Cast and Creative Team Set for ESCAPED ALONE World Premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre

Yale Repertory Theatre will continue its 2023–24 Season with Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill, directed by Liz Diamond, March 8–30, at Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street). Opening Night is Thursday, March 14, which is also press night.
 
The production features scenic design by Lia Tubiana, costume design by  Yu-Jung Shen 沈毓融, lighting design by Stephen Strawbridge, sound design by Sinan Refik Zafar, projection design by Shawn Lovell-Boyle, music direction by Liam Bellman-Sharpe, production dramaturgy by Catherine Sheehy  and Karoline Vielemeyer, technical direction by Keira Jacobs, vocal and dialect coaching by Julie Foh, casting by Calleri Jensen Davis, and stage management by Charlie Lovejoy.
 
The cast of Escaped Alone includes Latonya Borsay, Mary Lou Rosato, Sandra Shipley, and Rita Wolf.
 

More About Escaped Alone
 

Three old friends and a neighbor. A verdant backyard on a summer afternoon. Tea and catastrophe. Caryl Churchill’s convention-defying play, Escaped Alone, sets in comic and devastating counterpoint the consolations of a good chat and the looming weight of disasters both intimate and global.
 

Ticket Information and Performance Calendar
 

Tickets are $15 and $30 (all previews), $15 and $45 (weeknights), and $15 and $65 (weekends and matinees). Student tickets are $15 for all performances. Tickets are available online at yalerep.org, by calling (203) 432-1234, and in person at the Yale Rep Box Office (1120 Chapel Street).
 
Friday, March 8                           8PM   Preview
Saturday, March 9                       8PM   Preview, Post-Show Discussion
Monday, March 11                       8PM   Preview, Post-Show Discussion
Tuesday, March 12                      8PM   Preview
Wednesday, March 13                 8PM   Preview
Thursday, March 14                     8PM   Opening Night
Friday, March 15                         8PM
Saturday, March 16                     2PM
Saturday, March 16                     8PM
Tuesday, March 19                      8PM
Wednesday, March 20                 2PM   Pre-performance Discussion
Wednesday, March 20                 8PM
Thursday, March 21                     8PM    
Friday, March 22                         8PM
Saturday, March 23                     2PM   Audio Description, Touch Tour, Talk Back
Saturday, March 23                     8PM   American Sign Language
Tuesday, March 26                      8PM    
Wednesday, March 27                 8PM   Open Captioning in Spanish
Thursday, March 28                     8PM
Friday, March 29                         8PM
Saturday, March 30                     2PM   Open Captioning
Saturday, March 30                     8PM
 

The Creative Team
 

Caryl Churchill (Playwright) was born on September 3, 1938, in London and grew up in the Lake District and in Montreal. She was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Downstairs, her first play written while she was still at university, was first staged in 1958 and won an award at the Sunday TimesNational Union of Students Drama Festival. Caryl Churchill’s plays include Owners, Traps, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Cloud 9, Top Girls, Fen, Serious Money, Ice Cream, Mad Forest, The Skriker, Blue Heart, This Is a Chair, Far Away, A Number, Drunk Enough To Say I Love You?, Seven Jewish Children, Love and Information, Here We Go, and Escaped Alone. Music theater includes Lives of the Great Poisoners and Hotel, both with Orlando Gough. Caryl has also written for radio and television.
 
Liz Diamond (Director) is a Resident Director at Yale Repertory Theatre and serves as Chair of the Directing program at David Geffen School of Drama. Productions at Yale Rep include The Winter’s Tale; Lucinda Coxon’s Happy Now? (also at Primary Stages in New York); Marcus Gardley’s dance of the holy ghosts (world premiere); Strindberg’s Miss Julie; Sunil Kuruvilla’s Fighting Words and Rice Boy (world premiere); Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy; Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle and St. Joan of the Stockyards; and Suzan-Lori Parks’s The America Play (world premiere), The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (world premiere), and Father Comes Homes From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3. She has directed new plays, adaptations, and classical works at theaters including the Alliance, American Repertory Theater, The Public Theater, Vineyard Theatre, Theatre for a New Audience, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Westport Country Playhouse, and has won the OBIE and the Connecticut Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Direction. Additional projects at Yale include Diamond’s staging of her translation of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat, in a joint David Geffen School of Drama/Yale School of Music production at Carnegie Hall, as well as Matthew Suttor’s and Timothy Young’s musical adaptation of Blaise Cendrar’s epic poem, La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France for the Beinecke Library’s 50th-anniversary celebration.
 
