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 Jessica Burr (Artistic Director, Founding Company Member, Board of Directors) With blessed unrest she has directed Measure for Measure and the 365Days/365Plays Festival, co-adapted LYING and Certain Things Which I Will Call Sacred (The Lovers' Project), and performed in The James Wilde Project; LYING; Certain Things Which I Will Call Sacred (The Lovers' Project); All's Well That Ends...Well; Life is a Dream; tea and text for six women; Peer Gynt 1:16:19; The Rover; Destroy, She Said; and Miss Julie. Other directing credits include Pericles, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, and The Love of Don Perlimplin and Belisa in the Garden; and as Assistant Director to Eric Fraad, Handel's Esther and Messiah and Carissimi's Jepthe with Millennial Arts Productions. Burr graduated from Bard College in 1996 and became a traveling street performer, living and working on sidewalks from Scotland to Morocco with handmade masks and original pieces Layla and Majnun and Zulieka's Love. After a year spent teaching in Poland she returned to New York to find her beloved collaborators.
 Zenzelé Cooper (Associate Artist) is a BFA graduate from Rutgers University. With blessed unrest Zenzelé has performed in 365Days/365Plays, Measure for Measure, and The James Wilde Project. Some of her other adventures include The Illusion (The Bershire Theatre Festival, MA), The Comedie of Errours (The American Globe Theatre, NYC), and Voices Inside the Box (Open Stage, PA). While attending Rutgers, Zenzele performed in Venus, Life Spliced, Overtones, Tartuffe, and Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare's Globe, London).
 Ian Robertson Duncan (Board of Directors) is an artist who works with paint, wood, words, and fire. He is self-taught in the traditions of image and object making, and works in the service of the re-enchantment of the world. Ian designed the set for blessed unrest's Measure for Measure. Ian is represented by Jonathan Shorr Gallery. He came to New York six years ago by way of Virginia, Kentucky, New Hampshire, the Rockies, the Sierras, and New Mexico's high desert.
 Dave Edson (Associate Artist) has performed with Blessed Unrest in Nick, CoMotion, Burn, Crave, Hold: The James Wilde Project, and Measure for Measure. Other New York credits include performing as a synchronized swimmer on a sidewalk across from City Hall in One Million Forgotten Moments, The Cherry Orchard (Columbia Stages, CSC), various site-specific productions, The New York Fringe Festival, Chashama, and the Looking Glass Theatre. Dave enjoys working with talented directors (who doesn't?!) like Juan Souki, Yehuda Duenyas, Jessica Burr, Magin Shantz, Damon Scranton, Emily Mendelsohn, Alice Regan, Darren Gobert, and Kate Marks. Out of town work includes five years of work in Chicago, The Philly Fringe, Melodrama in Durango, CO, and The Hangar Theater in Ithaca, NY. Dave dabbles in writing plays, and composing and performing music for the stage. He holds a B.A. from Ithaca College and has trained extensively with Anne Bogart's SITI Company. He is also a blues guitarist.
 Jonathan Haas (Board of Directors) has presented over 400 concerts of percussion ensemble works over the past 26 years as the Director and Conductor of the New York University Percussion Ensemble, Aspen Music Festival Percussion Ensemble, Julliard Pre College Percussion Ensemble and the Peabody Conservatory Percussion Ensemble. Haas serves on the board of Directors of Blessed Unrest and considers his participation in this capacity as supporting one of the most vital, creative and effervescent theater troupes in the world. He attended a record breaking 7 performances of the Blessed Unrest production of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, and gained more from this experience than the sum total of four years of undergraduate degree work at Washington University in St. Louis.
 Kelly Hayes (Associate Artist) has worked with Blessed Unrest as a choreographer for Measure for Measure, 365 Days/365 Plays, Burn, Crave, Hold, and CoMotion. In addition, Kelly is Co-Artistic Director of RedShift Dance, a modern dance company whose work has been shown throughout New York City and nationally. She appears frequently as her alter-ego "Miss Goodi Two Shoes" at Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant, and has recently performed with Carrie Ahern Dance at Danspace Project and with Dixie Fun Dance Theatre. Kelly is originally from Mundelein, Illinois, and holds a BFA in dance performance from the University of Iowa.
