Amadeus

John Apicella (Count Orsini-Rosenberg) is making his first appearance at ETC.  L.A. Theater: Largo Desolato, Temptation, The Wood Demon, Sex Parasite (Taper), The History Boys (Ahmanson), Durango (EastWest Players), White Marriage, Juno and the Paycock, Marathon Madness (Odyssey Theater Ensemble), The Wasps at the Getty Villa, Little Egypt, The Big Knife, Rough Crossing, Strictly Dishonorable, dozens of others. Regional: First Picture Show, Glengarry Glen Ross and Imaginary Invalid (A.C.T.’s Geary Theater); 36 VIEWS (Laguna), Archy and Mehitabel (The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard). John is a founding member and a past artistic director of L.A.’s Antaeus Company, appearing in The Curse of Oedipus, You Can’t Take It With You, Mother Courage and Her Children, Chekhov x 4, Trial By Jury, The Man Who Had All The Luck, Patience, and many others. Founding member of THE BUBALAIRES.  Film and TV roles include High Crimes, Point Break, Just One Of The Guys, “Brothers and Sisters,”  “Bones,”  “The West Wing,”  “The X-Files,” and “Friends.”  John is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association.

Sirwan Assad (Valet) Sirwan Assad is an actor based in Santa Barbara. He is on course to graduate in Theatre Arts from SBCC in 2016 and hopes to continue his acting career in Los Angeles. He is fluent in Arabic, English and Swedish. Assad shows acting diversity, having played strong roles in both theatre and film productions. Assad acted with theatre veterans at Santa Barbara’s historic Granada Theatre in The Consul, an opera directed by Jonathan Fox. Also, Assad plays an Italian mobster in the upcoming feature film, Miles Away, based on the life of the jazz legend Miles Davis. Assad also played an Italian restaurant owner in the 1920s-inspired super short The Model, starring Samantha Mumba.

Zoë Chao  (Constanze Weber) is making her debut with ETC.  La Jolla Playhouse credits: Sideways, Surf Report, and WOW Festivals’ Our Town.  Other theatre credits: Making Love Over There (Asylum Theatre);  Girls on the Clock and her one-woman show, The Kitchen Painting (Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory).  Workshops: Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money (music by Lamont Dozier, dir. Kim Rubinstein), Bright Eyes (written/dir. Ping Chong), JAW Festival’s Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West (dir. Les Waters) and Middletown (dir. Ken Rus Scholl).  Film credits: Dirty Beautiful.  TV credits: “The Comeback,” “The Protector,” “Hart of Dixie.”  Web series credits: Monster Girls, God Particles. Education: M.F.A in Acting from UC San Diego.  B.A in Art History from Brown University.

Bo Foxworth  (Emperor Joseph II) is a member of The Antaeus Company in Los Angeles, most recently appearing in The Liar and The Crucible, for which he received an Ovation nomination for Best Lead Actor in 2013.  Also with Antaeus the title role in Macbeth, The Seagull and The Malcontent.  Bo has also worked at La Mirada, Laguna Playhouse, Shakespeare Orange County, The Geffen, Disney Hall, LATW, Theater @Boston Court, The Hollywood Bowl and A Noise Within, where he received an Ovation nomination for Measure for Measure.  New York and Regional theaters include:  The Off-Broadway hit, As Bees in Honey Drown at The Lucille Lortel; The Century Theater; HERE, The Pearl Theatre; The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C., Vienna’s English Theater in Vienna, Austria, The Long Wharf, Baltimore Center Stage,  Playmakers Rep, The Old Globe, Yale Rep and many others.  Bo has numerous film and television credits most recently appearing in Castle.   He is a graduate of UCLA and received his Master’s at Yale School of Drama.