 
Lia Tubiana (Scenic Designer) is a French-Tunisian scenic designer and architect, currently in her final semester pursuing an M.F.A. at David Geffen School of Drama, where her credits include Julius Caesar and littleboy/littleman. She is also the associate set designer for Les Paravents opening in June at the Théatre de L'Odéon in Paris. @lia_louna
 
Yu-Jung Shen 沈毓融 (Costume Designer) is a painter-artist from Taiwan and a 2024 M.F.A. candidate at David Geffen School of Drama. His/ta-de current focus is dramatic art and design. He received a 2017 World Stage Design Gold Medal award for Pool (No water) and an OISTAT Award (International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians) with his Taiwan Taipei National University of the Arts undergrad colleagues. He has worked mostly as a costume assistant, illustrator, tailor, draper, milliner, embroiderer, and textile artist for various companies: Axiom Space, 中華民國 Taiwan Ministry of National Defense, Saudi Arabia’s at-Turaif Living Museum, AMC Networks, The University of Texas at Austin, ZACH Theater, Ping-Fong Acting Troupe, and Godot Theatre Company.
 
Stephen Strawbridge (Lighting Designer) has designed more than 200 productions on and off Broadway and at most leading regional theaters and opera houses across the U.S. Internationally he has helped create major premieres in Bergen, Copenhagen, The Hague, Hong Kong, Linz, Lisbon, Munich, Naples, São Paulo, Stockholm, Stratford-Upon-Avon (for the Royal Shakespeare Company), Wrocław, and Vienna. Artistic collaborators have included such notable directors and choreographers as Robert Brustein, James Bundy, Martha Clarke, Graciela Daniele, Barry Edelstein, Richard Foreman, Athol Fugard, Loretta Greco, Mark Lamos, Emily Mann, Kathleen Marshall, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Diane Paulus, Erica Schmidt, Bartlett Sher, Rebecca Taichman, John Tillinger, Robert Wilson, Mark Wing-Davey, and Robert Woodruff. He has numerous pieces in the repertories of Pilobolus Dance Theatre and Alison Chase/Performance. Recent credits include King Lear with Joe Morton at Wallis Annenberg Center in Los Angeles; and The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Shana Cooper, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Patricia McGregor, and Twelfth Night, directed by Kathleen Marshall, all at The Old Globe in San Diego. He has been recognized with numerous awards and nominations including the American Theatre Wing, Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, Connecticut Critics Circle, Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum, Drama Desk, Helen Hayes, Henry Hewes Design, and Lucille Lortel. He is head of the lighting design concentration at David Geffen School of Drama and Lighting Advisor for Yale Rep.
 
Sinan Refik Zafar he/him/his (Sound Designer) is an award-winning sound designer and composer from NYC. Credits include What the Constitution Means to Me (Broadway, National Tour, New York Theatre Workshop); What to Send Up When It Goes Down (National Tour, Playwrights Horizons); English[Obie Award], Shhh (Atlantic Theater Company); Letters from Max (Signature Theatre); Which Way to the Stage, All the Natalie Portmans (MCC Theater); To My Girls (Second Stage); The Vagrant Trilogy, Cullud Wattah (The Public Theater); Wish You Were Here (Playwrights Horizons), Montag (Soho Rep). Regional: Kennedy Center, Guthrie, Mark Taper Forum, Berkeley Rep, Williamstown, among others. M.F.A., David Geffen School of Drama.  sinanzafar.com

