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Company
Jessica Brater, Artistic Director*, is the founding Artistic Director of Polybe + Seats. She is currently leading Polybe's collaborative development process for A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things, a new play about fish, mermaids, calcium carbonate, plastic, and the ocean's changing climate, among other things. Brater and Polybe were a fall 2006 resident artist at Mabou Mines/Suite to develop The Charlotte Salomon Project, for which Polybe + Seats also received a New Play Commission from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. The Charlotte Salomon Project was produced at Brooklyn Fire Proof in November 2006 and toured to the University of Michigan in April 2007 for the opening of the Walgreen Drama Center. Directing work away from the company includes a Fall 2007 workshop of Sibyl Kempson's KurbisGeistNacht at Dixon Place and Are You A Bird or a Dodo? Or, Aristophanes' Birds for Target Margin at HERE. Brater's directing work for the company also includes Gertrude Stein's Counting Her Dresses as part of Speakeasy at the Flea Theater, The Ladies' Auxiliary Telephone Bee at the Tank and as part of The Brick's Moral Values Festival, Careful of Eights: Four (Five) short plays by Gertrude Stein at Dixon Place's Not for Broadway, the HERE American Living Room Festival, the American Theatre of Actors, and at Columbia University as part of a conference on Stein featuring renowned scholar Ulla Dydo. Brater directed the premieres of Sally Oswald's Two Spent Swimmers at the Brown University New Plays Festival and at the Abingdon Theatre in New York and Desmond or Abraham and Frances at the New York Fringe Festival, collaborating on Desmond's further development at the Voice and Vision Envision Retreat 2003 in a reading featuring Mabou Mines co-artistic directors Ruth Maleczech and Sharon Fogarty. Brater teaches and works in the Barnard College Department of Theatre, where she completed her undergraduate studies and received the Kenneth Janes Prize in Theater. She is a student in the CUNY Graduate Center's Ph.D. program in Theatre Studies.
Miriam Felton-Dansky, Associate Artistic Director*, is a DFA candidate at the Yale School of Drama and an associate editor of Theater magazine. Her dramaturgy credits include The Charlotte Salomon Project, Careful of Eights, and Two Spent Swimmers (Polybe + Seats) as well as Suzan-Lori Parks's Venus and Ibsen's Peer Gynt (Yale School of Drama) and Yale Repertory Theatre productions of Trouble in Mind and Rough Crossing. In addition to Theater magazine, her writing has appeared in Theatre Journal, PAJ, and the Village Voice. BA: Barnard College; MFA: Yale School of Drama.
Stacey McMath * is a Program Officer at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. She has served as General Manager for chashama, an organization that converts temporarily vacant real estate into artists' spaces; as Managing Director for Voice & Vision Theater, a company that develops the work of women artists; and as a Producer for Target Margin Theater, Polybe + Seats, Green Chinchilla, and Studio 42. She teaches in the Barnard College Theater Department, regularly lectures at the Columbia University School of the arts, and has served as a Producing Consultant for Fractured Atlas, an arts service organization. She received her MFA at Columbia University in Theater Management and Producing and her BA in American History at Barnard College.
Catherine Wallach, Associate Producer, has been working with Polybe + Seats since the production of Two in Two in the summer of 2003. She is the Associate Editor for Book-of-the-Month Club.
Katya Schapiro * wears many hats, primarily those of a performer and writer. Katya conceived and co-produces Polybe's ongoing SpeakEasy series, at which she has performed and directed, and the Play Group first reading evenings. For Polybe, she also directed the premiere of David Egan's On and Giri at Union Docs in the fall of '05, and performed in the Ladies' Auxiliary Telephone Bees at the Brick and the Tank. She has performed in Here We Go! (365days/365plays), Life? or Theater?: The Charlotte Salomon Project, and the August 2007 workshop of A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things(formerly A Sea Change). Katya's short play Ever So Much More Than 20 debuted at Blue Box Productions' Sticky @ Galapagos in June '06. Her play Better Angels was produced in a Polybe workshop directed by Shira Milikowsky in October 2007. Katya is a graduate of Barnard College, and has trained with Vernice Miller of ALAT and at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA. She is currently an MLS student at Pratt Institute.
Associate Company Members
Donald Butchko joined Polybe + Seats in 2006 for The Charlotte Salomon Project and has refused to leave. Donald also enjoys the opportunity to work (in varied capacities, frequently of or pertaining to Stage Management) with Prospect Theater Company, Transport Group, Clubbed Thumb, LAVA, The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, and Barrington Stage Company.
