Using multimedia and the written word, Stage Raw is a digital journal dedicated to discovering, discussing and honoring L.A.-based arts and culture. The site offers complimentary searchable event listings, reviews (in written and podcast formats), features, profiles, humor and essays. Stage Raw will focus on the many voices and visions across the globe, in order to strive for a better understanding of local stresses and joys. We stand behind the actor on the unadorned stage; the director forging undiscovered meanings in a classic; the dramatist, painter, comedian and composer who may not have an agent, but who have something authentic to say. Stage Raw is here to provoke, and to serve artists and their audiences in the larger struggle to discern the purpose of our lives, and the meaning of our city.
CAST & CREW
Lara J. Altunian (she/her)
Lara is a writer, critic, and arts journalist. She received her MFA in Specialized Arts Journalism from the USC Annenberg School in 2016. Since then, her love for visual/interactive storytelling has drawn her focus to performance art. She was the primary dance reporter for Ampersand LA and L.A. correspondent for Dance.com. Lara is also a contributor of dance reviews for L.A. Dance Chronicle.
V CATE (They/Them)
V Cate’s passion for theater and reverence for fantasy blinds them to how to best live a normal life. Apart from their work with Stage Raw since its inception, the former Editor-in-Chief of @THIS STAGE is the Founder and Artistic Director of the feminist performance-coven, TheatreWitch, as well as the fantasy dance group Cabaret le Fey. V performs, writes, directs, however and whenever they can.
Julie LLoyd George (She/Her)
Julia Lloyd George grew up haphazardly in a family of 10 kids between Florida and England, before studying English at Georgetown University. She then moved to LA, where she started working as an assistant at production companies and in writers’ rooms for TV shows like A Teacher and Raised by Wolves.
Taylor Kass (She/Her)
Taylor Kass is a theater critic based in Los Angeles. She holds a BA in Theatre (Acting Emphasis) from the USC’s School of Dramatic Arts, with minors in Early Modern Studies and Musical Theatre. She also trained at the British American Drama Academy in London. In Los Angeles, she has appeared onstage, backstage, on film, and recording voiceover projects from her closet. Taylor currently works in TV production and has written about reality TV for ScreenRant and on www.taylorckass.com
Ryan M. Luevano (He/Him)
Ryan M. Luévano is a composer, playwright, screenwriter, and theater critic. He’s worked as a professor of music at several SoCal colleges and serves on the board of the Foundation for New American Musicals, a regular teaching artist at A Noise Within, and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America. He was Artists-in-Residence at Chateau d’Orquevaux in France and awarded the Denis Diderot Grant. His play La Lavadora was the winner of the Full Circle Players’ 2021 New Works Play Festival. www.ryanmluevano.com His website link is www.tinpanla.com
Judith Moreland (She/Her)
Judith Moreland’s directing credits include An Octoroon at the Fountain Theatre (Hollywood), Smart Peopleand Between Riverside and Crazy at Capital Stage (Sacramento), Everybody at Art of Acting/Stella Adler (Hollywood), At the Table at The Road Theatre (North Hollywood), Space Available at The Inkwell Theater (LA) and Into the Woods and The Mineola Twins at the UCLA where she’s a faculty member. Acting credits include Dark Skies, Eagle Eye, The Rookie, Blackish, PEN15, Grey’s Anatomy, NCIS, and Bosch. She’s performed at many theaters including the New York Shakespeare Festival, Playwrights Horizons, American Conservatory Theater, Meadow Brook Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theater/LA and the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles.
Elmira Rahim (She/Her)
Currently artistic director of ÉLAN Ensemble, Elmira started her acting career in Iran, where she worked with some of the most prominent theater companies. She joined the USC MFA Acting program where she met some of her most inspiring mentors. She has been working on stage, on camera and as a voice over artist since her graduation. She believes her homeland has offered her a great force to create art, combined with a deeply diverse community of artists at USC.
G. Bruce Smith (He/Him)
G. Bruce Smith is the award-winning author of over 25 plays of various lengths, and two screenplays. He has production credits in California, Minnesota, India and Paris, France. He has written theater reviews for publications including Stage and Cinema and Frontiers magazine. He was a staff writer for the Los Angeles Daily News and was a freelance writer for the Los Angeles Times for several years.