Daniel Gerroll (Antonio Salieri) trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. There followed six years in the British repertory system, which culminated in his appearance in the long-running Royal Court Theatre production of Once A Catholic. That success led to his being cast in the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire, which in turn motivated him to move to the USA. In 1984 he translated four years of on and off Broadway work into a directing career beginning with The Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of On Approval, which was to extended to run for six months and was nominated for a Drama Desk award for best revival. In 2001 he began a relationship with the Bay Street Theatre Festival in Sag Harbor where he directed and acted for seven years: Accomplice by Rupert Holmes, Blithe Spirit, Arthur Schnitzler’s Bacchanalia, Harold Pinter’s The Lover, Tom Stoppard’s Rough Crossing, S.N. Behrman’s 1930s classic No Time for Comedy. For The Guthrie Thater in Minneapolis he has played Henry Higgins in Pygmalion. Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. At the Ahmanson theatre in L.A. he played Tony Cavendish in The Royal Family. Theatre World Award, Outer Critics’ Circle Award and a Village Voice OBIE for ‘sustained excellence’ in theatre. TV roles in “Cheers,” “Seinfeld,” “Knots Landing,” “Cashmere Mafia,” “The Starter Wife,” “Ugly Betty,” and “The Good Wife” et al. Film roles: Big Business, The Namesake, Mania Days and a whole bunch of ‘interesting’ indies.  He is married to actress Patricia Kalember.

Anne Guynn (Teresa) is a  Graduate and Professional Acting Intern : Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts (PCPA). Roles with PCPA include: All My Sons (Sue / U/S Kate), God of Carnage (Annette), Pride & Prejudice (Mrs. Gardiner/ U/S Mrs. Bennett), Romeo & Juliet (Apothecary), Oklahoma! (Ensemble); Peter Pan (Nana); Invierno (U/S Hermonia & Paulina); Lion, Witch, Wardrobe (U/S White Witch). Other Theatres: Theatre Group at SBCC – August: Osage County (Barbara); Rubicon Theatre – Our Town; Circle Bar B – Fox on the Fairway (Pamela); Out of the Box Theatre – Bare: A Pop Opera (Claire); Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Storyteller); Elements Theatre Collective – Aspirations (Sarah); Speaking of Stories.

Randy Harrison (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) made his Broadway debut as Boq in Wicked. His other New York credits include Atomic (Acorn Theatre), Harbor (Primary Stages), Silence the Musical (Elektra Theater), The Singing Forest (Public Theatre/NYSF), Antony and Cleopatra (Theatre for a New Audience), Edward the Second (Red Bull Theater), A Letter from Ethel Kennedy (MCC), Notes! and Swan!!! with the QWAN Company at PS122, Abrons Arts Center and Theatre 80, and numerous appearances in Our Hit Parade at Joe’s Pub. Regionally, he most recently appeared as Ken in Red at the George Street Playhouse and Cleveland Playhouse as well as in Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art at the Studio Theatre in DC, Twelfth Night (Shakespeare Theatre, DC), Pop! (Yale Rep), The Glass Menagerie (Guthrie Theatre), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (SITI Company/ASF), The Who’s Tommy, Waiting for Godot, Mrs Warren’s Profession and Ghosts (Berkshire Theatre Group.) His film and television work includes five seasons on Showtime’s “Queer as Folk” and Bang Bang You’re Dead.

Robert Lesser (Baron van Swieten) grew up in New York City. He attended the High School of Music & Art and sang a solo in the chorus with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in an opera by Aaron Copland. In New York he appeared in several plays directed by Alan Arkin including, on Broadway, The Soft Touch and two one acts, Rubbers and Yanks 3 Detroit 0 Top of the Seventh at American Place Theatre. He worked with Sam Shepard on the New York premiere of Geography of a Horse Dreamer at Manhattan Theatre Club, The Public Theatre’s Richard lll at Lincoln Center, The Yale Rep, The Stanford Rep and the Jewish Rep. This year Robert played Alfieri in A View From the Bridge at The Pacific Resident Theater in Los Angeles, where it ran for six months, earning him a Sage Award/ outstanding performance. He has been in many productions in Santa Barbara, including My Antonia at the Rubicon Theatre and ETC’s Art, The Cripple of Innishman, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Communicating Doors, and Proof. He has been in numerous sitcoms and dozens of films, Hester Street, Shoot to Kill, The Big Easy, 2010, The Last Innocent Man, Ernest Saves Christmas, Diehard, The Relic, and Godzilla, to name a few. He is thrilled to be part of this great production in ETC’s grand new home.

