Rinabeth Apostol
Rinabeth Apostol* (Actor) has appeared in Min Kahng’s The Four Immigrants at TheatreWorks (TBA Award nomination), Eugenie Chan’s Madame Ho, and Jiehae Park’s peerless at Marin Theatre Company. Other world premiere roles include: Tala in Monstress (American Conservatory Theatre), Gloria Windham (The Nymphomaniac) in the musical The Cable Car Nymphomaniac (FOGG Theater), Ana in Lauren Gunderson's Fire Work (TheatreFirst), FIRST (PlayGround/Aluminous Collective), The Kite Runner (Arizona Theatre Company & San Jose Rep) and Usaping Puki: The Vagina Monologues (Skirball Center for the Arts, New York). She has also appeared in: Aliens With Extraordinary Skills (B Street Theatre Company), Othello (Marin Theatre Company), Of Mice and Men (San Jose Rep On Tour), Avenue Q (San Jose Stage Company), RED (TheatreWorks) and Imelda: The Musical (East West Players, Los Angeles). Rinabeth has worked with Magic Theatre, Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor, Playwrights Foundation, Crowded Fire, American Musical Theatre of San Jose and the Armory Center for the Arts, Los Angeles. Her TV/film credits include appearances on Nickelodeon, Showtime, LOGO and several independent films, including LIT, which received critical acclaim at Frameline, Outfest, and Palm Springs International Film Festivals last summer. Rinabeth is also an educator/activist. When she's not performing, you can find her choreographing for musicals or lecturing on gender and racial inequity in the performing arts. She is also a proud company member of PlayGround and SAG-AFTRA. www.rinabeth.com |
Greg Ayers
Greg Ayers is honored and delighted to be a new Ferocious Lotus company member. Before becoming a member, he appeared in Crane, Two Mile Hollow (TBA winner for Outstanding Performance as a Featured Actor), and the staged reading of After the War. He has also worked at San Francisco Playhouse, SHN, Aurora Theatre, PCPA. |
Cindy Cesca Yoshiyama
Cindy Cesca Yoshiyama (Managing Director / Artistic Producer) has worked in philanthropy (Zellerbach Family Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation) and nonprofit development for over a decade, supporting education and the arts/theatre in the Bay Area. Cindy started championing Asian American theatre artists and bringing AAPI stories to the stage almost 20 years ago when she produced theatre in Los Angeles. She is passionate about creating pathways to equity, diversity, and inclusion in the performing arts and is proud to be partnering with Ferocious Lotus in this work. |
Leon Goertzen*
(Founder/Associate Artistic Director/Casting Director/Actor) has worked at theaters in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, including East West Players, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Will and Company, Magic Theatre, Asian American Theater Company, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Road Theatre Company, Cutting Ball Theater, PlayGround, Aurora Theater Company, Bay Area Playwright's Festival, California Conservatory Theatre and New Conservatory Theater. Film credits include Quitters (with Kieran Culkin and Mira Sorvino) and Beauty and The Blade. Leon is a graduate of the School of Drama at UNC School of the Arts and is a member of Actors' Equity Association and Screen Actors Guild. |
May Liang
May Liang (Artistic Director/Director) was named Artistic Director after serving as our Literary Manager from 2014 to 2019. May is a female stage director/theatre artist of color in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has worked with American Conservatory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theater’s Ground Floor Lab, California Shakespeare Theater, Crowded Fire Theater (Resident Artist), Cutting Ball Theatre, Bay Area Children's Theatre, Bay Area Playwrights Foundation, Bindlestiff Studios, Contra Costa Civic Theater, Just Theater, PlayGround Center for New Plays (Directing Fellow 2017), San Francisco Playhouse, TheaterFirst, TheaterWorks, and Ubuntu Theater Project. May was a member of the 2017 Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab in New York City, a member of the 2019 Directors Lab Chicago and was nominated for Outstanding Direction of a Play at the 2018 Theater Bay Area Awards for Inside Out and Back Again at Bay Area Children's Theatre. May graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a double major in theatre and performance studies and integrative biology and currently works at the San Francisco Film Commission - Film SF as a Film Coordinator. She has been involved in productions such as Ballers on HBO and Always Be My Maybe on Netflix. In another life, she was a campaign organizer/activist for immigrant rights with ASPIRE—the first Pan-Asian undocumented immigrant youth organization housed under Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco. |
Jeffrey Lo
Jeffrey Lo (Playwright/Director) is a Filipino-American playwright and director based in the Bay Area. He is the recipient of the 2014 Leigh Weimers Emerging Arist Award, the 2012 Emerging Artist Laureate by Arts Council Silicon Valley and Theatre Bay Area Director's TITAN Award. His plays have been produced and workshopped at The BindleStiff Studio, City Lights Theatre Company and Custom Made Theatre Company. His play Writing Fragments Home was a finalist for the Bay Area Playwright's Conference and a semi-finalist for the O'Neill Playwright's Conference. Recent directing credits include Yellow Face and Dead Man's Cell Phone at Los Altos Stage Company, Uncle Vanya at the Pear Theatre (BATCC nomination for Best Production), Eurydice at Palo Alto Players (TBA Awards nomination for Best Direction), Some Girl(s) at Dragon Productions and The Drunken City at Renegade Theatre Experiment. Jeffrey has also worked with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, San Jose Repertory and is a company member of Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company and SF Playground. He is the Casting Associate and Company Manager at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, a graduate of the Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute, and a proud alumnus of the UC Irvine Drama Department. http://www.JeffreyWritesAPlay.com |
