Mar 25–Apr 3, 2022
“Imaginatively directed… five skilled actors introduce us to unforgettable lives we hadn’t dreamed of encountering, and the experience is stunning.“
—Barbara Adams, Ithaca Times
“An important play… The tonal layers are as varying as the characters themselves. People who enjoy a mystery will be hooked right from the start.“
—BroadwayWorld.com
“Provides an opportunity for viewers to see their best and worst selves in the stories of others, and that is one of the greatest offerings a piece of live performance can give.”
—TheReviewsHub.com
“The Cherry continues its exemplary live and livestreamed productions with The Wetsuitman“
—This Week in NY
“A finely tuned production [with] terrific ensemble members… In the hands of The Cherry Artists’ Collective, The Wetsuitman is profoundly amusing until it is profoundly affecting.“
—Thinking Theater NYC
2015. On the coast of Norway, an architect walks his dog. What looks like an oil slick by the cliffs turns out to be a wetsuit, a human bone protruding from the leg-hole. The Wetsuitman begins as a Scandinavian crime thriller, and unpeels like an onion, switching between perspectives and genres to become a profound and interlayered meditation on identity, expectation, race, and migration. Ultimately the play becomes a search for the truth— not only for the nature of the Wetsuitman but for the nature of a world in which he could wash up on a cold Norwegian beach.
2022 SHOWTIMES
(all performances were available in person and live-streaming)
| Fri Mar 25 – 7:30 | Fri Apr 1 – 7:30 |
| Sat Mar 26 -7:30 | Sat Apr 2 – 2:30 |
| Sun Mar 27 2:30 | Sat Apr 2 – 7:30 |
| Thur Mar 31 – 7:30 | Sun Apr 3- 2:30 |
A talkback was held on Sat Apr 2, 4-5PM, 2022, with playwright Freek Mariën, visiting Ithaca from Brussels! He talked with the director and other members of the creative team. Moderated by Cherry Education Director Aoise Stratford. In the theater or live-streaming!
CO-PRODUCED BY:
Donald Spector & Stacia Zabusky
A THANK YOU TO OUR UNDERWRITER FOR THIS PRODUCTION:
AND OUR HOUSING PARTNER:
The Wetsuitman was translated into English as part of the Foreign Affairs Theatre Mentorship 2020 with support from Flanders Literature. Freek Mariën’s visit to the US as part of this production is supported by Flanders Literature and the Keeton House, Cornell University.
The Wetsuitman Artist Bios
Eric Brooks* Collective Member. Previous Cherry: Felt Sad, Posted a Frog, Testosterone, The Snow Queen, The Missing Chapter. Numerous appearances with Kitchen Theater Company, including The Price, Talley’s Folly, Peter And The Starcatcher, and Precious Nonsense. Regional appearances with the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Meadow Brook Theatre (Detroit), St Louis MUNY Opera, among others. Proud member of Actors’ Equity since 1975.
Marc Gomes* is a teacher, writer and actor in television, film and on stage. He is a member of Third Space Performance Lab with artist/scholar Shanti Pillai. Their work has been presented
at UC Berkeley’s School of Dance, UCLA, USC Roski Talks, Brown University’s TAPS and Cal State Long Beach, and at GATI Institute in Delhi. Marc received a UNIDO CEMA for his screenplay adaptation of the Caribbean classic, Corentyne Thunder. His short film, Stir Crazy, garnered acclaim at film festivals across North America. Marc is an original artist member of The Unusual Suspects Theater Company in Los Angeles. He is also an avid cyclist and bicycling advocate. Karl Gregory* Collective Member. Previous Cherry: Testosterone,
A Day. Karl is an actor and private acting coach, and having done over 50 shows in Ithaca, he continues to make Ithaca his artistic home. Karl is a two time recipient of a SALT Award for Best Actor as well as snatching the same title in the Ithaca Times’ “Best Of
Ithaca” Awards.
Sylvie Yntema Collective member. Previous Cherry: The Snow Queen, Felt Sad Posted a Frog, A Day, An Odyssey. She has performed locally with Civic Ensemble, Homecoming Players,
Hangar Theatre, Fitz&Startz Productions, and Clockmaker Arts. Sylvie studied BFA acting at The Mason Gross School at Rutgers University, is a graduate of the Actors Workshop of Ithaca, a Pilates instructor, and a massage therapist.