 Anna Kepe (Associate Artist) With blessed unrest she has performed in The James Wilde Project, Measure for Measure, 365Days/365Plays. This season Anna will direct CoMotion with blessed unrest. Directing credits include: Musik Im Bauch, Peabody Conservatory; movement for the musicians in the opera Odin (hailed by The New York Times as an unqualified success while "raw energy coursed through the piece"); Cosi Fan Tutte, The Holders Season in Barbados; Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread, Loewe Theater as part of a 70th birthday celebration for Philip Glass. Acting credits include: Vittoria, The White Devil dir. Michael Edwards; Grushenka, Brothers Karomazov; 22 Day Adagio, Mill Mountain Theatre; Viola, 12th Night dir. Diana Denley; Iphigenia in Aulis, Symphony Space; Desdemona, Othello dir. Will Pomerantz; Let X, Washington, DC; Escalus, Measure for Measure, Culture Project; a full season with The Texas Shakespeare Festival. Anna has been a featured director and teacher at the Aspen Music Festival and at the Texas Shakespeare Festival. She received her MFA from The Shakespeare Theatre, ACA in Washington, DC and trained at RADA and with SITI Company.
 Eunjee Lee (Associate Artist) has performed with Blessed Unrest in Nick, CoMotion, Burn, Crave, Hold: The James Wilde Project, Measure for Measure, 365Days/365Plays. Her other NYC credits include: Oph3lia (HERE Arts Center), Ah, My Dear Andersen (Urban Stages), March (Bank Street Theatre), The Three Gods (Westbeth Theatre), Euridice's Abandon (The Brick Theatre). She also works internationally as a performer, teacher, and director. She has an MFA in Acting from The Actor's Studio Drama School at The New School.
 Matt Opatrny (Managing Director, Founding Company Member, Board of Directors) With blessed unrest Matt wrote Burn, Crave, Hold: The James Wilde Project, and co-adapted LYING and Certain Things Which I Will Call Sacred (The Lovers' Project). He has performed in 365Days/365Plays, LYING, Peer Gynt 1:16:19, Certain Things, All's Well That Ends...Well, Life Is a Dream, and Come if You Dare 1 & 2. He appeared Off-Broadway with the Roundabout and Mint Theater Companies, and has played with National Shakespeare Company (NYC), Theatre By the Blind (NYC), Fulton Opera House (PA), Vermont Stage, North Carolina Stage, Georgia Shakespeare Festival, The Warehouse Theatre (SC), Hampstead Players (NH), the outdoor drama Tecumseh (OH) and at Columbia University. He has taught and directed movement and stage combat at The School for Film and TV, Greenwich Academy, and Columbia Preparatory. Matt has trained with the SITI Company and at Clemson University, where he also received a degree in Biological Sciences, and owes much of who he is to the sea turtles of Costa Rica.
 Damen Scranton (Associate Artist) has directed the company's productions of Burn, Crave, Hold: The James Wilde Project and LYING, which went on to Teatri Oda in Prishtina, Kosova, and then to the 2006 NYC Fringe Festival. He also performed in blessed unrest's 365Days/365Plays. Damen has an M.F.A. in acting from U.C. San Diego (1997), and was the recipient of one of two national Princess Grace Awards for acting in 1996. He is currently in his 11th season with the Irondale Ensemble Project, an improv-based, political theatre ensemble. He has taught Shakespeare and improvisation in New York City high schools for 10 years, and has spent the past five summers teaching Shakespeare to students in England, France and Italy with the Putney Excel Student Travel Program. He has taught acting courses at Carnegie Mellon University and U.C. San Diego, and writing courses at Marymount Manhattan College. He also spent three summers in Ireland and Northern Ireland training as an actor and playwright with the Exiles Theatre Programme, which included playing Creon in a 1999 production of Antigone (directed by Athol Fugard) at the Firken Crane Theatre in Cork. Damen is from Pasadena, California.
 Matthew Sincell (Associate Artist) has appeared with Blessed Unrest in Burn, Crave, Hold, CoMotion, and Nick. Some other notable credits include Student 1 (Romeo) in the U.K. premier and West End transfer of Shakespeare's R&J, International artistic resident at The Globe Theatre, London, 2004, and three seasons with The American Shakespeare Center, where favorite productions include All's Well That Ends Well, Hamlet, A Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Brats of Clarence, Eastward 'Ho, As You Like It, Macbeth, and The Tempest (dir. Giles Block). His voice was also heard in Beyond Glory, a one man show adapted and performed by Stephen Lang, honoring 8 Medal of Honor recipients (The Goodman Theatre, Laura Pels Theatre, and a world-wide tour).
