Airswimming: Meet the Design Team

Meet the design team behind the regional premiere of Airswimming. 

Katherine Forrest (Stage Manager) Katherine is delighted to be making her debut with Dragon Productions Theatre Company. She has worked behind the scenes and on stage for many previous shows. Her most work was done at Woodside High School, taking on various roles in productions. She is also studying at Canada College to obtain a double major in Business and Theater.

R. Dutch Fritz (Scenic Designer) This is Dutch’s 2nd Dragon production after the fantastically received, Dead Accounts. Most recently he designed Sister Act at Hillbarn Theatre, Cabaret at Pacifica Spindrift and All in the Timing at NDNU Theatre; where he designs scenery, costumes, props & lighting and teaches Design & Production for his day job. For 20 years, Dutch produced the NDNU Theatre Festival & Playwrights’ Contest. Some favorite credits include, Amateurs, Almost Maine, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, *Dracula (his own adaptation),Our Town, Three Sisters, Beard of Avon, Misalliance,  A Christmas Carol, Fiddler on the Roof, Hotel Paradiso, Grapes of Wrath, Oklahoma!, *Real Women Have Curves, *Dearborn Heights, Dead Man Walking, 1940’s Radio Hour, *Rose Tattoo, *Blood Wedding, Noises Off, You Can’t Take It With You, *The Rover, Much Ado About Nothing, *Roosters, *Marisol, *F.O.B., Deathtrap, Crimes of the Heart, Will Rogers Follies, Holes, Defying Gravity, Aladdin, The Foreigner, Oliver, Secret Garden, Diary of Anne Frank, Sweeney Todd, Woman in Black, To Kill a Mockingbird, Approaching Zanzibar, Urinetown,*Dancing at Lughnasa, Inherit the Wind, *Our Lady of the Tortilla, Waiting for Godot, *Picasso at the Lapin Agile, and Man of la Mancha. He has adjudicated for American College Theatre Festival and Music Theatre San Jose High School Outreach. Other credits include, Ragazzi, Central Washington University, Laughing Horse Summer Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Invisible Theatre and University of Arizona, where he earned his MFA. He holds MSS & BA degrees from U of South Dakota where he designed museum exhibits, restored a 1941 Chevy and was a traditional Lakota/Sioux. For his grandson’s 3rd birthday Dutch built a kid-scaled pirate ship. An Eagle Scout; he has been a cook, teen counselor and a lifeguard. (* Shows directed and designed.) More at www.dutchfritz.com  

Brooke Jennings (Costume Designer) Brooke is ecstatic to rejoin Dragon Productions with this thoughtful production of "Airswimming.” A graduate of UC Santa Cruz's Theater Arts Masters Program, Brooke is an award winning Costume Designer currently working in the Bay Area and New York. Her credits also include San Francisco Playhouse (Colossal, The Nether, Stage Kiss), Berkeley Playhouse (Peter Pan The Musical), We Players (MIdsummer of Love, Romeo and Juliet, HeroMonster, Ondine), Magic Theater (asst. designer: A Lie of the Mind, Bad Jews), FaultLine Theater (Every 28 Hours, Maggie’s Riff), Virago Theatre (The Singularity (New York Premier, 2015)), Custom Made Theater Company (Mother Night, Belleville, Chess The Musical, Six Degrees of Separation, Sam and Dede (SF and NY Premieres)), and City Lights Theater (Rocky Horror Show). Brooke is the 2015 Recipient for Best Costume Design by Theatre Bay Area for her work on We Players’ “Ondine at Sutro," directed by Ava Roy and Carly Cioffi.

Charles McKeithan (Master Carpenter) has been working in Bay Area theater for over ten years now as an actor and a carpenter and is happy to be back with the Dragon for another round of fun. His past works include multiple producttions here at the Dragon, Walls of Jericho at the Pear, Collosus at SF Playhouse, and countless productions with Ron Gasparinetti under the guise of Thrust Scenic Design.

Lance Huntley (Sound Designer) Lance is pleased to be working at Dragon

again.

Chloe Schweizer (Assistant Sound Designer) Chloe is excited to be back in the Bay and working with Dragon Theatre again after filling in last summer as a stage manager for Anna Christie. Other recent credits include stage manager for Sunnyvale Community Players’ Rent, and assistant stage manager for the world premiere of Ike Holter’s Night Runner with The Theatre School at DePaul’s “Chicago Playworks for Families and Young Audiences” series. This fall, Chloe will be returning to The Theatre School to continue pursuing a BFA in theatrical sound design. She hopes you enjoy the show!

Patrick Mahoney (Lighting Designer) Patrick is thrilled to be designing his first show at Dragon Productions. He is a recent transplant to the Bay Area having just come from the Cleveland Play House as their Lighting Apprentice. While there, he served as the Assistant Lighting Designer for shows such as Sex With Strangers, Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville, Clybourne Park, How I Learned to Drive, and Disney’s Freaky Friday.  Locally, Patrick was the Assistant Lighting Designer for As You Like It at California Shakespeare Theater and Measure for Measure at both Santa Cruz Shakespeare and California Shakespeare Theater.  B.S. in Theatrical Design from Northwestern State University.  patrickmahoneydesign.com

Richard Newton (British Dialect Coach) This native of Liverpool, England  is a theatre professional and educator. His body of work includes: as dialect - for Dragon Theatre - The Woman in Black & Smash!; for Theatreworks Silicon Valley - Hound of the Baskervilles, The 39 Steps, Emma the musical; City Lights - Calendar Girls, Dr Jeckyll & Mr Hyde;  for NDNU & Performing Arts Group - Christmas Carol, the Musical (also, associate director); for Coastal Rep - Oliver!, The Rivals, & The Odd Couple. As director - Awake & Sing at Coastal Rep and will direct there in early 2018. As actor/writer/ensemble he collaborated on Arc:Hive - A Moment (Un)Bound: Or, The Unreal Past - a Dragon Theatre 2nd Stage production which was an honoree in the 'Standout New Works' category in the Silicon Valley small theatre venue awards. He supplements his professional theatrical career with the healing arts. His main focus is the horse/human connection where he finds their interaction resonates with his theatrical training and teaching. In this vein he cowrote/collaborated/acted in the experimental play Philippos, Red Barn, Stanford: a work integrating human actors and horses as actors. He holds an MFA in Directing/ Dramaturgy from Roosevelt University, Chicago.

Erika Overstreet (Scenic Intern) Erika is glad to be back in the theater helping to make the stage at Dragon Productions come alive. She spent her years at the University of Davis, CA working on a variety of shows but has since been using her skills in event coordination. When not offering her services to the next Dragon show she can be found roaming the Stanford campus or the Bay Area.

Erika Zinsmeister (Dramaturg) Airswimming marks Erika's dramaturgical debut in the Bay and she is grateful for the opportunity to explore public education and community development in the arts as part of Dragon's creative community. Having grown up in theater on the Massachusetts South Shore, she is thrilled to find this creative outlet for her historical research skills across multiple topics and time periods. She joins Dragon Productions straight out of a PhD program in the History of Health Sciences at University of California, San Francisco.