Sheila Berotti first trained with Theatre of Yugen in 1998. She learned the role of Master in Busu (Sweet Poison) and was koken for the 1999 production of Sisa in Project Artuad Theater. After some time doing other things (mostly yoga classes and original comedy skits called "Shandyland"), she reconnected with the company and resumed her training. She has appeared in Theatre of Yugen's origional adaptations of Futari Bakama (Two in One Hakama), Old Man and the Sea, Don Q, and was a core actor in 2007's all-day theatre event The Cycle Plays. She played the title role in Candide, or Optimism, and was in the recent Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Commission and Presentation of Dogsbody. A graduate of Bard College, Sheila is a certified yoga instructor and has been a teaching associate of Pretzel's Yoga for over a decade. She brings her experience to the stage and the classroom abd endeavors to make the ofter austere traditions of Noh and Kyogen interesting for todays audiences.

You can also find Sheila at Pretzel's Yoga and Pilates where she attends and instructs classes. Go to www.pretzelsyoga.com for class schedule information.

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Julie Brown was born in Hawaii, but calls Kobe, Japan her home town. She has attended school in the US, Thailand and Japan, and currently is a student at California State University East Bay, studying Theatre and Dance. She has performed in Scapin, the Cheat at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with the Theatre Department's international touring company, Aces Wild. She has studied Kyogen and Noh with Jubilith Moore, Yuriko Doi and Noh master Fujii Masayuki.

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photo: Martin Cohen

YURIKO DOI
Founder & Artistic Associate

Yuriko Doi was born in Tokyo and introduced to the Japanese traditional theater of Noh and Kyogen at an early age. She earned M.A.s in Drama from Waseda University in Tokyo and San Francisco State University, and has studied with the most esteemed masters of Kyogen and Noh: Mansaku Nomura and Shiro Nomura in Japan. She founded Theatre of Yugen in San Francisco in 1978 where she served as its artistic director, teacher and producer of classical, contemporary and original fusion works of Japanese theater. Ms. Doi was a recipient of the CAC individual artist in residency, the NEA Folk Arts Fellowship, the NEA Expansion Arts, the Peninsula Foundation Grant for Individual Artist, and the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Outstanding Achievement Award in Direction of Kokoro/True Heart, 1994.

Yuriko Doi has directed more than forty plays including: Kyogen comedies in English such as Tied to a Pole, The Persimmon Priest and Sweet Poison, the Noh play in English Sotoba Komachi,and the modern Noh plays Drifting Fires in 1993 (Janine Beichman) and Down the Dark Well in 1996 (Dr. Tomio Tada). Japanese contemporary plays include Shogo Ohta's Komachi Fuden (1986), Junji Kinoshita's Twilight Crane (1981), Shuji Terayama's Inugami (The Dog God)(1991), and Minoru Betsuyaku's Elephant (1995). Western plays using Japanese traditional theater technique and aesthetics include Sophocles' Antigone, Carol Sorgenfrei's Medea: A Noh Cycle Based on the Greek Myth, William Yeats' Purgatory (SF and National Tour, 1999), Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1984), Noh Christmas Carol (1993-7), and Masakatsu Gunji's Salome (Sarame Kyu Kyu No Dan) (1994) with Kabuki expert and director from Japan's National Theater, Masakatsu Gunji, and starring Kabuki actor, Kyozo Nakamura. In 1994 she also directed a premiere of Velina Hasu Houston's Kokoro/True Heart at Yugen's Noh Space as well as at the NYC Japan Society. As a guest director she has worked with TheatreWorks on Tea by Velina Hasu Houston in 1990, Fay and Michael Kanin's Rashomon in 1991, and as guest choreographer of W. Colin McKay's Nagasaki Dust (1994). In 1996 she joined the production of The Gate of Heaven by Lane Nishikawa and Victor Talmadge as a movement director at Old Globe Theatre, San Diego, CA., Annenberg Theatre in Philadelphia and Ford Theatre in Washington D.C. and A R Gurney's Far East (2001). Ms. Doi served as a consultant choreographer and Associate Director for TheatreWorks' Pacific Overtures (Menlo Park, CA).

