Meet the Creative Team

LIL G: A GATSBY REMIX by ISAIAH REAVES DIRECTED BY CAROLINE CLAY Creative Team
Playwright \| ISAIAH REAVES Isaiah Reaves is an emerging young playwright whose work explores a spectrum of Black and Queer experiences. A native of Cincinnati, he graduated cum laude from Northern Kentucky University in 2020. His plays have been commissioned and staged by Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, and many others. Isaiah has received five Michael Kanin Playwriting Awards at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. He is also a semi-finalist for the Ucross and The Blank Theatre Future of Playwriting Prize, a 2020 finalist of the Jackie Demaline Regional Collegiate Playwriting Competition, an Iowa Arts Fellow, and a recipient of a Cincinnati CityBeat Critic’s Pick.
Director \| CAROLINE CLAY Caroline Clay (she/her/hers) (SAG-AFTRA, AEA) Director. A native Washingtonian, Clay is a graduate of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, UArts in Philadelphia (BFA-Theater Arts,) and the University of Maryland, School of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies (MFA in Performance & Devising.) Clay has been featured on Broadway, on television, and in films. Clay is the winner of the NAACP 2020 Award for Best Actress in A Play for the role of “Faye” in Geffen Playhouse’s production of Dominique Morrisseau’s Skeleton Crew. She is an Assistant Professor of Acting here at UIowa’s School of Theatre Arts.
Music Director \| ISAAC ADDAI Isaac Addai is a second year MFA acting Candidate from Rialto, California. He most recently appeared in a UI production of The Bacchae as Dionysus. He hopes you enjoy the show and continue to support the Arts!
Choreographer \| KIERON DWAYNE SARGEANT Website: www.kierondwaynesargeant.com Kieron Dwayne Sargeant was born in the twin island state, Trinidad and Tobago, the most southerly of the Caribbean Archipelago. He is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, drummer and dance researcher emerging out of the African-Caribbean Diaspora tradition. He is currently a Assistant Professor of Dance at Skidmore College NY. Over the past 20 years, he has been involved in documenting, assessing, and analyzing dance traditions of the Caribbean and establishing a canon of dance teachings and workshops, informed by his research, to popularize the ancestral survival of movement traditions between the Circum-Caribbean and Western Africa. Kieron’s artistic practice includes: translating sacred, cultural and spiritual practices, resulting in dance works for the concert and commercial stage.  His latest work He Shall Walk (2022) is a solo performance presented by Northwestern Black Arts Consortium is part of The Black Arts Archive: The Challenge of Translation Sawyer Seminar, sponsored by Mellon Foundation. In this work he delves into his personal experience as a “Mourner” re-imagining his journey choreographically using his body as an archive and as a point of reference to carry the audience through his spiritual journey. He also explores how lineages and inter-generational experiences are engraved in his body as silent knowledge, and how they are excavated in times of need addressing the interplay between cultural amnesia, remembrance and survival through tracing and embodying family genealogies. Mr. Sargeant has conducted African Diaspora and Caribbean dance Masterclasses at Queensborough Community College, NYU Steinhardt, New York University, and Simon Fraser University of Contemporary Arts. Prior to this, he taught Masterclasses and Workshops in African-Caribbean, African-Diasporic, and African-contemporary at Ecole Des Sables (Senegal), at the Mojuba Black Dance Festival, the University of Florida—at the National Dance Education Colorado Conference, Sacramento State University, at Columbus State University, at Florida State University, at the Edna Manley School of the Performing Arts (Jamaica), at The Dance Guild (Nigeria), International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference  (IABD) and the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD). His choreographic works has been presented nationally at Suny Brockport University, Florida State University, Minnesota State University, Northwestern University, Universoul Circus (Atlanta), Air Dance Conference (Miami), 621 Gallery in Tallahassee, Florida. Internationally in Nigeria at the Festival of African and Caribbean Cultures (FESTACC), Canada at the High Commissioner for Trinidad and Tobago Residence, Senegal at Ecole de Sables, at Contemporary Choreographers Collective (COCO) Trinidad and Tobago, at Danza Extrema XIII Festival International in Mexico, and London, Barcelona, Portugal, and Malaga with MSC Cruise line.  He also performed choreographic/devised works by Merce Cunningham, Charles O. Anderson, Tiffany Rhynard, Jean Carson, Makeda Thomas, Milka Djordjevich among many others.  Mr. Sargeant holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Dance Performance and Choreography from Florida State University, a Master of Arts (MA) in Community Dance Practice from Ohio University and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Dance from the University of West Indies. In 2020, he was awarded a place in the Helen Pickett Choreographic Essentials Program, received the FA Ada Belle Winthrop King Art Endowment Award (2019), and was also awarded a Dance Fellowship from UNESCO to South Africa (2020).  Also in 2020, he founded and launched the Kieron Sargeant Dance and Dance Education Foundation of Trinidad and Tobago, which is a new platform for artists/dancers to nurture their creativity, inspire their environments, and empower themselves and the future of the arts industry in Trinidad and Tobago.  