Click here or on the image above to view a pdf of the Red Ash Mosaic program.

Biographies

MOLLY ANDREWS-HINDERS (Stage Manager/Performer) (see season program for full bio) is a performer, songwriter, educator, and activist. Most recently, Molly created Emergence, a musical piece featured in Cleveland Public Theatre’s 2018 Entry Point festival. She also created Stand Up: Songs of Resistance which appeared in Station Hope 2017 and A Midnight Call to the Sun for CPT’s Light the Lights, Ol’ Moses CLE! (A Wild Holiday Romp). Other original work includes In Between [Air Waves (Part Three of the Elements Cycle)] and Soliciting for Change [Big Box 2011]. Notable acting credits include 44 Plays For 44 Presidents, Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays, Rusted Heart Broadcast, and Akarui. She is a graduate of Wright State University’s PATP and holds a BFA in Acting.

RAYMOND BOBGAN (Producer/Director/Creator/Performer/Co-Sound Designer) (see season program for full bio) is the founding director of the Cleveland Core Ensemble and is dedicating a majority of his creative work to this group. He has devised over 30 full-length works for the stage with professional performers, students, and community groups, and countless shorter works and workshop productions. In 1993, Raymond founded Theatre Labyrinth (later becoming Wishhounds) which was housed at Pilgrim Church in Tremont and was a resident company at CPT. Their last creation was Blue Sky Transmission: A Tibetan Book of the Dead which was co-produced by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company (Off-Broadway) and CPT. Currently, he is envisioning a number of new works including The Mask of Flight, a collage of short pieces springing from various works created for Station Hope and Pandemonium; Ceremony and Spectacle, a two evening event loosely based on Cleveland Core Ensemble’s founding piece, Rusted Heart Broadcast; and Invitational #, an interactive experiment.

FAYE HARGATE (Creator/Performer) (see season program for full bio) is a lead Cleveland Public Theatre artist and a founding member of the Cleveland Core Ensemble. She has been collaborating creatively with Raymond Bobgan for over a decade. Notable created works include Feefer Rising, Fire on the Water (Part Four of the Elements Cycle), She’s Wearing White…, Air Waves (Part Three of the Elements Cycle), and Rusted Heart Broadcast. Faye is also a director and installation artist, and in January, she presented a workshop piece, When the She’ll Broke, for CPT’s Entry Point festival of new work.

HOLLY HOLSINGER (Creator/Performer/Co-Costume Designer) has been a Cleveland Public Theatre artist for over twenty years. Recently, Holly appeared at Cleveland Public Theatre in her solo work, Frankenstein’s Wake, which she co-created with Raymond Bobgan. Other original works include Ancestra and Insomnia: The Waking of Herselves, co-devised and performed at CPT. Holly is an Associate Professor at Cleveland State University, specializing in acting, voice, and movement. She recently received a Distinguished Faculty Award, the University’s top honor for teaching. Holsinger’s work has been featured in Canadian Theatre Review, Theatre Journal, and in Lisa Wolford’s book Grotowski’s Objective Drama Research. She has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Romania, Belgium, and Brazil, and has shared her performance research with artists in Denmark, Colombia, Spain, and Ireland. Holsinger received an MFA in Acting from the University of California, Irvine where she studied with Robert Cohen and Jerzy Grotowski. Holly is a certified Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework and a 2016 Creative Workforce Fellow.

BENJAMIN GANTOSE (Lighting Designer) (see season program for full bio) is Resident Lighting Designer at Cleveland Public Theatre. Along with Red Ash Mosaic, Benjamin’s work has been seen in CPT’s productions of Br’er Cotton; How to End Poverty in 90 Minutes (with 119 people you may or may not know); Barbecue; UZ, El Pueblo; Incendiaries; Exact Change; Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea; in a word; Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays; and Fire on the Water (Part Four of the Elements Cycle). Outside CPT, Benjamin has recently designed productions for The Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati, Beck Center for the Arts, Theater Ninjas, Baldwin Wallace University, Verb Ballets, Lafayette Ballet Theatre, and The Cincinnati Ballet.

