A Docotor in Spite of Himself

CREATIVE TEAM

CHRISTOPHER BAYES (CO-ADAPTER, DIRECTOR)

began his theatre career with the Tony Award-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune where he worked for five years as an actor, director, composer, designer, and artistic associate. In 1989 he joined the acting company of the Guthrie Theater for over twenty productions, including The Tempest, King Lear, Marat/Sade, The Triumph of Love, and his one-man show This Ridiculous Dreaming, based on Boll's novel The Clown. Directing credits include productions at Yale Rep (The Servant of Two Masters, 2010, which will be remounted at The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, this spring; The Birds, 2001), Intiman Theatre, Court Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, Touchstone Theater, and Idaho Shakespeare Festival. His New York work includes HERE Arts Center, P.S. 122, Dixon Place, The Flea Theater, The Public Theater, The Juilliard School, and NYU's Graduate Acting Program. He served as Movement Director and Creator of Additional Movement for the Broadway and national touring productions of The 39 Steps (The Roundabout's American Airlines, Cort, and Helen Hayes Theatres). He is a 1999/2000 Fox Fellow. He has served on the faculty of The Juilliard School, NYU's Graduate Acting Program, Head of Movement and Physical Theater at The Brown/Trinity Consortium and taught workshops for Cirque du Soliel, The Big Apple Circus, The Public Theater's Shakespeare Lab and Williamstown Theatre Festival among others. He is currently an Associate Professor at Yale School of Drama and Head of Physical Acting.

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AARON HALVA (COMPOSER, MUSIC DIRECTOR)

Raised amongst polkas and hymns in Iowa, Aaron has since studied music in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Greece, and Spain. New York composition credits include Red Noses, Four by Feydeau, The Bourgeois Gentleman, The Molière One Acts, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, The Love of Three Oranges, The Big Day, The Fiasco Bros. Circus, The Birds (The Juilliard School); The Imaginary Invalid, The New Place, We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!, The Reluctant Doctor of Love (New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Acting Program); and Timeslips (HERE Performing Arts Center). Other composition and performance credits include The Servant of Two Masters, Ubu Rex (Yale Repertory Theatre); Ballywoonde (Edinburgh Fringe Festival); The Molière Impromptu (Trinity Repertory Company); and A Doctor in Spite of Himself (Intiman Theatre). Recent film credits include Wall Street II as leader and arranger for Nu D'Lux, a New York-based Cuban/Latin style Son Montuno group.

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MATT SAUNDERS (SCENIC DESIGNER)

is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where his credits include The Tall Girls (sets) and Jib (projections and sets). He has designed over seventy shows for various companies, including The Wilma Theater, Arden Theatre Company, Walnut Street Theatre, Pig Iron Theatre Company, the Bessie Award-winning Headlong Dance Theater, and the Tony Award-winning Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis. He is also the Associate Artistic Director of New Paradise Laboratories (NPL) and has been involved in all of NPL's works as both a scenic designer and a performer, most notably in Batch at the Humana Festival of New American Plays. Matt's 2008 design for NPL's Fatebook was selected to represent American Set Design at the 2011 Prague Quadrennial. Matt is the recipient of the 2007 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Philadelphia Theatre Artist. He is also a Barrymore Award-winning performer. Matt is a graduate of Virginia Tech with a BA in theatre and visual art. He is also a graduate of the Scuola Internazionale dell'Attore Comico in Reggio Emilia, Italy, conducted by master teacher Antonio Fava. mattsaunders.net

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KRISTIN FIEBIG (COSTUME DESIGNER)

is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include A Streetcar Named Desire and Twelfth Night. Her other credits include As You Like It (Yale Summer Cabaret); Passing, Radio Station (Yale Cabaret); The Mad 7 (NYC Fringe Festival, McCarter Theatre's INFestival); The Chimes, Missing Celia Rose (Summer Play Festival); Once Upon a Mattress, La Clemenza di Tito (Westminster Choir College); A Streetcar Named Desire, Hedda Gabler, Uncommon Women and Others (Princeton University); Kiss Me, Kate and Floyd Collins (Syracuse University). She received her BFA from Syracuse University.

