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Happy Birthday McKenna
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| CAST & CREW (click photos for larger images) |
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COLBERT ALEMBERT
('Parker')
Colbert most recently appeared in Eurydice at Little Fish Theatre, as well as co-starring in American Auto and a national commercial for Verizon. He studied acting at Cornell University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts here in LA. His favorite hobby and great passion is indoor volleyball and he also enjoys the beach. He would like to thank Steve Silverman for this amazing opportunity, as well as the entire cast and crew. Furthermore, he thanks his friends and family, especially his mother, for their unwavering support and motivation to continue on this crazy journey of an artistic pursuit. Enjoy the show!
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SARA BALLANTINE
('Lucille')
Saratoga Ballantine was named for her Father’s favorite racetrack. Hailing from the
great city of New York she was forced to move to Hollywood when her magician father The Amazing Ballantine landed the series “McHales Navy”. Wishing to be an actress since the age of 3, her dream came true thanks to Red Skelton who put her in a segment of his variety show, and she got her SAG card at 9. Saratoga has been an actress her entire life, with many TV and film roles, and dozens of commercials and voice-overs. Favorite roles include “Loretta” in Chris Durang’s “A History of the American Film”, “Lavinia” in “Titus Andronicus”, and Crow woman in Brian DePalma’s cult classic “Phantom of the Paradise”. Voicing the iconic character “Mary Jane” for Fox’s “Spiderman” series was also a great thrill. Her own love of artists became the seed that grew into her documentary film “TROUPERS”, a valentine to actors over 80 and 90 who managed to navigate a long career in our business. It’s available on Amazon Prime. She just completed a role on “The Sterling Affairs”, and serves as Vice-President of the Academy of Magical Arts at the Magic Castle.
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MICHAEL DEMPSEY
('Ray')
Originally from Cleveland, Michael spent 10 years in NYC studying and doing commercials (over 250 of them) before moving to LA in 1992. Recent: Station 19, All Rise, The Conners, The Patient, Barry (Season Premiere) and Paul T. Goldman (directed by Jason Woliner). Thank you, Steve (funny and smart), and the incredible group of crazies both on and off the stage. Family. Where, when you knock on the door, they gotta let you in.
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BEN HOLTZMULLER
('Tommy' - 3/3 - 3/11)
Ben came to acting later in life--after graduating from Georgetown University, he lived in China for four years working in corporate real estate. In Beijing, he began dubbing films on his lunch breaks (in both English and "foreign accented Chinese")--and the rest is history. His theater credits include Forget Me Not When Far Away (Echo Theater), and in the desert... (Echo Theater), with film credits including Catalina and Heir of the Witch. He can typically be found in his home studio doing voiceover, at Crossfit Echo Park coaching classes, at Lesly Kahn & Co. teaching acting, or on your TV hawking things like the HPV vaccine and TRUFF sauce.
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TANYA PEREZ
('Irene' - 3/17, 3/18, 3/19)
Born in NYC, and raised in the South, Tanya is a Latinx performer, writer & filmmaker specializing in short-form comedy. She has excelled as a creator on both stage and screen and her stand-out work has received many awards and mentions. Tanya has appeared on several networks and streaming series like Paramount+’s Evil, Orange Is the New Black & Jessica Jones on Netflix. Stage credits include performances at Laguna Playhouse, Seattle Rep, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and touring throughout Italy. Her comedy film, Peep Show, was a finalist at the ‘Women in Comedy HBO Insider Competition.’ With over 22 screenings globally, her film, Veronica, won ‘Best Actress’ at Story Mode Shorts Festival, ‘Best Screenplay’ and ‘Best Actress’ at Outlanta Con, and ‘Best Latinx Short’ at IndieFest. Perez also received an Audioverse Award nomination for her audio play, Rincon. She is a recipient of New Circle Theater’s LB Williams Playwriting Award 2022. She is a featured writer for The Light Ahead podcast, a Greenhouse Lab artist with The Orchard Project, and a spotlight artist with Conch Shell Productions. Proud member of AEA, SAG/AFTRA, and the Latinx Playwrights Circle. WEPA!
