LLUIS VALLS acts, directs, and writes for the theatre. He has studied Noh with Richard Emmert, Akira Matsui, and Kinue Oshima (Kita school), Kyogen with Yukio Ishida and Yuriko Doi (Izumi school), and Kotsuzumi Noh drum with Mitsuo Kama (Ko school), as well as training in butoh, Suzuki method, and clowning. A graduate of SFSU, Mr. Valls has been a disciple of founder Yuriko Doi since 1993 and served as Theatre of Yugen’s Joint Artistic Director with Jubilith Moore and Libby Zilber from 2002 - 2008. He has worked on dozens of productions at Theatre of Yugen, including Blood Wine, Blood Wedding, (1997), Norton, I (2003), Frankenstein (2003, 2004), The Old Man and The Sea (2005), Moon of the Scarlet Plums (2003, Japan 2005), The Cycle Plays (07/07/07), Mystical Abyss (2012, Denver 2015), Erik Ehn’s Cordelia (2011, NY's La MAMA 2012), Emmett Till, a river (2013), This Lingering Life (2014), and The Red Demon (2016).

FENNER is a multi-disciplinary artist who enjoys working in ensemble theater. They have appeared on stage with Theatre of Yugen in Power Plays (2018), and as Master of the House in Busu, and with Ragged Wing Ensemble, Naked Empire Bouffon and Marzipanik theater co. Other artistic achievements include pedaling a play across the United States with Agile Rascal bicycle Touring Theater and producing/directing Picasso’s fever dream play Desire Caught by the Tail.

KATE PATRICK, currently based in San Francisco, started training with Theatre of Yugen in February 2019. Here she has appeared as both the Older Brother and Younger Brother in Fukuro Yamabushi, the Yamabushi in Kagyu, as well as the Ghost of Jacob Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Present in A Noh Christmas Carol. Previous experience in traditional Japanese theater includes her role as the second Yamabushi in University of Hawai’i, Mānoa’s 2016 production of a new kyogen play, Futari Yamabushi, and a 2017-18 Fulbright Research Grant to study traditional ji-kabuki costumes and practices under Sachie Oguri at the Museum Nakasendou and Aioi-za Theater in Mizunami, Japan. While there she performed in two kabuki classics, Sodehagi Saimon as Hachiman Taro Yoshiie, and Fuji Musume. Kate has an MFA in Costume Design from University of Hawai’i, Mānoa.

EDITH REISNER NEWTON is a writer based in San Francisco. She is the author of In a Memory Palace, the In a Memory Palace blog, the On the Bridgeway blog, and a novel entitled Still Shots of a Bird in Flight. Her first exposure to Noh was reading The Only Jealousy of Emer, a Noh-inspired play by William Butler Yeats, while a student at UC Berkeley in the mid 1970s. That experience led to a lifelong interest in Noh and in Classical Japanese literature more generally. Edith has studied Noh utai (singing) with Masayuki Fujii and David Crandall. She studies kana calligraphy, the style of brush writing used by women of the Japanese Heian period, with Sakiko Yanagisawa. Edith is the daughter of immigrants who fled Vienna after the “Anchluss,” the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938.

KEVIN SALFEN is Associate Professor of Music at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. He took his first two degrees in composition and his Ph.D. in musicology at the University of North Texas, and his research on Benjamin Britten has appeared in multiple academic journals and essay collections. Kevin is compelled by “public musicology.” He has written a music appreciation textbook, Pathways to Music (Kendall Hunt), is a frequent program note annotator, and has given many public lectures on a range of musical topics for the San Antonio and Dallas Opera, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Nasher Sculpture Center’s chamber music series, the San Antonio International Piano Competition’s Piano Series, and the McNay Art Museum’s public programming. Kevin’s formal study of noh began in 2008 through the Noh Training Project, and he became a member of Theatre Nohgaku in 2011. He has played nohkan for performances of Funa Benkei and Sumida River, has played the wakitsure in Atsumori, the tsure in the Boston premiere of Carrie Preston and David Crandall’s Zahdi Dates and Poppies, has sung in the chorus for Atsumori, Funa Benkei, Hagoromo, Blue Moon over Memphis, and Zahdi Dates and Poppies, and was music director for Elizabeth Dowd and David Crandall’s Gettysburg. An active composer, Kevin’s music has been performed in Japan, England, China, and throughout the U.S. He wrote the music for Elise Forier-Edie’s noh-influenced Icarus (2012), which was selected for performance at the 2013 Region VII Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. He also composed the music for 2015 Texas Poet Laureate Carmen Tafolla’s Song of the Yanaguana River (2015), part of the major outreach-performance project Where Rivers Meet, for which Kevin also acted as executive producer. His intercultural work Phoenix Fire received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Japan 21st-Century Exposition Fund.

