Gloria
April 2024
West College Café,
Wesleyan University
Written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Directed by Hadassa Garfein & Vincent Langan
Stage Managed by Luka Netzel
Cast Sita McGuire, Miles Allen, Miranda Simon, Kofi Agyei-Yeboah, Georgia Reed-Stamm, Charlotte George, Caroline Seymour, Alex Short, Eliza Marovitz, Caroline Lamoureux
In my final semester at Wesleyan, I had the honor of playing Dean in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins 2016 masterwork, Gloria. A Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Gloria follows an ambitious group of editorial assistants at a notorious Manhattan magazine, each vying for the chance to document a tragic workplace incident. The challenges this play presented were unique—balancing Jacobs-Jenkins’ whip smart satire of 21st century workplace culture with the devastating subject matter underneath. Specifically, we had to stage a workplace shooting, in which my character was the sole survivor. A collaborative effort in choreography and dramaturgy, I’m immensely proud of our team for treating the scene with delicacy and honesty. Beyond this moment, this play was an endurance sprint that saw me on stage for the majority of the runtime, transitioning from light comedic chatter to intense psychological drama. The cast and crew Hadassa and Vincent assmebled were sublime artists and people, and playing Dean was the perfect way to cap off my Wesleyan career.
All photos courtesy of Amanda Swartz.
“Gloria made me laugh and cry … The talent displayed by the actors was phenomenal and kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the entire performance.”
— Sabrina Ladiwala, The Wesleyan Argus
The American Way
A Senior Theatre Capstone by Izzy Koff
April 2022
Patricelli ‘92 Theater,
Wesleyan University
Stage Managed by Luka Netzel
Cast Jess Canning, Ada Gao, CJ Joseph, Sophie Taubman, Lydia Tadross Marks
Performed as part of Wesleyan’s Spring Capstone Festival, The American Way was an exercise in costume design developed by Izzy Koff. The project was conceived as a living history museum, featuring representatives from various social justice movements, such as a suffragette, Black Panther Party member, Women’s Liberation leader, etc. I represented an AIDS Activist, donning a Silence = Death T-Shirt and period accurate blue jeans. I worked with Izzy to amalgamate a monologue that would accurately dramatize the rhetoric espoused by activists, drawing inspiration from speeches by Vito Russo, Larry Kramer, and Mary Fisher. This piece was my first experience with nontraditional theatre, and a first attempt at devising work in collaboration with a director.
Photo courtesy of Marlene Allen.
Waiting for Godot
May 2021
West College Café,
Wesleyan University
Written by Samuel Beckett
Directed by Nina Jakobsen
Stage Managed by Avanti Sheth
Cast Vincent Langan, Miguel Pérez-Glassner, Isaac Slomski-Pritz, Joe Greenfield
One of the first student productions to go up in the wake of Covid, Waiting for Godot was also my first production at Wesleyan. I played Vladimir, one half of the doomed duo that waits for their savior, Godot, who never comes. In this 6-week process, I performed my first intense script study, granularly analyzing an at once bare but dense script, and diving headfirst into Godot’s abstract and existential themes.