Maxwell Anderson 137th Birthday Benefit at The Tank

Duncan Maxwell Anderson

Ava Boyde

A stage and film actor, AVA BOYDE has also taught many successful performers in film, television, theater and voiceover. A few roles include Putana in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Expanded Arts), Tanya in Galina Lives (Greenwich Street Theater), Molly Seagrim and Mrs. Firtzpatrick in Tom Jones, and Ursula in Much Ado About Nothing (Vita Shakespeare Festival). Ava was also fortunate to work as Olive in the musical Crooked Broadway, book by the late George Abbott as his final project. Life has come full circle for Ava as she began her acting career playing Cunegonde to Frank Farrell's Candide in the musical Candide, and she is grateful to work again with this talented actor/director. Ava is a long-time member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA and is a SAG-AFTRA NYC Local Performers with Disabilities Committee Member.

Danny Crawford

DANNY CRAWFORD is thrilled to have another opportunity to work with First Flight Theatre Company. His previous touring and regional theatre credits include Luke in The Lighting Thief, Brom Bones in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Angelo in Measure for Measure and Laertes in Hamlet to name a few. Film/TV credits include “Redrum,” “Scorned,” “The Perfect Murder,” and “Playbook 360” amongst others. www.DannyCrawford.com

Christopher Davis

Victoria Devany

Claudia Egli

CLAUDIA EGLI - actor and singer has performed with the Light Opera of Manhattan in several of their past productions. She has appeared in film and TV productions including all five seasons of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. For the past five years Claudia has been discovering the plays of 20th Century American playwright Maxwell Anderson performing with the First Flight Theatre Company and appearing in staged readings of his plays including Valley Forge, Elizabeth the Queen, Mary of Scotland (in the title role), The Masque of Queens, The Eve of St. Marks, The Feast of Ortolans, Second Overture, The Miracle of the Danube, White Desert and Sea-Wife. She stage-managed the company's production of Forgotten Soldiers performed at two churches in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan in 2018. This past August she appeared in the company's production of Shakespeare's Deaths as part of the Little Shakespeare Festival at the UNDER St. Marks Theater in NYC. Currently she can also be heard in the podcast Songs of the Pogo as Miz Ma'm'selle Hepzibah, a beautiful, coy French skunk frequently baking pies or preparing picnic baskets for her many admirers in Walt Kelly’s Okefenokee Swamp. Claudia also reads Shakespeare plays at the New York Public Libraries in collaboration with the Instant Shakespeare Company. She is honored and grateful to be performing at Under St Marks in First Flight's benefit reading of Maxwell Anderson's 1927 comedy Saturday's Children.

Alexa Elmy

Karen Eterovich

KAREN ETEROVICH (AEA, SAG-AFTRA, Dramatists Guild, LPTW) First Flight Acting Credits: Valley Forge, Dickens by Candlelight: A Christmas Carol adapted by Robin Olson, Elizabeth the Queen, Masque of Queens and Eve of St. Mark. Directing credits with First Flight: Mina adapted by Richard Width, The Witlings by Fanny Burney and A Vampire Kiss in the Plague of 1666 by Dr. James Fitzmaurice. New York City Acting Credits: Hudson Classical: Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride & Prejudice, Gertrude in Hamlet, Queen Anne in The Three Musketeers, Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest and HC Valentine Monologue Festival. National & international tours: as Aphra Behn in her play, Love Arm’d, including the Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh, Scotland and the Mission Theatre, Bath, UK. Karen plays Jane Austen in her solo play, Cheer from Chawton, which has toured coast to coast from Stockton, CA to NYC to the Mission Theatre in Bath and was performed in Bath at the Mission again for the 2019 Jane Austen Festival. Love Arm’d, Aphra Behn & Her Pen has been adapted to a Zoom format and is available for booking. Thank you to John Maguire, Alice, Frank Farrell, Richard Width and all our FF Ensemble. More at Lovearmd.com

Frank Farrell

FRANK FARRELL (Artistic Director of the First Flight Theatre Company) in August 2025 he directed Little Jewel at the Theatre for the New City in NYC. In 2024 he co-produced and directed Walt Kelly’s Songs of the Pogo as part of the New York City Fringe Festival, produced Hamlet on the Run at the Tank Theater and co-produced and directed Tongs and Bones Shakespeare at the Theater for the New City, he directed Little Women, Poe: An Evening of Mystery and the Macabre and Dickens Presents A Christmas Carol for the Hermitage in New Jersey. In 2023 Frank produced and directed Shakespeare’s Ladies at Tea and Shakespeare’s Deaths as part of the Little Shakespeare Festival in NYC. He was an actor in Chicago for 40 years receiving four Joseph Jefferson acting nominations and returned to NYC and New Jersey in 2016. While in Chicago he directed and produced plays for the Free Shakespeare Theatre Company, Temporary Theatre, Shakespeare’s Herd, Steppenwolf Theater, Raven Theatre, Equity Library Theater Chicago, the North Lakeside Players, Citadel Theater, and Theatre-Hikes. Frank has formed seven theater companies including the Free Shakespeare Theatre Company (Chicago’s first year-round Shakespeare theatre company), Theatre-Hikes, the Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company in Grand Haven, Michigan and in 2019 the First Flight Theatre Company. For FFTC he directed and produced 2022’s production of Maxwell Anderson’s play Valley Forge. Frank has published six plays by Anderson from the 1920s: What Price Glory, First Flight, The Buccaneer, Outside Looking In, Gods of the Lightning and Sea-Wife all available at Amazon.com.

