Meet The 2016 Festival Directors

Jade King Carroll (Director, Before Evening Comes) The daughter of the trumpeter and composer Baikida Carroll, as a child accompanied her father to the Public Theater in Manhattan, where he scored Lois Elaine Griffith’s White Sirens at the request of Joseph Papp, and to the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J., where he wrote, with Emily Mann and Ntozake Shange, and scored the musical Betsey Brown. After graduating from SUNY-New Paltz, where she majored in theater directing, she moved to New York City and quickly won an internship with the Women’s Project. Since then, she has compiled credits with the McCarter, New Dramatists, Primary Stages, Playwrights Realm, 24 Hour Plays, and New Jersey Rep.  In 2010, she served as artistic associate at Second Stage Theater.  Jade recently directed Emily Mann's Having Our Say at the Long Wharf Theatre, and will be directing the development of Running on Fire by Aurin Squire at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Conference prior to her work with BAPF.

Logan Ellis (Director, Non-Player Character) currently serves as the Producing Artistic Director of Theatre Battery and Literary Manager of Playwrights Foundation. Directing: The Little Mermaid (Marin Theatre Company), Water by the Spoonful (Dirty Hands), The Firefly Project (Magic Theatre), Year of the Rooster (Impact Theatre), dark play or stories for boys (Do It Live), Inay's Wedding Dress, Nanay's Lullaby (Bindlestiff Studio), Origins of Love (USF Mainstage), Chatroom, Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, Dog Sees God, Milk Like Sugar, A Maze (Theatre Battery). Former Artistic Direction Apprentice at Magic Theatre, BA,  Drama from Ithaca College.

Jessica Holt (Director, Sycamore) recently directed Significant Other by Joshua Harmon at Actor’s Express in Atlanta, Georgia.  She is thrilled to return to the Bay Area, where she served as the Artistic Director of the Bay One Acts Festival and as an artistic associate at the Magic Theatre.  Directing credits include: Bright Half Life (Magic Theatre), The Lily's Revenge, Act 5  (Magic Theatre), We Are Proud To Present... (Yale Summer Cabaret), Why Torture Is Wrong… (Yale Summer Cabaret), Have I None (Yale Cabaret), The Seagull (Yale School of Drama), Twelfth Night (Yale School of Drama), The Children (Yale School of Drama).  New play development at: Alliance Theatre, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, Theater Emory, Playwrights Foundation, Cutting Ball Theater, New Conservatory Theater Center, Piano Fight.  Upcoming: Ugly Lies the Bone by Lindsey Ferrentino (Alliance Theatre). 2015-2016 Phil Kent Directing Fellow, Alliance Theatre. 2016 National Directors Fellowship. MFA: Yale School of Drama.

M. Graham Smith (Director, Good, Better, Best, Bested) is a San Francisco-based Director, Educator and Producer. He is an O’Neill National Directing Fellow and an Oregon Shakespeare Festival FAIR Fellow. He’s directed at HERE in New York City, and in San Francisco at A.C.T., Aurora Theatre, Crowded Fire, Central Works, The EXIT Theatre, PlayGround, Brava, The Playwright’s Foundation, Cutting Ball Theatre, Ray of Light, Berkeley Playhouse, Golden Thread, SF Opera, and New Conservatory & Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor. He directed the West Coast Premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera in SF and Truffaldino Says No at Shotgun Players, (Best Director, Bay Area Critics Circle). Recent credits: The Lady Onstage (Profile Theatre Portland OR), The Liar adapted by David Ives (Occidental College, Los Angeles as an Edgarton Foundation Fellow). He teaches at A.C.T.’s actor-training programs, and was Producer of Aurora Theater’s international new play festival, The Global Age Project, for the last five years.

Sango Tajima (Director, whisper fish) is an Oakland-based artist who grew up internationally in the U.S, Japan, Tanzania, Trinidad & Tobago, and Thailand. In the Bay, she is member of a political theatre collective The Bonfire Makers, co-founder of a new producing ensemble Dirty Hands, and Associate Artist of Ragged Wing Ensemble. After serving as the Artistic Direction Apprentice at Magic Theatre, she’s acted in various productions with Campo Santo, FaultLine Theater, Impact Theatre, Cutting Ball Theater, Ragged Wing Ensemble, and New Conservatory Theatre Center. She recently directed for the Playwright’s Foundation’s FlashPlays 2015. BFA in Acting from the University of Michigan.

Christine Young (Director, Wild Goose Dreams)  is an Associate Professor at University of San Francisco and a free-lance director specializing in new plays about social issues affecting women’s lives.  From 2000-2006, she was Literary Manager and Artistic Associate at Playwrights Foundation. She has directed and taught for Tenderloin Opera Company, Crowded Fire, Lunatique Fantastique, Shotgun Players, California Shakespeare Theater, Magic Theatre, New Conservatory Theater, TheatreWorks, San Francisco Shakespeare, Golden Thread Productions and Just Theater. Christine curates Works by Women San Francisco (worksbywomensf.wordpress.com) a blog that spotlights the work of Bay Area women theater artists.  She is a member of Theatre Bay Area’s Gender Parity Advisory Committee and serves on the board of WomenArts.member of Theatre Bay Area’s Gender Parity Advisory Committee and serves on the board of WomenArts.