PREPAREDNESS
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November 10 - December 11, 2021
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PREPAREDNESS » November 10 - December 11, 2021 »
Written by Hillary Miller
Directed by Kristjan Thor
This comic thriller follows the faculty of a moribund arts department forced to undergo self-defense training. As the afternoon unravels into chaos, these educators discover the costs of a divided community. Award-winning theater scholar Miller teams up with director Thor, who brings his immersive horror expertise to Preparedness, examining the effects of fear on our professional lives.
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Alison Cimmet
Alison Cimmet is a veteran of theater, film, and television. She was in the original casts of seven Broadway shows (most recently Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus and Amelie) and countless off-Broadway and regional productions (including Romeo & Juliet at Westport Country Playhouse and the world premiere of John Guare's 3 Kinds of Exile at the Atlantic Theater). She has graced the small and large screens, most notably in The Big Sick movie and television shows such as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Blacklist, and Bull. Check out her acting reeland full resume.
After receiving a Theater Arts degree from Brown University - where she won the prestigious Weston Award for excellence in acting - Alison continued her performance studies with CayMichael Patten, Bob Krakower, and Larry Moss, and spent many years doing improv comedy with Upright Citizens Brigade. As a singer, Alison trained classically at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, and went on to work with Craig Carnelia, Marianne Challis, Steve Sweetland, and Matt Farnsworth. She is a proud member of The Actors Center where she has studied acting with incredible teachers such as Ron Van Lieu (Yale School of Drama), Maria Aitken (BADA), Jessica Wolf (Yale School of Drama), Peter Jay Fernandez (Columbia University), and Rebecca Guy (Juilliard School), to name a few!
Alison grew up in Portland, Maine, spending most of her free time doing either community theater or community service. She currently resides in Westchester, New York, with her spouse and two children, all of whom happen to be geniuses. She is an active participant behind the scenes at various charitable organizations including Covenant House and Artists Striving to End Poverty.
In her spare time, Alison produces intimate developmental play readings with the company that she founded, Bonfire Theatre Group, and also works as a visual artist creating paintings, drawings, and collages under the name Fancille. Check back here regularly for acting updates, and follow Alison on Instagram!
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Nora Cole
Nora is an outstanding performance credits include the revival of New York Times acclaimed performance (Audelco Award nominee) in Rinde Eckert’s Obie Award winning, two character chamber opera, And God Created Great Whales (Drama League Award Nominee) at the Culture Project. Originated and commissioned by the Foundry Theatre at Dance Theatre Workshop. Other engagements include the Red Cat (L. A.), the Barbicon (London), Bonn Bienale Festival (Germany), Playmakers Repertory, MassMoca and Baltimore Center Stage. Also created the role of The Bride in Eckert’s Highway Ulysses (World Premiere) at A. R. T. directed by Robert Woodruff and featured in American Theatre Magazine.
Career highlights include The World According to Micki Grant (Drama Desk nominee) commissioned and directed by yours truly for New Federal Theatre, work withGeorge C. Wolfe: Caroline or Change, Royal National Theatre, On the Town (Broadway), Jellly’s Last Jam (Broadway) opposite Gregory Hines and the National Tour opposite Maurice Hines. Regional credits include: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Fences and To Kill a Mockingbird at Geva, Doubt, Milwaukee Rep, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Studio Arena, On Golden Pond, and Avenue X, New Harmony and the O’Neill, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well, Santa Fe Stages, The Colored Museum, Hartford Stage, The Good Times Are Killing Me, Second Stage and Elizabeth Swados', Groundhog, Manhattan Theatre Club. She has also singly performed the epic Langston Hughes epic poem, Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz with an original score by Hale Smith.
Theatre Communications Group/Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship for Distinguished Achievement recipient. Fellowship used to develop first full length play, Katherine’s Colored Lieutenant based on collection of 50 letters written to her Aunt, Katherine Cole during WWII by her fiancé, Tuskegee Airman, Robert S. Lawery. World premiere production mounted by fellowship host theatre, Geva Theatre Center and directed by David Schweizer, received outstanding reviews including a personal letter of excellence from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, David Cay Johnston.
