Staff
Molly Marinik (Founder, Editor)
Molly is a director with a dance background who has worked in the theatre in a whole bunch of ways. She is passionate about developing audiences for New York theatre and hopes that Theasy functions to empower potential audiences to go out and see shows, thus filling the houses of deserving productions all over town. Thanks for visiting Theasy! (Now go and tell your friends...)
Dan Dinero (Associate Editor)
Dan Dinero has directed off-off-Broadway for many years, and has also worked on Broadway, assisting director Jeff Calhoun on the musicals Brooklyn and Deaf West’s Big River. Dan holds a B.A. from Yale University, and is now writing a dissertation on musical theatre for a Ph.D. in Performance Studies at NYU-Tisch.
Le-Anne Garland (Writer, Sales Manager)
Le-Anne received her MFA in Acting from the University of Florida, BA in Theatre Performance and BA in English/Creative Writing from Western Michigan University. Born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit, she started writing as a child on wood boards during weekend trips with the family to their cabin Up North.
Terra Vetter (Assistant Editor)
Terra has spent the last decade of her life living in Brooklyn and hopelessly addicted to theater. When she's not working as a stage manager or dabling as playwright she's seeing shows. Lots of shows. In addition to the theater she has significant amounts of love for reading, the Q train and board games. She's also a member of The Lucky Artist Theater Company.
Tzipora Kaplan (Assistant Editor)
Tzipora Kaplan is an indie-theatre so-and-so who spends a lot of time in search of both the perfect handbag and umbrella. What she is currently pleased about: working with the NYIT awards 2009, writing an action-adventure flick starring Daniel Craig and Ed Norton, contributing her opinions on Theasy, and the crazy and brilliant people who sustain both her social life and her hope for a better and brighter future. She continues to soldier on in her pursuit of artistic happiness (the ultimate oxymoron) and sincerely hopes that one day she will have the guts to be irreverent in her bio.
Darron Cardosa (Writer, News Editor)
Darron Cardosa has been acting and writing all of his life and gets to combine these two passions for Theatre Is Easy. A Gemini, he likes long walks on the beach, woodworking and Parcheesi. On occasion he has been known to read books, usually a biography.
Zak Risinger (Writer)
Zak Risinger likes theatre and thinks that it should be easy. Originally from the land where the wind comes sweeping down the plain, he attended the University of Oklahoma and has worked professionally as an actor and dramaturg all across the country. He often likes plays that are a little quirky and make you look at the world a little differently but is also a sucker for the classics.
Julie Feltman (Writer)
When Julie is not reviewing a play, she is a freelance stage-manager for off and off-off-Broadway, or brainstorming projects with her company, the Lucky Artists Theater Company. She is a classically trained singer, and occasionally enjoys performing light opera regionally and in New York. Julie is currently pursuing a business economics degree at Pace University, and resides in Brooklyn.
Nancy Kelly (Writer)
Nancy hails from the land of hot tubs, hiking and hokey New Age beliefs (aka Marin County, California). She escaped from paradise with her sense of irony barely in tact and landed in New York hoping to finally get things done. She now writes for Theater is Easy, and does a few other things as well, but she has learned that old habits die hard and spends more time relaxing than a good New Yorker really should.
Steve Hauck (Writer)
Steve remembers seeing South Pacific at Pampa (Texas) High School when he was 3 years old. He already knew all the songs. At 4, he discovered New York during a family vacation to the 1964 World’s Fair. 45 years later he made his Broadway acting debut. And they say there’s no such thing as Fate.
Aaron Blank (Writer)
Aaron is by day a rogue audiobook producer and by night a guerilla sound designer/engineer. He wears many different hats, always ready for any situation. Hailing from Seattle, he moved to NYC to be part of the theatre, and has successfully done that for almost 10 years.
Jessica Pohly (Writer)
Jessica is a native New Yorker who has worked in downtown theater for several years. She has performed at The Flea Theater, Theater for the New City, Dixon Place, New Georges The Room, The Wings Theater and regionally at The American Shakespeare Center, Theater at Monmouth and others. She has studied at the Atlantic Theater Company and L'Ecole De Mime Corporeal.
