Peter Oswald (Adaptor) Widely lauded as one of England’s most daring and innovative playwrights, Peter has written over twenty-five plays produced at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal National Theatre, the Apollo Theatre, the Lyric Studio Theatre, the Gate Theatre, the Finborough Theatre and numerous other venues. He was writer-in-residence at the Globe from 1998-2005; and his version of Schiller’s Mary Stuart, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, went from the Donmar Warehouse to the West End and Broadway. Peter specializes in plays written in verse form, welding his deep knowledge of classical literature and dramaturgy to a sharply modern sensibility. His plays and books of poetry have been published by Oxford University Press, Oberon Books, and New Generation Publishing.
Friedrich Schiller (Author, 1759–1805) Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German playwright, poet, philosopher and historian. In his relatively short life, he authored an extraordinary series of dramas, including The Robbers, Maria Stuart, and the Wallenstein trilogy. He was also a prodigious poet, composing perhaps most famously the “Ode to Joy” featured in the culmination of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and enshrined, some two centuries later, in the European Hymn.
In part through his celebrated friendship with the playwright Goethe, he edited epoch-defining literary journals and exerted lasting influence on German stage production. He is sometimes referred to as the German Shakespeare; his are still among the most widely produced German plays both in Germany and internationally.
Ian Gallanar (Director)is in his 24th year as Artistic Director of the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. He founded the organization in 2002. Ian has worked as a professional actor, director, producer, and writer for roughly 200 professional productions. He has directed over 40 productions for CSC and developed its student matinee series and Shakespeare Beyond, a statewide mobile unit that gives free performances and offers free educational residencies. Previously, Ian has served as Artistic Director for the National Theatre for Children, Minnesota Shakespeare in the Park, and the Repertory Theater of America. Ian is a proud member of the distinguished National Theatre Conference and the Dramatists Guild of America; a Helen Hayes Tribute Award, Telly Award, Howie Award (Howard County Arts Council) winner. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He was the 2023 recipient of the Sidney Berger Award, a lifetime achievement award given to an Artistic Director of note from a professional Shakespeare company given by the international Shakespeare Theatre Association, an organization for professional Shakespeare companies around the globe.
Lauren Engler (Production Manager) has stage managed for CSC for numerous productions over the past decade. Both on stage and off, she has scenic painted, choreographed, and performed with CSC over the years. Lauren has also stage managed for Renaissance Rumble and the Maryland Renaissance Festival. In 2019, she coordinated a city wide “Spring of Remembrance” for CSC in honor of Anne Frank across theaters and museums. Lauren graduated with honors from High Point University with a degree in Performance Theater and Studio Art.
Caroline Johnson (Production Stage Manager) is a DC-based director, actress, model, and writer. Recent credits include Edinburgh: Over Her Dead Body (Edinburgh Fringe Festival). Washington, D.C.: Horse and Carriage (Prologue Theatre), Agreste (Spooky Action Theatre), The Pitchfork Disney (Red Rat Theatre), Scorched (Ex Pats Theatre), En Las Sombras (Keegan Theatre, Boiler Room Series), The Histories Project (Brave Spirits Theatre), Motherhood and Other Fractured Fairytales and Abortion Road Trip (Theatre Prometheus), The Cake (Prologue Theatre), Our Black Death (Taffety Punk), and Mojada (1st Stage).
Dan O’Brien (Technical Director/Set & Projection Designer) is a founding member of CSC. Daniel has performed, designed scenery, lights, and served as Technical Director for many productions (among other jobs too numerous to name). He oversaw the construction of CSC’s theatre in Baltimore and designed the sets and lighting for Macbeth (2016); for the inaugural season plays A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Richard II; Romeo and Juliet (2015-2019); A Christmas Carol (2014-2019), and many others.
Dean Leong (Lighting Designer) is a freelance Lighting Designer from the Washington DC area making his CSC debut. Design credits include: The Infinite Tales; Museum 2040; and Tempered: A Cabaret with 4615 Theatre Co. Chemical Exile: Synthesis; Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really; Sometimes the Rain, Sometimes the Sea; and Sleeping Giant with Rorschach Theater Co. Fitting In with Arts on the Horizon. Webster’s Bitch! with The Keegan Theatre. My Mama and the Full Scale Invasion with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co. (Associate). The Immigrant and Romeo & Juliet with Synetic Theater Co. (Assistant).
