Director

Rachel Burttram
"Frankie"

Rachel is thrilled to make her Kitchen debut.  She has worked as a professional actor for 17 years with 10 of those years being an ensemble member at Florida Rep Theatre named by the Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout as “one of America’s Top Repertory Companies.”  Her work at the Florida Rep includes:  August Osage County, Gaslight, Trying, Dancing at Lughnasa, Amy’s View (with Carol Lawrence), Rabbit Hole, Proof, Opus, The Glass Menagerie, Doubt.  Selected Regional work includes: Hair, Christmas Carol, Backstory (Actor’s Theatre of Louisville & the Humana New Play Festival), Private Lives, Oleanna, Noises Off!, The Foreigner (13th Street Ensemble), The Cripple of Innishman (City Equity Theatre), Almost, Maine (Barnstormer’s Theatre) and Inconsolable (Gloucester Stage).  NYC Credits include:  Pushkin:  A Tragedy in Verse (Actors’ Studio with Daniel Sunjata), Falling (Vital Theatre Company), Young, Sexy & Talented? (NYC International Fringe Festival).  TV & Film: Burn Notice, World Traveler.  National commercials. Rachel is a proud member of Actor’s Equity for 10 years and is eligible for the Screen Actors’ Guild.

Brandon Morris "Johnny"

Brandon is thrilled to be making his Kitchen debut with this production of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De lune. Regional credits include: The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, The Whipping Man (Caldwell Theater); When the Sun Shone Brighter, Ward 57, and the world premiere of Lee Blessings’ Black Sheep (Florida Stage); Macbeth, A Streetcar Named Desire (Greenbrier Valley Theatre); Match Games (Actors Theater of Louisville); Somebody/Nobody (Mixed Blood); Fat Pig, Romance, This is How it Goes (Gablestage); The Boys Next Door (Palm Beach Dramaworks). Also recently worked on Superfly: the Musical directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones. TV credits include: Law and Order: SVU, Dexter, CSI Miami, Americas Most Wanted, and a recurring guest star role on Burn Notice as Agent Lane. Brandon currently lives in NYC where he does not wait tables or tend bar. He would like to thank Rachel L. for this amazing opportunity and also everyone in the audience for supporting live theater. “Bottoms up!”  

Rachel Lampert
Director

Rachel is a playwright, director and choreographer.  Her work at the Kitchen includes: Playwright: Main Stage Musicals Book & Lyrics for Waiting for Spring, Bed No Breakfast, Comfort Food, Tony & the Soprano, The Angle of the Sun and Precious Nonsense. Main Stage Non-musical plays:  Losing Myself, The Trial, The Book Club, Frankenstein and The Soup Comes Last. Main Stage Movement Pieces: In the Company of Dancrs and Summers at Rock's Edge. Family Fare: I Have a Song to Sing O!, Scoot, Sizzle & Slide, The Mozart Mystery, The Odyssey parts 1 & 2, A December Suite, and A Christmas Carol, among others. Director: Broke-ology, Red Light Winter, The Mystery of Irma Vep, Mary’s Wedding, Gutenberg! The Musical!, Secret Order, Last Train to Nibroc, The Glass Menagerie, The Price, Master Class, A Delicate Balance, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Swimming in the Shallows among many others. For the 2012-13 season she will direct Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Opus, and Crooked and will premiere in May a new piece And, Lately... in collaboration with composer/pianist Richard Montgomery.

She is proud to have been involved in the building of the new theater and, after two years in the new space, continues to be awed by its possibilities and always grateful to everyone who supported this amazing project.

Rachel is active in the Ithaca arts community beyond the Kitchen, having directed and choreographed at the Hangar Theatre (director: Sweeney Todd, Falsettos, The Sisters Rosensweig; choreographer: 2007 production of Hair) Other
collaborations include: Rounds for Orchestra with the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, A Soldier's Tale with Ensemble X, and dance pieces with Music's Recreation.  Her play Bet You Can't Catch It? was commissioned by AIDSWORK of Tompkins County as part of an educational program for teens, and toured Central NY for three years.

Directing and theatrical choreography credits outside Ithaca include productions at Cal Rep, Arkansas Rep, Portland Stage Company, New York's Public Theatre, Mill Mountain Theatre and Hawaii Opera Theatre. Her concert dance works have been in the repertories of numerous dance companies in the U.S. and abroad.