Shawn Lovell-Boyle (Projection Designer) has designed projections for theater, dance, music, installation, and themed entertainment across the United States and internationally. Organizations include Atlantic Theater Company, Tulsa Ballet, Sioux City Symphony Orchestra, Denver Center, Lagoon Park, Alliance Theatre, Yale Rep, Goodspeed Musicals, Berkshire Theater Group, Cork Opera House, and Ogunquit Playhouse. Broadway: Paradise Square. Previous credits at Yale Rep include Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles, peerless, and Elevada (Connecticut Critics Circle Award). Shawn is a member of United Scenic Artists I.A.T.S.E. Local 829 Projection & Lighting. B.F.A.: Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts; M.F.A., David Geffen School of Drama, where he is also a faculty member. ShawnBoyleDesign.com

Liam Bellman-Sharpe (Music Director) is a multi-disciplinary practitioner working primarily in sound and music for live performance. Liam specializes in devising unique musical and sonic scores and environments for theater, dance, installation, and hybrid forms, as well as designing sound delivery systems and digital tools to realize these scores. As a composer, sound designer, orchestrator, musician, and music director, Liam’s work has been heard in the United States, Europe, Hong Kong, and Australia. Liam holds an M.F.A. in sound design from David Geffen School of Drama, and a B.H.Mus from the Melbourne Conservatorium of music. Liam’s theatrical credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Classical Theatre of Harlem); Everybody (Yale Dramat); Manning, Mr. Burns: a post-electric play, shakespeare’s as u like it, and The Tempest (the Geffen School); The American Unicorn (Long Wharf Theatre); Bakkhai (Yale Summer Cabaret); The Ugly One, Mud, Phosphene, and Camille: A Tearjerker (Yale Cabaret). With dancer Sarah Xiao, he has presented untitled semi-improvised dance/music piece (Yale Cabaret) and from/to nothing (International Festival of Arts & Ideas).
 
Catherine Sheehy she/her (Production Dramaturg) is Resident Dramaturg at Yale Repertory Theatre and the Chair of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at David Geffen School of Drama. Her Yale Rep credits include Father Comes Home From The Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3, Happy Days, Elevada, These Paper Bullets!, In a Year with 13 Moons, The Winter’s Tale, Bossa Nova, POP!, Trouble in Mind, and The King Stag (which she also co-adapted with Evan and Mike Yionoulis). She’s a founding member of Rolin Jones’s Dwight Street Book Club and New Neighborhood. Her television work with Rolin includes HBO’s Perry Mason and AMC’s Interview with the Vampire. Her adaptation of Pride and Prejudice has been produced at Asolo Repertory Theatre and Dallas Theater Center. She has worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Public Theater, Yale Institute for Music Theatre, the Signature Theatre, O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Center Stage, and in New York and Ireland with the late Joseph Chaikin. For four seasons she was Festival Dramaturg at Shakespeare Santa Cruz. She is a former associate editor of American Theatreand a former editor of Theater magazine.
 
Karoline Vielemeyer (Production Dramaturg) is a second-year M.F.A. candidate at David Geffen School of Drama, where credits include Moe’s a D*ck and How to Live on Earth. Originally from Germany, she holds a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College in theatre arts and French and graduated from Prague Film School specializing in directing. Before pursuing her M.F.A., Karoline worked as a director, assistant director, and editor for cinema and television productions. Her most recent credits include assistant directing the feature documentary Rock Chicks—I am not female to you and directing the short film Woman in the Mirror—moments before Mata Hari's first performance, both released in 2023. She is thrilled to collaborate on this production of Churchill's magnificent play with this wonderful cast and creative team.
 
Keira Jacobs (Technical Director) is a second year M.F.A. candidate at David Geffen School of Drama, where her credits include Ghosts (assistant technical director), Julius Caesar (projection engineer), The Carlotta Festival (associate production electrician), and Yale Rep’s Wish You Were Here (assistant technical director). Prior to Yale, Keira was a freelance carpenter and technical director based in Chicago, where she held positions with Chicago Opera Theater, Lookingglass Theatre Company, and First Folio Theatre, among others. She holds a B.A. in theater and drama and a minor in German from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
 
