Lights Up! 2021 profiles
Our annual Lights Up! festival features an amazing array of talent, and is a terrific way for actors, directors, playwrights and readers to get involved with City Lights. Any time we’re putting out a call for new artists, you can read about it on our Podcasts page.
Since 2020, Lights Up! has been an audio festival. Learn more about our artists from the 2021 festival below.
The playwrights
Miranda Seaver Caravalho (The Clown) is a San Jose-based theatrical artist with a specialty in queer content and producing values. She’s been seen at Subzero and in Content Magazine, spotted giving out poetry to people on the street, and read in Fiction Pool and her column on ArtsEarth.com. She’s also proud to have helped tech several City Lights productions — her favorite was running spotlight for In the Heights.
John Levine (On Her Wavelength) has had plays produced throughout the U.S. Among his international productions: Mexico, Canada, India, Australia, the Philippines and the U.K. Notable workshops and productions include Houston’s Wordsmyth Theatre, Alaska’s Last Frontier Theatre Conference, and New York’s Core Artist Ensemble at the Barrow Group. His work has also been published in a number of anthologies by Smith and Kraus. He wrote the screenplay for the short film Human Resources and co-wrote A Movie Set, screened at film festivals. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild, the Playwrights Lab, and Alma Theatre Playwrights Collective.
Janis Butler Holm (Bar Belle) has served as Associate Editor for the film journal Wide Angle, and currently works as a writer and editor in sunny Los Angeles. Her prose, poems and performance pieces have appeared in small-press, national, and international magazines. Her plays have been produced in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.
Ron Rosenfeld (Take This Job And Shove It) is the author of five full-length plays and numerous one-act plays. His works explore the interface among science, religion, faith and ethics. Many are based upon historical figures, such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace (Survival of the Fittest), Spinoza (Blessed Thorn), Eadweard Muybridge (Helios), Fritz Haber (Fixation), and Adam and Eve (So Help Me God). His plays have received productions, podcasts and staged readings in Europe, Asia, Australia and throughout the United States.
Scott Mullen (Backseat Driver) is a longtime Hollywood screenplay analyst and screenwriter, and a two-time winner of Amazon Studios’ screenwriting contest, whose thrillers The Summoning, In Broad Daylight and Blood on Her Badge aired on TV One. His short plays have been produced hundreds of times around the world. An evening of his comic plays, A Night of S.M., recently had a two-week run in Hollywood.
Lee Brady (Widow in Flight) is a San Francisco playwright who, like everyone else in theater, wears several hats. She’s an actor (Gin Game in Antigua, Guatemala), The Oldest Profession, in San Francisco, CA. She is a founder/resident playwright for 3Girls Theatre (3girlstheatre.org), a teacher of playwriting (Monterey Peninsula College), and a theatre critic (Pacific Sun Newspaper). But writing plays is her first love, and seeing them produced is her biggest thrill. Her plays have been produced in Memphis, New York City, Columbia, Missouri, Edinburgh, Scotland and Alaska as well as in San Francisco. Her latest play, Southern Lights, was at Z Below theater in San Francisco just before the pandemic.
Cary Pepper (Gram Scams) has had his work presented throughout the United States and internationally. Among his full-length plays, How It Works won the 2012 Ashland New Plays Festival, and Cufflinked was a semifinalist for the 2014 festival. Among his one-acts, The Walrus Said won the Religious Arts Guild Playwriting Competition; Small Things won the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival 2006 One Act Play Contest; and Party Favors won the 2016 Goshen Peace Play Contest. More recently, What Do They Want? made Cary the first playwright to be included in The St. Louis Actors’ Studio’s LaBute New Theater Festival three times. Cary is a member of the Dramatists Guild, and a four-time contributor to Applause Books’ Best American Short Plays series.
