LEAH BACHAR
back to staff page
Leah Bachar is a performer/producer/director/experimenter. Fascinated with human connection, Leah is drawn to public performance and unique, interactive situations that create an open arena for spontaneous experiences and promote no barriers between the spectators and performers.
With a deep interest in ritualistic theatre and the healing properties of the arts, she combines her passion for guerrilla theatre, different cultures, the written word, surreal stagings, entering trance states, dancing, radical artistic collaboration, social experiments, and curating happenings where performance art and human healing intertwine. Realizing the powerful social and political message that the arts emit, Leah is interested in initiating conversations and introducing people to one another who wouldn’t normally meet in order to help facilitate a greater universal discourse between artists and their communities.
soraya broukhim
back to staff page
Soraya Broukhim is an actor, poet and teacher. Soraya has worked with The Living Theatre since 2010 devising and acting in several productions. She'll always regard Judith Malina as a dear friend and mentor. The aspect of theatre that interests her is how a collective can aim to liberate and empower people to make radical social change.Her credits include: Graduate of Fordham University LC, BAADA, NTI, & St. Petersburg Arts Theatre Academy, Russia. Adjunct Professor of Theatre at Fordham University.
NYC Theatre Credits: The Rug Dealer (Women’s Project), Petrol Station NYU/BAM, No Place to Hide (The Living Theatre, Bread & Puppet Theatre), I am Gordafarid (Drama League, NYTW & Rising Circle), Soundwaves: The Passion of Noor Inayat Khan (Fringe), Blackbird (one woman show, Schmucks Theatre), Here We Are, History of the World, SMOPS, Korach by Judith Malina (The Living Theatre), Red Tent Fabrik (JoyceSoho), Antigone, Betrothed (Ripe Time), Gut Girls (Chocolate Factory), Woyzeck (CultureProject), Innocent Erendira (Here), Logic of the Birds (LincolnCenter).
Regional Theatre: Scorched (Syracuse Stage). In the Heart of America (Interact Co. PA), Wintertime (San Jose Rep), Afghan Women (Passage Theatre, NJ), Sodom & Gomorrah (O'Neill Playwrights Conference), Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (CT), & Blue Demon (WTF) dir. Darko Tresnjak. Europe: Antigone (Romania, UNESCO/ITI),TV/Film: Madame Secretary, Flat Tire, Headshot, Xenophilia, Rosewater, America 1979, Eugenia & John, An Encounter with Simone Weil, The Push.
BRAD BURGESS
back to staff page
Brad Burgess is the Artistic Director, after having worked with friend and mentor Judith Malina for 10 years until her passing in April 2015. He is also an OBIE award-winning member of The Living Theatre ensemble.
He is a founding board member of The League of Independent Theatre Fund, an organization of 120 plus theatre companies that collectively tithes and fundraises to support community driven initiatives. He is a founding board member of Sophie Gerson’s Healthy Youth with former councilman Alan Gerson, Fr. Luis Gigantes and many other NYC community leaders, an organization that provides arts and sports programs both in and outside of school to underprivileged kids in the city.
He is an associate at The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The Graduate Center CUNY. He is also on the board of Frigid NY and The Assembly. He is also a workshop leader for the All Stars Project Cops and Kids program with the NYPD.
equiano
back to staff page
Equiano is currently the Shakespeare Groundlings Artistic Director/ teacher at Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre. He received an MFA from Brandeis University. This past summer he went from channelling dark comedic manipulation as Aaron in FST's Titus Andronichus, to a U.S tour with The Living Theatre performing Seven Meditations on Political Sadomasichism. In winter he was Lord Byron in Phantasmagoria directed by Randolph Curtis Rand which played at LaMama Theatre. He was a lead in the Elliott Norton award-winning 'Best Ensemble' The Convert, written by Danai Gurira.
Other credits: He has performed at House of Yes, with the Little Cinema series, The Berkshire Theatre Festival, and Shakespeare & Co.
Jessica daugherty
back to staff page
Jessica (jdaugh) is a director and producer of documentary and non-fiction film and video, a writer, and performance artist. A student of revolutionary theatre, working with social documentary filmmaker George Stoney, her work began to focus on radical social change brought through art, experimentation with forms, and creating access. Her work has been published by The Black Theatre Network, the Anamesa Journal, and can be seen on major networks such as Showtime, PBS, NBC, History, and WNET. She met Judith Malina and The Living Theatre while attending 2014's No Place To Hide and began performing in the piece in the difficult and beautiful summer of 2015.
Brandon fisette
back to staff page
Brandon Fisette is a multi disciplinary performance artist. They are a butoh dancer and teacher as well as a musician, songwriter, and actor. They have been a member of The Living since 2014 and have performed in multiple productions since then, including the recent Know Your Rites tour across the United States.
Brad Hamers
back to staff page
Poet, musician, performance artist, collage artist, loud dreamer. Brad Hamers has had 4 books of poetry published and 13 musical projects released over the past 17 years, both as a solo artist and as a part of the bands: Phlegm, Two Ton Sloth, Dust On Snow, Child of No Nation and Cat Child. Brad has been touring his art throughout the US and Europe for the past two decades. Brad has been performing with The Living Theatre since 2014. He is a believer in magic, a practitioner of art as medicine, art as a revolutionary tactic.
