About
Founder & Producing Artistic Director: Danielle Alicia Drakes
Producing Artistic Director of Round House Theatre, Blake Robison, describes Danielle as, " one of the DC theatre community's most exciting up and coming hyphenates. She is a producer-director-actor of great ambition and promise".
As an actor, Ms. Drakes has worked with The Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, Center Stage, The Contemporary American Theatre Festival, and Imagination Stage. She most recently played Madame CJ Walker in Lions of Industry, Mothers of Invention at The Smithsonian's Discovery Theatre and was featured in Referendum: A Political Arts Collective's The Trojan Women for the 2007 Capital Fringe Festival. As a teacher, she has worked with The Baltimore Shakespeare Partnership, The Theatre Lab, Round House TheatreÕs Education & Outreach, The Drama Learning Center and Montgomery College.
Ms. Drakes directed a reading of The Devil's Sweet Water for the Shakespeare Theatre's education department at The Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage Festival 2007, assistant directed A Lesson Before Dying at Round House Theatre, Intimate Apparel at African Continuum Theatre. Other directing credits include Stop Kiss, Southern Girls, Dutchman and Chain and Late Bus to Mecca as part of her undergraduate thesis, theHegira: A Sociological and Theatrical Exploration of the African American Woman in the 21st Century- two plays by Pearl Cleage.
Danielle is a 2008 TCG Nathan Cummings Young Leaders of Color grant award recipient. She is on the Artist Council of Round House Theatre and a member of the Cultural Development Corporation artist network, the Red Circle. Danielle received her BA from Goucher College and MFA from The Catholic University of America and is a proud member of the Actors Equity Association and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.
theHegira produced the final development workshop/reading of The Devil's Sweet Water at Woolly Mammoth Theatre June 2008.
Artistic Associate & Contributing Playwright and Dramaturg: Danielle Martin
Danielle worked in the Dramaturgy Office at Arena Stage where she assisted Mark Bly on the world premiere of Moises Kaufman's 33 Variations and also as Production Dramaturg for Well. As the assistant to the producer of Arena's New Play Downstairs Series, she worked with both up-and-coming as well as established playwrights as they developed their work. Additional experience in DC includes dramaturging for Wit's End, Constellation and MuseFire Theatre Company. In Philadelphia, she had served as a production intern and then assistant in the education and literary departments at InterAct Theatre Company, a company devoted to new-play production. She has been a reader for Source Theatre, PlayPenn, Philadelphia Young Playwrights, and Woolly Mammoth. A recent grad of Catholic University, she has M.A in Theatre History and Criticism, where she also served as production dramaturg on The Beggar's Opera, Life is a Dream, and Up Ubu. Her belief in contemporary voices drives new work forward as she has in the past two years work-shopped and dramaturged countless new plays written by fellow graduate candidates, and as she serves as the resident Literary Manager and Dramaturg at Philadelphia Music Theater Works.
Board Member: Aaron Heinsman
Aaron is currently the Director of the Annual Fund for Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington. From 2001 to early 2008, he served in several capacities—including Public Relations Director, Publications Coordinator, and Business Associate—at CENTERSTAGE in Baltimore, where he currently resides. His tenure there was highlighted by being named in 2005 one of "Baltimore's 20 Up-and-Comers" by Urbanite magazine. He trained as a theatrical director at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and as a theater historian/critic at University of Texas at Austin. An inveterate playgoer, film buff, music chart-obsessive, tennis fanatic, and truly frequent flyer, Aaron is thrilled to be a fully assimilated East Coaster, following three decades immersed in Appalachia and strewn across the Sun Belt.
Board Member: Martine Kei Green
Martine Kei Green is currently a faculty member at Kenyon College, the literary manager for Classical Theatre Company in Houston, TX, and a PhD candidate in the Department of Theatre and Drama at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to studying at the UW-Madison, she received her B.A. in Theatre from Virginia Wesleyan College and her M.A. in Theatre History and Criticism from The Catholic University of America.