February 20–March 1, 2020
The Cherry débuted On the Other Side of the Sea, winner of the Casa de las Americas award for Drama, by Salvadoran writer Jorgelina Cerritos, translated by Margaret Stanton and Anna Donko. This lyrical, humorous play explored the pressing issue of “documentation” from a thought-provoking perspective. The Cherry Collective was thrilled to produce the play for the first time in English!
The cast was anchored by beloved Ithaca actor/director Susannah Berryman (Cherry Artists’
Collective founding member), joined by Jahmar Ortiz, Berryman’s student in the Ithaca College acting program. Susannah is a veteran of dozens of local productions, most recently The Children at the Kitchen Theater and A Doll’s House Part 2 at the Hangar. Ortiz was recently seen in A Raisin in the Sun at the Hangar and as Oberon in Ithaca Shakespeare Company’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
On the Other Side of the Sea was directed by Cherry Artistic Director Samuel Buggeln, and we are delighted that Mary Brett Lorson and Alexa Schmitz composed original music, and local shadow puppet artist Linda Wingerter created shadow imagery. Environment design was by Daniel Zimmerman, costumes were by Sasha Oliveau, and lighting by Christopher Brusberg.
Especially for The Other Side of the Sea, the Cherry was proud to introduce Cherry Chats. After every performance of On the Other Side of the Sea, interested audience members were invited to remain and chat in an informal social setting. Chats were facilitated by Cherry Artists’ Collective members and/or members of the production creative team, and wine will be available by donation. We hope you’ll join us!
2020 Show times
Thursday, February 20th – 7:30pm (pay what you will preview)
Friday, February 21st – 7:30pm
Saturday, February 22nd – 7:30pm
Sunday, February 23rd – 3:00pm
Thursday, February 27th – 7:30pm
Friday, February 28th – 7:30pm
Saturday, February 29th – 7:30pm (Happy Leap Year)
Sunday, March 1st – 3:00pm
Co-Producing Sponsor
Underwriter
On the Other Side of the Sea Artist Bios
Susannah Berryman (cast) Cherry collective founding member. Previous Cherry: Loza Plays: Nothing to do with Love. 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. She is privileged to love her work as 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), and Antigone Project (director, Ithaca College). This summer Susannah will appear in the Hangar Theatre’s production of Outside Mullingar.
Jahmar Ortiz (cast) is a third year student at Ithaca College originally from Willingboro, NJ. His previous Ithaca College credits include Julio in A Bicycle Country, Shango in In the Red and Brown Water, and Belize in Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. His other credits include Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as Double J in Saturday Night Fever and Bunsen in Newsies with Cortland Repertory Theatre in Cortland, NY.
Jorgelina Cerritos (playwright) has written more than twenty texts for theater, as well as poems and storybooks for adults and children. She has received international awards including the Casa de las Américas Prize (2010), the George Woodyard Latin American Theater Award (2011), and the “Writing Difference” International Biennial Prize for Women’s Playwriting (2012); and been published, produced, studied and translated both inside and outside of El Salvador. In 2007 Cerritos founded the Los del Quinto Piso Theater Collective, and in 2018 she created Didascalia, a space for the training, reflection, study and exercise of dramatic writing. In 2019, alongside Los Del Quinto Piso and Índole Editores, she founded the editorial series Central American Playwriting Notebooks.
Anna Kathryn Donko (co-translator) is a PhD student in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies section) at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on colonial Latin America and her interests include the systematization of indigenous languages, the production of missionary dictionaries and grammars, and the relationship between verbal and visual discourses. Additionally, Anna holds a certificate in Second Language Studies and has published Spanish to English literary translations in The Mercurian (2016) and Contrapuntos (2017).
Margaret Stanton (co-translator) earned her MA and PhD in Spanish at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is Professor Emerita at Sweet Briar College in Virginia where she taught Spanish and Latin American studies for twenty-six years. The translation of Spanish American literature is of special interest to Dr. Stanton and fulfills her desire to help expose the world of Spanish American authors to a wider audience. Her translations include three pieces in the short story anthology edited by Marjorie Agosín, What Is Secret (White Pine Press, 1995) and The Reef and Exotic Birds: Five Stories with Rare Women by Reina Roffé (University Press of the South, 2011).
Samuel Buggeln (director) is the co-founder and Artistic Director of The Cherry Arts and Cherry Artists’ Collective, where over the last few years 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 theatres; in NYC he has developed new work extensively at the Lark and other venues and is an Artistic Associate at the New Ohio Theatre. Among numerous works directed at the Ohio are the Drama Desk-nominated Cressida Among the Greeks and Hater, his unconventional translation of Le Misanthrope, which has since been published and produced twice more. A volume of his co-translations of Santiago Loza’s plays is forthcoming from Seagull Books.
Christopher Brusberg (lighting) Previous Cherry: The Shoe. Chris is a lighting designer for theater, opera, dance, and live events based in New York City. Select design credits include: Lawson Dance Theater (Chicago), BandPortier (NYC), Cherry Arts (Ithaca, NY), Opera Omaha, Annapolis Opera, Imagination Stage (DC), Wolftrap Opera/NOI, New Rep Theater (Boston), Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Actor Shakespeare Project (Boston), Company One (Boston), Boston Midsummer Opera, A.R.T Institute, Caborca w/A.R.T, Boston Opera Collaborative, Guerilla Opera (Boston), Gotham Early Music Scene (NYC), Christopher received his BFA from Boston University and MFA in Lighting Design from The University of Maryland. Please visit
ctblighting.com for upcoming design work.
