Compulsion

The Creative Team

RINNE GROFF (PLAYWRIGHT)

is the author of the plays The Ruby Sunrise (The Public Theater), What Then (Clubbed Thumb), Jimmy Carter Was a Democrat (PS 122), Orange Lemon Egg Canary (Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of New Plays), The Five Hysterical Girls Theorem (Target Margin Theater), Inky (Women’s Project), and The Molière Impromptu (Trinity Repertory Company), among others; and of the musicals In the Bubble (book and co-lyrics; American Musical Theater Project) and Saved (co-book and lyrics; Playwrights Horizons). Rinne has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Sundance Theatre Lab, the Australian National Playwrights Conference, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Perry Mansfield New Noises Festival, and Chautauqua Theater Company; OBIE Award and NYSCA Individual Artist grants; and a Whiting Writers Award. She wrote for a season of Weeds on Showtime. She is a founding member of Elevator Repair Service and a member of New Dramatists and the Dramatists Guild. Rinne received her BA from Yale College and MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she teaches in the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing.
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OSKAR EUSTIS (DIRECTOR)

has been the Artistic Director of The Public Theater since 2005. He won a 2009 Tony Award as producer of Hair. From 1981 through 1986, he was resident director and dramaturg at the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco and Artistic Director there until 1989, when he moved to L.A.’s Mark Taper Forum as Associate Artistic Director, where he remained until 1994. Mr. Eustis then served as Artistic Director at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island, for eleven years. At The Public he has directed the 2008 Shakespeare in the Park production of Hamlet and Rinne Groff’s The Ruby Sunrise. At Trinity Rep he directed the world premiere of Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production); Homebody/Kabul (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production); Angels in America (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director). He has directed world premieres of plays by Philip Kan Gotanda, David Henry Hwang, Emily Mann, Suzan-Lori Parks, Ellen McLaughlin, and Eduardo Machado, among many others. He commissioned Tony Kushner’s Angels in America at the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco and directed its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. He was a professor of Theatre, Speech and Dance at Brown University, where he founded and chaired the Trinity Rep/Brown University Consortium for professional theatre training. He received honorary doctorates from Rhode Island College in 1999 and Brown in 2001 and currently serves as Professor of Dramatic Writing and Arts and Public Policy at New York University.
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MATT ACHESON (PUPPET DESIGNER, puppetry supervisor)

has had the pleasure of performing, building, and touring extensively with Basil Twist’s productions of Symphonie Fantastique, Petrushka, Master Peter’s Puppet Show, and La Bella Dormente Nel Bosco; Dan Hurlin’s productions of Hiroshima Maiden and Disfarmer; the Mabou Mines production of Peter and Wendy; Lee Breuer’s A Prelude to Death in Venice; Paula Vogel’s A Long Christmas Ride Home; and was the puppetry rehearsal director for The Metropolitan Opera’s Madama Butterfly. Matt has also worked with choreographer Nami Yamamoto on A Howling Flower and directs the St. Ann’s Warehouse Puppet Lab with Tom Lee. Film credits include the national and international Audience Choice Award-winning In the House of the Sin Eater, which he wrote, directed, and designed with filmmaker Paul Kloss. Currently Matt is collaborating with Tom Lee to create a new piece for the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park.
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EUGENE LEE (SCENIC DESIGNER)

has been the production designer at Saturday Night Live since 1974. He holds BFA degrees from the Art Institute of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon, an MFA from Yale, and three honorary doctorates. He is currently represented on Broadway by the musical Wicked. He has received the Tony Award, American Theatre Wing’s Design Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award, Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Achievement, and Pell Award. He was recently inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in New York. He lives with his wife Brooke in Providence, where they raised their two sons.
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LISA LOEN (COSTUME DESIGNER)

is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include last season’s The French Play (Carlotta Festival of New Plays) and Brecht’s Man=Man. At Yale Cabaret she designed The Little Prince, Babs the Dodo, Dancing in the Dark, and Chicano Sketches. Other theatre credits include The Threepenny Opera, Uncle Vanya, and Luku Lake (Wright State University Dance Ensemble). She received a BFA in costume design from Wright State University in 2007.
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MARIE YOKOYAMA (LIGHTING DESIGNER)

is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include American Catnip, The French Play (Carlotta Festival of New Plays); The Ghost Sonata, Man=Man, and Jelly’s Last Jam. Yale Cabaret credits include The Homecoming Project, Mask Ritual: Electra, One for the Road, and The Little Prince. Credits outside of the university include King Cat Calico produced by Son of Semele and The Underpants by Little Fish Theatre. She graduated from California State University, Long Beach, with a BA in Technical Theatre Arts in 2006.
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DARRON L. WEST (SOUND DESIGNER)