Louis Lotorto (Venticello 1) is thrilled to be revisiting eighteenth-century Vienna in Peter Shaffer’s masterpiece for the 5th time. Credits at ETC include Bradley in Buried Child, also directed by Jonathan Fox, Dorian in Opus, and Clown #1 in 2012’s extended smash hit, The 39 Steps. A proud member of Actors’ Equity for over 25 years, regional credits include A.C.T., The Shakespeare Theatre Company (Helen Hayes Award Nomination for Ariel in The Tempest), Oregon and California Shakespeare Festivals, Portland Center Stage, Berkeley, South Coast, North Coast, San Jose and Artists’ Repertory Theatres (Drama Critic’s Circle Award for Ned in The Normal Heart/Destiny of Me). Los Angeles credits include A Noise Within (L.A. Ovation Award Nomination for Camille in A Flea in Her Ear), The Odyssey, Rubicon, Colony, and The Ahmanson in An Enemy of the People (with Sir Ian McKellen). www.louislotorto.com.

Stuart Orenstein (Cook/Bonno) Stuart Orenstein has been acting since 1990. He has appeared at The Pasadena Playhouse, The Old Globe, Off Ramp Theatre,  Getty Villa, Center Stage Theater, Plaza Playhouse, Circle Bar B, the Theaters at SBCC, The Ojai Valley Grange, The Veterans Memorial Theaters, and UCSB. In addition to his stage work, he has appeared in seven films, one TV commercial, a product video and a video for a political candidate.  One of his films, Theoryland, was featured in the SBIFF in 2010.  Among his favorite stage experiences are portraying 15 characters including King Henry V in Happy Few, playing six characters and being hit, beaten, pummelled, stabbed, shot, and machine-gunned in Ghetto, and playing King Lear in a dance/movement production.

Wilson Smith (Johann Killian von Strack) most recently performed at Center Stage Theatre in Morning’s at Seven. Prior to that, he appeared in Ensemble Theatre’s production of Take Me Out. Other appearances on Santa Barbara stages have been in Twelve Angry Men at the Center Stage and in Santa Barbara City College productions of Born Yesterday, The Beard of Avon,Wild Oats, and Gross Indecency, The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. He has performed at a variety of northern California venues in such productions as Translations, Shadowlands, Oleanna, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged). In addition to directing productions of The Odd Couple (Female Version), True West, Extremities, and Bullshot Crummond at the Riverfront Playhouse in Redding, California, he has been seen in independent video productions and commercials and been heard playing several characters in video games.

Justin Stark (Venticello 2) has been involved in theatre since the age of 14 and studied at The University of Colorado as well as Santa Barbara City College and more recently with The Peter Frisch Studio.  In the past year he was seen as Skeeter in Lonestar and C.S. Lewis in Freud’s Last Session.  He has worked with Elements Theatre Collective as Doug in Gruesome Playground Injuries.  In addition, he played the dramatic role of Joe Clay in the classic The Days of Wine and Roses and as the impeccable David Frost in Frost/Nixon at the Center Stage Theatre.  He has an extensive history of performing at Santa Barbara City College Theatre Group as Little Charles in August, Brian in Laughter on the 23rd Floor, and Froggie in The Foreigner, to name a few.  You might have also seen Justin in Ensemble Theatre Company’s production of The Real Thing as Brodie.

Mila Wizel (Katherina Cavalieri) has been performing in local productions in Santa Barbara since she moved from London about a year ago. SBTG’s Project Love marked her debut on stage, where she discovered the invigorating thrill of performing for an audience. She received  the Sara Evelyn Smith Scholarship Award for her Shakespeare monologue, and her latest role was that of Lucille in the five-act play Connected by Ed Giron. Mila would like to thank her family, her acting mentors and herself for promising to stick with theater for better or for worse.