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. Some notable examples of Sarah’s work include directing The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Ithaca’s State Theatre, managing marketing for an online literary arts magazine, performing as a Drag King at Pop’d at The Cherry, teaching drag workshops at Cornell University and around the Finger Lakes Region, and ongoing collaborations with Whiskey Tango Sideshow.
Kate Griffin (sound) Previous Cherry: The Shoe. Kate is an audio engineer, sound designer, and classically trained musician. Originally from Chicago, IL, she came to Ithaca College to study voice performance when she took her first audio class on a whim and immediately fell in love with the art form. She has been sound designing film and mixing music for 3 years and graduated from Ithaca College with a double major in audio and voice performance. Post-graduation from Ithaca College, Kate found a deep appreciation for the thriving musical and artistic community in Ithaca and has been working as freelancing in Ithaca in live sound, theatre, and film ever since.
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.
Mary Brett Lorson (original music/keyboards) has been combining words and music in varied ways for many years. Beginning as a songwriter and performer, she moved on to composing scores for contemporary and historical narrative and documentary films, creating a musical memoir, setting poetry and prose to music, and more.
Sasha Oliveau (costumes) Previous Cherry: costume design, The Shoe; assistant costume design, Testosterone and The Snow Queen (2018). Sasha is a fibers artist and designer from rural Northern Virginia. She learned to sew from her grandmother at 6 years old, and began teaching others as a young adult. Having graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2018 with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Fibers, she plans to continue her education in expressive art therapy. She works with slow, meditative processes to make one of a kind, abstract expressionistic objects and textiles that create therapeutic environments.
Alexa Schmitz (original music/violin) received her BA and BMus from Oberlin, where she majored in biochemistry and violin performance. She is a member of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra and occasionally plays with the Binghamton Philharmonic and Tri-Cities Opera. Previously, Alexa was a member of the Boston Philharmonic and Atlantic Symphony in Boston, and was concertmaster of the Mansfield Symphony in Ohio, with which she performed solo in their season’s final concert. She has also performed solo with the Delaware County Symphony, North Penn Symphony, and the Orquesta Sinfónica Juvenil de las Américas in Puerto Rico. Alexa is also a postdoctoral researcher in Biological and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University.
Ivy Stevens (stage manager) Previous Cherry: Testosterone, Listen to Her. Ivy is a graduate of Ithaca College and the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Coming up next will be Romeo and Juliet and A Comedy of Errors with the Ithaca Shakespeare Company. Other recent credits include Cendrillon, La Boheme, and Liberazione/Ada Lovelace with Opera Ithaca; director of The Maids with House of Ithaqua; and master electrician for Proof with the Kitchen Theater Company. Select past credits with the Ithaca Shakespeare Company include Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and Julius Ceasar.
The Stringpullers is a third-generation visual arts and performance company that designs, builds, performs and teaches puppetry and visual storytelling through low-tech practical effects. Linda Wingerter constructed and performed the shadow puppet film sequences, assisted by Edith McCrea, in her studio at Artist Alley at South Hill in Ithaca. www.stringpullers.com
Daniel Zimmerman (set) Cherry collective member. Previous Cherry: Loza Plays, Geroge Kaplan, The Shoe, Testosterone. Select Off-Broadway: Fashions for Men (Drama Desk nomination; The Mint); After the Blast and Kill Floor (Lincoln Center); Friend Art (Second Stage); Suicide, Incorporated (Roundabout); You Got Older (Page 73 Productions); Be a Good Little Widow (Ars Nova); Other NYC: Play Company, Clubbed Thumb, Cherry Lane, Colt Coeur, The Pearl. Regional: Arena Stage, Dallas Theatre Center, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival, NYS&F, Cincinnati Playhouse, Center Stage, Playmakers Rep, Trinity Rep, Milwaukee Rep, Theatreworks Palo Alto, Portland Stage, People’s Light, O’Neill Center. Daniel teaches set design at Ithaca College.
Paul Andrews (assistant director) is a senior dual degree student in Theatre Studies and Cinema Production at Ithaca College, and hails from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. This semester he will co-direct Mary Jane as part of Directing II at Ithaca College, and is directing an original movie musical he wrote.
Julia Dreitzer (assistant stage manager) is a sophomore BA Theatre Studies Major at Ithaca College from Las Vegas, Nevada, with a focus in Stage Management and Playwriting. Her previous credits include Assistant Stage Manager for Hookman and Production Assistant for Ragtime and Marisol, all with Ithaca College Theatre Arts. As a playwright she has had multiple plays produced, including Places, Please with Majestic Repertory Theatre and And They Were Roommates with Theatrists’ Theatrics.
Sebastián de la Paz (production translator) is a Theatre Studies and Writing for Film student at Ithaca College. His previous work includes Everybody (Ithaca College, Asst. Stage Manager), Little Shop of Horrors (Bool’s Flower Shop, Production Assistant), and Ugly Lies the Bone (Ithaca College, SM Shadow).