Jordan Moore* hails from the suburbs of Chicago, but is now based in Los Angeles. He is a proud graduate of Northwestern University where he studied Theatre and Acting for the Screen. Since graduating, he has worked across Chicago, St. Louis and Los Angeles. In Film and TV he most recently appeared in the film, Year One, opposite Elizabeth Yu (Avatar the Last Airbender, May December), and was nominated for his performance in the web series, Chill Girl, at the Indie Series Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy. He is a proud company member at the Road Theatre and a recent alumni of the IAMA Theatre Company Summer Intensive. He has performed with Road Theatre, McCoy Rigby Entertainment, Paramount Theatre, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, Chicago Immersive, Lifeline Theatre, and Pride Films and Plays. As a writer/director, Jordan is in pre-production for his short film COUSINS set to shoot in the fall and developing a feature film and a pilot concurrently. He thanks his family, friends, Aqua Talent, Rectangle Entertainment and Dawn Mora for their endless support.

Ricki Franklin (she/her) is so excited to be returning to Shakesfest for this new adventure!  She was seen most recently in Metro Theater Company’s tour of But What Can You Do.   She has been seen previously in her award winning runs as Touchstone in As You Like It and Dame Toby in Twelfth Night, both with the St Louis Shakespeare Festival.  Other theater companies she has worked with include Contraband theater, Bread and Roses, MustardSeed Theater, and St Louis Shakespeare Company.  She’s a St Louis, Missouri native who was trained at Baylor University.   She loves Jesus, her family and pasta.

IG: pretty_ricki20

(Lady Capulet) is so glad to return to St. Louis to work with this tremendously talented company.  STL credits:  Night of the Iguana and Lady of Larkspur Lotion (radio play) with The Tennessee Williams Festival STL. She has performed on Broadway (The 39 Steps) and Off-Broadway/NYC (White on White, Intimate Apparel, The Pretty Trap, Dysphoria, The Less We Talk) working all over the country at theatres including JACK, The Zach, The Goodman, Berkeley Rep, Seattle Rep, Chautauqua Theatre Company, Pioneer Theatre Company, San Jose Rep, The Olney Theatre Center, Capital Rep, Geva Theatre, Theatre at Monmouth, Merrimack Rep, Chautaqua Theatre, Peterborough Playhouse, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, three seasons with the Cleveland Play House, three with The Illinois Shakespeare Festival, and three with the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre, four seasons with The Old Globe, and five with The Denver Center. She has been involved in developing new work for Manhattan Theatre Club, Lark Theatre, New Harmony Project, Dramatist Guild, Colorado New Play Summit, and OSF’s PlayOn! Project.  As a member of the Screen Actors’ Guild, she played June Thompson in all five seasons of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and was included in a SAG Award for Best Ensemble nomination. Nisi holds an MFA from the Old Globe/USD. She’s a proud mom to and Owen and is grateful to be among the theatre faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as an Associate Professor of Acting. With much gratitude to my mentors, family, and friends. LOVE & ART!

Olivia Scicolone is a recent graduate of NYU’s MFA in Acting. Originally from Cleveland, OH, Olivia has performed regionally and gravitates toward new work development and service-oriented theater. After devising a clown show in grad school (Mallwalkers) and pursuing a fellowship to study puppetry in Indonesia, she is thrilled to help bring such a larger-than-life production to the stage!

Jacob is ecstatic to be making his debut with St. Louis Shakespeare Fesitval, and to work with this amazing group of cast/crew/creatives! He’s a proud graduate of Fontbonne University with a B.A. in Theatre Performace. He was last seen in The Tesseact Theatre Company’s productions of Anastasia: The Musical (Ensemble), as well as The New Jewish Theatre’s production of Trayf (Zalmy)! As a St. Louis local, the zoo holds so many happy memories, and he dedicates this show to his grandmother who brought him here constantly and would’ve LOVED to see him perform here. Much love to his friends and family, his sister Ellie (his biggest cheerleader and biggest critic), his boyfriend Riley, and YOU the audience for supporting local theatre and live arts!

Ryan Omar Stack Ryan is incredibly excited to be making his STL Shakespeare Debut. Regional credits include: The Queen’s Ball: A Bridgerton Experience (Shondaland, Netflix, Fever); Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, All’s Well That Ends Well, Coriolanus, Macbeth, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Arden of Faversham (Colorado Shakespeare Festival); Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Elusive Ear (Miner’s Alley Performing Arts Center); You Enjoy Myself (Local Theater Company); TV/Film/New Media: Life Is Strange Remastered. Special Awards/Training: 2024 OnStage Colorado Actor in a Comedy. Lewis Myers Scholar, DCPA Education. www.ryanomarstack.com

Home to over 16,000 animals, representing nearly 500 species, the Saint Louis Zoo is recognized worldwide for its innovative approaches to animal care and management, wildlife conservation, research, and education. One of the few free zoos in the nation, the Saint Louis Zoo is the most-visited attraction in the region. Accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), the Saint Louis Zoo is part of an elite group of institutions that meet the highest standards in animal care as well as provide fun, safe and educational family experiences. The Saint Louis Zoo and the other AZA-accredited institutions collectively dedicate millions of dollars annually to support scientific research, conservation and education programs. For more information, visit stlzoo.org. 