MAYA T JONES (Creator/Performer) is an actor, director, and writer, and has worked in many capacities on and off the stage. She most recently appeared in Mother Eve’s Burden, a devised work-in-progress by Darius Stubbs, as part of CPT’s Entry Point 2018. Earlier this season, she was in Ensemble Theatre’s production of Well by Lisa Kron. Maya also appeared in the Karamu House production of You Can’t Take It With You and in An Octoroon at Dobama Theatre. Other credits include Harbor at convergence-continuum, where she was recognized for her characterization of Lottie, and Objectively/Reasonable, which she stage managed and directed.

MAURA KRAUSE (Dramaturg) is the Artistic Director of Barrymore-award winning company Orbiter 3, Philadelphia’s first producing playwrights collective, in addition to being a new work director, dramaturg, and producer. She is a former National New Play Network Producer-in-Residence at InterAct Theatre Company, and an Associated Artist with Applied Mechanics. Maura has also worked with the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, EMP Collective, PlayPenn, The Renegade Company, Arcadia University, Philadelphia Young Playwrights, and Tiny Dynamite, among others. Favorite projects include Lost in the Meadow (PearlDamour), Red Ash Mosaic (Cleveland Public Theatre), Breathe Smoke by Douglas Williams (Orbiter 3), flesh flesh flesh: A Ghost Play by Lena Barnard (self-produced), and Tilda Swinton Adopt Me Please (The Greenfield Collective). Upcoming: This Is On Record (Applied Mechanics) and CANON (created with Douglas Williams).

IRENE MACK-SHAFER (Co-Costume Designer) is currently the Manager of Costume Design at The University of Akron where she supervises a staff of professional costumers along with students in creating costumes for dance, theatre, musical theatre, and opera. Irene has been involved as designer, draper, or stitcher at CPT, Ohio Light Opera, Akron All City Musical, and various individual productions and theatres for the last 20 years. A member of IATSE, Ms. Mack-Shafer holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from The University of Akron and a Master of Taxation Degree also from The University of Akron.

SARAH MOORE (Creator/Performer) (see season program for full bio) is one of Cleveland Public Theatre’s Education Associates and Brick City Theatre Lead Teaching Artist at Woodhill Homes. Recently, Sarah and her team directed a show created by the youth at Woodhill Homes in celebration of Black History Month. The creation of the show involved an intensive research process and creative exploration with the youth inspired by the lives and legacies of Maya Angelou, Gordon Parks, Mae C. Jemison, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Florence Mills, who were all African American leaders, innovators, and pioneers in their chosen field of study.

RYAN T. PATTERSON (Technical Director) (see season program for full bio) is the Technical Director of Cleveland Public Theatre and the touring production of Red Ash Mosaic. In its original conception, Red Ash Mosaic was performed in a custom-built arena with encapsulating 8-foot walls. Ryan has attempted to distill some of Raymond Bobgan’s original design elements into this tour-friendly version. Recently, Ryan was the Scenic Designer for American Dreams and Special Effects Designer for Br’er Cotton, and is preparing for Station Hope.

DEVIN POWELL (Master Electrician & Carpenter) graduated from Kent State University with a BFA in Lighting Design and just returned from working a year with Walt Disney Imagineering in Orlando, Florida.

MATTHEW RYALS (Composer [pre-recorded]/Co-Sound Designer/Kulas Theatre Composer Fellow) is an electronic musician based in New York City. This spring will see the release of his second album on Oxtail Recordings. Previous releases include his first full-length, We Could Make The Ride Better For Everyone, on Behind Glass and the EP, Weekend Sonata, on Low Hanging Fruit. Recent collaborative projects include his work with CSU’s Dance Department and The Movement Project, a contemporary dance company based in Cleveland. Additionally, his music was featured in The Fixers, a set of short-films that asked Cleveland residents what concerns they would share with the 2016 RNC delegates if they had the opportunity. The work was led by Kate Sopko and exhibited at SPACES and Smack Mellon in NYC. As an inaugural Kulas Theatre Composer Fellow at CPT for the 15/16 & 16/17 seasons, Matthew created music for the plays Feefer Rising and Red Ash Mosaic.