Most recently, he was honored with the 2021 International Artist Award - Ayjano Folklore Heritage and Performing Arts Institution of Nigeria. From 2021, he was selected to join the coordinating team of the Emerging Black Choreographers Incubator as a mentor by Mojuba Dance Collective Company based in Ohio and in 2022 was appointed to the advisory board of the company. He also collaborated with the Tabanka Dance Ensemble (Norway) 2021, to host an ongoing Online Lecture Series of in-depth talks, sharing of knowledge, and connecting with African and African diaspora scholars, artists and dancers from around the world.  Sargeant was collaborator on a Mellon funded project, Writing the Body with Dr. Lara Cahill-Booth, an Associate Professor in the English and Communications department at Miami Day College.  He is currently Collaborating on an interdisciplinary educational project Caroline Copeland of Hofstra University and Shireen Dickson of Northwestern University on highlighting the African presence in British and colonial ballroom Dancing in the era of Ignatius Sancho (1729-1789).  The interdisciplinary project is affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University.
Scenic Designer & Props Artisan \| DAMARIA FINLEY*
Costume Designer \| ABIGAIL GARRATY MFA '25 (Costume Design) BFA '20 Texas Wesleyan University, magna cum laude (Theatre Design and Technology) Born and raised in Texas, Abby worked as a costume designer, stagewear designer, and fashion illustrator. Their Costume Design credits include Sleepy Hollow, The Sound of Music, Mr Burns, A Post-Electric Play, and Vintage Hitchcock: A Live Radio Play. Their work can also be seen on the band's Rosegarden Funeral Party and The Texas Gentleman. She is a recipient of the KCACTF Doug Getzoff Award for Undergraduate Design Excellence.
Lighting Designer \| VICTOR MALDONADO
Sound Designer \| BRI ATWOOD
Dialect Coach \| MARY MAYO Mary Mayo is a designated Linklater teacher and has taught voice, acting, and improvisation at a variety of institutions including New York University, Syracuse University, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Virginia, Shakespeare & Company, and the American Shakespeare Center. Before coming to Iowa, Mary taught at the University of Maryland and coached voice and dialects throughout the District/Maryland/Virginia area at (among others) Arena Stage, Ford’s Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Roundhouse Theatre, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, and Signature Theatre. Acting credits include roles with Kristin Linklater's Company of Women, Shakespeare & Company, Live Arts Theatre (Charlottesville), The Open Eye, Ensemble Studio Theatre (NYC) and Chesapeake Shakespeare Company (Baltimore). Favorite directing credits include The Waiting Room (University of Maryland), Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief, Richard II (Mary Baldwin College), A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III (Nelson County Shakespeare Festival), 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (University of Mississippi), As You Like It, The Vagina Monologues (Randolph College). For 16 years she was Shakespeare consultant for the Nelson County Public Schools where she implemented a language arts curriculum for sixth graders and co-authored a teaching manual using Shakespeare to teach poetry and figurative language.
Stage Manager \| SAVANHA MOORE Savanha Moore (She/Her) is a Theatrical Artist and Production Stage Manager from Southern California. She is happy to be continuing her education at the University of Iowa as a first-year Stage Management MFA candidate. Savanha has always wanted to tell stories that serve a greater purpose and that makes way for the change she would like to see in the world. She is incredibly grateful to be a part of this team and to be a part of telling this story. Thank you to the cast and crew and creative team for their incredible work throughout this process, and for creating space for this story. She thanks those who have always supported her on this journey and encouraged her to take that leap of faith; without your support none of this would have been possible. Her recent show credits include: Braided Sorrow (Thayer Theatre), Mother:Knife (MacVey Theatre), HBO House of the Dragons Activation (SDCC 2022), Untitled Baby Play (IAMA Theatre), and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Geffen Playhouse). She thanks you for coming and enjoying live theatre; enjoy the show! If you are in a position and feel inclined to do so, please think about signing this petition, https://action.aclu.org/petition/take-pledge-support-trans-youth-now
Dramaturg \| ROB SILVERMAN ASCHER Rob Silverman Ascher is a dramaturg, writer, educator, and third-year Dramaturgy MFA candidate. He has worked on University productions such as The Bacchae, Basically Children, and A Plant. For this year's festival, he would like to thank both the Lil G and Fathers and Sons teams for sharing him, Maddie for helping out, and Lisa, Scott, and Dare for their support. Love to Margo, Mom, and Dad.
Assistant Lighting Designer \| GABBY JOHNSON*
Assistant Stage Manager \| COLIN KIERNAN* Colin Kiernan is a first-year Theatre Arts, Cinema, Event Management, and Public Digital Arts student. He is excited to begin his third production at Iowa and the first one as Assistant Stage Manager. Colin comes from Waukee, Iowa inside the Des Moines Metro area, where he worked on shows in various technical positions at the Des Moines Civic Center and Wells Fargo Arena (IATSE Local 67), Des Moines Playhouse, Des Moines Young Artists, and Waukee High School. Some notable credits include Lighting Designer for the Ten Minute Play Festival, Assistant Lighting Designer for rockabye both at the University of Iowa, Lighting Designer for Be More Chill The Musical at Waukee High School, and Assistant Stage Manager for The Sound of Music at the Des Moines Playhouse. Colin would like to thank everyone a part of Lil G for all of their hard work in producing such a collaborative and safe space to create this profound and moving show!