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SIGI RAVET
(''Deb'' - 3/17 - 3/26)
Sigi Ravet is a Swiss-Israeli-American actress and member of Theatre of Note. Favorite onstage credits include Bad Jews (Daphna), The Diary of Anne Frank (Anne), The Immigrant, Askance, and Note’s productions of Red Helen, Phrazzled, and 0=1. She will be performing in George F. Walker’s Featuring Loretta this summer at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. TV credits include Call Your Mother, Girl Meets World, The Middle, and upcoming shows Unprisoned (Hulu) and Lessons in Chemistry (Apple+). Sigi has created several web series and shorts and won Best Actress for her film Optimistic Realist at the Portland Comedy Film Festival. The film is about an aspiring actress slash Hebrew school teacher, which is (shockingly!) based on real life. Though Sigi is a quintessential baby child, she is both willing and thrilled to portray middle sister Deb. Special thanks to her husband, family, friends, community, child, dog, reps, and Steve. Not necessarily in that order, but you never know.
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TRACEY ROONEY
('Deb' - 3/2 - 3/11)
Tracey is thrilled to be back on stage with so many lovely humans, including Karl T Wright. They last shared the stage in the LA premiere of The Favorite, (directed by Ann Hearn Tobolowsky) in which Tracey won the 2019 Broadway World Award for Leading Actress in a Play. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and UCC in Ireland, some favorite credits include THE FAMILY OF MANN, THE MISER (National Tour), ROMEO & JULIET, PINATA (directed by Stan Zimmerman), her one woman show DO I DO? and TRUE LINES (originally created by John Crowley). Film/tv includes HIGHTOWN, REACHER, JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE, REVENGE, INVASION, VERONICA MARS and OFFICE UPRISING (which she also produced). She is also the producer of the LatinX THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (most recently at The Colony) and NEO Ensemble’s monthly NEO Fests. She is the lucky wife of a very hot husband and mom to three tiny hooligans. www.traceyrooney.com
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FAITH SALIE
('Irene' - 3/10, 3/11)
In a multiverse, Faith is married to playwright/director Steve Silverman, and they happen to solve crimes, low-key, while calling each other “darling.” In this universe, she’s a five-time Emmy-winning contributor to CBS Sunday Morning and a regular on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, she starred Off-Broadway in her solo show, Approval Junkie, based on her memoir of the same
name, at Minetta Lane Theatre, and her Audible Original was named one of Audible’s Best of the Year for 2022. She’s also the host of the podcast Real Good, amplifying the voices of folks making the world a better place. She hosted five seasons of PBS’s Science Goes to the Movies and has been a storyteller for The Moth, with her story viewed over 6 million times and included in The Moth’s New York Times bestsellers, Occasional Magic and How To Tell A Story. Faith’s interviewed thousands of people as the host of a dozen podcasts (NPR, Wondery, Stitcher, Audible) and has been interviewed by Oprah, Anderson Cooper, and Bill O’Reilly (consensually). Bylines: The New York Times, Time, Slate, O,The Oprah Magazine, and McSweeneys. As an actor, her favorite stage roles include playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret (American Repertory Theatre) Squeaky Fromme in Assassins (Oxford Playhouse, England), Svetlana in Chess (Edinburgh Fringe), and a member of the Ovation Award-winning Los Angeles premiere of The Laramie Project. She’s performed at Carnegie Hall, sung with the Boston Pops, and swum with the Weeki Wachee mermaids. Faith has a A.B. from Harvard and an M.Phil from Oxford, which she attended on a Rhodes scholarship. Her fellow Rhodes scholars went on to become senators and Pulitzer Prize winners, while she got beamed up on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and landed on a collectible trading card worth thousands of cents. She grew up in Atlanta and lives in Manhattan where she’s raising kids who say “y’all.”
