foster creativity & innovation in the theater by providing
alternative production structures for new work

encourage and support innovative collaborations
within and across disciplines

Sabrina Hamilton (Artistic Director)
is the Artistic Director of the Ko Festival of Performance in Amherst, MA. For many years she worked with the New York theatre company Mabou Mines as Lighting Designer, Production Manager, Stage Manager, Performer, and Assistant Director.   Other credits include work at the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Goodman Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum and 6 years as Route Lighting Designer for New York's Village Halloween Parade under the direction of Ralph Lee. International lighting credits include work in Bologna, Florence, Milan, London, Grenada, Geneva, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Amsterdam, Brussels, Cardiff, Edinburgh, at the Bristol Old Vic, the Theatre Academy in Tampere, Finland, and at the International Theatre Festival in Havana, Cuba. She has been touring recently as the Lighting Designer for LOW, written an performed by Rha Goddess, directed by Chay Yew. Her directing work, primarily original pieces, has been seen in New York, Berlin and throughout New England. Hamilton has served on the Editorial Board of Theatre Topics . She is on the Lighting Commission of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), for whom she serves as head of their Portfolio Review program and as the International Liaison.   She was recently named as the USITT representative to the Lighting Design Working Group of OISTAT, the international parent body of USITT. In addition, Hamilton has served on a N.E.H. panel, the "New Forms" panel for Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers panel. She holds a B.A. from Hampshire College and double M.F.A. in Directing and Lighting Design from the UMASS/Amherst.   She has been on the faculties of Hampshire, Williams and Trinity Colleges, and Long Island University, and served as the Program Director of the M.F.A. Theatre Program at Towson University for 2006-7. She was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the Network of Ensemble Theatres

Kathy Couch
is the resident Instructor and Lighting Designer for Amherst College. In her freelance work, she has designed over 300 shows in New York, Boston, Washington DC and across the Northeast USA. This is Kathy's eighth lighting design for Serious Play! Theatre Ensemble and she toured with them to Athens Greece in 2000. Kathy has worked extensively with Wendy Woodson, New WORLD Theatre, the 2050 Project, Universes, Fay Simpson Impact Theatre, Chimera Theatre and the Dance Generators. She has worked extensively with the KO FESTIVAL OF PERFORMANCE for many years, where last summer she was the designer for MATERMORPHOSIS

Lesley Farlow
performs as a dancer, actress and vocalist.   She has worked with Ping Chong, Douglas Dunn, Phyllis Lamhut, Moses Pendleton, Ann Carlson, Johanna Boyce, Ara Fitzgerald and Marta Renzi, among others. She has been one of the vocalists in Joshua Fried's ubiquitous Headfone Follies. Her own movement/theatre work has been produced at various venues in New York throughout the U.S. and in Europe.   Acting credits include productions Off and Off-Off Broadway, as well as regional theatre.   Choreographic credits include The Alexander Plays (Public Theater), What Use Are Flowers (Westbeth Theater Center), Imperceptible Mutabilities of the Third Kingdom , Pilgrims of the Night , Pericles and Love's Labors Lost (Yale Drama School), Madwoman of Chaillot , Ingmar Bergman's Nora and Charles Mee Jr.'s Orestes (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Len Jenkins' Candide (CSC Repertory Theatre), Stephen Schwartz and John Caird's Children of Eden (American premiere), Ring Round the Moon (Sanford Meisner Theatre). In 2004 the Ko Festival mounted her evening of solo performance OUT OF THE GARDEN and her last performance at the Ko Festival was in 2006 as part of THE KO KABARET.

Janna Goodwin
is a writer, director, performer and composer whose work has been seen and/or heard in Los Angeles, Denver/Boulder, New York, Boston, and throughout Western Massachusetts, where she now makes her home in Denver. The latest information on her can be accessed here


BJ Goodwin (emeritus)
was a dancer, improviser and producer who joined Ko Theater Works, Inc. as a core company member this year. She has performed with Phyllis Lamhut, Moses Pendleton, and Ann Carlson as a dancer.  Her own movement/theatre work has been produced at various venues in New York City, including P.S. 122, Dixon Place, Movement Research and BACA Downtown.  Her improvisational performances have been seen at the New York Improv Festival, the Montreal Fringe Festival, Green Street in Boston, the Berkshire Improv Festival and in Northampton, MA. She has produced numerous multi-disciplinary events including New Preston at Night, Live in Litchfield, Northampton at Night and The Spontaneous Cabaret.  Her one-woman show Keeping A Breast, about living with breast cancer, premiered at the 10th Annual Ko Festival of Performance at Amherst.

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