BWW Stage Mag The Dog is Alive at the Start of the Play - Dixon Place Stage Mag

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Cast

Anahita Monfared
Ruhi
Abrar Haque
Father
Avanthika Srinivasan
Mother
Carter
Shimere
Leland Fowler
Radio
Rachel Jihye Han
The Frequency
MJ Farrell
Moon the Dog

Creative Team

Anooj Bhandari

Writer, Director, Producer

Metika Begleiter

Stage Manager

Alessandra Cronin

Production Design Manager

Meet the Company

Anahita Monfared

Ruhi
Anahita Monfared is a Persian-Canadian actor, writer, and dancer based in NYC/Lenapehoking. They work with text, movement, and performance art to explore the body politic, gender/sexuality, violence, disability, and disobedience. Upcoming: 1001 Nights (La MaMa Experimental Theater Club), Select T.V./Film: “Firefly Lane” (Netflix) , “National Parks” (ABC) and For Her, a feature film centering the ongoing Woman Life Freedom revolution in Iran.They are the Director of Development at Dyke Theater Co. and the Associate Artistic Director of MENA Artists Initiative. A graduate of NYU Tisch (BFA Drama ’24). To connect: anahitamonfared.com, @anabringsthehita

Abrar Haque

Father
NYC Credits: Soho Rep & TFANA (Public Obscenities; Drama Desk Ensemble Award, Pulitzer-finalist), Clubbed Thumb, The Public Theater, Egg and Spoon. Regional Credits: Woolly Mammoth, Profile Theatre, Artists Rep. As a writer, he’s independently developing a play and a film, and producing/starring in a Bangladeshi horror short, Nodir Kul. BA: UC Berkeley. IG: @abrarhawk19

Avanthika Srinivasan

Mother
Off-Broadway credits include: Young Vasantha in Elyria (Atlantic Theatre Co.), Candida in Candida (Gingold Theatrical Group) and Sanam Shah in Queen (NAATCO/Long Wharf Theater). Other acting credits include Louka in Arms and the Man, India 3 and Daanya in Testmatch (A.C.T.’s Strand Theater), Sakina in The Fit (San Francisco Playhouse), and Natasha in Three Sisters. Srinivasan holds a BA in French and Theater from Princeton University and an MFA in Acting from the American Conservatory Theater. (she/her) avanthikasrinivasan.com.

Carter

Shimere
CARTER is a trans-genre maker/performer + educator + creative doula based in Brooklyn/Lenapehoking. CARTER’s generative practice seeks to archive + explore their identity—{Black, Queer, Trans, Ancestor-Led & to provide space for play + release + deep knowing. Select performance credits include: The Butterflies (Columbia/Schapiro), Aftermath/Analyzing Anguish (The Flea), and Seven Guitars (ASP Boston). CARTER is also an active member of The New York Neo-Futurists: a non-illusory theater company–exploring the fiercely-urgent present through new plays, weekly. As an educator CARTER works within: The Child Center of New York, Hofstra University, the NYDOC and partners with various community-led organizations. As a Creative Doula, CARTER strives to prioritize ease + tenderness while facilitating the emergence of new work. Upcoming: In De Back Of God’s Eyes with Ma’at Works Dance Collective (Director). Connect with them on Instagram: @carter_m_n “One cannot live with sighted eyes and feeling heart and not know or react to the miseries which afflict this world.” —Lorraine Hansberry

Leland Fowler

Radio
Off-Broadway: Sally & Tom, Plays for the Plague Year, Henry V, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Public); This Land Was Made (Vineyard); one in two (The New Group); Novenas for a Lost Hospital (Rattlestick); If Pretty Hurts, Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (Playwrights Horizons); Measure for Measure (TFANA). Leland has also performed at Williamstown, Dorset Theatre Festival, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, Westport Country Playhouse, McCarter Theatre Center, Yale Rep, and Alliance Theatre. TV/Film: “Blossoming Wasp” & “City on a Hill.” BA: Morehouse College; MFA: Yale School of Drama. Leland is a member of the Actor’s Center.

Rachel Jihye Han

The Frequency
Rachel Jihye Han is a composer, classically trained violinist, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and poet living in Brooklyn. She received an MFA in Poetry with a Jazz Studies Concentration from Rutgers University-Newark where she currently teaches English and Poetry, and has taught workshops for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and New Jersey Performing Arts Center. A 2023 MacDowell Fellow, 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow, 2022 Hawthornden Castle Fellow, and 2025 Synth Library NYC Resident, she performs and releases music under the name Hiera Jihye. Her first poetry collection, I AM RETURNING FOR THE BODY (Switchback Books), won the 2024 Gatewood Prize. Connect with her on Instagram: @hiera.jihye, hierajihye.com

MJ Farrell

Moon the Dog

Anooj Bhandari

Writer, Director, Producer
Anooj is an artist and community organizer who enjoys creating moments that feel like witnessing animation. Drawn to aesthetics that sit somewhere between a Shel Silverstein drawing and an episode of the Twilight Zone, he combines the endearing softness of illustration and the eerie mysticism of the unknown to weave communal senses of possibility. Since 2018, he has been an ensemble member of the New York Neo-Futurists, is a collaborator with Agile Rascal Bike Theater where he toured his show Chai Chai over 500 miles on bikes, and is developing a new devised work with Radical Evolution and SoHo Rep. His first film, Blossoming Wasp, is coming out this year. Past residencies have included the Lighthouse Residency at the BEAM Center, and The Bandung Residency with the Asian American Arts Alliance and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporic Arts. Anooj is a 2023 MacDowell Fellowship recipient in the Theater Arts and a current Jerome T. Hill Artist Fellow. @mybodyasleep

Metika Begleiter

Stage Manager
Tika Begleiter (she/they) is an NYC based Stage Manager, Theatre Artist, and the creator of the Instagram page @broadway1011_. Stage Management work includes: Off-Broadway: Girls Who Walked on Glass. NYC: When Claudia Sees God; Metamorphoses; R+H’s Cinderella; Star Lake; FMK; I <3 My Coven. Regional: High School Musical: The Musical; Carlene Yakin; This Side of the Room; Pleasant; Paradise Lost (Vintage Theatre) She would like to thank her family, friends, and Queer +BIPOC Theatre Artists everywhere!

Alessandra Cronin

Production Design Manager
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