In recent years Ms. Doi has developed her signature work involving the examination of blending other cultures with Japanese traditional theater styles. In 1997, she directed a most ambitious Kabuki-Flamenco collaboration of Carol Sorgenfrei's Blood Wine, Blood Wedding featuring La Tania, Jesus Montoya, Chuscales Valce, Kyozo Nakamura and Yumiko Tanaka from Tokyo. In 1999 she co-directed Amelia Lapena Bonifacio's "FilipiNoh", Sisa with Chris Milado. She has worked with playwright Erik Ehn in creating new works in contemporary Noh and Kyogen fusion style, such as the Kyogen play Bright and Gifted (companion piece to the FilipiNoh Sisa) and in an Asian adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream presented at Mills College. In 1999 she taught at Colorado College where she directed Erik Ehn's Moon of the Scarlet Plums which then was developed into Crazy Horse, and performed at San Francisco's Japantown Peace Plaza (September 2001) as part of the 50th anniversary of the signing of the US-Japan Peace Treaty. In 2005 this production was re-staged again as The Moon of the Scarlet Plums and toured to Japan (Theatre X in Tokyo, World Expo of Aichi) and the US (Eliote, ME, Diego Rivera Theatre, SF and the World Festical of Sacred Music.)

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ERIK EHN
Artistic Associate

Since 1996 Erik Ehn has been collaborating on theatrical productions with Theatre of Yugen, first in revising a literal translation of a contemporary Noh play, Mumyo no I / Down the Dark Well, then with an adaptation of Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere. where Noh style was braided with Philippine material which was paired with an original Kyogen-style comedy, Bright and Gifted. In 2001 he worked closely with Doi and Noh composer Richard Emmert on a Noh piece honoring Crazy Horse, a fusion that blends Noh with Native American dance, singing, flute playing, and drumming. In 2003 he adapted and directed Frankenstein, which was restaged at Project Artaud in 2004.

Books include Beginner (Sun and Moon) and The Saint Plays (PAJ/Jophns Hopkins). Other plays include Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling, No Time Like the Present, Wolf at the Door, Tailings, Ideas of Good and Evil, and an adaptation of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. These have been produced in San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, New York, San Diego, Dallas, Chicago and elsewhere.

He is co-founder and co-artistic director of the Tenderloin Opera Company, San Francisco (with Lisa Bielawa). He is a graduate of and member of New Dramatists. He has also worked as an actor and a director, often working collaboratively with collectives of writers, with choreographers, and with musicians. He has taught at University of Iowa, Santa Clara University, CA, Colorado College, Emerson, University of San Francisco, Cal Arts in Los Angeles and Princeton. He has directed at the Annex in Seattle and Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco.

Erik is currently Director of Playwriting at Brown University.

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RYAN MARCHAND
Junior Company Member

JUBILITH MOORE
Artistic Director

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Originally from Cleveland, Stephen first became interested in acting at a young age and pursued performance through high school during which time he received a number of scholarships to study acting at the Cleveland Playhouse. In 1997 Stephen returned to the performance arena and began studying acting again at City College of San Francisco and Studio ACT. Physical acting has always interested Stephen and while taking a Commedia Dell'Arte class he was introduced to Theatre of Yugen through a friend and immediately fell in love with the Noh and Kyogen forms. His first role was Taro-kaja in Noh Xmas Carol '99. He has also accompanied the ensemble on a number of short tours and recently performed in the opening ritual of last summer’s all-day theatre event The Cycle Plays. In January 2003 he premiered his solo piece RunEscapeEmbrace at Yugen Presents.

Stephen has been the resident light designer for Theatre of Yugen since 2002: The Clay Play; Norton, I; Frankenstein (for which he won a BACC award); The Old Man and The Sea and Don Q . Stephen has also designed for The 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors, Asian American Theatre Company, Amy Hill, Takami Craddock, Hiroko Tamano, Pauline oliveros, Strangefruit, Eri Majima, Ashpool and many other talented performers from the Bay area and beyond.

