Chris Rivera is a NYC based director, actor, and playwright. In New York they've directed Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Dog Sees God for What Dreams May Company and Queens Shakespeare, Chasing Heroes for Two Cherry productions, several one acts for The Secret Theater, the Midtown International Festival, and Manhattan Repertory. Rivera workshopped and directed two plays for the Tony Award winning Alley Theater's Houston Young Playwright Exchange. The Alley then brought Rivera in to workshop a commissioned work by Alvaro Saar Rios, Juan Seguin: The Unsung Hero of Texas.
With TTF, Rivera facillitates the MUSE program. TTF has produced readings of Rivera's plays Curse of Cassandra, Our Own Odyssey, Modern Day Martyrdom, and Witch of the Black Forest. Rivera also directed TTF's webseries Orpheus was an A*hole, and Dear Little Butterface for the 2016 Reading Series, and played Laertes in May Violets Spring, Dr Nanti in The Other Other Woman, Adonis in The Love and Death Trilogy, and Sir Tristan in Table Round.
As a writer, they had the great privilege of learning from and working with the late Lanford Wilson, who produced Rivera's first full length play 15 Hours in the Green World at the Edward Albee Playwriting festival. Rivera cowrote Uncivil Unions, an artist response to the gay marriage debate for Unhinged Productions. Rivera's one act plays The Body, Quick Visits, and Cash Comfort Sex have been produced by the Secret Theater, Midtown International Festival, Manhattan Rep, and Sisters of Semele was produced by What Dreams May Co. and Queens Shakespeare in rep with The Bacchae as a prequel to the classic Greek play. Rivera's full length plays Our Own Odyssey , Gender of Attraction, and Modern Day Martyrdom were produced by FUERZAFest. Gender of Attraction was revived for the 2018 Edinburgh Festival.
As an actor Rivera has appeared in various New York productions including King Lear, The Bacchae, The Miss Longview Texas Drag Pageant, and Oh Holy Mother of Quique. Rivera also appeared in their own plays, Gender of Attraction, Modern Day Martyrdom, and Our Own Odyssey, and won the FUERZAFest's best supporting actor role for the latter. Favorite regional theatre credits include leading roles in Compleat Female Stage Beauty, Phantom Tollbooth, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch for which he was named Best Actor in a Musical in the Houston Area Theater Awards.
Rivera currently coaches acting privately, with TTF, and for the New York Film Academy summer program.
With TTF, Rivera facillitates the MUSE program. TTF has produced readings of Rivera's plays Curse of Cassandra, Our Own Odyssey, Modern Day Martyrdom, and Witch of the Black Forest. Rivera also directed TTF's webseries Orpheus was an A*hole, and Dear Little Butterface for the 2016 Reading Series, and played Laertes in May Violets Spring, Dr Nanti in The Other Other Woman, Adonis in The Love and Death Trilogy, and Sir Tristan in Table Round.
As a writer, they had the great privilege of learning from and working with the late Lanford Wilson, who produced Rivera's first full length play 15 Hours in the Green World at the Edward Albee Playwriting festival. Rivera cowrote Uncivil Unions, an artist response to the gay marriage debate for Unhinged Productions. Rivera's one act plays The Body, Quick Visits, and Cash Comfort Sex have been produced by the Secret Theater, Midtown International Festival, Manhattan Rep, and Sisters of Semele was produced by What Dreams May Co. and Queens Shakespeare in rep with The Bacchae as a prequel to the classic Greek play. Rivera's full length plays Our Own Odyssey , Gender of Attraction, and Modern Day Martyrdom were produced by FUERZAFest. Gender of Attraction was revived for the 2018 Edinburgh Festival.
As an actor Rivera has appeared in various New York productions including King Lear, The Bacchae, The Miss Longview Texas Drag Pageant, and Oh Holy Mother of Quique. Rivera also appeared in their own plays, Gender of Attraction, Modern Day Martyrdom, and Our Own Odyssey, and won the FUERZAFest's best supporting actor role for the latter. Favorite regional theatre credits include leading roles in Compleat Female Stage Beauty, Phantom Tollbooth, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch for which he was named Best Actor in a Musical in the Houston Area Theater Awards.
Rivera currently coaches acting privately, with TTF, and for the New York Film Academy summer program.
Emily C. A. Snyder is a published and internationally produced playwright and novelist, whose work has been performed from Christchurch, New Zealand to Dublin, Ireland. A NYC-based verse coach and director, she is the premiere international scholar on writing and performing new verse drama.
