The world premiere of a new international work of live-streamed theater.
Co-written by six brilliant collaborating writers from around the world, and performed by members of Ithaca, NY’s Cherry Artists’ Collective.
Featuring stories from Buenos Aires, Berlin, San Salvador, Belgrade, Bucharest, and New York,
exploring with depth and humor how interactions and relationships are playing out on global screens in a time of danger.
NYC says:
“This work glimpses others in their sequestered locales, their loneliness, creativity, frustration, fear, presented up close the way we are experiencing others these days… —only, this is a work of theater, and like it or not, we’re in it.” (Gossip Central)
Audience email: “A timely, innovative, and powerful theatre piece.
Each playwright and actor captured real truth about this strange time in which we are living.
Kudos on the combined artistic and technical excellence.“
Felt Sad, Posted a Frog will have five live-streamed performances,
from May 1–9.
Fri May 1 @ 7:30EST | Sat May 2 @ 2:30EST
Thurs May 7 @ 7:30EST | Fri May 8 @ 7:30EST | Sat May 9 @ 2:30EST
Tickets are priced on a sliding scale starting at $15.
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Felt Sad, Posted a Frog
Another:“We greatly enjoyed the experience and will recommend it enthusiastically to friends both here and elsewhere. …
We found it very interesting, engaging, and highly theatrical. …
We applaud the great creativity and courage that all of you brought to this production. A terrific job.”
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Felt Sad, Posted a Frog
This moment is a paradox. After struggling for decades with the isolations of capitalism, we are asked to separate further. With so much contact already mediated by the screen, we are asked to eliminate togetherness in favor of digitality.
But in some ways the world is more unified than it has ever been: countless people in vastly different places around the world are living versions of the same extreme circumstance. From an isolation that brings cultures into shared experience, the Cherry Artists’ Collective seeks a way for live performance to reflect this commonality in a time of isolation. The six writers of Felt Sad, Posted a Frog each bring their global perspective to quarantine and digital life:
Iva Brdar (Belgrade—writer of Rule of Thumb (Cherry 2018)— two-time Theatertreffen Stückemarkt shortlist)
Jorgelina Cerritos (San Salvador—writer of On the Other Side of the Sea (Cherry 2020)— Casa De Las Americas award for drama)
Rebekka Kricheldorf (Berlin—writer of Testosterone (Cherry 2019)— Kleis, Kassel, and Saarbrücken theater awards)
Santiago Loza (Buenos Aires—writer of Winter Animals, Nothing to do with Love, and The Saint (Cherry 2017 & 2019)— Un Certain Regard prize, Cannes Film Festival)
Saviana Stanescu (Bucharest/Ithaca—writer of What Happens Next (Cherry 2017)— Innovative Theater Award, New York)
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (Ithaca—lyricist of The Snow Queen (Cherry 2016-18)—National Book Award finalist for poetry)
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Felt Sad, Posted a Frog
The work is directed by Artistic Director Samuel Buggeln and co-director Beth Milles, and performed by members of the Cherry Artists’ Collective and others. Translations are by Neil Blackadder, Buggeln, and Ana Brdar.
This project is made possible, in part, with the funding from The Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County.
Felt Sad, Posted a Frog Artist Bios
Susannah Berryman (Nora) Collective Member. Previous Cherry: On the Other Side of the Sea; Nothing to do with Love/Loza Plays; White Rabbit Red Rabbit. Susannah has been a part of the Ithaca theatre world since 1980 as a teacher, actor, and director. She has performed in or directed over sixty plays in the Finger Lakes area, with the Kitchen and Hangar Theatres serving as particularly significant long-term artistic homes, and the Cherry Arts as a more recent valued friend, where she is a member of the original Cherry collective. She is an Associate Professor in the Ithaca College Theatre Arts Department. Most recent local productions: The Children (KTC), The Roommate (KTC), A Doll’s House, Part Two (Hangar), Antigone Project (director, Ithaca College).
Neil Blackadder (translator) Previous Cherry: Testosterone (translator). Neil Blackadder is a translator of drama and prose from German and French, specializing in contemporary theatre, and recently retired from a 25-year career teaching theater at Knox College and Duke University. He also translated Rebekka Kricheldorf’s Testosterone as produced at the Cherry last year, and his translations of plays by Lukas Bärfuss and Ewald Palmetshofer have been staged in London, New York, Chicago, and elsewhere. Other translations by Neil of plays by Ferdinand Schmalz, Mishka Lavigne, Maxi Obexer, and Thomas Arzt among others have been widely published, and presented in staged readings.
