FOUNDERS

NATALYA KRIMGOLD (writer/director: Dumpster Dive)

Natalya Krimgold is an actor, writer and producer living in Bushwick, Brooklyn.  She has played leading roles in a number of short plays and independent films in the New York area.  She has worked with The TEAM and The Civilians in New York, as well as at The Boston Publick Theater and Zucker Productions in L.A.  She holds a B.A. in English with Honors from Wellesley College.  She has worked as a copywriter at a number or online publications as well as at interactive marketing agency Deep Focus.  Currently, she can either be found navigating the mean streets of Manhattan on her rickety bicycle, participating in performance art, posing as a life model, or at Flavorpill.  She produced Mixed Company at Galapagos Art Space in April 2008, and also contributed as an actor and director.  Dumpster Dive is her playwrighting debut.

ALEX JOHNSON (writer/director: Getting Sam)

The daughter of a programmer & an artist, Alex spent her formative years being shipped between homes in London & Gdansk, Poland.  Alex started interning at 14 years old at the BBC & honed her production instincts with continuous work moonlighting within the TV & film industry while studying Art & English Literature at UCL/Slade, during which time she also continued making short films and writing the now defunct fanzine, Parasite.  Her work includes Introducing a micro-musical shot outside Battersea power station; The Man Who Hung His Clothes in Trees, a documentary about a homeless savant she invited to her parent’s house for a dinner party; and Bullet For Your Gun, a series of interlocking vignettes set over one night in Hoxton.  Post College, after working in the music video & commercials industry, then for filmmaker Sally Potter, Alex moved to LA to join interactive marketing agency Deep Focus.  She now works as a Digital Strategist in NYC, consulting & speaking at conferences on branding & online audience.  Visit her blog, Motive & her website for more info.

PARTICIPANTS

ANDY MASKIN (writer: To Catch a Pen Pal)

Andy Maskin was born in the Bronx in nineteen hundred and seventy seven. A son to a teacher and another teacher, Andy grew to become what can only be described as a creative juggernaut. He has traveled the globe, spreading good cheer and taking photographs. He’s been to Graceland. Every now and then, he likes to walk to the JFK international airport. He’s driven over a printer in the Mojave Desert. Andy is often mesmerized by fax machines, and he’s kayaked through a swamp. While earning his prestigious fancy-pants business degree, he was very nearly a roadie for Iron Maiden. Andy did, however, enjoy thirty seconds of fame on daytime television. In his spare time, he likes to dream the impossible dream, and write dangerously complex database queries. He’s made any number of short films and music videos. He’s also written some stuff. Andy is best known for being very appealing.

CHRISTA IMBRIALE (writer/director: The Landscape of Marriage)

Christa Imbriale had dreams of stage glory when she was a kid.  Unfortunately life (and more specifically, impending poverty) got in the way so she took a job in digital advertising.  For ten years she has been an evil advertiser and it’s really never bothered her.  In her non-work time she writes, knits, embroiders, cross-stitches and plays soccer.  She lives in Jersey City with her husband and two adorably bad dogs.  Landscape of Marriage is her first short play.

JANE MILLER (writer: A Good Day)

Jane Miller is a screenwriter/playwright living in Brooklyn. While not writing or making movies, she works at the School of Visual Arts in film production. She recently completed production on her short Ten Second Exposure, the feature  version of which will be shot next summer.  Her other feature script, Entry-Level was optioned in 2006 and is currently in development.  While growing up in NYC, she performed in many plays with the youth theater group Downtown Art. It was here she got her first experience being involved in community building theater.  In college at Johns Hopkins, she wrote and directed several short plays that were performed as part of Witness Theater Group, and directed a Baltimore production of The Vagina Monologues. She loves slurpees, furry animals and writes a blog called ScratchFilm

LAURA PESTRONK (director: A Good Day)

Laura Pestronk (Director) received her B.F.A in Drama and Psychology from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. Recent credits include the award winning Jump! for the 2008 New York Strawberry Festival, 200 Mystical Fictions for the New York International Fringe Festival, Nicky Silver’s Fat Men In Skirts, John Patrick Shanley’s Savage In Limbo, Winter Forum at the Looking Glass. Laura studied at Playwrights Horizons Theater School for four years, concentrating in directing and acting.

LUCY KRIVITSKY

Following her research on sexual orientation & identity at Cornell, stints as a summer-camp counselor; teacher to Russian immigrants; children’s theatre troupe member & reporters’ assistant at NBC news, Lucy currently works as an Analyst for political clients.  While she is known to respond to Serge Gainsbourg with winsome fawnishness, it is also rumored that she is a Ninja, due to her unusual abilities in the art of stealth and camouflage.  She has lived in NYC for two years and is looking forward to playing pedophile bait in To Catch A Pen-Pal.

HANNAH HAVOC

Hannah moved to NYC in 2002 from a small Ukranian town called Irshava. Less than a year after picking up a camera for the first time, and at just sixteen years old, the self-monikered Hannah Havoc has already garnered nearly quarter of a million views on her Deviant Art profile as word spread about her emotive pop portraits of friends living in the urban city, many of which have now been bought as prints. An art major at LaGuardia High School studying photography and fashion by day, Hannah spends the rest of the time setting up her own shoots and working with those she admires, including Vogue photographer Erez Sabag, stylist & ‘alternative model’ Raquel Reed, Israeli photographer Oded Shoshan, and fellow wunderkind Brandon Taelor Aviram. The very un-ugly Hannah also models for the Ugly agency.

ERIC CONTRACTOR

Eric Contractor is a musician, actor, and poet. He has studied classical voice and piano, and is currently in the process of writing a collection of original songs.  Eric recently graduated from New York University, where he majored in both Music and Dramatic Literature & the cinema. Eric recently spent some time working for the music site Fuzz Artists, where he worked as a music tastemaker.  He participated in Mixed Company as an actor and performed a song at the piano. Eric also enjoys occasional mountain biking and horticulture.

MORE BIOS ON THEIR WAY….

ANNELI CURNOCK

JOSHUA STRINGER

CLAY NELMS

SANA KEITH

JACKIE ROSE

JULIE ASRIYAN