Meet our company!
Last month, we held two days of auditions in Boston and two days of auditions in New York - and were absolutely stunned by the turnout. Over 45 talented artists and performers came out and auditioned. We were dazzled by the work we saw; in just 10 minutes, these strangers came together to create beautiful micro-performances based on a passage from The Odyssey where Odysseus encounters the monsters of the Strait of Messina, Scylla and Charybdis. We witnessed the creation of swirling, bubbling whirlpools and terrible, slithering monsters...and then we had the opportunity to speak one-on-one with every performer who auditioned, witnessing their passion, creativity, and spirit first-hand. We were blown away by the wealth of talent we saw--with only 5 spots to fill, we could have cast our company ten times over!
Though our choices were challenging, in the end we constructed a team of 8 ensemble performers with a wide variety of complementary skills and experiences, all of whom are fiercely passionate about cultural exchange, theatrical exploration, and community development.
We are so pleased to finally introduce you to our players!
Josephine Cooper is an artist who is passionate about the collaboration process of theatre! Josephine studies acting and directing at Emerson College in Boston. She has recently performed in a workshop performance with director Thaddeus Phillips of Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, and starred in many other plays at Emerson. Last year, Josephine began to explore devised theatre by working with a group of artists and maintenance workers at Emerson, to create a devised piece about their lives and journeys to the US in their own voices. Last summer, Josephine performed in the world premiere of a new play for the NYC International Fringe. She also works in TV and film, having recently been in a new mini-series for Comedy Central created by Ilana Glazer of Broad City, and is currently nominated for Best Actress at The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival for March. Josephine is honored to be making this journey will Trinacria Theatre Company! Combining theatre making, world travel, education, and heritage- it doesn’t get much better than that! Josephine would like to deeply thank those who donate to this inspiring new company!
Sean Devare is a NY-based multi-disciplinary theatre artist, designer, and avid traveler, previously working abroad with Dell'Arte International (Bali) and Dramatic Adventure Theatre (Ecuador). He was a resident actor at The Flea where he appeared in 'The Cutthroat Series' and '#serials@theflea.' Other NY credits: 'The Saltmakers' (Dixon Place/HERE); 'Artaud Artaud' (Signature/Columbia); 'The Tutors' (The Kraine). He studied theatre at Brown University where he created an original solo show, 'Into the West,' featuring his own mask and projection designs. Sean specializes in mask design and physical theatre, and is working on a new adaptation of the Grimms' 'Juniper Tree' featuring original archetype masks and puppets integrated through devised theatre. He has created masks and props for INTAR Theatre, The Ume Group, and Underling Productions. Training includes: Movement Theater Studio, Old Trout Puppet Workshop, and Per Brahe. BFA in Illustration, RISD. Sean will be pursuing an MFA in Theatre this fall at Sarah Lawrence. www.seandevare.com
Quinton Kappel is a visual artist, filmmaker, performer, designer, and jack of all artistic trades. He received his BFA in Film & Illustration from Tufts University together with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. His work strives to integrate his passion for performance with visual and digital mediums of storytelling, in areas as wide-varied as gallery spaces, video game development, visual effects, performing arts, production design, set design and more. Favorite roles include Hamlet, Steindorff (Bach at Leipzig), Mercutio (Romeo & Juliet), Claudio (Much Ado About Nothing), Hanschen (Spring’s Awakening), Lancelot (Spamalot!), and Orsino (Twelfth Night). His professional voice work includes clients such as Dunkin Donuts, ESPN, Warner Brothers, Jersey Jack Pinball, and more. As a film maker, he has filmed, edited, animated, and directed a wide variety of projects, and as a producer, his work includes nationally syndicated commercials for clients such as Dunkin' Donuts, LG, Chili's, Bank of America, Great Wolf Lodge, ESPN, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Capella University. His viral YouTube video, “105 Impressions,” was featured in the Huffington Post and Yahoo News, while the first episode of his web series “We Have a Dinosaur,” earned over 2.5 million views on YouTube. www.quintonkappel.com.