Emily holds her Masters in Theatre Education from Emerson College, and a double-major with her BA in English: Literature and Drama from Franciscan University of Steubenville. She studied John Barton's Shakespearean technique with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and Stratford-upon-Avon, where her Rosalind (As You Like It) was compared to a young Maggie Smith.
For the past twenty years, Emily has directed the major works of Shakespeare's canon, and performed in the remainder. Favorite New York directing credits include Richard II with Hamlet Isn't Dead, King Lear with What Dreams May Co., as well as the Shakespeare adjacent material, such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and May Violets Spring: A New Story for a New Ophelia. She originated the role of Alice Ford in her own Merry Widows of Windsor, performed as Brutus in Julius Caesar, voiced Olivia in Twelfth Night for the Chop Bard podcast, and played Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest twice. Favorite regional directing credits include Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night's Dream twice, among others. In Boston, she ran Gaudete Academy, a company dedicated to providing Summer Shakespeare courses for adolescents and young adults. Emily is a much sought-out teaching artist, specializing in bringing Shakespeare to life for students of all ages.
Her new verse plays, Cupid and Psyche and The Other, Other Woman performed to sold-out audiences in New York City. Her Shakespearean homage, A Comedy of Heirors was named one of the Top 15 NYC Shows of 2017 by A Work Unfinishing, and was a finalist along with Cupid And Psyche with the American Shakespeare Center's (ASC) "Shakespeare's New Contemporaries." Her feminist sequel to Shakespeare's Merry Wives, her Merry Widows of Windsor was selected for development and a fully staged reading with The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture. Her verse plays have also received commendation from the Eugene O'Neill, Princess Grace Foundation, and Thornton Wilder Foundation. She is published through Playscripts and YouthPLAYS.
With TTF, she has written and directed The Love & Death Trilogy: Persephone Rises, The Seduction of Adonis and Cupid and Psyche, the French Farce, The Other, Other Woman, and The Table Round Arthurian duology. She directed May Violets Spring, wrote A Comedy of Heirors, and wrote and acted in The Merry Widows of Windsor (Alice Ford) and Juliet and Her Romeo (Juliet). Through The Shakespeare Forum, she offers her popular course on Writing and Performing New Verse, which is also available through the TTF Podcast, Hamlet to Hamilton: Exploring Verse Drama.
You can learn more at emilycasnyder.info, Amazon or New Play Exchange.
Emily holds her Masters in Theatre Education from Emerson College, and a double-major with her BA in English: Literature and Drama from Franciscan University of Steubenville. She studied John Barton's Shakespearean technique with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and Stratford-upon-Avon, where her Rosalind (As You Like It) was compared to a young Maggie Smith.
For the past twenty years, Emily has directed the major works of Shakespeare's canon, and performed in the remainder. Favorite New York directing credits include Richard II with Hamlet Isn't Dead, King Lear with What Dreams May Co., as well as the Shakespeare adjacent material, such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and May Violets Spring: A New Story for a New Ophelia. She originated the role of Alice Ford in her own Merry Widows of Windsor, performed as Brutus in Julius Caesar, voiced Olivia in Twelfth Night for the Chop Bard podcast, and played Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest twice. Favorite regional directing credits include Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night's Dream twice, among others. In Boston, she ran Gaudete Academy, a company dedicated to providing Summer Shakespeare courses for adolescents and young adults. Emily is a much sought-out teaching artist, specializing in bringing Shakespeare to life for students of all ages.
Her new verse plays, Cupid and Psyche and The Other, Other Woman performed to sold-out audiences in New York City. Her Shakespearean homage, A Comedy of Heirors was named one of the Top 15 NYC Shows of 2017 by A Work Unfinishing, and was a finalist along with Cupid And Psyche with the American Shakespeare Center's (ASC) "Shakespeare's New Contemporaries." Her feminist sequel to Shakespeare's Merry Wives, her Merry Widows of Windsor was selected for development and a fully staged reading with The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture. Her verse plays have also received commendation from the Eugene O'Neill, Princess Grace Foundation, and Thornton Wilder Foundation. She is published through Playscripts and YouthPLAYS.
With TTF, she has written and directed The Love & Death Trilogy: Persephone Rises, The Seduction of Adonis and Cupid and Psyche, the French Farce, The Other, Other Woman, and The Table Round Arthurian duology. She directed May Violets Spring, wrote A Comedy of Heirors, and wrote and acted in The Merry Widows of Windsor (Alice Ford) and Juliet and Her Romeo (Juliet). Through The Shakespeare Forum, she offers her popular course on Writing and Performing New Verse, which is also available through the TTF Podcast, Hamlet to Hamilton: Exploring Verse Drama.
