Creative Team

Anna Fleischle (Set Design) is an Olivier award–winning and Tony Award®-nominated production set and costume designer. Theatre includes Death Of A Salesman (Broadway 2022/Young Vic/West End); John Gabriel Borkman (The Bridge); Much Ado about Nothing (National Theatre); Hangmen (Broadway/ Royal Court/ West End, Tony Award® nominee 2022, 2016 Olivier Award Winner for Best Set Design, Critic’s Circle Award Best Designer, Evening Standard Award Best Design); The Collaboration (Young Vic, Broadway); 2:22 A Ghost Story (West End, Ahmanson Theatre LA); House of Shades, The Writer, Before the Party (Almeida); Hamlet (Young Vic); The Forest (Hampstead Theatre); Don Juan In Soho; The End Of Longing (West End); Once Upon A One More Time (Nederlander); A Kind Of People; Liberian Girl (Royal Court) The Kid Stays In The Picture (Royal Court & Complicité); Two Ladies; A German Life; A Very Very Very Dark Matter (Bridge Theatre); Home I’m Darling (Theatr Clwyd/ National Theatre/ West End, 2019 Olivier Award nominee for Best Set Design and Best Costume Design); The Way Of The World (Donmar Warehouse); Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (Crucible/ Sheffield/ West End/ UK tour/ LA/ Korea); Much Ado About Nothing; Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare’s Globe); Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (Old Vic); Beware Of Pity (Schaubühne, Berlin/ Complicité); The Two Noble Kinsmen; Cymbeline; Love’s Sacrifice (RSC); West Side Story, Blindsided, Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, Rats Tails (Manchester Royal Exchange) You Can See The Hills; Love and Money (Manchester Royal Exchange /Young Vic). Opera includes L’Orfeo (Vienna Staatsoper); Weimar Nightfall: Seven Deadly Sins (LA Philharmonic). Dance includes: Message in a Bottle (Sadler’s Wells); John; Can We Talk About This? (DV8 Physical Theatre / NT / International tour). Fellowships include Founding Member of Scene/Change; Associate Artist, Young Vic; Trustee Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.

annafleischle.com

Emilio Sosa (Costume Design) is the Chair of the American Theatre Wing. His Broadway credits include Sweeney Todd, Goodnight, Oscar (Tony Award® nomination); By The Way, Meet Vera Stark; A Beautiful Noise; 1776; Ain’t No Mo (Tony Award® nomination); Trouble in Mind (Tony Award® nomination); Skeleton Crew; On Your Feet!; Motown: The Musical; Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill; The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (Tony Award® nomination); Topdog/Underdog. TV and film: “Annie Live!” (NBC) and Red Hook Summer (directed by Spike Lee). Recipient of the NAACP Theater and Lucille Lortel awards and a Drama Desk nominee. Usher’s Las Vegas residency, Blue Man Group tour, Big Apple Circus, The Rockettes, NY Knicks City Dancers, Diana Ross, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan and Wynton Marsalis.

@esosafashion

Jen Schriever (Lighting Design) Broadway: A Strange Loop (Tony Award® nomination), Death of a Salesman (Tony Award® nomination), 1776, Birthday Candles, Lackawanna Blues, Grand Horizons, What the Constitution Means to Me, Lifespan of a Fact, Eclipsed, Ghetto Klown. Off-Broadway includes: Bright New Boise, My Broken Language, Thom Pain, Night is a Room (Signature); To My Girls, Superhero (2ST); Shhhh, (Atlantic). Tours: Blue Man Group. Opera: Die Fledermaus, Pearl Fishers (Met); Faust, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, La Traviata, (Mariinsky, Russia). Obie Award. Adjunct: Purchase. Mom: Henry.

