Z Space

A Pair of Eyeglasses
BY ANNA MARIA ORTESE

Directed by Rotimi Agbabiaka

CRedits

for A Pair of Eyeglasses

Directed by Rotimi Agbabiaka

Cast:
Sheila Balter*
Catherine Castellanos*
Paul Finocchiaro
Jeunée Simon*
Amy Kossow*
Brian Rivera*
Patricia Silver*

Dramaturg: Joel Mullennix
Sound Design: Elton Bradman
Audio Engineer: Patrick Simms
Line Producer: Kelley Ho

Pictures and Biographies Below

Author

Anna Maria Ortese was an Italian author of novels, short stories, poetry, and travel writing. Born in Rome, she grew up between southern Italy and Tripoli, with her formal education ending at age thirteen. Ortese's stories, novels, and journalism received many of the most distinguished Italian literary awards, including the Strega and the Fiuggi. She lived for many years in Naples following the Second World War, where "A Pair of Eyeglasses" is set. Neapolitan Chronicles, which contains "A Pair of Eyeglasses" is considered a classic of 20th century Italian literature.

Production / Creative Team

Rotimi Agbabiaka (Director) is an actor, writer, director, and teacher who uses humor, glamor, and drama to upset the status quo. Previously, Rotimi appeared in Word for Word’s Holiday High Jinx and is a member of the Core Company. Most recently, Rotimi originated the role of Salima in House of Joy (California Shakespeare Theatre) and Cellphone in If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (Playwrights Horizons, NYC). Other acting credits include Black Rider (Shotgun Players), Bootycandy (Brava Theater, Theatre Bay Area award), runboyrun (Magic Theatre), and several shows with the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe. Rotimi penned the solo shows Homeless, Type/Caste (Theatre Bay Area award), and Manifesto, the Musical, Seeing Red; and dazzles nightlife stages (as alter ego Miss Cleo Patois). www.rotimionline.com

Joel Mullennix (Dramaturg) has worked with WFW many times as an actor and director in works by Alice Munro, Langston Hughes, Tobias Wolff, Elizabeth Strout and others. This foray into dramaturgy has provided an exciting opportunity to combine his love of great writing with his love of Italy and special affection for Naples and its surrounding areas .

Elton Bradman (Sound Designer) composer/sound designer credits include audio dramas (Aurora Theater’s The Bluest Eye), student productions (ACT’s The House of Yes), Zoom theater (Actors Theaters’ Romeo & Juliet: Louisville 2020), podcasts (Z Space/Word for Word’s Retablos), filmed theater (San Francisco Playhouse’s Hieroglyph), hybrid visual/audio (New Conservatory Theater Company’s Interlude), and outdoor performances (Oakland Theater Project’s The Waste Land). He is currently teaching a sound design course for Western Washington University and co-writing a musical for Bay Area Children’s Theater and the Rose Theater in Omaha, Nebraska.

Patrick Simms (Audio Engineer) is an sound professional with a background in music performance and production. He has also written plays for stage and radio, and is a member of the AFM Local 6. He is also the Executive Director of People in Plazas summer, noontime, outdoor concerts in downtown San Francisco, the city he moved to in 1994 after hanging up his career as a daily newspaper reporter in Connecticut.

Kelley Ho (Line Producer). Born and raised in Sacramento, Kelley Ho found her calling in the performing arts playing the flute and saxophone. At University of California, Irvine, she graduated with a BA in Drama (Honors in Directing) and a minor in Art History. After seven years of experience as a drum major including four national tours in a drum & bugle corps, she continues to teach marching band leadership students from all over the country. She currently resides in Brooklyn with her partner and their two kittens. She sends her love & gratitude to her family, friends, and Z Space. | bit.ly/kelleyho 

Cast

Sheila Balter, a Word for Word Charter/Core Company member, has originated many roles with Word for Word over the past 20+ years. Favorites include Mis’ Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss in In Friendship (Gale), Abby in Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People (Moore), Shirley in The LoudestVoice (Paley), the wife in Dolly (Munro) and Cora in Two on A Party (Williams; France tour). She has appeared on stages around the Bay Area, in New York, and has had the great fortune to perform with Word for Word in France for many years.

