HWS Rembiko Project

About the Company: Professional Staff Listing

William Adashek Program Producer, Production Manager	A native of Los Angeles, California, William Adashek is returning to Edinburgh for his third summer at the Fringe in 2003 with the HWS Rembiko Project. Adashek has been a designer or producer of numerous productions in the United States and the UK, including recent presentations of Oleanna, As You Like It, and last year’s remarkably successful Edinburgh production of Pirates of Penzance: County USA, which played at the George Square Theatre. In addition to his extensive work as a lighting designer and technician, Adashek also works as a sound designer and production manager. He is currently a student in the United States at Kenyon College in tiny Gambier, Ohio where he studies film, theatre, and economics. Adashek is thrilled to return to the Fringe Festival this summer with HWS Rembiko Project.
Antonia Carnevale Director (Fortune Cookie Man) Asst. Program Producer	Antonia is a playwright and Director of Theatre at LA’s cutting edge New Roads School, where she has mounted productions of Twelfth Night, Jarry’s Ubu Rex, Sophocles’ Antigone, Shaw’s Saint Joan, Brecht’s Galileo, Romeo & Juliet, Martin Luther King’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail (which she also adapted for the stage), and Once On This Island. She also ran the high-energy improvisational summer theatre troupe S.I.C.K. (Summer Improv Comedy Kids) from 1996-1999. Ms. Carnevale is currently working on an epic drama which features a mother who has the head of squirrel, body of a goddess, and after an unfortunate trolley accident, an insatiable sexual appetite. Ms. Carnevale is also featured on Sounds of Weirdness as the New Jersey Devil with the legendary band Primal Smell.
Daniel Cummings Choral & Music Director	Daniel is the company music director. His full bio will be posted shortly.
Daniel Faltus Instrumental Music Director	Daniel is the company instrumental music director. His full bio will be posted shortly.
Ashley James Set Designer	Ashley James has been working in the theatre since 1988 as a performer, designer and technician. Her roles have included Edna in The Good Times are Killing Me, Jo in Little Women, Tess in The Sisters Rosensweig, and Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest. She has designed and built sets for numerous shows, with highlights including recent productions of Into the Woods, Once Upon a Mattress, Pippin, and Brigadoon. She enjoys ballet and working in children's theatre, and plans to pursue an MFA in acting next year after graduating from Kenyon College with degrees in Art History and Drama.
Nathaniel Leonard Director (FaustUS)	Nathaniel Leonard is looking forward to his first Edinburgh Fringe Festival with the HWS Rembiko Project. Leonard has a great deal of professional and collegiate theatrical experience in the United States as a director, actor, designer, and technician. Most recent credits include directing productions of Oleanna and The Importance of Being Earnest, acting in As You Like It and Boys’ Life, and lighting design for Conference of the Birds and Collected Stories. Leonard is an alumnus of Kenyon College, in picturesque Gambier, Ohio where he recently graduated with a double major in Drama and English Literature. He is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Renaissance Literature at the University of York, UK.
Joseph McKee Choreographer	This is Joseph's first production with the HWS Rembiko Project. His choreographic credits from television include General Hospital, Cybill, Country Jamboree, as well as projects for the Nickelodeon network. Stage credits include varied productions in a variety of places from Disney to Bangkok, Thailand to Europe, including the Dominion Theatre on the West End. For the big screen his work can be seen in Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss, which was nominated for Best Dramatic Feature at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. Joseph has been both a performer and stage manager for over 20 years in an even wider variety of venues. He also recently graduated from the Pasadena School of Culinary Arts/Cordon Bleu Program.
Rees Pugh Set Designer, Director (Watson)	Rees Pugh returns to the HWS Rembiko Project from the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts by way of Vassar College, where he recieved a degree in drama. Rees has worked in New York City, San Francisco, and most recently Southern California, where he currently lives with his son Ezra. A classically trained actor (A.C.T., Stella Adler Institute) and founding member of the California theatre company A Noise Within, he has also worked extensively behind the scenes on numerous television, film and theatre productions in the United States and abroad. Pugh's most recent projects include the building and installation of large-scale expansion projects at Disneyland Theme Parks in Florida, Tokyo and Anaheim, for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Lissette Schettini Costume Designer	Lissette resides in Los Angeles and continuously and simultaneously works in both theater and film. Her broad background includes fine arts: painting and sculpture, art history, fashion design, landscape architecture and set design/set decorating/props. Theater involvements are Franny's Way, Six dancing lessons in six weeks, Trojan Women, Danton's Death Defiled and Mizlansky/Zylinsky. Most recent film involvements are SWAT, Solaris, XXX. She is proud to be part of the HWS Rembiko Project for the second time around.