Sir Peter Shaffer (Playwright) was educated at St. Paul’s and Trinity College, Cambridge, Shaffer first worked for a music publisher and then as a book reviewer. His first play, Five-Finger Exercise, is a tautly constructed domestic drama that almost overnight established his reputation as a playwright. It was followed by The Private Ear, The Public Eye, and The Royal Hunt of the Sun, a portrayal of the conflict between the Spanish and the Inca—“hope and hopelessness, faithlessness and faith.” In 1965 Shaffer’s adroit farce Black Comedy was performed. Equus, dealing with a mentally disturbed stableboy’s obsession with horses, and Amadeus, about the rivalry between Mozart and his fellow composer Antonio Salieri, were successes with both critics and the public. Later plays include the biblical epic Yonadab (1985), Lettice and Lovage (1987), and The Gift of the Gorgon (1992).

Jonathan Fox (Director/Executive Artistic Director) joined ETC in 2006. He directed ETC’s productions of Metamorphoses, A Little Night Music, The Liar, Crime and Punishment, Creditors, Underneath the Lintel, Ghosts, Loot, The Glass Menagerie, Buried Child, Striking 12, Take Me Out, Old Wicked Songs, Thérèse Raquin, This Is How It Goes and Visiting Mr. Green. He directed Opera Santa Barbara’s recent production of The Consul at the Granada Theatre. He is the recipient of seven Indy Awards. Recent European productions include Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A Streetcar Named Desire, Visiting Mr. Green and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the English Theatre of Frankfurt, and Old Wicked Songs, Crimes of the Heart, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Vienna English Theatre. Before joining ETC, Mr. Fox spent 12 years with Two River Theater Company in New Jersey, which he helped establish in 1994. He served as managing director of the company from 1994-99, and subsequently became its artistic director. For Two River, he directed over a dozen acclaimed productions. His production of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was profiled in American Theatre Magazine, as was his festival of work by Samuel Beckett. His directing work has been seen in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Cologne, and has received critical acclaim in The New York Times, Variety, the LA Times, and other publications. He received his MFA from Columbia University, and is a recipient of the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship. He has served as an adjunct faculty member in theatre departments at UCSB, Columbia University, University of Utah, and Monmouth University.

Fred Kinney  (Scenic Designer) is entering his fifth production at ETC. Previously he designed The 39 Steps, Loot, In the Continuum and Old Wicked Songs. Other credits include Sight Unseen, Ordinary Days, A Wrinkle in Time, Sunlight, Emperor’s New Clothes and A Year with Frog and Toad (South Coast Repertory); Peter Pan and Wendy (Prince Music Theater); Intimate Apparel (San Diego Repertory Theatre); End Game and Taming of the Shrew (Cutting Ball Theatre, San Francisco); A Picasso (Pittsburgh City Theatre); Serious Money (Yale Repertory Theatre); The Grouch (The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey); Cats Talk Back, Suburban Stories (NYC Fringe Festival); The Good Daughter, The Adjustment, Color of Flesh, Winterizing a Summer House (New Jersey Repertory Company); Passion Play and The Laramie Project (The Chance Theater); Anna Christie, Tennessee Playboy, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Tartuffe, Angel Street, Sleuth, Proof, Noises Off, Steel Magnolias, On Golden Pond and Bus Stop (Triad Stage, North Carolina). Mr. Kinney has also worked on television productions such as “Larry the Cable Guy’s Christmas Special” and “Jeopardy!” He is a recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers and holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama.

