LOU BELLAMY (Director) is the founder and artistic director of Penumbra Theatre. He has been a member of the University of Minnesota's faculty for 31 years and is currently appointed to the rank of associate professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance. Recent awards include the 2007 Obie for Direction and the 2006 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award. Recent directing credits of Wilson's plays include the staged reading of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at the Kennedy Center, The Piano Lesson at Penumbra, Two Trains Running at the Signature Theatre in New York and Jitney at Kansas City Repertory Theatre and Arizona Theatre Company. Other recent directing credits at Penumbra include REDSHIRTS, Get Ready, Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers, Zooman and the Sign and Black Nativity - A Homecoming.

DOMINIC TAYLOR (Associate Artistic Director) has been a practicing theatre artist for the past 20 years, recently relocating from New York to Saint Paul. He has directed a variety of theatre projects and musicals including the new opera Fresh Faust at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the cantata The Negro Burial Ground at The Kitchen in New York City. He has worked with Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, The Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Crossroads Theater, Rites and Reasons Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, and Ensemble Studio Theatre among others. He holds both a Bachelors and a Master of Fine Arts from Brown University. He has been appointed Assistant Professor in Directing at the University of Minnesota.

MARY K. WINCHELL (Stage Manager) is in her 21st season with Penumbra Theatre. Recent Penumbra credits include The Piano Lesson, Get Ready and Black Nativity: Twenty Years of Holiday Cheer! Other select Penumbra credits include Fences at Penumbra and the Guthrie Theater, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Jitney, Two Trains Running, King Hedley II and Dinah Was. Mary has also stage managed at the Orpheum Theatre, State Theatre, Pantages Theatre, The Children's Theatre Company, The Jungle Theater and the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami. She has also served as production stage manager for Dorothy Hamill's Nutcracker on Ice, and lent her talents to Macy's Glamorama, the Aveda Corporation including Aveda's 20th Anniversary Celebration at Radio City Music Hall, and Super Bowl XXVI Winter Magic.

SANFORD MOORE (Musical Director) has been the musical director for several productions at Penumbra Theatre including Black Nativity: Twenty Years of Holiday Cheer!, Get Ready, Blue, Black Nativity–A Homecoming, and Ain't Misbehavin'. Select musical direction credits also include Crowns, Dream on Monkey Mountain, Triumph of Love, and As You Like It at the Guthrie Theater, and Two Queens, One Castle at Mixed Blood Theatre. Sanford is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota School of Music and Minister of Music for Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church.

ANSA AKYEA (Boy Willie) was last seen on stage as the angel in Penumbra Theatre’s Black Nativity: Twenty Years of Holiday Cheer! He has also appeared at Mixed Blood Theatre, History Theatre, Black Ensemble Theatre, Chicago Theatre Company, Frank Theatre, and many other stages around the country. He can be seen and heard on radio and television for Gillette Hospital, Goodwill Industries, Great Clips, Qwest, and on the big screen in movies such as Repetition and Zora Neale Hurston’s The Gilded Six Bits. Ansa was named City Pages 2007 Best Actor.

LEREA CARTER (Grace) is making her professional acting debut with Penumbra Theatre’s production of The Piano Lesson. Lerea began acting in 2005 with a role in the University of Minnesota’s Crisis Point Theatre production Embarrassed in Rarig. She also worked with the University of Minnesota’s Xperimental Theatre Company. In 2006 she performed in the University of Minnesota’s main stage season in The Master and Margarita and The Arabian Nights.

JAMES CRAVEN (Solly Two Kings) is a longtime Penumbra Theatre company member. Recent Penumbra credits include The Piano Lesson, REDSHIRTS, Get Ready, Zooman and the Sign and Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers, produced in collaboration with Trinity Repertory Theatre. He also recently performed at Kansas City Repertory Theatre and Arizona Theatre Company in their joint production of Jitney. James is a 2005 recipient of the Spenser Cherashore Fund. He used this grant to research Native American culture and the experiences of the Buffalo Soldiers ca. 1880, in the greater Southwestern United States. This research provided invaluable knowledge that James applied to the creation of his role of Craig Robe in Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers.

