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Love's Labour's Lost - Cast Biographies
In alphabetical order
Allan Armstrong (Holofernes)
SSC: Debut
Since moving to Seattle from Northern California two years ago, Allan has had the good fortune to play roles with several companies, including Wooden O Theatre, SecondStory Repertory, Theater Schmeater and Capitol Hill Arts Center. In California, he worked with Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the California Shakespeare Festival. Allan earned a degree in engineering from Harvey Mudd College, and has a fondness for black and white film photography. He is honored and happy to be making his first appearance with Seattle Shakespeare Company.
Todd Bjurstrom (Dumaine)
Todd is very pleased to make his debut with the Seattle Shakespeare Company. His Cornish College of the Arts credits include: Falstaff in The Merry Wives Of Windsor, Fluellen in Henry V and Frank in Fen by Caryl Churchill. Todd played Tom in Theater Schmeater’s production of The Time of Your Life, directed by Rita Giomi. Also an aspiring director and playwright, Todd will be graduating from Cornish College of the Arts this spring.
Michael Black* (Berowne)
SSC: Debut
Michael is thrilled to make his Seattle Shakespeare Company debut with Love’s Labour’s Lost. He was last seen as Gray/Walter in the workshop production of Singing Forest at ACT Theatre and played Myron in the world premiere of Sideways Stories From Wayside School at Seattle Children’s Theatre. Other favorite parts include David in Taking Sides (Spokane Interplayers) Moritz in Spring’s Awakening (Borderlands Theater), the Writer in Vieux Carre (Krying Sky). He also loved playing Adonis to Suzanne Bouchard’s Venus in Dan Kremer’s The Chase, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis.
Dale Bowers (Sir Nathaniel)
SSC: Debut
Dale is a 35 year veteran of the stage. He holds a Master’s Degree in Theatre Arts from Washington State University. He has taught Speech and Oral Interpretation at the college level. Dale most recently appeared in the Second Story Repertory’s production of Arsenic and Old Lace. Some of his favorite roles include Scrooge in Scrooge: The Musical, Pappy Yokum in Li’l Abner, Mayor Shinn in The Music Man, and Gremio in The Taming of the Shrew.
Scott Coopwood* (Armado)
Scott recently played the villain Edmund in King Lear for Portland Center Stage and prior to that Bill in Lobby Hero at Artists Repertory Theatre. More of Scott’s work with Portland Center Stage includes Shylock in last seasons controversial and provoking Merchant Of Venice, the title role in Hamlet, Orlando in As You Like It, Marley in A Christmas Carol, Trigorin in The Seagull, and Straker in Man and Superman. Other regional favorites include the title role in Macbeth; Benedick, Don John, and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing; Angelo in Measure for Measure; and Terry Meighan in the professional world premier of Tennessee Williams’ Fugitive Kind. Scott is also very proud to work in Portland with The Haven Project, a program using the theatre arts to reach at-risk youth.
Alban Dennis* (King Ferdinand)
SSC: Twelfth Night (Malvolio)
Alban Dennis is very pleased to return to the Seattle Shakespeare Company with this production. Locally, Alban has also performed at Seattle Repertory Theatre, Intiman Theatre, ACT Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Village Theatre and the old Bathhouse Theatre. Regionally, he has performed at The Kennedy Center, Huntington Theatre, Arden Theatre among others. Alban is a graduate of the University of Washington’s Professional Actor Training Program under the direction of Jack Clay.
Rachael Ferguson (Katherine)
SSC: Debut
Rachael is a recent graduate from Cornish College of the Arts where she was last seen in E/R directed by Kathryn Mesny. She also participated in the First Annual Black Science Fiction Festival this past summer.
Ray Gonzales (Boyet)
SSC: Measure for Measure (Provost), Twelfth Night (Orsino), Much Ado About Nothing (Borachio), A Midsummer’s Night Dream (Moonshine), Richard III (Catesby), Romeo and Juliet (tour)
Ray is happy to be back at Seattle Shakespeare Company for his seventh show. He is a graduate of Cornish College of hte Arts (97). Other Seattle credits include Double Indemnity, Sunset Thursday, Hard Times and Waxwings with Book-It, Romeo and Juliet, All’s Well That Ends Well and Taming of the Shrew with Wooden O Theatre, Don Juan and Time of Your Life with Seattle Rep, and Map of the World and Death and the Maiden for Bridge’s International among others. Ray and his beautiful partner Kellini Walter are the proud parents of Shelby and Ruby-Rose.
Garth Ink (Costard)
SSC: debut
Garth recently played the title character in Macbeth for the Western Washington Shakespeare Festival. Other favorite Shakespearean roles include Capulet from Romeo and Juliet for the Seattle Public Theatre, Banquo from Macbeth for GreenStage, Tybalt from Romeo and Juliet, Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Caliban from The Tempest for Island Stage Left. Post-Elizabethean favorites include The Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon in Night of the Iguana (GreenStage) and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (Everett Historic Theatre). His sole film credit is the Seattle cult classic Mulletville.