Her trip to China in 1997 to stage West Side Story resulted in her writing The Soup Comes Last, produced off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters in Fall 2004. The Angle of the Sun (written by Lampert & Pressgrove) was selected by the New York Musical Theatre Festival to be presented in NYC in September 2007. Rachel is a 4-time recipient of NEA Choreography Fellowships and a CAP Individual Artist Grant. She received a SALT Award for Best Actress 2004. She attended Mount Holyoke College and has a BFA and MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Raised in Brooklyn, she moved to Ithaca as a trailing spouse right behind her husband David Squires in 1995. They enjoy a wonderful house, two terrific dogs, and the joy of having family join them in Ithaca and friends always visiting. This is her 16th season as Artistic Director – a job that is always exciting. 

Kent Lynn Goetz
Scenic Designer

Kent is a professor at Cornell’s Department of Theatre, Film & Dance and the Resident Scene Designer at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. Previous designs for KTC include sets for PRIVATE LIVES, CHESAPEAKE, SECRET ORDER, I BECAME A GUITAR, STRANGERHORSE, A MARRIAGE MINUET,  and DRUNKEN CITY, and set and lights for OLD TIMES in ‘94. Other institutions for which he has designed include the Asolo Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Florida Stage, Geva Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Madison Repertory Theatre, Madison Opera, Skylight Opera, Body Politic Theatre, American Musical Theatre, Maine State Musical Theatre, Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, and Hangar Theatre. He has also served as a scenic artist at the Long Wharf Theatre, Hartford Stage, Goodspeed Opera and the Julliard School. Prior to Cornell Kent taught theatre design at Illinois State University and Illinois Wesleyan University.

Tyler M. Perry
Lighting Designer

Tyler is a recent graduate of Ithaca College where he received a BFA in TheatricalProduction Arts with concentration in Lighting and Scenic Design. Past Kitchen Theatre credits include: Waiting for Spring, The Mystery of Irma Vep, In the Company of Dancers (Lighting Designer), Brokeology (Properties Designer), Bed and Sofa (Assistant Scenic Designer). Ithaca College credits include: The Magic Flute (Scenic Designer), The Light in the Piazza, How Learned to Drive (Lighting Designer), The Little Prince (Assistant Lighting Designer), among others. His work has also been seen with Running to Places Theatre Company where he spent the season as Resident Designer: Oklahoma, Noises Off, Oliver, Cinderella (Scenic Designer) Hairspray, Joseph and...Dreamcoat (Scenic and Lighting Designer), Urinetown (Lighting Designer). He also has extensive work as an assistant/associate designer to Steve TenEyck with such companies as Ithaca College, Kitchen Theatre Co., Hangar Theatre, Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Florida Grand Opera, Mill City Summer Opera, and the Herson Group Ltd. www.tylermperrydesign.com

Amara Kopakova
Costume Designer

Amara is an artist working out of Triangle, NY. She is pleased to be working with Kitchen Theatre for the first time as costume designer. She enjoys this constant inspiration of Ithaca,  and I glad to be back after years of travel and west coast living.  When not costuming,  AmArA designs sets for ISC, paints drops for TCO,  and creates fine art in her livery barn studio.  IHJK.

Michael Doliner
Sound Designer

Michael is a senior at Cornell University studying Theater Arts and Biology. He is thrilled to be working on his first production here at the Kitchen Theatre Company. He is recently returning from the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center where he acted as assistant sound designer. He is also directing the upcoming Cornell mainstage production of Adding Machine: a musical. Other Cornell credits: Elegies: A Song Cycle, Trial by Jury, [title of show], The Doctor Despite Himself"

Abigail Smith
Properties Designer

Abigail studied Architectural Design at Cornell University where she first began to explore design in the world of the theater through both scenic and costume design. A former production intern with the Kitchen (’09-’10) Abby has designed in some capacity for many a KTC production perhaps most notable as the set designer for Speech & Debate (KTC ’10). Abby is a graduate of the Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca (where she is now an assistant instructor) and the Scenic Designer for the Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca Theater Company (AWITC). Recent credits include set design for Poona the F***dog (and other plays for children) (AWITC), Art direction for Sex, Drugs, and A Cappella (An Original Web Series), costume and set design for Rabbit Hole (AWITC), costume design for RENT (Melodramatics Theatre Company), art direction for Happy Hour (Nice Girl Films), and set design for Spring Awakening (Melodramatics Theatre Company).

LaShawn Keyser
Productions Stage Manager

LaShawn is in her fourth and final year with the Kitchen as the SM. She wholeheartedly thanks the Kitchen Table for taking her into their arms and helping her grow. As she moves onto the next step in her life, she'll have glorious memories of the people and culture she's encountered in Ithaca. She is a native of Baltimore City and a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in Theatre Arts. *Be on time. Communicate. Be prepared. Have fun. Breathe.*