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YI ZHAO (LIGHTING DESIGNER)

is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where he designed lighting for Passing, Jib, Eurydice, and Othello. Yale Cabaret credits include hundredyearspacetrip, Into the Blue, Underneath the Lintel, and Nijinsky's Last Dance. Professional credits include John Moran and Saori Tsukada's touring dance operetta Saori's Birthday! (US and Europe), multiple plays directed by Anna Brenner, and shows at P.S. 122, Ontological-Hysteric Theater, the Chocolate Factory, and other venues in New York and Chicago. Yi grew up in Beijing and Paris and graduated from the University of Chicago. He is also a photographer. yi-zhao.com.

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KEN GOODWIN (SOUND DESIGNER)

is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama. A sound designer and engineer originally hailing from upstate New York and Pennsylvania, he has worked with a number of companies in the US and UK, ranging from drama and musical theatre to opera and rock-n-roll. Ken's background also includes a number of corporate clients and touring dance companies. His credits include Emilie (Spoleto Festival USA); Cooking with the Calamari Sisters, Miss Saigon, Peter Pan, Thoroughly Modern Millie (Merry-Go-Round Playhouse); What a Glorious Feeling, Brush the Summer By, Murder for Two: A Killer Musical, Loving Leo (Adirondack Theatre Festival); 1776, Into the Woods, and Manon Lescaut (Utah Festival Opera). Ken has worked on over fifteen productions at Yale Cabaret and serves as an Artistic Associate for its 44th season. Ken has also worked with numerous live bands at nightclubs and festivals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for Events Staging Co. He holds a BA in theatre production and design with a minor in music technology from Susquehanna University.

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BENJAMIN FAINSTEIN (production DRAMATURG)

is a second-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where he has worked on The Tall Girls, Ruzante, and The Game Room. His Yale Cabaret credits include Future Oprah Lovesong and Crumbs. Last summer he directed four plays for The Dwight/Edgewood Project, and he is currently collaborating on Yale School of Drama's upcoming production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. He is the former Co-Founding Artistic Director of Whistler in the Dark Theatre. His work as a playwright has been produced in New York, Boston, and Washington, DC.

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WALTON WILSON (VOCAL COACH)

is Head of Voice and Speech at Yale School of Drama. He was trained and designated as a voice teacher by Master Teacher Kristin Linklater and was trained and certified as an associate teacher by Master Teacher Catherine Fitzmaurice. He also studied with Richard Armstrong, Meredith Monk, and Patsy Rodenburg. His New York credits include The Violet Hour, Golden Child, and Victor/Victoria on Broadway; and the world premiere productions of The Laramie Project and The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, and Endangered Species. Regional theatre credits include productions at Actors Theatre of Louisville, American Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. At Yale Rep, he has served as voice and dialect coach on Autumn Sonata, Battle of Black and Dogs, Notes from Underground, Boleros for the Disenchanted, The Evildoers, The Unmentionables, The Cherry Orchard, The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, The Black Monk, Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella, Betty's Summer Vacation, The Birds, and Richard III.

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TARA RUBIN CASTING (CASTING DIRECTOR)

has been casting at Yale Rep since 2004. Broadway: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying; Promises, Promises; A Little Night Music; Billy Elliot; Shrek; Guys and Dolls; The Country Girl; Rock 'n' Roll; The Farnsworth Invention; Young Frankenstein; The Little Mermaid; Mary Poppins; My Fair Lady; The Pirate Queen; Les Misérables; The History Boys; Spamalot; Jersey Boys; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; The Producers; Mamma Mia!; Imaginary Friends; The Phantom of the Opera; Oklahoma!. Lincoln Center Theater: Happiness, The Frogs, Contact, Thou Shalt Not. Off-Broadway: Love, Loss, and What I Wore and Second Stage Theatre. Regional: Kennedy Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Dallas Theater Center.

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BRANDON CURTIS* (STAGE MANAGER)

is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where his credits include Passing, Macbeth, La Ronde, and the things are against us. He also worked on Bossa Nova at Yale Rep last season. Other credits include Rose Mark'd Queen, The Phoenix, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Yale Summer Cabaret); Passing, 100 Year Space Trip, and The Maids (Yale Cabaret). Brandon holds a BA in theatre from The Ohio State University.

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*member of actors' equity association, union of professional actors and stage managers.