ARTISTS
Sophie Goldstein is a native of Los Angeles, and received her B.A. in Theatre from California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA). It was there that she took classes with Tanya Kane-Parry and joined Opera del Espacio. In 2011, she enrolled in the MFA graduate program in Physical Theater at the Accademia Dell’Arte in Arezzo, Italy. After graduating in May 2014, she returned to Los Angeles for performances as the Lady’s Maid in the LA Opera production of Lucia di Lammermoor, a Soldier in a new multimedia opera, The Wall: A Musical Misdeed, based on the short story by Jean-Paul Sartre, composed by John M. Kennedy and directed by Tanya Kane-Parry, and most recently as Cassie in Josefina Lopez’s Piñata Dreams at Casa0101. Additionally, Sophie was the Assistant Director of the abridged version of Don Giovanni directed by Tanya Kane-Parry with the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra. And during this past year Sophie has taught the undergraduate Viewpoints course and undergraduate Voice for Actors courses at CSULA, a Commedia Dell’Arte workshop at A Noise Within theatre company and a beginning dance class at Plaza De La Raza. Prior performances with Opera Del Espacio include: Meet Me @ Metro produced by the Watts Village Theater Company, multiple site-specific performances at the Downtown Artwalk, Echo Park Artwalk and Frogtown Artwalk, and the Series at the Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Melanie Keller (B.A. Drama University of Washington) began her theatre and dance training in Washington D.C. performing with her high school dance troupe at the deaf Gallaudet University. Melanie also studied theatre, dance and fashion at Cal State LA. Credits include Endgame (Clov) at CSULA, The Dining Room (North End Players, Portland), Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All For You (SETheatre), Bee Stings and Ding-a-lings (NoHo Actors Studio) and F*ck Me Love Me Leave Me. She is a member of the adventure rock band P L a N E T S and recently wrapped filming the web series “Flat.” www.melaniereese.weebly.com
Tanya Kane-Parry directs and choreographs theatre, opera and dance and is the Artistic Director and co-founder of Opera del Espacio. Credits include Tosca Jumps!, a multimedia adaptation of Puccini’s opera (EdgeFest/LATC, Highways, Luckman Intimate); Supreme Being by Richard Foreman; Romeo and/y Juliet(a), a Spanglish Re-Mix with Quantum Theatre, and a touring production of Ubu Roi in Brazil. She has directed Carmen (Pacific Repertory Opera), The Coronation of Poppea (CSULA) and The Medium (CSULA). an extracted semi-staged productions of Don Giovanni and The Barber of Seville with the Bakersfield Symphony, the avant-garde multimedia opera The Wall: A Musical Misdeed, (CSULA) a semi-staged production of Phillip Glass’s Civil Wars with the LA Phil, and La Traviata with Angels Vocal Art. At Long Beach Opera she choreographed The Man from Atlantis, The Clever One and Moscow, Cherry Town. At Los Angeles Opera she was the Assistant Director on Madama Butterfly, The Barber of Seville, Carmen, The Broken Jug, The Dwarf and The Merry Widow. With Barcelona director, Joan Font, she was the Associate Director on The Barber of Seville (Houston Grand Opera Theatre, L’Opera National de Bordeaux, Gran Teatro de Liceu, Canadian Opera Company), L’Italiana in Algers (Houston Grand Opera) and Cinderella (LA Opera, Opera Omaha, Washington National Opera). With Opera del Espacio she directed/choreographed I’ve Fallen/Clap Off! at Highways Performance Space; The Way Of Water by Caridad Svich at Cal State LA, Bootleg Theatre, Cal Poly Pomona, Hollywood Fringe and South Coast Rep’s SCRamble; Meet Me @ Metro II and III ; Space: The Final Frontier presented at SOSE as part of the Company Creation Festival; Private in Public for the SoCal Dance Invitational Concert and the World Dance Alliance-Americas in Honolulu; multiple site-specific performances at the desert ruins at Llano del Rio, Downtown Art Walk, Brewery Art Walk, Echo Park Art Walk, The Series at the Standard and more. Upcoming this October 2015 is a full-evening dance concert at Highways Performance Space, followed by the Savitri and River of Light with Festival Opera in November, and the News by Jacob TV with Long Beach Opera in June 2016. Tanya is a professor at Cal State LA, where she teaches acting, dance, Viewpoints and Experimental Performance.
