LEANDRA ACOSTA, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT (she/her), is a graduate of Rider University with degrees in dance performance and arts administration. During her time performing at Rider, she was awarded both the Dance Merit Scholarship and Mildred S. Hawkins Dance Scholarship and helped adopt the Dance Mentorship Program. She is grateful to have had the opportunity to work with so many fantastic choreographers during her time performing at Rider including: Kate Ladenheim, Randy James, Angela Cusumano, Merli Guerra, Jennifer Gladney, Robson Alves, Lynn Neuman, and Ryan Davis. She was recently featured as a choreographer for the 2023 Senior Dance Capstone performance, Acknowledgements. In her role as Associate Director, Leandra creates programs for and manages the social media pages for the Department of Performing Arts and Westminster Choir College.
JAMEL BAKER, STAGE MANAGEMENT MENTOR. Jamel is excited to be a part of this production of Nell Gwynn as the Stage Manager Mentor. Jamel has been stage managing for over 10 years for theatre, opera and dance locally and nationally. In addition to stage managing, Jamel has also led Stage Management workshops with Opera Philadelphia & Riot Inc. When not stage managing, Jamel works at Passage Theatre (Trenton, NJ) as the Lead Producer.
MARLA BURKHOLDER, DIALECT COACH (she/her), is the Artistic Director for Journey Arts, a Philadelphia-based company that cultivates multidisciplinary performances that engage with social justice issues. Marla co-founded and led Shakespeare in Clark Park as Producing Artistic Director, performer and curator for 10 years. She also previously directed the education program at 1812 Productions; has acted in and coached dialect performance for numerous regional productions; and worked as a teaching artist throughout the region. Marla teaches voice, speech, and acting to theater students at Rider and Temple Universities. She holds an MFA in Acting from Temple University.
ELEANOR CONOVER, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR (she/her) is a sophomore Musical Theatre major. Previous Rider technical credits include Anything Goes (Assistant Stage Manager) and Rider Student Theatre Company’s Minor Feelings of a Minor Character (Assistant Stage Manager/Sound Designer).
ALYSSA GIL-PUJOLS, SOUND DESIGNER, (She/Her) is a sophomore Theater Design and Technology major. Rider Main Stage Credits include: Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 (Assistant Sound Engineer), Radium Girls (Sound Mixer), A Doll's House (Sound Designer), Anything Goes (Sound Mixer), and Rent (Sound Mixer). Rider Student Theater Company Credits include: Ride the Cyclone (Sound Designer), Inside the Spitz a BoBurnham Cabaret (Sound Designer), and The Guy Who Doesn't Like Musicals (Sound Designer). Summer Stock Credits at Roundabout Youth Ensemble & Princeton Summer Theater include: Grooves (Sound Designer), Dracula (Sound designer), The Last 5 Five Years (Assistant Sound Engineer/ Sound Mixer), and Emergency (Sound Designer).
CLARE HANRAHAN, PROPS DESIGNER, is always happy and excited to come back and work for her Alma mater. Her recent work includes The Children’s Hour, Love and Information, and LAST WORDS at Rider University. Clare actively works in the North Jersey and New York City metro area theater scene, where she will join the team at Plays in the Park in Edison, NJ this summer. Clare would like to thank Louise Grafton for sharing her wisdom about the dangers of hot glue guns and for always being her inspiration.
LIZZIE HOLZWORTH, STAGE MANAGER, (she/her) is a sophomore Acting major. Select Credits include: Much Ado About Nothing (Assistant Stage Manager; Rider University).
DERYN C. KRANER, CHOREOGRAPHER, is a Junior BFA Musical Theatre Major with a Minor in Dance. Professional Credits include: Flashdance the Musical (Destiny, Ensemble), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Swing for Brides, Ensemble), and A Christmas Story the Musical (Child/Adult Ensemble). Rider Credits include: Asking Strangers the Meaning of Life (Choreographer), Entr’Acte: Femininomenon (Choreographer), Rider Dances 2024 (Dancer and Costume & Makeup Designer), Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812 (Assistant Costume Designer), Entre’Acte: Come Together (Soloist, Featured Dancer), Momentum: Rider’s First Year Showcase (Soloist, Featured Dancer).
