Give Me
Carmelita
Tropicana!

Alina Troyano

Co-Writer / Performer

Alina Troyano, aka Carmelita Tropicana is a Cuban born, New York based writer, performer and educator. Tropicana uses irreverent humor to challenge cultural stereotypes, performing feminine and masculine personas, animals, insects, cyborgs, and hybrid fantasy creatures. She’s currently working on Live Memoir, (2025). She’s received a Latinx Artist Fellowship (2022); United States Artists Fellowship (2021); John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2017); and awards from Creative Capital (2016); Anonymous Was a Woman (2005); New York Foundation for the Arts (1987, 1991, 2006) and an Obie (1999). Her writing appears in her book I, Carmelita Tropicana, Performing Between Cultures (2000), a collection of scripts, short stories, essays and she is an editor on Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the Wow Café Theater (2015). She serves on the New York Foundation for the Arts Board of Directors, Soho Rep Board of Directors, and is a member of the Dramatist Guild.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Co-Writer

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based playwright, producer, Tony winner, and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist.  Recent theater credits include Appropriate (Broadway), Purpose (Steppenwold Theater) The Comeuppance (Signature Theatre), Girls (Yale Rep), Everybody (Signature Theatre), War (Yale Rep; Lincoln Center/LCT3), Gloria (Vineyard Theatre), Appropriate (Obie Award; Signature Theatre), An Octoroon (Obie Award; Soho Rep, Theatre for a New Audience), and Neighbors (The Public Theater). He currently teaches at Yale University and serves as Vice President of the Dramatists Guild council and on the boards of Soho Rep, Park Avenue Armory, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the Dramatists Guild Foundation.  Honors include a USA Artists fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, the MacArthur fellowship, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award.  

Eric Ting

Director

Eric Ting (he/they) is a two-time Obie Award-winning director of theater, opera, and dance, and one of three Directors of Soho Rep, whose work has been seen across the US and around the world. Credits include the world premieres of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ The Comeuppance (Signature Theater); The 1491s Between Two Knees (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, PAC NYC); Lloyd Suh’s The Far Country (Atlantic Theater); Toshi Reagon’s Parable of the Sower: The Opera (Lincoln Center); Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap (Denver Center, Seattle Rep); Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present a Presentation… (Soho Rep). Ting is a proud member of SDC.

Mimi Lien

Co-Scenic Designer

Mimi Lien (she/her) is a designer of sets/environments for theater, dance, and opera. Arriving at set design from a background in architecture, her work often focuses on the interaction between audience/environment and object/performer. In 2015, she was named a MacArthur Fellow, and is the first stage designer ever to achieve this distinction. In addition to her work on the stage, she also creates large-scale public artworks, and sculptural/performance installations. Selected work includes Fairview, An Octoroon (Soho Rep.); Sweeney Todd (Broadway); Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway, Tony Award); Taylor Mac’s A 24 Decade History of Popular Music (St. Ann’s Warehouse & international tour). Mimi is a recipient of a TONY Award, Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, American Theatre Wing Hewes Design Award, LA Drama Critics Circle Award, Bessie Award, an OBIE Award for sustained excellence, and is a co-founder of the Brooklyn performance space JACK.

Tatiana Kahvegian

Co-Scenic Designer

Tatiana Kahvegian (she/her)  is a Tony nominated stage designer based in Brooklyn, NY. She is originally from São Paulo, Brazil, and is of Armenian descent. Tatiana was recently nominated to both a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for the scenic design of the Broadway adaptation of The Outsiders, co-designed with Christine Jones and Brett Banakis as part of the collective AMP. She received her M.F.A. at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Greg Corbino

Costume and Puppet Designer

Greg Corbino (he/him) is a transdisciplinary artist, puppeteer and educator. His work has been called “gorgeously baroque” by The New Yorker and “crafty and audacious” by The New York Times. Collaborators include Peter Schumann and The Bread and Puppet Theater, Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir, Charlotte Brathwaite and Sunder Ganglani, Jennifer Miller, Xaviera Simmons, Cecilia Vicuña and Becca Blackwell. His design work has been featured at Soho Rep (It’s That Time of the Month), The High Line, The Architecture League of New York, The Queens Museum, The Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, HEREarts and the Smithsonian Institution.