SOLO SHOWS
Voices of the Spirits in My Soul (Audelco nominee) Last performed at St. Albans Church in Queens, NY lieu of two morning services celebrating the Martin Luther King holiday. Other venues include Geva, University of Southern Indiana, York College, 2007 National Black Theatre Festival and encore engagement in 2009 for NBTF’s 20th Anniversary. Based in part on Kentucky family slave history researched from an ample collection of family letters and photographs. First produced at Eastern Connecticut State University where Ms. Cole was an adjunct, director and coach intermittently for twelve years. NYC productions later presented by Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art’s Seaport Salon.
Oliva’s Opus, an ode to adolescence. First read at Second Stage and later presented at venues including the Negro Ensemble Company, Primary Stages, the 1993 NBTF and the Castillo Cultural Center.
15+ years with Vinnette Carroll's Urban Arts Corp (NYC) and repertory company (Ft. Lauderdale). Productions included, Your Arms Too Short to Box with God (Broadway, National & European tours), MEDEA (Title role), Boogie Woogie Rumble of a Dream Deferred, and pre-Broadway productions When Hell Freezes Over I’ll Skate (Kennedy Center) and ALICE. Her article, Vinnette Carroll: The First Black Woman Broadway Director was published in the 2012 Summer/Fall quarterly, Black Masks. www.blackmasks.com
Toured annually for several years with Woodie King Jr.'s National Black Touring Circuit production, I Have A Dream as Coretta Scott King. Tour highlights: Festivals in Brighton and Birmingham, England and the first National Black Theatre Festival.
Television appearances include The Cosby Mystery Movies, All My Children, Loving (I delivered Trish's baby!), Another World, The Guiding Light, the pilot, H.E.L.P. and numerous commercials and voice-overs. Performed for WNYC Public Radio's Selected Shorts series with Kingdom of the Sun.
Louisville, Kentucky native. Trained and performed with Louisville Children’s Theatre (Stage One), the West Side Players and Louisville Shakespeare in the Park. Attended Beloit College, Chicago Conservatory and earned a BFA from the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago. Throughout career studied dance with Frank Hatchett, Pepsi Bethel and Barbara Fraser.
Other Honors
AUDELCO Awards. Best Director of a Musical & Retrospective Recognitioin
Actors Theatre of Louisville Women in Music Award,
Spencer Cherashore Fund Individual Artist Grant,
Joseph Jefferson & Connecticut Critics Circle Award nominee
Hedgebrook, Women's Writing Residency alumna
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Tracy Hazas
Tracy Hazas is a queer Cuban-American actor and movement director from Louisville, Kentucky based in New York. (Hazas rhymes with the Spanish casas.)
Tracy has performed at various NYC theaters including New York City Center, Dixon Place, Abrons Art Center, the Bushwick Starr, Theater for the New City and HERE Arts Center. She has been a movement consultant on plays produced by Clubbed Thumb (NYC) and regionally at Word for Word, Center Repertory Company and Davis Shakespeare. With director Kathleen Capdesuñer, she is currently developing Los Kentubanos, a new full-length performance that had its first work-in-progress showing at INTAR, and which will be further developed in residence at the Mercury Store in 2026.
She is an affiliated artist with Counter-Balance Theater. Regionally, she’s performed at the Aurora Theatre Company and CenterREP in the Bay Area, among others. She made her feature debut in White Rabbit at Sundance 2018. Tracy is repped commercially by BBR Talent; clients include Tide, Xbox, Uber and others. Voiceover work includes KCRW’s podcast The Organist, and narration for the Eisenhower Presidential Memorial, and the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation.
Tracy has held teaching appointments at Stanford University, Emerson College Los Angeles, Montclair State University and Queens College. BA, Smith College (Comparative Lit & Spanish); MA, NYU Tisch School (Performance Studies); MFA, UC Irvine (Acting).
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Lou Liberatore
LOU LIBERATORE (Beelzebub) Broadway: Burn This (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Award nominations), As Is. Off Broadway: God Shows Up (ActorsTemple), Daniel’s Husband (Westside Theatre, Primary Stages, Penguin Rep), Pushkin (Sheen Center), Rocket to the Moon (St. Clement’s), others. Regional: Angels in America (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide… (Berkeley Rep), 12 Angry Men (Pioneer), others. London: Burn This. TV: Blindspot, Deception, The Affair, Law & Order, Sex and the City, Nurse Jackie, others. Film: Lesson #4, Barrio Boy, (upcoming), and It’s My Party, Mary & Louise, others. Education: Fordham University (Lincoln Center), William Esper. Member Artist: Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Actors Center and The Circle Repertory Company (1985-96).