David Winitsky (Writer)
David Winitsky is married to painter Elizabeth Samet and the proud father of Ezekiel and Alexander. He has received rave reviews at Playwrights Theatre (Our Dad is in Atlantis), Luna Stage (Santaland Diaries) and What Exit? Theatre (Beau Jest). He is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab & Emerging Artists Theatre. MFA: Northwestern, BA: Cornell. His great aspiration is to own a dog.
Abby Marsh (Writer)
A Cleveland native, Abby is a self-proclaimed gal-about-town and NYC enthusiast. When she isn’t seeing shows and being sassy, she can be found eating at Hale and Hearty or scoping out and writing about the absurd (albeit hilarious) fashion blunders on her style blog, “A Gal’s Right to Style,” of which she is co-creator. Abby loves soy ice cream (yeah, that’s right), abbreviating, and fantasizing about the possibility of one day owning a French bulldog. BFA in Acting from Boston University’s College of Fine Arts. http://galsright2style.blogspot.com
Alan Miller (Writer)
Alan is a retired senior financial executive who ran the research and investment management divisions of a major NYSE member firm. In that former life, he also wrote two books on finance and lectured on the subject in the US, Russia, Indonesia and Malysia. Alan believes that the only way to remain young is to re-pot yourself from time to time which explains why he became a rare book dealer for a decade after retiring from Wall Street, why he then started his own blog at http://aseatontheaisle.blogspot.com. Alan is unique among our staff in several respects: (1) he’s probably old enough to have fathered or grandfathered the rest of us; (2) he’s never actually worked in the theatre himself; and (3) he’s fortunate now in being able to indulge his love for the theatre without any longer having to concern himself with a day job.
Markus Paminger (Writer)
Markus Paminger is an actor, director, writer, critic, theater technician, musician and teacher. He has just finished a production of Divine Will with his company The Lucky Artists at the Orlando Fringe Festival and is preparing to produce his original play Ripple this winter. He is currently writing as a critic for Theasy.com, works as a freelance technician, mostly for the HERE Arts Center, and helps with recording with his band I Seem To Be A Verb. Markus is currently working for the Harlem Children’s Zone as a student advocate.
Gwenyth Reitz (Writer)
Gwen is an actress, director, and teaching artist. She’s worked with New York Theatre Workshop, McCarter Theatre, The Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, and is a company member of the Judith Shakespeare Company. Likes:politics, edgy unconventional theatre, curries, traveling the world, and a good board game. Dislikes: photos of adorable cats.
Janelle Lannen (Writer)
Janelle Lannan lives in Park Slope with her monkey husband and their two black furred pets: NikitaDog and JimCat. She enjoys singing for anyone who will listen and for herself in the shower, really good sushi, spirals mac n cheese, and she and her monkey watch So You Think You Can Dance and True Blood when it's on. (Currently looking forward to Fringe coming back on.) She's a member of both Anonymous Ensemble (anonymousensemble.org) and Emerging Artists Theatre Company (emergingartiststheatre.org). Someday, at the prodding of her closest friends and some acquaintances, she might try out for America's Got Talent, but not yet. (Illustration by Joseph T. Peñaloza.)
Ben Charles (Writer)
Ben loves a good show. He also loves sports, comedy and live music. He's seen many bad shows and doesn't want you to waste your time seeing something that makes you hate live theater. So listen to Ben. He doesn't want to waste your time.
Joseph Samuel Wright (Writer)
Joseph Samuel Wright is a playwright, producer, director, and the founding artistic director of Roots and Wings Theatrical (www.rawtheatrical.org). Joseph’s plays have been produced both off-off Broadway and regionally, and during his collegiate hay-day his LGBT youth advocacy play Ours was performed at colleges across East Tennessee. In addition to Theasy, you may recognize his byline from BroadwaySpace.com or his tragically under-updated blog. Special soft spots for environmental theatre, experimental forms, and strong female leads. www.JosephSamuelWright.com
Jennifer Park (Writer)
Jennifer Park was born and raised in Mississippi and moved to NYC after graduating from NCSA as a dance major. She is a freelance theater and dance writer for various blogs and zines in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. She is currently pursuing an MSW at Fordham University and also dabbles in lighting design when she is not in class.
Di Jayawickrema (Writer)
Di Jayawickrema is a native New Yorker and an erstwhile cog in the corporate machine. Having sold out early, she was able to return to her artistic roots at a relatively young age and is now a writer, a theater enthusiast, and some other good things.