Amanda Andrei (She/Her)
Amanda L. Andrei is an award-winning Filipina Romanian American playwright residing in Los Angeles by way of Virginia/Washington DC. Her interests center on the concealed, wounded places of history and societies from the perspectives of diasporic Filipina women. Her work has been developed with Echo Theatre, The Vagrancy, Pasadena Playhouse, Playwrights Arena, Artists at Play, La MaMa, Relative Theatrics, Parity Productions, Panndora Productions, Bucharest Inside the Beltway, Southeastern European Film Festival, and more. University of Southern California (MFA). www.amandalandrei.com
Julyza Commodore (She/Her)
Julyza comes to Stage Raw through the Clark Branson/Stage Raw Young Journalists Program, in partnership with Grow @ The Wallis (a program of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts). Her first role was in Milford Second Street Players, but the role that would leave a lifetime impression, having been cast in Stormy Weather: The Lena Horne Story at Philadelphia’s Prince Music Theatre (2007). Julyza guest starred on Law & Order SVU where she played an African sex slave survivor.
F. Kathleen Foley (She/Her)
Kathleen began her critical career in the early 1980s as a reviewer for the Los Angeles Reader, where she briefly served as editor. She contributed several features to the Hollywood Reporter Special Issues section. She has also been a reader for Republic Pictures, recommending novels for production. She was a reviewer for the Drama-Logue before being hired by Charles Marowitz at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, where she worked until the paper folded in 1989. From 1994 until the theatrical community was disrupted by the pandemic, she regularly reviewed for the LA Times.
Deborah Klugman (She/Her)
Has been writing for alternative media in Los Angeles since 1987 when she began writing theater reviews for the LA Reader. She was a theater critic for the LA Weekly from 1995 through 2013. She has also reviewed film, books and food for various publications, along with articles on social and political issues. She joined the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle in 2013. She also posts for artsbeatla.com
Iris Mann (She/Her)
Iris is a former child actor who appeared on Broadway, in films, on television during its so-called Golden Age, and on dramatic radio. She has worked as an actor with Cary Grant, Marlon Brando, Frederic March, Julie Harris, Charles Laughton and numerous others. She also had her first journalism by-line at age 12 in The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper.She received a B.A. in philosophy from UCLA. As an arts journalist and critic, she has reported extensively for National Public Radio, California Public Radio, Artbeat, The Jewish Journal, and Backstage.
Terry Morgan (He/Him)
Terry has been reviewing theater or film since 1990. He has reviewed for the L.A. Weekly from 1997 to 2004. He has also reviewed for Variety, Back Stage West and LAist. Terry currently also posts for talkinbroadway.com. He joined the Los Angeles Drama Circle in 1999 and has served as its president.
Arthur L. Ross (He/Him)
After years of performing in New York and working as a Broadway dresser, Arthur has returned to his home city, Los Angeles, to continue his passion as a director, actor, choreographer and teaching artist. Arthur received his MFA Degree in Acting from University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and studied acting at SCR’s Professional Conservatory. A proud member of AEA, IATSE, AGVA and the New Light Theatre Project as an Artist-in-Residence. In 2005 Arthur created Bedazzled Productions where he remains the Artistic Director.
Jannelys Santiago (She/Her)
Jannelys comes to Stage Raw from the platform’s youth journalism program. She currently attends Los Angeles Film School, studying animation and game design. She was reared at Living Free Animal Sanctuary in Mountain Center, CA, where her father serves as the kennel supervisor. It was there she learned the importance of family, and respect for animals. In high school, she was accepted into Girls State, an exclusive auxiliary of the American Legion, where she learned about the duties, privileges, rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
Katie Buenneke (she/her)
Katie has been a theater critic for over a decade, and has been reviewing Los Angeles theater since 2011. She ran Neon Tommy‘s theater section for three years before freelancing for LA Weekly for another three years. She joined the LA Drama Critics Circle in 2015. She earned her BA in theater and MFA in film producing from USC. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Los Angeles Magazine, The Village Voice, The Long Beach Post, Paste, and TV Insider, among other publications.