NATALIA GASTON (Maretha) is making her Penumbra Theatre debut in The Piano Lesson. Natalia has appeared in numerous commercials, television shows, independent films and several stage productions. She has studied acting and voice at Professional Actors Studio and Clark Atlanta University. She also enjoys creative writing and dance. She is the 2007 recipient of the Kathryn Coram Gagnon Fellowship in Musical and Dramatic Theatre at Penumbra.

GRETA OGLESBY (Berniece) has performed in several productions at Penumbra Theatre including Black Nativity: Twenty Years of Holiday Cheer!, Dinah Was, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and A Love Song for Miss Lydia. She has also performed at the Guthrie Theater, Goodman Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Steppenwolf Theatre, Dreamstreet Theatre, ETA Theatre, Chicago Theatre Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and played the role of “Aunt Ester” in the world premiere of August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean. Television credits include Early Edition and Unsolved Mysteries. Film credits include Passing Minds, Time Saved, Four-way Stop, The Fugitive, My Life, and most recently, Conversations with God. Awards include the Joseph Jefferson Award and two Black Theatre Alliance Awards for Best Actress.

T. MYCHAEL RAMBO (Caesar) is an actor, vocalist and educator. He has performed at Penumbra Theatre since 1989 and is now a company member. His most recent Penumbra credits include The Piano Lesson, Black Nativity: Twenty Years of Holiday Cheer!, Get Ready and Ain't Misbehavin'. He has performed with the Guthrie Theater, Illusion Theater, Minnesota Opera, Ordway Music Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Park Square Theatre, Hey City Theatre, a number of regional theater companies, at Carnegie Hall with the Minnesota Orchestra and internationally throughout Canada, Europe, Africa and Brazil. He has appeared in several local and national television commercials and in HBO miniseries including Laurel Avenue, Endeavor and I Led Two Lives. Film credits include The Mighty Ducks, Crossing the Bridge, Grumpy Old Men, The Cure, Equinox, Wooly Boys and Justice. Rambo also has to his credit two CDs: Simply and The Gift.

DENNIS W. SPEARS (Wining Boy) most recently performed in Penumbra Theatre’s Black Nativity: Twenty Years of Holiday Cheer! Other Penumbra credits include Ain’t Misbehavin’, Black Nativity–A Homecoming, Blue and Get Ready. He has also performed in Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Crowns at the Guthrie Theater and Smokey Joe’s Café at Hey City Theater. An accomplished jazz vocalist, Dennis made his splash with the jazz vocal ensemble Moore By Four. Minnesota Jazz Music Awards named him Best Male Jazz Vocalist. He has performed in jazz festivals nationally and internationally with such legends as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Joe Williams, Carmen McCrae and Dee Dee Bridgewater. Solo recordings include “I Hear It,” “Why Try to Change Me Now,” and his first national release, “Evening Candlelight.”

ASHFORD THOMAS (Lymon) is making his Penumbra debut. Most recently, Ashford was seen in The Meeting at the History Theatre where he portrayed the role of Rashad. As a performing apprentice at the Children’s Theatre Company, Ashford has also appeared in Antigone, Tale of a West Texas Marsupial Girl, and The Lost Boys of Sudan. He also performed in the 2007 Minneapolis Fringe Festival where he played the role of AKA in Same Difference. Ashford is a 2006 graduate of Howard University.

MALO ADAMS (Sound Design) has designed several Penumbra productions including The Piano Lesson, Zooman and the Sign, Sex Diary of an Infidel, Dinah Was, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars and King Hedley II. Other design credits include Mighty Real, A Slow Ride on the Big Muddy and Straight as a Line at the Hennepin Center for Performing Arts. In addition to design work, Malo is the creative force behind the critically acclaimed group Tribe of Millions. Malo has also played with Me’Shell Ndegeocello, The Black Crowes, Soul Asylum, Chaka Khan, and has worked with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. He has also scored films including Street Guns and The Visionary, and commercials for Target Market, Target, Marshall Field's, Mervyn's, African American Adoption Agency and Dunwoody Institute.