Kristina Lambdin (Costume Designer) won the Broadway World Best Costume Design award for her designs for A Christmas Carol (2016). Some of her costuming credits with CSC include Dracula (2013 and 2019); The Diary of Anne Frank; She Stoops to Conquer; Alice in Wonderland; Red Velvet; Anne of the Thousand Days; The Fantasticks; Macbeth (2016); A Christmas Carol (2014-2018); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2005, 2011 and 2014); The Importance of Being Earnest; The Taming of the Shrew (2006 and 2013); Romeo and Juliet (2003, 2012, and student matinees 2015-2019); A Doll’s House; As You Like It (Broadway World Best of Baltimore Award); and The Country Wife. Broadway World named her as a top artist of the 2007 Baltimore Theatre, and she won the Greater Baltimore Theater Award for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2005). For more than a decade, she served as the Costume Supervisor for the Baltimore Opera Company and then Lyric Opera Baltimore.
Grace Srinivasan (Music Director) has programmed and arranged the music for CSC productions since 2016 as Resident Music Director. A soprano who performs a wide-ranging repertoire throughout the region, she appeared as a soloist in a program of works inspired by Shakespeare’s plays, If Music Be the Food of Love, with CSC artists, the Peabody Baroque Band, and the Peabody Renaissance Ensemble. Grace holds a master’s degree in vocal performance from the Peabody Conservatory and sings professionally at St. Stephen Martyr Church and the National Cathedral
Paige Stone (Props Artisan) returns to Chesapeake Shakespeare Company after previously acting as props artisan for Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Her past credits with other companies include A Winter’s Tale, Pride and Prejudice, Antony and Cleopatra, and Comedy of Errors, among others.
Dawn Thomas Reidy (Assistant Director/ Production Associate) is an actor, teaching artist, director, and puppeteer. She is also a company member and member of the Black Classical Acting Ensemble at CSC. You may have seen her onstage as the Provost in Measure for Measure, Ruth Younger in A Raisin in the Sun or Lady Macbeth in the 2023 outdoor production of Macbeth. Dawn received her BFA in Acting form UMBC and her MFA in Acting from IU Bloomington. Dawn is excited to help plan, organize, a facilitate the creation of the beautiful work seen on stage working on the admin side of things in Production Management. When not at CSC, she pretends to have a whole host of illnesses as a standardized patient.
Sarah O’Halloran (Sound Designer) is a sound designer and composer. Sarah previously worked on CSC’s The Oresteia, A Christmas Carol; Anne of the Thousand Days and Measure for Measure. Other credits include Sense and Sensibility, Be Here Now, Proof, Dinner with Friends (Everyman Theatre); The Brothers Paranormal; The Humans, Our Town and Labour of Love (Olney Theater Center); The Chameleon; Gloria: A Life; Two Jews Walk into a War; Nathan the Wise, Compulsion, Talley’s Folly (Theater J) ; She the People: The Resistance Continues (Woolly Mammoth/The Second City); The Phlebotomist, The Brothers Size, Swimming with Whales, Trevor, and When the Rain Stops Falling (1st Stage); Cry it Out (Studio Theatre); A Chorus Within Her (Theater Alliance); In His Hands and The Return (Mosaic Theater); The Glass Menagerie, E2, The 39 Steps, The Heidi Chronicles and Things That Are Round (Rep Stage).
Lorraine Ressegger–Slone (Fight & Intimacy Director) is making her CSC debut. Other credits include Baltimore Center Stage: The Garden, How to Catch Creation; Round House Theatre: Spring Awakening; Woolly Mammoth: Describe the Night, BLKS, Botticelli in the Fire, Oedipus el Rey, Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play; Washington National Opera: Fidelio, Grounded. Shakespeare Theater Company: Much Ado About Nothing, Our Town. Taffety Punk: La Salpêtrière, Our Black Death, Pramkicker. 1st Stage: Hang, Laughs in Spanish, The Nance, The Rainmaker, The Phlebotomist, Secret Things, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Rorschach Theater: The Figs, Sleeping Giant. Website: lorraineresseggerslone.com
Abraham Stoll (Dramaturg/Text/Vocal Coach) is a production dramaturg and specialist in early modern literature. Recent productions include Brecht, Galileo, Aristophanes, The Clouds, and Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard, for the Johns Hopkins Theatre Program, and Henry 4 Part 1, Twelfth Night, Wilder, Skin of our Teeth, and Dürrenmatt, The Visit for The Old Globe/ University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Acting Program. Recent publications include an edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost(Broadview Press) and Conscience in Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge UP). He is the Director of JHU Theatre Arts and Studies.
