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Rehearsals Start for Beginning Days & Strangers - SOCIETY

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At last! After years (and an unexpected year) of development, Beginning Days of True Jubilation by Mona Mansour and The Strangers Came Today by Emily Zemba officially began rehearsals today at ART in NYC.

It is thrilling – and surreal – to be back in the room together, and to welcome Jennifer Mogbock, Dela Meskienyar, and Violeta Picayo to our cohort. Despite not having our full cast and creative team in rehearsal for Day 1, we are already very excited about where we’re headed.

Ticket information will be released tomorrow! Keep your eyes on our Instagram account @societytheatreco and right here for more updates.

SOCIETY is a collective of theatre makers based in New York City creating new research-driven, radically collaborative works.
SOCIETY is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
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Jennifer Mogbock

Jennifer is a proud immigrant  born in Nigeria and raised in Argentina, Texas and Canada. She is a Bilingual (English and Spanish) actor, collaborator, writer, and theatre educator currently based in New York City. Jennifer is a recent graduate of the NYU Graduate Acting program, Class of 2021. Recent credits include: The Good Fight (Paramount +), Merry Wives (Public Theatre), Golden City (Marvel/ Disney +), Lady In The Lake starring Natalie Portman (Apple TV). Jennifer’s ambition is to perform and create stories about differences: to explore race, culture, and the complexities of how we self identify. But most importantly, her biggest dream is to provide genuine representation for little brown skin girls. When Jennifer isn’t working, she spends her free time baking, FaceTiming her family, and traveling the world.

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Grant Harrison

Credits include SOCIETY’s Beginning Days of True Jubilation as well as numerous Cheap Date pieces (as writer, director and actor). TV: God Friended Me (CBS), The Big Dogs (Amazon) and The Tick (Amazon). Regional: Dial M For Murder (Bucks County Playhouse), Fill (Los Angeles Theater Center), and 4000 Miles (Studio Theatre, DC). NY Stage: Ensemble Studio Theatre, New Georges, New Ohio, Access Theater, 52nd Street Project, The Flea. He holds a BA from UCLA and an MFA from NYU Graduate Acting.

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Brian Bock

Brian Bock is an actor, clown, singer, and writer from California. The youngest and most ignorable of 5 dysfunctional children, Brian blossomed from a shameful little cretin into a conduit for strange, jagged humor borne from his inescapably existential ennui. He is perhaps happiest when performing his two-person clown show, Soul Potato, in which he eats a rotisserie chicken with his feet—or, more generally, whenever he can disarm and delight someone with mild-to-medium grotesquerie. An avid satirist of himself and the world, Brian is a stalwart believer in humor as social medicine, and in plumbing one’s darkest depths for the truth. He is an alumnus of NYU’s Graduate Acting Program.

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Hana Chamoun

Hana Chamoun is a Palestinian-Lebanese actress born in London and based in New York. She graduated in Communication Arts and Psychology in Beirut and soon after moved to NYC to pursue an acting career. Hana has appeared in the Emmy-award-winning show Ramy (Hulu) and is a series regular on Jinn (Netflix). She stars in the acclaimed short film Salam (2018) and has a leading role in the feature film 3000 Nights (2015). Hana has directed several short films and a play, Baggage (2015), performed on the Babel Theater stage in Beirut, Lebanon. She is the Associate Producer of Nour Productions, founded by her parents in 1993.

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Jonathan Louis Dent

Jonathan Louis Dent is a New York City based actor, writer, teacher and Reiki practitioner. He believes firmly in the power of a good story. An experience he’s particularly proud of is when he originated the role of Vin in Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet, which made its debut at the Huntington Theater and later transferred to The Roundabout Theatre. He is forever indebted to the litany of teachers that have helped shape his consciousness, most especially those in the NYU Graduate Acting program. After graduating in 2015,  he took his play The Broken Record to the New York International Fringe Festival during the summer where it was a recipient of the award for Overall Excellence. Jonathan has a passion for storytelling that upends the conventions of patriarchal conditioning, and he loves assisting in cultivating similar passions in his students. Art can and always does change the world: and so, as we create we resist. 