BUCK LINTON, DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT. Earning his MFA in Scenography and Technical Design (Virginia Tech), Buck joined Rider University as its Technical Director in 2012 and became the Director of Production Management in 2022. He professionally produced more than 200 productions with such venues as The Kennedy Center, Paper Mill Playhouse, Manhattan Theatre Club, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse and McCarter Theatre. Selected works include Travesties, Sleeping Beauty Wakes, Take Flight, Herringbone, Lookingglass Alice and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Falstaff, Die Zauberflöte, Pelléas et Mélisande, Dialogues des Carmélites, La Clemenza di Tito, Oreste, Sunjata Kamalenya, The Odyssey Experience, Die Fledermaus, Rigoletto, Turandot, Chicago, EDDA (Ping Chong & Sequentia Ensemble, international tour). Since 2012, he has produced more than 100 productions for Rider University’s College of Arts and Sciences in the performing arts.
TODD LOYD, LIGHTING DESIGNER, is the lighting director for Rider University’s Department of Performing Arts. He supervises the lighting for every performance that the department produces in addition to mentoring several students that assist in designing, hanging, focusing, and programming the lighting for each show. At Rider he has designed over 30 productions including plays, musicals, dance recitals, cabarets, and operas. Some of the highlights include Anything Goes, Radium Girls, The Prom, Clean Slate: A World Premiere Musical, Urinetown, Cabaret, Polaroid Stories, Rider Dances: Moving in Our Community, Pippin, Bright Star, Hair, Heathers The Musical, Once On This Island, She Kills Monsters, A Chorus Line and Metamorphoses. Other selected professional projects include Rock of Ages and Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery (Forestburgh Playhouse), Clean Slate: A World Premiere Musical and The Gun Show (Passage Theatre), and Journey to Oz (Children's Theatre of Charlotte and Experiential Theater Company).
DR. SEAN MCCARTHER, FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHER/INTIMACY COACH, serves as Professor of Musical Theater Voice at Rider University. In addition to his work as a voice teacher, he is an advanced actor combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors and the Academy of Fight Directors Canada and has trained with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators and Theatrical Intimacy Education. Dr. McCarther’s research interests span the fields of performance psychology, the acquisition of expertise, motor learning, theatrical emotion, and consent-based rehearsal processes. His research appears in several peer-reviewed publications, and he is a frequent lecturer and workshop presenter nationally and internationally.
CHARLOTTE NORTHEAST, DIRECTOR. Born in Canada to British parents, Charlotte is an actor, director, writer and coach in text and dialects. She is proud to join the Rider faculty teaching Acting and Voice. As an actor, she has received two Barrymore Awards for her work with InterAct (Skin in Flames) and Lantern Theater Company (Emma). Graduate: Circle in the Square. As an actor, she has appeared with: Philadelphia Artists’ Collective (PAC), Act II Playhouse, Theatre Exile, Passage Theatre, Azuka, Montgomery Stage, Hedgerow, Orbiter 3 (Barrymore Nomination), Theatre Horizon, Delaware Theatre Company, and the Walnut Street Theatre. She has directed for InterAct, PAC, Curio, Hedgerow, Rutgers-Camden, WST, Tribe of Fools, and Philadelphia Young Playwrights. Co-creator and performer of The Complete Works of Jane Austen, Abridged (now published through Concord Theatricals/Samuel French) and a new adaptation of Jane Eyre (PAC - Barrymore nomination). Director/deviser of You Shouldn’t Be Doing What You’re Doing On That Ladder with Tribe of Fools and Citrus Andronicus for PAC. Co-founder of 100th Meridian, dedicated to telling stories about the communion of rock and roll. Her solo show They’ve All Gone And We’ll Go Too has been per-formed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, NJ Fringe and the Cannonball Festival. Love to Damon, Jules, and The Kitties. Please visit: www.charlottenortheast.com
CRAIG PINCUS, SOUND ENGINEER, Craig Pincus has worked in professional audio & system design for the past twenty-nine years. He has engineered and produced audio for musical theater performances, national television broadcast, and recording studio clientele. Craig holds a Bachelor's degree in Communication from Rutgers University and teaches digital audio production at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, NJ. Craig also performs and records music, owns a sound & event production service, and directs TheatreCraft Musical Program, a children’s theater company, created with his wife Renee, producing theatrical performances in the central NJ area.
BRANDON RUSH, TECHNICAL DIRECTOR, Brandon Rush is thrilled to make his debut as Technical Director for Rider University’s 2024-25 season! Since his graduation from Rider in 2015, he kept a consistent relationship with Rider’s Theatre Department, where he has worked as an overhire carpenter, Sceneshop Supervisor, and most recently as Assistant Technical Director. Rider University Production Credits include: Assistant Technical Director for Radium Girls, Doll’s House, Enemies, and Anything Goes. As a freelance Technical Director, his credits include: Dracula, The Last Five Years, and Emergency at Princeton Summer Theater.
