I'LL BE THINE, VALENTINE: ROMEO AND JULIET

Travis Ascione is an actor and educator based out of Chicago, IL. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from Westminster College, a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from The University of Southern Mississippi and is a Certified Practitioner and member of the Lessac Training and Research Institute. Off-stage Travis works as a freelance Voice Over Artist, is an avid guitar player and photographer. Past roles include Macbeth (Macbeth), Charles II (Nell Gwynn), and Sky Masterson (Guys & Dolls).

Cameron Davis is thrilled to be making his acting debut here at Shakespeare & Company! He is honored to get to tell this timeless story and be a part of a team with such talented and dedicated artists. At other theatres: Fish in the Royale (Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado); Sheriff in Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood(Creede Repertory Theatre); Donalbain in Macbeth, Stokes in How to Catch Creation (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Belize inPerestroika, Frederick in The Rover, Avery in The Flick (Oregon Center for the Arts); Tom in Actually (Black Swan Project).

Ptah Garvin is blessed and elated to be making his Shakespeare & Company debut. Originally from Atlanta ,GA, Ptah is grateful to be performing again. He is a recent graduate the FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training where he received his MFA in acting. Some of his previous credits: Pipeline (The Warehouse Theatre) Our Town, Twilight Los Angelos 1992, Julius Caesar (FSU/ASOLO CONSERVATORY). Ptah wants to thank his family, friends, and the good lord above for his talents and continued support. “Believe in yourself or no one else will.” Love you mommy!

JoJo McDonald is an actor, tap dancer, and teaching artist raised in the Berkshires and based in Queens, NY. She has taught at Shakespeare & Co and in community art initiatives such as Community Access to The Arts in Great Barrington and They Dance For Rain in Nairobi, Kenya. As a young person she participated in almost all of the education programs at Shakespeare & Co, and as an adult returned to teach for Riotous Youth and just directed her third Fall Festival of Shakespeare. In 2018-19, she gave a year of service in Queens, NY as a teaching artist through ArtistYear, an Americorps program aiming to enrich arts programming in Title 1 schools. JoJo studied at Williams College and completed the Month-Long Intensive at Shakespeare & Co in January of 2020. As a performer she has done a lot of Shakespeare, The People’s Tap Dance Theater, works written by brilliant friends, and self-produced and devised work with Dancers of the Berkshires. She is grateful to family and her mentors, and grateful to you for being here. Headshot by Ari Scott, @ariscottphoto.

Stephanie Neuerburg is a Chicago-based performer, writer, and podcaster. Her theatre work has been featured at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, among others. Her poetry has been published in Okay Donkey, Lazy Women, and dirt children literary magazines, and her original play Science Night was a finalist for the John Cauble Outstanding Short Play award. When not performing, she works as a docent on the architecture boat tour on the Chicago River. stephanieneuerburg.com

Savanna is an Actor and Teaching Artist originally from Humboldt County California. Theatre credits: Shakespeare in Love, Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles, Off the Rails (U/S, Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Pick Me Last (La Jolla Playhouse); Life Sucks (Cygnet Theatre); Christmas Contigo (Oregon Cabaret);The Refugee Hotel (Latinx Play Project); The Madres, The Return of Tartuffe (Ashland New Plays Festival); The Epic of Gilgamesh (Oregon Fringe Festival); Dream Hou$e (Latinx New Play Festival); Written in Stone (La Jolla Playhouse WOW Fest); Saints Go Marching (Ingenio Milagro Festival).SOU credits: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Secret Garden, The Crucible, Little Shop of Horrors, Caliban’s Dreams, Horse Girls. UC San Diego credits: Shame Spiral, Life is a Dream, Orestes 2.0, Elektra, HEAP, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. BFA in Acting: Southern Oregon University, MFA: UC San Diego.

Naire is fresh off of her performance as Margaret/the Sexton in Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare & Company, where she also featured as Elizabeth Darcy in a staged reading of The Wickams: Christmas at Pemberly. She has a hunger for exploring roles that challenge societal structures, such as her performance of Bella in For the People’s Good at Global Majority Shakespeare Company. Some of her favorite roles include: Antigone (Antigone), Hermia (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), three (hang), Dave Moss (Glengarry Glenross), and Hamlet (Hamlet). When she isn’t tackling roles that explore complexity in interpersonal relationships, she is a Director and Teaching Artist; ablaze to adjust theatrical structures into inclusive, healing, and meaningful spaces. She is lifted by supportive friends, grounded by a lovely family, and illuminated by God. salu. blm.

S&Co: Feste (Twelfth Night), Fenton/Slender (Merry Wives), Silvius/Amiens (As You Like It), Young Men (Macbeth), Iago (Othello ed. tour), Bottom/Demetrius (Midsummer ed. tour), Leo (4000 Miles), Scaramouch (The Emperor of the Moon), Macduff/ Duncan (Macbeth ed. tour), Musician/ Composer (An Iliad), Greg (SLaW), Polonius/Horatio (Hamlet ed. tour), Nurse/Friar (R&J ed. tour), Ensemble (The Tempest), Damis (Tartuffe). Off-Off B’way: Ernst, Spring Awakening: A Sin of Omission (Looking Glass Theatre); Greg has worked with many theaters across the northeast including Urbanite Theatre, The Theater at Woodshill, The Umbrella Stage Company, Berkshire Playwrights Lab, WAM Theatre, Emergent Ensemble Theater, The Theatre at Monmouth, and Hampshire Shakespeare, and has taught with Community Access to the Arts, The Berkshire Music School and in the education department at S&Co. Training: S&Co 2017 January Intensive; (BA) UMass Amherst; UKent, Canterbury. For more, visit GregoryBoover.com

Kevin is one of Shakespeare & Company’s artistic and administrative leaders. He works in the Performance and Training departments as an actor, teacher, and director, and oversees the mission of the Education department. Kevin has been a guest teacher or director at MIT, Harvard, L.S.U., Stanford, Shenandoah Shakespeare, Q.U.T.- Brisbane, Lincoln Center, the Folger Library, Shakespeare Festivals in both Stratfords, and the Mercury Theatre in Colchester, UK. Kevin is the Theatre Director at the Austen Riggs Center, where he has directed over 30 productions. In 2016, Kevin was Runner-Up for the Tony Award for Excellence in Theatre Education. Along with Patrick Toole, Kevin recently produced the soon to be released film, Speak What We Feel, documenting the Fall Festival of Shakespeare.

Hailing from Westborough, Massachusetts, scenic designer, production designer, props master and scenic charge Devon has been involved in technical theater since the age of eight. Most recently she served as Adjunct Scenic Designer at UAlbany for A Dream Playand Twelfth Night and received the BroadwayWorld Berkshires 2021 Award for best Scenic Design of a Play/Musical for her design of S&Co’s production of Becoming Othello: A Black Girls Journey. Other professional and academic credits include scenic design for Taming of the Shrew, Love’s Labor’s Lost, and God of Carnage (S&Co), The Magic Flute (UNCG Opera), Antigone, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (UNCG), Machinal and Casanova (UMass Amherst); props master at S&Co and the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts. Devon has also served as a production designer for S&Co’s Fall Festival of Shakespeare. She holds an MFA in Design from UNC-Greensboro’s School of Theatre and a BA from UMass-Amherst. Website: DevonDrohanDesigns.Weebly.com