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Hiram Delgado

Hiram Delgado is an actor and writer from Carolina, Puerto Rico. Virtual theater credits include Romeo y Julieta (The Public Theater) and BDOTJ (New Ohio Ice Factory). Some live theater credits include Be Mean to Me (IATI Theater), Agnes (59E59) and The Model American (Williamstown Theater Festival). He has made TV appearances in New Amsterdam, Fantasy Island, Prodigal Son, Madam Secretary and The Code, and film appearances in Homesick and The Vessel. Broadway debut coming soon in Take Me Out (Second Stage). He currently resides in Queens.

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Caroline Englander

Caroline is an AEA Stage Manager based in Brooklyn, NY. Credits include King Lear on Broadway, starring Glenda Jackson. Off-Broadway: The Vagrant Trilogy (postponed), Julius Caesar, The Outer Space, The Civilians’ The Great Immensity, Richard Nelson’s The Apple Family Plays (Public/NYSF). runboyrun & In Old Age (NYTW), Describe the Night (Atlantic Theater Company), The Courtroom, HAMLET (Waterwell), Sense & Sensibility,  Hamlet & St. Joan (BEDLAM). Multiple productions for NYU Graduate Acting. B.A. Barnard College.

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Christy Escobar

Christy Escobar is the third of ten children and finds acting a great way to satisfy her need for attention. Some of her favorite roles are Bubblegum, feminist terrorist on AMC’s Dietland, and Julie in a modern Latinx take of Miss Julie by Hillary Bettis called Queen of Basel. Film and TV credits: Blindspot (NBC), Loser Leaves Town (HBO), The Rehearsal (Emmy award-winning web series), Who We Are Now, Anomalous, Untitled Short Film About White People, The Brick Wall, Viral Beauty, The Man in the Woods, Under the Lantern Lit Sky, and The Falling World. She loves working on new plays and is the recipient of the New Dramatists Charles Bowden Award. Off-Broadway credits include GNIT at Theatre For a New Audience, Scissoring at INTAR, The Hollow at The Brick, and Lady Macbeth and Her Lover at the Director’s Company. She recently wrote her first play called The Motherhood Project, which began in SOCIETY’s Salon series during the pandemic. She lives with her sports surgeon husband Dr. Hamula (now taking new patients!) and their calico cat Zelda.

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Rebecca s'manga Frank

Rebecca S’manga Frank is an actor, writer, and director for the stage and screen based in New York. She has been a passionate storyteller in the theatre arts, committed to developing new work for over a decade. Rebecca got her start by singing jazz in an improvisational ensemble in Oakland, CA. She collaborated with theaters all over the California Bay Area until going to NYU’s Graduate Acting program. She’s since acted all over the world from Sundance’s Theatre Lab in Morocco to The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 2019 production of the yiddish song-play Indecent. This year she did a few spots on television including a guest star on FOX’s Prodigal Son. As a director, she’s worked at California Shakespeare Company and New York Theatre Workshop under the guidance of visionary female directors. In 2018, she returned to Oakland to direct a 6-person Romeo and Juliet. As a writer, she writes poems, essays, and plays, and contributes pieces to spaces interested in racial justice as an intersectional force and advocate for Black Lives.

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Annie Fox

Annie Fox, actor, collaborator, is writing to you. Fave credits include Beginning Days of True Jubilation with SOCIETY, Lobby Hero on Broadway, Anne Frank at the Cleveland Playhouse, etc. 

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Leslie Fray

Leslie Fray was born in Lyon, France, raised in Austin, Texas and has lived in New York for the past 9 years. Her first and greatest love, theatre, led her to NYU Graduate Acting where she received her MFA. Since then, she’s performed in various theatre productions including Queens at La Jolla Playhouse, The Rose Tattoo at Williamstown Theatre Festival and Caught with the Play Company. She also appeared on TV’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Sinner, Plot Against America, and coming up, Regina Hall’s Master! As a storyteller, and deep-feeling human (Cancer, come on), she is hungry to create, fail, get back up again, and bring joy and healing through this wild craft, because, let’s be real… this world desperately needs it. She is humbled and honored to be part of a group of artists and activists who are fearlessly challenging what art and theatre can do for humanity, and so excited about what we will create together.

