Community Shakespeare Company

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

There are many people who help out with each CSC production: parents, cast members, students, and community members. But there are a few whose contributions to many productions we would like to recognize:

Susan Wilson - Co-Founder

Susan Wilson first discovered a love of theatre through her involvement with neighborhood theatre troupes as a child. This initial exposure to acting and stagecraft, combined with a natural ability to inspire young people of all ages and relate to their individual gifts and strengths, has enabled her to maintain a dynamic and uncanny connection with all her student actors. Susan has worked tirelessly on all aspects of producing first-rate performances since CSC’s inception, including (but not limited to) creating engaging and realistic stage sets, managing props, running lines with actors, ensuring students had healthy snacks and water to drink during rehearsals, staying up into all hours of the night painting set pieces or hanging drapery, and all this after giving kids a ride home from rehearsal. In addition to volunteering with CSC, Susan delights in her work as a kayak guide, has been an invaluable inspiration to her daughters, Tasha and Arielle, and is currently taking some time off from the stage to enjoy the pleasures of an empty nest with her husband Bob.

Celia Rosenberger - Music

Celia Rosenberger has been the music director for the Community Shakespeare Company's plays for the older students since 2002. She studied Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque musical performance at UC Berkeley in the heyday of the revival of ancient music, and has put on innumerable early music performances. She was a member of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra for many years, and was a professor of music in the preparatory department of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is thrilled to be able to pass on the love of early music to a new generation.

Tracey Cottingham - Costumes

Tracey Cottingham has been the Costume Design Director for CSC since 2001. Her education includes a BA in Clothing Design from the University of Washington and continuing education at the Modeschule am Hetzendorf in Vienna, Austria. She divides her time between designing for the modern world of outdoor sport clothing and Shakespeare’s Medieval and Renaissance periods for CSC. Her life-long love of collecting textiles includes recent ventures into many parts of the world to hunt for costume materials including Lopez Island’s recycling center and eBay. She is looking forward to researching and working on King Lear this fall, being inspired from her ancestral roots in Celtic England. This year, she hopes to direct students interested in costume design. The most exciting part of the process for her is creating and choreographing the costumes in each scene and then watching the young actors blossom from normal kids into confident Shakespearean characters on stage during the first dress rehearsal.

Maya Borhani - Production Stage Manager

With a background in English literature and a lifelong passion for poetry, Maya loves working with student actors on the musical affect and subtle nuances of the Bard's sweet tongue. Maya has been with Community Shakespeare since 2001, assisting the Directors, as stage manager, and as sometime choreographer. She is founder and director of Lopez-Poets-in-the-Schools, has worked with Seattle Shakespeare Company, and thanks Seattle Scenic Studios for her on-the-job training as Properties Manager. As Stage Manager for King Lear, Maya looks forward to uniting essential elements of set and scene to create a riveting, live theatre experience, and to supporting our professional-calibre cast in unveiling their deepest dramatic selves. Maya is the proud mother of Elena (who plays Goneril), and Petra, a sophomore at Syracuse University.

Jaina A. Davis has helped out on several CSC productions, but this is her first time as production manager. She studied filmmaking and performance/video at the San Francisco Art Institute and has an extensive background in the experimental and musical theaters of the Bay Area, as well as the theater and music departments of Camp Nor’wester. She loves being amazed by the kids.