ELLA RYBCZYNSKI, ASSISTANT LIGHTING DESIGNER (she/they), is a Sophomore Theatre Design and Technology Major. Rider Main Stage credits include: The Prom (Spot Op.), Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (Sound Op.), Rider Dances (SM), Anything Goes (Light Board Op.), RENT (SM), and Nell Gwynn (ALD). Rider Student Theatre Company credits include: Inside the Spitz: A Bo Burnham Cabaret (SM), and The Six Degrees of Sierra Boggess (PSM). She was also the Paint Charge for Totem Pole Playhouse's 2024 Summer Season.
ROBIN I. SHANE, COSTUME DESIGNER. Robin is an Associate Professor of Theatre where she teaches classes in Design, Script Analysis, and runs the new Theatre-Making program at Rider University. Some favorite designs at Rider include Enemies:A Love Story, Last Words, Cabaret, Polaroid Stories, Pippin, Kiss Me, Kate, and many Rider Dance concerts. Robin has been a professional costume designer for over 25 years; recent professional credits include The Outsider (Act II Productions,) Children of the Sun (PAC) The Pillowman and In The Next Room, or, The Vibrator Play (Hedgerow Theatre) and OK Trenton (Passage Theatre). Regionally and nationally she has designed at The New Victory Theatre, Berkeley Rep, The Yale Rep, The Hedgerow, Theatre Exile, Philadelphia Artist’s Collective, EgoPo, Passage Theater, Shakespeare Theater of NJ, The National Constitution Center, The Revision Theater, the Jean Cocteau Repertory Theater, Soho Rep and The Harrisburg Opera, as well as for film and television. Robin holds a MFA from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and a BA in Theater and Psychology from Wesleyan University.
BEN SIMONETTY, PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGER (they/he) is an Actor, Stage Manager, Director, and Teaching Artist, based in Philly. They attended Dutchess Community College where they received their associates in Theatre Arts and later went on to attend Rider University where they received their Bachelors in Theatre Arts with a concentration in Acting and a Minor in Art Entertainment Industries Management. Since graduating, Ben has worked in four states in a multitude of roles including: company manager, teaching artist, stage manager, house manager, actor, and production assistant. They are currently one of the House Managers at Quintessence Theatre Group and Mccarter Theatre. Ben has fostered their love for storytelling and creation, while finding a passion for new work and theatre for social change.They pride themselves on being a jack of all trades or at least as many as possible. Upcoming works: ASM- Mabelines the Greenaissance Tour: Dec 2024. bensimonetty.squarespace.com
SAMUEL STEPHENSON, COORDINATOR OF PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT (he/him/his), received his Bachelor of Arts degrees in English Literature and Music from Wabash College, graduating magna cum laude under a full-ride Lilly Scholarship. As a Joseph Flummerfelt Scholar, he received his Master of Music in Choral Conducting with distinction from Westminster Choir College. Samuel has performed with many choirs across the world. He toured with the Wabash College Glee Club internationally to Taiwan and organized and managed the renowned Choral Institute at Oxford, a summer program at the University of Oxford for inspiring conductors to work with leading figures in the choral world. He has performed with The Same Stream, whose recordings can be found on all major music services, and at the Weiwuying National Center for the Arts as part of the opera chorus for Verdi’s La Traviata. Most recently, Samuel conducted Morten Lauridsen’s Mid-Winter Songs with the Westminster Choir in concert at Washington D.C. He currently works as the Performance Management Coordinator at Rider University and Music Director at St. Andrew’s United Methodist Church in Warminster, PA.
CASSIDY SWEETLAND, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR (they/them) is a sophomore Musical Theatre Major. Rider credits include The Prom (ASM) and Anything Goes (ASM). Recent professional credits include Props Artisan at Pacific Conservatory Theatre.
LEXI VAKSDAL, ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER, is a freshman B.F.A Acting Major. This is Lexi’s first technical mainstage credit.
GRACE WOLF, DRAMATURG (she/they) is a junior Musical Theatre Major. Rider Main Stage credits: Momentum: Freshman Musical Theatre Showcase and Come Together: Sophomore Musical Theatre Showcase. Rider Student Theatre Company credits include: Six Degrees of Sierra Boggess (Performer), Love Letter to Lake House (Assistant Stage Manager). Regional credits incude: The Prom at Axelrod Performing Arts Center.