Julie Foh (Vocal and Dialect Coach) is a voice, text, and dialect coach and is an Associate Professor of Acting at David Geffen School of Drama. Previous coaching credits include the ripple, the wave that carried me home (Yale Rep); The Winter’s Tale (Hartford Stage); Othello, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Measure for Measure, Henry V, Twelfth Night, Coriolanus (Next Chapter Podcasts); A Man for All Seasons, And a Nightingale Sang, The Caretaker, A Child’s Christmas in Wales (Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey); Belfast Girls (Irish Rep); Mlima’s Tale (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and Westport Country Playhouse); Ride the Cyclone: The Musical, Sleuth (McCarter Theatre Center); Wolverine: The Lost Trail (Marvel podcast); As You Like It, King Charles III (Colorado Shakespeare Festival); Sherwood (Cleveland Play House); Pygmalion (BEDLAM); Familiar (Woolly Mammoth); Trans Scripts, Cardenio (American Repertory Theater); The Tallest Tree in the Forest (Tectonic Theater Project); and others. She is an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework, a Master Teacher of Knight-Thompson Speechwork, and co-author of Experiencing Speech: A Skills-Based, Panlingual Approach to Actor Training.
 
Calleri Jensen Davis (Casting Director) is a creative casting partnership among James Calleri, Erica Jensen, and Paul Davis of over 20 years. They began their collaboration with Yale Rep last season with Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles and the ripple, the wave that carried me home. Broadway credits: The Piano Lesson, Topdog/Underdog, for colored girls..., Thoughts of a Colored Man, Burn This, Fool for Love, The Elephant Man, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Of Mice and Men, Venus in Fur, A Raisin in the Sun, 33 Variations. Television: Love Life, Queens, Dickinson, and The Path, to name a few. callerijensendavis.com
 
Charlie Lovejoy (Stage Manager) is a fourth-year M.F.A. candidate at David Geffen School of Drama. Off-Broadway and NYC: Kimberly Akimbo (Atlantic Theater Company), Seagull (Elevator Repair Service). Regional: The Brightest Thing in the World (Yale Rep); Otello, Kiss Me Kate (Central City Opera). Chicago: The Santaland Diaries, Incendiary, graveyard shift (Goodman Theatre); Miracle: A Musical 108 Years in the Making (Royal George Theatre); La Ronde (American Theater Company). Academic: Moonie, BURNBABYBURN: an american dream (Yale Cabaret); Moe's a D*ck, littleboy/littleman, Romeo and Juliet, Bodas de sangre/Blood Wedding (The Geffen School). B.A., University of Chicago. Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
 
 

THE CAST
 

Latonya Borsay (Mrs. Jarrett) is thrilled to return to Yale Repertory Theatre; previous productions at Yale Rep are Jenny in Death of a Salesman and Darlene in dance of the holy ghosts. Other regional theater credits include the role of Grace in The West End (Cincinnati Playhouse), and Delia in Blues for an Alabama Sky (Crossroads Theatre Company). She has also worked at Philadelphia Theater Company, The Passage Theatre Company, Denver Center, and Indiana Repertory. Off-Broadway credits include, Mistress Prattle in The Saintliness of Margery Kempe, and Mrs. Drinkwater in Des Moines (The Flea Theater); Georgia Hayes in The Exonerated (Bleecker Theater); James Baldwin in Civil Sex, and Second Witch in Macbeth (The Public Theater). Television and film credits include the The Gilded Age, City on Fire, For Life, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Luke Cage, The Knick, Show Me A Hero, Orange is the New Black; Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: SVU, The Wire, ED, Sisterhood of Night, Lights Out, and It Takes Two. Upcoming releases: Netflix’s Eric and FX’s American Sports Story: Gladiator. LaTonya is a Beinecke Fellow at Yale University this spring. “Give light and people will find the way.”—Ella Baker.
 
