29 Apr KSF Artists of Choice 2016: US Theatre Selection Panel
Today we were interviewing shortlisted applicants for KSF Artists of Choice: US Theatre Category. Below you can read about the high level industry professionals who worked with us on the selection panel to uncover some of the best new talent working in the US Theatre industry today.
Michael Cumpsty is an Obie award winning, Tony nominated actor. Theatre includes: Sunday in the Park with George, The Constant Wife and La Bete. Off-Broadway he took the title role in Richard III, which he also co-directed. Other Shakespeare roles: Timon in Timon of Athens, Parolles in All’s Well That Ends Well, Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale, and Romeo and Juliet at the Public Theater. He played the title role in Classic Stage’s Hamlet in 2005.
John Dias is the Artistic Director of Two River Theatre. He worked at The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival for 12 seasons in a variety of capacities including Associate Producer and Associate Artistic Director. He’s launched the theater’s first literary department and developed arts-education initiatives for young people including A Little Shakespeare, an annual production of a Shakespeare play performed by high-school students. He currently teaches in the graduate school at Columbia University.
Jenny Jules is an actress whose roles at the Almeida Theatre include: A Chain Play, Big White Fog, The Homecoming (Dir. Michael Attenborough) and Ruined (Dir. Indhu Rubasingham). Other theatre includes Death and the King’s Horseman at the NT; A Raisin in the Sun at the Manchester Royal Exchange (winner M.E.N Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actress) and Father Comes Home from the Wars (Public Theater). She is currently making her Broadway debut in The Crucible (Walter Kerr Theatre).
Anna Ziegler is a playwright whose work includes: Photograph 51 (Dir. Michael Grandage and starring Nicole Kidman; winner of 2016 WhatsOnStage Award for Best Play); The Last Match; Boy (Outer Critics Circle Gassner Award nominee, 2016); A Delicate Ship and Another Way Home. Her plays have been developed at The Sundance Theatre Lab, The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, The Williamstown Theatre Festival and NY Stage and Film, and are published by Dramatists Play Service and in an upcoming Oberon collection.
KSF Artists of Choice is a pioneering funding and mentoring initiative for UK, US and Canada based emerging artists working in theatre, musical theatre, dance or film. Epitomizing KSF’s aim of ‘sending the elevator back down’ it will provide funding, year-round support and mentoring by industry heavyweights.