Marcelo Olivas (B.A. Theatre Arts and Dance, CSULA). A native of East Los Angeles credits include: Hamlet as Hamlet at East Los Angeles Performing Arts Center, El Verde at Casa 0101 in Boyle Heights and TeAda in Santa Monica, Fallujah at The Lex Theatre, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All The Met Theatre in Hollywood, and puppeteer in Too Many Tamales at The Bilingual Arts Foundation. Additionally, he was lighting designer for Pinter’s The Lover at The Luckman Intimate and co-wrote and co-directed a traveling show for children and pre-teens entitled The School of Hard Knox.
Alicia Tycer is a member of Opera Del Espacio and has worked with them on The Way of Water and Meet me @ Metro. She wrote Space: The Final Frontier in collaboration with the company, which was produced as part of Son of Semele’s Company Creation Festival and South Coast Repertory’s SCRamble. Her adaptation Lysistrata: Re-Imagining was produced by The Unknown Artists at the Grove Theatre Center. Her play The Civil War: A Tragi-Comedy was selected for the John Lion New Plays Festival, Dreaming of Women was included in Moving Arts’ Mosaic Wonderland Project, and she collaborated with the Circle Squared Collective on Embers. Most recently, her play H.U.A.C. was included in The Paul Robeson Theatre Festival at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Her acting credits include performing with Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Project in Last Summer at Bluefish Cove at the Stella Adler Theatre, in TransMe at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, in The Laramie Project at CAP Studio Theatre, and The Vagina Monologues at Ensemble Studio Theatre. She is currently working on an adaptation of Hedda Gabler and will be performing in Camino Real at the Luckman Theatre. Alicia teaches in the Music, Theatre, and Dance department at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA). She received her Ph.D in Drama and Theatre from University of California, Irvine focusing on contemporary British women playwrights. She has her M.F.A. from CSULA in Television, Film, and Theatre with options in Dramatic Writing and Performance. Publications include Continuum Modern Theatre Guide: Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and an article on Sarah Kane’s work for Theatre Journal.
Jonathan C. K. Williams While a student at CSULA, he was introduced to ensemble-based, experimental, physical theater while studying with Tanya Kane-Parry. He had the honor of studying the Viewpoints with originator, Mary Overlie, and then SITI company director, Anne Bogart, as well as SITI members Barney O’Hanlon and Will Bond (aka Bondo), as part of the CSU Summer Arts Viewpoints Intensive (Fresno) coordinated by Tanya Kane-Parry (2004). He earned his membership into Actors’ Equity for his role as Amado in Eyes for Consuela, directed by Stephen Rothman, at CSULA. Also while at CSULA, he performed in Tanya’ Kane-Parry’s production of Susan-Lori Parks’ The America Play. He later performed in Tanya’s movement-based multimedia adaptation, Tosca Jumps!, which premiered at EdgeFest, and was remounted at Highways Performance Space and the Luckman Intimate. Since his time at CSULA he has done intensive training with LA’s Diavolo Dance Theater, and became a member of the Son of Semele Ensemble, performing in their productions of The Mysteries, Iphigenia (A rave fable), Tragedy: a tragedy, Wallowa, and a Center Theatre Group workshop production of Fencerow to Fencerow. He Currently works at the LA Natural History Museum/La Brea Tar Pits inside a full-suit animatronic saber-tooth cat puppet built by the Jim Henson Creature Shop. He was featured in said puppet in the April 2013 issue of National Geographic. His puppeteer skills have also been seen at Disney’s California Adventure appearing as Iago in the Aladdin Musical Spectacular. Other puppeteer credits include promos for Assassins Creed III, The Dark Knight Rises, Pain & Gain, and Don John featured on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. As an actor his credits include commercials for MTV, Yahoo!, Umami Burger, Embraer Private Jets, and perhaps most recognizably for GameFly. His most recent television appearance was Fatal Encounters on iDiscovery. Recent stage appearances include The Night Fairy at South Coast Rep, the premiere of the avant garde opera The Wall (a musical misdeed), and was a puppeteer in Clouded Sulphur: as part of RedCat’s Radar LA Festival and at Automata in Concrete Folk. A long time member of Opera del Espacio, productions include I’ve Fallen/Clap Off! at Highways Performance Space; The Way Of Water by Caridad Svich at Cal State LA, Bootleg Theatre, Cal Poly Pomona, Hollywood Fringe 2012 and South Coast Rep’s SCRamble, May 2013; Meet Me @ Metro II and III (2011 & 2012 – director) produced by Watts Village Theatre Company; Space: The Final Frontier presented at SOSE as part of the Company Creation Festival 2013; multiple site-specific performances at the Downtown Art Walk, Brewery Art Walk, Echo Park Art Walk, The Series at the Standard and more. Occasionally he also uses his 10+ years of experience in Viewpoints to teach others in small workshops. http://resumes.actorsaccess.com/jonathanckwilliams
