Full Out Formula: I Think It Could Work

(he/they) Ben Grinberg is a Philadelphia-based performing artist, director, educator, and festival producer. For over ten years, they have created community-based platforms for artistic presentation and exchange both in Philadelphia and abroad. He is a company member, co-founder, and director of Almanac Dance Circus Theatre, an award-winning and internationally touring physical performance ensemble, and from 2017-2021 was a founding core faculty member and head of Performance and Artistic Craft at Circadium, the nation’s first certificate granting program in contemporary circus performance, where he developed and curated the Test Flights series. He co-founded Cannonball Festival, a hub for new performance in Philadelphia, and is on faculty at the (formerly UArts) Pig Iron MFA program in devised performance. Through Almanac, Ben initiated and co-produced the biannual Fit Fest in Penn Treaty Park in 2019, 2021, and 2023. With Almanac, they won a 2020 Rocky Award, a 2017 Suraya Award, and a 2019 Barrymore Award for

Vanessa Ogbuehi is a director and performer of new and devised work, mixing clown, narrative, and spectacle to elevate everyday stories to mythic proportions. Most recently, she assistant directed Heartbeat Opera’s Lady M, which the New York Times called “Flat-out brilliant.” While the inaugural Director of Digital, Film, & Interactive Media at Pig Iron Theatre Company, she collaborated with filmmaker Josephine Decker on The Path of Pins or The Path of Needles, an immersive performance exploring fairy tales and motherhood. Other past collaborators include Double Edge Theatre and The Bearded Ladies Cabaret. University direction includes Orlando (Boston University), Metamorphoses (Villanova), and Resilient: Black Bottom (Drexel), a student-written piece about the university’s 1960s expansion atop a thriving black neighborhood. Vanessa was recently awarded a 2023 Drama League Assistantship, paired with Dawn Monique Williams for the world premiere of Welcome to Matteson at New Jersey Repertory Theatre. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Devised Performance from Pig Iron Theatre Company.

L M Feldman is a queer, feminist, GNC playwright who writes theatrically audacious, physically kinetic, ensemble-driven plays that are both epic & intimate – usually about outsiders, often about searchers, always about the human connection. She writes plays that shift the prism, plays that quest & grapple, plays without answers. Plays about the women and queers she finds in the shadows & footnotes & margins. Plays wrestling with voice & agency, opportunity & access, history & its wake. Plays that explode space & time & dramaturgical form. Plays in which something TRANSCENDENT transpires – for the community both onstage and off. So far, her plays include S P A C E (EST/Sloan commission, Playwrights’ Center, Drama League, Fresh Ground Pepper, Sue Winge Award); THRIVE, OR WHAT YOU WILL [AN EPIC] (American Shakespeare Center, Kitchen Dog New Works Festival, New Georges Audrey Residency, Page 73 Residency, InterAct Core Playwrights); ANOTHER KIND OF SILENCE (Colorado New Play Festival, FEWW Prize Honorable Mention, Magic Theatre Play Festival, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, PlayPenn Conference, Playwrights Realm Fellowship); SCRIBE, OR THE SISTERS MILTON, OR ELEGY FOR THE UNWRITTEN (Playwrights’ Center, Emerson Stage, Georgetown University, Northwoods Ramah Theatre commission); THE EGG-LAYERS (Jane Chambers Honorable Mention, New Georges/Barnard College co-commission); GRACE, OR THE ART OF CLIMBING (Denver Center, Brown Paper Box Co., Art House Productions, Nice People Theatre, ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award Nomination, Barrymore Nomination); A PEOPLE [A MOSAIC PLAY] (Terrence McNally Award Finalist, Orbiter 3, YiddishFest, Jewish Plays Project); and a TYA stage adaptation of the poem-novel TROPICAL SECRETS: HOLOCAUST REFUGEES IN CUBA by Margarita Engle (Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, Kindness Project commission).

Eleanor is a multidisciplinary circus artist and educator from Minnesota and a graduate of the New England Center for Circus Arts. Her work weaves together intricate research and personal storytelling with dynamic movement, and has been performed all over the United States as well as internationally. Through nearly two decades of love for circus, Eleanor has developed a wealth of technical knowledge which she has shared with hundreds of youth, adults, and professionals. She believes that circus is a powerful tool for building community and connecting to the self, and that art is an essential part of life.

(they/them) Lizzy is an interdisciplinary, gender queer artist who plays with otherworldly textures and tones to invite, envelope, and transport. They compose and perform music for dance, theater, podcast, and film. Their scores have been heard at the Cannes Short Film Festival and CamerIMAGE Festival. Lizzy’s work has been featured on NPR’s Invisibilia and at the Smithsonian Hirshorn. Lizzy is a company musician/composer with David Dorfman Dance, whose new work truce songs premiers this fall. Lizzy has performed with Yara Travieso since 2016, at venues including Joe’s Pub, Lincoln Center, BRIC, and the Chelsea Factory. Their Philadelphia-based, experimental pop band, Lizdelise is the 2024 recipient of the Recording Fund. The band’s last release, I Swore I Heard You Laughing, recorded with Andy Stack (Wye Oak, Helado Negro), centers radical self-acceptance through excavation of memory. Lizdelise has been featured on NPR’s “New Music Friday”, “Rough Trade Recommends”, WXPN, PBS, and the CW.