Karen Offereins
Karen Offereins (Actor) is a Bay Area native and was last seen in How to Transcend a Happy Marriage at Custom Made Theatre, having appeared there previously in The Pain and the Itch and M. Butterfly. Recent credits include Elevada at Shotgun Players, where she also performed in The Mousetrap, Top Girls, and Our Town. Past credits include Two Mile Hollow (Ferocious Lotus), Phèdre (Cutting Ball Theater), The Potrero Nuevo Project (PlayGround, where she is a company member), and The Rules (SF Playhouse). A founding member and Artistic Director of AtmosTheatre, her credits there include Twelfth Night, Alice in Wonderland, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Big Funk, The Ives of March, and No Exit. Additionally, she has performed with Word for Word, Playwrights Foundation, SF Theater Pub, and Theatreworks. |
Sango Tajima
Sango Tajima is a performer / multi-disciplinary artist / arts administrator based in Oakland, CA. She has worked at theaters including Cal Shakes, Berkeley Rep, Guthrie Theater, Shotgun Players, Campo Santo, SF Playhouse, Marin Theatre Company, Cutting Ball Theater, Magic Theatre, Bay Area Children’s Theatre, Playwright’s Foundation, and performed on stages in Japan, China, Korea, and Israel. As a playwright her work has been produced with Ragged Wing Ensemble, and she devised and created several plays and actions with the political theatre collective The Bonfire Makers. She is a new company member of Ferocious Lotus. Sango holds a B.F.A. in Acting from the University of Michigan. www.sangotajima.com |
Michelle Talgarow
Michelle Talgarow* is a Kalmyk/Filipina theatre maker in the Bay Area for over 25 years, specializing in the collaborative process in devising new work. She's grateful to be part of Ferocious Lotus and this community of fellow AAPI artists. She is a proud member of the artistic company of Shotgun Players (Berkeley) where she co-coordinates The Champagne Staged Reading Series and will be directing her first mainstage show, Man of God. She’s a company member of Mugwumpin (SF), recently collaborating with Cutting Ball Theater and Bay Area Theatre Cypher on Phantasmagoria. Michelle has been working with high school students for several years. She directed the winter play at San Francisco University High for the past 4 years and mentored students through a design project with Industrial Design Outreach. Some of her performance credits include Utopia (Cutting Ball Theater/ Virtual performance), Dance Nation (SF Playhouse), Vietgone (Capital Stage, Sacramento). With Ferocious Lotus: Mutt and Two Mile Hollow (TBA Award Nominee). |
Sunshine Lampitoc Smith
Sunshine Lampitoc Smith enjoys producing new plays and collaborating with and advocating for underrepresented theater artists and audiences. She was most recently the Institutional Giving Manager at Z Space in SF’s historic Mission District. Prior to that, she worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Signature Theatre Company (NYC). Sunshine has also worked and produced with Lodestone Theater Ensemble (Los Angeles), Ma-Yi Theater Company (NYC), Leviathan Lab (NYC), and the Summer Play Festival for Emerging Playwrights (NYC). She earned her MFA in Theatre Management & Producing at Columbia University School of the Arts. |
Alex Trono
Alex Trono is a Bay Area actor and teaching artist, born and raised in San Francisco. He is a company member of Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company and Red Ladder Theater Company, and the Assistant Artistic Director of Gritty City Repertory Youth Theatre. He has also worked with the New Conservatory Theater Company as a teaching artist. Alex believes in using theater and the art of storytelling to foster connections and transcend the barriers that divide us. |
Ogie Zulueta
Ogie Zulueta* (Actor) SF/Bay Area theatres: A.C.T. - Monstress (The Strand Theatre), After The War (understudy), The New Americans (First Look Workshop Series); Crowded Fire Theater – 100 Flowers Project, The Late Wedding; Magic Theatre - Dogeaters; Ferocious Lotus – Lu Shen, the Mad; Center REP - Sisters Matsumoto; Ubuntu Theatre - Rashomon, Streetcar Named Desire (upcoming); Playwrights Foundation – Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Other Regional Theatre: La Jolla Playhouse – Bay and the Spectacles of Doom; South Coast Rep. – Caucasian Chalk Circle, Dogeaters (Pacific Playwrights Festival); Mark Taper Forum – Architecture of Loss, L.A. Stories - 900 miles from Iraq; Antaeus Theatre Company/Boston Court – Pera Palas; Singapore Rep. – Hamlet; East West Players – The Tempest; Cornerstone Theatre Company/East West Players - As Vishnu Dreams; Playwrights’ Arena – Sleepwalk, Gumsimao; Nevada Shakespeare in The Park – Othello; Deaf West – Romeo and Juliet; East L.A. Classic Theatre - A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Sledgehammer Theatre – Three Sisters; Theatre Nada – The Battles of Coxinga, SoHo Rep. – Malibu. Film & T.V.: Day Without A Mexican, Pink as the Day She was Born, How to Make your First Billion & Save the World, My Bad Dad, One West Waikiki, First Years, 2 Guys and a Girl, L.A. Heat, Models Inc. https://sites.google.com/site/ogiezulueta/home |
ADVISORY BOARD
Mekhala Chatterjee
Philip Kan Gotanda Diane Takei Gotanda Lauren Gunderson David Henry Hwang Anu Menon Christine Wang Morris Brad Rubenstein Susan Shay Nonoko Sato M. Graham Smith |
ALUMNAEChris Chen
Will Dao Mina Morita Ken Savage Annie Jim Wang |