Who's Who at The WorkShop
Executive Staff Biographies
For a complete list of our members and their contributions to the WorkShop, please click here.
Scott C. Sickles
Artistic Director
Scott has dedicated his entire adult life to new play development. Sickles hails from Pittsburgh where his work -- producing the long-running reading series Sunday Night Live and as artistic director of Pittsburgh New Voices, a company devoted to new plays by local authors -- inspired Pittsburgh Magazine to name him one of the city's three most influential theater personalities. Since arriving in New York City, he has served as company manager of Playwrights Horizons and helmed the Off-Off-Broadway companies Running Start Productions and Antipodes Theatrical before finding an artistic home here at the WorkShop. As a playwright, Sickles received his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for his play Shepherd's Bush and the 1999 Beverly Hills Theater Guild/Julie Harris Playwriting Award for his play Lightning From Heaven. WorkShop audiences are familiar with his full-length plays Moonlight & Love Songs, Intellectuals, The Philosopher's Joke, Perfecting the Kiss and From the Top, as well as many of his one-acts. Intellectuals has been published by Smith & Kraus in New Playwrights: Best Plays of 2007 and his short play murmurs was published by Samuel French, Inc. in Festival Plays #21. Smith & Kraus will also include his piece Beautiful Noises in its forthcoming Ten-Minute Play anthology. As a dramaturg and teacher, he has advised playwrights and taught at Carnegie Mellon University's Graduate Dramatic Writing Program, Pittsburgh New Voices and here at the WorkShop. In addition to being the WorkShop's artistic director, Scott is currently a writer at ABC Daytime's One Life to Live.
Jeff Paul
Managing Director
A native of Pittsburgh, Jeff was introduced to the theater when his parents decided in the 7th grade that his “energetic antics” would best be dealt with by engaging him in military school or community theater. He his forever grateful to them for their ultimate decision! His first roles in The Baldwin Players productions of Peter Pan and Plain and Fancy hooked him for life!
Primarily an actor, singer, and sometime director, he has almost always “kept his day job”. After a brief stint at West Virginia University majoring in Computer Science followed by 2 years in the computer department at Mellon Bank, he graduated from Point Park University with a BA in Theatre Arts. The following years in Pittsburgh, while working as an actor at most of the major metropolitan theatres (The Odd Chair Playhouse, The Pittsburgh Playhouse, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Laboratory Theatre, City Theatre, St. Vincent’s Summer Theatre, Hartford Acres, Pitt University, and Carnegie Mellon University), his day jobs ranged from teaching acting and stage makeup at Point Park University to becoming a General Manager for Stouffers restaurants.
Soon after Stouffers approved his transfer to New York City (and his realization that he hated the restaurant business), he was hired as a telemarketer, and subsequently as Photo Researcher/Traffic Manager at Franklin Watts Publishers... a job which he has basically never left. Through the next 24 years, and multiple corporate buyouts, he was promoted to Photo Manager at Grolier Inc., and ultimately to his present position of Photo Business Manager for the Visual Content Group at Scholastic, Inc. NYC and regional stage and film credits during that time were numerous.
After joining the WorkShop Theater Company in 2004 and performing in such memorable shows as The Barksdale Confession, Antony and Cleopatra, Moonlight and Lovesongs, and Interchange (for which he received a 2011 NY Innovative Theatre nomination for Best Actor), he decided to give back to the theatre by volunteering for the position of Producing Director in 2011, and the position of Acting Managing Director later that year. (Note to self ~ Stop Volunteering!!)
His DEEPEST respect and appreciation goes to the volunteer army that IS the WorkShop Theater Company! You are part of the Dream!
Kathleen Brant
Producing Director
Kathleen moved to New York City in 1986, as an actress. (she received her BFA from Wayne State University in Detroit) She began directing in 1993 and joined the WorkShop Theater Co. in 2004, directing a staged reading of When It Rains. Some of her directing credits include: Henry V (SouthWest Shakespeare), ART (Arts Center of Coastal Carolina), Son of Drakula (with David Drake, AK, Croatia, SF) and Miss Lulu Bett (at WorkShop Theater Co.) She became a Producing Director in August of 2010, after successfully producing several seasons of Cold Snaps (Winter One-Act Festival) at the WorkShop.
Since joining the staff, she has continued to produce everything from one act festivals to special events as well as fundraising parties. And keeps an eye on all of the productions., offering help, support and advice. When she first joined the staff, she was asked to be the “talent wrangler” and has been responsible for bringing to the WorkShop, award winning designers as well as extremely talented Stage Managers. Kathleen also has instituted a “Producers WorkShop” to train new prospective Producers. And, is grateful to skilled Company Artist who consistently step up to help keep our Company moving and constantly Producing.
DeLisa M. White
Producing Director
DeLisa M. White has worked in various theatrical capacities in New York, both on stage and off, but primarily works as a director. Most recently, she directed Greg Oliver Bodine’s critically acclaimed Poe Times Two for the Workshop Theatre Company and two pieces in the Vincent Marano retrospective, What I Meant Was… at Manhattan Theatre Source. In March of 2011, she directed the IT Award-winning Things at the Doorstep - inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's work. She also directed two pieces in the 2011 INgenius Festival, the flagship festival of the Manhattan Theatre Source Writers Forum. In the past few years she has directed world premiere productions of: Meri Wallace’s Crossroads for the Midtown International Theatre Festival; John C. Davenport’s Tough Love, Annalisa Loeffler’s A Spring Break and Julia Harman Cain’s Last Meal for the Estrogenius Festival; and the North Shore Theatre Group's original adaptations of Charlotte Gillman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and F. Marion Crawford’s The Screaming Skull / The Upper Berth. DeLisa has also directed the independent feature film SNAP, as well as several short films and documentaries.
