May
Adrales | Lear DeBessonet |Gia
Forakis | Jyana S Gregory | Meredith
McDonough
Lisa Rothe| Daniella Topol | Kara Lynn Vaeni | Meiyin Wang | Kim Weild 
MAY ADRALES May Adrales is thrilled to be a part of Women's Project. She recently graduated with her MFA from Yale School of Drama where she directed Hamlet, Layla and Majnun, Antony & Cleopatra, The War is Over, and Deuce. She served as the Artistic Director of the Yale Cabaret in 2004-05, producing a 22-show season, including 5 world premieres. At Yale Cabaret, she directed Cyrano, the Love of Don Perlimplin for Belisa in his Garden and the American premiere of Ophelia: opera in blue. She has directed and developed work at Second Stage Theatre, The Hangar Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, New Jersey Repertory, The Hypothetical Theatre, West Coast Ensemble, and The New York International Fringe Festival. She has assisted Lee Breuer, Mary Zimmerman, John Rando, David Chambers, and David Warren. May received a Van Lier Directing Fellowship and an SDCF Observership. She is a Drama League Directing Fellow and a Directing Associate at the Lark Theatre. She also received a New York Theatre Workshop Directing Fellowship for 2006-07. May currently works as an Artistic Associate at the Public Theatre.
LEAR DeBESSONET
Gia Forakis: Recent credits
include: William Inge's PICNIC, Bay Theatre Company, Annapolis, MD.,
Sherridan's THE RIVALS, Hudson Valley Shakespeare, Cold Spring, NY.
ACTS OF MERCY: PASSION-PLAY, by Michael John Garcés, Rattlestick Playwright's
Theater, NYC. Other recent credits include: Shakespeare's THE WINTER'S
TALE, (Milwaukee Shakespeare, Milwaukee, WI), PORT AUTHORITY THROW
DOWN by Mike Batistik, (Workshop, Cape Cod Theatre Project), IRON,
by Rona Munro (The Kitchen Theatre Company, Ithaca, NY), DANCING AT
LUGHNASA, by Brian Friel (Guest Director, New York University's Tisch
School of the Arts), FRAG by Michael John Garcés (HERE, NYC),
COATHANGER, by Mac Wellman (WOW-PAC-Benefit, Long Wharf Theatre, New
Haven, CT). Other credits include: Chekhov's UNCLE VANYA, Robert
Patrick's KENNEDY'S CHILDREN and Gertrude Stein's LADIES VOICES. She
has also directed new plays by Rolin Jones, LAST OF THE CHATTERBOX
WOLVES, and by Kate Walet, A BOOK OF TWO. Gia
is a founding member of Epic Proportions Productions where she functioned
as director, producer, playwright, and performer for 10 years, creating
17 original works for the stage in New York, including: DIA Downtown,
T.W.E.E.D. New Works Festival, West Bank Downstairs Theater Bar, Dixon
Place, Pulse Theatre, Access Theatre, and the Phantom Theater in Warren,
VT. She holds a BFA in Acting from New York
University's Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA in Directing from
Yale School of Drama. Gia is a member of the Women's Project
Director's Lab, an affiliated director with The Lark Play Development
Center, a New Georges Affiliated Artist, and a member of SSDC (the
Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers). In November '06 she
completed a guest directorship at The Lee Strasberg Institute, NYC,
directing THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND, by Tom Stoppard. This May '07 she
will be directing I WANT WHAT YOU HAVE, a new play by Saviana Stanescu
as part of the Women's Project GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUND$ at the
World Financial Center, NYC. Additionally, Gia offers private coaching
sessions for actors preparing audition material, and teaches acting
workshops in One-Thought-One-Action©: an action based approach
to acting through physical gesture. CONTACT: GiaForakis@aol.com/ Cell:
718-208-6583 JYANA S. GREGORY
MEREDITH MCDONOUGH Meredith McDonough most recently directed the workshop of Megan Mostyn-Brown's The Rest of Your Life at LAByrinth Theatre's Intensive, as well as the regional premiere of Alena Smith's Alice, Eat Your Words at Northwestern University. Her NY credits include the premieres of Adam Rapp's Members Only, Gary Winter's The Impotent General, and Betty Shamieh's Again and Against (New Georges). Regionally, Meredith is directing the premiere of Megan Mostyn-Brown's The Secrets Lives of Losers this winter with UMKC's graduate department and directed the premiere of Alison Moore's Hazard County at Actors Express in Atlanta. She will also be directing Driving Miss Daisy for Delaware Theatre Company in March 2007. During her 3 seasons at Actors Theatre of Louisville, she directed the world premieres of Kuwait, A Bone Close to My Brain, Heaven and Hell, and Backstory in the Humana Festival of New American Plays. She was also the 2004 Boris Sagal Fellow at the Williamstown Theatre Festival where she directed Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice on the Nikos Stage. Other favorite credits include Angels in America, Full Circle, Balm in Gilead, Baltimore Waltz and A Bright Room Called Day. In addition to her work developing new plays, she also works with new musicals, and was the New Works Program Director for the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. She holds an MFA in directing from UCSD and a BS in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, and is a 2006 Drama League Directing Fellow.