HENRY WARSHAW BROADWAY SHOWS LLC has successfully invested in Broadway Shows over the past 10 years including Hamilton, Hadestown, Funny Girl, CATS, School of Rock and many other hit shows. Henry is the founder and president of Virtual Realty Enterprises, a diversified real estate company. He has served on the Board of Directors at institutions across St. Louis, including Enterprise Financial Services Corp, Enterprise Bank of Clayton, the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, Crossroads College Prep, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Barnes Jewish Hospital and the Goldfarb School of Nursing. He is a graduate and current Trustee of Washington University St. Louis, where he earned both a B.A., and M.B.A. In 2013 was honored with the Distinguished Alumni Award.

St. Louis Shakespeare Festival strives to foster community and joy across the St. Louis region through the Shakespearean tradition of art for all. Since 2001, the Festival has grown from producing a single production of Shakespeare in Forest Park to a year-round season of impactful programming in exciting and accessible venues throughout the bi-state area. Artistic and education programs reach over 50,000 patrons and students each season. Their award-winning work has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg News.

Jennifer Joan Thompson is a writer, actor, and educator based in St. Louis. Her plays have been performed in New York and New Haven. She has been a finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and featured on Steppenwolf’s “The Mix” list. As an actor she has performed on and off Broadway, regionally and in television at theatres including Lincon Center, Roundabout, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ensemble Studio Theatre and regionally around the country. She has taught playwrighting, acting, and theatre history at The University of Pennsylvania, Webster University, Brooklyn College, and City College and is currently an assistant professor of theatre studies at Southern Methodist University. Her book on Chilean theatre is currently available with Northwestern University Press. BA: Yale University; MFA: NYU; PhD: CUNY Graduate Center. She dedicates her work on this play to her two daughters, Eleanor and Rosie.

Tom has served as Producing Artistic Director of the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival since 2018. He is also a Drama Desk-nominated director who has developed or presented work at the Public Theater, The Old Globe, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Red Bull and more. He’s worked with Tony nominees Sting, Sherie Rene Scott, Will Swenson, Kelli O’Hara, Bill Irwin and others, and his productions have won DFW Theater Critics Forum and ECNY Awards and been nominated for St. Louis Theatre Critics Circle, Connecticut Critics Circle and BroadwayWorld Connecticut Awards. He came to St. Louis from Waterwell in New York City, the company he co-founded and led and as Artistic Director from 2002-2018. There he created and produced more than a dozen world-premieres and adaptations of classics that were nominated for three IT awards, a Drama Desk, a New York Magazine Culture Award and a Village Voice “Best of NYC”. Many involved innovative community partnerships, such as resurrecting the lost WWII-era Frank Loesser musicals, Blueprint Specials – featuring Broadway and military veterans and presented on board the former USS Intrepid aircraft carrier – and adapting and directing Waterwell’s dual-language (English/Farsi) version of Hamlet: designed and performed by a company largely of Middle Eastern and South Asian artists. As Artistic Director of Waterwell, he also oversaw the Waterwell Drama Program at the Professional Performing Arts School, one of the preeminent training grounds for young artists and innovators in the country, which offers daily, year-round, conservatory-style classes to more than 200 New York City public school students absolutely free of charge. Since taking over the Festival, he has won a St. Louis Magazine A-List Award for “New Arts Leader” and overseen the Festival’s shift to developing and producing new work, which also won an A-List Award for “New Programming”. The Festival’s regional premiere of George Brant’s Into the Breeches won the Theatre Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Production of a Comedy, and the collaboration he conceived between the Festival, Jazz St. Louis and Big Muddy Dance Company on a world-premiere adaptation of Duke Ellington’s Such Sweet Thunder won the Theatre Circle Award for Outstanding Musical as well as a St. Louis Arts Award for “Arts Collaboration”. His outdoor production of King Lear – starring Tony, Grammy and Emmy Award winner André DeShields, with an all-BIPOC cast – was the nation’s first major live theatrical event since the onset of Covid-19 and was named the “Best Live Theater” of 2021 by the Riverfront Times. The Festival’s new TourCo program he launched in 2021 is now the largest outdoor Shakespeare tour in the world. And the Confluence Regional Writers Project has commissioned over a dozen new plays from emerging playwrights in Missouri and Illinois since 2019, more than half of which have gone on to full productions at theaters around the country. He also led the effort, alongside Aaron Williams of 4theVille, to prevent the closure of Sumner High School, the oldest black high school west of the Mississippi, and give it a new focus on Arts and Activism. The Sumner Recovery Plan won a LaunchCode Moonshot Award for “Collaboration”, an ACAC IDEA Award for “Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility” and a St. Louis Arts Award for “Art Collaboration”. It now offers daily in-school instruction in Dance, Drama, Fashion, Music and Visual Art to over 200 St. Louis public school students through an innovative public-private partnership with over a dozen local arts organizations.

