Drew Woodson, Playwright-in-Residence

man in plaid jacket wearing glasses leaning against a wall with skyline behind him

Drew Woodson

B/W photo of church in silouette against cloudy sky
April 14, 2025

Indigenous Performing Arts Residency Program 

Drew Woodson

Playwright-in-Residence

April 14 – 18, 2025

Location/map to the Arts Research Center here

Co-presented by the Arts Research Center and the Department of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies, in partnership with Alternative Theater Ensemble, and with support from the Dean's Office of the Division of Arts & Humanities, the Department of Ethnic Studies, the Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, the Native American Studies Program, the Puffin Foundation, and the California Arts Council

SCHEDULE

Script Development Workshops for From Above
Playwright, Director, Dramaturg & Actors

Monday April 14 through Friday April 18, 2025 
Arts Research Center, Hearst Field Annex D23, UC Berkeley

Workshops Open for UC Berkeley Student Observation:
Tues April 15th from 4:30 - 8pm
Wed April 16th from 4:30 - 8pm
No RSVP necessary. Drop in hours, students are welcome to stay for as long or as little as they'd like. 

*closed to the general public

Class Visit: Playwriting
with Professor Philip Kan Gotanda

Tuesday April 15, 2025 at 2pm
Dept of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies, UC Berkeley
Zellerbach 170

Artist Talk with Drew Woodson
in conversation with Patrick Russell 

Thursday April 17, 2:00 - 3:30pm 
Arts Research Center, Hearst Field Annex D23, UC Berkeley

*free & open to the public, seating 1st come 1st served

Public Reading: From Above
followed by Talk Back with Drew Woodson  

Thursday, April 17, 2025 at 6pm
Arts Research Center, Hearst Field Annex D23, UC Berkeley

Production by: Alternative Theater Ensemble
Playwright: Drew Woodson
Director & Producer: R. Réal Vargas Alanis
Producers: Leah Sanginiti and Zoë Aiko Sonnenberg
Dramaturg: Zoë Aiko Sonnenberg
Stage Manager: Clara den Dulk
Actors: Tasi Alabastro, Raymond Álvarez, Linda Amayo-Hassan, W. Fran Astorga, Katherine Bahena-Benitez, Patrick Russell, Leah Sanginiti

*free & open to the public, seating first-come, first served

The Arts Research Center and Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies with Alternative Theater Ensemble are proud to welcome Playwright and Berkeley Alum Drew Woodson for a residency at UC Berkeley, April 14 - 18, 2025. Woodson will spend the week developing a new play (From Above) in workshops with local Indigenous actors, give an Artist Talk in conversation with Patrick Russell, present a public reading of From Above, and visit with students in Professor Philip Gotanda's Playwriting class. Woodson has also opened the script development workshops to students to observe the process of developing a play.

Drew Woodson is a Western Shoshone playwright based in New York City. He has had his work read in multiple theaters across New York, including Rattlestick Theater where he was asked to open the first annual Northeastern Native Arts Festival with his play “Your Friend, Jay Silverheels.” For this same work, Drew was named Yale's Young Indigenous Playwright of 2021. More recently, Drew completed a two month artists residency on Governors Island for AICH, and completed a workshop of a new work “From Above” under the direction of Madeline Sayet. As a writer, Drew seeks to tell stories where Native people are allowed to take up space, be complicated, and ultimately be more than a storytelling device. Drew is an MFA Graduate from the Dramatic Writing department at NYU, and an alumni of UC Berkeley's Department of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies.

These programs are featured in collaboration with Alternative Theater Ensemble’s Indigenous Performing Arts Residency, a collaborative initiative piloted by Berkeley’s Arts Research Center and the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies. AlterTheater’s residency offers the opportunity to produce new work by an Indigenous performance-based artist each spring of the residency’s duration. 

Read an interview with Drew Woodson

During his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley - in Berkeley News!