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Meredith Garretson

Meredith Garretson is an actress & artist-citizen living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY. She hails from the Washington, DC area. She is a proud alum of the NYU Graduate Acting program, Class of 2017. When she isn’t acting, she’s running, doing yoga, or eating a profound amount of kale. She’s a lifelong animal lover, a big dirty vegan, and a gramophonetic synesthete (it’s worth a Google).

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Rosa Gilmore

Rosa Gilmore is an actor best known for her role as Zoe in Season 1 of The Handmaid’s Tale, and more recently, Lucia Mazur on Season 4 of The Expanse. With a background in theatre, Rosa graduated with an MFA from NYU Graduate Acting and performed in Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Taming of the Shrew at NYC’s Public Theater, alongside Janet McTeer and Cush Jumbo. She loves cats, of course, all things pickled, and spends a great deal of time taking photos of the vibrant people around her. Most of all, she believes art, and more specifically theatre, actually can change the world and broaden our idea of what it means to be human. 

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Caroline Grogan

Caroline Grogan is just a midwestern girl who likes old-timey music, baking pies, and sending snail mail. She is a New York-based actor and teaching artist, with recent theatre credits such as: Bedlam’s The Crucible (Boston & NY) and Mona Mansour’s Beginning Days of True Jubilation directed by Scott Illingworth. Caroline is also a puppeteer for Puppetsburg, the Development Director and teaching artist for the arts nonprofit Zara Aina. Zara Aina is a New York-based nonprofit organization focused on helping at-risk children harness the transformative power of theatrical storytelling and performance. Caroline is a clown who loves kids! In addition to her work with SOCIETY, Caroline is social media manager & development associate for Bedlam Theatre Company. Caroline is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.  

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Scott Illingworth

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Scott Illingworth is a director, academic, and political theatre maker. His directing work focuses on new play development and includes productions seen across the United States and on four continents. His teaching and research explores actor training tools that link observation and physical theatre methods with modern brain science. Curious? Check out his book, Exercises for Embodied Actors: Tools for Physical Actioning. He is currently an Associate Arts Professor in the Graduate Acting Program at NYU|TISCH School of the Arts. Scott is a proud union member of SDC, a Certified Feldenkrais Teacher, and a Fulbright grant recipient.

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Victoria Detres

Victoria Detres is a Puerto Rican and Albanian artist from New York. At a striking 5’2’’, she is a fierce producer dedicated to elevating voices of the global majority and building community across the industry. Victoria has worked for various theaters and companies including The Play Company, Tectonic Theater Project and New York Theatre Workshop. When she’s not producing theater, you can find her sending audio messages to her friends, lifting weights, or planning an elaborate themed party.

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Keren Lugo

Keren is beyond proud to have been born and raised in Puerto Rico.

New York: Privacy (The Public Theater), Actually, We’re F**ked (Cherry Lane Theatre), Two Mile Hollow (Women’s Project), Sehnsucht (JACK). Regional: Girls (Yale Repertory Theatre), Water by The Spoonful (Mark Taper Forum), Men on Boats (Baltimore Center Stage), Scenes From Court Life (Yale Repertory Theater), Women of Padilla (Two River Theater), Henry V, Our Town (Chautauqua Theater Festival). TV: New Amsterdam (NBC), Orange is the New Black (Netflix), The Americans (FX). Education: MFA, NYU Graduate Acting. 

Upcoming: Cymbeline (The Public Theater’s Mobile Unit), At the Wedding (LCT3).

