Z Space

HOME
BY George Saunders

Directed by Sheila Balter

On a related note, we’d like to recommend the In the First Version of the Story by the Home’s Dramaturg John M. Meyer. It touches on many themes that are also applicable to this story.

CRedits

for Home

Directed by Sheila Balter

Cast:
Molly Benson
Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe*
Robert Ernst*
Edie Flores
Lisa Hori-Garcia*
Joel Mullennix*
Brian Rivera*
Jomar Tagatac*

Sound Design & Original Music: Cliff Caruthers
Audio Engineer: Patrick Simms 
Line Producer: Kelley Ho
Dramaturg: J.M. Meyer
Production Assistant: Anthony Doan

Pictures and Biographies Below

Author

George Saunders (Author) studied under Tobias Wolff in the graduate program in creative writing at Syracuse University. His work includes the short-story collections “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” (a finalist for the 1996 PEN/Hemingway Award), “Pastoralia,” “In Persuasion Nation” (a finalist for the Story Prize), “Tenth of December” (a finalist for the National Book Award and recipient of the Folio Prize), “Congratulations, By the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness,” and Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel (winner of the Man Booker Prize). Saunders has won prizes for his best-selling children’s book, “The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip,” and for a book of essays entitled “The Braindead Megaphone,” and he has been featured in the “O. Henry Prize Stories,” “Best American Short Stories,” “Best American Nonrequired Reading,” “Best American Travel Writing,” and “Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy” anthologies. Named by The New Yorker one of the best American writers under the age of forty in 1999, Saunders has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Production / Creative Team

Sheila Balter (Director) 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 Loudest Voice (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.

Cliff Caruthers (Sound Design & Original Music) is a Bay Area based sound designer and composer with over 20 years experience in the field of theatre sound design. He has created music and soundscapes for over 300 productions near and far, including Frankenstein at Guthrie Theatre, 1984 at Alley Theatre, Caucasian Chalk Circle for American Conservatory Theater, TRAGEDY: A Tragedy for Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Man in Love for Kansas City Rep, and A Clean House for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, where he was Resident Sound Designer for seven years. In 2007 his work on Fighter Airplanes for Cutting Ball Theater was featured at the Prague Quadrennial in 2007. His work on Earth: A Primer, was featured at the Experimental Gameplay Worship at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 2015. He designed sound for Word for Word's Stories by Alice Munro in 2015. He has received several Bay Area Critics Circle awards, including most recently in 2019 for Detroit ’67 at Aurora Theatre Company. Mr. Caruthers is co-curator of the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, and serves as Member Representative to the Western Region Board of United Scenic Artists Local 829.

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. bit.ly/kelleyho 

J.M. Meyer (Dramaturg) works as a researcher and as a playwright-performer in Austin and New York. His work as a playwright and an actor has been featured in the Austin Chronicle, The Austin American-Statesman, KUT radio, the BBC online, The Scotsman, and The List. His stage play American Volunteers won the 2010 Mitchell Award at the University of Texas, and subsequently made the long-list for the Dylan Thomas Prize in the United Kingdom. His research explores competition within military hierarchies, especially during the Second World War. He served in the United States Army, and deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Anthony Doan (Production Assistant) is an actor, playwright, director, excited to be joining the team as a Production Assistant. This is his first ever professional PA job, and he is glad that it is with Z Space and such wonderful artists.

Cast

Molly Benson (Renée, Ensemble) is a Bay Area actress and a Core Company Member with Word for Word. She recently performed with Word for Word in Anniversary! as well as Food Stories several years ago, both of which toured in France. She has worked with many other theaters in the Bay Area and Los Angeles including TheaterWorks, Shotgun Players, The Magic, Cutting Ball, Cal Shakes, PianofightSF, Killing My Lobster, Town Hall Theater, Grove Theater Center (LA), and El Portal Theater (LA). These days she is primarily a Mom to two wonderful children, and works as a voiceover actor. You can find her voiceover work at www.mollyrbenson.com

Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe* ("Ma") is an accomplished actor, director, writer, working in the Bay Area for almost 40 years. The founding artistic director of the award-winning ensemble Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience (BACCE), she has directed and produced 10 critically acclaimed productions for the company. She is a former acting and directing member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. She has directed at Trinity Rep, Capitol Rep, Southern Rep, Carpetbag Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, WaterTower Theatre, Curious Theater, SF Playhouse, Magic Theatre, TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, and the Lorraine Hansberry, receiving accolades from Dallas’ Rabin Awards and Backstage’s Dean Goodman Award for Excellence. Edris has appeared as an actor in productions throughout California, and in Nigeria. She was a core member of Rhodessa Jones’ Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women. Her plays, Adventures of A Black Girl In Search of Academic Clarity and Inclusion and There are Women Waiting are published in the anthologies, solo/black/woman and Black Medea. Edris is also a member of Campo Santo, Word for Word, and the National Institute of Directing and Ensemble Creation. She holds an MFA in Theater from the University of Iowa, and is a member of the Goddard College faculty.

Robert Ernst* (Harris) is a co-founder of The Iowa Theater Lab (1968-1972). His first solo performance was at 2019 Blake St. in Berkeley in 1973, and in 1975, he co-founded The Blake St. Hawkeyes, a theater collective devoted to ensemble and the development of original works. During this time, he also created a half dozen more solo works. In 1984, he won a Dramalogue for best director and best over-all production for the musical, Tokens, a 65-person cast, performed at Project Artaud. In 1987, he performed a solo that lasted for 24 hours and 12 minutes, voted one of the “Best 10” performances of the year. His pocket opera, Catherine’s Care at Alter-Theater was voted Best of the Year by The Guardian in 2007. Recently, his solo show, towards/ away, was produced at the San Francisco International Arts Festival, as well as his original piece, The Buck and Bill Show, a theatrical episodic, at the Above Ground Festival. More traditionally, he has appeared in Road (Eureka Theater Co.), Speed of Darkness (Berkeley Rep) King-fish, Playland, People’s Temple, The Late Henry Moss (Magic Theatre),The Time of Your Life (A.C.T., Seattle Rep), and Glengarry Glenn Ross (Arizona Rep). Bob appeared in Word for Word's 2019 production of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and in the staged reading and podcast productions of "The 14 Mission".

Edie Flores (Ryan, Ensemble) recently performed for Word for Word in Retablos by Octavio Solis, and the podcast of Citizen, by Greg Sarris. He has toured in Evil Dead: The Musical. Other credits include The Little Mermaid, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Mamma Mia, Next to Normal, and Cry Baby (Western Stage)

LIsa Hori-Garcia* (Ryan’s mom/ensemble), is thrilled to be back and helping bring this beautiful and powerful story to life with this incredibly talented cast and crew. She has previously worked with Word for Word in the school tour of The Master-Maid, as well as Stories from Sonoma Mountain and Holiday High Jinx. During this pandemic, Lisa has been focusing her energy to radio plays and zoom readings and can be heard in SFMT’s radio plays Tales of the Resistance www.sfmt.org. When not performing in front of a microphone, Lisa has kept busy teaching online with Word for Word’s Youth Arts education programs. Lisa is a proud Company Member of Word for Word and is a member of AEA and SAG/AFTRA.

Brian Rivera* (Mikey) 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, and Anna Maria Ortese's A Pair of Eyeglasses. 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, and will be performing the titular role in the upcoming The Great Khan at SF Playhouse. Brian is a proud member of AEA and SAG/AFTRA.

Jomar Tagatac* (Evan, Landlord, Ensemble) appeared at San Francisco Playhouse in Hold These Truths, Art, King of the Yees; Today is My Birthday (Theater Mu). At A.C.T. he was seen as in Rhinoceros and A Christmas Carol. Other credits include Vietgone (Capital Stage) , Fortinbras in Hamlet, The Language Archive (TheatreWorks); The War of the Roses, Macbeth, Everybody, As You Like It (CalShakes), The Happy Ones, and Dogeaters (Magic Theatre). Jomar is a recipient of a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Principle Actor in a Play, and TBA Award for Outstanding Performance in a Featured Role. He earned an MFA from A.C.T.

*Member, AEA

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