Ana Brdar (translator) Previous Cherry: Rule of Thumb (translator). Ana Brdar is a translator and writer based in Serbia and South Korea. She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the Faculty of Philogy at the University of Belgrade, where she majored in English language and Literature. Over the course of her career, she has produced English to Serbian (and vice versa) translations for various cultural institutions across the former Yugoslavia, including museums, theatres, NGOs and festivals, and has translated books for leading publishers in the Balkan region and beyond.
Iva Brdar (playwright) Previous Cherry: Rule of Thumb (playwright). Iva Brdar studied Dramaturgy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and earned a master’s degree in Theatre Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III. Her play Rule of Thumb, which had its world premiere at the Cherry Arts, won the Brücke Berlin Prize, the Sterijino Pozorje Prize, was shortlisted by the Berlin Theatertreffen Stückemarkt, and staged in theaters worldwide. Geraniums Can Survive Anything won first prize at the Heartefact Foundation Contest for best socially-engaged play, and her newest play Tomorrow Is (For Now) Always Here also made the Theatertreffen’s Stückemarkt shortlist. She lives in Berlin.
Eric Brooks (Rafael) Collective member. Previous Cherry: The Missing Chapter, The Snow Queen, Testosterone. Many shows at Kitchen Theatre Company, including The Price, Talley’s Folly, Peter and the Starcatcher, and the world premiere of Precious Nonsense (also at Auburn Public Theatre). Other regional credits include A View from the Bridge, The Iceman Cometh, Macbeth (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis), Comedy of Errors, She Loves Me, Guys & Dolls (Meadow Brook Theatre, Detroit). New York theatre includes Henry V, Richard II (11th Hour Company), Naked Will (PS 122). Several years as Dr. Louis Darnell on the CBS soap Guiding Light.
Samuel Buggeln (conceiver, co-director) is a Canadian director and translator and the Founding Artistic Director of The Cherry Arts, a multidisciplinary company with a focus on international works. Over the last five years at the Cherry he has produced, directed, translated, and/or commissioned over a dozen productions from Ithaca-based and international writers. Before founding the Cherry, Sam directed over 20 productions at regional theaters. In NYC he is an Artistic Associate at the New Ohio Theatre: work at the New (and original) Ohio includes the world première of The Eyes of Others (Bulgaria); the Off-Broadway première of Conor McPherson’s Rum & Vodka; the Drama Desk- nominated Cressida Among the Greeks, and for the Obie Award-winning Ice Factory Festival, his adaptations of Queneau’s Le Vol D’Icare and Duras’ Les Yeux Bleus Cheveux Noirs, as well as Hater (his translation of Le Misanthrope, since produced by two west-coast companies and published in The Mercurian). Recently translated and directed George Kaplan by French playwright Frédéric Sonntag, and co-translated recent works by Argentine playwrights Santiago Loza (published by Oberon and forthcoming from Seagull Books) and Rafael Spregelburd (published in The Mercurian). In NYC he has directed and/or developed new works at venues including NYTW, Atlantic, Clubbed Thumb, HERE, and JACK, and worked extensively on new plays at the Lark. He is an alum of the Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, a member of the international theatermakers’ network The Fence, and has been a regular guest artist at NYU/Tisch, Hunter College, SUNY Albany, Ithaca College, and Cornell university.
Jorgelina Cerritos (playwright) Previous Cherry: On the Other Side of the Sea (playwright). Jorgelina Cerritos is an actor and playwright based in San Salvador, El Salvador. She has written more than twenty texts for theater, as well as poems and storybooks for adults and children, and on numerous occasions has received El Salvador’s national awards for Best Play and Best Play for Young People. In 2010 she received the prestigious Casa de las Américas Literary Award for drama for Al otro lado del mar (On the Other Side of the Sea), which has since been produced all over Latin America and in the US. In 2011 her play Vértigo 824 received the George Woodyard Latin American Theater Award, and in 2012 her play La Audiencia de los Confines received the sixth international “Writing Differences” biennial prize for women’s playwriting. In 2007 Cerritos founded the Los del Quinto Piso Theater Collective.
Sarah Chaneles (Cherry Arts Marketing Manager) is a graduate of Ithaca College’s Park School of Communications and spends her time outside of the Cherry planning, marketing, and performing in Ithaca’s arts and nightlife scenes. She co-produces and hosts Flame Night Fever; a virtual drag & burlesque show, and directed The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Ithaca’s State Theatre. She manages marketing for an online literary arts magazine, acts as Treasurer & Aesthetic Director of the dance party Pop’d at The Cherry, teaches drag workshops at Cornell University and around the Finger Lakes Region, and is an ongoing collaborator with burlesque company Whiskey Tango Sideshow.