 Darrell Stokes (Company Member) has performed with Blessed Unrest in Life is a Dream, Lying, All's Well That Ends...Well, Come If You Dare 1 & 2, The James Wilde Project, and Nick. Other New York credits: The Misanthrope (Boomerang); Quake (Hypothetical). Regional credits: A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens and The Merry Wives of Windsor (Chicago Shakespeare Theater); Gross Indecency, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Cherry Orchard and An Ideal Husband (Court Theatre); The Midnight Circus (Ivanhoe Theatre); Life in the Trees and Charlotte Cushman (SummerNITE); The Blue Hour, Spoon River Anthology and The Actor's Nightmare (Hatfield International Theatre Festival, England). Darrell studied at Wayne State University and Northern Illinios University.
 Benjamin C. Tevelow (Associate Artist) is the resident Lighting Designer with blessed unrest as well as the Clockwork Theatre. Recent designs include: Don Juan in Chicago, The Monument (Clockwork Theater); 365Days/365Plays, Measure for Measure, The James Wilde Project, LYING (blessed unrest); Charlie's Ghost, Taking Care (Roots and Branches); Take No Survivors (59E59th); The Quick-Change Room (HB Playwrights); Signals (Olamale); Back of the Throat, Sweet Nothings for my Neurosurgeon, Vomit Talk of Ghosts, Design Your Own Kitchen, The Lake, The Orchid Show (Flea Theater). Assistant Designer for Orpheus with Designer Juliet Chia, Savage Nursery and Animal with Designer Andrew Hill.
 Laura Wickens (Company Member) Performances with Blessed Unrest include Nick, CoMotion, Burn, Crave, Hold, Measure for Measure, 365Days/365Plays, and Lying (NYC and Prishtina, Kosova). Recent NYC credits: Sordid Perils of Actual Existence, TNC; The Magnificent Cuckold, Connelly Theater; Hamlet, Irondale Ensemble Project. Regional Credits: The Real Thing, The Glass Menagerie, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Trojan Women: A Love Story. Laura has also performed at SoHo Rep, Theater Four, Ontological, Perry St. Theater, HERE, and many site-specific spaces. She has an MFA in Acting from Brandeis, and has trained with the American Mime Theatre, SITI, Noh Training Project, Song of the Goat, and Maly Theatre. Following the March workshop, Laura continues to hone her contemporary translation and adaptation of Chekhov's Ivanov. Currently she teaches voice & speech and acting at Manhattanville College.
Anne Bogart is Artistic
Director of the SITI Company, which she co-founded in 1992 with
Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki. She is currently on the faculty
of Columbia University's MFA Theater Department. Anne is the recipient
of two Obie Awards, a Bessie Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
She was the president of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), and
was designated a Modern Master, 1995 Modern Masters Festival, Actors
Theatre of Louisville.
Daniel Debicella
received a BS from the Wharton School at University Penn, and an
MBA from Harvard, and is currently an associate with McKinsey and
Company.
Dan Fallon
has worked as a General Manager for the Ford Center (Broadway),
and Managing Director for Milwaukee Rep, Pittsburgh Public, and
Pittsburgh Renaissance Theater. He has served as a faculty member
at Carnegie Mellon, on the Executive Committee for the League of
Resident Theatres, and on the Board of Directors for the Theater
Association of Pennsylvania. Mr. Fallon most recently engineered
the merger of the Paramount and State Theaters in Austin Texas,
where he resides.
Guy Lesser was a founding
editor of the monthly Madison, and
is currently a contributing writer to Harper's.
He worked as dramaturg on Laurie Anderson's Songs
& Stories from Moby Dick and with the artist Jenny Holzer
on several installations. A graduate of Columbia College, he holds
a JD from Yale Law School.
David Schechter appeared
on Broadway in Liz Swados's Runaways
(shared TONY nomination) and in The 3Penny
Opera (starring Sting). He directed his own play, Hannah
Senesh, Off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre (Drama Desk
Nomination, Drama Logue Award) as well as his original musical,
The Jungle Book (co-author) on Broadway
at The New Victory Theatre.
Arthur Strimling has
directed and co-authored 14 productions for Roots & Branches
Intergenerational Theatre. He directed The
Road of Poems and Boarders, a five-day performance event
with a cast of thousands in Joensuu, Finland. Arthur's work has
been seen at the Public, the 92nd Street Y, and Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors.
Leslie Tyrie, MD is
currently a resident and surgeon-in-training at St. Luke's Roosevelt
Hospital. She received her MD at the University of Medicine and
Dentistry in New Jersey.
Robert Woodruff is the
Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge,
MA. Woodruff is known for his early work with Sam Shepard, and his
bold productions of many of the world's most important classic plays.
His work has been seen at ART/NY Shakespeare Festival, Theater for
a New Audience, Trinity Repertory Theater, The Goodman Theatre,
Lincoln Center, La Jolla Playhouse, and The Guthrie.
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