Lisa Sanaye Dring (She/Her)
Lisa is a writer, director and actor. A recipient of the 2020/21 PLAY LA (Stage Raw/HUMANITAS) play development program. She’s worked with Circle X, Rogue Artists Ensemble, Hero Theatre, East West Players, SCF @ Son of Semele, Theatre of NOTE, Playwrights’ Arena, Blank Theatre, Bootleg, Inkwell, Cal Rep, Know Theatre of Cincinnati, Edinburgh Fringe, Bread & Puppet, Oregon Shakes, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Asolo Rep and La Jolla Playhouse, with fellowships at MacDowell, Blue Mountain Center and Yaddo. She is currently a member of The Geffen Writers’ Room. lisasanayedring.com
Martin Hernandez (He/Him)
Martín Hernández has a keen interest in social, racial and environmental justice as well as promoting workers’ rights, having been an organizer with the Labor/Community Strategy Center, where he still serves on its board of trustees. He grew up in East LA. After graduating from Cal State LA, he began a nearly 20-year stint as a theater reviewer and calendar writer for LA Weekly. After being with Stage Raw for its inaugural two years, he retired from his full-time job and followed his spouse to Saint Paul, Minnesota. Martín and spouse have now returned to the city of his birth, and he’s happy to rejoin Stage Raw.
joseph klink (He/Him/His)
Joseph Klink (He, Him, His) is an actor, director, and newly a theatre critic. Graduate of Saint Mary’s College of California and Art of Acting Studio Professional Conservatory, Joseph’s experience in performing arts ranges from acting in intimate spaces to choreographing group numbers for prosceniums. With a constant curiosity for detail, he’s happy to join Stage Raw in the search for powerful storytelling.
Dana Martin (She/Her)
Dana Martin is an actor, director, and critic (a member of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle). She serves as a mentor through the Z. Clark Branson/Stage Raw Equity and Inclusion Initiative for Young Journalists in partnership with the Grow @ The Wallis. Recent Performances include the Harold Clurman Lab Theatre, Chicago Dramatists/New Light Theatre Project, LA Opera, and Third Culture Theatre. Dana is a resident artist of NYC’s New Light Theatre Project.
Steven Leigh Morris (He/Him)
Is the Founding Editor of Stage Raw, and reports from the West Coast for The Stage in London. He was the Theater Editor and Critic-at-Large at LA Weekly, recipient of the National Entertainment Journalism Awards’ Print Critic of the Year, and has chaired and served on the Pulitzer Prize jury for Drama. Published in the New York Times, the LA Times, American Theatre Magazine and DRAMA Magazine in London. Steven’s plays have been produced in LA, NYC, and Poland.
Julia Stier (She/Her)
Julia Stier is an LA-based actress and playwright, and holds a BA in Theatre and minor in Cinematic Arts from the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared onstage in both LA and New York, and she has written for numerous publications, including Larchmont Chronicle, LA Parent, and the national magazine, Italian America. Julia is a member of the acting company at Hero Theatre, where she also serves as an Associate Producer and Literary Director. Juliastier.com
Socks Whitemore (They/Them/Theirs)
Socks Whitmore is a writer, stage and voice actor, and lyricist-composer rooted in voice and text. A graduate of CalArts, the range of their writing spans from musical theater to narrative design for games to poetry, short fiction, and op-eds. They have been produced by New Musicals Inc. and Overtone Industries, and published by the Sappho Small Talk blog and Queer Quarterly magazine, among others. Learn more at https://sockswhitmore.com.
Special Thanks TO:
co-founders David Elzer and Michael Seel, to Philip Brandes and Douglas Clayton for their counsel, and to our donors: Matt Almos, John Apicella, Gordon Bean, Sharon Bell, Timothy Cummings, Drew Blakeman, Z. Clark Branson, Gregory Crafts, Suzie Dietz, David Elzer, Olga Garay-English, Leigh Fortier, Maria Gobetti, Mark Governor, Martin Hernandez, Nancy Hereford, Nancy Keystone, Corey Klemow, Robert Leventer, Simon Levy, Alan Mandell, Kanchan Mattoo, Matthew McCray, Patricia McKee, David Melville, Kevin Meoak, John Money, Sebastian Munoz, Oanh Nguyen, Thomas James O’Leary, Lucy Pollak, Travis Preston, Wendy Radford, Jenelle Riley, Michael Seel, Mark Seldis, Philip Sokoloff, Mark Wilson, and Laura Zucker