Amoreena Wade Collective Member. Previous Cherry: The Shoe, Felt Sad Posted A Frog, The Fan, And What Happens If I Don’t. Amoreena 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 in Endicott, NY, 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 standup comic for many years. Her mother would also like her to tell you she has appeared on The CW’s One Tree Hill.
Samuel Buggeln (director) is the co-founder and Artistic Director of The Cherry Arts and Cherry Artists’ Collective, where over the last six years he has produced, directed, translated, and/or commissioned over fifteen productions from international and local 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 will be available this summer from Seagull Books.
Admiral Grey (sound design) is a multimedia artist who designs, directs and performs theater, music, video, and objects. She has exhibited theater in New York and around the world with Robin Frohardt Company, The Nerve Tank, The Drunkard’s Wife, Psychic Readings, Sister Sylvester, her own Snake In The Boot Collective and others. As a composer, singer and musician she has toured nationally and internationally with Cellular Chaos,The Simple Pleasure, Ecstatics, Glass Lamborghini, and solo projects. She exhibited video, performance art, music and sculptural costume design for Miami Art Week/Basel in 2019, and toured her spoken word with Lydia Lunch in 2015. Her multimedia performance and puppetry project The Human Dream Project workshopped at Opus 40 in 2020 and St. Ann’s Warehouse Puppet Lab in 2021, and she will be in residence at KinoSaito arts center in June.
Olivia Kirschbaum Previous Cherry: co-costume design, The Fan. Olivia is a costume designer with a current career focus in wardrobe for all genres of live entertainment. Olivia is from Akron, Ohio currently based in Ithaca, NY working towards a BFA in Theatrical Production and Design from Ithaca College. For Ithaca College she has designed House of Desires (2021), Head Over Heels (2021). Other work includes Wardrobe Supervisor at The Hangar Theatre. She is thrilled to be designing for The Cherry once again.
Maggie Lapinski (Stage Manager) Previous Cherry: And What Happens If I Don’t, The Fan. Maggie is an Ithaca College alum, graduating in 2018 with a B.A. in Theatre Studies, and has spent the last four years stage managing locally. She grew up in East Lansing, MI, and has to give credit to her older sister, Emaline, for introducing her to the world of theatre. Previous credits include: The Skriker and The Maids (The House of Ithaqua); and Richard III and Much Ado About Nothing (Ithaca Shakespeare Company).
Peter Leibold (lighting design) is a lighting and video designer based in New York City. Selected credits include Remnants and How To Catch A Star at the Kennedy Center (DC), Children of Babel (finalist for the 2020 Design Achievement Awards) at Dance Place (DC), The Arrival (NH Theatre Award) at Andy’s Summer Playhouse (NH), Someone Else’s House with Geffen Stayhouse, and three years as Sierra Repertory Theatre’s Resident Lighting Designer in California. He is the Assistant Production Manager of Technology at Spoleto USA. Peter holds a BA from UC Irvine and an MFA from the University of Maryland. He is thrilled to work with the wonderful people at Cherry Arts. See more of Peter’s work at www.PeterLeibold.com.
Greg Levins (associate live-stream design) graduated NYU with an emphasis in film directing, screenplay writing and video editing. Greg worked for a handful of casting houses in NYC, auditioning actors in countless commercials, industrials, music videos and films. He has directed two indie features, wrote a handful of screenplays and dabbled in music video and
commercial production. Since moving to Ithaca he’s made a number of promotional videos for Ecovillage and is currently filming/archiving a weekly Gayogohó:nǫ’ language class taught by one of the few remaining native speakers. He’s thrilled to be a part of TWSM, helping to expand the audience to include viewers at home with a live stream feed.’
Freek Mariën (playwright) is an author and theatremaker, and co-founder of theatre company Het Kwartier. For his theater texts Freek Mariën has been awarded, amongst others,
the international Kaas en Kappesprijs (2012), the Prijs voor de Letterkunde Oost-Vlaanderen (2014) and the Taalunie Toneelschrijfprijs for Waiting and Other Exploits (2015). In 2019 The Wetsuitman was nominated for the Toneelschrijfprijs.