jenschriever.com

Tal Yarden (Co-Video/Projections/Media Design):  Broadway: Network, The Waverly Gallery, Indecent, Sunday in the Park with George, The Crucible; West End: Get Up, Stand Up, Anna X, Hamlet; Regional and Off-Broadway: Becky Nurse of Salem, Ocean Filibuster, A Walk on the Moon, Grey Rock, Passing Strange, Between the World and Me, The Undertaking, Indecent, King Lear, Distracted, Lazarus, Little Foxes, Liberty City, The Misanthrope, & Lush Valley; International: My Brilliant Friend, Obsession, Antigone, The Damned, Kings of War, The Fountainhead, Antonioni Project, Roman Tragedies, Mourning Becomes Electra, Angels in America, Husbands, and Edward II;  Opera: The Exterminating Angel, Between Worlds, The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny, Salome, Der Schatzgräber, Mazeppa, La Clemenza de Tito, Idomeneo, Brokeback Mountain, Ring Cycle, Macbeth.  Tal Yarden has collaborated with Clint Dyer, Melly Still, Sarna Lapine, Robert Icke, Deborah Warner, Ivo van Hove, Tom Cairns, Reza Abdoh, and Lucy Sexton. He has directed videos for Pat McGrath, Rick Owens, Balenciaga, Annie Lennox, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg, James Brown, Wyclef Jean, Peaches, & Patti Smith.  His video, “Counting Sheep” was featured in Times Square. Awards include: 2018 Molière Award for Visual Creation, 2019 Lucille Lortel Award & nominations for Tony, Drama Desk, Hewes, Outer Critics, Barrymore awards.

talyarden.com

Gino Ricardo Green (Co-Video/Projections/Media Design) is a director and video/projection designer. He is co-founder of Black Apron Entertainment. Credits as Video/Projection Designer include Othello (National Theatre, Co-Video Designer); The Ballad of St Johns Carpark (Icon Theatre); Treason: The Musical in Concert (West End); That is Not Who I Am (Royal Court Theatre); Kabul Goes Pop: Music Television Afghanistan (Brixton House & Hightide); Edge (NYT); Lava (Bush Theatre); Children’s Children (Director of Photography/Editor – English Touring Theatre); Beyond The Canon and Poor Connection (RADA); Sweat (Donmar Warehouse & West End); Passages: A Windrush Celebration (Black Apron at the Royal Court); Hashtag Lightie (Arcola Theatre); Lightie (Projection Designer – Gate Theatre). Credits as Associate Video/Projection Designer include Small Island (National Theatre); Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical (West End) and Be More Chill (The Other Palace & West End).

gricg.co.uk

Benjamin Grant (Sound Effects Design) worked as Sound Effects Designer on Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical (Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Ave). Recent sound design credits include: Othello, Death of England & Death of England: Delroy (Co-Sound Designer & Composer, National Theatre); A Fight Against (Royal Court); Michael Kohlhaas (Schaubühne); Maggot Moon (Unicorn Theatre); I’ll Take You To Mrs Cole (Pleasance Beyond); The Last of the Pelican Daughters (Pleasance Beyond); Education Education Education (Trafalgar Studios); The War of The Worlds (New Diorama Theatre); Prurience (Southbank Centre/Guggenheim Museum NYC); The Road Awaits Us (Sadler’s Wells). Grant studied Theatre Sound at Central School of Speech and Drama and is currently an Associate Artist of The Wardrobe Ensemble.

benjamingrant.co.uk

KAI HARADA (Sound Design) Broadway: Merrily We Roll Along; New York, New York (Tony Nomination); Kimberly Akimbo; The Old Man and the Pool; Mister Saturday Night; The Band’s Visit (Tony, Drama Desk Awards); Amélie; Sunday in the Park With George; Gigi; Fun Home; On the Town; Follies (Tony, Drama Desk Nominations); Million Dollar Quartet. Other musicals worldwide.

Asmeret Ghebremichael (Associate Director) is an actress, singer, and director. She spent this past fall as the associate director for the world premiere of the The Notebook in Chicago. She also served as Artistic Director of the Big Sky Summer Theatre Festival and an artistic consultant on the “South Park: Pandemic Special” (Comedy Central). On Stage, her resume includes the original casts of The Book of Mormon, Elf, Legally Blonde, Spamalot, Wicked, Footloose and the West End cast of Dreamgirls. On Camera, she recurred on “WeCrashed” (Apple) and “Get Even” (Netflix). Other TV credits include “And Just Like That” (HBO), “The Blacklist” (NBC), “The Other Two” (Comedy Central), “Bonding” (Netflix), “Trevor Moore: High in Church” (Comedy Central).