For 35 years, Michael Curry Design has been a leader in entertainment and attractions around the world, creating some of the most iconic forms of puppetry, set design, and spectacle. Our in-house design and production teams are made up of over 50 highly specialized artists, designers, technical consultants, and fabricators. This award-winning multidisciplinary team is sought out by the world’s foremost entertainment companies, including The Walt Disney Company, Universal, Wynn Resorts, Metropolitan Opera, Cirque du Soleil, as well as Olympic and Super Bowl Ceremonies. Michael Curry Design continues to innovate, heavily incorporating new technologies while being grounded in traditional theatrical techniques to create the world’s most exemplary entertainment experiences.

Scott C. Neale is thrilled to return to St. Louis Shakespeare Festival after designing the 2023 Shakespeare in the Streets production of The Game’s Afoot. As You Like It is Scott’s seventh SFSTL mainstage design, after his first production of Taming of the Shrew in 2011 and most recently The Winter’s Tale in 2017. Scott is an award-winning freelance scenic & experiential designer and Chair of the Scenic Design program at The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He has served as Resident Scenic Designer for Albany Park Theater Project in Chicago since 2006, which recently opened a 12,000 Sq. Ft. immersive production co-created with Third Rail Projects titled Port of Entry, an experience which invites audience members to step inside the real-life stories of immigrants and refugees from all parts of the world living side by side in a single apartment building in one of the country’s most diverse immigrant communities: Chicago’s Albany Park. Port of Entry was recently featured in the Fall 2023 edition of American Theatre Magazine. In addition, he continues to design theatrical sets, exhibits and events, and interactive immersive environments around the world.

Scott is a proud member of United Scenic Artists Local 829, Themed Entertainment Association, and USITT. He is also a credited contributor to the collegiate textbook Scene Design and Stage Lighting, 9th and 10th Editions (Parker, Wolf & Block: 9th and 10th Editions © Wadsworth 2009, 2013). www. ScottCNealedesign.com

Raquel Adorno is a costume designer based in Chicago and Puerto Rico. Selected credits: CHICAGO: Wife of a Salesman (Writers Theatre); The Tragedy Of Othello, The Moor of Venice (Court Theatre); I, Banquo (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre); Intimate Apparel (Northlight Theatre); Plano (First Floor Theater); Top Girls (Remy Bumppo Theatre Company); Mies Julie (Victory Gardens Theater); Unelectable You (The Second City); D.O.A., Angry Fags (Steppenwolf Garage). REGIONAL: Rent (The Muny), Intimate Apparel (Utah Shakespeare Festival); Taming of the Shrew, Cymbeline, A Doll’s House, A Doll’s House, Part 2 (American Players Theatre); Small Mouth Sounds (UCCS Theatreworks). FILM: Limerence. EDUCATION: MFA in Stage Design, Northwestern University MM in Opera Performance, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. AWARDS: The Michael Merritt Academic Achievement Prize for Collaborative Design 2019.

Jeffrey “JQ” Qaiyum is an Emmy-winning composer and producer from Chicago. He creates the score for Hulu/FX’s The Bear, often working with fellow Chicago artist Johnny Iguana. He is also a founding member of Q Brothers, known internationally for their hip hop adaptations of Shakespeare and other classics. Q Brothers also performs music for children annually on the family friendly stages at Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits music festivals.

Jesse Klug (Lighting Designer) Off Broadway: The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity (Lortel, Hewes Nomination), The Screwtape Letters (Off Broadway and National Tour), The Hunchback Variations, Romulus, and The Hourglass. Regional: Goodman Theatre, Drury Lane, Broadway in Chicago, Chicago Shakespeare, Marriott Theatre, Victory Gardens, Lookingglass Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Asolo Rep, Court Theatre, Writers Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory, Geffen Playhouse, Fulton Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Indiana Repertory, American Theatre Company, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Northlight Theatre, First Stage Milwaukee, Timeline Theatre Company. He is a Jeff and After Dark Award recipient. www.jessekluglightingdesign.com

Stephen Ptacek is a Chicago-based Sound Designer, Composer, Musician and Audio Engineer. This production marks 10 years of sounds with the Q Brothers, going back to 2013 when he subbed into the Mix For Othello: The Remix. A Small Sample Of Other Sound Design Credits Over The Past 20 Years Includes Nell Gwynn And Q Brothers Christmas Carol At Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Ever In The Glades At The Kennedy Center, Mies Julie At Victory Gardens, The Skin Of Our Teeth With Remy Bumppo, Killer Angels At Lifeline, The Twins Would Like To Say With Dog & Pony At Steppenwolf, And Faster At The Side Project. When He’s Not Designing He Engineers Live Sound At The Lyric Opera, The Harris Theatre for Music & Dance, The Goodman Theatre, and abroad.