Executive Director

Co-Artistic Director

RED - Representation / Equity / Diversity

Co-Artistic Director / Playwright / Media Design

Kepano Richter is a former United States Marine, a novelist, an award winning playwright, and filmmaker. He holds a Ph.d. in Literature (Translation & Adaptation Studies) from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Co-Artistic Director

Noah is an award-winning director, actor, fight choreographer, intimacy choreographer, and teaching artist

Literary Management / Dramaturgy

Brynne has written the text for computer games, over 200 produced animation scripts, screenplays, short stories, novels, comic books, graphic novels and nearly a thousand informational articles. Nominated for an Emmy Award for her writing on Batman the Animated Series, Brynne is also experienced in adapting and editing manga.

Media Chief / Public Relations

Director

Dr. Justina Taft Mattos is a Professor of Performing Arts at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, an award-winning Director of both Local theatre of Hawai’i, Hawaiian language theater, and co-founder (with Jackie Pualani) of the Hawaiian language theater festival, Hawaii Island.

Community Engagement

Literary Mgt. / Translation

Bilingual fluency (English - Spanish) as a writer, scholar, translator and instructor. I’m the author of two books of poetry: la distancia es siempre la misma (Matalamanga, 2006) & el cerrajero (AUB, 2012); one book of translation, Album of Fences (Cardboard House Press, 2018); and creator of the AMLT project (http://amlt-elcomienzo.blogspot.pe), an exploration of hypertext literature and collective authorship, which was sponsored by Puma from 2011-2014. My third book, titled open pit, is forthcoming from Counterpath Press and AUB in 2022. Areas of focus include: Creative Writing, Poetry/Poetics, Cross-Genre Literature, Literary Translation, US-Latinx Literature, Critical University Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. I hold an MFA in Writing from UCSD and I’m currently a PhD Candidate in Literature at UCSC.

Director

ERIK PEARSON is a Brooklyn based director and projection designer. Recent projects include John Glover’s new opera Lucy for Urban Arias in DC, Richard III for Allentown Shakespeare In The Park, Spike Lee’s Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth on Broadway/HBO, and Bill Irwin and David Shiner’s Old Hats at ACT in San Francisco. Other New York credits include The Playwrights Realm, Cherry Lane Theater, EST, SoHo Playhouse, Park Avenue Armory, Intar, HERE, TerraNOVA, New Dramatists, The Lark and Studio NYC. International and regional credits include The Holland International Dance Festival, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth, Two River Theater, Carolina Ballet, El Paso Opera, Ballet Met, The Magic, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, BRAVA!, Marin Theater Company, The Playwrights Center, and Nantucket Theatre Workshop. He has served on the teaching faculty at NYU, Ithaca College, University of California at Santa Cruz, as a guest lecturer at Yale School of Drama, and as a guest artist at Rutgers University. Erik is a member of Wingspace Design Collective and holds an M.F.A. in directing from Yale School of Drama.

Composer / Musical Director

Pablo Rubio-Vargas is a multimedia artist/composer from Aguascalientes, México.Pablo was finalist in different national and international composition competitions such as: III Concurso Nacional de Musica Contemporanea de Michoacan and IV Concurso Internacional de Artes Electrónicas Video del Festival Transitio_MX 04.He was awarded by the FONCA as Jóven Creador (young artist) in 2014-15. Also, Pablo has been awarded with Creative fellowship for Young Artists by the Cultural Institute of Aguascalientes and the Institute of Culture and Arts in Queretaro. He was selected twice by CMMAS (Mexican Center for the Music and Sound Art) to develop musical work that involves new technology in 2008 and 2010.His music has been featured at various and different forums or festivals such as: Cervantino Festival, 47 Internationale Ferienkurge Darmstadt, Transitio, Visiones Sonoras, WhiteNoise.Fest, Foro de Musica Nueva "Manuel Enriquez", Radar - Festival of Mexico City, Contemporary Music Festival of Monterrey, among others. Furthermore, his music has been showcased in Germany, Chile, Peru, Sweden and the USA.As conductor, Pablo is interested in performing new works with the use of technology. This interest led him to premier his work Kiuya Xaa for string orchestra, piano and electronics at Winifred Smith Hall, Orange County (2013).Pablo has been fortunate to work with several outstanding musicians such as the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) Arditti String Quartet, Horacio Franco, Wilfrido Terrazas, Eva Zondler, Alexander Bruck, Bergamasque Duo, Eight Blackbird Ensemble, and Daniel Sanchez, among several others.He studied composition with Ignacio Baca in Queretaro. In 2013 he completed the MFA in Improvisation, Composition & Technlogy at UC, Irvine. Working with Christopher Dobrian as his advisor. Pablo has attended lectures, seminars and classes with renowned composers like Rodrigo Sigal, Juan Trigos, Nicole Mitchell, Brian Ferneyhough, , Larry Polanksy, David Jones and Hi Kyung Kim.Pablo has been a member of different projects specialized in musical improvisation utilizing new technologies, and in performing new music with or without technology such as Colectivo Kaoss, Paracaidistas Alrevés, and Sound Body Collective, Cuarteto Yagalé.

Director / Actor

Danny Scheie — pronounced SHAY, and certainly not SHY — is a theater director and actor, and, still in his early 30s, was the leader of Shakespeare Santa Cruz, at that time the most prominent theater company in Santa Cruz County and one of the most well-regarded theaters in Northern California. Danny has directed and acted in a plethora of Shakespeare’s plays. Some of them rank among the most memorable productions in SSC’s long history, including a jaw-dropping take on Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus” and an unforgettable take on “The Tempest,” both set in the gorgeous and haunting Festival Glen in the redwoods of the UCSC campus.

Scheie’s fearlessly outré style appealed to lots of Santa Cruz audiences, until it didn’t. In 1994, Scheie acted in a production of “Merry Wives of Windsor” as a kind of slumming transvestite Mistress Quickly and, in the early Clinton years, such a thing was bound to outrage some people, which it did.

“I got run out of town at 33,” he said, “the same age that Hamlet got killed and Christ got crucified.” - Danny Scheie

During the COVID 19 pandemic, Danny revived his ground-breaking version of Comedy of Errors, produced by Kevin Beggs.

“The whole idea was ingenious,” said Kevin Beggs, who served as Scheie’s assistant director on the original production of “Comedy.” Beggs is one of UCSC’s most successful alums. He’s now the chairman of the Lions Gate Television Group and one of the most powerful people in Hollywood.”

Without changing any of Shakespeare’s language, Scheie envisioned his cast as a group of itinerant Depression-era actors who come across the crate and aren’t sure exactly which play they are supposed to be performing.

“The audience just ate it up,” remembered Beggs. “The whole preamble which, of course, was invented, of the actors arriving late to town, having not eaten and unsure of what roles they’re playing and the shtick they pull off for 20 minutes before the show even begins, it’s just genius. And you know, it’s reflective of our TV world. It’s like the opening credits of a TV show.”

Scheie’s “Comedy” was an instance of artistic boundary-pushing that generally delighted audiences and made Shakespeare more approachable. But the controversial moments of Scheie’s reign, particularly his in-drag portrayal of Mistress Quickly, drew all kinds of fire on the Sentinel’s op-ed and letters pages (the era’s social media) for “gay agenda” programming. Yet it would barely rank a mention in today’s world. In his gender-fluid portrayals, Scheie was in fact ahead of his time.” - WALLACE BAINE

We, at America Shakes, are honored to have Danny join us in this passion project to create a Shakespeare of, by, and for BIPOC communities and to employ Shakespeare to address the issues of social inequality in America.