie Theatre, Signature Theater in Arlington, VA, among others, and premiered at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. Julie’s work has been developed or seen at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Seattle Rep, Cherry Lane, A.S.K. Theatre Projects, LAByrinth Theater Company, Denver Center Theatre, among others. She received a Walt Disney Studios Screenwriting Fellowship, a Jerome Fellowship at the Playwrights' Center, and a McKnight Advancement Grant. She is currently working on commissions for ACT Seattle, Roundabout Theatre, and Yale Repertory. She is a resident member of New Dramatists.
Bahni Turpin
Actor
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.
Co-Founders
Bill Rauch
Co-Founder, Founding Artistic Director
Bill Rauch
Co-Founder, Founding Artistic Director
Bill Rauch co-founded Cornerstone in 1986 and has directed over 40 of the company's productions, including the majority of the company's community collaborations nationwide. In 2007, he was named Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he has directed the world premiere of Bill Cain’s Equivocation, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, The Music Man, Handler, The Clay Cart and many others. He has also directed at regional theaters across the country including the Lincoln Center Theater, Yale Repertory, Guthrie Theatre, Arena Stage, South Coast Repertory, Long Wharf Theatre and Great Lakes Theater Festival. For his directorial efforts, Bill has received L.A. Weekly, Drama-Logue, Garland and Helen Hayes Awards, Connecticut Critics Circle Award (for Best Direction), and has been twice nominated for the Ovation Award for Best Director. From 1992 to 1998, he served on the Board of Directors of Theatre Communications Group, the national service organization for non-profit theater (two years as a member of the Executive Committee). He graduated from Harvard College in 1984 where he received the Louis Sudler Prize for outstanding graduating artist. He has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, The Durfee Foundation and the Playwrights Center and Keynote Speaker for Theatre Puget Sound's inaugural conference and has testified before Congress in support of the NEA. Bill is the only artist to have received the inaugural Leadership for a Changing World Award. In October of 2008 he was named a United States Artists Prudential Fellow, and is the recipient of the 2009 Margo Jones Medal. In 2010 he was a Panelist for the Fund for National Projects, Doris Duke Foundation. He is an Associate Artist at Yale Repertory Theater and South Coast Repertory and was a Claire Trevor Professor of Drama at University of California, Irvine during the 2006-2007 academic year.
Alison Carey
Playwright, Co-Founder
Alison Carey
Playwright, Co-Founder
Alison has written or co-written over 25 of the Cornerstone's productions, and has been nominated for Emmy, GLAAD and Ovation awards. A member of the Dramatists Guild, she has served on advisory or peer panels for organizations such as The Ford Foundation, Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation, the Mark Taper Forum's Other Voices Projects and Arts Midwest. She has guest lectured at universities and organizations around the country, including at Yale, Stanford and the BAM/CUNY Shakespeare Conference, and taught courses at the University of Southern California and CalState LA in playwriting and community-based theater. Alison and her husband have two children.
Past Members
- Christopher Acebo
- 2000-2006
- Nephelie Andonyadis
- 2009-Present
- Tim Banker *
- 1986-87, 1991, 1996
- Gail Berrigan
- 1987-1988
- John Bellucci *
- 1986
- Michelle Blair
- 2004-2010
- Paul Bostwick
- 1988-1989
- Loren Brame
- 1988-1992
- Amy Brenneman*
- 1986-1994
- Gracy (Brown) Keirstead
- 2000-2001
- James Bundy
- 1988-1991
- Alison Carey *
- 1986-2002
- Juliette Carrillo
- 2004-Present
- Benajah Cobb
- 1987-1999
- Jonathan DelArco
- 2004-2007
- Jarrin Davis
- 1990-1991
- Paula Donnelly
- 2000-Present
- Marcenus “MC” Earl
- 2008-Present
- Michael John Garcés
- 2006-Present
- Sigrid Gilmer
- 2009-Present
- Elizabeth Gonzalez
- 2003-2004
- Mary-Ann Greanier
- 1988-1991
- Raquel Gutierrez
- 2010–2013
- Stephen Gutwillig
- 1988-1995
- Peter Howard *
- 1986-1994, 1999-Present
- Alice Hutchins
- 1989-1990
- Nikki Hyde
- 2010-Present
- Lynn Jeffries *
- 1986-Present
- Bridget Kirkpatrick
- 2000-2004
- Geoff Korf
- 1996-Present
- Shishir Kurup
- 1994-Present
- Page Leong
- 1994-Present
- Donal Logue
- 1989-1990
- Janice Mabry
- 1995-1996
- Armando Molina
- 1996-2003
- Christopher Liam Moore *
- 1986-2006
- Andres Munar **
- 2007-2009
- Julie Marie Myatt
- 2009-Present
- Beth Nathanson
- 1990-1991
- Alejandra (Gonzalez) Navarro
- 2005-2008
- Damien Teeko Parran
- 1999-2002
- Catherine Patterson
- 1989-1990
- Patty Payette
- 1989-1990
- Sabrina Peck
- 1988-1994
- Douglas Petrie *
- 1986-1987
- Debra Piver
- 2003-2009
- Adina Porter
- 2002-2004
- Paul James Prendergast
- 1999-2002
- Tali Pressman
- 2009-2013
- Bill Rauch *
- 1986-2006
- David Reiffel *
- 1986-1991
- Susan Rosen
- 1987-1988
- Miriam Schmir
- 1988
- Ashby Semple
- 1988-1995
- Jay Skriletz
- 1990
- Chuck Smith
- 1990 - 1991
- Sal Taschetta
- 1988
- Leslie Tamaribuchi
- 1993-2001
- Anne Tofflemire
- 1990
- Bahni Turpin
- 2005-Present
- Sal Velasquez
- 1992-1993
- Mark Valdez
- 2000-2004
- Shay Wafer
- 2002-2007
- Nela Wagman
- 1987-1988
- Molly White (aka Emily Herzog) *
- 1986
- Laurie Woolery
- 2004-2012
** denotes “guest” status
* denotes founding member