From Above

In the middle of an unnamed desert sits a lone church just at the edge of town. Sister Karina, Sister Maggie, and the Father all lead the small Native congregation that comes through its doors. In the five years since Sister Karina has found God and joined the church, calamity has struck the small town, leading to a string of deaths that some in the community believe to be God punishing them. Inside his darkened room, the Father believes he's hearing the voice of God, and what God has told him to do reverberates through the Native community, causing an uproar inside and out – leading to a decision that the community must make that tears each other apart.

From Above is a recently announced contest winner of the 10th Annual Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (YIPAP). Woodson will present a staged reading at Yale on April 9th, 2025.

On Thursday April 17 at 2pm, Drew Woodson will give an Artist Talk in conversation with TDPS's Patrick Russell.


Patrick Russell is a professional actor and director whose work has been seen in theaters across the Bay Area, and is a Continuing Lecturer in the Department of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies. As an educator, Patrick also teaches in American Conservatory Theater’s Summer Training Congress and San Francisco Semester, and has taught workshops at universities across the country as a recruiter and representative for ACT’s training programs. Patrick has also taught for California Shakespeare Theater, Academy of Art University, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and most recently, served as the head of movement for Southern Oregon University’s B.F.A. in acting program. He is also the co-founder of The Actors Space SF, a part-time professional actor training and performance center located in San Francisco. Patrick is a member of Actors’ Equity and SAG-AFTRA. He holds a B.F.A. in acting from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is a graduate of American Conservatory Theater’s Master of Fine Arts in acting program. Patrick's most recent acting credits include The Play that Goes Wrong at San Francisco Playhouse and the feature film, Moss Beach. His work has been recognized with nominations from both the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle and Theatre Bay Area. Other productions include King Charles III, Once in a Lifetime, A Christmas Carol (ACT); Frost/Nixon (TheatreWorks); As You Like It (Cal Shakes); A Bright New Boise, Wilder Times, Body Awareness, Trouble in Mind, Awake and Sing! (Aurora Theatre Company), and many others. More on Patrick here.

Updated Poster: Woodson IPAR Residence
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About the Indigenous Performing Arts Residency

The Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) in collaboration with the Arts Research Center (ARC) have created a multi-year Indigenous Performing Artist Residency Program, which allows us to host a performance by emerging Indigenous performing artists yearly, along with a visit to campus by the artist for a public talk and an opportunity to work with students in class visits. Alternative Theater Ensemble (ATE) was chosen as Berkeley’s inaugural residency company. Their residency offers them the opportunity to workshop or present a play by an Indigenous playwright each spring on campus. 

AlterTheater seeks to create a more just, equitable community by supporting the creative growth of theater artists from historically underrepresented communities, and telling stories that reflect the full complexity and diversity of our community. Their work centers the spiritual and emotional well-being of Black and Indigenous people, casting roles in ways that break stereotypes rather than reinforce them and creating opportunities for both established and emerging artists to learn and support each other in their craft. 

The mission of the artist residency program is to strengthen relationships with Indigenous community partners and to create ongoing financial and material support for upcoming Indigenous performing artists so that Native stories can be told on our campus now and into the future. It utilizes the longstanding collaborative partnership that ARC and TDPS have established with each other over many years, and utilizes both our units’ connections to local California theater and performing arts organizations off campus. 

The program stems from the idea that embodied theater and performance practices are a site of historical remembering and knowledge production. The Indigenous Performing Artist Residency builds a relationship with a local performance company for multiple years, to premiere Native or Indigenous creative works in their theater/performance space. ARC and TDPS will then collaborate to reprise those artistic worksin one of our campus performance spaces. During the presentation of the performance, the artist(s) will be invited to campus to meet with our community, give talks, engage with our students in a variety of ways that best support the artistic production. 

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DIRECTOR & PRODUCER
R. Réal Vargas Alanis

R. Réal Vargas Alanis is an acclaimed indigiqueer, 2-Spirit artist from Winton, CA (Yokut). Réal is a descendant of the Purépecha, Rarámuri, and Nahua Tenochca people and a traditional Tlahualil dancer. They are an actor, playwright, producer, and award-winning director. As a co-founder and core leader of the Arts and Advocacy Organization IN THE MARGIN, Réal oversees an ensemble of intersectional and interdisciplinary QT, BIPOC artists.