MONICA HUNKEN
back to staff page
Monica Hunken is a performer, teacher, activist, writer living in Brooklyn, NY. She has performed her solo plays in festivals and theaters all over the world. She leads workshops in physical theater, storytelling and also trains people in non-violent direct action. She has been produced in Australia’s Horse’s Mouth Festival, the Netherland’s DeParade and Fringe Festivals, Norway’s PIT festival, the Glastonbury Festival in England, among many others. She has ridden her bicycle through more than 20 countries and specializes in creating interventionist performances for social justice. She has organized with Time’s-Up, Occupy Wall Street and Public Space Party. She was Action Captain for Reverend Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping for a decade. She is a trainer with Beautiful Trouble, Resist Spectra and Second Response. Lately, she has been working more with refugee communities in theater and education throughout Europe and is a member of The Living Theatre.
LOIS KAGAN MINGUS
back to staff page
Lois Kagan Mingus studied acting with Joseph Chaikin, Gene Frankel and Davey Marlin-Jones and dance at the Harkness Dance Center, The New Dance Group Studio and dance and voice at Boston Conservatory. She is a member of The Living Theatre since 1988 and has appeared in dozens of productions, both in New York and on tour in Europe and Latin America. Lois also performs with Dadanewyork, a theatre company showcasing the work of the Dadaists, and The Wycherly Systers, a political cabaret, at such venues as La MaMa, CBGB's, Bric, the Kraine, Cornelia Street Cafe, PS122, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Le Poisson Rouge and Theater for the New City. She's been an invited guest poet at Bowery Poetry, Theater for the New City, 6th St. Avenue B Garden among others. Lois has spoken at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum in Minnesota about using theatre as a tool for social change. Her poetry and writing is published in Evergreen Review, the Maintenant Journal, Daughterspeak and Western States Theatre Review as well as The New York Public Library play collection, and her short play, Refugee Camp Shtima, received Honorable Mention in the LaMia Ink International One Page Play Festival. She is a Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Finalist Judge and Presenter. Lois co-founded The Living Theatre Workshops in 2001 and received a Carnegie Grant and Bronx Council on the Arts Grant for Action Racket Theatre which she co-founded in 1998. She is listed in Who's Who in Entertainment in America. Lois will be honored with an Acker Award for Achievement in the Avant Garde in the Winter of 2017.
DENNIS YUEH-YEH LI
back to staff page
Dennis earned his Masters degree in Performance Studies at Tisch School of Arts, New York University. He works as a director, playwright, performer, and performance artist, having created productions addressing sexuality, literature, philosophy and politics to give his unique perspectives on time, space and power relations. Dennis endeavors to make powerful and transcendental performances to stimulate compelling reactions in the audience.
Dennis's directing credits include: The (New) Trial (Theater for the New City), Freud Out Loud--A Performantive Reading of "Civilization and Its Discontents" (Judson Memorial Church), To Defend Freedom (The Secret Theatre), Upcoming Train/Stopped Clock/Untitled Waiting (Theater for the New City), & Marat/Sade (Taipei), among others.
PhILIP SANTOS SCHAFFER
Philip is a director, poet, performer, and playwright. He first learned of The Living Theatre when he was 16 and read Julian Beck's diary, "The Life of the Theatre," for the first time. Six years after that, his adaptation of the book was staged for the first time at Hofstra University, and he joined The Living as a performer that fall. Philip is the co-artisitc director of WalkUpArts, through which he consistently produces plays and events.
He is also the co-editor of Walk Write Up, a monthly literary zine. BFA in Production, Focus in Directing from Hofstra University, 2013. MFA in Dramaturgy, Columbia University, anticipated completion in 2018.
THOMAS S. WALKER
back to staff page
Tom Walker first saw the Living Theatre as an audience member in 1968. He joined the company in 1971 in Brazil and shortly spent two months in jail with it, with the charge: being in the presence of marijuana. Since 1973 he has worked continually with the Living, spending twelve years with Julian Beck, participating in the great cycle “The Legacy of Cain”, over 40 plays indoors and outdoors in the streets, in the US and for six years in Italy and Europe. He continued collaborating with Judith Malina and Hanon Reznikov after Beck’s death in 1985, helping to create two theaters in New York City, and a five year residency in Piemonte, Italy. Hundreds of performances, thousands of spectators.
Walker is the Living Theatre archivist, overseeing the major sale of the archive to Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book Library in 2008. He teaches workshops in the US and in Italian in Italy. He also has worked with other directors: Reza Abdoh, Frederick Neumann(Mabou Mines), Gerald Thomas, Henryk Baranovsky, and Michael Counts. He participated in the recent Living Theatre joint production with Motus of Italy, “The Plot Is The Revolution”, which has toured in the US, France, Switzerland, and Italy. In New York recently he has worked with The Assembly, and with TEAM at the BRIC in Brooklyn. He is at work on a memoir of his years in the theater.