Mary Ann Jung (Style Coach) of History Alive! Shows is an award-winning actress and Smithsonian Scholar who performs delightful and inspiring shows about amazing women in history. She has appeared on CNN, Good Morning America, and in newspapers around the world. She has been a lead actress, Royal Court and Shakespearean Language Director at the MD Renaissance Festival for 45 years. Her degree is in Tudor History and she has been performing her show Good Queen Bess for 35 years. She researches and writes her own scripts and always appears in the authentic costume, accent, and attitude for her heroines. She also portrays Amelia Earhart, Clara Barton, Sally Ride, and Julia Child among other fascinating ladies. Mary Ann has done numerous shows for the National Archives, Kennedy Space Center, and Smithsonian Museums as well as for festivals, corporate events and schools Website www.HistoryAliveShows.com
Gerrad Alex Taylor (Dialect Coach) is an award-winning director and actor that has worked with regional theatres and educational institutions across the country. In 2021 he was named one of Baltimore's "40 Under 40" by the Washington Business Journal. Gerrad currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre at UMBC and one of the leaders for CSC’s Black Classical Acting Ensemble. He holds a BA in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Performance from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is a member of the Actors’ Equity Association and the Society of American Fight Directors. (he/him/his)
Hannah Brill (Hair/Wig Designer & Wardrobe Supervisor) is a costume and lighting designer from Baltimore. She is the Assistant Costume Shop manager for Towson University’s Department of Theatre Arts. Hannah is returning to CSC as wardrobe manager (Romeo and Juliet, The Oresteia, As You Like It, Macbeth, Hamlet, A Christmas Carol 2022 & 2023, Twelfth Night). Other recent work includes costume design for A Year with Frog and Toad (Towson University), TU Dance Company shows Multiplicity, Echoing Visions, Legacy, and Surging (Towson University), Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes (Single Carrot Theatre), The First Thing That Happens (Acme Corporation), and lighting design for Rachel (Rapid Lemon Productions.)
Tyrel Brown (Assistant Stage Manager) returns to CSC after previously appearing in Shakespeare Beyond’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2023), Romeo and Juliet Student Matinee (2023), and Twelfth Night (2022). His other regional credits include Julius Caesar (Fools and Madmen), Young Playwrights Festival (Baltimore Center Stage), Black Super Hero Magic Mama (Strand Theater), Dreamgirls (ArtsCentric), and The Comedy of Errors (Endangered Species Project). He is also a member of CSC’s Black Classical Acting Ensemble (BCAE). Tyrel is a Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival nominee. Education: Towson University, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Acting. Follow Tyrel on Instagram and Tik tok: @tyreltyrelbrown
Chester Stacy (Assistant Technical Director) has designed, built, and painted many CSC productions, including Alice in Wonderland, The Fantasticks, Red Velvet, and Titus Andronicus; and for Baltimore Center Stage’s Thoughts of a Colored Man and Shakespeare in Love. Chester Creates LLC, has provided film production design for The Night Watchmen, set decoration for House of Cards and The Wire; and environmental graphics for Crunch Fitness, Royal Caribbean, Bmore Greek Grill, and Healthy Highlandtown.
Kalatri Singleton (Board Operator) is making his Chesapeake Shakespeare Company debut as a light board operator. Kalatri received his Bachelor’s of Science in Urban Arts with a concentration in Theatre from the illustrious Coppin State University. He began as a stage manager, leading the production of Zooman and the Sign, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Suspects in America. Most recently, he stage managed the Coppin Repertory Theatre as they mounted a production of Marty and the Hands That Could during the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Region 2.
Preaundrea Franklin (Production Intern) is an intern with Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, supporting the production and promotion of Mary Stuart and It’s the Comedy of Errors, Hon!. She is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Entertainment Management at Coppin State University. Her background includes vocal performance, songwriting, and theatrical performance. Through this internship, she is gaining hands-on experience in production and arts administration as she prepares for a career in the entertainment industry.