DANIELLA TOPOL
Kara-Lynn Vaeni's recent projects include the premiere of Deviant by A. Rey Pamatmat (nominated for IT "Best Production" Award), Molly Rice's Medea Unharnessed at The Drilling Company, Hell the Opera at PS 122 (Associate Director), a new translation of Life is a Dream at U-Mass Amherst, and Lee Blessing's Two Rooms in NYC. This year she was a Guest Artist at Hofstra University where she taught acting and directed her adaptation of Calamity John's Cowboy Musical, a feminist parody of King John, for which she also wrote original lyrics. She has directed other productions and workshops at The Flea, New Georges, The Lark, South Coast Repertory, Ma-Yi and the NY Fringe. Currently she is staging fights and dances for Don Juan in Hell, based on Mozart's Don Giovanni for the Estates Theatre in Prague and for Nextwave at BAM. Next up is the national tour of Lost in Yonkers for Montana Repertory Theatre. She recently received her MFA from the Yale School of Drama, where she was won a Presidential Public Service Fellowship and the Julian Milton Kauffman Prize for Directing.
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Lear
deBessonet, (Time Out New York's "25 People to Watch 2006") is the founder and artistic director of Stillpoint Productions. Her many New York directing/devising credits include Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards (PS122), transFigures (a site-specific work at Calvary Church in 2003, produced Off-Broadway by Womens Project in 2007), Bone Portraits (Walkerspace), Death Might Be Your Santa Claus (a site-specific work performed at an abandoned bank next to the NY Stock Exchange), Flying on the Wing (NY Fringe, Outstanding Solo Show), The Eliots (Center Stage), The Female Terrorist Project (HERE Arts Center), Equus (Hangar Theatre), Whiskey Girl (Hangar Theatre).
Regional: When I Was a Ghost (Guthrie Dowling Studio). For NYU: Fefu and Her Friends, L'Histoire du Canard, Bite Your Tongue.
Internationally, Lear directed In the Dark Ages, a new tri-lingual musical for the National Opera Theatre of Kazakhstan. She has assisted Martha Clarke, Anne Bogart, and Marianne Weems, and has trained with DAH Theater of Yugoslavia. Lear is the recipient of the LMCC's Presidential Award for Artistic Excellence. She is an alumnus of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and Women's Project Directors Lab, a
Drama League Directing Fellow, and a Jefferson Scholar. Upcoming:
On The Levee, commissioned by Yale Rep.
JYANA
S. GREGORY is currently directing a new adaptation of Euripides' Iphigenia
at Aulis for City College in Harlem. She is the Artistic Director of
NYC-based ACTIVE EYE (www.activeeye.org) for whom she has directed
Hard Lovin' Ever After, Dojoji, Woyzeck, and Senjo. Jyana spent 2 years
at Cleveland Public Theatre as a Future Leaders Fellow (sponsored by
Theatre Communications Group) being mentored in Artistic Direction.
She helped produce 2 seasons of work and also directed Suzan-Lori Parks'
Venus and Wallace Shawn's The Designated Mourner as well as works-in-progress
of Adam Rapp's Nocturne and Jill Levin's The Lawyer Play. Other directing
includes Your Nightgown is Jealous When You Dream (collectively devised,
mugwumpin, SF & Denver), Siegfried's Nerve (Target Margin Theater's
Lab Festival, NYC), Cosi Fan Tutte (Chrysalis Opera, Boston), Zeami's
Izutsu (Lincoln Center Directors Lab/HERE, NYC), Handke's Kaspar (Blueprint
Series, Ontological Theatre, NYC), and a reading of Whooping Momma
and Dookie Braids (Young Playwrights, NYC). She has assisted Chen Shi-Zheng,
David Herskovits, and Diane Paulus and worked for Richard Foreman.
Jyana is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. She is a graduate
of Yale University and has studied traditional and contemporary performing
arts in Japan. 
