Megan Campisi (Founding Member) received her B.A. from Yale University in theater studies where she received the Lustman Award for Artistic Excellence. She completed her graduate training at L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq in France. From 2001 to 2006 Megan lived in Paris where she created numerous works including Les Musiciens de Brême, winner of the ALFA and Adami awards at the Avignon Festival 2006. She also taught theater in French public schools and participated in bilingual playreadings at the prestigious Théâtre de Rond-Point. Megan studied commedia dell’arte with Antonio Fava in Italy, puppetry with Philippe Genty in Paris and Shakespeare at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She arrived in New York in 2006 direct from the Festival Alpes-Mancelles in northern France where she debuted a play she both wrote and performed: L’Amour des Papillions des Nuits. Megan later translated this work into English for a run at the 2006 NYC Fringe. The Pinks is her most recent devised work. For the past five years Megan has taught annual theater workshops in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou and Tianjin International Schools. This year her international workshops are expanding to Kobe, Japan and New Delhi, India. In addition, Megan guest teaches for the Yale University theater department, at the California Shakespeare Festival and with the Lincoln Center. www.megancampisi.com
Kevin Lapin (Founding Member) has enjoyed making things up for almost as long as he can remember. Over the years, he has helped produce and perform in many new works, some of which were created in his very own living room. After attending the Lecoq school in Paris, he co-created the absurdly fun Mad Maths (over 350 performances and counting!) and Brementown an award winning puppet adaptation of Grimm’s fairytale. Back in New York, Kevin helped produce and direct Nutmeat: A Burlesque Fairytale for the NY Fringe, has worked with several companies including Cagey Productions (The Blue Puppies Cycle, The Zombie Chronicles) and Handcart Ensemble (Alcestis) and is a proud member of the Nerve Tank (A Gathering, Bauhaus the Bauhaus, Pitch!). Kevin is lucky to have traveled extensively, teaching theater workshops in Europe, Africa and Asia. He currently hangs his hats in Brooklyn and is studying to become a nurse practitioner. www.kevinlapin.com
Max Dana is a Brooklyn-based performer and mask maker. Initially trained as a playwright at Yale University, Max later studied clowning and physical theater at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris and mask design with mask maker Donato Sartori at the Center for Masks and Gestural Structures in Italy. His work as a performer, writer and mask maker has been seen at various international festivals, including the Asia Contemporary Theater Festival, Fusion Festival in Germany, the Prague Fringe, the Edinburgh Fringe, Avignon OFF and La Festival de Primavera in Madrid. He was a co-creator of Attic People’s award-winning comedy Drip and collaborated with the French mask company Bus-a-Trois on Volpone and Balade Nocturne. Other credits include The Assassins Chase Pinocchio, Punch & Judy Redux, Les Freres Corbusier’s Hell House, Eat Shit And Die With The Joneses, Chuck.Chuck.Chuck. and Doesn’t Everybody Do It In Paris? Max recently created masks for NY premiere of Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More and Bus-a-Trois’ Au Fin Moka.
Jay Dunn is an actor, director, and teacher based in New York. He has performed in Paris, London, Haiti, Philadelphia, Washington DC and New York since 1999 with theaters and companies such as Folger Theater, Woolly Mammoth, Arena Stage, Clowns Without Borders and Pig Iron Theatre Company. Jay’s most recently co-created work with Charlotte Ford Theater Company, Chicken, premiered to sold-out audiences at the 2010 Philadelphia LiveArts Festival and Bryn Mawr College. He recently performed another newly devised piece, Handshake Uppercut with John Leo at the 2010 NY Clown Festival and Triskelion Comedy in Dance Festival. Jay also performed at the London Mime Festival 2011 (Barbican Theatre) with Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl and will join the show again in Paris this July. He has studied Clown intensively with Giovanni Fusetti (Boulder, CO) and continues to work as a part-time pedagogic apprentice to Dody DiSanto at The Center for Movement Theater in Washington DC and New York. Jay received his B.A. in Theatre Studies from Middlebury College and completed his graduate training at L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
Tara Giordano is happy to be collaborating with the artists of Gold No Trade. She has frequently appeared at Arena Stage (Death of a Salesman, A View From the Bridge, Christmas Carol 1941), Two River Theater (The Underpants, Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Year with Frog and Toad), and Olney Theatre (Is He Dead?, Blithe Spirit, Anna Karenina). Other credits include: New York Theatre Workshop, Primary Stages, Minetta Lane, New York Musical Theatre Festival, McCarter Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, The Kennedy Center, and many others. Her feature film debut, YellowBrickRoad, can be seen in select AMC Theatres this June. Tara is the recipient of the Arts Council of DC Individual Artist Fellowship and a 2010 Helen Hayes Nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Musical. She is a graduate of Middlebury College. Upcoming: Potomac Theatre Festival After Dark Series at Atlantic Stage 2.
