Writer and Director

Elizabeth Dinkova (she/her/hers) is a Bulgarian itinerant director, adaptor, and collaborative creator who explores alternative realities at the intersection of theater, film, and music in pursuit of social justice. In 2021-22, she was an Associate Artistic Director of 7 Stages Theatre in Atlanta. She is an alum of the Alliance Theatre’s Artistic Leadership fellowship and a recent graduate from the MFA Directing program at the Yale School of Drama, where she served a a Co-Artistic Director of the Yale Summer Cabaret and received the Julian Milton Kaufman prize for Directing. Recent projects include the independent feature Cracking Zeus by Christopher Hampton, the visual album TIT, inspired by Titus Andronicus and co-written with Jesse Rasmussen, at the NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival, Rage, a play with music adapted from Stephen King, at Quinnipiac University, The Seagull at Serenbe Playhouse, and the opera Orfeo ed Euridice at Bel Cantanti Opera Company.

Writer and Director

Jesse (she/her/hers) is a writer, director and lyricist from Australia, currently based in Brooklyn and Maine. Jesse received her MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama and has directed works by Jeremy O.Harris, Tori Sampson and Sarah Mantell at Ars Nova, PSNY, the Yale School of Drama and Yale Rep. Jesse is a founding member of LA based avant-garde opera company Four Larks and has collaborated with the company on numerous projects as writer, librettist and lyricist on operatic works staged at the Getty Villa, The Wallis Annenberg Center and The Malthous Theatre (Australia). Four Larks’ film “hymns” was recently produced and released through the Getty Villa. Jesse is currently developing Medea In Exile, a contemporary adaptation of Medea by Australian playwright Tom Holloway, and producing a visual album based on Rilke's Book of Hours featuring a song cycle composed by Ellen Warkentine. In addition, Jesse has directed several music videos in the US and Australia for artists including The Ah, Joan As Policewoman and Cold Hands Warm Heart.

Producer and Co-Creator

Ashley James (she/her/hers) is an independent film producer, manager, and devised theatre creator, based in Atlanta. In 2015, she received the Princess Grace Theatre Honorarium Award to continue her work as an emerging director with Double Edge Theatre in Massachusetts, where she also worked as a performer. Later, Ashley relocated to Atlanta where she worked on theatre and film productions with Alliance Theatre, 7Stages, Dupont Productions and more. Having graduated from Florida State University with a Bachelor’s of Art in Theatre, she returned in 2018 to pursue her Master’s in Film Production. Since returning to Atlanta in the summer of 2020, Ashley has worked as a Production Coordinator on studio projects like Uglies (Netflix), Harold and the Purple Crayon (Sony), & Yellow (Amazon). From 2021 to 2022, Ashley also served as an Associate Artistic Director of 7 Stages Theatre. In addition to SYRENA, she is currently in production on a documentary feature about Double Edge Theatre’s 40th anniversary season and starting production on an animated short written and directed by Lebanese filmmaker and frequent collaborator Mazen Khaled.

Music Coordinator

Lukas Papenfusscline (they/he) is a composer and performer based in NYC and Cologne, Germany. They perform both very old and very modern music in collaborative spaces. Fusing ancient sounds with interdisciplinary experimentation and improvisation, they use quee temporality to connect disparate worlds through performance. A sought-after vocalist in opera and crossover genres, Lukas specializes in medieval and new music, while also leading a band, mammifères, that adapts traditional songs through ethnic chaos. As a theatre artist, they create, direct, and produce intimate performances based on found material, embodied research, and alternative documentation. They have recently appeared at the Wallis Theatre, Getty Villa, NYPL, La MaMa, Joe's Pub, Dixon Place, Club Passim, Bowery Electric, montez press radio, and New Ohio.

Documentarian

Tanya is a filmmaker, editor and documentary film researcher collaborating with teams across Europe and the US.

Her directorial debut “Village Vibe” premiered at the Lighthouse International Film Festival (LBI, NJ) in 2018. She is currently working on her next project - short documentary poem “I Am Not Going Back” and on a video essay for Light Year Festival (DUMBO, Brooklyn).

She has been on the creative team of a number of films and also works as a documentary researcher and associate producer for European productions - Boogaloo Film, Spain; Toolbox Films, Denmark; Diana Naecke, Germany, etc. She worked as a Field Producer for PPTV Sport China (on docu-series) during the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Moscow.

Since 2020, she is a Member of The Alliance of Documentary Editors.