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Luis Moreno
Luis was born in New York City to immigrant parents from Spain, he grew up in Midtown Manhattan in a bilingual household, speaking English at school and Spanish at home. His acting journey began at the age of four when his mother enrolled him in a Spanish-speaking theater group in his neighborhood. Throughout his childhood, he traveled frequently to Spain to visit extended family before relocating with his family to Madrid at age 13. There, he continued performing in school productions as well as with community theater companies throughout the city.
In the mid-1990s, he returned to the United States to attend Bard College, where he earned a double major in Drama/Dance and Philosophy. After graduating, he moved to Portland, Oregon, where he performed with several independent theater companies, including Liminal and defunkt. Following a workshop with SITI Company and a brief return to Spain, he relocated to New York City to pursue an MFA in Acting at Columbia University. During his graduate studies, he trained with renowned teachers including Kristen Linklater, Andrei Șerban, Anne Bogart, Brian Kulick, Larry Singer, and many others.
Throughout his career, he has performed in theaters across New York City and the United States, appearing Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, and on national tours. His theater credits include work with Monica Bill Barnes & Co., Red Bull Theater, Classic Stage Company, The Acting Company, Caborca, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and La MaMa ETC, as well as leading regional theaters including Berkeley Rep, Long Wharf Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Two River Theater, and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.
In 2009, he began narrating audiobooks in English and has since recorded more than 100 titles. His narration credits span a wide range of genres and authors, including Miguel de Cervantes, William S. Burroughs, Danielle Steel, Harlan Ellison, Carlos Castaneda, and E. E. Cummings, among many others.
He expanded into film and television in 2013, making his feature film debut in Home, directed by Jono Oliver, and appearing in Tarik Karam's short film Zzzzzzz, which screened at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. Since then, he has appeared in numerous television series, including The Blacklist, Person of Interest, The Good Fight, Blue Bloods, Madam Secretary, The Mysteries of Laura, and Daredevil.
Outside of acting, he has also worked as a freelance stagehand and theatrical electrician for several New York theaters, most notably St. Ann's Warehouse and Columbia University's Graduate Theatre Program.
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KK Moggie
KK was born in Malaysia to an Iban father and New Zealand Mother, K.K grew up in both of her cultures. Spending her early years in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and her formative years in Christchurch and later Auckland, New Zealand.
Off Broadway includes: Preparedness (Bushwick Starr) Eureka Day (Colt Coeur), Passage (Soho Rep), The Gravediggers Lullaby (The Actors Company) Daphne’s Dive (Signature Theater) Charles Francis Chan Jr’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery (NAATCO), One Night (Cherry Lane), The Golden Dragon (The Play Company), Bottom of the World (Atlantic Theater Company), Grace (MCC), Richard III (Classic Stage Company)
Regional: Mary Stuart (title role, Chicago Shakespeare Theater)
Film: Shackled, After Party, Home, Anna and the King, The Sleeping Dictionary
T.V includes: Gotham Knights (Upcoming) (CW), Inventing Anna (Netflix), Bull (CBS), God Friended Me (CBS) The Good Wife (CBS), Gossip Girl (CW), Mercy (NBC), White Collar
(USA)MFA Columbia University Acting Program.
K.K is also an adjunct professor in acting for camera, having taught at Columbia University, PACE University and Long Island University.
K.K considers herself third culture and 1st generation Asian American.
Scenic Designer Carolyn Mraz, Costume Designer Rodrigo Muñoz, Lighting Designer Christina Tang, Sound Designer Chris Darbassie, Prop Designer Patricia Marjorie, Casting X Casting / Victor Vazquez CSA, Production Stage Manager Christina M. Woolard, Assistant Stage Manager Jackie Mercer, Producer Oliver Kramer and Amanda Cooper/ALC Management
Preparedness is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Additional support for this project was provided by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and the City University of New York.