Barbara Samuels

Lighting Designer

Barbara Samuels (she/her) is an Obie and Henry Hewes Award winning queer lighting designer, organizer and producer creating design-forward live events that prioritize generosity, equity, and representation. New York credits include designs at Soho Rep, Signature, MCC, Lincoln Center, Ars Nova, TFANA, NYTW, Playwrights Horizons, NAATCO, Ma-Yi, WP Theater, The Bushwick Starr, Monica Bill Barnes & Company, Beth Morrison Projects, New Georges, Little Island, The Public and Clubbed Thumb. Regional: Pig Iron, Bard Summerscape, The Alley, Long Wharf, ACT, Woolly Mammoth, Playmakers, Kansas City Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Shakespeare Theater Company, and Trinity Rep. New Georges Affiliated Artist. 2016 Target Margin Institute. Wingspace Member. WP Lab 2022-24.BA, Fordham; MFA, NYU. Proud Member USA829. www.barbarasamuels.com

Tei Blow

Co-Sound & Video Designer

Tei Blow (he/him) is a media designer performance maker. His work has been seen at Dance Theater Workshop, PS122, and theaters around the world. He is the recipient of The Henry Hewes Award, NYSCA Composer’s Grant, the Bessie Award, the FCA Grants to Artists Award, and the Creative Capital Award.

Jeremy Kadetsky

Co-Sound & Video Designer

Jeremy Kadetsky (they/them) is a writer, designer and tinkerer based in Brooklyn. Recent work includes performing for Lisa Clair (Willa’s Authentic Self at Theater MITU), making and programming video for Sister Sylvester (Constantinopoliad at Onasis Steggi and Internaational Theater Amsterdam), and making sounds for Heather Kravas (overly merry at The Chocolate Factory). Jeremy is currently developing a devised piece (Fellow Traveler) with Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble and a rabbinical, punk operetta (BIRDS). Education: Johns Hopkins University (BA), Sarah Lawrence College (MFA). @kadetskyj www.kadetskyj.com.

Cookie Jordan

Co Hair and Wig Designer

Broadway: Merrily We Roll Along, Strange Loop, Camelot, The Piano Lesson, Into the Woods, Trouble In Mind, Clydes, Potus, Slave Play, Choir Boy, The Cher Show, Once On This Island, Sunday in the Park with George, In Transit, Eclipsed, Side Show, After Midnight, Fela, A View From the Bridge, South Pacific. Off-Broadway: Flex, Orpheus Descending, White Girl in Danger, Girls, Fefu and Her Friends, Aint No Mo, Fairview, Toni Stone, If Pretty Hurts, The Secret Life of Bees, All The Natalie Portmans, Boseman and Lena, Fabulation, Our Lady of 121st Street, In the Blood, Daddy, Hercules. Television: Emmy nominated for make up design NBC, “The Wiz Live”. Recipient of 2019, 2020 Obie Award.

tbd casting co.

Casting

tbd casting co. (Margaret Dunn, Tanis Parenteau, Nia Smith & Stephanie Yankwitt, she/her). Resident casting office for Soho Rep., where past productions include The Fires, Public Obscenities, Wolf Play, Notes on Killing, and Fairview … among many others. Select upcoming film projects include “Still Life” (Alex Dinelaris, Wr./Dir., Lexicon), and “Driven” (David Shane. Wr./Dir., O Positive). Select upcoming theater includes Cymbeline (NAATCO), The Thing About Jellyfish (Berkeley Rep), Here There are Blueberries (National tour), Babbitt (Shakespeare Theatre Co.), and Disruption (West End). tbd casting co. cast the award winning film “In The Summers”, written/directed by Alessandra Lacorazza, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival, and was an official selection of Tribeca, Cartagena, LA Liff Film Festivals). It will be released in select cities this fall. @tbdcastingco

Cha Ramos

Fight Director & Choreographer

Cha Ramos (she/ella) is a Drama Desk Award winning fight director and industry leading intimacy director as well as a dramaturg, playwright, and performer, who has been studying and creating dances since she was a toddler. She’s as likely to be found in NYC rehearsal rooms, as on Renaissance Faire stages, as in a rueda on the dance floor. More about her artistic practice(s) can be found at www.CallMeCha.com. Con mucho cariño, orgullo, agradecimiento, y ¡azúcar! 

Eliza Simpson

Dialect Coach

Eliza Simpson (she/her) is an accent and speech coach who’s clients appear on Netflix, Hulu, Paramount+, HBO, & Apple TV. Her most coaching credits include Inside Out 2 (Disney), Apples Never Fall (Peacock) , and Avatar: Frontieres of Pandora (Ubisoft Games.)

Mariana Catalina

Assistant Director

Mariana Catalina (she/her) is a writer, theater artist, and creative producer living in New York City. Her work expands across the modalities of performance, poetry, and visual narrative. Currently she is an associate producer at PAC NYC and creative producer for Tina Satter/Half Straddle. Mariana has worked with a variety of artists both independently and through institutions and companies such as Elevator Repair Service, The Kitchen, Performance Space New York, and Mabou Mines. She proudly straddles all of these realms.

