Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with live & active cultures!)

Julia is a writer and performer who makes all kinds of theatrical nonsense. Her plays include Regretfully, So the Birds Are (Playwrights Horizons/WP Theater), miku, and the gods. (ArtsWest), and Sometimes the Rain, Sometimes the Sea (Rorschach Theatre, Helen Hayes Award Nomination for Best New Play Adaptation). Her work has been developed at MTC, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Berkeley Rep, Portland Center Stage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ojai Playwrights Conference, and more. Honors include the Kerry English Award and KCACTF’s Darrell Ayers Playwriting Award. Current New Dramatists Resident. Current commissions: True Love Productions, MTC/Sloan, Playwrights Horizons, Seattle Rep. MFA: Brown University. Her resume as an actor is not as robust, but she is listed in the New York Times as being in a show that got a Critic’s Pick even though she was let go from the production weeks before the premiere, so that’s kind of cool. Love to Mami-chan.

With roots stemming from both Carolinas, and raised in Virginia, Jamar Jones is a multi-hyphenate creative molded with a Southern sensibility. Formerly a Resident Company Member of PlayMakers Repertory Company, credits include Fat Ham, Much Ado about Nothing, Emma, The Legend of Georgia McBride, Hamlet, and Seattle Rep’s Blues for an Alabama Sky. As a museum theater practitioner, Jamar has collaborated with museums and history-forward institutions, including the International Spy Museum, Museum of the American Revolution, Mount Vernon, and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, to research, excavate, and share stories from centuries ago, particularly those centering Black American life. This work has even expanded to international collaborations (200 Years of Returns) in Monrovia, Liberia. 2019 RTCC Award- Best Actor in a Play for An Octoroon (TheatreLab). 2022 RTCC Award- Best Lead Performance- Play for Fires in the Mirror (Firehouse Theatre). Television: Law & Order (NBC). UNC at Chapel Hill- M.F.A (Acting). jamarjonesofficial.com.

(they/he) As a kid, Ashil caught the theatre bug playing a series of lovable bugs (Glow-Worm from the giant peach, Cricket from Pinocchio, Charlotte from that web). NYC-based actor, playwright, director, and sex educator. Korean-American, trans nonbinary, child of immigrants, and bestie to microceleb pup, Hux. 2023 Lucille Lortel nominee (Outstanding Ensemble: The Nosebleed). Proud reigning ‘Troll King’ (Clubbed Thumb Holiday Party 2024). Selected acting: The Nosebleed (LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater, Woolly Mammoth, US Tour), OriGen Story (Clubbed Thumb: Winterworks), Dogville (theatrical premiere, dir.Robert O’Hara). Selected playwriting: Relentless 2024 Semi-Finalist (Me No Know Korean), ‘Pericles: Prince of Tyre’ adapted with Mark Wing-Davey (NYU: Grad Acting), PRELUDE (Rooting for You!), Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writer’s Group (23-24), Pataphysics (with Clare Barron). Selected directing: Coach Coach, US Drag (NYU: MSNR), The Big Pick (Sapphest Festival), Manifest Destiny (LimeFest). Education: NYU Tisch. BFA: Acting, Minor: Youth Mental Health. www.ashillee.com

A Washington, D.C. native, Lizzy Lewis is excited to be working at Woolly Mammoth. She is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, working across media in theater, music, and writing. Theater credits include Lydia/Lady Catherine in Pride and Prejudice at Baltimore Center Stage and Arkansas Repertory Theatre and Lucy in A Christmas Carol at Trinity Repertory Company. An in-progress poetry collection was selected for a Theater and Performance Studies workshop at the University of Chicago, where she performed excerpts of her writing. For the past two decades, she has worked as a professional choral singer and vocalist. Lizzy holds an M.F.A in Acting from Brown University/Trinity Rep and a B.A. in Comparative Literature (focuses in Music and French Lit.) from the University of Chicago. 

Kento is an actor and comedian who appears in the upcoming animated series Get Jiro! and the action RPG Rise of the Ronin. A graduate of The Second City’s Conservatory, The Upright Citizens Brigade’s improv program, and The Barrow Group, he has performed at SF Sketchfest, Asian Comedy Festival, Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, and SketchFest Seattle. Kento created Cyberpunk Live With Kento, a sci-fi comedy talk show featured at UCB, where he also performed as part of the house sketch team Baby Todd. His interactive AI film Moment in Manzanar won Bronze at the 2023 Anthem Awards, and My Daughter Yoshiko, which he co-wrote, received the Zeno Mountain Award at the Miami Film Festival. Originally from the Bay Area and raised between California and Okinawa, Japan, Kento was once the NYU mascot and has been trying to top that gig ever since.