Anna Brenner

The Karamazovs is dark comedy inspired by Dostoevsky’s classic novel about what we inherit from our parents, and what we chose to leave in the grave. Part murder mystery, part liberation parable, the Karamazov takes a searing look at race and class in America.

Directed by Anna Brenner

Written by Anna Brenner and Rafael Jordan

Produced by Aisha Jordan and Rafael Jordan, Village Park Productions

Cast: Rami Margron, Ross Cowan, MK Tuomanen, Rachael Richman

Cinematography by Tatiana Stolpovskaya.

Editor: Yana Biryukova

Production Design: Claire DeLiso

Composer: Jordan McCree

Post Production: Stina Hamlin, East Coast Digital

Sound Op: Braulio Lin; Hair/Makeup: Ashley Webb; Costume Design: Oana Botez; Wardrobe: Amina Jordan; Camera Assistants: Jazzy Schutt-VanMeveren, Samantha Farinella

The New Ohio Theatre, New York City, March 2020.

Created and Directed by Anna Brenner, with the ensemble: Tymberly Canale, Ross Cowan, Rachael Richman, and Mary Tuomanen. Designers: Elizabeth Atkinson, Yana Birykova, Oana Botez, Oona Curley, Tatiana Stolpovskaya and Choreography: Tymberly Canale

Part murder mystery, part spiritual quest, The Karamazovs is a new play inspired equally by Dostoevsky’s novel, and by my own siblings and our relationship while our father was dying.

It’s a story that looks backward and forward, at all the ways we try to become whole and free even as we are inextricably linked to each other.  Developed with the ensemble in a playful marriage of the experimental and the classical, through text, movement, music (and a total disregard for the arcane gender roles of the novel) we ask the vital question of how to be a good person in today’s world. 

photos by Tatiana Stolpovskaya

In This Hope: A Pericles Project is part play and part ritual. Led by an all-female/multi-cultural ensemble, the production excavates the layers of the past to reveal something completely in the present.

The story of being forced to flee a homeland, journey over the sea, discover love and experience great loss has been passed on since antiquity and still resonates to this day. With Shakespeare’s epic PERICLES as the starting point we come together, with our audiences, to uncover the power of memory and storytelling.

November 8 – December 2, 2018

Spooky Action Theatre

1810 16th Street, NW

Washington, DC 20009

Created by 

Dramaturg Hannah Hessel Ratner

Director Anna Brenner

Performers Lida Maria Benson, Rocelyn Frisco, Raghad Makhlouf, and Lori Pitts.

Designers Colin K. Bills, Pei Lee and Roc Lee.

Assistant Director and Dramaturg Jess Phillips

Artistic Consultant Isaiah Matthew Wooden

Stage Manager Emma Heck
Production Manager KayCee Tucker

This project is made possible with the support of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the 2018 Bly Creative Capacity Grant

Written and Directed by Anna Brenner

Devised with the ensemble:
Cass Collins, Nate Grams, Megan Hill, Elisa Matula, and Maria McConville

"Do one thing a day that scares you."

Dramaturgy: Jess Applebaum
Set: Blanca Anon
Sound: Matt O'Hare and Brian Wenner
Lights: Yi Zhao

the undergroundzero festival
The Living Theater, New York, July 2012

Note for Disquiet by dramaturg Jess Applebaum

by Peter GIl-Sheridan

Fordham University Mainstage, 2016

Cast: Elka Chowdhury, Kelveen Fabian, Elizabeth Kline, Sarah Lazarus, Glenn Morizio & Austin Spero

Scenic Design: Deb O
Costume Design: Danica Martino
Lighting Design: Chad McArver
Sound Design: Luqman Brown

Developed at Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and PlayPenn

Based on Robert Altman's film

Adapted and Directed by Anna Brenner

Cast: Melissa Brown, Rachael Richman, Selene Beretta, Eliza Bent, Cass Collins, Lisa Dennett, Rebecca Hirota, Maryalyn Jabour, Mike James, Natalie Kuhn, Todd Licea, Emily Madison, Elisa Matula, David Olan, Rachael Richman, and Ryan Stinnett

Set: Julia Przedmojska

Costumes: Dasha Martikainen

Lights: Eric Southern

Projections & Sound: Matt O'Hare and Pia Blumenthal

Dramaturgy: Hannah Hessel

Riverside Theatre, 2011

Photos by Carol Rosegg

Enter the American mind:  afraid, allergic, contradictory, and forever searching.

Directed by Anna Brenner
Devised with the company:
Melissa Brown, Nick Dillenburg, Gabel Eiben, Hannah Hessel (dramaturgy), Otso Huopaniemi (writer), Mike James, Rachael Richman, and Teana David

Set: Scott Dougan
Costumes: Dasha Martikainen
Lights: Bruce Steinberg

undergroundzero festival at Performance Space 122
New York, 2010

Devised with the ensemble
Directed by Anna Brenner and Jess K. Smith

Performers:  Gabriel Barron, Melissa Brown, Ross Cowan, Mike James, Yael Nachajon, Rachael Richman

Set: Julia Przedmojska
Lighting: Dante Olivia Smith
Photos by Marissa Sher

Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn
New Voices in Live Performance, curated by Ann Marie Lonsdale, 2013

by Eliza Bent
The Bushwick Starr, 2013

Six travelers, both young and ancient, spend one night in a rundown hostel in the outskirts of Rome. Speaking in direct translation from Italian into English the eccentric voyagers form a temporary community and unexpected friendships as they fail, and flail, in their attempts to communicate.  