Eric Schrode Company Artistic Director, Program Producer, Director (Othella)	Eric Schrode is a teacher and playwright who lives in Santa Monica, California. He formed HWS/Rembiko 5 years ago and has directed over 30 plays, 9 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. As a playwright he has written some 16 other works. His most successful play, Somewhere Where Your Head Still Be A Crown, originated on the Fringe before subsequent performances in London, New York and Indiana. Schrode’s one-act plays Solo Conversation and Four Seasons were produced at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in St. John’s Church Theatre on Prince’s Street in August 1985 while he was attending the London School of Economics on a Thouron Fellowship. Before teaching English, Theatre, and History for the last nine years at Los Angeles’ Harvard-Westlake School he was the Artistic Director for New York’s multi-racial Rembiko Project Theatre Company, which produced 14 new plays between 1986 and 1993. Schrode has written the screenplays Jurisprudence, Six Hours Til Dawn and Turning Tables, the books of poetry To and From the Waterfall and Dublin Burning, and the novel An Expression Of Furious Unbelief
Michele Spears Choreographer	A graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Michele Spears has worked as a director/choreographer for such organizations as the Musical Theatre Guild at the Pasadena Playhouse, the Academy of New Musical Theatre, The Contemporary Musical Theatre Company of Santa Barbara, Cornerstone Theatre, Scala Musical Theatre Productions, The Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera and the LA Gay Men's Chorus. She received the Santa Barbara Independent Choreography Award for The Rocky Horror Show, and was nominated for an LA Choreographers Award for her work on the feature film Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss. She's had the honor of working with such musical talents as Jason Alexander, Joanna Gleason and Mr. Jerry Herman. Michele also co-created and directed the improvised musical Cattle Call for Los Angeles' Impro Theatre. As a performer she has appeared in TV, film, off-Broadway and regional theaters across the country as well as national and European touring companies.
Thérèse Stephano Director (Fortune Cookie Man)	This is Thérèse Stephano's first production with the HWS Rembiko Project. Previous directing credits include Token To The Moon with the Sacred Fools Theater Company in Los Angeles, and All Happy Families at Marlboro College. As a teenager Therese was a member of The First All Children's Theater Company in New York. She has various film and television acting credits including Northern Exposure, Medicine Ball, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, and the lead role in the film Trust Me directed by Survivor's Jeff Probst. She can also be seen in the Stone Temple Pilots video Plush, and the video for Dyslexic Heart by Paul Westerberg on the Singles soundtrack album. She recently received her MA in Counseling Psychology and plans to go into private practice. She is happily married to Alexander Yannis Stephano and mother to 10 month old Apollo Payton Stephano.
Alexander Stephano Director (Othella, LA Comedies)	Alexander Yannis Stephano - Director, Actor, Producer, Writer, Fight Choreographer, Teacher, is excited to be a part of the HWS Rembiko Project. Recently he directed Specter by Don Nigro, and Twelfth Night (Co-Directed w/ famed Antonia Carnevale). Los Angeles directing highlights include Uncle Tom's Cabin (Nominated for 3 NAACP Awards), Want's Unwished Work by Kirk Wood Bromley (Nominated for 3 LA WEEKLY Awards), and True West (Nominated for 9 OGEE Awards). Regional Theater directing highlights: Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet.. New York City directing highlights: Love's Labours Lost and Want's Unwished Work.. Future directing credits: Sylvia by A.R. Gurney. Memberships: AEA, AFTRA, NABET, Sacred Fools, associate member of Inverse Theater Company and is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab West. Life highlights: executive producer on the award winning short film Baby Steps staring Kathy Bates, husband to Thérèse, and father to a 10 month old boy named Apollo.
Andrew Stocker Director (The Mikado: County USA)	Drew Stocker is an actor, teacher and director who has worked with the Royal National Theatre, the English Shakespeare Company, and the Creative Arts Team New York. He founded the Traditional Shakespeare Company, which performed to over 15,000 students in 2001, and co-founded the Educational Shakespeare Company in Northern Ireland which, for the past ten years, has brought students together from all communities to perform Shakespeare and develop mutual understanding. For seven years he produced and directed educational and small scale theatre for the English Shakespeare Company, and was assistant director on a major tour of Romeo and Juliet. He is a trained teacher and was Head of Drama at Runshaw Tertiary College before working in the professional theatre. For the past 13 years he has taught and directed on summer schools in the USA and at Oxford University. He has also worked extensively in the corporate sector, and regularly directs theatre abroad. He is currently teaching drama at Canford School, Dorset, and in September will be teaching drama at Sevenoaks School, Kent.
Ananthan Thangavel Press & Marketing, Graphic Design	Ananthan is returning for his second summer with the HWS Rembiko Project. This year Ananthan is serving as the company graphic & publications designer in addition to his role as one of the press coordinators. He is currently an economics student in the United States at Northwestern University.

Updated: Tuesday, 29 July, 2003 1:30