Benny Sato Ambush is a professional SDC freelance director, teacher of stage acting and directing (BA, BFA, MFA levels), consultant, former National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) panelist/site evaluator, and a published commentator. He served nine years as Senior Distinguished Producing Director-In-Residence of Emerson Stage, the producing wing of the Department of Performing Arts (PA) at Emerson College, where he also taught on PA’s acting and directing faculty. Prior artistic leadership (select): Acting Artistic Director – Rites and Reason Theatre Company (Academic), Providence, RI; Producing Artistic Director – Oakland (CA) Ensemble Theatre (SPT); Associate Artistic Director – San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater (LORT B); Co-Artistic Director – San Francisco Bay Area Playwrights Festival; PEW Charitable Trust/TCG Director in Residence – Florida Stage (LOA); Associate Artistic Director – Anna Deavere Smith’s Institute on the Arts & Civic Dialogue at Harvard University; Producing Artistic Director – TheatreVirginia (LORT C). Formerly at New Rep: The Whipping Man; Thurgood; Cardboard Piano. Benny holds numerous directing credits at professional regional theatres and universities throughout the U.S. and the Boston region. He has served on numerous regional and national boards, including Theatre Communications Group (TCG). He adjudicates nationally and internationally for the American Association of Community Theatre, is a Steering Committee member of the National Alliance of Acting Teachers, a member of The National Theatre Conference, a panelist for the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, and is a Fellow – College of Fellows of the American Theatre. MFA – University of California, San Diego; BA – Brown University.

JON SAVAGE has designed The Gift Horse, Broken Glass, The King of Second Avenue, Closer Than Ever, Imagining Madoff, The Elephant Man, and Holiday Memories at New Repertory Theatre. Other area credits include Out of Sterno (Gloucester Stage); A Disappearing Number (Underground Railway Theatre); M and Laughing Wild (Huntington Theatre Company); You for Me for You (Company One); The Farm and Deported/a dream play (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre); and All’s Well That Ends Well (Elliot Norton Award, Best Production) and The Comedy of Errors (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company). Regional credits include A Grand Night for Singing (Bucks County Playhouse); State Fair (Walnut Street Theatre); Is He Dead? (Olney Theatre); and Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Bay Street Theatre). Jon was the Associate Set Designer for the Broadway production of Hot Feet and has worked in television and film for productions on the History Channel and the HBO miniseries, John Adams. He also served as a curator for the US National Student Exhibit at the Prague Quadrennial in 2007. He is currently on faculty at Boston University and is a member of United Scenic Artists. Originally from Wyoming, he resides in Weymouth.

Leslie Held returns to New Repertory Theatre after most recently working on The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde and The Promise. Some of Leslie’s previous Boston design credits include Guards at the Taj, Proof, Copenhagen, Einstein’s Dreams, Mr. G, Journey to the West, The Other Place, A Disappearing Number, Arcadia and Arabian Nights (for which she won an IRNE award) at the Central Square Theater; and Rhinoceros at the Suffolk Modern Theater. In the Washington, DC area, her credits include Three Sisters, Out of Our Father’s House, Twelfth Night, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Roundhouse Theater), Candide (Arena Stage) and Renard the Fox with the Folger Theater at the Kennedy Center. Leslie additionally teaches at Suffolk University. Originally from New York City, she now resides in Newton, MA.

SCOTT PINKNEY (Lighting Designer) returns to New Repertory Theatre after designing Freud’s Last Session, Broken Glass, The Whipping Man, Race, Opus, and The Last Five Years. Mr. Pinkney was represented on Broadway by Harvey Fierstein’s Tony Award-winning Torch Song Trilogy. Off-Broadway credits include Becoming Dr. Ruth, The Majestic Kid, Divine Fire, Nymph Errant, and The World is Made of Glass. Regional credits include Mala (Guthrie Theater and Huntington Theatre Company); Don Juan (Denver Critic’s Circle Award, Denver Center); My Fair Lady (Phoebe Award, Theatre Virginia); Secret Garden (Olney Theatre Center); and Texas Flyer (Theatre Under the Stars). He has designed the last fourteen seasons for Barrington Stage, where he serves as an Associate Artist, including productions of The Best of Enemies, The Crucible, A Streetcar Named Desire, Carousel, Uncle Vanya, Follies, West Side Story, and Ring Round the Moon. He designed more than 30 productions for Bristol Riverside Theatre, including The Balkan Women (Barrymore Award Nomination), Evita, Chicago, Alive and Well, and Dear World. Other credits include ‘ART’ and Kiss of the Spider Woman (Singapore Rep); Concerts (The Club Mohamed Ali, Cairo); Ulysses on Bottles (Israeli Stage); The Comedy of Errors (Elliot Norton Award, Commonwealth Shakespeare); Don Giovanni (NEC Opera); The Merchant of Venice (Actors’ Shakespeare Project); The Glass Menagerie and Adrift in Macao (Lyric Stage Company); Absurd Person Singular, The Sea Horse, and Van Gogh in Japan (Nora Theatre Company); and Grease, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Into the Woods (The Majestic Theatre). Mr. Pinkney is a Professor at Emerson College.

slpinkney.com

DEWEY DELLAY  returns to New Repertory Theatre after composing and designing for Ideation, The Gift Horse, Thurgood, The Testament of Mary, The Whipping Man, Rancho Mirage, and Long Day’s Journey into Night.  Other credits include Duet (Greenwich Street Theatre, Off Broadway); and The Countess (Criterion, London’s West End). Other regional credits include Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Lyric Stage Company); Photograph 51 (IRNE nomination Best Sound Design, Nora Theatre Company); and When January Feels Like Summer (Underground Railway Theater). He has received an Elliot Norton award for Outstanding Design and an IRNE for Best Sound Design. Television credits include original music for Emmy nominated National Geographic’s China’s Mystery Mummies, Discovery Channel’s Miami Jail, and five seasons of the show Our America with Lisa Ling for the OWN Channel. He presently is contributing music to This is Life with Lisa Ling on CNN.

BECCA FREIFELD*  returns to New Repertory Theatre after serving as Performance Stage Manager on Thurgood, Assistant Stage Manager on Fiddler on the Roof and Good, and Production Assistant on Freud’s Last Session, The Testament of Mary, The Snow Queen, A Number, Broken Glass, Scenes From an Adultery, The King of Second Avenue, and Closer Than Ever. Other area stage management credits include Barbecue (Lyric Stage Company); Shoes On, Shoes Off (Brandeis Department of Theater Arts); Romeo & Juliet and Evil Dead: the Musical (Arts After Hours); Hamlet (Wax Wings Productions); Bully Dance (Argos Productions); and Hamlet (Bay Colony Shakespeare Company). Upcoming: Assistant Stage Manager on New Repertory Theatre’s production of Man of La Mancha. Ms. Freifeld is a graduate of Brandeis University, and currently resides in Newtonville.