Elena Kritter is a New York City based actor, director, producer and personal trainer. From studying Shakespeare in Oxford, England, playing with Balinese masks in New York City, and producing off-off broadway plays, Elena brings a broad a spectrum of knowledge and experience. She believes that "to theatre", allows for a necessary cyclical process of growth in self and community. She is excited to work with her fellow artists in Trinacria and together become apart of that cyclical event between countries, stories, and people. Recent credits include The Drunken City (Battalion Theatre), As You Like It (Shakespeare on the Sound), and ‘Adara’ in Kasuba Mukuka's short film, The Dark Room. Elena completed the 2-Year Full Time Meisner Training Program at the William Esper Studio, BADA's Midsummer at Oxford Program, The Maggie Flanigan Studio’s Summer Intensive, and received at B.A in Theatre from Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, Virginia. www.elenakritter.com
Mariagrazia LaFauci (Artistic Director) was born and bred in Boston, but raised with Italian as a first language and Sicily as a second home. She graduated from Brown University in 2012 with a degree in History of Art and Architecture, but found her home in the Theatre Department. During her senior year, Mariagrazia wrote and performed Alexandria, a solo show dealing with the heritage, history, mythology, and “ghost stories” of her Sicilian upbringing. Following graduation, her work has focused on directing (favorite credits include Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo, Bach at Leipzig, Doubt: A Parable, and Twelfth Night) and teaching theatre. She has taught in a variety of locations including Saint Joseph Preparatory High School (where she helped create the school’s first academic theatre arts program), Stoneham Theatre’s young company, Jammin’ With You!, Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston, and more. Trinacria Theatre Company evolved out of Mariagrazia’s artistic desire to use theatre to address, explore, and discuss issues of cultural memory in global communities. She is so grateful to all those who are sharing in the journey! www.mariagrazialafauci.com
Kathleen Lewis is a Boston-based actor that hails from north country Maine, where she studied theater arts at Bowdoin College. She is currently devising a project using Bavarian Fairy Tales with a group of experimental physical theater artists from Boston, NYC, and Maine to be showcased in 2016. Her most recent performance was as a rapping, dancing, 90's clad lesbian in Gina Youngs's, Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo. Before that she was an intergalactic hacker for Kevin Mullins's space opera, Citizens of the Empire. She is a member of Beau Jest Moving Theatre, a Boston-based physical theater company that finished touring an original film noir play titled Apartment 4D in February. She has had the pleasure of working with a number of Boston theater companies including Boston Public Works, Flat Earth Theatre, Post-Meridian Radio Players, Fort Point Theatre, and Boston Bohemia to name a few. And now, she cannot wait to dive into work with Trinacria Theatre Company on this exciting physical theater, Sicilian myth telling adventure.
Dario Ladani Sanchez is entering his final semester at Northeastern University, where his studies have focused on rhetoric, theatre, and Portuguese. From Washington, D.C., Dario is the first person in his family to be born in the United States, and will be the first to finish college... unless his dad beats him to it with those sneaky online classes. In addition to acting, he loves playing music, screwing around with martial arts, pretending to have a unique fashion sense, and eating his way through Boston. Theatre roles include Peter in The Heidi Chronicles, Alejandro in Welcome to Arroyo's, Prep in columbinus, and David in A Wake for David's Fucked-Up Face (his first time performing in New York!); he also starred in the Emmy award-winning webseries Paper Trail. Dario is extremely excited to be a part of this new, exciting, intercultural experiment!
Max Sklar is a local actor based in Salem MA. He received his BA from McGill university. He is currently a cast member of Othello in the Seraglio (Meddah) with Dünya, Cry Innocent: the People Versus Bridget Bishop with History Alive!, and The Diary of Perpetua (various roles) with Still Small. Past credits include Love's Labour's Lost (Costard), Macbeth (Ross), A Trolley Christmas Carol for the Griffen Theater in Salem, and performances in Puglia Italy for the Orlando Innamorato Festival; Il Viaggio Segreto (Giuseppe Verdi), and La Terra Promessa (Il Funzionario). College productions include All's Well That Ends Well (Dumaine lord 1), Ben Johnson's The Alchemist (Abel Drugger), and Timon of Athens (Poet, Ventidius, Caiphis, and Senator). Apart from acting, Max is passionate about languages and translation. He is a tour guide, and works as the foreign language tour manager for Cambridge Historical Tours. He is also an amateur Old Time music player and plays the Mandolin and the Bandoneón.