Catherine Castellanos Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2016-2020: Bring Down the House, Parts I and II; Mother Road, La Comedia of Errors; Destiny of Desire, The Book of Will; The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Odyssey; Roe (Helen Hayes nomination), Richard II. Bay Area: Associate Artist with California Shakespeare Theatre appearing in over 20 productions; Company member with Campo Santo since 2001, creating premiere works with renowned and award winning writers Denis Johnson, Luis Alfaro, Naomi Iizuka, Octavio Solis, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Jessica Hagedorn, Luis Saguar, Sean San Jose, Greg Sarris. Regional credits: A.C.T., Magic Theatre, Shotgun Players, San Jose Rep, Berkeley Rep, Yale Rep, La MaMa, Arena Stage, Portland Center Stage, Seattle Shakes, Arizona Theatre Company. Teaching: California Shakespeare Summer Conservatory, and restorative justice through theatre art with Community Works West-Rising Voices, and with the men in blue in San Quentin.

Paul Finocchiaro has performed at A.C.T., Berkeley Rep, The Magic Theatere, Aurora Theatre, Marin theatre Company, and Eureka Theatre. He has received four Bay Area Critics Awards or his acting. With Word for Word he has appeared in A Child's Christmas in Wales, The Loudest Voice, The Bunchgrass Edge of the World, More Than Human, Communist, Stories by Tobias Wolff, Strangers We Know, Angel Face, More Stories by Tobias Wolff,Olive Kitteridge, The Islanders, In Friendship, Stories by Alice Munro, and Holiday High Jinx.

Amy Kossow was a founding member of the Z Space Studio and is a Core Member of Word for Word Performing Arts Company. With Word for Word, Amy has adapted and directed productions of Smut: An Unseemly Story, by Alan Bennett; 36 Stories by Sam Shepard, You Know When the Men Are Gone, by Siobhan Fallon, and Mlle Dias de Corta, by Mavis Gallant. Amy appeared in the WFW acting company in stories by Annie Proulx, Edith Wharton, John Steinbeck, Amy Hempel, Sandra Cisneros and Zona Gale.

Brian Rivera is a Word for Word Core Company Member He has previously worked for the company in the school tour of The Master-Maid as well as the sold out, extended run of Amy Tan's Immortal Heart. He was in the first Word for Word podcast, The Machine Stops, as well as Helen Oyeyemi's Books and Roses. Brian last performed onstage in Translating Selena for Campo Santo. He made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award winning revival of The King and I at Lincoln Center and subsequently traveled in its first national Broadway tour. Other credits include the US premiere of The Orphan of Zhao at A.C.T. and La Jolla Playhouse, Major Barbara at A.C.T and Theatre Calgary, Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Yellowjackets, and California Shakespeare Theater's American Night. Brian can be seen as a principal character in the dark Christmas comedy Bitter Melon, available on Amazon Video and Google Play. He can be currently heard in Tales of the Resistance, San Francisco Mime Troupe radio play episodes available at www.sfmt.org. Brian is a proud member of AEA and SAG/AFTRA.

Patricia Silver is a Charter Member Word For Word from its inception in 1993. Her first story was There's A Garden of Eden by Ellen Gilchrist, followed by Xingu ( Edith Wharton) and at least 20 others including many for the school and library tours, and also the France tours. She is best remembered for Olive in Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. She spent her youth with the San Francisco Mime Troupe touring parks, the USA, and Europe.

Jeunée Simon is an actor and director in the Bay Area. Recent credits include: La Ronde (Cutting Ball Theater), Men On Boats u/s (American Conservatory Theater), HeLa (TheatreFIRST) The Daughters (SF Playhouse), The Bluest Eye Audio Play (Aurora Theater). Simon is a proud recipient of the 2017 RHE Artistic Fellowship and a 2019 Directing Apprentice with PlayGround. She is delighted to return to Word for Wordcast, where she was last heard in Books and Roses by Helen Oyeyemi. www.jeuneesimon.com

This first season of the WORDforWORDcast ran from September 2020 and January 2021 and included Stories from Greg Sarris, E.M. Forster, and Anita Cabrera

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