Collaborator Bios & Project Synopses

Jennifer Barclay

Jennifer is a playwright and screenwriter. She presented her one-woman show based on the life of Olympian and professional golfer Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Clearing Hedges, at the San Francsico Fringe, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the International Theatre of Vienna, Austria. Her play Red Helen received a Kennedy Center workshop in 2009. Her plays have been produced and/or developed at Steppenwolf, Northlight, Piven, Remy Bumppo, Teatro Vista, Stage Left, American Theatre Company, Dog and Pony, among others. Jennifer has also had residencies at the Hawthornden International Writers Retreat in Scotland and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Recently she has been named a finalist for the Samuel Goldwyn Award for screenwriting. Jennifer has an MFA in Playwriting from the University of California at San Diego and is a graduate of Northwestern University. She is currently the Playwright-in-Residence at South Coast Repertory Theater.

Sean Cawelti & Rogue Artists Ensemble

Rogue Artists Ensemble is a collective of multi-disciplinary artists who create “Hyper-theater”, an innovative hybrid of theater traditions, puppetry, mask work, dance, music, and modern technology. Through a collaborative development process, with an emphasis on design and storytelling, the Rogues create original, thought-provoking performances. Since its inception in 2001, Rogue Artists Ensemble has garnered critical acclaim, being dubbed "the most buzzed about new arrival on the Orange County theater scene" by the Los Angeles Times in 2004 and called by the OC Weekly “a genuinely imaginative and gleefully creative troupe of theater artists.” Their 2008 production of Mr. Punch received three LA Drama Critics Circle Awards, and is featured in a book on novelist and comic book writer, Neil Gaiman. The Rogues were nominated by the Los Angeles Weekly for an award for Mask Design for their production HYPERBOLE: epiphany, and presented with a special award for “Theater Oriented Puppet Design” by the Orange County Weekly. Their mission is to deliver storytelling and spectacle that piques the interest of theatergoers and non-theatergoers alike.

Designer and Director Sean Cawelti graduated from the University of California Irvine, where he received his BA in Drama with honors in Stage Direction. Sean studied puppetry at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and has been a puppeteer since he was just a boy. In 2006 Sean was awarded the Technical Achievement Honor for Puppet Oriented Theater Design by the OC Weekly, and was nominated for a Los Angeles Ovation Award for his mask design work on HYPERBOLE: epiphany. He serves as the Artistic Director for the performance group the Rogue Artists Ensemble, which creates “Hyper-theatrical“ productions, incorporating puppetry, masked acting, original music scores and theatrical effects. Sean has designed puppets and masks for Cornerstone Theatre Company, International City Theater, The Rude Guerrilla Theater, Opera Pacific, NYU and many others. He has been awarded a Puppeteers of America 2003 National Festival scholarship and his articles have been featured in several national journals.


Aaron Raz Link

Aaron is a writer, a traveler, a philosopher, a performance artist, an educator, and the Director of the Museum of Nature. His memoir, What Becomes You, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in 2008. He has studied physical theater at the Dell'Arte School and Creative Writing at the California Institute of the Arts. His interactive traveling exhibition on the Outremer people was originally presented in Seattle, Washington, but the project is continuing to grow.


Katie Shook

Katie is a puppet and performance artist. She has a background in visual art, dance and physical theater, and is active in the movement toward more ecologically sustainable theatrical practice. Her production of Erik Ehn’s adaptation of the Godzilla myth, One Eye Gone, was presented at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe. Katie designed and created the puppets for Oh My Tiger! at Highways Performance Space. As a performer she has worked with the Manual Archives, the Velaslavasay Panorama and with the Little Fakers, as well as at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Toy Theater Festival and the New York Toy Theater Festival. Katie holds an MFA in Puppetry and Integrated Media from the California Institute of the Arts.

Elizabeth English

Elizabeth produces theater and multidisciplinary performance with the intention of transcending boundaries and subverting paradigms. In her artistic life she has pursued many interests from punk rock radio dj to opera stage manager. In 2009 she produced Erik Ehn and Katie Shook’s object theater and multimedia adaptation of Godzilla, One Eye Gone, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She produced the Chicago premiere of John Patrick Shanley’s The Big Funk, nominated for two Joseph Jefferson Awards, and the Los Angeles premiere of Thomas Bradshaw’s Strom Thurmond Is Not A Racist, which The Village Voice described as “wickedly shocking” and “unapologetically flaunts racial conflict”. Elizabeth has a BS in Theater from Northwestern University and is about to complete her MFA in Producing at the California Institute of the Arts.

THE EXILE OF PETIE DELARGE by Jennifer Barclay

In The Exile of Petie DeLarge a student protest takes an unexpectedly violent turn with deadly consequences in a dystopian near-future. A young woman finds herself thrust from the role of student agitator into that of a revolutionary outlaw and potential murderer. When Wendy fell from the window was it suicide or was she pushed? An ensemble of actor/musicians rocks this tale of revolt playing both students and faculty, with live music, mask and video.

THE COWBOY ELEKTRA adapted by Rogue Artists Ensemble

Set in a nineteenth century bordello, The Cowboy Elektra juxtaposes the classical Greek story of Elektra, who conspired with her brother Orestes to murder her mother and avenge her father’s death, against the backdrop of Spanish/Mexican colonial California. It is a fanciful exploration of the forgotten histories and myths of old Los Angeles centered around a young woman torn between family loyalty and revenge. To be told through Rogue Artists’ signature technique of combining music, mask, puppetry and multimedia.