Gingold Theatrical Group Announces the Appointment of Ilana Becker as New Associate Director

Gingold Theatrical Group Artistic Director David Staller today announced the appointment of Ilana Becker as GTG's new Associate Director.

Ilana Becker is a producer and director specializing in new play and musical development, investigative and verbatim material, community-driven projects, and arts education.

"Building the Gingold family has been one of the joys of developing our company over the last 15 years. Adding the brilliant Ilana Becker to the team has already proven to be the best possible move during this bizarre time of history. She'll be overseeing our new play labs, among other programs, and there's no one I'd rather entrust to this most important of Gingold endeavors," said Mr. Staller.

In addition to serving as Gingold Theatrical Group's Associate Director, Ilana is The Civilians' R&D Group Program Director. She has also served on the staff of All For One Theater, Lincoln Center Education, and Bret Adams Ltd, and spent a year as the Associate Artistic Director and Interim Artistic Director of Sun Valley Center for the Arts' Company of Fools. Recent Line Producing includes projects with CollaborationTown, All For One, and Jewish Plays Project. She is the creator of Argument Sessions, an ongoing series of immersive variety-theater events that weave SCOTUS argument transcripts and decisions with ensemble-driven, collaboratively developed original material. Ilana has also directed and developed new work at New York City Center with The Civilians, ART/NY with Project Y Theatre, The Tank, The Lark, The Flea, Ars Nova, Dixon Place, National Black Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, 54 Below, Disney/ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, Samuel French Festival, Pittsburgh Fringe (Best Ensemble), Kalamazoo Center for the Arts, Sun Valley Center for the Arts' Company of Fools, among several others. She has enjoyed educational directing and teaching artist experiences with The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's Young Playwrights' Festival, NYU Tisch New Musical Theatre Workshop's New Studio on Broadway, NYU's MFA Dramatic Writing Program, Columbia University's MFA Playwriting Program, Hunter College, Barnard College, American Academy of the Dramatic Arts, Stevens Technical Institute, Hunter College Elementary School, and with K-12 schools throughout Blaine County, Idaho. Ilana is a proud member of the WP Theater 2018-2020 Producers Lab, an alum of The Civilians' R&D Group, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, DirectorsLabChicago, Fresh Ground Pepper PlayGroup, The Orchard Project's Liveness Lab, as well as a Playwrights Horizons Robert Moss Directing Fellow and an Emerging Leader of NY Arts Fellow. For more information, visit IlanaBecker.com.

"I am thrilled and honored to join the GTG community. At such a tumultuous time in our world, our country, and within our field, I feel particularly fortunate to be welcomed into an artistic home that upholds arts as activism. We have so much ongoing deep and complex work to do in dismantling the systems built to oppress. I join with GTG's thoughtful and committed staff, board, and extended community in continually seeking more equitable practices and inciting honest conversations. It seems fitting to jump right in with our Speakers' Corner writers' group, as new work development feels like a joyously radical act of hope. I am invigorated by GTG's mission and look forward to working closely with David and Alyce in support of new creations, accessible arts education, and civic discourse meant to disrupt, inspire, and heal," says Ms. Becker.

Now celebrating its 15th year, Gingold Theatrical Group's Project Shaw made history in December 2009 as the first company ever to present performances of every one of Shaw's 65 plays (including full-length works, one-acts and sketches). They are now also including plays by writers who share Shaw's activist socio-political views embracing human rights and free speech, including work by Chekhov, Ibsen, Elizabeth Robins, Rachel Crothers, Pinero, Wilde, Barrie, and Harley Granville-Barker. GTG's other programs include its new play development and educational programs. For those interested in lively off-site discourses, each Project Shaw event is followed by a talk-back with cast members. GTG's David Staller and Stephen Brown-Fried also host a monthly Shaw Club discussion group.

GTG's highly acclaimed Off-Broadway engagement of Shaw's beloved almost historical comedy Caesar and Cleopatra at Theatre Row, hailed as a New York Times Critic's Pick, was named Best Classical Production in Terry Teachout's year-end recap of the the best theater of 2019 for the Wall Street Journal: "David Staller and the Gingold Theatrical Group nailed it for the second year in a row with another insufficiently appreciated play by George Bernard Shaw, this time a small-scale off-Broadway staging of Caesar and Cleopatra that brought a rarely seen show to persuasive life." In his review earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal he declared "As always, Mr. Staller, who knows more about Shaw than anyone else in America, gets it right, situating the action of the play in a modern-day archaeological dig and keeping the costumes simple and the diction crisp and clear. Mr. Cuccioli tosses off his epigrams ('The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it') with a light, dry touch, while Ms. Lim, who is a terrific find, starts off as Lolita, gradually turning under Caesar's tutelage into a grown woman who has tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and isn't sure she likes it. ...all the more reason to cheer David Staller's splendid new adaptation of one of Shaw's most glittering, least Shakespearean conversation pieces. This is the third of Mr. Staller's small-scale Gingold Theatrical Group productions to be presented off Broadway at Theatre Row. It follows in the wake of his all-but-flawless 2018 Heartbreak House, an uncommonly hard act to follow, and leaves nothing whatsoever to be desired. May his Shaw stagings become annual events!"

For more information about all the programs of Gingold Theatrical Group, including the acclaimed Project Shaw, call 212-355-7823, email info@gingoldgroup.org, or visit online at www.gingoldgroup.org.

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