Salt of the Earth - Cast & Crew
Zvi Sahar - Director, Performer, Founding Artist
Zvi Sahar (Director, Performer, Founding Artist)is an Israeli born actor, director and puppeteer, living and working in New York. Sahar holds a degree in acting from the SELA performing school, in Tel-Aviv, and a BA (summa cum laude) in theater studies from Haifa University. As an actor, Sahar has worked with several prominent theater groups in Israel including Itim Ensemble with director Rina Yerushalmi – an Israel Prize for Arts recipient – at the Cameri Theater of Tel Aviv and the Be’er Sheva Theater company. With his colleague, Oded Littman, Sahar co-directed and starred in the critically-acclaimed Richard III at Tmu-na Theater and Oedipus Rex at Hasimta Theater. Sahar’s works have been supported by The Jim Henson Foundation (2013 project grant for Salt of the Earth), the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, the Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation, the Consulate Generals of Israel in New York, DC, LA and more. Over the past few years, Sahar has explored puppetry and established his Tel-Aviv & New-York company PuppetCinema, presenting its first show Planet Egg at the Puppet Lab at St. Ann's Warehouse. The show was later presented in full at The International Puppet Theater & Film Festival in Israel, Dixon Place’s Puppet Blok, HERE Arts Center, Rockefeller University, Hawaii Fringe Festival and the DC Capital Fringe where it was chosen as the Washington Post Editors’ Pick.
Jessica Scott - Puppetry Director, Puppeteer
Jessica Scott is a self-taught visual artist, director, performer and teacher living in NYC and working abroad. Her work includes puppetry, specialty props, installation and sculpture. She's had the pleasure of designing for Basil Twist, Lee Breuer, Mabou Mines, Addams Family the Musical, Big Fish on Broadway, Julian Crouch and Improbable Theater, Red Bull Theater, Clubbed Thumb and many other talents. As a director of puppetry, she's created the physical language for the puppetry in Mabou Mines Porco Morto and their current production, La Divina Caricatura, as well as for her own work. She has also puppeteered for Pee Wee Herman, Bjork, Moisés Kaufman, Blind Summit and HBO’s Flight of the Conchords. Jessica is currently developing her own show, Ship of Fools, as a HARP resident artist at HERE Arts Center in NYC. http://jessicaantoniascott.net
Justin Perkins - Puppeteer and Resident Company Member
Justin Perkins is a performer and designer. His work has appeared at St. Ann's Warehouse, 92nd St Y, Dixon Place, IRT Theater, Magnet Theater, Ohio Theater, Ulysses Pub and The Hotel Chelsea, among others. He is a founding member of the all-male experimental Shakespeare company American Centaur. He is a graduate of Vassar College and has an MFA in Theatre from Sarah Lawrence College. He is a New Hampshire native.
Tom McDonagh - Puppeteer
Tom McDonagh began creating shadow plays while studying Physics at University of Bristol. His first fulllength play, Beyul Demojong, grew from studies from the folklore of Sikkim, a mountainous state in the India. The play was performed extensively around Bristol and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2008. In 2012 at the St. Ann's Warehouse Puppet Lab, he produced Voyage to the Skies, a short shadow play that paid homage to Buster Keaton and the wonder of silent comedy. Tom has recently performed at Puppet Playlist at the Kraine Theater in New York where he showcased a new 3D shadow play technique.
Ien DeNio - Sound Design and Resident Company Member
Ien DeNio is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College where she studied Technical Theater with an emphasis in Sound Design. She is based in New York City, where she is a freelance sound designer, theatrical foley artist, aural-landscape composer and puppet builder. Her work has been featured with Godlight Theater Company's Pilo Family Circus (2013 Drama Desk Nomination for Outstanding Sound Design of a Play) and Bella's Dream (Going to Tahiti Productions). Upcoming: An adaptation of The Master and The Margarita with Janos Szanz.
Jesse Garrison - Director of Photography
Jesse Garrison is an emerging multi-media artist, working in film, theater and still imagery. His work ranges from the experimental to the informational, from music videos to medical documentation and promotional material, site-specific dances to theatrical projection and a post-apocalyptic feature film. His work has appeared on Thirteen, MNN, El Museo del Barrio, The Birkshire Film Festival, reviewed in the New York Times, and his photographs have appeared in Time Out New York and international newspapers and blogs.
Erica Livingston - Puppeteer
An NYC based theater artist, Erica Livingston most recently developed and appeared in the Drama Desk Award-nominated show, The Complete and Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O’Neill Vol 1: Early Plays/Lost Plays. Her work has appeared at The Public Theater, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Barrow Street, Abrons Art Center, HERE Arts Center, Bushwick Star, Theater for the New City, Dixon Place, CATCH! Performance Series, The Brick Theater, and Ars Nova. She was a member of the St. Ann’s Warehouse Puppet Lab (2010-2011) and was a co-artistic director of The New York Neo-Futurists (2006-2011). Awards include: Café Cino Fellowship Award, Village Voice Reader’s Poll for Best Performance Artists, People of the Year (nytheater.com), and a Drama Desk nomination for Unique Theatrical Experience and Best Performance Art Production Nominee (NYIT).
Daniel Burnam - Puppeteer
Daniel Burnam is an amateur boxer, writer, film, and theater-maker living in Brooklyn, Daniel is a proud alumnus of the 2011 St. Ann's Warehouse Puppet Lab. Most recently he performed The Complete and Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O'Neill Volume 1: Early Plays/Lost Plays, which was nominated for a 2011-2012 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience.
Ronit Muszkatblit - Assistant Director
An emerging director and theater artist, Ronit Muszkatblit is a member of Post Theater NY/Berlin, a founding member of WokenÅglacier Theater Company, and Co-Artistic director of LABA. Recent credits: Hanna and the Moonlit Dress (14th Street Y Theater), Nature of Captivity by Mathew Paul Olmos (Mabou Mines Suite @ PS 122), Cantaloupe by Gina Bonati (LABA, Boston), I Had A Little Voice (LABA), ON ART, an adaptation of ART by Yasmina Reza (Rohkunst Bau, Berlin), It is Said the Men are Over in the Steel Tower by Hideo Tsuchida, adapted by Eriko Ogawa and Matthew Paul Olmos (TBG Theater, NYC), Struwwelmensch (Rohkunst Bau Festival, Berlin), Matchmaker Matchmaker (Stadts Bank Berlin), Quartet by Heiner Müller (Westbeth Theater, NYC), The Child Dreams by Hanoch Levin (59E59, NYC), La Mama Umbria (Italy). Graduate of the Actors Studio Drama School.