David McKay is a literary translator who lives in The Hague. He is the runner-up for the Vondel Prize 2022 for Adrift in the Middle Kingdom by J. Slauerhoff and won that prize in 2018 for War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans, which was also nominated for the Booker Prize International, shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award, and included on many lists of the year’s best books. His most recent publication is the anti-colonial classic We Slaves of Suriname by Anton de Kom. He was the ALTA Dutch-English mentor in 2021. His upcoming books include The Ascent by Stefan Hertmans and Bold Ventures: Thirteen Tales of Architectural Tragedy by Charlotte Van den Broeck. His translation of Freek Mariën’s play The Wetsuitman is being produced in 2022 by The Cherry Arts (Ithaca, NY) and Foreign Affairs (London) and has been published online in The Mercurian.
Sasha Oliveau (costume design) Collective Member. Previous Cherry: costume design,The Shoe, A Day, Hotel Good Luck, And What Happens if I Don’t and On the Other Side of the Sea;
assistant costume design, The Fan, Testosterone, George Kaplan and The Snow Queen (2018). 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.
Chad Raines (sound engineer) is a performer and sound designer from Dallas, Texas. In New York his work has been featured at Soho Rep, Roundabout Underground, Here Arts Center, Jack Performing Arts Center, Target Margin, The Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Ontological, The New Ohio, La Mama, The Public Theatre’s Under the Radar Festival as well as regional and college theaters such as Bard’s Fisher Center, Princeton’s Berlind Theatre, Long Island
University, Brown/Trinity, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Barnard and Brooklyn College to name a few. He is the resident Sound Designer for Fault Line Theater and I AM A BOYS CHOIR and has designed for Rachel Chavkin, Robert Woodruff, Julia Jarcho, Liliana Blain-Cruz, Robert Woodruff, Robin Frohardt, Eugene Ma among many other awesome people. As a performer he has been in Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra, Cellular Chaos and is frontman for the rock group “The Simple Pleasure” He is a 2011 graduate of the Yale School of Drama. www.chadraines.com
Dean Robinson* (acting coach) Collective Member. Previous Cherry: White Rabbit Red Rabbit, George Kaplan, Felt Sad Posted a Frog, as well as voicing Storm Country, The Missing Chapter, and The Fan. Also in the Ithaca area, Dean has appeared in plays including The Cripple of Inishmaan, Swimming in the Shallows, The Chairs, Circle Mirror Transformation, Nora, Tribes, and The Children. Other area performances include Sirens, Perfect Crime, and Dancing at Lughnasa. Regionally, Dean has performed at A.C.T. (San Francisco), Trinity Repertory Theatre, American Southwest Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, and New York’s Public Theatre as well as performed in the international tour of Robert Wilson’s The Black Rider. He is a founding member of the critically acclaimed The Actors’ Gang where he directed and acted in multiple plays. Dean is a graduate of the Academy for Classical Acting at George Washington University; he is currently an assistant professor of theatre at Ithaca College, where he teaches voice, movement, and acting.
Karen Rodriguez(live-stream design) is the owner of Windup Pictures and the Director of Photography of the feature documentary Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing. She previously designed the Livestream for And What Happens If I Don’t at the Cherry and designed the visual projection for Tenebrae: The Passion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Hugh McElyea. She has many film and television credits including MURDER and Murder by Yvonne Rainier, American Orpheus by Rick Schmidt, Northern Exposure, and The Chanticleer by Becky Lane. Karen is a 2017 Fulbright Scholar and holds an MFA in Film and Video Production from the University of Iowa Graduate College.
Nellie Spears (assistant stage manager) earned a B.A. in Theatre Studies from Ithaca College in 2021. Previous credits include: My Darling Darkling (Devising Ensemble), Stop Kiss (Dramaturg), Shifting Spaces Dance Concert (ASM), Particular Risk (Devising Ensemble). Since graduating, she spent 6 months on a trail conservation crew in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. She is currently an assistant preschool teacher with Tompkins Community Action.
Nick Pyzowski(She/They) (master electrician). Nick is a current Theatre Production & Design major at Ithaca College. Previous works include: Fun Home, House of Desires, and Head Over
Heels. This is her first time working with The Cherry and they are very thankful for being part of the production.