Sean Mayes (Music Supervisor). Born in Toronto and based out of New York City, Sean Mayes enjoys an active and varied career internationally as a conductor, music director, orchestrator, arranger, composer, author, and educator across North America and Europe, with his work spanning numerous musical styles through the world’s largest theatres and concert halls, between Broadway, theatre, opera, classical and pops.

In New York, Mr. Mayes shares his time as conductor for two Tony Award-winning productions, MJ: The Musical and Hadestown, and is a frequent music director of numerous engagements within the Broadway community. Recent symphonic conducting engagements include conducting the American Pops Orchestra in “Black Broadway: A Proud History, a Limitless Future” for National Television on PBS, featuring a select star line up of Broadway’s most established Black performers. Internationally, Mayes serves as a Conductor and Music Supervisor of productions across the globe. In Fall 2022, Mr. Mayes served as music director and conductor of the new musical Mandela, inspired by the life of Nelson Mandela at the Young Vic Theatre in London.

Additional recent credits include serving as music supervisor for the International Finnish Premiere of the musical, Come From Away. At home in Canada, Mayes was music director and conductor of the all-Canadian premiere of The Color Purple in 2019, for which he was awarded the 2020 Merritt Award for Outstanding Musical Direction. As music supervisor, recent work includes supervision of Black HERstory, an all-immersive two-day joint event with AFROPUNK at Lincoln Center featuring an all-star line-up of Black musical talent, and as music supervisor of RENT: In Concert at the Kennedy Center.

Fred Carl (Creative Dramaturge) is an Associate Arts Professor in the NYU/Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and is also one of the Co-Associate Deans of Faculty at the Tisch School of the Arts. His jazz theatre collaborations with writer hattie gossett, including pussy and cash; in the waitingroom of the 21st century and the immigrant suite: hey zenophobe who you calling a foreigner? have been performed at the New School, the Public Theater, the Whitney Museum, Here Arts Center, the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, the Vision Festival and the National Black Arts Festival. He musical directed Kirsten Childs’s The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin from its beginnings at Dixon Place and Musical Theatre Works thru its multiple award-winning 2000 Playwrights Horizons run; he received the 2000 Audelco Award for Best Musical Direction. In 2012 Fred musical directed, composed songs and incidental music, arranged, and orchestrated the score for the 10th anniversary revised version of Regina Taylor’s piece, Crowns, at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.

In the years 1999-2017 he co-designed and co-led a summer musical theatre-writing workshop at London’s Theatre Royal Stratford East training hip-hop and contemporary music and word artists to write for the musical theatre stage; a version of the summer workshop was featured in the 2005 BBC Channel Four documentary, Rappin’ at the Royal. In 2018 he composed the score of Becoming Ailey, a multi-media piece that played in NYC for the 60th anniversary season of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Between 2018 and 2022 Fred co-led musical theatre writing workshops in the UK and Kenya, encouraging the sharing of more stories to be created by more people from more places.

Michael ‘Silk’ Olajide, Jr. (Special Boxing Consultant and Fight Coordinator) was trained by Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali’s World Champion trainer, and was a professional boxer from 1981 to 1991. In that time, he was Canadian Middleweight Champion in 1984, World Athletic Association Champion in 1985, World Boxing Council Intercontinental Champion in 1986, and #1 World Middleweight Contender in 1987. In 1991, he created Equinox Fitness Club’s and the world’s first boxing fitness program. Shape Magazine rated his “Aerobox” video the #6 greatest workout video of all time. He is the author of the book, Aerobox High Performance, and he opened the world’s first Boxing Fitness Club, Aerospace High Performance Center, in 2004. Silk’s Off-Broadway credits include choreographer for Blade to the Heat starring Paul Calderon, directed by George C. Wolfe at the Public Theater in 1995. He was Boxing Consultant for Michael Mann’s film, ALI, starring Will Smith in 2001. He has trained such artists as Hugh Jackman, Iman, Rachel Weiss, Q-tip, Mary J. Blige, Beyonce, Harvey Keitel, Dustin Hoffman, Josh Hartnett, and many more. Silk was the Fight Choreographer for Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia in 2006, the trainer for Ray Fisher for the play, Fetch Clay, Make Man in 2013, for Jake Gyllenhaal for the Southpaw boxing movie in 2015, for Liev Schreiber for the 2017 boxing film, Chuck, and for Adrienne Warren for her Tony Award®-winning role as Tina Turner on Broadway.