Helen T Clark (Oana) Collective member. Previous Cherry: Testosterone, Rule of Thumb, Winter Animals/Loza Plays and The Snow Queen (2016 & 2017.) Other select favorite regional roles include You Can’t Take it With You (Essie,) Good Children (Iris, world premiere), Storm Trilogy/K, Or the Girl With the Plastic Rose (Mother), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Honey), Crimes of the Heart (Chick Boyle), Julius Caesar (Portia), and WRENS (Meg.) She holds a BFA in Acting from UConn, an MFA in Interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College, and is an alumna of Shakespeare and Company’s Center for Actor Training. www.HelenTClark.org
Joseph D’Amore (Radu) Cherry debut. Joseph is currently in his Junior year at Ithaca College working on his BFA in Acting. His recent college credits include Sender, Twelfth Night, and Tatjana in Color.
Noah Elman (live video mixing & design) Cherry debut. Noah Elman recently graduated from SUNY Fredonia and has returned to his hometown of Ithaca to pursue stage and film directing. Stage directing credits: Two Gentlemen of Verona (Shakespeare on the Lake), The Pillowman (SUNY Fredonia’s PAC); Assistant directing credits: A Christmas Carol (Hangar Theatre), The Skriker (House of Ithaqua), Hamlet (Shakespeare on the Lake), Legally Blonde Jr., Alice in Wonderland Jr., and Seussical Kids (all with Playground Drama Camp). Film directing credits include: re/act, White River (in production); BFA Acting, SUNY Fredonia.
Jeffrey Guyton (Narrator) Collective Member. Previous Cherry: The Snow Queen (2016 and 2017), Rule of Thumb. Jeffrey started his career at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival where he was given the Patterson Award in his first season and a Guthrie Award in his fourth. He acted in Wedekind’s Lulu at the Watford Palace In England, has appeared in many Off Broadway shows and toured for two years with The Acting Company. Regional theater roles include Smike in Nicholas Nickleby, Richard III, Lear’s Fool at the Asolo Theater, Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest, and many others. He taught acting at Cornell University for seven years. He thanks his wife, Jaekah and daughter, Roxane for their love and support.
Cynthia Henderson (Chelle) Cherry debut. Cynthia has performed professionally in the United States, Europe, and Africa. Her credits include A Wrinkle in Time at the Lincoln Center; Off Broadway: Dorothy Dandridge, an evening of song and remembrance and Brother’s Keeper; other NYC credits include: Vagina Monologues, Joy in the Morning, A Star Ain’t Nothing But a Hole in Heaven, and It’s Only a Play. Regional credits include: A Raisin in the Sun, Katrina, a new musical, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, King Lear, and Two Rooms. International credits include Pretty Fire, Dreamgirls, Into the Woods, Children of a Lesser God, and Little Shop of Horrors, for which she received the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical at the European Tournament of Plays. She is a the founder of Performing Arts for Social Change (pa4sc.com), a director, author and an associate professor of acting in the Department of Theatre Arts at Ithaca College. Cynthia is a member of Actors’ Equity Association.
Rose Howard (Cherry Arts operations manager) has a BFA in Theatrical Design, Ithaca College ’04. After living in and around NYC, she has returned to Ithaca. Highlights from NYC include working props on the Broadway shows South Pacific, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Sunday in the Park with George, American Buffalo, and Cyrano de Bergerac. She has designed for theatres in New York and Seattle including SecondStory Rep, The Ohio Theatre, and The Zipper. She has done additional work at The Vineyard Theatre, The Signature Theatre, and at Williamstown Theatre Festival, the New School for Drama and The Actors Studio.
Rebekka Kricheldorf (playwright) Previous Cherry: Testosterone. Rebekka Kricheldorf was born in Freiburg and is based in Berlin. She has written commissioned works for the Staatstheater Stuttgart, the Theater am Neumarkt Zurich, the Staatstheater Kassel, and for Deutsches Theater Berlin, and been playwright-in-residence at the National Theater Mannheim and the Theaterhaus Jena, where she also worked as a dramaturg and artistic director. Her plays The Ballad of the Pine Tree Killer, Everyday Life & Ecstasy, and Miss Agnes were all selections for the Mülheim Theatertage festival. Among numerous other awards, Kricheldorf is the recipient of the Publishers Prize and the Heidelberg Play Competition Audience Award for Princess Nicoletta, and The Kleist Prize for Warrior Flesh. Her plays have been produced around the world.