LIL G: A GATSBY REMIX
by ISAIAH REAVES
DIRECTED BY CAROLINE CLAY
Creative Team

Playwright | ISAIAH REAVES

Isaiah Reaves is an emerging young playwright whose work explores a spectrum of Black and Queer experiences. A native of Cincinnati, he graduated cum laude from Northern Kentucky University in 2020. His plays have been commissioned and staged by Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, and many others. Isaiah has received five Michael Kanin Playwriting Awards at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. He is also a semi-finalist for the Ucross and The Blank Theatre Future of Playwriting Prize, a 2020 finalist of the Jackie Demaline Regional Collegiate Playwriting Competition, an Iowa Arts Fellow, and a recipient of a Cincinnati CityBeat Critic’s Pick.

Director | CAROLINE CLAY

Caroline Clay (she/her/hers) (SAG-AFTRA, AEA) Director. A native Washingtonian, Clay is a graduate of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, UArts in Philadelphia (BFA-Theater Arts,) and the University of Maryland, School of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies (MFA in Performance & Devising.) Clay has been featured on Broadway, on television, and in films. Clay is the winner of the NAACP 2020 Award for Best Actress in A Play for the role of “Faye” in Geffen Playhouse’s production of Dominique Morrisseau’s Skeleton Crew. She is an Assistant Professor of Acting here at UIowa’s School of Theatre Arts.

Music Director | ISAAC ADDAI

Isaac Addai is a second year MFA acting Candidate from Rialto, California. He most recently appeared in a UI production of The Bacchae as Dionysus. He hopes you enjoy the show and continue to support the Arts!

Choreographer | KIERON DWAYNE SARGEANT

Website: www.kierondwaynesargeant.com

Kieron Dwayne Sargeant was born in the twin island state, Trinidad and Tobago, the most southerly of the Caribbean Archipelago. He is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, drummer and dance researcher emerging out of the African-Caribbean Diaspora tradition. He is currently a Assistant Professor of Dance at Skidmore College NY.

Over the past 20 years, he has been involved in documenting, assessing, and analyzing dance traditions of the Caribbean and establishing a canon of dance teachings and workshops, informed by his research, to popularize the ancestral survival of movement traditions between the Circum-Caribbean and Western Africa.