R. Réal Vargas Alanis is a visionary force in the intersectional realm of social justice artistry. Their community engagement and artistic intersectionality garnered recognition as an “Artist Disruptor” awardee by the Center for Cultural Power and the California Arts Council in 2023. Réal's performance, "A Little Bit of Gay: A Standup Piece by a Homo," also earned them acclaim as one of "the best Latinx comedic talents in the Nation” by the Latinx Theater Commons’ Comedy Carnaval 2022. As a member of the inaugural producing cohort of the National New Play Network's Bridge Program, Réal served as an Executive Producer for The New American Theatre Festival 2021, contributing to the development of 10 intersectional new works. Réal is also part of the Latinx Theatre Commons and Bay Area Native Theatre Artists. 

Réal's plays, including "La Demanda: A Call to Action" and "Golly Good Day!," have become integral to modern playwright curricula. In addition to their artistic endeavors, Réal serves as a Casting Director with Bay Area Casting Collective, co-runs their family business Sexii Tacos, and represented California's Central Valley on the California Arts Council's Creative Corps Community Development Panel, shaping grant guidelines for a $60 million one-time General Funds initiative. 

https://www.realvalanis.com/

PRODUCER & ACTOR
Leah Sanginiti

Leah Sanginiti (she/her) is a performer, director, and choreographer whose work has been featured across North America and Asia. Her recent projects include an original musical produced at the Gateway Theatre in Singapore, an artist residency at Papermoon Puppet Theatre, and a partnership with Berkeley Repertory Theatre to design innovative arts programming for teaching artists and youth. Leah has performed with companies including Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Davis Shakespeare Festival, and Bay Area Children’s Theatre, touring throughout Turtle Island as an actor and teaching artist. Alongside her performance work, Leah has championed liberatory storytelling in education, serving youth across urban, rural, and incarcerated communities, and creating original scripts and programs presented to tens of thousands of California students. She currently serves as producer for YouTube literacy advocate Bri Reads, and her online pieces merging theatre and everyday life have reached millions of viewers on a global scale. A queer, multiracial Xicana of Jicarilla Apache descent raised in East Oakland, Leah found theatre as a form of resistance in a middle school Hip Hop class at Destiny Arts Center. Her early years as a professional artist were shaped by housing instability and radicalizing international travel, solidifying her commitment to community care and art that inspires collective action. leahsanginiti.com IG: chleah

PRODUCER & DRAMATURG
Zoë Aiko Sonnenberg 

Zoë Aiko Sonnenberg (she/her) is a writer, dramaturg, and educator. Born in Chicago into a family of psychologists, she channels her secondhand analytic training into character and story. Her writing frequently engages with themes of time, medicine, and new media. As a dramaturg, Zoë is dedicated to supporting writers for stage and screen through the process of developing new work and finding their unique voice. Zoë earned her B.A. in English with a minor in Theater and Performance Studies from Stanford University and her M.Litt. in Playwriting and Dramaturgy from the University of Glasgow. Now based in the Bay Area, she has worked with numerous major production companies and performing arts organizations in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and the Bay Area. She is currently the writer's assistant to writer/actor/director B.J. Novak and is pursuing her M.S.W. at San Jose State University. An accomplished singer, Zoë has toured with choral ensembles in New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Hawai'i, South Africa, and Italy. zoeaiko.com 

Three headshots, director of play and two producers

ACTORS

Collage of headshots of six individuals with diverse backgrounds, alongside the Alternative Theater Ensemble logo.

