Production Team

J Dakota Powell, Producing Artistic Director

See: Board of Directors.

Simon Gethin Thomas, Lighting and Production Designer - London

Simon is a London-based lighting designer, and trained for a Master's Degree at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Recent production credits include the Arensky Chamber Orchestra (Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre), Twelfth Night (Victoria Baths, Manchester) and Fear of Music (York Theatre Royal, then touring).

Jake Witlen, Literary Advisor - International

Jake Witlen is a theatre and video artist based between Brooklyn and Berlin. After spending three years as the Artistic / Literary Associate at the award-winning Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, he helped found The Internationalists, a collective of directors from around the world. With the Internationalists (theinternationalists.org), he has devised and developed many pieces using new technologies, and presented work live and virtually from dozens of countries. Previous work examples includes: a collectively written adaptation of the Odyssey with 12 writers around the world using wikis, emails and waves (OD@C); an interactive puppet show written live in a wiki and performed in English and German (Rubble Room; winner 2010 Zitty Top Buhne); and a simultaneous dinner between New York and Berlin (The Virtual Dinner Party). US Work: Williamstown Theatre Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, HERE Arts, 3-Legged Dog, PS122, the Ohio Theare etc. International Work: Berlin, London, Athens, Bucharest, Oslo, Sibiu, Quito and Bagalore, India.

Luisa Marieth Morales, Producing Partner - London

Morales is the International Community Developer at Innovation Warehouse, a co-working space and incubator in central London. Luisa is also co-founder at Poksea Studios, a company she launched with a friend that focuses on social media marketing for startups. Having studied economics and law at university, she finds the art of setting up a business and seeing an idea reach fruition absolutely fascinating. Thanks to her varied interests, the beautifully creative and intelligent people she gets to work with and the locations from which she works, every day is challenge filled with a new learning experience. She loves this!

Alison Reader, Producer - New York City

Alison Reader is an actress based in New York City, currently pursuing her Masters in Acting at The Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University. Most recently she was the New York Broadcaster for LoNyLa's Velocity Lab, in an off-broadway production, and working for The New York International Fringe Festival. She has had the privilege of working with The Old Vic in London with their Old Vic New Voices division. She attended The Hotchkiss School, The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and Colby College.

Nicholas Hart, Associate Producer - London

Hart graduated from Central School of Speech & Drama in 2011, with a BA (Hons) in Acting, specialising in Collaborative & Devised Theatre. He played Jack in SOLD at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2011, which won the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award and received five-star reviews. He recently played Don Ricardo in a rehearsed reading of The History of Cardenio at Shakespeare's Globe, directed by Wilson Milam. Nicholas is also a freelance digital designer, and is responsible for the design and implementation of timewavefestival.com.

LoNyLa Artistic Directors

John Gould Rubin, New York

Directing credits include: Hedda Gabler staged in a Town House for 25 people per performance, Little Doc at Rattlestick, The Importance of Being Ernest for Twin Tiers Theatre and In the Daylight at the McGinn-Cazale. Was Co-Artistic and Executive Director of LAByrinth Theater Company for which he directed the premieres of Philip Roth in Khartoum and Penalties & Interest (both as part of Public/LAB at The Public Theater); STopless; The Trail of Her Inner Thigh by Erin Cressida Wilson; John Patrick Shanley’s A Winter Party; Dreaming in Tongues; and Mémoire. He co-created and directed The Erotica Project for the NYSF; Trial By Water for Ma-Yi; A Taste of Honey at Playwrights Horizons; Blood in the Sink at Urban Stages; both A Matter Of Choice and NAMI for Partial Comfort; Rebecca Gilman’s The Land of Little Horses, Frank McGuiness’ Factory Girls, Timberlake Westenbaker’s Three Birds Alighting on a Field and Richard Nelson’s Franny’s Way, for the Stella Adler Studio; EST’s and Naked Angel’s Marathons; The Fartiste for the NY Fringe Festival (Best Musical.) He wrote (and played Ivan Boesky in) The Predators’ Ball (collaborating with Karole Armitage and David Salle) for the Teatro Comunale in Florence, Italy, and at BAM’s Next Wave Festival. He recently directed his first film, Almost Home for Trigger Street Independent at The Berkshire Film Festival.

Elyse Singer, New York

Elyse is a director/writer/producer and the Founding Artistic Director of the OBIE-winning Hourglass Group. Her work has been seen Off-Broadway, regionally and internationally. Her original multi-media play Frequency Hopping won the International STAGE Playwriting Competition and ran at 3LD Art & Technology Center. Singer’s Off-Broadway directing credits include Trouble in Paradise; the first NYC revival of Mae West’s 1926 play SEX; the first US revival of West’s Pleasure Man (starring Charles Busch); and Deborah Swisher’s Hundreds of Sisters & One BIG Brother. Singer’s other original works include Love in the Void, Care-less: Eva Tanguay and Private Property. As producer: Beebo Brinker Chronicles Off-Broadway at 37 Arts (co-produced with Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner and Harriet Newman Leve), winner of the 2008 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New York Theater. A Yale graduate, Singer is a Usual Suspect at NYTW, an alum of the LCT Directors Lab and a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women. She is represented by Bret Adams, Ltd. and is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

Drayton Alexander Hiers, Singapore

Drayton is a writer, director and dramaturg. His plays, films, and performances have been seen in Singapore at the Arts House, 72-13, and the SPORE Arts Salon; in New York at Eyebeam, the Bushwick Starr, Anthology Film Archives, and The Tank NYC; and in Amsterdam at Het Muiderpoort Theatre. He has worked as a director and dramaturg with Jean Tay ("Between Us"), Chong Tze Chien ("The Book of Living and Dying"), and Su Ching Teh ("Call Me Bea and Ubin"). He lectures at NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia and Singapore Repertory Theatre, and holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch Asia.