About the Artists
Shannon Burkett (book/lyrics, The Female Pope) had an award-winning stop-motion short screened at Cannes, Woodstock, RiverRun, and many more. Musicals: The Female Pope (Pipeline Arts Award, NAMT, O’Neill and Larson Grant Finalists, A&O), Perfect Little School (Raindance), Aqua Tofona collaborating with Dani Leone, So You Wanna be a Porn Star music by Peter Salett. Plays: Lead: This is Cooper’s Story (Waterworks and O’Neill Finalist), Once Upon a Sisters Grimm, The Ringer, Fun for the Whole Neighborhood. As an actor, she has been on Broadway alongside Patrick Stewart in Arthur Miller’s The Ride Down Mt. Morgan. Off-Broadway: Playwrights Horizons, Atlantic, New Georges, NYTW, WPA. EST Member. New Georges Affiliate. shannonburkett.com
Heather Christian (music, The Female Pope) is a Drama Desk and 2 time Obie Award winning composer/librettist/ performer. 2018 Recent shows include her own work Terce: A Practical Breviary (Prototype Festival/ HERE Arts Center) Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova), Prime: A Practical Breviary (Playwrights Horizons Soundstage) Animal Wisdom (The Bushwick Starr,) in addition to being a lead artist on devised works Mission Drift (Nat’l Theater London), The World Is Round (BAM). Recent Film and TV Composition: (A Good Girls Guide to Murder (BBC and Netflix), Teenage Euthanasia (Adult Swim) The Shivering Truth (Adult Swim), The Craft: Legacy (Blumhouse) Lemon (Dir. Janicza Bravo). She was named one of TimeOut NY’s Downtown Innovators To Watch, was given a special citation by the New York Drama Critics Circle for musical innovation in 2024 and has been awarded both the Richard Rogers and Stephen Schwartz Prizes. She’s released 11 records, taught at NYU and Princeton, operates her own recording studio in Beacon, NY, and can be seen regularly in concert as Heather Christian & the Arbornauts.
Johanna McKeon (director, The Female Pope) is the resident director of the Funny Girl First National Tour. Broadway: Funny Girl, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, American Idiot, King Kong, War Paint and Grey Gardens. Upcoming Broadway: Swept Away. Directing credits include Noura, Henry V, Unseen, and Anonymous Biography (Old Globe), Hedwig (Olney), Anne Washburn’s I Have Loved Strangers (Williamstown, Clubbed Thumb), Tokio Confidential (Atlantic Theater), First Down (59E59), The Comedy of Errors and Schmoozy Togetherness (Williamstown), We Swim, Much Ado About Nothing, Cymbeline, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall (Vineyard Playhouse), A Hatful of Rain (ITS Festival Warsaw), Semi-Permanent (NY Fringe Outstanding Solo Show), Golden Motors (BRIC). Her independent feature debut Auld Lang Syne received the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the Indie Street Film Festival. Her new feature Walton will screen at the Venice Bienale this July. Upcoming: premiere of The National Pastime by Rogelio Martinez at Syracuse Stage. She is the recipient of Drama League, Boris Sagal, and Fulbright Fellowships. MFA UT Austin.
Banna Desta (playwright, Red Taxi) is an Eritrean and Ethiopian-American writer for the stage and screen. She crafts stories about and for the African diaspora. Her work for the stage has been supported and developed by SPACE on Ryder Farm, Audible Theater, Rattlestick Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, National Black Theater, and the Dramatists Guild Foundation. She received her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU where she currently teaches undergraduate students.
Yohana Desta (director, Red Taxi) is an Eritrean- and Ethiopian-American writer and filmmaker based in New York City. She is an MFA candidate at New York University’s graduate film program, with a focus in writing and directing. She is currently working on her thesis film. She is also a longtime journalist, working as a staff writer for Vanity Fair from 2016 to 2023. During her tenure at the magazine, she wrote cover stories on Chadwick Boseman and Regina King, among others. She has also written for outlets like Harper’s Bazaar UK and moderated panels on behalf of A24, Focus Features, BAFTA, the Screen Actors Guild, and more. She is also a previous artist resident of Pocoapoco, a cross-disciplinary arts residency in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Nadia Davids (playwright, Hold Still) is a South African writer, theatre-maker and scholar. Her plays have been staged throughout Southern Africa and in Europe. She’s won the Fleur du Cap award for Best New South African Play twice; for What Remains (2018) and Hold Still (2023). In 2022, What Remains won the Olive Schreiner Prize for Drama. Her debut novel An Imperfect Blessing was shortlisted for Pan-African Etisalat Prize for Literature and named one of This is Africa’s best African novels. Nadia’s writing has appeared in The American Scholar, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Astra Magazine, The Georgia Review and Zyzzyva Magazine. She’s held residencies at Hedgebrook, Art Omi and The Women’s Project in New York. Her research focuses on Apartheid forced removals, memory, and creative resistance. Nadia has taught at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Cape Town and serves as President of PEN South Africa. She was a 2023 Aspen Words Writer in Residence.
