Clarissa Po

Clarissa is thrilled to be participating in Beyond the Stage Door! She is a senior Theatre major and Film & Media Studies minor at Smith College and worked at Williamstown Theatre Festival as an assistant company manager over the summer, primarily focused on Celebrating the Black Radical Imagination: Nine Solo Plays. There, she developed an interest in theatrical management. She hopes to pursue a career in managing and producing under-represented stories with 3-dimensional perspectives and delivering them to wider audiences. She is currently serving as the artistic director for The Smith Student Theatre Committee and the Box Office Manager for the department. She is also the musical director of The Smiffenpoofs a cappella group. Previous work includes stage managing for other Smith College productions and serving as Technical Director for Chester Theatre Company’s The Story of King Lear. In her free time she enjoys cuddling with her cat at home, watching trashy reality tv and baking for her friends and family. 

Brillian Qi-Bell

 Brillian is a recent graduate of the University of Iowa with a B.A. in Theatre Arts with a focus in Stage Management, as well as an Arts Entrepreneurship Certificate. Most recently, she was a recipient of the Innagural Cody Renard Richard Scholarship. Her current projects involve integrating digital media, virtual reality, & theatre as a stage manager of Media Clown & UIXR Theatre. Brillian is most passionate about working on new political works that inspire her & others to make changes in our society. She is extremely grateful to have an opportunity to influence the industry with this powerful cohort.

Jacqueline Holm

(she/her) graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a BA in Theater and Performance Studies in December 2019, after stage managing Who Shot La Miguelito? and assistant light designing The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Previous work includes: Before & Over, That’s What It’s All About, The Farnsworth Invention, You Can’t Take It with You, and The Laramie Project. 

Jasmine Foster

Jasmine Foster is a Kansas City native where she currently resides with her three children.  She has worked in Procurement for over 10 years. Her love of theater and written works led her to apply for the BTSD cohort program. Her goal is to use this opportunity to potentially transition to full time theater work employment. 

“Hold fast to dreams. For if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird, that cannot fly”- Langston Hughes

Samantha Womack

Sammy Womack is a third year student at the University of California, Los Angeles studying Business Economics and minoring in Film/TV/Digital Media and Theater. Her background is mainly in technical theater and producing, but she looks forward to getting to know more about general theater management! In her free time, she enjoys lifeguarding and camping.

Michael Tang

Michael Tang is a senior at Binghamton University, SUNY, majoring in Economic Policy Analysis and minoring in Theatre. Michael has been in many student and department productions as an actor and technician, but first realized an interest in management during a project which proposed a fictional theatre company to a grant organization. That paired with a longstanding curiosity of the inner workings of his home theatre on Roosevelt Island in New York City, he has found a way to blend his two areas of study and has been pursuing it ever since. He is excited to lift up BIPOC voices, especially amongst theatre managers and financiers.

Eric Gelb

Eric Gelb is a NYC based Musical Theatre Manager. Broadway/Off-Broadway: WICKED (Stage Management Intern), Head Over Heels and Little Shop of Horrors (Co-producer). Select NYU: Beauty and the Beast, The 25th...Spelling Bee, Legally Blonde, Mary Poppins, Mamma Mia, Xanadu. Select Regional: Fordham University, The Rose Theater (Omaha, NE), Maples Repertory Theatre (Macon, MO), Walt Disney World Entertainment, SeaWorld Entertainment. Alum of TEDxBroadway ‘17 and Broadway For Racial Justice ‘21. Bachelors of Science in Educational Theatre; New York University ‘20. @EricGelbNYC

Nia Blizzard

Nia Blizzard (she/they): Nia is a Black theater worker whose passions include (but are not limited to) binge watching reality TV shows, spending time with their friends, and advocating for the rights of all Americans. When they are not stage managing, you can find them at the nearest hiking trail or trying to make the world a better place through advocacy and volunteering. Their most recent credits include The Last of the Love Letters by Ngozi Anyanwu (Stage Management Fellow, Atlantic Theater Company), Over Easy by Abaigeal O’Donnell (Production Stage Manager, SheNYC Arts),  “Broadway Celebrates Juneteenth” (Production Assistant, The Broadway League), and Foul Shots by Christin Eve Cato (Production Stage Manager, INTAR Theater Company) . Follow them on Instagram @nia_blizzard1!

Emily Preis

Emily Preis is a proud citizen of the Osage Nation as well as a New York City-based maker, performer, and organizer who loves any opportunity to explore the incredible power of storytelling and community sharing. Since receiving her BFA from NYU Tisch’s Experimental Theatre Wing, she has collaborated with her advisor, Mauricio Salgado, to turn her thesis, Performance as an Act of Tribal Sovereignty, into a Theatre Studies course to be offered at NYU in the Spring of 2022. She has worked as an assistant to Iakowi:he’ne’ Oakes and alongside Ty Defoe, Tanis Parenteau, and Ryan Opalanietet Pierce, to produce several Native plays as part of Carnegie Hall’s Voices of Hope festival. For her work as an actress, she was named one of the finalists for Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program’s inaugural Misty Upham Award for Young Native Actors. Emily is incredibly thankful to BTSD for this opportunity to grow and learn more ways to support theater-making that builds community and challenges harmful narratives.

Hannah L. Jones

Hannah Jones (she/her) is a stage manager, educator, and facilitator based in Chicago. Hannah holds a degree from Hampshire College with concentrations in theatre, education, and black feminist thought with a Multicultural Theatre Certificate from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her recent credits include:  Covidtown: The Musical (Stage Manager, Children’s Theatre Company Theatre Arts Training), Love and Kindness in the Time of Quarantine, directed and curated by Regina Taylor  (3rd Assistant Director, Planet Connections Festivity) Blood At The Root, (Production Stage Manager,  Hampshire College). Hannah hopes to create theatre that is intersectional, amplifies black voices, and makes people think. When she's not stage managing, you can find her reading, color coding, or working with young people. 

Kalen Sierra Hughes

Kalen Sierra Hughes (she/her) is a director and stage manager based in NYC. Kalen holds a degree in Directing and Stage Management from Marymount Manhattan College. Recent stage management credits include: P.S (Ars Nova), and The Who’s Tommy (MMC). Recent directing credits include: Green Day’s American Idiot (MMC) and The Jellyfish Play (The Queerantine Readings). Kalen hopes to continue work in genre-bending pieces of theatre and projects motivated by intersectionality and social justice.

Diamond Morgan

Diamond Morgan is from Houston, TX and is thrilled to have been selected to be apart of Beyond the Stage Door’s intensive program. Diamond found her passion for Stage Managing by accident her sophomore year of high school. She greatly loved musicals and dance, but high school was her first introduction into the theatre arts. Thanks to her theatre experiences in high school, Diamond decided to pursue Stage Management as a career. She attended Texas State University and graduated with her BFA in Theatre with an emphasis in Stage Management. She has stage-managed and assistant stage-managed a variety of plays and musicals. Some of her favorite selected works include: Harvey, A Flea in her Ear, Cabaret, Oklahoma!, and Frozen JR. Diamond also enjoys working with youth and her long term goal is to one day become a resident Stage Manager at a children’s theatre.