Kieron’s artistic practice includes: translating sacred, cultural and spiritual practices, resulting in dance works for the concert and commercial stage.  His latest work He Shall Walk (2022) is a solo performance presented by Northwestern Black Arts Consortium is part of The Black Arts Archive: The Challenge of Translation Sawyer Seminar, sponsored by Mellon Foundation. In this work he delves into his personal experience as a “Mourner” re-imagining his journey choreographically using his body as an archive and as a point of reference to carry the audience through his spiritual journey. He also explores how lineages and inter-generational experiences are engraved in his body as silent knowledge, and how they are excavated in times of need addressing the interplay between cultural amnesia, remembrance and survival through tracing and embodying family genealogies.

Mr. Sargeant has conducted African Diaspora and Caribbean dance Masterclasses at Queensborough Community College, NYU Steinhardt, New York University, and Simon Fraser University of Contemporary Arts. Prior to this, he taught Masterclasses and Workshops in African-Caribbean, African-Diasporic, and African-contemporary at Ecole Des Sables (Senegal), at the Mojuba Black Dance Festival, the University of Florida—at the National Dance Education Colorado Conference, Sacramento State University, at Columbus State University, at Florida State University, at the Edna Manley School of the Performing Arts (Jamaica), at The Dance Guild (Nigeria), International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference  (IABD) and the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD).

His choreographic works has been presented nationally at Suny Brockport University, Florida State University, Minnesota State University, Northwestern University, Universoul Circus (Atlanta), Air Dance Conference (Miami), 621 Gallery in Tallahassee, Florida. Internationally in Nigeria at the Festival of African and Caribbean Cultures (FESTACC), Canada at the High Commissioner for Trinidad and Tobago Residence, Senegal at Ecole de Sables, at Contemporary Choreographers Collective (COCO) Trinidad and Tobago, at Danza Extrema XIII Festival International in Mexico, and London, Barcelona, Portugal, and Malaga with MSC Cruise line.  He also performed choreographic/devised works by Merce Cunningham, Charles O. Anderson, Tiffany Rhynard, Jean Carson, Makeda Thomas, Milka Djordjevich among many others. 

Mr. Sargeant holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Dance Performance and Choreography from Florida State University, a Master of Arts (MA) in Community Dance Practice from Ohio University and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Dance from the University of West Indies. In 2020, he was awarded a place in the Helen Pickett Choreographic Essentials Program, received the FA Ada Belle Winthrop King Art Endowment Award (2019), and was also awarded a Dance Fellowship from UNESCO to South Africa (2020). 

Also in 2020, he founded and launched the Kieron Sargeant Dance and Dance Education Foundation of Trinidad and Tobago, which is a new platform for artists/dancers to nurture their creativity, inspire their environments, and empower themselves and the future of the arts industry in Trinidad and Tobago. 

Most recently, he was honored with the 2021 International Artist Award - Ayjano Folklore Heritage and Performing Arts Institution of Nigeria. From 2021, he was selected to join the coordinating team of the Emerging Black Choreographers Incubator as a mentor by Mojuba Dance Collective Company based in Ohio and in 2022 was appointed to the advisory board of the company.

He also collaborated with the Tabanka Dance Ensemble (Norway) 2021, to host an ongoing Online Lecture Series of in-depth talks, sharing of knowledge, and connecting with African and African diaspora scholars, artists and dancers from around the world. 

Sargeant was collaborator on a Mellon funded project, Writing the Body with Dr. Lara Cahill-Booth, an Associate Professor in the English and Communications department at Miami Day College.  He is currently Collaborating on an interdisciplinary educational project Caroline Copeland of Hofstra University and Shireen Dickson of Northwestern University on highlighting the African presence in British and colonial ballroom Dancing in the era of Ignatius Sancho (1729-1789).  The interdisciplinary project is affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University. 