You can learn more at emilycasnyder.info, Amazon or New Play Exchange.
STAGE MANAGER - Mel Ryan (She/Her)
Melanie Ryan is a New York City based Production Stage Manager, and newly Screen Manager! She has been working in the city for neigh on 10 years and has worked with many different companies in that time, notably Barefoot Shakespeare Company, Occupy Verona, What Dreams May Co./Queens Shakespeare, and now Turn To Flesh Productions! Melanie loves working on new and old works alike, the works of William Shakespeare are her roots and passion and in 2018 she worked on the New York premiere of As Much As I Can, produced by Harley and Company. In 2019 she landed her dream job of Production Stage Manager of Footloose on the cruise ship the Norwegian Joy.
OUTREACH ASSOCIATE - Evan Sachs (Him/Him or Ze/Zer)
Evan Sachs is a copy editor by day and theater, film, and radio geek by night. He has enjoyed wearing many hats over the years, including but not limited to Foley sound artist, actor, and film editor. Having grown up with Shakespeare, he is incredibly excited to join the Turn to Flesh team and to help bring verse drama to a wider audience in whatever small way he can. He has also worked with groups such as Actors Shakespeare Company and Fireside Mystery Theatre.
Joe Montoya is an actor/writer based in New York City. A lover of theatre - from the downtown avant garde to the Metropolitan Opera - and inspired by the spirit of invention at Turn to Flesh - they are so excited to be behind the scenes as a literary associate. You might recognize Montoya from their work onstage with Turn to Flesh’s staged readings of Malvolio's Revenge (Sebastian) and The Table ‘Round (Mordred). Or if you’ve attended the monthly Muse workshop in the last year, you may have also seen them, workshopping new works-in-development as both an actor and a playwright. Montoya’s own play Orpheus Was an A**Hole! received a Proteus Project reading in early 2020. They could not be more grateful to have been a part of new Proteus Projects like Our Own Odyssey and Modern Day Martyrdom, which Montoya continued with to full productions at FUERZAFest NYC. Bringing new stories to life, reinventing forms, and uniting audiences are a few of their deep beliefs in theatre. A few favorite acting roles include Eponine in Les Miserables, Crutchie in Newsies! and Des in Our Own Odyssey. Additionally, they’ve worked with Actors Theater of Louisville, Prospect Theater Co., and Arena Stage.
INTIMACY EDUCATOR - Cristina (Cha) Ramos (She/Her)
Cristina (Cha) Ramos is a multidisciplinary theatre artist devoted to telling underrepresented stories with a focus on the power of movement. As an instructor, she’s invested in inviting artists into deep self-listening, consensual collaboration, and practiced autonomy. She’s also been known to create classes where she uses her experience in one discipline to help illuminate another (ex. Salsa for Swordfighters, Dueling and Gender Norms in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, etc.) Cha is an MFA candidate in Dramaturgy at Columbia University. More info about her at www.CallMeCha.com.
Audio Engineer/Sound Design, Hamlet to Hamilton - Colin Kovarik (He/They)
Colin Kovarik is a near-Chicago based polymath who works between Chicago and Milwaukee (and beyond). He completed his degree in Acting in 2017 at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, finding sound along the way, also happening to win First in the Nation from the Kennedy Center in 2018 for his first show, A Streetcar Named Desire. As an associate designer under his mentor, Josh Schmidt, he’s had the pleasure of working with such Chicago titans as Steppenwolf (Bug) and Victory Gardens (Pipeline). He’s excited to be working with TTF on such an important podcast. Shakespeare was a jazz musician, baybee, and you can be too.
Transcriptions, Hamlet to Hamilton - Esther Williamson (She/Her)
Esther Williamson is an actor/musician/teaching artist/word nerd based in Brooklyn, New York. She holds an MFA in Classical Acting from the Academy for Classical Acting at The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC. She is a company member of DC-based Taffety Punk Theatre Company, for whom she has performed roughly half of Shakespeare’s canon along with numerous new works. Esther has performed and taught with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ford’s Theatre, Happenstance Theater in DC, Opera House Arts in Maine, Seattle Shakespeare Company, Book-It Repertory Theatre, and many others. Learn more: http://www.estherwilliamson.com/