DAVID CRANDALL holds degrees in Japanese and music composition from University of Michigan and completed postgraduate work at Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music. He began studying noh chant and dance in 1979 and in 1986 he was admitted as an apprentice at the Hosho Noh Theater in Tokyo, studying with the current head of the Hosho school, Hosho Fusateru, and working on a professional level until 1991. While working as a noh performer and workshop lecturer, Mr. Crandall has also been active as a composer and playwright, with works that include instrumental pieces (performed by the Tokyo Quintet and others), noh-inspired dance dramas (Crazy Jane and The Linden Tree), film scores (Nighters and Crime and Passion), and, most recently, children’s musicals (Johnny the King and The Merchant of Cheat Street). He is a founding member of Theatre Nohgaku, and participated in its first national performance tour (presenting Yeats’ At the Hawk’s Well in eight US cities) in September 2002. 

HIDETA KITAZAWA (Mask Carver) following his father’s footstep, is a second generation woodcarving artist. In 1991 after graduating from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology with a major in Forest Management, he began intensive woodcarving studies with his father Ikkyou Kitazawa. He has received a number of awards including the Outstanding Youth Artisan Award for Tokyo 1997 and the Yokohama Noh Drama Hall Director’s Prize in 2003. He has exhibited his works both nationally and internationally and his carvings of Shinto floats and o-mikoshi are in current use throughout Japan’s Kanto area. His masks are also used extensively by a number of noh and kyogen professionals. Theatre Nohgaku commissioned him for the masks in use for the productions of Pine Barrens, Crazy Jane, Pagoda, Atsumori, Phoenix Fire, In a Memory Palace, and Blue Moon Over Memphis.

JUBILITH MOORE is a performer, director, teaching artist and producer for the theatre who has devoted her professional life to exploring the ongoing life of traditional Japanese and contemporary American theatre. She studied noh with Richard Emmert, Akira Matsui and Kinue Oshima, kyogen with Yukio Ishida and Yuriko Doi. She is a Founding Company Member of Theatre Nohgaku and was Artistic Director of Theatre of Yugen from 2001 to 2014. World premiere directorial credits include Chiori Miyagawa’s THIS LINGERING LIFE, Judy Halebsky’s, THE WEAVER AND THE DRESS, and Carrie Preston’s ZADHI DATES AND POPPIES. Noteworthy roles include Elvis in Deborah Brevoort’s BLUE MOON OVER MEMPHIS and the Traveller in Jannette Cheong’s PAGODA and BETWEEN THE STONES. She is the recipient of a Japan Foundation Fellowship, TBA’s CA$H and CA$H | Create awards, TCG’s Future Collaborations and Leadership U[niversity] grants and the Investing in Artists grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation.

BRETT CARSON is a composer, pianist, improviser, poet, and occasional theater artist based in Oakland, CA. As a pianist and keyboardist, he has performed internationally in the realms of free improvisation, new music, jazz, and rock. He has worked with a wide variety of musicians including Bill Baird, Brian Baumbusch, Nicolas Collins, Vinny Golia, George Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Roscoe Mitchell, Bill Noertker, Zeena Parkins, Rent Romus, and William Winant. From 2019-20, he performed as the pianist for the legendary jazz unit the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Notable compositional projects include his song cycle “Mysterious Descent”, a one-act play “Mary's Dilemma, or That Sinking Feeling”, and an experimental chamber opera “Just Visiting (X-Ray Vision)”. His latest song cycle, “The Secret Life of the Paramecium”, premiered in the Bay Area as part of the Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency to sold out audiences in September 2022. 

NICK ISHIMARU has served as the Artistic Director at Theatre of Yugen between 2016 and 2019. His work explores a combination of Western and traditional Asian performance techniques for original creations, along with work in conventional musical theatre and Shakespeare. He has trained in noh and kyōgen with Theatre of Yugen for over seven years. Ishimaru has also studied kabuki, jingju (Beijing Opera), and nihon buyo (traditional Japanese dance). He received a BA in Performing Arts from Colorado State University (2005), where he directed a kabuki adaptation of Macbeth, and a Masters in Drama from San Francisco State University (2009). During his time as Artistic Director of Theatre of Yugen, he has directed several productions including The Red Demon (2016), A Noh Christmas Carol (2017, 2018, 2019), and Seen/By Everyone (2018). Ishimaru has appeared in numerous performances with Theatre of Yugen, both in San Francisco around the world, including Minor Cycle (2012), This Lingering Life (2014) and Mystical Abyss (Denver 2015), Yugen in Action (Iquique, Chile, 2019) and a plethora of kyōgen performances. He was most recently on stage in Puppets & Poe and Yugen-no-Kai: Aki.