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Since 2002 Lluis has worked collectively with the artistic team to create the original experimental pieces The Clay Play (2002), Norton, I (2003), The Old Man and The Sea (2005), Frankenstein (as the Doctor in 2003, as the creature in 2004), toured to Japan in Moon of the Scarlet Plums (2005), adapted Don Q (2006) and was a core actor in last summer’s all-day theatre event The Cycle Plays (07/07/07).

Lluis' other notable roles include: Agamemnon in Clytemnestra by Tadashi Suzuki, Banquo in Shogun MacBeth, Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Yerba Buena Gardens, and Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet with SF Shakespeare Festival. Lluis has also directed Purgatory by Yeats, The Great American Cheese Sandwich by Burton Cohen, as well as directed, produced and performed in The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria by Fernando Arrabaal with his own company, Anhinga Productions.

In his spare time Lluis studyies languages, guitar and contemporary and classical Catalan theatre. His translations include Dotze Treballs by Lluisa Cunille, and Estrips by Toni Cabre.

Lluis oversees finances and technology for Theatre of Yugen and is the webmaster for this site.

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Max
Ensemble Member

Max creates puppets and environments using materials as varied as fire, cloth, metal, papier-mache and plastic. She has worked as a puppeteer for Brooklyn's Art at St. Anne's and performed as a shadow puppeteer for the New Conservatory Theater. Original puppet productions in San Francisco include Killing Mom, Hop, Sweet Meat and The Sand Child, a solo shadow show. With Theatre of Yugen she has designed the set and props as well as performed as the guest puppetry artist in Theatre of Yugen's production of Frankenstein (for which she was nominated for a BACC award) and designed and manipulated puppets for The Old Man and The Sea, designed the set and props for Don Q, and was a core actor in The Cycle Plays.

Max also works as a lighting designer and stilt walker.

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JOHN OGLEVEE is an actor/performer/musician currently based in Tokyo. He has been studying, performing and teaching noh since 1996 under the tutelage of Richard Emmert, Omura Sadamu, Kama Mitsuo and Akira Matsui. He has been the Managing Director of Theatre Nohgaku since it’s inception in 2003. He holds an MFA from the University of Hawai’i with a focus in Asian performance and a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in drama. Apart from noh, he has performed extensively, as an actor in Europe, North America and Asia with a variety of companies. These include: Richard Foreman’s Ontological Hysteric, Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet, Min Tanaka’s Maijuku and GAle GAtes et al, of which he was a founding member. As a member of Yoji Sakate’s Rinkogun in Tokyo he has had the pleasure of performing in productions of Joen Sarenakatta “Sannin Shimai”, as well as originating his role in the award winning Darumasan ga Koronda. Both pieces toured extensively in Japan.

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Suki O'Kane is a classically trained mallet percussionist, a media ecologist, and a composer working with artists from an encyclopedic range of musical genres.  One of the founding members of the lo-fi sampling ensemble The Noodles (with Michael Zelner), plays percussion with Moe! Staiano's Moe!kestra! and Dan Plonsey's Daniel Popsicle, and has performed live and recorded with She Mob and the side projects of its co-founder Sue Hutchinson: mad folk duo Junior Showmanship and its alter-ego speed metal Winner's Bitch. She has performed in realizations of Jon Brumit's Vendetta Retreat, and with Lucio Menegon in his Split Lip, Strangelet and Soundtrack Instumentals projects. Her long-running conversation about intermedia with Sarah Lockhart is occasionally expressed in drumkit duo and percussion trio performances of SL Morse.

