Ensemble Members

	Amy Sass, Artistic Director, Co-Founder Amy Sass: Director, writer, performer, and visual artist, Amy is the co-founder of Ragged Wing Ensemble. Her thorough training in both traditional acting and the avant-garde canon continues to propel her on a quest toward possibility and surprise. Combining large-scale spectacle with the strength of classical scene-work, Amy thrives on stretching the shape of theater. Founder of Prospect Sierra School's drama department and Lead Teacher for the Ragged Wing Youth Ensemble, she is a fierce arts advocate who instills a sense of bravery and risk in her students. Amy works from the gut, creating multi-disciplinary stories for the purpose of healing, empowerment and social change. Company credits include: The Serpent, Alice in Wonderland (Director), Splinters and Other F-Words (Woman), The Tempest (Ariel, Choreographer) So Many Ways To Kill A Man (Writer, Clytaemnestra), Handless (Writer, Director), OPEN. (Writer, Director) Other favorite endeavors include: for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, The Dutchman (Director, Bucknell University) The Odyssey, The Jungle Book (Director, Shotgun Players), The Skriker, The Bacchae (Performer, Shotgun Players),, Bald (Director, Bald Productions) See More. . .
	Anna Shneiderman, Executive Director, Co-Founder ANNA SHNEIDERMAN, a Ragged Wing Ensemble founding member, is committed to working at the intersection of theatre, education and social justice. Anna brings her experience with performing, directing, mask-making and puppeteering to Ragged Wing from her work with Bread and Puppet Theatre, the Dell'Arte School of Physical Theatre, Redmoon, Steppenwolf, and other theaters in Chicago, Washington, DC and Massachusetts. She has trained with Michael Rohd, Augusto Boal, the SITI company, Jeffrey Bihr, Bruce Mars, the Flying Actor Studio and Zen Zen Zo Physical Theater. Anna is an experienced teacher, most recently creating and directing the theater program at Envision Academy, a public, charter high school in Downtown Oakland. She is also the director of Ragged Wing's Youth Ensemble. With Ragged Wing, Anna has directed Persephone’s Roots and Inanna’s Descent, performed in The Serpent, Splinters and Other F-Words, Alice in Wonderland, So Many Ways to Kill a Man, Handless, and A Fool's Errand, and has produced The Tempest, The History of the Devil, Handless and OPEN. She currently serves as Ragged Wing's Executive Director. See More. . .
	Keith Cory Davis, Core Company Director Keith Cory Davis began studying theater at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston and continued at the University of Northern Colorado, majoring in both acting and directing. He has been in the Bay Area since 1997 performing with many theater companies including Traveling Jewish Theatre, (where his role in "Dybbuk" was listed as one of the top theatrical duets of 2004 in the SF Guardian's "Best of the Bay,") Shakespeare at Stinson, foolsFury, Last Planet Theatre, Darvag Theatre, Exit Theatre, CuttingBall Theatre, Women's Will Playwriting Experiment at the Magic Theatre, Shotgun Players, Mettle Theatre, and of course, Ragged Wing Ensemble. As a director and teacher, he has worked with Ragazzi Peninsula Boys Choir, Education Unlimited Acting Intensive in Berkeley, Albany High School and MLK Middle School. He currently teaches Drama at Prospect Sierra School. He has also appeared in several independent films, including "Weapon of Mass Destruction," "Greed" and Pulse Film's "The Collapsing Wall." With RWE, Keith has performed in The Serpent, Splinters...and Other F-Words, Alice in Wonderland, and as the Devil in The History of the Devil. He directed Ragged Wing's The Tempest in 2007. See More. . .
	David Stein, Core Artist, Marketing Coordinator David Stein is proud to be a Ragged Wing Ensemble core member. He has appeared in Alice in Wonderland, Persephone’s Roots, Open and most recently Atomic Intuition. This past season, he was a site director for Inanna's Descent. In addition, he has performed with, and directed for a number of other local companies including Killing My Lobster, Subterranean Shakespeare, California Shakespeare Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Shotgun Players, and Wily West Productions. When not in a theatre, David rigs theatre lighting for special events, volunteers telling stories to elementary students once a week for SAG BookPals, toils by day for a national science lab, and is also Ragged Wing's Marketing Coordinator. See More. . .