ALEXANDRA JERINIC, mezzo soprano, is active in both the U.S. and Europe performing opera and concert repertoire. Her most recent Bay Area performance was as Lucia in Opera on Tap San Francisco’s production of Cavalleria Rusticana at Dance Mission Theater. Other significant role credits include Adalgisa (Norma), Mother (Amahl and the Night Visitors), Fanny Price (Mansfield Park, U.S. premiere, orchestrated version), Suzuki (Madama Butterfly), Carmen, Hansel (Hansel and Gretel), Dinah (Trouble in Tahiti), Mrs. Hale (Trifles, world premiere) and Dorabella (Cosi fan tutte). Opera company credits include Opera Modesto, California Opera, West Edge Opera, New York Lyric Opera, and Romanian Opera at Craiova. Local orchestra credits include Symphony of the Vines, Kensington Symphony Orchestra, and Redwood Symphony Orchestra. She holds and M.M. from N.D.N.U. and B.A. from Mills College. She resides in San Francisco and maintains a private voice studio in addition to performing.

RYAN MARCHAND is a Los Angeles native who moved to the Bay Area to attend San Francisco State, where he completed his BA in French with a minor in Theatre in 2008. He was a founding member of 11th Hour Ensemble and was awarded a CA$H Grant for their original adaptation and performance of Alice. Since then, he has performed, directed, and taught in the Bay Area with particular focus on new and devised works. Recently he performed in Chiori Miyagawa’s world premiere This Lingering Life with Theatre of Yugen whose work is founded in traditional Japanese theater forms; African American Shakespeare Company’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and he has performed in a range of San Francisco Theatre events including the San Francisco Theatre Festival at Yerba Buena Gardens and the Bay One Acts Festival. He served as movement director for Kat Evasco’s Mommy Queerest, which enjoyed runs in San Francisco with Guerilla Rep and in Boston with The Theatre Offensive; he directed with Playwright’s Foundation for their 2015 and 2016 Flash Plays. Most recently he worked as Program + Artistic Director of Handful Players – a free afterschool musical theater program based in the Western Addition, from 2009 to 2018. Currently Ryan is a member of Nice Tan comedy, a WOC/QPOC led sketch comedy group that pokes fun at the complexity of identity, and he works at San Francisco Opera as part of their newly formed Department of Diversity, Equity and Community.

LEANDRA RAMM (mezzo-soprano) is a remarkably versatile mezzo-soprano and actress with an “extraordinary voice” (Anderson Cooper 360), whose “beautiful and quite moving” (Nordstjernan Newspaper) performances have graced prestigious venues including San Francisco Opera, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the United Nations, Symphony Space and Davies Symphony Hall. Leandra performs regularly at San Francisco Symphony, recently as alto soloist in Bach’s Magnifict conducted by Jane Glover, and she starred in Ecstacy at SoundBox. Favorite performances include L’enfant et les Sortileges with Pacific Symphony, Anybodys in West Side Story with Opera San Jose and Cunning Little Vixen with West Edge Opera. Concert soloist engagements include Duruflé’s Requiem, Schubert’s Miriam’s Song of Triumph and Mendelssohn’s Drei Geistliche Lieder with San Francisco Choral Society and San Francisco City Chorus. She can be heard on the Albany Records cast album of San Francisco Opera Guild’s Lucinda y las Flores de la Nochebuena. www.LeandraRamm.com Social Media: @LeandraRamm

MONICA SCOTT has performed throughout the United States, European, Argentina, Canada and South Korea, engaging audiences with her energetic, eloquent playing. Monica has been a member of the composer/improviser collective sfSound since 2000, and has also performed with Composers’ Inc., the Composers Alliance, and in countless chamber groups; she was the cellist of the award-winning San Francisco-based Del Sol String Quartet from 2001-2005. In 2006 Monica formed the cello-piano duo martha & monica  with pianist Hadley McCarroll. They perform and record ambitious programs of masterworks and challenging contemporary repertoire. In 2019 Monica appeared with the Dresher Ensemble in Žibuoklė Martinaitytė’s In Search of Lost Beauty. Besides performing, Monica is a composer – notably as a member of LIGHTFAST, a collaborative quartet with two visual artists, a writer and herself as performer, improvisor and sound sculptor. She also has a very active private cello studio in Oakland. Monica holds a Bachelor in Music from Oberlin College Conservatory and the Soloist’s Diploma from the Sweelinck Conservatorium, Amsterdam. www.monicascott.net  www.lightfast.us