COLLABORATORS
Marc Devine is a performer, director, and film editor. He currently performs with Opera del Espacio and Teatro de Facto, a physically driven theater company, under the artistic direction of Zach Helm. Recently, Marc was the Assistant Editor on Ken Roht’s feature film The Bloody Indulgent, a vampire musical, and co-directed Roht’s one-act opera Permissible Union for the prestigious 2010 COLA Awards Show. Marc is the voice for the Literal Systems’ audiobook production of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Around Los Angeles he has performed with ARTEL, The Bootleg Theater, needtheater, Vox Humana, Fierce Backbone, Ken Roht’s Orphean Circus, Opera del Espcacio and Teatro de Facto. Marc recieved his BFA in Acting from theCollege of Santa Fe, and studied in London at Ithaca College’s London Center.
Christina Estrada: (B.A. Theatre Arts and Dance, CSULA) Christina is an actor and an artist. In addition to her studies at CSULA, she has also trained with Mark Majarian at Cypress College and The Groundlings. Credits include Red Noses, Evita, the ensemble-created F*ck Me, Love Me, Leave Me and How ‘Bout Now? With Opera del Espacio, she appeared in the touring performances of The Way of Water, in the site specific performances on the Metro Gold Line as part of Meet Me @ Metro III, and as Kick-Ass Carmen and the Barberess of Seville for the company’s two bouts in the LA Ladies Arm Wrestling competition held at Bootleg Theatre.
Daphne Gabriel is an actor and singer based in Los Angeles, CA. She received her actor training at California State University, Los Angeles and studied the Meisner Technique at the Joanne Baron/D.W. Brown Studio in Santa Monica, CA. Her credits include: Stage Door (2010) at The Open Fist Theatre Company, the ensemble driven Fuck Me, Love Me, Leave Me (2010), , (2010) and THE SERIES: A. BUILDINGTHE SERIES: IN TRANSIT (2010), and The Making of an American Girl (2011) . She currently performs with Opera del Espacio and was recently accepted into The Actors’ Gang.
M. Gimenez is a Los Angeles based noise maker and video artist who has coordinated the sonic aspects of Opera Del Espacio performances from the beginning. His work has been heard at such diverse venues as REDCAT, Son of Semele, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Los Angeles Opera, and the Los Angeles Metro system. He holds degrees from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and the California Institute of the Arts, and was named “A Young Designer to Watch” by Live Design Magazine. Martin is currently working on Cirque de Soleil’s Irisin Los Angeles.
Amanda Gomez (B.A. Theatre Arts and Dance, CSULA). Credits include Tony Planas’ adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, the children’s puppetry play The Cloud Gatherer by Jose Cruz Gonzales, and F*ck Me, Love Me, Leave Me, directed by Ben Caron. She is currently studying voice with Anne Gresham and pursuing a career in TV and Film. With Opera del Espacio she appeared in the touring performances of The Way of Water and as part of the Entourages for the company’s two bouts in the LA Ladies Arm Wrestling competition held at Bootleg Theatre.
Natasha Snow Needles, (B.A. Theatre Arts and Dance, CSULA), RYT-200. Natasha began dancing as a child in Idaho, which was the catalyst for performing and dancing in many competitions and studying with various companies such as Silver Slippers Dance Academy, High PerFormance, American Ballet Theatre, In Dance We Trust, The Devilittes Dance Team and I Love Dance Academy. As well as teaching dance and Pilates, she began studying yoga. After receiving her certification with Yoga Alliance in Hatha, Power, Vinyasa, Sculpt and Barre she is now on staff on various studios across the California. Performance credits include: Curtain, Cliff Lake, and the web series 321.net. Natasha is also a member of the performance band, PLaNETS as the choreographer, musician, singer, dancer and shadow puppet creator.
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