His work has been heard in more than 400 Broadway, Off-Broadway, national, and international productions. He is the recipient of the Lortel, AUDELCO, Henry Hewes, Princess Grace, OBIE, and Entertainment Design Magazine EDDY Awards. His directing credits include Kid Simple (2004 Humana Festival of New Plays), Big Love (Austin’s Rude Mechanicals; Austin Critics Table Award, Best Director), and the national tours of SITI’s War of the Worlds Radio Play and RadioMacbeth. He served as resident sound designer at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and is a founding member of Anne Bogart’s SITI Company.
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AMY BORATKO (DRAMATURG)

previously served as dramaturg on the Yale Rep productions of Notes from Underground, A Woman of No Importance, Eurydice, and The Cherry Orchard. Other dramaturgy credits include The Time of Your Life, The Summer People, Romeo and Juliet, The War Is Over (Yale School of Drama); as well as Voice and Vision’s Envision Retreat at Bard College. She is the Literary Manager at Yale Rep. She has been a teaching fellow at Yale College and Yale School of Drama and was a managing editor of Theater magazine. A graduate of Rice University, she received her MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama.
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THOM JONES (VOCAL AND DIALECT COACH)

has been the Voice and Speech Director for Trinity Repertory Company for nine seasons. His theatre credits include productions at The Public Theater (New York), Long Wharf Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Hangar Theatre (six seasons), Rites and Reason, Providence Black Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Huntington Theatre Company, and Dallas Theatre Center. Film and Television credits include Black Irish with Brendan Gleeson and Melissa Leo; Edge of Darkness with Mel Gibson; Rabbit Hole with Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest, and Aaron Eckhart; and Brotherhood (Showtime). He is director of voice and speech for the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. Other teaching: Purchase College, NYU at Playwrights Horizons, The Paper Mill Playhouse Conservatory, Providence College, and Rhode Island College.
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TARA RUBIN CASTING (CASTING DIRECTORS)

has been casting at Yale Rep since 2004. Broadway: A Little Night Music, Billy Elliot (Adult Casting), Shrek, Guys and Dolls, The Little Mermaid, Mary Poppins, Jersey Boys, The Producers, Mamma Mia!, The Phantom of the Opera, The Country Girl, Young Frankenstein, The Farnsworth Invention, Rock ’n’ Roll, The History Boys (US casting), Les Misérables, Spamalot, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, The Pirate Queen, Good Vibrations, Bombay Dreams, Oklahoma!, Flower Drum Song, Imaginary Friends, Metamorphoses (New York casting). Lincoln Center Theater: Happiness, The Frogs, Contact, Thou Shalt Not, A Man of No Importance, Anything Goes (concert). The Kennedy Center: Mame, Mister Roberts, The Sondheim Celebration, and Tennessee Williams Explored. Film: The Producers: The Musical. Members, Casting Society of America.
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JESSICA BARKER (STAGE MANAGER)

is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include The Bedtrick, The Robbers, I Am a Superhero, Peer Gynt, Learning Russian, and Dramatis Personae. Other recent credits include Lydia (Yale Rep); Three Sisters, or a Dormouse’s Tale; Little Shop of Horrors (Yale Cabaret); Fly-by-Night: A New Musical (Yale Summer Cabaret); Fall Opera Scenes (Yale Opera); sam i was (Yale Institute for Music Theatre); La Passion de Simone and Lemi Ponifasio’s Requiem (Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival). She received her BFA in technical theatre from the University of Central Missouri.
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THE PUBLIC THEATER (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director; Andrew D. Hamingson, Executive Director)

was founded by Joseph Papp in 1954 and is now one of the nation’s preeminent cultural institutions, producing new plays, musicals, and revivals of classics. The Public’s mandate to create a theater for all New Yorkers reaches more than 250,000 people each year at six downtown stages, including Joe’s Pub and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public has won 42 Tony Awards, 145 OBIE Awards, 39 Drama Desk Awards, and four Pulitzer Prizes and transferred 52 shows to Broadway, including most recently, the Tony Award-winning revival of Hair. www.publictheater.org
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BERKELEY REPERTORY THEATRE

Born in a storefront, Berkeley Rep has moved to the forefront of American theatre. In four decades, four million people have enjoyed more than 300 shows at Berkeley Rep, including 52 world premieres. Known for its core values of innovation and excellence, Berkeley Rep provides a safe haven for emerging and established artists to explore new ideas. With two stages and a school, its vital and versatile facility is the linchpin of a bustling arts district that has helped revitalize downtown Berkeley. In recognition of its place on the national stage, Berkeley Rep was honored with the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. In the last five years alone, the company has helped send five shows to Broadway: American Idiot, Bridge & Tunnel, In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), Passing Strange, and Wishful Drinking.
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