Katie Braden
Artistic Associate
Katie Braden is a fixture of the New York theatre scene, having performed in numerous classic and new plays throughout the city. She was recently seen as Teiresias in Antigone and Mrs. Warren in Mrs. Warren's Profession with the Queens Players. Other favorite roles include: Florinda in The Rover, Olive in The Odd Couple (Female Version) and Sara in Stop Kiss.
Katie trained at the Gregory Abels Training Ensemble (GATE) in NYC, where she studied Shakespeare, Chekhov, and scene work with master teacher Gregory Abels, Mask with Per Brahe, Tai Chi and Stage Combat with David Chandler, as well as yoga and Alexander Technique. Credits at GATE include: Yelena in Uncle Vanya, Alma in Summer and Smoke, Mrs. Candour in The School for Scandal and Orinthia in The Apple Cart.
Katie regularly strikes fear into the hearts of her opponents in the ZogSports volleyball and touch rugby leagues in Manhattan. She also played basketball and was a former cheerleader in her native Iowa. And if you find yourself in trouble at the beach, you might want to have Katie around - she was a certified Red Cross lifeguard, who swims six strokes and teaches swimming.
Music has always been a big part of Katie's life; she both sings and plays the flute. Katie is currently studying ballroom dancing - she especially loved practicing the tango while visiting Buenos Aires, Argentina! Other favorite places she has traveled in her quest to see the world include: Paris, Stockholm, Lisbon and Rome. Next on her list are Athens and Dublin!
Anne Fizzard
Artistic Associate
Anne became a WorkShop member in 2002, and remains active (here and elsewhere) as an actress, writer, and producer. Originally from St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, she got an honors degree in English from Mount Allison University, took summer school at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and completed the two-year acting program at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts here in New York. She has also interned at Ensemble Studio Theater, acted in the Women's Project and Productions Directons Forum, and studied acting with Alfred Molina and Laura Esterman. At the WorkShop, Anne has performed in The Alpha State by William Kovacsik, The Bow-Wow Club by Levy Lee Simon, M is for the Million Things by Scott C. Sickles, and Audience by Mick Stern. She has written and produced her own sketch comedy show Off-Off-Broadway, and one of those pieces, Marry Me or Else, was staged as part of Weaving the Words here at the WorkShop in autumn 2002. Anne produced her full-length comedy Good Opinions in the Midtown International Theatre Festival in 2005. Also that year at the WorkShop, she co-produced (with Virginia Roncetti and Libby Hughes) Unknown Country, a Canadian playreading series, and most recently served as Coordinating Producer for Never Missed a Day here on the mainstage in 2006. As a cartoonist/illustrator, she has done illustrations for several WorkShop postcards/posters Intellectuals, Liberty: The Musical). Anne is also a proud member of Equity, AFTRA, ACTRA, the Independent Feature Project, and the ASPCA.
Steven Petrillo
Director of Musical Theater
A performer for many years, Steven's Broadway and National Tour credits include Peter Pan, starring Cathy Rigby, Man of La Mancha, starring Robert Goulet and Jesus Christ Superstar, starring Carl Anderson. TV and Film credits include Law & Order C.I., The Sopranos, The Stepford Wives, and the mini-series A Will of Their Own, opposite Lea Thompson and Thomas Gibson. As a director, he received critical acclaim for Rumors for Parkside Players; the East Coast premier of Route 66 in the Berkshires; Operaplay at the WorkShop Theater Company, as well as for choreographing Fiddler on the Roof for The Gateway Playhouse, and Love! Valour! Compassion! in St. Louis. Steven has been an Associate Director/Choreographer in theatres across the country including North Shore Music Theatre, The North Carolina Theatre, Seattle's Fifth Ave Theatre and Theatre Under the Stars in Houston. Mr. Petrillo, an Associate Producer and Director at Algonquin Productions in NYC, is currently developing a new musical, SESSIONS, by Al Tapper, slated for Off-Broadway in the spring of 2007.
David M. Pincus
Director of Outreach
David recently stepped down as Managing Director of the WorkShop Theater Company after having served as both a WST Producing Director and Artistic Associate. He now has taken the position of Director of Outreach for the WorkShop.
Administratively, David created the WorkShop's successful annual direct mail campaign which has been an important part of the formula which has kept our creative doors open since 2004. WorkShop creative credits include acting with and directing Olympia Dukakis in two readings of RULES on our Main Stage, and recently appearing in the critically acclaimed production of INTERCHANGE, among many other projects on our two stages.
Additional directorial efforts at the WorkShop include SOLACE, GRACELAND, and WHEN YOU TRY TO SAVE YOUR LIFE YOU LOSE IT.
Other NYC acting credits include the role of "J.J." in BLOOMSDAY ON BROADWAY with William Hurt, Marian Seldes, and Fritz Weaver at Symphony Space; A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM as "Demetrius", "Thisby" and "Flute" with Theater for a New Audience at Lincoln Center; and in MEDEA as the Blind Messenger, directed by David Herskovits for Target Margin.
David serves on Manhattan Community Board 4, where he is the Chair of its Theater Task Force. He is working with all 12 Manhattan Community Boards to form an unprecedented alliance with many New York City art support and advocacy organizations in an effort to find innovative solutions to the ever growing financial and real estate issues facing New York's performing arts community. Presently he is working on the issue of property tax relief for all NYC non-profit performing arts organizations that pursue an artistic mission, or rent to those companies that do.
He also serves on CB4's Clinton/Hells Kitchen Land Use and Quality of Life Committees and as a result now knows more about R8 zoning variances and ULURPs (being ULURPed is a verb) than he ever anticipated.
David has produced Country music in Nashville, bungy-jumped off the highest bridge in New Zealand and Scuba-dived the Great Barrier Reef.
Go Niners!