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HEATHER L. TYLER
('Carolyn')
Heather is from a far away land called Arkansas, a state that used to be blue. After studying theatre at Rhodes, Heather began her professional career in Chicago, where onstage credits include The Threepenny Opera w/the hypocrites at Steppenwolf and critically acclaimed Dirty Diamonds at The Factory. In L.A., she was in the ensemble for Tony award-winning The Lehman Trilogy at the Ahmanson (a record shortest time onstage). She worked with Rogue Machine in A Bright New Boise and Wish I had a Sylvia Plath (u.s.) and with Sacred Fools in A Gulag Mouse. Film/TV credits include The Bridge (FX), For All Mankind (Sony/AppleTV) and her award-winning short, postpartumm… recently completed the festival circuit.
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STAKIAH LYNN WASHINGTON
('Julie')
Stakiah was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. She began acting in church, before becoming a national finalist in the August Wilson Monologue Competition to perform on Broadway. Soon after, Stakiah was accepted into Southern Methodist University where she studied theatre and earned her Bachelor's of Fine Arts. Before graduating, she landed the lead role in the thriller film Everything is Both. Currently, you can tune in to the Amazon FreeVee comedy show, Primo, to find Stakiah playing the series regular role of Mya. Stakiah would like to thank God, her family, friends and reps, for the enormous amount of love and support.
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MARI WEISS
('Irene' - 3/2, 3/3, 3/4, 3/5)
Mari recently made the ridiculous decision to leave Los Angeles and return to chilly Chicago. So she is pleased as punch to be back in the sunshine and part of the H.B. McKenna adventure. She has worked on many Steve Silverman shows including 15 Minutes of Fem, Slideshow, and his webseries’ Pretty and Club 5150. She’s been a guest on his podcast World Gone Good more than anyone except that darn Faith Salie (But I get to play Irene first, Faith - HAHA). Other L.A. Theatre credits include Earthquakes in London (Rogue Machine), Tales of the Lost Formicans (evidEnce room), The Lively Lad (ZooDistrict), and she received an LA Weekly award for Oh Sister, My Sister! written by and starring Jane Lynch. She originated the role of Alice in The Real Live Brady Bunch performing in Chicago, New York, and L.A. Recent TV credits include: Shameless, Jane The Virgin, Black-ish, How To Get Away With Murder as well as tons of commercials both on and off camera — so if she sounds familiar it's because she's been trying to sell you stuff for years.
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DYLAN WITTROCK
('Tommy' - 3/17 - 3/26)
Dylan began acting at an early age, performing alongside his father and brother at Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox, Massachusetts. He attended the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) and went on to study acting at the Atlantic Acting School in New York. TV Credits: Feud: Bette and Joan, Power. Film: The Long Weekend, A Mouthful of Air. LA Theater: A Few Good Men (La Mirada Theater) A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Open Fist), The Red Dress (Odyssey Theater), Othello (A Noise Within) Other Theater: The Pillowman, Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice, Edward II.
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RYAN WOODS
('Ed')
Ryan is a seasoned actor based out of Los Angeles. He has done regional theatre across the country at such places as The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey (The Winter’s Tale, Romeo & Juliet, As You Like It, William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play), The Dallas Theater Center (Gloria, The Great Society), Kingsmen Shakespeare (Measure for Measure, Richard III) among many others. He has both his BA (CSU, Fresno) and MFA (SMU) in acting. He is excited to be a part of such a great project and working with such awesome people!
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KARL T. WRIGHT
('Martin')
Karl is excited to be working with so many talented friends from back in Chicago and here in LA. He started his acting career at Second City and Players Workshop and reported on Chicago’s entertainment scene on WBEZ as host of the award-winning, Backstage Pass. Karl’s theater career in LA started here at the Hudson with Theater Neo. He recently appeared in Neo Ensemble’s Best of the Best Fest NEOFest (with Tracey Rooney); a staged reading of Wendy Kout’s new play MY TOWN at Skylight Theatre and the dark family comedy THE FAVORITE for Avante Garage Theatre (again with Tracey) for which he was nominated for a Broadway World Award for Featured Actor. Karl is also a podcast producer and VO artist, THE GETAWAY an audiobook he narrated was named one of 2023’s Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults by YALSA. On screen he’s best known for playing Chuck on ATYPICAL (Netflix) as well as guest star roles on dozens of shows including STAR TREK:PICARD; CHICAGO MED; 9-1-1 LONESTAR; SHAMELESS, CASTLE; MONK and the award-winning indie thriller, SURVIVAL.