Scenic Designer & Props Artisan | DAMARIA FINLEY*

Costume Designer | ABIGAIL GARRATY

MFA '25 (Costume Design)

BFA '20 Texas Wesleyan University, magna cum laude (Theatre Design and Technology)

Born and raised in Texas, Abby worked as a costume designer, stagewear designer, and fashion illustrator. Their Costume Design credits include Sleepy Hollow, The Sound of Music, Mr Burns, A Post-Electric Play, and Vintage Hitchcock: A Live Radio Play. Their work can also be seen on the band's Rosegarden Funeral Party and The Texas Gentleman. She is a recipient of the KCACTF Doug Getzoff Award for Undergraduate Design Excellence.

Lighting Designer | VICTOR MALDONADO

Sound Designer | BRI ATWOOD

Dialect Coach | MARY MAYO

Mary Mayo is a designated Linklater teacher and has taught voice, acting, and improvisation at a variety of institutions including New York University, Syracuse University, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Virginia, Shakespeare & Company, and the American Shakespeare Center. Before coming to Iowa, Mary taught at the University of Maryland and coached voice and dialects throughout the District/Maryland/Virginia area at (among others) Arena Stage, Ford’s Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Roundhouse Theatre, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, and Signature Theatre. Acting credits include roles with Kristin Linklater's Company of Women, Shakespeare & Company, Live Arts Theatre (Charlottesville), The Open Eye, Ensemble Studio Theatre (NYC) and Chesapeake Shakespeare Company (Baltimore). Favorite directing credits include The Waiting Room (University of Maryland), Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief, Richard II (Mary Baldwin College), A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III (Nelson County Shakespeare Festival), 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (University of Mississippi), As You Like It, The Vagina Monologues (Randolph College). For 16 years she was Shakespeare consultant for the Nelson County Public Schools where she implemented a language arts curriculum for sixth graders and co-authored a teaching manual using Shakespeare to teach poetry and figurative language.

Stage Manager | SAVANHA MOORE

Savanha Moore (She/Her) is a Theatrical Artist and Production Stage Manager from Southern California. She is happy to be continuing her education at the University of Iowa as a first-year Stage Management MFA candidate. Savanha has always wanted to tell stories that serve a greater purpose and that makes way for the change she would like to see in the world. She is incredibly grateful to be a part of this team and to be a part of telling this story. Thank you to the cast and crew and creative team for their incredible work throughout this process, and for creating space for this story. She thanks those who have always supported her on this journey and encouraged her to take that leap of faith; without your support none of this would have been possible. Her recent show credits include: Braided Sorrow (Thayer Theatre), Mother:Knife (MacVey Theatre), HBO House of the Dragons Activation (SDCC 2022), Untitled Baby Play (IAMA Theatre), and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Geffen Playhouse). She thanks you for coming and enjoying live theatre; enjoy the show!

If you are in a position and feel inclined to do so, please think about signing this petition, https://action.aclu.org/petition/take-pledge-support-trans-youth-now

Dramaturg | ROB SILVERMAN ASCHER

Rob Silverman Ascher is a dramaturg, writer, educator, and third-year Dramaturgy MFA candidate. He has worked on University productions such as The Bacchae, Basically Children, and A Plant. For this year's festival, he would like to thank both the Lil G and Fathers and Sons teams for sharing him, Maddie for helping out, and Lisa, Scott, and Dare for their support. Love to Margo, Mom, and Dad.

Assistant Lighting Designer | GABBY JOHNSON*

Assistant Stage Manager | COLIN KIERNAN*

Colin Kiernan is a first-year Theatre Arts, Cinema, Event Management, and Public Digital Arts student. He is excited to begin his third production at Iowa and the first one as Assistant Stage Manager. Colin comes from Waukee, Iowa inside the Des Moines Metro area, where he worked on shows in various technical positions at the Des Moines Civic Center and Wells Fargo Arena (IATSE Local 67), Des Moines Playhouse, Des Moines Young Artists, and Waukee High School. Some notable credits include Lighting Designer for the Ten Minute Play Festival, Assistant Lighting Designer for rockabye both at the University of Iowa, Lighting Designer for Be More Chill The Musical at Waukee High School, and Assistant Stage Manager for The Sound of Music at the Des Moines Playhouse. Colin would like to thank everyone a part of Lil G for all of their hard work in producing such a collaborative and safe space to create this profound and moving show!

*Undergraduate student. UI Theatre is dedicated to providing hands-on theatre experience for both undergraduate and graduate students.