Cast: Christine Holt, Alessandro Magania, Linda Mancini, Federico Rodriguez, Kourtney Rutherford, and Howard Thoresen

Set: Blanca Anon
Lighting: Yi Zhao
Costumes: Asta Hosteter

Produced by Regina Vorria and Sarah Rose Leonard

Dramaturgy by Sarah Rose Leonard

Photos by Yi Zhao / Blanca Anon

L Magazine's 25 best stage shows of 2013

"Stylishly directed by Anna Brenner" - Jacob Gallagher-Ross Village Voice Review

NYTimes Review

by Tennessee Williams

Theaterworks Colorado, 2012

Cast: Melissa Brown, Jane Fromme, Philip Guerette, and Ryan Reilly

Set: Julia Przedmojska
Costumes: Asta Hostetter
Lighting: Yi Zhao
Sound: Elizabeth Atkinson
Photographs by Isaiah Downing / Yi Zhao

"Almost 70 years after it premiered, The Glass Menagerie remains one of the great American plays. This powerful, moving and very human production shows why." - Todd Wallinger CS Independent

by Francis Weiss Rabkin

composer: Leslie Allison

WON’T BE A GHOST is a personal, performed essay and an experiment in documentary theater, accompanied by a live choir. Based on research into the life of St. Sebastian (“the unofficial queer saint”) and the trial of Army Intelligence Analyst/WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning, the piece examines the queer body, sacrifice, and bearing witness.

Performers: Ethan Dubin, Ryan Reilly, Francis Weiss Rabkin; Choir: Rachael Balcanoff, Arla Berman, Kate Ehrenberg, Sophie Traub, Claire Wilcox

HERE, Smith and Tinker, curated by Sarah Rose Leonard, 2013

Drama League Residency, 2014

Prelude Festival, curated by Jackie Sibblies Drury, 2014

Written by Moliere. Translated by Tony Harrison

Directed by Anna Brenner

"The more I know of him the more bizarre
it seems to me his slavish passions are.
Given the kind of star Alceste's born under,
the fact he loves at all's an earthly wonder."
- Philinte

"And that's the way that you feel
That's the way that you feel
If that's the way that you feel, honey, then
That's the way that you feel"
- The Kills

Featuring:
Matt Biagini, Michael Guagno, Fatih Genckal, Elisa Matula, Maylin Murphy, Mike James, Wil Petre, Johanna Weller-Fahy, Ross Cowan, Rachael Richman, and James Rutherford

Set:  Nicolas Benacerraf
Costumes:  Asta Bennie Hostetter
Lights:  Yi Zhao

Photos by Yi Zhao

AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER of the 2009 undergroundzero festival at PS122

by James Ryan Caldwell

1919. The next Stettheimer soiree is not-to-be-missed. Duchamp might be there, Gertrude Stein’s brother certainly will. And Florine Stettheimer is showing a brand new painting. Her famous friends can’t wait to judge.
 

Cast: Tina Mitchell, Megan Hill, Elisa Matula, Van Hansis, Elliotte Crowell Simian, Benjamin Pelteson, Christopher Hirsh, James Ryan Caldwell, Amar Srivastava, and Craig MacArthur Doležel*

Set: Peiyi Wong
Costumes: Isabelle Coler
Lighting: Victoria Bausch
Sound: M. Florian Staab
Props: Jiin Choi

Dixon Place, 2015

by Jason Pizzarello

Four estranged friends meet again on a late night subway ride through an apocalyptic New York City. Their secrets and sufferings eventually emerge in this gripping and spare play about people struggling to trust the goodness they once so easily possessed.

Developed in a workshop production at Classic Stage Company, 2013

Cast: Lily Dorment, Maria McConville, Davy Raphaely, Joel Ripka

Set: Blanca Anon
Sound: Elizabeth Atkinson
Costumes: Kristin Fiebig
Lighting: Yi Zhao

Photos by Yi Zhao

“Under the direction of Anna Brenner, this play is a brilliant and thought-provoking expedition into four human hearts torn not only from the recent events which shook the world to its deepest core, but also by simple actions that question the essence of an individual's sense of humanity. …I would say that this show is indeed important, as well as masterful and necessary for people to see.”
–Kristen Morale, BroadwayWorld.com

look away
a new play inspired by Franz Kafka
by John Douglas Weidner
directed by Anna Brenner

“I got it…I’ve finally got it this time.  No.  It is lost.  Now the world seems a mystery to me yet again.” 

Cast: Erica Abbott, Asher Bailey, Ephraim Birney, Gus Birney, Virginia Logan, Elisa Matula, Eric Murdoch, Kelly Narcum, Jonathan Riddleberger, Christopher Salazar, and Emily Young

Set: Tuffer Weidner
Projections: Hannah Wasileski
Costumes: Evan Prizant
Lights: Kevin Hardy
Dramaturgy: Lucille Cashion and Erik Grathwohl
Choreography: Erica Abbott and Kelly Narcum
Stage Manager: Sarah Helgesen 

Kafka Fest
Shapiro Theater, New York 2009

by Robert Attenweiler and Scott Henkle

OUR GREATEST YEAR is an innovative blend of live stage action and projected motion comics that follows Harvey Pruit, and his new wife, Elton, as they return to Cleveland, OH to care for his ailing father, watch another tortured year of Cleveland professional sports and learn about loss, losing, and the myths we create to make sense of both. 

Cast: Rebecca Benhayon and Eric Slater

The Brick, Brooklyn, 2011

Dobama, Cleveland, OH 2012

"Anna Brenner’s empathic direction brings this unflagging pessimist and his mystified wife to vivid life" - Eric Grode, The New York Times