Dianne K. Graebner (Costume Design) is happy to be back at ETC, having previously designed Red, Frankie and Johnny, Opus and Bell, Book and Candle. Her MFA in Costume/Set Design is from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. She has designed and created costumes nationwide in theatre, film and television. A few of her recent credits include: The Brothers Karamazov (Ovation nomination) and Battle Hymn at Circle X, What I learned in Paris, Breath and Imagination, Sex and Education and Falling for Make Believe at Colony Theatre, Dying City (Ovation Winner- Production of the Year) and the New Electric Ballroom at Rogue Machine, Dogeaters and Clay at Kirk Douglas Theatre, A Delicate Balance at The Odyssey Theatre, Bright Light City at LATC, 365 Days/365 Plays at Center Theatre Group, Philosophy of the World, The Shaggs (original production) and she has originated the costumes for many new works and world premieres.  She is a member of United Scenic Artists Local-829. www.diannegraebner.com.

Michael Klaers (Lighting Designer) Previous Ensemble Theatre Company: 39 Steps, Gunmetal Blues. Regional Theatre: Great Lakes Theater Festival, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Commonweal Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, Missouri Repertory Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, and Mixed Blood Theatre.

Barbara Hirsch  (Sound Designer) owns Opus 1 mobile recording, a classical and acoustic music recording business, and is one of two new owners of the Santa Barbara Yoga Center. In a previous life, she loved working in theater in various capacities: box office, sound, playing in the pit, composing music for theater and sound design. She won a Dramalogue Sound Design award for Singin’ in the Rain, an SBCLO production that helped to end a years’ long drought. In the last few years she has happily rejoined the theater world,  working on SBCC Theater Group productions of Machinal, Becky’s New Car,  Project Love, Through the Fire, August: Osage County and ETC’s Frankie and Johnny at the Clair de Lune.  She is thrilled to be involved with this production of Amadeus, and to be filling the New Vic with the glorious music of Mozart!

Anna Jensen  (Dramaturg) happily returns to Ensemble after serving as Dramaturg for Looped, Red, Metamorphoses,  Good People,  A Little Night Music, Creditors, Crime and Punishment, and The Liar. In March of 2013, Austin College in Texas produced her new translation and adaptation of When We Dead Awaken by Henrik Ibsen. She has her bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley, where she majored in Rhetoric, focusing on the rhetoric of historical discourse. Her master’s degree was from UC Santa Barbara, where she wrote on the playwright August Strindberg’s dramas as interpreted by the film and stage director Ingmar Bergman. Her dissertation research, also at UC Santa Barbara, considers how Norse Saga material was instrumental to Henrik Ibsen’s dramaturgy. She teaches full-time in Santa Barbara at the Brooks Institute.

Amy Lieberman, CSA (Casting) has worked with Ensemble Theatre Company for seven seasons. The recipient of six CSA Artios Awards, with a total of twelve nominations. Broadway: The Dinner Party, Flower Drum Song, Big River. Recent Past: Reprise Theatre Company for three seasons. Center Theatre Group (Mark Taper Forum/Ahmanson/Kirk Douglas) 1999–2006, 1983-1989. Many regional theatres throughout the states as well as locally. L.A. TheatreWorks, Pasadena Playhouse, Ojai Playwrights Conference, The Granada, KCRW, Sundance Theatre Lab, Deaf West, Theatre@Boston Court, Falcon Theatre, Hollywood Theatre of the Ear. Film and television throughout the 90’s. Visiting Assoc. Prof. UCLA- MFA 3rd yr. graduate program 2007-2013.

Aleah Van Woert (Stage Manager) is pleased to be stage managing her third season with ETC. Previous credits include Black Pearl Sings!, Crime and Punishment, Bell, Book and Candle, The Liar, The Year of Magical Thinking, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, A Little Night Music, Good People, Metamorphoses, Red, and Looped. A resident of Santa Barbara for nine years, she has also stage managed over 20 shows for PCPA Theaterfest in Santa Maria and Solvang, including All My Sons, Hairspray, Caroline or Change, Pride and Prejudice, Peter Pan, Songs for a New World, Curtains, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Heart’s Desire, Art, and The Importance of Being Earnest. Originally from Fallon, Nevada, she graduated in 2003 from Southern Oregon University with a BFA in Theatre Arts, emphasis in Stage Management.