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Frances Uku
(Performer)
Frances is so very excited to be in a Katori Hall play! Previous stage credits include Twelfth Night with New York's all-female classical ensemble The Queen's Company, Richard II and Macbeth with Los Angeles' Independent Shakespeare Company and the solo show Waking Kya at the Women Center Stage Festival at 45 Bleecker. Film: By Poison and No P*ssy for Polluters, both of which recently premiered at indie festivals. Television: Girlfriends on the CW, and the daily World Music program on Link TV. Training: MFA from the A.R.T. Institute at Harvard, improv at The Second City Conservatory. Visit her sometime at www.francesuku.com.
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Katori Hall
(Playwright)
Katori Hall is a playwright-performer hailing from Memphis, Tennessee. Her plays include Hoodoo Love, Remembrance, Hurt Village, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, The Mountaintop (West End), The Hope Well, On the Chitlin’ Circuit, and Freedom Train. Her work has been developed and presented at the following venues: Theatre 503, Trafalgar Studios, Cherry Lane Theatre, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Women’s Project, World Financial Center, Lark Play Development Center, Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival, American Repertory Theatre, and the Kennedy Center.
Her awards include the 2009-10 Lark Play Development Center Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, Kate Neal Kinley Fellowship, two Lecompte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, NYFA Fellowship, and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center. Recently, she was shortlisted for the London Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award for The Mountaintop and received the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award from the William Inge Theatre Festival.
She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts in African-American Studies and Creative Writing. She was awarded top departmental honors from the university’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS). In 2005, she graduated from the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University with a Master of Fine Arts in Acting. She recently graduated from the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace playwriting program.
Visit www.katorihall.com
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Maechi Aharanwa
(Performer)
Maechi (Fury #2) is a 2009 graduate from The Juilliard School. Her credits there include Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Julius Caesar, The Greeks Part III:The Gods, Antony and Cleopatra, Katori Hall’s Saturday Night/Sunday Morning and many more. Her favorite credits include Beneatha in A Raisin In The Sun, Augusta Snow in The Blacks: A Clown Show, and Kattrin in Mother Courage. Television: 30 Rock(NBC), Mercy(NBC). Maechi holds a BA in Theater from Temple University and studied at Circle In The Square Theatre School. www.maechi.net
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Martin Damien Wilkins
(Director)
Martin makes his NYC directorial debut with STEP. Other directing credits include developmental readings of new work by emerging playwrights, Katori Hall (HOODOO LOVE), Jacqueline E. Lawton (DEEP BELLY BEAUTIFUL), and M.A. Robinson (DRIVING DOWN THE PRICE OF HONEY). His work has been seen at George Mason University (Laura Zam's STUPID FRAILTY) and as part of Arena Stage's Student Playwrights' Festival. Mr. Wilkins has also been a recipient of Arena Stage's Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellowship, the Contemporary American Theater Festivals' Marvin Weissberg Directing Fellowship and a Stage Directors and Chroegraphers Foundation Observership. He has assisted directed with artists such as Wendy C. Goldberg, Molly Smith, Tazwell Thompson, Kate Whoriskey and Charles Randolph-Wright. He has also served as the Assistant to the Artistic Director of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference.
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Vella Lovell
(Performer)
(Fury #1) Most recently was seen in The Bacchae at The Public, and The Great Recession at The Flea Theater, where she appeared in Sheila Callaghan and Thomas Bradshaw's short plays. Other recent projects: Andromache with Full of Noises Co., The Secret Keeper with Examined Man, Kaspar Hauser at The Flea Theater. Training: Experimental Theater Wing and Classical Studio at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts; Williamstown Theatre Festival Apprentice Program. So many thanks to Katori for this wonderful opportunity!
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