Kyle Davies was most recently seen performing in art.party.out.reach.’s premiere project Big Love: A story about a man and his fat, a collaboratively created theatrical short performed entirely in mask. As a director, his work in New York includes the world premiere reading of Howard Emanuel’s Last Supper starring Penny Fuller, Dan Lauria, and Michael Mastro, Survived By… at Theatre for a New City, In the Name of Bob at New Dramatists, and There Goes the Ballgame: The Music of Kander and Ebb at The Duplex and Don’t Tell Mama’s. Kyle has also assistant directed a multitude of shows on and off Broadway. On Broadway he assisted Lonny Price on the revival of Master Harold…and the boys starring Danny Glover and Urban Cowboy. Other productions he assistant directed include the U.S. National Tour of The Boyfriend directed by Julie Andrews, the critically acclaimed Paper Mill Playhouse production of Ragtime directed by Stafford Arima, and the 2004/2005 Emmy Award winning Lincoln Center Live! production of Passion starring Tony Award winners Michael Cerveris, Patti LuPone, and Audra McDonald. Along with receiving a B.F.A. in Musical Theatre from Syracuse University, Kyle attended L’Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq in Paris and is also a graduate of their Laboratoire d’Étude du Mouvement.
Loren Fenton is a New York-based performer interested in collaborations that expand the range of her performance skills. She has crafted roles in traditionally staged plays, narrative and non-narrative experiments on stage and screen, as well as dance/theatre works. Since arriving in NYC in 2007, Loren co-created and performed in works including: Floating Brothel (2007), Hoi Polloi’s The Less We Talk (2009) and Mile of String’s Elegy for a Vacant Lot (2009). In 2010, Loren will start work on a new devised work entitled Too Long; Didn’t Read conceived in collaboration with filmmaker, Alistair Schneider. Additional theater credits include: the world premiere of Richard Foreman’s What to Wear (2006), Lysistrata (2007), Twelfth Night (2008), and Ramrods of the Roaring Noughts (2009). Film credits include the dance/films Exhibits (2006) and Yuri and Winnie (2007). She holds a BA in Psychology from Harvard, and received an MFA in Acting from the California Institute of the Arts in 2007.
Liz Vacco is a Brooklyn-based performer and choreographer. She graduated from Yale in 2000 with honors in Theatre Studies. Since moving to New York, she has been active in the New York theater and dance communities, performing with Les Freres Corbusier, The Collapsable Giraffe, Fovea Floods, Floating Brothel, One Year Lease, Sidra Bell NY and at St. Ann’s Warehouse, P.S. 122, Lincoln Center’s Clark Studio Theater and the Hangar Theater. She is also a founding member and Managing Director of the non-profit performance collaborative, Immediate Medium. Liz has contributed to all Immediate Medium’s works since 2002 as a collaborator, choreographer and performer. Additionally, she teaches dance, theater and yoga to young children at P.S. 214 through the NYC Ballet Bridges Program, at Discovery Programs and through Let’s Dance Brooklyn. She has choreographed for student productions at the Browning School and the Imagine Project. She also worked for the non-profit organization, The Children’s Aid Society, implementing and expanding the after-school theatre program at P.S. 5. www.lizvacco.com
Ben Vershbow Recent credits include: Caucasian Chalk Circle (Performance Lab 115); M4M, Rehearsal Vanya (Quality Meats); Chuck.Chuck.Chuck. (Immediate Medium); Hell House (Les Freres Corbusier); You May Go Now (Babel Theater Project). Ben is also Associate Curator of IRT Theater, a new development space in Greenwich Village (irttheater.org), and is currently directing a version of Herman Melville’s Bartleby to be presented there in late ’09. Ben holds a B.A. in Theater Studies from Yale, and has trained additionally with the SITI Company, The South Wing and the Actors Theater of Louisville. He works days at the New York Public Library’s Digital Experience Group.