ADAM SEEHOLZER (Creator/Performer) (see season program for full bio) has performed in Theater Ninjas’ Woyzeck: A Proper Murder (Andres/Baby) and The Excavation; Cleveland Public Theatre’s The Other Shore (Young Man); Open Mind Firmament (Young Cuchulain); Earth Plays (Part Two of the Elements Cycle); Rusted Heart Broadcast; George in Air Waves (Part Three of the Elements Cycle); F*** Me, Love Me, Aphrodite (Chris Seibert’s 2014 Big Box); American Falls (Samuel); numerous Pandemonium events; and 2016 Fire Fish Festival’s Out at Sea (Thin). Most recently at CPT, he performed in the world premiere of Red Ash Mosaic as a member of the Cleveland Core Ensemble. He has trained with Cleveland’s Improv Institute (today’s Comedy Project Alliance), SITI (NYC), and Second City (CHI). He has a BA from Cleveland State University. Adam also works on staff at CPT as the Education Manager.

DARIUS STUBBS (Creator/Performer) (see season program for full bio) is a poet, playwright, performer, vocalist, educator, and transgender advocate who has been living and working in Cleveland since 2006. He is also a founding member of Cleveland Public Theatre’s Cleveland Core Ensemble working under the visionary guidance of Raymond Bobgan to question, nurture, and deepen his relationship to the craft of performance and storytelling. Selected acting credits include: Fissures of Men (Judas, Blank Canvas Theatre, ’17) Rusted Heart Broadcast (CatManDu, CPT ’13), Titus Andronicus (Aaron the Moor, Cleveland Shakespeare Festival ’10), Comedy of Errors (Sir Balthazar, Great Lakes Theatre ’09). Darius also created and directed an original piece “Mother Eve’s Burden” for Entry Point 2018.

ABOUT CLEVELAND CORE ENSEMBLE

In 2012, Executive Artistic Director Raymond Bobgan began working with a group of actors to create Rusted Heart Broadcast. The principles of this work were guided by Raymond’s extensive experience in ensemble theatre creation. Raymond formed a core group of actors to continue working together as an ensemble company, aligning with the Network of Ensemble Theaters (a national organization of which CPT is a member) which defines ensemble as “a group of individuals dedicated to collaborative creation, committed to working together consistently over years to develop a distinctive body of work and practices.”

As part of its growth, the group has claimed a name—Cleveland Core Ensemble—and is working on a multitude of projects. The ensemble is made up of Raymond Bobgan, Faye Hargate, Adam Seeholzer, and Darius Stubbs. On occasion, other actors will work inside the ensemble as guests and the ensemble members will continue to be a part of other theatrical projects, both independently and as a company. The purpose of the ensemble goes beyond the creation of new work, as it also influences the approach to theatre throughout the season, instills core values in the broader artistic work of CPT, contributes to CPT’s community work in events like Station Hope, and forms the pedagogical basis for our education programs.

Special Thanks

Raziel Bobgan; National New Play Network; the North American Association of Flying Effects Directors; William Auld (Aerial Consultant); Catapult, Mondo Bizarro, & ArtSpot Productions; A Host of People; and Available Light Theatre.

This production is supported in part by the Art Works program of the National Endowment for the Arts.

INSPIRED BY

• Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi, by Henry Corbin, translated by Ralph Manheim, Princeton University Press, (1969).
• The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry, edited and translated by Peter Lamborn Wilson and Nasrollah Pourjavady, Phanes Press, (1987).
• The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum, translated by E. A. Wallis Budge, Dover (1967, original 1895).
• The Gift: Poems by Hafiz The Great Sufi Master, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, Penguin (1999).
• Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-’Arabi and the Problem of Religious Divers, by William C. Chittick, State University of New York Press (1994).
• Meetings with Remarkable Men, by G. I. Gurdjieff, translated by A. R. Orage, E. P. Dutton (1963).
• Rebel in the Soul: An Ancient Egyptian Dialogue, translated by Bika Reed, Inner Traditions International (1978).

About the Tour

Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT) is proud to announce a limited tour of Red Ash Mosaic, created by Raymond Bobgan and Cleveland Core Ensemble. The Cleveland Core Ensemble and collaborators will tour this spring to the following partner organizations and theatres: Catapult, Mondo Bizarro, & ArtSpot Productions (New Orleans), A Host of People (Detroit), and Available Light Theatre (Columbus). For more information about the tour of Red Ash Mosaic, click here.

Sponsors