KEN EVANS (Scenic Design) has designed numerous productions for Penumbra including Dinah Was, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, King Hedley II, Jitney, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Pill Hill, Playboy of the West Indies, Little Tommy Parker’s Celebrated Colored Minstrel Show, Ain’t Suppose to Die A Natural Death, Soul Alley, Deadwood Dick—Legend of the West, Songhai, Raisin, and Someplace Soft to Fall. Ken is also a prolific lighting designer. Ken’s New York credits include lighting off- Broadway revivals of Les Blancs and Streamers, and The Revenger’s Tragedy and Two Noble Kinsmen at the Jean Cocteau Repertory. Ken also did lighting design for Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion.

MICHELLE HABECK (Lighting Design) recently designed the lighting for The Piano Lesson and REDSHIRTS at Penumbra Theatre. Other collaborations with Lou Bellamy include A Raisin in the Sun, Two Trains Running and Jitney at Kansas City Rep. Recent national credits include Love Song at Steppenwolf Theatre, Carter's Way at Kansas City Rep, Things of Dry Hours and Elimina's Kitchen at Center Stage, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Alliance Theatre Company, and Lobby Hero at the Goodman Theatre. She has worked as associate lighting designer with Tony Award-winning designer Donald Holder on Gem of the Ocean, King Hedley II, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, among others. Michelle is a National Endowment for the Arts/TCG Grant winner for 2003-2004.

EDWARD SUMMERS (Costume Design) is a past winner of the AACT/Fest Award for Excellence in Costume Design. Penumbra Theatre credits include Seven Guitars, Black Nativity–A New Rendition of a Timeless Tradition, The Day the Bronx Died and Canned Goods.

STEVEN HORSTMANN (Properties Master/Scenic Design Assistant) works locally as a scenic designer, performer and musician with companies such as Open Eye Figure Theatre, Four Humors Theater and Penumbra. He is a performing member of the Seattle-based traveling vaudeville troupe The New Old Time Chautauqua. Most recently, he appeared in Mud at the Bedlam Theatre. Steven holds a degree in Theatre Arts and Architecture from the University of Minnesota.

AARON CHVATAL (Assistant Costume Design) is a senior theatre major at Hamline University. His recent work includes designing costumes for The Cherry Orchard, directed by Zaraawar Mistry, Fefu and her Friends, directed by Jeff Turner, and Words Words Words, directed by Barbe Marshall.

STEPHANIE LEIN WALSETH (Dramaturg) is an M.A./Ph.D. candidate in Theatre Historiography at the University of Minnesota and is pleased to be the August Wilson Fellow for Penumbra's 2007-08 season. Previously she served as the managing director of the Minneapolis-based Asian American theater and taiko company Mu Performing Arts. She has worked professionally as a theater administrator, actor, director, dramaturg and stage manager throughout the Twin Cities with companies such as Mu, Mixed Blood Theatre, the Guthrie Theater, The Playwrights' Center, Frank Theatre, Theatre in the Round, Starting Gate Productions, Theatre Unbound, Chaos Theories, CLIMB Theatre and in Maine at the Portland Stage Company. Her writing has appeared in the Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance, and she is currently serving as the co-artistic director of the University's Xperimental Theatre.

RICK JACOBSON (Audio Describer) provides description for blind patrons at over 25 theaters in the Twin Cities, including the Guthrie Theater and the Ordway Center for Performing Arts. Recent shows include Black Nativity: Twenty Years of Holiday Cheer!, Spamalot, The Rocky Horror Show, and Les Misérables. Rick has been describing theater for thirteen years and has worked in television for five years. He can be heard on Nickelodeon and PBS stations across the country. Rick is the audio description coordinator for the Minnesota Fringe Festival. He describes the annual Flint Hills Children’s Festival. In 2006, Rick received an Access Arts Award from VSA Arts Minnesota. Rick describes for blind and low vision passengers on cruise ships, most recently in Mexico. Rick works in the School of Dentistry at the University of Minnesota.

ERIKA K. DIXON-GOSS (American Sign Language Interpreter) has been the ASL Interpreter for Penumbra Theatre for ten years. Erika has had the pleasure of interpreting works by the late August Wilson such as Seven Guitars and King Hedley II. Most recently, she interpreted Alter Boyz at the Pantages Theatre. Erika also interprets for Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Hopkins Stages Theater, Plymouth Playhouse, and Anoka’s Main Street Stage.