Alejandro Flores

ALEJANDRO FLORES is a New York-based actor who has had the pleasure of working on multiple productions, such as Gallery Players’ Romeo and Juliet and Jimmy Fallon’s Tonightmares. He has worked with Frank Farrell on various projects, such as Tongs and Bones Shakespeare and Little Jewel, as well as multiple readings with Instant Shakespeare. He is ecstatic to bring the Sea Wife to life alongside his fellow ensemble and is thankful for the opportunity. He is grateful for his peers, family, and, of course, his cat Gandules, who has served as his scene partner many a time!

Robert Gengerke

ROBERT GENGERKE has performed on stage with award-winning improvisational groups, including ForPlay Improvised Theater and Some Assembly Required. Most recently, he appeared as Father Hafner in Trey Rogan's A Cycle Of Violence, business tycoon Mr. Adam in My Husband Regrets Divorcing Me and an estranged father at the center of a family drama in Triplicate. He is also a producer and director with over 35 years of experience creating educational programs, including segments produced for CNN, PBS' Nova and Inside Edition.

Brian Hagerty

Denise Alessandria Hurd

DENISE ALESSANDRIA HURD is happy to be working First Flight again. Denise has worked as an actor, a teacher, a director, a fight choreographer and an intimacy director all over the country. During the height of the pandemic, she expanded into teaching acting and stage combat online and acting in online productions such as The Witlings and the award winning A Vampire’s Kiss in the Plague of 1666 with First Flight Theatre Company. She teaches in the Theatre Department at City College of New York. She has appeared in regional theatres in such shows as The Play’s the Thing, Defying Gravity, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth and has done the fight choreography for such shows as Ruined, Lear, Dorothy’s Coming Out Party, I Hate Hamlet, and Macbeth, and Intimacy Choreography for shows such as Intimate Apparel, La Gringa, Ruined, and the premiere of I Wanna F**k Like Romeo and Juliet. She wishes to thank her mother, Merlyn, for all her love and support, her sisters, Michelle and Adrienne for all their support and inspiration and to remember her father, Hugh, for his loving heart and generous soul.

Jennifer Kim

Lynn Manuell

Jackie Margolis

JACKIE MARGOLIS -Arrabian Nights,@HB theater, Orestia , Antigone The Crankie at TADA Jacqueline has been Catherine in Arms and the Man played Mother in "The Transparent Veil" at love creek, has played and sang in xmas plays with lovely love creekers. Hudsonware House Tamur Lenk at theater of the new city, played the nurse in Titus Andronicus, Mother in Beyond the Horizon performed in spoon river feature "The end of the Line", she plays Executive secretary, Barbara, opposite her husband Mark Margolis and John Polito. She has a small encounter with Jacqueline Bisset in "Death in Love", Prior to that she was in Vassa Zheleznova in the part of Dunya, at Horizon Rep. The Mother in Uncle Vanya, for the Off-Bank theater at Abbington square theater. Prior to that that a Romanian Tour Guide in "Unleashed" at TSI. Sang, whirled and played many parts in "the Golden Bear" at Theater for the New City. i Soaps and Commercials. Many plays at Love creek, such as a one women monologue "Hartford Circus Fires" at the Samuel French festival". Lulu"s Back in Town at Common Basis Theater. "trust Me" Pulse theater. Various versions of Lysistrata. Currently Shakespeare with The Instant Shakespeare Theater performing staged readings at NY public Libraries Readings with Midatlantic Theater, The Good Doctor. Most Loved role as the Grandmother in "Eleemosynary", and lovely roles with Love Creek. AEA, AFTRA, SAG. jackiemargolis@mac.com

Ireland Meacham

Eike Ross

EIKE ROSS is an actor, director, and producer based in Brooklyn, New York. They studied Film and The Performing Arts at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and completed the Full-Time Conservatory program at Atlantic Acting School. They are a founding member and artistic director of NYC theater company The Clementine Players. Eike has been on stage recently as The Sheriff in Brokeneck Girls: The Murder Ballad Musical, Tybalt in A Man Called Paris, and Harriet in Vice and Virtue.

Hannah Simpson

Paul Singleton

PAUL SINGLETON previously appeared in Henry IV Part 1, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Pride and Prejudice, Richard II, Henry VI, and Antony and Cleopatra with Hudson Classical Theater Company. New York Theater includes Shakespeare at the Greene Space Brutus in Julius Caesar (New York Public Radio); Grit in a Sensitive Instrument (one-man play, Vineyard Theater – Cable TV also); When I Grow Up (lead, Playwright’s Horizons Festival); Careless Love (by John Olive – NY premiere), The Winter’s Tale, The Blue Carbuncle (also Theatre Encino, Los Angeles). Regional includes The Tempest, Idiot’s Delight, The Golden Age, Fallen Angels, The School for Scandal, P.S. Your Cat is Dead, Bedroom Farce. TV includes: “Conan O’Brien,” “All My Children,” “One Life to Live” and Comedy Central. As always, love to Nina and Paul.