	Cecilia Palmtag, Core Artist Cecilia cut her teeth directing Charles Ludlam’s Stage Blood at the age of 17. Later she helmed original play festivals, and an open mic series at Cabrillo College. Her directorial credits include: Harold Pinter’s The Lover(Off Broadway West), Paul Baird’s White Knuckled Driver (Eureka Theater), a full length ensemble adaptation of Marlowe and Goethe’s works entitled Faust: a Shadow Pact (SFSU), Plastic Earth: A Radiohead Musical(SFSU), an original clown piece Standard Stoppages: The Seduction of Duchamp (Velocity Circus), and Picassolocity: Six periods through a circus eye at the De Young Museum. She has stage managed dozens of works including classical theater, corporate events, dance concerts and variety cabarets. With honors, she completed her BA in Drama from San Francisco State University in 2008 with a focus in classical acting, and in the summer of 2010 was invited to study with the Moscow Art Theater School in Cambridge, MA. Roles have included the title characters in Hedda Gabler and Sylvia, Ivana Fyodorovna in The Karamazovs, Cassandra in Troy: The Gates of Hell, and ensemble in Amy Sass's Open. Her recent foray into music composition for the original musical Love Myths was well received as a Resident Artist Workshop at The Garage in 2010. She is currently serving as Artistic Associate at Gregangelo and Velocity Circus learning how to juggle the business of entertainment. See More. . .
	Addie Ulrey, Core Artist Addie was raised by farmers, house painters, mediators, and real-life radicals in Charlotte, Michigan. She holds a BA in theatre from Oberlin College, and has trained at the Eugene O'Neill Center, the Moscow Art Theatre, and Double Edge Theatre laboratory. In the spring of 2010 she moved west to seek her fortune. See More. . .
	Philip Wharton, Core Artist Ensemble and solo performance are the two poles of Phil’s theatre work. He finds that each pole supports and enlivens the other. In his work with Ragged Wing Ensemble he has appeared in The Tempest, Persephone’s Roots and Open. He has also appeared in productions with other Bay Area companies, including as Henry Drummond In Novato Theatre Company’s Inherit the Wind. In addition to storytelling that ranges from the Brothers Grimm to California Indian mythology, he has performed his solo works: The Wrath of Achilles, The Gospel of Mark and Beowulf (his own translation) in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York and Great Britain (Beowulf at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2008). He is delighted and honored to be a core artist with Ragged Wing Ensemble and looks forward with great anticipation to the coming year. See More. . .
	Lisa Klein, Core Artist Lisa Klein is an actor, improviser, director, writer and educator. She founded and performs with Dolphintales StoryTheatre, and works with other Bay Area theater companies. As a teaching artist, she teaches yoga, theater arts, and storytelling. She is a core artist with Ragged Wing Ensemble, and has performed with RWE in “Persephone’s Roots” and in “Open”. See More. . .
	Dax Tran-Caffee, Core Artist Originally trained as a painter, but having bounced around in every discipline from music to movement, Dax Tran-Caffee stumbled into the art of puppetry in 2007 and the practice has since consumed him. Dax apprenticed with the Blair Thomas & Co. chamber puppet theater in Chicago until 2009, and in 2010 built and directed the Museum Proper, a street-festival performance wherein a pudgy collector hunts a 12-foot tall monster with steak-knives for teeth. Dax has built puppets for Ragged Wing's youth ensemble, was Puppetmaster (among other roles) for Open., and became a Core Member in 2011. Dax's puppetry also makes regular appearances with the band Corpus Callosum, for which he plays accordion. Dax holds a BFA in painting from the California College of Arts & Crafts and an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. See More. . .
	Elizabeth Durst, Company Manager A proud native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Elizabeth received her BFA from Boston University's College of Fine Arts with a degree in Theatre Arts (Design & Production). Elizabeth has worked at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for two summers, worked extensively with BU's New Play Initiative, and spent three summers working at the College Light Opera Company. She particularly enjoys her work in directing, theatre education, dramaturgy, and costuming. See More. . .
	Suzanne Birrell, Development Coordinator Suzanne graduated from Webster University and her training has included special studies for film as well as theater. She has acted in film, stage plays, musicals, and operas. As well as writing, directing, and producing plays, she has experience as choreographer and musical director. She has also worked with performing groups in the capacity of fundraiser, treasurer, public relations, and manager. She recently came to the Bay Area from the Navajo Nation where she conducted many Acting, Scriptwriting, and Mask making Workshops and assisted in getting a five-year grant for an Artist in Residence Program. See More. . .
	Linda Baumgardner, Board Chair Linda Baumgardner holds an M.F.A. in Theater Management from California Institute of the Arts and B.A. in Performing Arts from Saint Mary’s College. She is excited to join Ragged Wing Ensemble as Managing Director after several years working as a stage and production manager in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Management credits include: work with the Joffrey Ballet; the North American Premiere Opera “Sextuor L’Origine des Especes”, and the world premiere of Richard Foreman’s “What to Wear”. Ms. Baumgardner worked as Producer and Company Manager for foolsFURY where she produced the 2009 FURY Factory, an international theatre festival which featured works by 23 companies, including many San Francisco artists, and ensembles from as far as Afghanistan and the UK. In addition to her work with Ragged Wing, Ms. Baumgardner is a faculty member at Saint Mary’s College. See More. . .