She works in partnership with House of Zoka, a live recording project that has documented over 13 years of creative new music in the Bay Area, and since 2003 has been curating performances of live music and film, such as The Illuminated Corridor, a nomadic public art project that creates streetscapes of live experimental music and performative projection and Music by the Eyeful, the indoor performance series exploring the work of intermedia artists. She has collaborated with Neighborhood Public Radio to present NOVA, a culminating event of NPR's exhibition American Life at the 2008 Whitney Biennial, and with the the Overdub Club,  an ensemble made of performative filmmakers Alfonso Alvarez, Thad Povey, and musician Lucio Menegon.

Suki is currently composing with a collaboration of artists led by Shinichi Ioga-Kova and Dohee Lee to develop the new performance work The Line Between (2011). Her work in theater includes two commissions for Theatre of Yugen: Frankenstein (2003) and The Cycle Plays (2007) in collaboration with Allen Whitman and a community of Bay Area musicians and composers.

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Mei Ann Teo is a Singaporean theatre/film maker working internationally and based in the Bay Area. She serves as the Resident Artist at Pacific Union College where she helms a drama program concentrated on creating provocative original work through collage and documentary theatre techniques. She has worked with Theatre of Yugen, Crowded Fire, Cutting Ball, Berkeley Rep, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and in New York at Urban Stages and The Public Theater. She lectures at major academic conferences nationwide and her short film has screened at international film festivals. Her work has been supported by TBA CA$H Grants, the Center for Cultural Innovation, and the Singapore Film Commission.

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Edward Schocker is a composer who creates music with made/found materials and alternate tuning systems. Using an assortment of unorthodox materials for which to create sound, Edward has developed a large set of glass vessels of various sizes and shapes as his primary musical instrument. Blending experimental sounds with East Asian traditional systems. Edward has also studied Gagaku (Japanese court music) and plays Hichiriki and Sho.

Edward is co-founder of Thingamajigs and is currently a 2010 Headlands Artist in Residency.

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Allen Whitman has performed, recorded, produced, licensed and written music for over thirty years, touring Japan, Sweden, most of the lower 48 U.S. states, Alaska and Canada. He has worked in a wide variety of musical forms and with a wide variety of musicians including Helios Creed, Tiny Tim, The Inkspots and The Sandals. He produced the Million-Mom March benefit CD featuring Emmylou Harris, Ani DiFranco, Melissa Etheridge, Shawn Colvin, and others. He is a founding member of the San Francisco cult psychedelic surf band The Mermen. He has worked with playwright Erik Ehn on productions in both San Francisco and New York. He is co-creator of the instrumental dancehall CD "biL" and executive producer of "The Unfinished Tattoo," a spoken word CD of the life and times of Leon "Whitey" Thompson, ex-bank robber and former Alcatraz prisoner. He has released numerous other albums and performs sporadically around the San Francisco area with The Mermen & others. He was nominated along with co-composer Suki O’Kane by Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards (2004) for Best Original Score and Best Sound Design for their work with Theatre of Yugen’s Frankenstein. Allen was co-Lead Composer with Suki O'Kane for The Cycle Plays.

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KEDAR LAWRENCE
NOHspace Technical Director

LISA WENTZ
Projects Manager

Lisa joined Theatre of Yugen as a Projects Manager in March of 2009. Since then she has worked on projects including educational outreach, concurrent events for the world premier of Dogsbody, and publicity and management of Mr. Yoo Who's Holiday! Lisa holds a Master's degree in Voice Studies from the Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. She is also an AmSAT Certified Alexander Technique Teacher.

Lisa Wentz is primarily a teacher of voice and speech. Lisa holds a Master's degree in Voice Studies from the Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. She is also an AmSAT Certified Alexander Technique Teacher. She has worked at American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and several conservatories in London, including East 15 Acting School, Rose Bruford College, and the Performers College of Essex. Lisa is the only teacher in California with both a Master’s Degree in Voice Studies and teaching certification in the Alexander Technique. She has given seminars at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference, the Alexander Technique Educational Center, and the American Society for the Alexander Technique Teachers' conference in June 2009. Lisa joined Theatre of Yugen as a Projects Manager in March of 2009.

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