This Season’s Leap/Conceive line-up is:

Us, Them, and The Meat Market

Conceived by Lauren Fraley
Created with Christopher Hisey
Laden with guilt from a culture-wide tragedy, a broken community searches for new identity. Their individual inquiries through spices, herbs, and broken VCRs lead them to a collision at a neighborhood meat market- a place raw and unregulated, but a powerful source of truth.

Lauren Fraley has been seen on the following CPT projects: Earth Plays (ensemble), The Secret Social in collaboration with Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant (Etude), a Big Box production of Free Radical and The Late Night Sketchbook (Marina/ensemble), and at Pandemonium in The Reverie Oracle and the outdoor installation, Cultivated, which she co-created. She has worked as an actor-educator with CLIMB Theatre, a teaching artist at Karamu House and Children’s Theatre of Charlotte (NC), and currently at PlayhouseSquare. She has trained at LaMama Umbria in Spoleto, Italy and NaCl Theatre. She will next be performing with Theater Ninjas in Black Cat Lost, presented in various locations in Northeast Ohio.

Left in Ink

Conceived and Directed by Caitlin Lewins
A devised documentary performance about people who have memorial tattoos for suicide victims. Created from interviews, photographs, and online posts, this play tells intimate stories of confrontation, remembrance, and loving honor. Lewins brings authenticity, sensitivity, a quirky sense of humor, and passionate storytelling to this deep exploration of an entire subculture.

Caitlin Lewins is currently one of the 2013-2014 Joan Yellen Horvitz Director Fellows, as well as the Story Connecter at Cleveland Public Theatre. Ms. Lewins studied Theatre, Philosophy, and Music at Baldwin-Wallace College and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2010. In the fall of 2012, she completed the devised directing class at CPT and made her writing/directing debut with “The Environmented” in Earth Plays (Part Two of the Elements Cycle). Ms. Lewins interned in the Education Department and Artistic Department at Cleveland Play House, as well as the Education Department at Great Lakes Theater. Ms. Lewins was previously a Grant Program Coordinator at the YMCA and organized and ran a grant funded after school program at Brooklyn Middle School that served 70 students. She’s also taught theatre, music, and visual arts at several camps including Shaker Summer Theatre, SmArt in the City and Camp Mendocino, a Boys and Girls Club Camp in Northern California.

Jacob’s Ladder Surface

Written by Deborah Magid
Directed by Brian Pedaci
Just like Shakespeare’s OTHELLO, it’s all about Recognition. Recognition of a PhD candidate’s accomplishments versus her advisor’s sense of entitlement. Recognition of how a 2D surface folds, knots, and layers into the multidimensional world. Recognition that what you feel you deserve isn’t always what you get.

Playwright/composer and lyricist since 2008, Deborah Magid is also a director, actor, singer, tech writer-editor, journalist, blogger, and all-round energetic type. She is attached to five Cleveland theaters including the Cleveland Play House’s Playwrights’ Unit, is a member of Dramatists’ Guild, and serves on the Board of the International Centre for Women Playwrights. Deborah’s works are not genre-identifiable as they include drama, comedy, SciFi, short, long, straight, musical, rock opera, and RICHARD WAGNER’S ENTIRE RING CYCLE IN 10 MINUTES’ a one-woman play that she performs with sock puppets.

Free Radical and The Late Night Sketchbook Part 1 & 3

Conceived and Directed by Pandora Robertson
The ensemble uses dialogue and movement to consider confession. How does confession affect our sense of self identity, and indeed our perception of reality? What is the boundary between what we think is the truth and what we want the truth to be? What might happen if the world passes you by and your sense of what actually happened to you is lost?

Pandora Robertson is a 2011-2012 Cleveland Public Theatre Joan Yellen Horvitz Director Fellow. CPT credits include Free Radical and The Late Night Sketchbook: Part Two The Wedding (Big Box 2013)(Director-Creator), Meantime Anthropocene (Earth Plays) (Director-Creator), 13 Most American Dreams (Director-Creator), Crash Project (At-TEN-tion Span) (Director-Creator), Voice Over (Big Box 2011) (Director-Creator), and Wanderlust: A History of Walking (actor). Local credits include The Two Gentlemen of Verona– Cleveland Shakespeare Festival (Director), Shorn – Dobama Theatre (Director). She has choreographed at The Cleveland Playhouse for A Carol for Cleveland, Galileo, The Glass Menagerie, The Emperor’s Groovy New Clothes and Ferdinand the Bull, and at Great Lakes Theater for You Can’t Take It With You and 18 seasons of A Christmas Carol. Upcoming projects include [sic]– Theater Ninjas (Director), The Woman and the Scarecrow– Mamai Theatre (Director), and Free Radical and The Late Night Sketchbook (Director-Creator)- Ohio City Theatre Project.

Voices of the Holodomor: Oral Histories of the Ukrainian Genocide

Conceived by Ellen Rooney
Voices of the Holodomor: Oral Histories of the Ukrainian Genocide, written and directed by Ellen Rooney, PhD, is based on the US Government’s Oral History Project on the Ukraine Famine of 1933. Dramatization of the Oral Histories re-creates the setting of the testimonies, breaking the silence of the forgotten genocide of 20th century.

Ellen Rooney, PhD — Currently, serves on the Ohio Arts Council’s Project Support Committee. Teaches Memory Acting, Emotion Scales, American Method, Viewpoints, Rasaboxes and Theater Instructor at Montessori High School at University Circle. Playwright: Dorothy Fuldheim Live, Raid at Bridgman, The Battle of Frogs and Mice (Winner Mimi Fest Competition, Acadia Theatre, Canada, 2009) Cafe Renoir, Argolis, In the House of Atreus. Directed and/or choreographed at Near West, Berea Grindstone Players, Geauga Lyric Theater and others. In New York produced Ellen Rooney Dance Theater at East 4th St. People’s Playhouse. LA credits include Theater West, Universal Studios, Fox Studios, and Magar Pictures. Earned MFA Dance & MA Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University and recently, PhD Theater from Bowling Green State University.

Feefer’s Primer

Conceived and Directed by Faye Hargate
“…fey grace…elusive, shifty, soul-shattering, insidious charm…a flower in flight…”

Faye Hargate is a performer, creator, educator and installation artist. Recent CPT credits: Rusted Heart Broadcast, Earth Plays, Echoless Shore-Pandemonium, Reverie Oracle-Pandemonium, Alibi-Attention Span and Royal Ann’s Preserve. Other notable CPT credits: Akarui, Fever/Dream, Open Mind Firmament, Anna Bella Eema, The Other Shore and Fellsalie-Pandemonium. Faye joined the CPT staff as the Education Associate in 2009. As Education Associate, Faye aids in the creation and production of the original, ensemble-driven theatre works created by CPT’s core education programs. She is the program director of CPT’s Brick City Theatre, working with youth who live in public housing, and leads the creation of 3-5 original works every year. Full Bio can be found in season program.