Tasi Alabastro is a versatile San Jose-based artist, celebrated for his dynamic contributions to theater. A recipient of the SVCreates Emerging Artist Laureate and Leigh Weimer’s Emerging Artist Award, Tasi is excited to continue training in storytelling through directing. He has appeared in various productions across the Bay Area, including A Christmas Carol (A.C.T), The Play That Goes Wrong (SF Playhouse), MANAHATTA (Aurora Theatre), and Every Brilliant Thing, as well as VIETGONE and Stupid F**king Bird at City Lights Theatre Company. Tasi has also made significant strides as a director, leading the inaugural AAPI Playwright Festival for Contemporary Asian Theater Scene and assisting with CLYDE’S at City Lights.As a senior company member of the award-winning Red Ladder Theatre Company, he is dedicated to using the arts as a tool for social justice and community engagement. For more visit tasialabastro.com. Follow him on IG/Threads @tasialabastro

Raymond Álvarez is thrilled to return to the stage and grateful to be among the vibrant community of talent in the Bay Area. Recently, he portrayed Jaimito in Sueños: Our American Musical. Trained at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Hollywood, Raymond has performed in numerous short films and theatrical productions across his hometown of Los Angeles. Since making the Bay Area his home, he’s rocked the role of Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Harmony Werks and had the pleasure of joining the ensemble cast of Land of the Dead, directed by Sinjin Jones. Follow him on Instagram: @instacantina

Linda Amayo-Hassan is an enrolled member of the Spirit Lake Tribe and a Native/Chicana actor, playwright, and director. She appeared in Manahatta/Auroa Theatre, Yerma/Shotgun Players, and Exodus to Eden/Oakland Theater Project. Linda performed her one person show, The Missing Songs, about missing and murdered Indigenous women and children at Potrero Stage and had the honor of expanding that script at Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor. In January, Linda was in Drew Woodson’s staged reading of Smoke at KC Rep. She has an MFA from UMKC, is the Founder/Artistic Director of Theatre Cultura, and is a board member with PlayGround.

W. Fran Astorga (they/them) is a San Francisco based artist from Modesto, CA. They have recently been interviewed and had their writing featured on Howlround Theater Commons and Theater Magazine. Locally, Fran has performed with African American Shakespeare, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, and Alternative Theater Ensemble; has had their writing featured/performed by Native Writers and Cutting Ball Theater; and has aided as a dramaturg for projects with Word For Word and Aurora Theater. Fran currently works as the Conservatory Operations Manager for American Conservatory Theater. They enjoy residing in the intersections of administration, artiststry, and advocacy.  

Katherine Bahena-Benitez (she/they) is a queer Mexican Indigenous multidisciplinary artist who is bicoastal between New York and California. Katherine is an actor, writer, filmmaker, teaching artist and model. Katherine has trained with the American Conservatory Theater, 24 Hour Plays, Shakespeare and Company, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, California State University Sacramento and Broadway Advocacy Coalition at Columbia University. They’ve performed with New York Stage and Film, Teatro Linea de Sombra, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, NYU Skirball, La Lengua Teatro, National Queer Theater, La Mama Experimental Theater Club, and Teatro Espejo, among others. Katherine has been featured in HipLatina, Vogue, Remezcla, Fenty, VoyageATL, Canvas Rebel, Activista Media, YITTY, Apostrophe, and Reclamation Magazine. Katherine is a Queer Art Fellow Alumni, a Miranda Family Fellow Alumni, an Emergenyc Arts Alumni, and recipient of the John Cauble Emerging Producer Leader Award. Katherine’s writing has been published in HEROICA, Museum Guild, and the International Human Arts Movement. It is with great joy that Katherine shares the debut of her solo show JOTA this summer 2025 in Sacramento, CA. Katherine says, “Con mucho amor y cariño, I do this for our gente, I do this for us.”

Patrick Russell has performed in theaters across the Bay Area, including ACT, TheatreWorks, California Shakespeare Theater, San Francisco Playhouse, Aurora Theatre Company, Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Marin Shakespeare Company, CenterREP, and Shotgun Players. Most recently he was seen in The Play That Goes Wrong at San Francisco Playhouse. Directing credits include Stupid F***ing Bird and She Kills Monsters at SF State University, The Arsonists at UC Berkeley, and All My Sons at Role Players. Film credits include the feature films Being Us and Moss Beach, and the award-winning animated short film Rapunzel’s Etymology of Zero. He currently teaches acting at UC Berkeley and movement at ACT. He holds a B.F.A. in acting from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is a graduate of American Conservatory Theater’s Master of Fine Arts Program in Acting.

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