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STEVE SILVERMAN
(Writer/Director/Producer)
Critically-acclaimed, award-winning writer/director/producer Steve’s work has been called ‘Sly’ by the Los Angeles Times, which is his all-time favorite single word review. Theatre includes All About Steve, not a one-man show but a twist on the classic film All About Eve, his horror comedy 666 Westbourne Drive, and his musical mashups Jesus Christ Super Star Wars & The King and I Know What You Did Last Summer, which he co-wrote and directed. Speaking of the force, he’s the force behind the one-woman show festivals 15 Minutes of FEM and the standup comedy show Slideshow, which ran the first Friday of every month for five years straight at the Fake Gallery. Steve is an award-winning writer/producer/director in the world of on-air promotions where he’s worked for FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, Bravo, several ad agencies and most recently, Hulu. He’s directed Whoopi Goldberg, Reba McEntire, Mindy Kaling, Zooey Deschanel, the original Fab Five from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on a horse ranch in Dallas, Texas and his all-time favorite, the late and very great Cloris Leachman. Presently, Steve just finished a new novel, a ‘cozy’ murder mystery. You can hear him weekly on his podcast World Gone Good where he talks to everyday people making good here on planet Earth: www.worldgonegoodpodcast.com
Contact:
hbmproducers@gmail.com
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KATHLEEN O'GRADY
(Producer)
A Virgo is a Virgo is a, well a Virgo so as much as she’s tried to suppress it with acting and design, Kathleen has a star chart inclination to produce if that means over organizing, staying within tiny budgets and a love of spreadsheets. In pre- pandemic LA, Kathleen most recently Co-Produced the apocalyptic Fruition right before lock down and the huge cast and stage fight heavy Marian or the True Tale of Robin Hood back in 2018 both at Theatre Of Note. As an actor her LA Theater credits include Fruition (Lauren Smerkanich -director) Cleo, Theo & Wu (Lisa Dring- director), Year of the Rooster (McKerrin Kelly-director) at Theatre of Note, the interactive Hollywood Premier Party with KLP, and she’s worked at Neo Theater Ensemble, on the controversial Ferguson The Play at Verbatim Theater, TalhotBlond at The Ruskin and various theaters in New York, Pittsburg, Huston and Chicago. Film & TV: Murder in the First, Law & Order, and a recurring role in a web and comic book series as well as a bunch of commercials. SAG-AFTRA, AEA/ www.kathleenogradyactor.com
Contact:
hbmproducers@gmail.com
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STEPHANIE ALECIA ROSE
(Assistant Director)
Stephanie started her love for the arts on stage. Already with a drawing background of superheroes for her brothers, Stephanie fell in love with acting after narrating for a school play in the 5th grade. From there, Stephanie continued her career in acting well into adulthood. From stage to film and television, Stephanie not only loved acting but also loved everything around it. Stage managing, set design and building, costuming, and directing became a part of the many other hats Stephanie can wear. “I’m excited to be a part of this amazing production as the stage manager and assistant director with Steve and Kathleen!”
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VICTORIA HOFFMAN
(Casting Director)
Victoria is the Resident CD at Rogue Machine Theatre. Recent credits include Justin Tanner’s Little Theatre and the new musical Come Get Maggie. Additional Casting Credits include For the Love of a Glove at The Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan Theater; Kiss of the Spider Woman at A Noise Within; How We Got On for Sacred Fools; Curious Incident & Herland for Greenway Court; Judas Kiss & A Streetcar Named Desire for Boston Court. Film projects include the AFI Thesis films Zenaida and The Fishmonger; Dog Lover at the DTLA Film Festival (among many), and USC Thesis Film Falling (an official selection at the Slamdance Film Festival (among many). Currently Manager of Casting at the AFI Conservatory. Acting credits include Julius Weezer for the Troubies, Sonneteer at the LA LGBT Ctr, and TV pop ups in Abbot Elementary and The Shrink Next Door. www.victoriahoffman.com
@VicHoffmanLA
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