Directors:

Nancy Manocherian (Founding Artistic Director)
Nancy is a lyricist, playwright and producer.  Writing credit include: Sin!; Rio, a Brazilian musical novella (Theatre for the New City); and Dinner and Delusion, an opera co-written with composer Michael Sahl (The Center for Contemporary Opera/New York city Opera’s VOX Festival).  Her passion is for the arts and her dream is the cell, a 21st century salon.

Kira Simring (Artistic Director)
Kira directed the cell’s premier productions of Blackout, Dinner and Delusion, and Guilty. She is the resident director for The Center for Contemporary Opera’s Atilier Series. Other recent NY directing venues: Then New School, The Actors Studio, Bank Street Theatre, Triple A Productions, American Theatre of Actors, Waters Edge Writers, Slice of Life Theatre Co. and New Village Arts Theatre, and Connecticut Grand Opera. MFA in Directing: the Actors Studio Drama School of New School University (Schubert Fellow). BA in Anthropology: Smith College.

Pat Jones (Managing Director) 
A multimedia professional with experience in, Pat Jones started telling stories at young age. As an adult with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre that ability spread to many mediums giving her a multi media career that includes theatre, television, fiction, films and marketing as she learned how to tell the stories of people and brands. Pat consistently combined marketing expertise with creativity and production experience to create unique experiences for her clients. She returns to her roots in theatre bringing all this experience to bear on her vision for productions. Within her career she has produced TV shows, that have appeared on IFC, Spike TV, LOGO and Oxygen. She has worked with several Fortune 500 companies including McDonalds, General Motors, Sprint/Nextel and Reebok. Jones is also a writer and under her pen name P.J. Edghill, her short story Ophelia and Crawler was published in 2006 on AOL Black Voices. Jones is currently shopping a novel called PRIDE and is working on a second novel called The Soul Contract.

Garlia Cornelia Jones (Director of Development)
Garlia Cornelia Jones is currently working on her Masters of Fine Arts in Playwriting at the New School for Drama. Previous Masters work was in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University, in Bloomington, IN. In 2003, while working on her Bachelor’s at Indiana University, Garlia founded Black Curtain, a Black theatre group devoted to performing works about the Black Experience in America. Black Curtain began a new theatrical experience for Ms. Jones as she began to mix the theatrical with the social and political. Black Curtain and Garlia awards from the Commission on Multicultural Understanding (COMU) and Diversity Education for some of their work that specifically dealt with cross-cultural communication. Garlia and Black Curtain were also heavily involved with the Bloomington community and HIV/AIDS. “RedVolution was born from this partnership in October 2006. This was an HIV/AIDS Benefit, co-hosted by former MTV VJ, Quddus. Their HIV/AIDS work also gave Black Curtain numerous opportunities to perform in front of the Bloomington Mayor and in front of MC Lyte during the Spring of 2007 in Indianapolis, IN. Garlia is also a dancer, has played the flute since she was twelve and stuttered since she was five.

Credits include: A Raisin in the Sun (Director – Black Curtain), Can You Hear Me Now (Creator, Director – Black Curtain), The Day I Found Out I was Black (Black Curtain), Against the Grain (John Waldron Arts Center, Black Curtain).

Lee Terry (Lighting Design) is a graduate of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Recently he has design the lights for the Tony award winning composer Tom Kitt, the stand-up comedian Mario Cantone, and Cedar City Falls, an 8 episode play series written primarily by the Emmy Award winning writing team of Sex and the City. In addition to working at the cell, Lee also works with Urban Stages, Soho Rep, and other theatre companies in New York in various lighting design roles. For more information about Lee Terry and his work please visit www.LMTlighting.com.

T.J. (Sound/Projection) Ted Pallas – Sound and projection designer for theater, and live visualist supporting parties and concerts all over New York City.  Ted is also a graphic designer, and founder of the design group ://grove.nyc.  Clients for all of the above include okayplayer, Modiba, Miscreant Theater, Bone Orchard, Counts Media, Mamarazzi, Sahr Ngaujah/Danny Soto’s Searchin’ party, Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, the Knitting Factory, LeenBack Productions, Joe’s Pub and others.  Ted believes that if you can talk you can sing and if you can dance you can drum, and tries to embody that spirit of celebration in all of his work as much as possible.  He doesn’t work on many Strindberg plays.  When he’s not designing something he’s playing music with various people/projects.

Rick Gomes (P.R. Director)

Chris Gabriel (Web Director)
Chris Gabriel grew up in rural Vermont before attending a private boarding school in central Connecticut. After high school, Chris moved to New York City and began his studies at Parsons the New School for Design. Chris is now a junior in the Integrated Design Curriculum department at Parsons, where he studies Fashion, Graphic, Product and Communication Design. Chris is also the owner of a freelance creative design and development business, now in its sixth year of operation. Chris’s freelance work is largely web-based, where he helps businesses develop an online identity and reach new markets. Chris’s other freelance work has been in graphic, print, apparel, and industrial designs.  Additionally, Chris’s photography and fine art have been curated in shows and publications around New York.

Craig Kraft Studio “Falling Man”
Hugo Moro Charles Atlas 2008