Brian Freeland

Production Manager

Brian Freeland (he/him) is a production manager, director, producer, writer, sound + media artist, and community builder. Production management credits include works for and with Illinoise (Broadway), En Garde Arts, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Lincoln Center, Soho Rep, The TEAM, Under The Radar, Wooly Mammoth Theatre, The Park Avenue Armory, Mass MoCA, Ripe Time, The Bearded Ladies, Andrew Schneider, Up Until Now Collective, Bard, Curious Theatre Company, HERE Arts Center, Beth Morrison Projects, The LIDA Project, Countdown to Zero, The Brick, and The Prototype Festival. www.brianfreeland.com

Graham Zellers

Associate Lighting Designer

Graham Zellers (he/him) is a lighting designer based out of New York and holds a B.A. in Theatrical Design and Technology from Ball State University and an M.F.A. from the School of Drama at Yale. Design credits include: National Black Theatre / Apollo Theater, Yale Repertory Theater, and Gulfshore Playhouse among others. Outside of designing, Graham has worked at Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, NY as a Lighting Supervisor and as the Lighting Director at Gulfshore Playhouse in Naples, FL.

Carmelita Tropicana

Alina Troyano, aka Carmelita Tropicana is a Cuban born, New York based writer, performer and educator. Tropicana uses irreverent humor to challenge cultural stereotypes, performing feminine and masculine personas, animals, insects, cyborgs, and hybrid fantasy creatures. She’s currently working on Live Memoir, (2025). She’s received a Latinx Artist Fellowship (2022); United States Artists Fellowship (2021); John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2017); and awards from Creative Capital (2016); Anonymous Was a Woman (2005); New York Foundation for the Arts (1987, 1991, 2006) and an Obie (1999). Her writing appears in her book I, Carmelita Tropicana, Performing Between Cultures (2000), a collection of scripts, short stories, essays and she is an editor on Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the Wow Café Theater (2015). She serves on the New York Foundation for the Arts Board of Directors, Soho Rep Board of Directors, and is a member of the Dramatist Guild.

Octavia Chavez-Richmond

Octavia Chavez-Richmond (she/her) is an actor/writer/storyteller who uses theater and film to disrupt colonialism, racism, and misogyny. Selected Theater: Mary Gets Hers, The Playwrights Realm; Fuente Ovejuna, Theatre for a New Audience; Pride and Prejudice, Long Wharf Theatre; Between Riverside and Crazy, SpeakEasy Stage Company; Yoga Play, Syracuse Stage/Geva Theatre; Last Ship to Proxima Centauri (world premiere), Portland Stage Company; Marisol, Trinity Repertory Company. Selected Film: Free Guy, Knives Out, From Nowhere (SXSW). Training: Brown/Trinity MFA Acting.

Ugo Chukwu

Ugo Chukwu (he/him) is a NYC based actor from the Bronx. Theater credits: Broadway National Tour of Oklahoma!, USUS (Clubbed Thumb) Lunch Bunch (Play Company/Clubbed Thumb), Primary Trust (Roundabout), What To Send Up When It Goes Down (Movement Theater/Under the Radar/Playwrights Horizon), House Plant (NYTW: Next Door), Do You Feel Anger (Vineyard) Today is my Birthday (Page73) and Porto (WP Theater/New Georges/Bushwick Starr). Regional Theater: Ripcord (Huntington) and Adventure Quest (Edinburgh Fringe/Dutch Kills). Film/TV: Driven (Tribeca Film Festival), The Path, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Inventing Anna. Ugo can also be seen in the Emmy nominated “Agent State Farm” commercial starring Arnold Schwarzenegger which premiered during this year’s Super Bowl, as well as commercials for Spectrum Mobile and Apple Pay. Ugo is a teaching artist with the New Victory Theater. www.ugochukwuactor.com

Will Dagger

Will Dagger (he/him) reveres this team! He has helped develop new work with Ars Nova, Audible, The Civilians, Clubbed Thumb, Colt Couer, EST, New Dramatists, The New Group, NYTW, Primary Stages, and Second Stage. Theatre: CORSICANA (Playwrights Horizons), UNCLE VANYA (O’Henry Productions), YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING (Here), MACBETH (Double Feature), THE ANTELOPE PARTY (Dutch Kills), AMONG THE DEAD (Ma-Yi). TV: LAW & ORDER: SVU (NBC), FBI: MOST WANTED (CBS), THE BLACKLIST (NBC), and DECEPTION (ABC). Thanks Dave and A&R, love you M. willdagger.com

Keren Lugo

Keren Lugo (she/her) Off-Broadway: Comedy of Errors, Privacy, Romeo y Julieta-radio play (The Public Theater); Stargazers (Page 73), At the Wedding (LCT3); Actually, We’re F*cked (Cherry Lane); Two Mile Hollow (WP Theater). Regional: Girls, Scenes From Court Life (Yale Rep); Water by The Spoonful (Mark Taper Forum); Men on Boats (Baltimore Center Stage); Women of Padilla (Two River Theater); qHenry V, Our Town (Chautauqua Theater Festival). TV: “New Amsterdam” (NBC), “Orange is the New Black” (Netflix), “The Americans” (FX). Education: The University of Puerto Rico, NYU Graduate Acting.