Keenan Flagg (Until Tomorrow) is a local actor and poet. He studied English and Creative Writing at University of Puget Sound and has contributed work to Play On Words and Flash Fiction Forum. This is his first appearance as a playwright for Lights Up! He most recently appeared on stage in the production of Eurydice and as an understudy in The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley.
The directors
Melinda Marks is a longtime California Bay Area actor, director, writer and educator. Since 2014, they have also been the co-editor and casting director of San Jose-based production company Play on Words. Recent directing credits include Esperanza Rising at Teatro Vision, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at Pear Theatre, Anne of the Thousand Days at Dragon Productions, and Macbeth at Silicon Valley Shakespeare. Recent acting credits include roles in Shakespeare in Love and Teatro Vision’s world premiere of Departera.
Roneet Aliza Rahamim is a theatre artist based in the Bay Area. She has been seen on stage at City Lights in productions such as Amadeus, Coney Island Christmas and Handle With Care. You can hear her voice on the Filament podcast in Truce: A Christmas Wish From The Great War and Much Ado About Nothing. Roneet also played the role of assistant director for Making God Laugh at City Lights and has directed for Los Altos Stage Company, Foothill Theater Department, and Our Digital Stories.
The actors
David Boyll is a San Francisco-based actor and improvisor. In 2017, following a 30-year hiatus from the stage, David played Bernard B. O’Hare in the world premiere of Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night at Custom Made Theatre Company. Recent work includes: Dr. Irving Baer in Quack at Shotgun Players; Taking Steps and Present Laughter at Pear Theatre; American Hero, Custom Made (SFBATCC Award: Featured Actor); and Felix in The Odd Couple, Ross Valley Players.
Leigh Rondon-Davis is a performer, dramaturg and director from New York City and the Bay Area. They work for Shotgun Players in Berkeley and Crowded Fire Theater in San Francisco where they are also a Resident Artist. Leigh is also a Company Member at Oakland Theater Project and Shotgun Players where they are a Theatre Bay Area Director-in-Residence. Recent credits include: The Light, Quack, The Niceties (Shotgun Players); Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again., Inked Baby (Crowded Fire Theater); A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (Curran and Magic Theatre).
Oluchi Nwokocha was last seen in Under Milk Wood at The Pear Theatre. Previous credits include: Sappho at Cutting Ball Theatre, The Claim at Shotgun Players, Slaughter City at Performers Under Stress, The Lady Scribblers at Custom Made Theatre, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Marin Shakespeare Company, Macbeth at African-American Shakespeare, and We Are Proud to Present… at San Jose Stage Company. Oluchi will be directing Alone Together at SJSU. Oluchi holds an MFA in Acting from the University of Florida and is a Lecturer at San Jose State University.
Kieran Beccia is a Bay Area director and dramaturg focused on devised performance and the development of new works. Their work has been produced at The Forum Collective, Quantum Dragon Theatre, FaultLine Theater, Fuse Theater, Dragon Theater, Utopia Theater Project and more. A TITAN Award winner and two-time CA$H Grant recipient, Kieran is also a company member at the Oakland Theater Project, a former artistic director of the U.C. Santa Cruz poor theatre performance lab, Barnstorm, and a founding member of The Forum Collective. They serve as the Associate Literary Manager for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Literary Development Director for The Forum Collective, and an Associate Producer for Playwrights Foundation.
Arcadia Conrad is a screenwriter, playwright, director and intimacy coordinator who often performs. She’s best known as the Theatre Program Director of Cupertino Actors Theatre and the reason behind a lot of other people’s successful careers, but that’s changing. She and her work have been featured at the Michael Laskin Studio in Los Angeles, City Lights, Play On Words and The Dragon, among other places.
Chiarra Sorci has worked on shows with City Lights as a stage manager/assistant stage manager in Alabama Story, Mothers and Sons, and Silent Sky, and has worked closely with the theater as an educator at Notre Dame High School. Chiarra continues to work with students in the Bay Area through The Audacity Performing Arts Project, where she serves as the director of Theatrical Productions.