IPHIGENIA

Lebanese-born, Canadian-raised, after having graduated with a degree in Biotechnology, Sarah Himadeh started her career as a private banker at Merrill Lynch in London - I know. She eventually chose to pursue her calling as a storyteller, moved to New York for theater school, and never looked back. In 2019, she joined the Lebanese revolution, spent half a year on the streets fighting for accountability and human rights for the Lebanese people. Her advocacy work morphed into mobilizing the Lebanese diaspora to aid in relief efforts following the economic collapse. She’s working towards marrying both her worlds; sharing stories of her homeland on stage, and on set.

AGAMEMNON

Ali Andre Ali is an actor and musician of Palestinian and Irish descent based in New York City. Some of his credits include Cymbeline (RADA), Invasion! (Ancram Center for the Arts), One Night (Target Margin), Sonntags wird gelogen Or We Only Lie On Sundays (Local Grandma/The Brick), American Dreams (Working Theater), 10,000 Balconies (TheatreSquared) and Eh Dah? Questions for My Father (Hypokrit/Next Door @NYTW). TV: “Ramy.” As a musician he writes and performs with his music duo fajjr+ali. Their music is available on all major streaming platforms. BFA: NYU. www.aliandreali.com | @aliandreali | @fajjrplusali

THE WIND

Danny Bryck is a New York-based actor, singer, playwright, and dialect coach. Select theatre credits: Be the Death of Me (The Civilians), Only Place I Belong (The What Co.), Just Outside the Door (Broadway Bound Festival), Chill (Merrimack Repertory Theatre), The Cherry Orchard (Actors’ Shakespeare Project), RENT (New Repertory Theatre), The Donkey Show (American Repertory Theater), Sila (Central Square Theater), Tales from Ovid (Whistler in the Dark/ ArtsEmerson). Plays include Shelter in Place, Quixote in Kabul, The River and the Sea, and his solo show No Room for Wishing. He holds a BFA from Boston University and is a member of Actors’ Equity. www.dannybryck.com

ORESTES/CHORUS

Shahzeb Hussain is a Pakistani American actor. He was born in Pakistan, and grew up in England and the US. He started performing breakdancing at a young age which led him into acting. Most recently he was seen Off Broadway in The Great Gatsby as Tom Buchanan. Tonight, he’s honored to be in Iphigenia Point Blank: The Story of the First Refugee. He hopes you enjoy this story and identify with the humanity within it.

CLYDE/CHORUS

Crystal Marie Stewart is a Brooklyn resident (originally from South Carolina) and she recently graduated with her MFA in Acting from the University of Iowa. Some theatre credit highlights include: (NYC) Lt. Uhura/ Carol Marcus in Khan! The Musical (Off Broadway), Sir Toby Belch in Emit Theatre’s Twelfth Night, Judas Iscariot in Ring of Keys’ Queering the Canon: Andrew Lloyd Webber concert at Joe’s Pub, Hannah/Nancy in The DNC Presents: FTP 2023 #Already Great at Theatre in Asylum. crystal-m-stewart.wixsite.com/crystal

She would like to thank her husband for his love and support.

CHORUS

Fajjr Khan is a performing artist based in Pennsylvania. With a B.A. in Theater and the Performing Arts from Alvernia University, her credits include A Jewish Wife (Alvernia University) and King Lear (Albright University). For almost 9 years she has been writing and recording music with her music duo fajjr+ali. Being of South Asian descent, she is passionate about art and performance that celebrates diverse and often overlooked voices. Their music is available on all major streaming platforms. @fajjrk | @fajjrplusali

CHORUS

Sophie Zmorrod is an actor and vocalist based in NYC. She most recently originated the role of Béa in The Acting Company’s production of ODYSSEY, adapted and directed by Lisa Peterson. Select additional theatre: Beadle Bamford in Sweeney Todd (Trinity Repertory Company), Marjana and the Forty Thieves (Target Margin Theater), INVASION! (Ancram Center for the Arts), Miss U in Promenade (The María Irene Fornés Marathon at The Public), and Hamlet in Machine Learning Hamlet (MetaPhys Ed). TV: For Life (ABC/Hulu). MFA in Acting from Brown/Trinity Rep, Stephen Sondheim Fellow and David Wickham Prize in Playwriting. BA cum laude in Music from Columbia University. www.sophiezmorrod.com.

CHOREOGRAPHER/CHORUS

Hussein Smko is a choreographer/director/ and visionary, from the Kurdish region of Iraq. Since his arrival in NYC he was mentioned in the NYTimes, Dance Magazine, SXSW, and many more. His work is also mentioned in Dana Mills book “Dance and Activism”. His vision is unity through artistic expression and freedom as basic human need.

