Rafael Benoit, Sarah Eismann, Eddie Jackson, Wei-Yi Lin, Natalia Miranda-Guzmán, Jensen Olaya, Marine Sialelli & Blaze Mancillas 

Director: Simón Adinia Hanukai is a director, performer and educator. He has been teaching theater in middle and high schools as well as community colleges and universities since 2000. He has recently relocated to New York City from Oakland, California, where he was a founding member of headRush Crew and the Co-Artistic Director of the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company. Working with both companies for six years he was instrumental in creating original full-length dance theater pieces, which toured nationally and were seen by over 25,000 people per year. He has also written, performed and directed productions with Rainbow Theater & JUICE, Santa Cruz, California-based performance collectives, and co-founded the Naked Souls Artists Alliance, an artist collaborative that in its five years brought together over 250 Bay Area visual, performance and literary artists to share their work with the community. Simón has a Masters degree in Education from the University of San Francisco’s Center for Teaching Excellence and Social Justice and is currently attending the MFA program in Theater Directing at Columbia University. 

Playwright: Naïma Kristel Phillips is an M.F.A. playwriting student at Columbia University. Born and raised in Montreal, Canada, she studied ballet with Helena Voronova, sang with the F.A.C.E. Treble Choir under Iwan Edwards and trained at the Centre international des arts de la scène. She then studied for two years at the Pantheatre ACTS Voice Performance School (Paris, France). Naïma performed in several productions including Black Knickers (Myth and Theatre Festival), subUrbia (Persephone Productions) and My Fair Lady (Champlain College). Her play Night Spell was given a main-stage production at Nextfest (Edmonton, Alberta). She has been commissioned to write a play for the Black Theatre Workshop (Montreal, Quebec). Naïma is a recipient of the 2010 Gloria Mitchell-Aleong Award and the 2009-2010 Shubert Presidential Fellowship.  

Dramaturg: Jessica Kaplow Applebaum has worked as Production Dramaturg for One Year Lease since 2001. Particular projects she is proud of are Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (Teatro Circulo, NYC 2008); Ariel Dorfman's Resistance Trilogy: Death and the Maiden (Athens, Greece 2007), Widows (Monodendri, Greece 2007) and Reader (NYC Fringe 2007); Phaedra x3, which included Ted Hughes Phedre, Mathew Maguire's Phaedra and Sarah Kane's Phaedra’s Love (Cherry Lane, NYC 2005); and Oresteia an adaptation of Aeschylus' trilogy (Athens, Greece/Milan, Italy/Theater for the New City, NYC 2001). Other credits include artistic advisor for the Debate Society's A Thought About Raya, performed at CSV (New York) and dramaturg for Bradford Louryk's Klytemnestra's Unmentionables, performed at HERE (New York). While earning her Masters in Performance Studies at NYU (2004) Jessica served as editorial assistant to TDR: The Drama Review. A contributing scholar for Columbia University Press' Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, Jessica has also written articles for the upcoming book Performance Studies: The Key Concepts published by Routledge. Wanting to further her skills and understanding of her craft, Jessica is now completing her MFA in Dramaturgy at Columbia University.

Playwright: Danny Mitarotondo is a playwright, director and the Artistic Director/Co-Founder of The Common Tongue (www.tctnyc.org), an international production company of 22 performers based in New York. Danny's plays WE CARRY ON, SEA, and AMERICAN BREAKFAST premiered at the Manhattan Repertory Theater, TheaterLab, the American Theater of Actors, the Kraine, and the Gene Frankel Theater, all of which he acted in as well. As a director, he has worked with John Shea, Angelica Torn, members of The Actors Studio, LAByrinth and was nominated as Best Director 2009 at the Strawberry One-Acts Festival for his play SEA. For the past three years Danny has collaborated with playwright Edward Albee as director on Albee's ALL OVER, incarnations of which have appeared at the Geraldine Page Salon for the Arts, TheaterLab, and most recently the Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater starring Marian Seldes and Kathleen Butler. Danny holds a BA from NYU's Gallatin School, has trained and developed work at the Royal Shakespeare Company, is a graduate of the Atlantic Theater Company's Professional Conservatory, is the youngest Assistant Teacher of Catherine Fitzmaurice’s Voice Work ® world-wide, is an MFA Playwriting Candidate at Columbia University, and is the recent recipient of an Edward F. Albee Writing Fellowship.

Director: Shannon Fillion is a New York based director/producer whose work includes Homeward Bound and Maggie Misplaced (Green Light Productions), Time Et. Al. (Fringe NYC), The High Cost of Living (Prospect Theater's Dark Nights Series), Better This Way (Fringe NYC), Yehuda Duenyas's One Million Forgotten Moments, The Turtle Tattoo (MITF), Monkey Study (6B Garden), and Hamlet (Austin Arts Center). Shannon studied with director Brigid Panet at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, with Tina Packer at Shakespeare & Company, and is a graduate of both Trinity College and the Trinity/LaMama program. She is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and has worked on staff at New York Theatre Workshop since 2006. She is currently studying for her MFA in Theatre Direction with Anne Bogart and Brian Kulick at Columbia University.

Lighting Designer: David Bengali designs lighting, video projections, and sets, for theater, dance, and opera. He is a resident designer for the Stolen Chair Theatre Company and has designed for Royal Family ("Safe Home," "Nobody Suspects a Butterfly"), Opera New Jersey, Intravenous Theater, Ignited States ("To Barcelona"), Propel-Her Dance, Jamal Jackson Dance Company, The Process Group, Puleio Dance, Re:Directions Theater Company, Studio 6 of Moscow Art Theater, and others, as well as internationally for Battery Dance Company.  He is an MFA lighting design student at NYU-Tisch.

Dramaturg: Ellen Joffred received her B.A. in French and Theater from Dickinson College, spent her junior year studying abroad in Toulouse, France, and is currently a second year MFA Dramaturgy student at Columbia. She is thrilled to continue collaborating with the wonderful Sparrow team.

Dramaturg: Jay Jaski is a member of the Literary Managers & Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) and specializes in the development of new works for the American Musical Theatre. He has worked with the Richard Rodgers Award, Tony Award-winning director and lyricist, Richard Maltby, Jr., and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. More than 60,000 Chicagoans attended Jay’s recent Sondheim, Bernstein, and Gershwin concerts in Millennium Park, where Jay directed such Tony-winning and -nominated actors as Judy Kaye, Brian d'Arcy James, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Marin Mazzie. Producing work includes Broadway’s CHILDREN AND ART, SONDHEIM IN THE PARK (Chicago), and TAKE FLIGHT, the new Maltby/Shire/Weidman musical that debuted at the Menier Chocolate Factory and recently played the McCarter Theatre. Jay has worked with producers Gerald Schoenfeld, James Freydberg, Ira Pittelman, Joey Parnes, and Trinity Repertory. As an actor, Jay made his Broadway debut in 2005 and works regularly in the development of new musicals, including Broadway's 9 TO 5, Yeston's DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY, and EVER AFTER, by Goldrich & Heisler. Off-Broadway: Roundabout, Public Theater, Georgia Shakespeare Festival. Additionally, Jay has had the pleasure of working with Stephen Sondheim, Joe Mantello, Doug Hughes, Theresa Rebeck, Tom Meehan, Gary Griffin, and Graciela Daniele. Jay holds a degree in Music Performance from Florida State University and is an MFA Candidate at Columbia University (MFA in Dramaturgy and Script Development).