Our Exciting New Team:

Director: Sara Fernandez Reyes

A performing artist from Bogotá, Colombia, where she studied a drama degree at the School of Teatro Libre, joining the professional company after graduating. Her main training has been in physical and laboratory theatre. She moved to London and joined Para Active Theatre for several years performing in the UK, and she is currently a member of the play Hotel Medea which has just finished a run in the Southbank Centre, London. She now lives in Barcelona, Spain, where she works as a director, leader of the physical training and performer for The Performers Inc. an educational children’s theatre, as well a developing her own projects.

Assistant Director & Dramaturg: Andrew Kingsford-Smith

Andrew Kingsford-Smith is a young theatre practitioner, well experienced and well travelled. Playwriting: Children of the Future – Bold Type Ink Showcase (2011 Belvoir Theatre, Sydney), Status.Update. – 24-hour Play-Offs (2011 Griffin Theatre, Sydney), Dr Eruliaf – Crash Test Drama (2010 New Town Theatre, Sydney), Chips or Crisps – ATYP Fresh Ink Program (2010 ATYP, Sydney), Nola’s Ark – Illawarra Young Writers/Directors Project (2010 IPAC, Sydney). Radio: Filthy Crimes – Sonic Tales (2012 Eastside Radio, Sydney). Directing: Are They – Short and Sweet (2012 New Town Theatre, Sydney), 3D Theatre – Nothing to See Here (2011 University of Wollongong, Sydney), Flec – Nothing to See Here (2010, University of Wollongong, Sydney). Acting: Grins and Annie Band (2011 Roxbury Hotel, Sydney), Midsummer Night’s Dream (2006 Abbotsleigh, Sydney), The Ring – Short Film (2005 Komaba High School, Tokyo). Reviewing: Fringebiscuit (2012 Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Spitpress Magazine (2011 Sydney). Website: http://grinsford.wordpress.com

Actor: Leofric Kingsford-Smith

CV reads like a roadmap to acting. Geographically it extends from London’s West End and English repertory to the Sydney Opera House and a host of smaller Australian theatres. In almost four decades he has played everything from Shakespeare to Ayckbourn, Emlyn Williams and David Williamson in roles ranging from  the tragic King Lear and Mark Antony to featured roles in many of  Australia’s hottest TV series; Underbelly11 and Home and Away, Crownies, Deadly Women, Behind Mansion Walls,  and Channel Sevens Sunday night programme. Leof recently completed a tour of Adelaide, Los Angelese, London West End and the Edinburgh Festival with his one man play; Mission of Flowers. In 2012 He will tour The Madness of King Lear to Edinburgh, Avignon and Tokyo. He can also be seen in Sydney in April in The Big Daddy role in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (Star of the Sea Theatre in Manly).

That he travels so smoothly in his acting career should not come as a surprise. Leof is the grand-nephew of one of Australia’s most celebrated travellers, the pioneer aviator Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith.

Actor: Lucas R. Tsolakian

Lucas R. Tsolakian, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, began, at the age of 12, his acting studies at San Martín Centre. Four years later he entered the Musical Theatre School where his mentor was one of the pioneers of this type of theatre in Argentina. In addition to his official studies he took extra vocal training and singing classes. In 2004 and at the age of 23 he moved to Barcelona, Spain, where he set up his own educational theatre company which currently performs in English for children and adolescents in throughout Spain and Southern France.

Our Fantastic Old Team

Ira Seidenstein

has been actively in theatre since 1973 when he was in the Pittsburgh Repertory Theater directed by Dr. Trudy Scott. Prior to that, Ira had various performance experiences as a youth, including in a U.S.Navy drill team at the beginning of his four years active duty. His career as an actor, director, playwright and choreographer has also included overlapping experiences in tangential training such as, Iyengar yoga teacher training; M.A. in Visual & Performing Arts; PhD in Education; and, six years advanced training in the Suzuki Actor Training Method. Throughout his career, Ira has kept studying classical works as well as working with his specialities such as mime, clown, commedia, circus,
and movement based theatre ('physical theatre').

Ira has extensive experience in clown and clown theatre. He apprenticed the founder of the Ringling Clown College - Danny Chapman who was a circus master as well as a clown. Then Ira studied extensively at the Dell'arte School in California during the period when founder Carlo Mazzone-Clementi taught a small group every day. Ira then studied privately with master teachers of acrobatics, ballet, and Australian Knockabout. Ira's first foray into the circus was the three-ring Sarasota Show Folks Circus with 13 clowns and directed by the circus legend Karl Wallenda. Equally legendary Merle Evans was the Conductor with his 20-members band. The latest circus experience with Cirque du Soleil's show Corteo in which Ira was the first clown trained to alternate roles (playing both the White and the Dead clowns), he also was the tour teacher offering training in a wide range of subjects at the request of each artist. That included partner comic acrobatics, yoga, qi gong, tai chi, classical acting, and character development.

Shakti

was born in 1957 in Kyoto, Japan to an Indian father and a Japanese mother.
Her mother founded the VasantaMala Indian Dance Institute and was the first Japanese woman to introduce Indian dance into Japan. Her father was a professor of English at the Kyoto University of Foreign Studies 

and was also the  founder and director of the Gandhi Institute in Kyoto.

SHAKTI ｇrew up with not only the rich cultural heritage of Japan but of India as well.
She studied yoga with her father and dance with her mother and with the foremost gurus of India.

While earning an M.A. in Indian Philosophy at Columbia University in New York City,  SHAKTI studied modern dance with Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey and jazz dance with Luigi.

Upon returning to Japan, SHAKTI developed a unique hybrid form of dance blending an array of Eastern dance traditions and yoga with Western jazz and contemporary rock resulting in an exotic, erotic, and shocking effect.
She has been performing worldwide to great critical acclaim.
Her unique and mesmerising performances have touched and tantalised audiences everywhere.
She is called the "Dancing Phoenix" and the "Sculpture in Movement."

She is the coordinator of the Japan Experience which assists and manages Japanese artists abroad.
The Scotsman said "The greatest step for Asian Art in Edinburgh!"

SHAKTI is also the artistic director of The Garage International which is now one of the most prominent venues in various festivals such as Avignon and Adelaide Fringe.
Shakti is also the founder and artistic director of the Tokyo Fringe Festival and Kyoto Fringe Festival.


There are no borders no boundaries for this universal artist.