Hana Lass (Rosaline)
SSC: Midsummer Night’s Dream - 2004 (Puck)
Hana trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York and has a B.A. in Drama from the University of Washington. Most recently she performed the role of Liza in an original adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground, the latest in a long history of collaborations with Defibrillator Productions. Other favorite Seattle credits include Ophelia in White Raven Production’s Hamlet, Lorraine in GreenStage’s The Man Who Came to Dinner, and Puck in Seattle Shakespeare Company’s most recent Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Arne Zaslove.
Kelly Mak (Maria)
>SSC: Debut
Kelly was last seen as Woman in Balcony at Intiman Theatre’s Our Town. She graduated recently from the University of Washington with a B.A. in Drama and B.S. in Biology. Her UW credits include Sue in Beginnings, Professor/Lesbian in A Thousand Ifs, Betty in The Witlings, Mary in A Fairytale Kind of Ending, Lady Montague in Romeo and Juliet, and Lavinia Penniman in The Heiress.
Beethovan Oden (Longaville)
SSC: Top Ten (Education touring show), Measure for Measure (Lucio), Taming of the Shrew - 2003 (Bianca)
Beethovan is happy to be returning to Seattle Shakespeare Company. This will mark his third production with the company. He’s worked locally with Seattle Children’s theatre (Holes) the Seattle Rep (Anna In the Tropics), Wooden O (Henry V, Julius Ceasar), Book-it All Over (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Pink and Say), and Theatre Schmeater (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). Next on his plate is resuming the role of Bianca in the all male Taming of the Shrew.
Venessa Lynn Ortega (Jaquenetta)
SSC: Debut
Venessa is delighted to make her Seattle Shakespeare Company debut in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Some of her favorite roles include Mrs. Martin in The Bald Soprano, Martirio in The House of Bernarda Alba, and Bardolph in The Merry Wives of Windsor. She will be receiving her BFA in Theater from Cornish College of the Arts this spring.
Max Piscioneri (Moth)
SSC: Debut
Max got hit in the mouth by a baseball 5 minutes into his first practice when he was nine. Deciding this sport was not for him, and at the encouragement of his teacher, he tried out for a local community theater production. A love for acting was born! Now twelve, his credits include stage and film productions in Washington, New York and Los Angeles. His most recent performance was as Joe Crowell in the Intiman Theatre’s staging of Our Town. Max lives locally where he enjoys playing his ukulele and mandolin, fencing, and making his own digital movies with friends.
David Rollison (Constable Dull)
SSC: Debut
David is pleased to be appearing in his first Seattle Shakespeare Company production. Most recently he has been seen in Cornish College of the Arts’ The Merry Wives of Windsor as Sir Hugh Evans and The Cripple of Inishmaan as Bartley. He is currently in his final semester at Cornish and will be graduating in May of 2005.
Stephanie Shine* (Princess of France, Artistic Director)
SSC: Artistic Director; As You Like It, Measure for Measure, The Taming of the Shrew, Richard II, Wild Oats, Hamlet, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV, pt.1 (Director); King Lear (Regan), Twelfth Night (Feste), Lovers and Madmen (Woman), Richard II (Queen Isabel), Much Ado About Nothing (Beatrice), Richard III (Lady Anne), As You Like It (Rosalind), The Taming of the Shrew (Kate)
This marks Stephanie’s seventh season as the Artistic Director for Seattle Shakespeare Company. Her association with the company began in 1993 when she developed a summer program for kids now known as Camp Bill. She is a graduate of the University of Washington’s Professional Actor Training Program and has worked at most of the theatres in Seattle as well as several regional theatres including Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland Center Stage, The Alley in Houston, New Jersey Shakespeare, Idaho Rep, New Mexico Rep, and Arizona Theatre Company. She has adapted literature for the stage as a longtime company member of Book-It, where her work was most recently seen as adapter and director of A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote. In 2001, she was a guest artist and teacher at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Stephanie also directed The Comedy of Errors for Colorado Shakespeare Festival this past summer. She is the proud mother of Conor and Cally.
Jeffrey Willey (Forester/Mercade)
SSC: Debut
Jeffrey is anxiously awaiting graduation from the acting program at Cornish College of the Arts in the spring of 2005. He recently appeared in a double bill of absurdist comedies as Mr. Martin in The Bald Soprano and the Young Man in The American Dream. Jeffrey also appeared in the school’s productions of The Merry Wives of Windsor as Mistress Ford and Chorus and Montjoy in Henry V.
*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.