PLAYWRIGHT
The
"But Benitez avoids lectures, and makes her people talk like people."
-Kay Kipling, Sarasota Magazine
(Dike) is also sure to leave anyone who has the pleasure of seeing it eager for whatever Miss Benitez does next. "
- Bradenton Times, Dennis Maley
Hannah Benitez is based out of NYC, originally from Miami FL.
Her plays often tackle the English & Spanish language.
She studied playwriting under Tarell Alvin McCraney & Marco Ramirez at New World High School.
She received her B.F.A in Acting from FSU, where she studied playwriting under Sheri Wilner.
Along with writing, she works full- time as an AEA actress-musician. She is the recipient of the Playwright Development Program- 2 year grant cycle.
COMING UP:
High Desert Play Workshop
Southwest Theatre Company
New Mexico University, Las Cruces
End of the Exodus
1 of 2 plays selected for workshop, reading & consideration for 2021-22 season production.
Gringolandia - Commission / World Premiere
Miami, Florida
Zoetic Stage
Premieres May 8-24, 2020.
The
DIRECTOR
"Tatiana Pandiani's production [Assasins] is smooth and assured in many ways (...) It also brilliantly addresses the futility of violence... "
-Talking Broadway Assassins by Stephen Sondheim.
Tatiana Pandiani is a live performance director based in New York City.
Originally from Buenos Aires, she grew up around tango salons, antique stores and dance studios. Diplomatic childhood meant home was always temporary and in cities such as Kingston, Miami, Atlanta, and Boston. She studied Performance and Philosophy at Florida International University (BFA, Summa Cum Laude) and Directing at Columbia University (MFA) with masters such as Anne Bogart, Brian Kulick, Gregory Mosher, and Michael Lachiusa.
Her work combines live performance, dance, music, and storytelling to challenge and entertain today's audiences; it is inspired by the legacy of Maria Irene Fornes, Frida Kahlo, Pina Bausch, Bob Fosse, Bertol Brecht, and Astor Piazzola.
Most recently she directed the world tour of La Negrophilie by Zakiya Markland at the Frank Collymore Hall in Bridgetown, Barbados, the Ubumuntu Arts Festival in Kigali, Rwanda and the Kampala International Theatre Festival in Kampala, Uganda. Other recent: El Poeta y El Rey (BRIC), Field, Awakening by Melis Aker (Corkscrew Festival / New Plays @ Signature Theatre), The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Aldy Guirgis and Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl (Atlantic Stage 2), Sondheim's musical Assassins and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Appropriate (Princeton Summer Theater), La Lupe (Teatro SEA). She assisted directed The Glass Menagerie directed by Sam Gold at Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Ivo Van Hove’s company. Other work has been seen at The Bridge, La Micro, Truant Arts, Wertheim Performing Arts, MicroTheatre Miami, The Koubek Center, The Rose Theatre (UK), and Hangar Galleries. Tatiana was a 2017-2018 Directing Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, a Teaching Artist at the Atlantic Theatre Company and the Artistic Associate at Miami New Drama. She is currently a National Directing Fellow at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center / NNPN / Kennedy Center.
The
DRAMATURGS
Kelly Pekar is a New York City based actress, writer, and teaching artist originally from Cleveland, Ohio.
She has been part of Dike since the its conception as dramaturge and actress. She traveled with the playwright on a sponsored research trip to Dublin to work with Colm Summers on the cultural Irish aspects of the play.
Her favorite acting credits include Lucy Brown in the Off-Broadway, Drama Desk nominated Threepenny Opera at Marvell Repertory Theatre, the world premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Three Sisters at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park directed by John Doyle, and voicing the character of Susan in multiple seasons of the animated series, Spike Team. Kelly has toured the U.S. as a vocalist with the circus, served as a dialect coach, and has enjoyed teaching, directing, and costume designing classical, contemporary, and musical theatre productions regionally. www.kellypekar.com
Colm Summers is an Irish director with an interest in visual storytelling and politically engaged, experimental theatre-making. Credits include: Pseudaria (Project Cube, Live Collision 2017), Love à la Mode After Macklin, by KNAVES (Smock Alley Boys School, Scene + Heard 2017), Gays Against the Free State! (Smock Alley Boys School, Tiger Dublin Fringe, 2016), Enemy of the Stars by Wyndham Lewis (Dublin & Morocco, Winner of the Best Experimental Theatre Award at Fez International Theatre Festival), God’s Ear by Jenny Schwartz, (Samuel Beckett Theatre), Catastrophe and Ill Seen Ill Said, both by Samuel Beckett (SBT + Arts and Technology Research Lab). His work includes internships with Dead Centre, Pan Pan and The Wooster Group, Dublin and New York. His photography was exhibited at Temple Bar Gallery and Steambox (February – March ’16), and his first essay on performance, with Nicholas Johnson, can be read in Blast at 100 (Brill). His second will appear later this year in Charles Macklin and the Making of the 18th Century. He is currently earning his MFA in Theater Studies at Columbia Univeristy in NYC.