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Lisa
Rothe is a director, actor and educator. Her recent directing credits
include the New Harmony Project's workshop of David Caudle's Likeness,
productions for the Summer Play Festival (Split Wide Open by Christina
Gorman & Anatomy 1968 by Karen Hartman); the independent film,
Contemplating Emily (chosen for LA Outfest this summer); Milwaukee
Shakespeare Company (As You Like It); Yale School of Drama (Balm in
Gilead); NYU's MFA acting program(Stop Kiss, Gum, Top Girls, Ah, Wilderness!);
the Culture Project (Rebecca Hart's one woman show, Jazz Desert); and
the world premiere of Amy Kohn's radio-opera, One Plum Square for WNYC.
Recently, Lisa returned from Ethiopia where she created a theater piece
with the orphans at Ahope Orphanage in Addis Ababa culminating in a
performance at the National Theatre of Ethiopia. This fall, she will
be directing The Seagull at the Yale School of Drama. She will also
be teaching the course Acting for Film and Television this fall for
New York University's School of Continuing Education. Lisa is also
Drama League alum, a Fox Fellow, and a graduate of NYU's Graduate Acting
Program and Director's Lab.
Daniella Topol is the Artistic Program Director at the Lark Play Development Center as well as a freelance director of new plays. Her NYC productions include: Sheila Callaghan’s Dead City (New Georges), Peter Gil-Sheridan's Topsy Turvy Mouse (Cherry Lane Theatre), Stanton Wood’s Snow Queen (Urban Stages), Zakiyyah Alexander's Sick (Summer Play Festival), David Simpatico's Mary (NYC Fringe), and she has directed numerous readings and workshops around town. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon's Directing Program, Daniella was previously the New Works Program Director at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre and the Associate Producing Director at City Theatre in Pittsburgh. She is an NYTW Usual Suspect and a HARP artist at HERE developing a new epic piece on floods with Sheila Callaghan and William Cusick. Upcoming productions include: Trista Baldwin's SAND (Women's Project and Productions), Kim Oler, Sean Hartley and Alison Hubbard's musical Little Women (Village Theatre, WA) and Sheila Callaghan's Lascivious Something (Cherry Lane Theatre). 
Meiyin
is the associate artistic director of Singapore Repertory Theatre and
a co-founder of theatrewagon, an international collective, in NY. Her
work has been seen around the U.S, Singapore and Italy. Highlights
include Sarah Kane's Cleansed,; Scratch/Medea; A Lover's Discourse;
Mother Courage; Ivanov; Bullet for Unaccompanied Heart at the Theater
of the Riverside Church, Theater Row, Prospect Theater, Barrow Group,
Yale University Theatre, Premio Dams Festival(Bologna, Italy) among
others. In Singapore - Postcards from Persephone (Best Director, Best
Script finalist for National Life! Awards; Betrayal (SRT, National
premiere, starring Indian film legend Shabana Azmi); The Good Citizen
(SRT). Meiyin's work has been descrbed by Singapore Straits Times as " Bold,
Brisk and Brilliant" and she was featured in the national news
as the top female director to watch. She has assisted Robert Woodruff,
Eduardo Machado, Lisa Peterson and has worked at ART, The Public Theater,
INTAR, Prospect Theatre, Classic Stage Company and Long Beach Opera.
As a writer, Meiyin's work has been recognized by Hewlett Packard,
Singapore Youth Festival and Singapore National Arts Council. She is
currently the Associate Producer to Mark Russell for Under The Radar
2007. Meiyin is also a musician, photographer, cook and travelor. Upcoming:
C4 The Chekhov Project; La La Lear Sisters; Dead Letter Office. Training
-- Columbia M.F.A, Yale B.A., in Political Science. 
Kim
Weild is a director, performer and teacher. She is the 2006 Bill Foeller
Directing Fellow to The Williamstown Theatre Festival where she conceived
and directed the new play Paradise Now. She is a Kennedy Center Directing
Fellow, the recipient of a Kennedy Center Fellowship, a Columbia University
Theatre Fellowship and has held the David Parsons Chair at LACHSA.
She is the Artistic Director of Burning Wheel which is dedicated to
the creation of new work, the dynamic re-imaginings of the classics
and the training of theatre artists. Most recent productions include,
Uncle Vanya, The Eccentricities of a Nightingale and Endgame. The design
of her production of Uncle Vanya has been chosen for exhibition in
the Prague Quadrennial and the show itself will be performed in Prague
in June. Kim received her BFA from New York University-Tisch School
of the Arts (University Honors Scholar) and is an MFA candidate (2007)
in the directing program at Columbia University. Her thesis production
will be the N.Y. Premiere of Charles Mee Jr.'s Fetes de la Nuit opening
February 14, 2007. Current plays in development are new adaptations
of Miss Julie with playwright Luis Alfaro, Racine's Phaedra, and a
new play entitled FAUN.