Mary Lou Rosato (Vi) Broadway: Once Upon a Mattress, The Suicide, The School for Scandal, The Inspector General. Off-Broadway: Henry V, The Skin of Our Teeth (Theatre for a New Audience); The Government Inspector (Red Bull); The Misanthrope, The Winter’s Tale (Classic Stage Company); King Philip’s Head Is Still on That Pike Just Down the Road (Clubbed Thumb). The Acting Company (seven seasons): The School for Scandal (Drama Desk Award), The Robber Bridegroom (Drama Desk nomination), The Cradle Will Rock (Off-Broadway/Old Vic, London). Regional: American Repertory Theater, Guthrie Theater, Old Globe, Mark Taper Forum, Shakespeare Theatre, South Coast Rep, McCarter, Yale Rep (Elizabeth: Almost by Chance a Woman, The Alchemist), St. Nicholas, Chicago (Jeff Awards: The Primary English Class, The Curse of an Aching Heart). Television/film: Warehouse 13, Law & Order: SVU, Titus, Caroline in the City, Two Bits, Quiz Show, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Wedding Banquet, Illuminata, Spike of Bensonhurst. Mary Lou is a Lecturer in acting at David Geffen School of Drama, CalArts (Co-Head, B.F.A. acting program), Tisch at NYU, Stella Adler, BADA in Oxford; Directing credits include As You Like It (Juilliard), Henry V (TAC), The Beaux’ Stratagem (Pearl Theater), Richard II (Creative Pulse, LA). Member AEA, SAG-AFTRA, SDC. Founding Member of The Acting Company. Education: Juilliard Drama (Group 1). Mary Lou is a Beinecke Fellow at Yale University this spring.
 
Sandra Shipley (Sally) was born and raised in England. She attended New College of Speech and Drama and was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, appeared at the Royal Court, on the West End, and in regional repertory. Broadway credits include Present Laughter with Kevin Kline, Indiscretions, Pygmalion, The Importance of Being Earnest, Vincent in Brixton, Equus, Retreat from Moscow. Off-Broadway: Venus, Stuff Happens (The Public Theater); Suddenly Last Summer (Roundabout); The Daughter in Law, Hindle Wakes (Mint), Phaedra in Delirium (Classic Stage Company), Gentleman Prefer Blondes (Encores), Man in Snow (La MaMa). National and International tours: Anything Goes and Blithe Spirit with Angela Lansbury. Regional: Williamstown Theatre Festival, Shakespeare Theatre Company in D.C., McCarter, The Old Globe, Guthrie, ART, Long Wharf Theatre, Humana Festival. Previously at Yale Rep: You Never Can Tell, The Way of the World, The Adventures of Amy Bock, and Venus. Sandra is a Beinecke Fellow at Yale University this spring.
 
Rita Wolf she/her/hers (Lena) Recent theater: Out of time at The Public Theater and Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance for The Transport Group, both co-productions with NAATCO. Credits also include The Michaels and What Happened? The Michaels Abroad the final installments of Richard Nelson’s Rhinebeck Panorama cycle of plays (The Public Theater and Hunter College); the world premiere of Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul at New York Theatre Workshop, Mark Taper Forum, and BAM; David Grieg’s The American Pilot(MTC, Drama Desk nomination: Featured Actress); David Hare’s Stuff Happens (The Public Theater); Hammad Chaudhry’s An Ordinary Muslim (New York Theatre Workshop); and Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba (Mark Taper Forum). Television and film work includes My Beautiful Laundrette (Hanif Kureishi/ Stephen Frears), Girl Six directed by Spike Lee, Law & Order, and The Good Wife. Audio work includes Madhuri Shekar’s Evil Eye for Audible (Winner, Audie for Best original work 2020). Rita also has extensive theater, film, and television credits in the UK and is the co-founder of the London-based Kali Theatre Company which exclusively produces and promotes the work of South Asian female playwrights. In her free time, she studies yoga and the classical Indian dance form, Bharatnatyam. Rita is a Beinecke Fellow at Yale University this spring.
 

About Yale Repertory Theatre
 

Yale Repertory Theatre, the internationally celebrated professional theatre in residence at David Geffen School of Drama, has championed new work since 1966, producing well over 100 premieres—including two Pulitzer Prize winners and four other nominated finalists—by emerging and established playwrights. Seventeen Yale Rep productions have advanced to Broadway, garnering more than 40 Tony Award nominations and ten Tony Awards. Yale Rep is also the recipient of the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. Established in 2008, Yale’s Binger Center for New Theatre has distinguished itself as one of the nation’s most robust and innovative new play programs. To date, the Binger Center has supported the work of more than 70 commissioned artists and underwritten the world premieres and subsequent productions of more than 30 new plays and musicals at Yale Rep and theaters across the country.

 

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