Santiago Loza (playwright) Previous Cherry: Winter Animals, Nothing to do with Love, The Saint (playwright). Santiago Loza was born in Córdoba, Argentina, and is now based in Buenos Aires. He is the author of over 20 plays, collected in three volumes, and of two novels. Many of his plays have enjoyed multi-year runs in Buenos Aires— at one point with seven of his plays running concurrently— and tours and productions throughout Latin America. Loza’s début feature film, Extraña, won Best Picture at the 2003 Rotterdam Film Festival, and has been followed by seven features and documentaries, among which Los Labios received the Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. Most recently, Breve historia del planeta verde received the Teddy Award at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival.
Beth F Milles (co-director) Collective member. Previous Cherry: Rule of Thumb (director). Beth is an award-winning director and adaptor and Associate Professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. She has directed at Trinity Rep (Dead Man’s Cell Phone, The Importance of Being Earnest),The Magic Theatre (Nero: Another Golden Rome developed in collaboration with playwright Steven Sater and composer Duncan Sheik), Long Wharf (Serial Blackface), Perishable Theater (Lazarus Disposed), SPF (Flesh and the Desert), and the Actors’ Gang (Private Battle, Self Defense, Carnage, and The Imaginary Invalid (4 LA Ovation Awards including Best Adaptation)), and developed work at Playwrights Horizons, The Sundance Theatre Institute, American Repertory Theatre, Young Playwrights, Inc., New York Stage and Film, The Mark Taper Forum, New York Shakespeare Festival, ASK Theater Projects and South Coast Repertory Theater. Beth directed Julia Sweeney’s God Said HA on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre, and is the founder of Banter Company, which focuses on the adaptation of classical theatre for the modern audience.
Elizabeth Mozer (Lia) Collective member. Previous Cherry: George Kaplan and Listen to Her: a mini-festival in which she performed her one woman play Asylum; awarded “Best Drama” at the United Solo Theatre Festival in NYC. Elizabeth was in the original Broadway casts of Teddy & Alice, Dangerous Games and Victor/Victoria. She wrote and directed Castle on the Hill which premiered at Binghamton University where she is an Associate Professor of Theatre. Elizabeth’s directing credits include The Burial At Thebes, A Chorus Line, and Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. Elizabeth is the founding artistic director of the movement-theatre company Theatre in the Flesh.
Dean Robinson (Wikihow) Collective Member. Previous Cherry: White Rabbit Red Rabbit, Winter Animals, and voicing in both of the walking plays: Storm Country and The Missing Chapter. He has been a member of Cherry Arts since its inception. Around Ithaca, he has
performed in dozens of plays with The Cider Mill Playhouse, The Kitchen Theatre, The Hangar Theater Company, Civic Ensemble, and others. He has also worked with the Cornell Interactive Theatre Ensemble, the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, and the Hangar’s education programs. Currently an assistant professor in the Ithaca College Theatre Arts program, Dean has also taught acting at Cornell and Binghamton Universities. Nationally, Robinson has been seen on the stages at American Conservatory Theatre and Eureka Stage (SF), The Ahmanson Theatre and LATC in Los Angeles, Trinity Repertory Company, American Southwest Theatre, and Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre. He is a founding member of the critically acclaimed Actors’ Gang of Los Angeles.
Jennifer Schilansky (Production Stage Manager) Cherry debut. Jennifer Schilansky is thrilled to be with the Cherry Arts remotely. She has been the resident stage manager for the Kitchen Theatre Company, in Ithaca NY, since 2012. Previous production favorites include: The Two Kids That Blow Sh*t Up, Tribes, The Royale, Ironbound, Brawler, Birds of East Africa, Hand to God, Peter and the Starcatcher, The Mountaintop, Paloma, Sunset Baby, Lonely Planet, Swimming in the Shallows, Slashes of Light, What I Thought I Knew, The Motherf**ker With the Hat, The Whipping Man and Brian Dykstra Selling Out. She has also served as the the Production Stage Manager for the Hangar Theatre’s Little Women, Dégagé and A Doll’s House Part 2. Prior to moving to Ithaca, she spent five years as the resident stage manager for Stageworks Theater in Hudson, NY. She has also stage managed for Half Moon Theater in Poughkeepsie, NY, and Bard College. A native of Catskill, NY, Jennifer enjoys exploring the gorges of Ithaca with her sidekick, and unofficial KTC mascot, Buddy, and her husband Eric.
Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr. (Guy) Collective Member. Previous Cherry: The Shoe, A Cherry Timedive. Godfrey is the Artistic Director of HartBeat Ensemble in Hartford, CT, and previously was the Artistic Director of Civic Ensemble in Ithaca. He has been championing and shepherding new scripts and adaptations toward production for over 20 years. He most recently appeared in Civic Ensemble’s production of Mike Daisey’s Trump Card, and directed Eugene O’Neill’s rarely-produced All God’s Chillun Got Wings in Brooklyn and at Cornell University. Godfrey has also been seen in Richard III with Obie Award-winning Epic Theatre Ensemble, in the title role of Othello with Ithaca Shakespeare Company, and as Hambone in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running with Syracuse Stage. He is a member of Epic Theatre Ensemble (2012 Fox Fellow), Ensemble Studio Theatre, and the Lark Playground. He has taught at Cornell University, Binghamton University and Marymount Manhattan University.
Saviana Stanescu (playwright) Collective member. Previous Cherry: What Happens Next (writer), A Cherry Timedive (co-writer), Don’t/Dream (writer). Saviana Stanescu is an award-winning Romanian playwright and ARTivist based in New York and Ithaca. Her US plays (written in English) include Aliens with Extraordinary Skills, Ants (both published by Samuel French), Useless, Toys, For a Barbarian Woman, Lenin’s Shoe, Waxing West (2007 NY Innovative Theatre Award), What Happens Next. Honors include: Fulbright, Indie Theater Hall of Fame, NYSCA playwright-in-residence, writer-in-residence for Richard Schechner’s ECA, Audrey Residency, John Golden Award for Playwriting, KulturKontakt artist-in- residence, Marulic Prize for Best European Radio Drama, Best Romanian Play of the Year UNITER Award. Saviana’s plays have been developed/produced at Women’s Project, La MaMa, 59E59, New York Theatre Workshop, EST, HERE, New Georges, Lark, Cherry, Civic Ensemble, Teatro La Capilla, Odeon, etc. She holds an MA in Performance Studies, MFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University, and currently works as an Associate Professor of Playwriting & Contemporary Theatre at Ithaca College (www.saviana.com)
Erica Steinhagen (Girl) Collective Member. Previous Cherry: White Rabbit Red Rabbit, The Snow Queen, George Kaplan, What Happens Next. Selected Kitchen Theatre: Hand to God; Cry It Out; The Drunken City (world premiere); Dario Fo’s We Won’t Pay!; Nora; Bed and Sofa; The Servant of Two Masters. Selected Hangar Theatre: Ever So Humble (world premiere); The Sound of Music; Cats; Beauty and the Beast; My Fair Lady; Into the Woods. Additionally, Stage Kiss (Cider Mill); The Best of Kathy and Mo, Wider than the Sky, and Antigone (Civic Ensemble); The Drowsy Chaperone (Human Race Theatre Co.); The Unfortunates, a one-woman play by Cherry artist Aoise Stratford. Proud member, AEA. ericasteinhagen.com
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (playwright) Collective Member. Previous Cherry: The Snow Queen (lyrics), A Cherry Timedive (co-writer), Esopus (writer). Lyrae is the author of Open Interval, a 2009 National Book Award finalist, and Black Swan, winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, as well as Poems in Conversation and a Conversation, a chapbook collaboration with Elizabeth Alexander. She is currently at work on The Coal Tar Colors, her third poetry collection, and Purchase, a collection of essays. She was one of ten celebrated poets commissioned to write poems inspired by Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series in conjunction with the 2015 exhibit One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series and Other Works for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Amoreena Wade (Jamie) Collective Member. Previous Cherry: The Shoe. Amoreena is a recent transplant to Ithaca and is thrilled to be returning to The Cherry Arts “stage”. Some of her fondest theatre experiences have included Reckless with 40th St Stage in Norfolk, VA, You Can’t Take It With You with Cider Mill Playhouse, and many shows with KNOW Theatre in Binghamton, where she also directed and performed in benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues, and for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. She has studied at Upright Citizens Brigade in NYC and was a stand-up comic for many years. TV: the CW’s One Tree Hill.
Natasha Lorca Yannacañedo (Woman) Cherry debut. As an actor, writer, casting director and director, Natasha’s work spans independent film, radio, primetime television, and numerous plays. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the American Conservatory Theater and is an Assistant Professor at Eugenio María de Hostos Community College. She is a company member of Harlem Shakespeare Festival and is a proud member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA. Natasha served the past three years as the Vice-Chair for the National Playwriting Program for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. She was selected as an apexart International Fellow in 2018.
Sylvie Yntema (Coretta) Collective Member. Previous Cherry: The Snow Queen (2018). Sylvie has worked in Ithaca with Civic Ensemble (On the Corner, After Orlando, In the Parlour), Homecoming Players (In the Next Room, From the Mississippi Delta), and Fitz&Startz Productions (A Case for the Classics). She is a graduate of the Actors Workshop of Ithaca, a Pilates instructor, and a NYS licensed massage therapist.