Jay Pather (director, Hold Still) is a distinguished interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, curator, and academic. He is a professor at the University of Cape Town and directs the Institute of Creative Arts (ICA). Pather spearheads significant cultural events like the ICA Live Art Festival and Infecting the City, promoting African artists globally. His international influence includes consulting on prestigious projects in various cities on the African continent, Venice, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, and Madrid. He co-authored Transgressions: Live Art in South Africa (2019). Notable productions include The Firebird (2016-2018), Qaphela Caesar (2010-2013) Nadia Davids’ What Remains (2018) for which he received a Fleur du Cap Award for best director and nominated for the award for Davids’ Hold Still in 2022 , and surface tension (2023). In 2017, Pather received the Order of Arts and Letters, highlighting his profound impact on the arts.
Michael Breslin (book/music/lyrics, The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse) is a writer, director, and actor. As a creative director of Fake Friends, with Foley: Circle Jerk (Pulitzer finalist, Obie Award), This American Wife (FourthWall Theatricals, NYTW, “Best Theater 2021” LA Times and New Yorker), and Bikini (writer/director, starring Cat Rodríguez; forthcoming). Additional: Invasive Species (director, written by Maia Novi), Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, TV and feature film development with A24, The Green Room, Lionsgate, and more. Doctorate and MFA, Yale. BA, Hamilton College.
Patrick Foley (book/additional lyrics, The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse) is an Obie-winning actor and writer who was last seen at The New Group in Thomas Bradshaw’s The Seagull/ Woodstock, NY. His play Circle Jerk, co-written with Michael Breslin, is a 2022 Obie Winner and 2021 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Drama. With Breslin, he is a creative director of Fake Friends, a theater and media company credited with pioneering digital theater. Their play The American Wife was named one of the “Best Performances of 2021” by the New Yorker. He executive produced and co-wrote the book for Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, which won a Webby Award and raised $2 million for the Actors Fund. He has TV and Film projects with A24, Lionsgate, The Green Room, Good Thing Going and Irony Point. MFA Yale School of Drama, BFA NYU / Tisch.
Rory Pelsue (director, The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse) is an Obie-winning director of new and classic plays, operas, musicals, and live-stream performances. He is the Resident Director of Fake Friends, where he has helmed This American Wife and Pulitzer Prize Finalist and Drama League Nominee Circle Jerk. His work has also been seen at the New Group, Heartbeat Opera, Primary Stages, Ars Nova, The Mercury Store, CultureHub, Southcoast Repertory Theater, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Portland Stage, Boise Contemporary Theater, Northwestern University, Quinnipiac University, Queens College, and the Yale School of Drama, among other venues. rorypelsue.com
Kate Douglas (book/lyrics, hag) is a writer/performer and composer. Recent/upcoming work: The Apiary (Outer Critics Circle Award nomination), The Lucky Few with Todd Almond (Ancram Center for the Arts), The Ninth Hour with Shayfer James (The Met Cloisters). She has been awarded residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, and Millay Arts, among others. Alum of the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program, Colt Coeur, The Civilians R&D Group, and The Orchard Project Greenhouse. Upcoming: Tulipa at New York Stage & Film; Centuries starring opposite her co-writers Matthew Dean Marsh and Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez (Ancram Center for the Arts). www.katedouglasprojects.com
Grace McLean (music/lyrics, hag) (she/her) is a performer, writer, composer. She performs on Broadway (Currently Suffs), Off-Broadway and Regionally, and on TV in “The First Lady” (Showtime), “The Other Two” [HBOMax) and writes and composes for theater (The Apiary, In the Green, Richard Rogers, Lortel Awards) and film (Marina, The Photographer, Our Mine, Best Score Brooklyn Film Festival). She released her first full length album “My Lovely Enemy” to critical acclaim this year with Rolling Stone calling her “avant-garde pop” tracks “brilliant.” Lincoln Center Writer-in-residence, Vivace Award (’23), Larson Grant (’21), Broadway Women’s Fund’s Woman to Watch (‘21), Civilians R&D Group (‘19-’20), MacDowell Fellow (‘18), Lincoln Center Emerging Artist (‘17). www.gracemclean.com
Kate Whoriskey (director, hag). On Broadway, Kate Whoriskey has directed Clyde’s, Sweat and The Miracle Worker. Off-Broadway credits include The Apiary, Letters from Max, All the Natalie Portmans, Songs for a New World, Sweat, Ping Pong, Aubergine, Inked Baby, Fabulation, Her Requiem, How I Learned to Drive, Ruined, Tales from Red Vienna, among others. Regionally, she has worked at Center Theatre Group, The Goodman, American Repertory Theatre, Center Theatre Group, The Guthrie, The Huntington, The Geffen, South Coast Rep, Sundance Theatre Lab, New York Stage and Film. Internationally, her work has been seen at the Châtelet in Paris and Theatro Municipal Opera in Rio de Janeiro and Carriage Works in Sydney.