Marnie Cumings is a proud associate member of Polybe+Seats. She has designed Better Angels and the 1st incarnation of Slimy Things for them. Marnie is also the current production manager and lighting designer for the all female hip-hop dance company Decadance Theatre, designing their most recent show Max338 at the Brooklyn Lyceum. This spring Marnie is also touring with Yoshiko Chuma as her production manager.
Samantha Debicki appeared in Polybe’s The Charlotte Salomon Project and A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things. In New York, she has performed with Target Margin Theater, 13th Street Repertory Company, Blue Box Productions, spork*Festival, The Public Theater's 365 Days/365 Plays Project, Ensemble Studio Theatre Lab, The Flea Downstairs, and the Urbanworld Film Festival screenplay reading series. Regional and television credits include Signature Theatre, The Kennedy Center, and the Discovery Channel. Sam majored in English at Columbia University, has published freelance writing, and teaches vinyasa yoga.
Avi Glickstein is a New York-based actor and writer and has been involved in commercial, non-profit, regional, and downtown productions in various creative and technical capacities. With Polybe + Seats he has worked on Mother Russia, The Charlotte Salomon Project, Here We Go!: 365 Days/365 Plays (co-producer), and A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things. In addition to Polybe, he also often collaborates with experimental music and theater group Object Collection. With them, he s performed in Is this a gentleman? (Ontological Incubator, 2005), Evoke memories of a golden age, Famous Actors, and Problem Radical(s) as well as musical compositions by Travis Just, Michael Pisaro, John Lely, Cornelius Cardew, and Christian Kesten. His performances and written work have been seen at venues including the Public Theater, New York International Fringe Festival, Mabou Mines, HERE, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Center Stage, Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, and the University of Michigan. He s worked with companies that include Prospect Theater Company, Studio 42, Bread and Puppet Theater, New England Shakespeare Festival, the Bridge Theatre Company, Mind the Gap, and Creative Mechanics (founding Producing Associate). He has a B.A. from Columbia University in Theater and English and trained in Meisner technique at the William Esper Studio. Currently, he is completing his MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU s Tisch School of the Arts.
Elaine O'Brien has appeared in Polybe + Seats' The Charlotte Salomon Project, 365 Plays/365 Days, and A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things. Past favorite roles include Dawn in Lobby Hero and Agnes in Dancing at Lughnasa.
Natalie Robin * is a New York-based lighting designer and founding member of Polybe + Seats, for whom she has designed Desmond or Abraham and Frances, Two Spent Swimmers, The Museum Play and Granada and co-designed The Charlotte Salomon Project. She is an Associate Artist of Target Margin Theater, an adjunct faculty member in NYU's Department of Undergraduate Drama and a contributing writer for Live Design Magazine. In 2008, she was chosen as a Young Designer to Watch by Live Design Magazine. BA: Columbia University. MFA: NYU Tisch School of the Arts. www.natalierobinlighting.com
Lindsay Torrey is an actor, dancer and choreographer. With Polybe, she has appeared in The Museum Play, Careful of Eights and The Charlotte Salomon Project. Favorite credits include Estelle in No Exit and Anne Deever in All My Sons for the Clarence Brown Theatre, Desdemona in Othello for the Theatre at Monmouth, and Kit in Top Girls for The Actor's Center. She holds a BA in English and Dance from Columbia University and an MFA in Acting from The University of Tennessee.
Ari Vigoda has been working with Polybe + Seats as an actor since 2006. He has performed in their productions of The Charlotte Salomon Project, A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things, and Granada. He has also appeared on Guiding Light and Law and Order: Criminal Intent. For the very latest, check out www.arivigoda.com.Peiyi Wong is a Brooklyn-based artist and designer for theater and film. Her work has appeared at HERE Arts Center, The Ontological Theater, 303 Bond, The Brick Theater, The Connelly Theater, and various other venues in and around New York City and in shows by companies such as Object Collection, Sinking Ship Theater, Studio Six, kInDeRdEuTsCh pRoJeKtS, Blackbird Theater (Amy Trompetter), and Transport Group. Most recently she designed sets and costumes in the Target Margin Theater Lab: The Theater of Tomorrow at The Chocolate Factory. She received the Marvin Sims Fellowship to attend the Kennedy Center Summer Intensive in Scene Design in 2005.
People We Like to Work With
Albert Aeed
Jason Binnick
Jacob Burstein-Stern
Libby Emmons
Kara Feely
Karen Flood
Andrew Gilchrist
Devon Harlow *
Kanae Heike
Shira Milikowsky
Sally Oswald *
Molly Parker-Myers
Lily Perlmutter
M. Ryan Purdy
Meredith Ries
Lisette Marie Silva
Zuzanna Szadkowski *
UnionDocs
Natasha Warner* Founding Member of Polybe + Seats