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Mona Mansour

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Mona is a thrillingly proud co-founder of SOCIETY. The Vagrant Trilogy was set to make its NYC debut in March 2020 at the Public Theater, directed by Mark Wing-Davey; the production was postponed due to COVID-19, and will resume at a future date.  The Trilogy was presented at D.C.’s Mosaic Theater in June 2018 (d. Wing-Davey). Of the Trilogy: The Hour of Feeling (d. Wing-Davey) premiered at the Humana Festival; an Arabic translation was presented at NYU Abu Dhabi as part of Arab Voices Festival in 2016. Urge for Going, productions at Public Theater (dir. Hal Brooks) and Golden Thread (dir. Evren Odcikin). The Vagrant was commissioned by the Public and workshopped at the 2013 Sundance Theater Institute. We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War debuted at Golden Thread in 2018 (dir. Odcikin; a spring 2021 production for Geva Theater, directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh, was canceled due to COVID-19. The Way West: Labyrinth (d. Mimi O’Donnell); Steppenwolf (d. Amy Morton); and Marin Theatre Company (d. Hayley Finn) Across the Water, written for third-year MFAs at NYU (d. Scott Illingworth); Dressing (with Tala Manassah), commissioned by the New Black Festival, for Facing Our Truths: Short Plays About Trayvon, Race, and Privilege. Mona was a member of the Public Theater’s EWG and is New Dramatists class of 2021. Awards: 2020 Kesselring; 2020 Helen Merrill; 2012 Whiting; 2014 Middle East America Playwright; MacDowell Colony 2018.  Mona wrote for an Apple TV show and is working with the newly launched FlipNarrative on its project The Valley. She can easily get obsessed with just about anything, and past time-sucks have included: heiress/kidnap victim Patricia Hearst, Sykes-Picot, and the 1969 Miracle Mets.

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Kario Marcel

Kario loves summer, biking through the city, hiking with his dog, meeting people and telling stories. Originally from Aruba, Kario is passionate about multi-generational, multi-cultural voices, stories, and platforms. 

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Simone Recasner

Simone is a proud alum of NYU Graduate Acting. A born-and-raised Californian, Simone’s favorite tree in the world is a California Oak. That’s important. When she’s not perfecting her “sourdough” starter slash loaf (that’s being generous, flat bread with a beer kick at the end is more like it.) Simone can be found reading five books at one time and finishing absolutely none… she’s working on it. On the career side, Simone stars in the forthcoming FOX TV series The Big Leap. You may have also caught her in Ain’t No Mo’ at The Public Theater. Simone, above all things, believes in the power of a lucky penny. Look down, look up, be here, grab your luck! 

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Alex Templer

Alex Templer is absolutely an actor millennial social media whatever grumble grumble. Favorite credits include Netflix’s When They See Us (dir. by Ava Duvernay,) Lempicka (dir. by Rachel Chavkin,) and Cymbeline (dir. by Davis McCallum.) MFA: NYU Graduate Acting. BA in Nerdscience (Neuroscience) at Georgetown University.

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Shayvawn Webster

Shayvawn Webster is a minister of Earthseed, a Dorothy Dandrige devotee, and RPG obsessed (currently playing: Cyberpunk 2077). As an actor, Shayvawn was last seen as Jr. Detective Dani Vertiz in NBC’s reboot of Law & Order. Upcoming and past screen credits include: Happiness For Beginners (Netflix debut spring 2023), Flying Lessons (Indie Feature), F.B.I. (CBS), and Devs (Hulu). Shayvawn’s stage credits include Zawe Ashton’s For All the Women Who Thought They Were Mad at Soho Rep, Beginning Days of True Jubilation by Mona Mansour and The Strangers Came Today at the New Ohio with SOCIETY. She also previously co-starred in the world premiere production of The Gods of Comedy at The McCarter Theatre Center and The Old Globe. Shayvawn is a proud alumnus of NYU’s Graduate Acting Program.
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Shpend Xani

Shpend Xani is a classically trained Albanian-American actor based in NYC. Born and raised in Kosovo, he left his native country in 1999 following the war and brought with him a vibrant talent and unique skill set, including a degree in Acting (from the University of Prishtina), his career as a professional basketball player in Germany, proficiency in four languages and his grandma’s sense of humor.

On stage, Shpend has performed in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra at Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, King John at Folger Theatre, Coriolanus, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare Theatre-ACA, in the Olney Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, and Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information at Forum Theatre. Shpend also performed in the world premiere of Mona Mansour’s The Vagrant Trilogy at Mosaic Theater Company. He has appeared in the NBC TV show The Blacklist as well as other independent features and short films.

He holds a BFA in Acting from Millikin University in Illinois and an MFA in Classical Acting from Shakespeare Theatre’s Academy for Classical Acting at GWU in DC.

