EZRA BARNES*

New Jersey Rep: Iago, by Jim McLure. NY theater: Breakfast With Mugabe (Signature Center & Theatre Row, NY Times Critic’s Pick), Transparent Falsehood (Theatre 511), Queen (Astoria Performing Arts Center), To Kill a Mockingbird (Queens Theatre), In White America (New Federal), English Bride (59 East 59), Far & Wide (Mint), The Miser (Brave New World), Richard II (Pearl). Regional: Portland Stage (as Sherlock Holmes), Geva, McCarter, Hartford Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse, Denver Center, Pioneer, Paper Mill, Florida Rep. TV: New Amsterdam, Jessica Jones, Orange is the New Black, The Sinner, Law & Order, SVU. Film: Group: The Schopenhauer Effect, The Last Day, Motherless Brooklyn, birth/rebirth, Noah, Unintended, Joshua, Once More With Feeling. Directed Diary of Anne Frank (Playhouse on Park; Outstanding Director award, Connecticut Critics Circle). Founding Artistic Director of Shakespeare on the Sound in Norwalk, CT. Runs Brooklyn’s Young Actors Workshop.

CHRISTOPHER DAFTSIOS*

This is the sixth mainstage production for Daftsios at NJ Rep including The Jag and Swimming at the Ritz for which he received two BWW nominations and Lily which he was also wrote. He has performed in over fifty theatre productions throughout the United States and Europe receiving a Pryor Nomination for A Streetcar Named Desire (The Gilbert Theatre) and a SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Nan & the Lower Body (TheatreWorks, Palo Alto). Film/TV: American Horror Stories, FBI, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, The Equalizer, What Would You Do, Royal Pains, Conviction, A Haunting, Ball & Vase (Emmy Award, Best Short). Daftsios can be currently seen in six episodes of Hulu’s limited series Diddy on Trial: As it Happened as defense attorney Brian Steel. He is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA, Actors Equity, The Dramatist Guild and The Actors Studio, Playwrights Division.

ANNA KHAJA*

Anna Khaja most recently appeared Off Broadway in Fatherland at Manhattan Theatre Club and starred opposite Sir Ben Kingsley as Zipporah in “The Old Stories” (Amazon Prime). She has performed at numerous theaters across the country, including the Mark Taper Forum, Rogue Machine Theatre, Cleveland Play House, La Jolla Playhouse and Culture Project.

Anna is also an award-winning playwright and solo performer. Her play Shaheed: The Dream and Death of Benazir Bhutto, which she wrote and starred in, enjoyed an extended Off-Broadway run in New York. Time Out called the play “a wonder,” while Backstage described it as “heart-stopping, engrossing, funny, and profound theatre.” Her stage work has earned her an Ovation Award for Lead Actress, five Ovation nominations, and an LA Weekly Award for Best Solo Performance.

As a writer, Anna is a recipient of the Google x Black List Storytelling Fellowship and an alum of the Mentorship Matters TV Writers Program, where she was mentored by showrunner Valerie Armstrong. Her original pilot “Monsters Like Us” won the Grand Prize in the ScreenCraft Pilot Competition. Her short film “Headbang,” which she wrote and directed, has screened at festivals across the country and internationally, earning multiple awards and honors.

Anna is perhaps best known for her recurring roles on “The Lincoln Lawyer,” “The Good Place,” and “The Walking Dead: World Beyond,” “Hacks,” “Madam Secretary” and “Silicon Valley”.

KEVIN LOREQUE*

Kevin is excited to be making his debut at New Jersey Rep with Nacho Ate Spiderman in this wonderful new play by Michelle Kholos Brooks, and directed by Sarah Norris, both of whom he had the immense pleasure of working with on the World Premiere Off-Broadway play War Words at A.R.T./New York, and then later presented at The Library of Congress in D.C. Kevin’s more recent Television credits include “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”, “Daredevil”, “The Blacklist”, “Elementary”, “Pose” “Godfather of Harlem”, among others. He is a lead in the feature film “Small Time”, directed by Niav Conty, portraying a war vet with PTSD and a heroin addiction, on Amazon Prime, and recently portrayed Fred Astaire in “Marty Supreme”. Theatre Credits include an International Tour of I Am My Own Wife (Africa, UK, USA), the Broadway National Tours of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats (Rum Tum Tugger) and Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Papa Who). Regional theatre credits include lead roles in The Elephant Man, Cabaret, Baskerville, Sleuth, Man of La Mancha, Spamalot, George M!, Romeo and Juliet, Chicago, The Who’s Tommy, A Man of No Importance, as well as the world premiere play Year One by Erik Gernand, among others. Kevin is represented by the Bloc Talent Agency in NYC and has now been a part of over 125 stage productions.

MICHELLE KHOLOS BROOKS

MICHELLE KHOLOS BROOKS is an award-winning playwright with productions staged internationally. Awards and distinctions include the Susan Glaspell Award, multiple Stage Raw awards, and Best of Edinburgh Fringe for H*TLER’S TASTERS.  KALAMAZOO won the Riva Shiner Comedy Award. ROOM 1214 was a finalist for The Ashland New Plays Festival. HOSTAGE was a finalist for the Woodward/Newman Drama Award, the Fratti-Newman Political Play Contest, and a Showcase Finalist for the National New Play Network. CHAIR received second place in the Firehouse Theatre Festival of New American Plays. Brooks’ play, WAR WORDS, was recently inducted into the United States Library of Congress as a collection of the Veterans History Project. H*TLER’S TASTERS is currently being developed as a streaming series by Producer Brad Saunders and Peter Dinklage’s company, Estuary.

Publications include Dramatists Play Service, Theatrical Rights Worldwide, Plays for New Audiences, Room Literary magazine, The Daily Beast, and Zocalo Public Square.

Brooks earned a B.A. from Emerson College and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Otis College of Art and Design. She is a Resident Artist at New Light Theater Project, a former Artist in Residence at New York Rep, and a current a board member of ShPIel-Performing Identity Theatre Project. Brooks is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, The Playwrights Center, Pacific Resident Theatre, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. www.MichelleKholosBrooks.com

SARAH NORRIS

SARAH NORRIS is an award-winning SDC director and producer based in New York. Her work has been seen around the country including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Houston, and around the world in Scotland, Australia, England and Ireland. She is the Founding Producing Artistic Director of New Light Theater Project, an Off-Broadway company dedicated to an ensemble of artists that has mounted over 40 world premieres, including Michelle Kholos Brooks’ H*tlers Tasters, War Words, and Room 1214. Her last production at NJR was Lily by Christopher Daftsios which was named ‘Top 12 of 2019’ from NJ Arts. To learn more, visit SarahNorris.org.