COMPOSER/CLARINET

Hailed as a “virtuoso, intensely soulful" by the New York Times and "spellbinding" by the New Yorker. Syrian-born, Brooklyn-based genre-bending composer and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh has been touring the globe with great acclaim as a soloist, composer and improviser. He has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Daniel Barenboim, John McLaughlin, Aynur and Djivan Gasparian, among others. He leads his own bands Hewar and the Kinan Azmeh CityBand. He is a Silkroad ensemble artist with whom he won a Grammy in 2016. His recent orchestral album Uneven Skywith the Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin has won Germany’s OpusKlassik Award in 2019. Recent commissions include works for thet New York Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra among others. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School, the Damascus High Institute of Music, and Damascus University’s School of Electrical Engineering, Kinan holds a doctorate in music from the City University of New York. His first opera, Songs For Days To Come which fully sung in Arabic was premiered in Germany in June 2022 to a great success. And he has recently been appointed to the United States National Council For the Arts.www.kinanazmeh.com

IPHIGENIA/VIOLIN

Composer and violinist Layale Chaker was raised in Lebanon, speaking multiple languages, both linguistically and musically. Her complex sound universe, described by NPR as “beguiling” with “bright and beautiful strands... gorgeous, wine-dark swirls,” lies at the intersection of classical contemporary music, jazz, Arabic music, and improvisation. A 2020-2022 Jerome Hill Fellow, Chaker is also recipient of the 2022 Opera America Discovery 2022 Award, among many other accolades. To open Chaker’s 2023-2024 season, the New York Philharmonic presents the world premiere of her double concerto, "Dawning", alongside Kinan Azmeh, for clarinet, violin and orchestra Dawning, co-commissioned with Nebraska Crossroads Music Festival and Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra.

DOUBLE BASS

Iranian-American bassist, producer, and recording engineer Sam Minaie, was born and raised in Reno, Nevada where he attended the University of Nevada, Reno. After receiving his undergraduate degree in Reno, he moved to Los Angeles to study with Charlie Haden at California Institute of the Arts where he received his Master’s degree. Currently living in New York City, he has toured and recorded throughout the world with artists including Tigran Hamasyan, Kneebody, Donny McCaslin, Dhafer Youssef, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra (tuba), Peter Epstein, David Ake, Ravi Coltrane, Jeff Ballard, Nate Wood, Patti Austin, Melody Gardot, Butch Morris, Tootie Heath, Jean-Michel Pilc, Nate Wood, Ben Wendel, Houman Pourmehdi, Alfred Ladzekpo and numerous others. His debut record, "Heyo," is available through Orenda Records.

PERCUSSION

JK Kim is New York based drummer, He graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2017 where he was the recipient of a full-tuition scholarship. During his time at Berklee, he studied with Hal Crook, Terence Blanchard, Ralph Peterson, and Terri Lyne Carrington. Kim has performed with a long list of accomplished musicians from diverse backgrounds such as Kim BTS, Eric Nam, Ben Monder, Miguel Zenon, Leo Genovese, Gerald Clayton, George Garzone, Dave Binney, Dayna Stephens, and Ted Nash, Matthew Garrison. He has performed internationally in France, Canada, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Turkey. Jongkuk has played at many of New York’s finest venues such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Blue Note, Birdland, and Smalls. He has also performed at many festivals such as the Montreal Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, DC Jazz Festival, Toronto Jazz Festival, and the Nancy Jazz Festival.

PLAYWRIGHT

Lisa Schlesinger’s works for stage and radio include Iphigenia Point Blank, Celestial Bodies, Wal-martyrs, Same Egg, Manny and Chicken, Rock Ends Ahead, The Bones of Danny Winston, Twenty-One Positions: A Cartographic Dream of the Middle East (with Naomi Wallace and Abdel Fattah AbuSrour), In the Wake of the Graybow Riots. Winner of the BBC Playwriting Award, she has received commissions from the Guthrie Theatre, the BBC, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and fellowships from the NEA, TCG, CEC/Artslink, the Sloan Foundation, the International Writing Program among others. Produced nationally and internationally, her work is published in American Theatre Magazine, Performing Arts Journal, Broadway Plays, NoPassport, Playwrights Canada Press, the New York Times and elsewhere. Ruinous Gods, Lisa’s newest opera with composer Layale Chaker, is co-commissioned by Spoleto Festival USA, Wuppertal Opera, and Nederlandse Reisopera and will premiere at Spoleto Festival USA in May 2024. Lisa is co-director of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa.