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Emily Zemba

Emily Zemba is a playwright, Mary Tyler Moore Show enthusiast, and occasional producer. Some of her plays include Deer and the Lovers (First Floor Theater), Clockwork (Local Lab), Have You Been There, and I’m Sorry I Brought Up God. Her work has been presented both on and off music stands at places like Williamstown Theater Festival, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, Ars Nova, Dixon Place, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater… and also at places not like them at all. She is a commissioned playwright with Theater Masters, a member of Two River Theater’s 2020/21 Emerging Writers group, an affiliated writer with the Playwrights Center, and a New Georges affiliated artist. Emily has taught playwriting with The Strasberg Institute, MCC Youth Company, Theater Masters, Wesleyan University, and more. She holds an MFA from Yale School of Drama. Check out her upcoming production with the playwright-led collective The Pool.

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Drew Florida

Drew is a proud native of Flint, Michigan. His career began in 1998 with the award-winning Earl the Vampire at Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Since then, he has designed lighting for over 300 projects that range from theater and dance to corporate events and fashion shows.
 
His work has been seen across the United States, Canada, China and Scotland, as well as many NYC theaters including The Public Theater, La Mama, The Duke on 42nd St, Theater Row, and Ailey Citigroup Theater.
 
Notable theater productions include Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice at Syracuse Stage (SALT Award for Best Lighting Design), Aaron Posner’s Life Sucks, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s Happy Birthday, Wanda June (Wheelhouse Theater Company), Nathan Wright’s Manifesto: The Diaghilev Project (In Absentia Productions), and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (New York Shakespeare Exchange).
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Joshua David Robinson

Joshua David Robinson is a storyteller. As an actor, Joshua has appeared off and on Broadway and in regional theaters across the country, as well as working extensively as a voiceover artist. As an educator, he has worked at colleges and universities across the country, teaching voice, speech and theatrical devising to BFA and MFA students from from Arizona to New York. Holding an MFA from NYU Graduate Acting, Joshua is always working to use the art of storytelling, theatre in particular, as a means to engage with his community and as a vehicle for social change. The stories we tell become our reality. Love, light, health and happiness to all.

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Dela MeskiEnYar

Dela Meskienyar is a theater and film storyteller.  A lover of RnB and all things bread. Her hobbies include overpaying for takeout, British reality TV and half-assed cardio. Dela has a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and received her master’s from NYU for acting.

Since graduating she has appeared in Law and Order: SVU and the feature film  Funny Face. Some of her Theater credits include Beginning Days of True Jubilation (New Ohio Theater) and Joe Turner’s Come And Gone (Huntington Theater). 

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Stephanie Jean Lane

Stephanie Jean Lane is a performer, writer, and director.  She grew up dancing and never quite stopped – most recently finding herself in the company of extraordinary dancers at Punchdrunk’s long-running Sleep No More, alternating the roles of Hecate and Agnes.  Her original work for stage and film includes Lighthouse Triptych, a dance-theater adaptation of “To the Lighthouse,” Sweat Spot 101 with Diana Ramirez, about a small-town aerobics class, and Fort Trumbull, an award-winning short film starring her dad, Colin Lane, as well as several collaborative projects produced in NYC, L.A., Shanghai, and Edinburgh.  Some favorite acting credits have been at Elm Shakespeare, The Guthrie Theater, and Berkshire Theater Group, workshops at Lincoln Center and The Public Theater, and on film and TV – Law & Order, Elementary, and the short film Enloquecer.  BA: Barnard College; MFA: NYU Grad Acting.

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Tim Nicolai

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Tim Nicolai is an actor, writer, and producer from southeast Missouri. He bounced around regional theaters like Milwaukee Rep and the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey before landing in NYC, where he attended NYU’s Graduate Acting program. Since then, he’s worked on Broadway (The Glass Menagerie), at The Public Theater (Plenty, Othello, Cymbeline) and Shakespeare Theatre Company (Hamlet), for CBS, FOX, HBO, TBS and Amazon. He plays D&D as often as possible, and derives an alarming amount of enjoyment from tediously organizing incredible messes. He particularly enjoys the challenge of impossible tasks, which is probably why he thought founding a theatre company was a good idea.