michaelsilkolajide.com

IN MEMORIAM

We are all deeply saddened by the loss of our beloved friend, artist and brilliant collaborator, Casey Benjamin who passed away on March 30, 2024 and will be dearly missed by all.
Casey’s musical genius, creativity, kindness, unforgettable smile and absolute joy for Music made a positive and lasting impact on us all. We are extremely fortunate for our time with him.
Rest In Peace, beloved Casey. Your ALI family will honor you and carry your incredible work and legacy forward for all to know and enjoy.

Casey Benjamin (Associate Music Producer) Two-time GRAMMY® award-winning Casey Benjamin is the first original member of the Robert Glasper Experiment. Through his melodic ingenuity on the vocoder, textual mastery on the keytar and spiky virtuosity on the alto, soprano and tenor saxophone, Benjamin gives the Experiment its most defining sound that has enabled it to gain international acclaim in the jazz, R&B and hip-hop scenes on such trailblazing albums as Black Radio (Blue Note Records, 2012) and Black Radio 2 (Blue Note Records, 2013).

In addition to the Experiment, Benjamin toured with singer Patrick Stump (Fall  Out Boy) and has  performed/toured/recorded  with a string of other stellar musicians from jazz to hip hop to pop including singer Betty Carter, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, trumpeter Roy Hargrove, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, Nas, Kendrick Lamar, Mos Def, Q-Tip, A Tribe Called Quest, Kanye West, Diddy, Wyclef Jean, Anderson Paak, Pusha T, Common, Maxwell, Solange, Mary J. Blige, John Legend, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and Drake. With singer and songwriter Nicky Guiland, Benjamin co-leads the funk-forward combo, HEAVY, which has released three discs –HEAVY (Kindred Spirits, 2000), Jazz Money$$ (BBE, 2007) and First Sessions (Kindred Spirits, 2008).

Benjamin started playing the saxophone when he was 8 years old. After graduating from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, Benjamin attended The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City, where he met Robert Glasper in 1997. Benjamin and Glasper collaborated formally in 2004 with the first edition of the Robert Glasper Experiment. Although Benjamin remains a central member of the Robert Glasper Experiment, he’s working on his forthcoming solo project coming out soon.

Richard Willis is an Award-winning Theatrical Producer focused on developing and producing new works for Broadway and the West End. Founder of TheTribecaWorkshop® – a full-service Theatrical production company based in New York and London.

A Tony Award-winner and five-time Nominee with over thirty (30) years of experience in the Theatre Business. He won Los Angeles Theatre’s highest honor – Ovation Award (Large Theatre) – as well as the NAACP’s highest honor – NAACP Theatre Award for Best Producer (Equity), in cooperation with Pasadena Playhouse.

Richard was the visionary and driving force behind the “Westside Arts Complex,” built and operated under the banner RICHMARK Entertainment. The Westside Arts Complex consisted of The Wadsworth Theatre (1378 seats), The Brentwood Theatre (507 seats), The Great Lawn (a large outdoor Concerts/Special Events area), The Japanese Garden and two additional outdoor venues, complete with Production Offices, Rehearsal Spaces, Administrative Offices and more at The Department of Veterans’ Affairs’ (DVA) Campus in Brentwood, CA from 1999-2016.

In addition to renovating, programming and operating his own Theatres, Mr. Willis worked with his business partner in the renovation, programming and operating of The Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway – 1999-2011 – as well as other Theatres and Companies throughout the United States.

He is a graduate of Brown University.