DIRECTOR

Marion has been developing her own style of physical theater for 25 years in New York, Seoul and France. She has directed, produced and choreographed more than 20 theater shows, operas and shadow plays, blending dance-theater, rhythmic text and live music. In Korea, she has directed a North Korean mass dance propaganda play with 2 orchestras and 100 actors, performed at Korean National University of Art. Her work has been called “A triumph” (Fabienne Darge, Le Monde), “A creation of a new myth” (Michel Vinaver, La Gazette Jaune), “Post-modern perfection” (Helen Shaw, Time Out NY).

PRODUCER

Nilou is an Iranian-American producer working in film, theatre and branded content. Her mission has always been to amplify unheard and culturally diverse voices and stories, helping to bring people together through the arts. Nilou’s film career began at Levantine Entertainment (Associate Producer for AMREEKA, 2009). Her last feature, JULIA BLUE (2018) was shot entirely in Ukraine during wartime and was a Gotham award winner. Nilou's current daily work is as a Creative Producer (Where the Buffalo Roam) in branded content and strategic storytelling with Google.Org where she focuses on telling the stories of nonprofits working to solve some of today's biggest challenges. In addition, she is the founding Board President of Obie award-winning Noor Theatre, dedicated to developing and producing the work of artists of Middle Eastern Descent. Noor has been looked to as a leader in the space of Middle Eastern performing arts in the US for over a decade.

FILMMAKER

Irina Patkanian is an award-winning filmmaker, a Fulbright scholar, Professor of Film & Media Arts at Brooklyn College/CUNY, and the co-founder of “In Parentheses,” a NYC based nonprofit film, theater & media arts company that supports immigrant artists since 1995. Irina makes hybrid (fiction/nonfiction) films questioning history with poetry, memory with animation, performance with behavior. Irina’s films have screened at 150+ film festivals worldwide, incl. DOC NYC, Ann Arbor, STARZ Denver, Palm Springs, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival and many others, winning 25+ awards. Her work has been supported by fellowships and grants from NYSCA, NYFA, Made in New York Women's Film, TV and Theater Fund, Tow, Blaustein, Troy and Jerome Foundations; as well as fully funded artist residencies at MacDowel and the Millay; the Art Studios of Key West; Ucross and Villa Lena (Italy) Foundations.

CINEMATOGRAPHER

Gus Ford is a cinematographer and photographer, based in Redding, CT. He shot numerous award-winning documentaries in Russia, Mozambique, Cuba, Greece, Lebanon, France and Ireland. Gus has been a staff videographer of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and a Director of Photography on several film productions of creative digital agency WE ARE CMYK. Most recently, he was a Director of Photography on “Children of the Revolution,” a documentary produced by BMG.

SET DESIGNER

M.F.A. in Design, Graduate school of Brooklyn College, M.A. in Scene Design at Hongik University and B.F.A. in Painting, Chungang University. Mr. Lee is Professor, Dept. of Musical & Theatre, Yongin University. He is awarded Dong – A Theatre Award; Best Scenic Design by Donga Daily Newspaper; The Best Scenic Design 2005, The Korean Center of Assiteji; The Best Scenic Design 2000, Korean Musical Grand Awards, Sport Jungang. Special Award, Korean Dance Critic Awards.The Best Scenic Design, The Year of Drama. The Best Scenic Design, Seoul Theater Festival. He has worked in opera, musical and theaters in the biggest venues in Korea, and with national Korean companies. taesuplee.com

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Bryon Winn is a professor of design and Director of Theatre for the Department of Theatre Arts at University of Iowa. He has designed lighting, media, and/or scenery for theatre, opera, dance, and corporate events throughout the country. This includes over 250 productions and 50 premieres of new plays. His theatre design work has been seen at Portland Stage Company, Trinity Rep, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Florida Studio Theatre, Axis Theatre, Intersection for the Arts, Miranda Theatre Company, Utah Musical Theatre, Middlebury College, Riverside Theatre, and Iowa Summer Rep.

PROJECTIONIST

Young Cheong was the director of photography for the American Penguin Project, which was awarded The Best Online Film Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006. We Are All Here won best Animation at ION’s International Film Festival in 2009. He currently teaches video production and theory at Brooklyn College Department of Television and Radio and at Dongguk University in Seoul, Korea. Cheong was also awarded a CUNY Diversity Projects grant that he used to produce World Within; a documentary highlighting Asian students attending various campuses within the CUNY school system. youngcheong.com