Copy & Acknowledge Reading - Cast & Crew Bios & Headshots
Robert Walsh* (RUSTY)
Robert Walsh is a founding Member of Actors’ Shakespeare Project: As You Like It (Director); Henry VIII (Wolsey); Two Gentlemen of Verona (Director); Troilus and Cressida (Aggie/Pandarus); Living In Exile (multiple roles); Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2 (Falstaff); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Bottom); Coriolanus (Director); The Merchant of Venice (Antonio); The Tempest (Stephano); Titus Andronicus (Titus); Hamlet (Polonius); Twelfth Night (Director); Julius Caesar (Brutus); and Measure For Measure (Director). Producing Artistic Director: American Stage Festival (Table Manners, Bus Stop, Intimate Exchanges, among others); Director: Merrimack Rep (Norman Conquests, Later Life, Holiday Memories, K2); Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey (Othello); New Repertory Theatre (Rancho Mirage, Race, Speed the Plow, and True West); Shakespeare & Company (The Goatwoman of Corvis County, The Secret of Sherlock Holmes), and Two River Theatre Co. (Misalliance, A Life In the Theatre), among others. Other acting credits include Cherry Lane Theatre (Gloucester Blue), the Huntington Theatre (Hamlet and Ah, Wilderness!); Commonwealth Shakespeare Co. (Coriolanus, Macbeth, Henry V); Portland Stage Company (Romeo and Juliet); StageWest (Anna Christie); Gloucester Stage Company (Sins of the Mother, The Subject Was Roses); Douglas Fairbanks Theatre (Big Maggie). Films: Black Mass, The March Sisters at Christmas, Evening, State and Main, Amistad, The Spanish Prisoner, Eight Men Out, and Turk 182!, among others. TV: Body Of Proof (ABC), One Life To Live, Guiding Light, and Another World. Adjunct faculty: American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University) and Brandeis University. He also serves as Artistic Director of the Brandeis Theatre Company. He is a member of SDC, AEA, SAG-AFTRA and The Society of American Fight Directors.
Emma Weller (JILLY)
(she/her) is an actor, writer, director originally from Cambridge, MA. She earned her BFA in Theatre Arts from Boston University’s School of Theatre in 2024 and has trained with Atlantic Acting School, Accademia dell’Arte, and Frantic Assembly. She recently closed a three-week run of a new play in NYC and will return to her leading role for the show’s extension in early February. See more of her work at emmaweller.com & @em.sophia.
Theatre King Lear with Alvin Epstein, Emma, Twelfth Night, Richard III, Edward II, Othello, Henry VI, Part II, As You Like It, Medea, The Duchess of Malfi, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King John, All’s Well That Ends Well, Julius Caesar (Actors’ Shakespeare Project); Dancing at Lughnasa, Table Manners, Living Together (Gloucester Stage Company); Boston Marriage, Tartuffe, Dollhouse (New Repertory Theatre); Leopoldstadt, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Huntington Theatre); Living in Exile, Comedy of Errors, The Heidi Chronicles (Vineyard Playhouse); Molly Maguire (Sugan Irish Theatre); Macbeth, As You Like It (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company); Undine’s Valediction, Summer, The Scarlet Letter, Macbeth (Shakespeare & Company); The Marriage of Figaro/Figaro Gets a Divorce, The Beaux Stratagem, Pilgrims of the Night, (Yale Repertory Theatre); Guernica, King Lear , Scattered (Actors Theatre of Louisville); Cyrano De Bergerac (Lincoln Center Theatre); Goose and Tomtom (Theatre Building Chicago); Antony and Cleopatra (Greenwich Street Theatre); Midsummer Night’s Dream (Sun Valley Shakespeare Festival); Antigone (Chautauqua Theatre Festival). Film/TV Rudy (TriStar), Guiding Light (CBS), Darkling Plain (Trinity Pictures); Miss Julie, (PBS/BBC). Associate Professor of Theatre, The Boston Conservatory at Berklee; MFA Yale School of Drama.
Jennie Israel* (SAL)
Robert D. Murphy* (OFFICIAL VOICE / WEATHER REPORTER / DONNIE / JOEY B)
Robert D. Murphy has performed throughout New England for over 30 years and is a proud member of Actors’ Equity, SAG-AFTRA, and the Dramatists Guild. Regional credits: SpeakEasy Stage Company, Weston VT Playhouse, Harbor Stage Wellfleet, Underground Railway Theatre, Boston Playwrights Theatre, and North Shore Music Theatre, among others and, farther afield, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Fringe NYC. Upcoming in May 2026: THE CHILDREN at Players’ Ring Theatre in Portsmouth NH. In 2015, Bob was named a Fellow in Dramatic Writing by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and his plays have been produced from Provincetown to Perth; featured in numerous iterations of the Boston Theatre Marathon; and published in several editions of Smith & Kraus Best 10-Minute Plays. He has served on the boards of StageSource, The Theatre Community Benevolent Fund, and currently at the Rocky Neck Art Colony.
Tara Hightower (Stage Manager)
With Lanes Coven: Romeo & Juliet School Tour/Hammond Castle Museum, The Servant of Two Masters, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo & Juliet, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Macbeth. She is excited to be in Gloucester this summer for a fourth season with Lanes Coven! Select Stage Management credits include: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and A Midsummer Night's Dream (Gloucester Stage), Too Fat for China, Tuck Everlasting, The Tempest, Sam & Jim in Hell (Lost Nation Theater); and The Nutcracker (Brass City Ballet). She is a proud graduate of Central Connecticut State University (B.F.A) and a member of the Stage Managers' Association of the United States. IG:@tarajhightower
Justin Genna* (LUCA)
is the Co-Founding Artistic Director of Lanes Coven Theater Co and also an Actor, Theater-Creator, and Dancer. For Lanes Coven he has directed Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Chekhov’s The Proposal and most recently Love’s Labour’s Lost. He also adapted The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni for Lanes Coven in 2024, rewriting Truffaldino (whom he played) to speak in a made-up language “Zanni,” and communicate through movement. Justin holds an MFA in Acting from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. As an Actor, his Off Broadway & Regional Credits include Novenas For a Lost Hospital (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, NY); Marie, Dancing Still (5th Avenue Theatre), A Christmas Carol (American Conservatory Theater); Cyrano de Bergerac (SPARC Theater). TV/Film: Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women,” and “Law and Order SVU.” Justin worked as a professional ballet dancer for eight years with the Milwaukee Ballet, and has also danced with SF Opera and Oakland Ballet. Justin reimagines classical texts by envisioning them as a ballet; synthesizing movement, music and storytelling to expand its possibilities.
Lily Narbonne (DIRECTOR)
is the Co-Founding Artistic Director of Lanes Coven Theater Co and also an Actor, Dialect Coach, Director and Teaching Artist. As an Actor: Leopoldstadt (Huntington Theatre), A Christmas Carol (American Conservatory Theater); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Persuasion, Cyrano de Bergerac (SPARC Theater); Every 28 Hours (Berkeley Rep/A.C.T); The Three Musketeers, King Lear, Two Noble Kinsmen, All’s Well That Ends Well (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival); and Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Proposal, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Taming of the Shrew (Lanes Coven Theater Co). As Director: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Importance of Being Earnest and The Dumb Waiter (Lanes Coven Theater Co) and The Insurgents by Lucy Thurber for A.C.T. MFA SkyFest. TV/Film: “Julia” (HBO Max). As Dialect Coach (@dialectarts) – select credits include: A View From The Bridge, Shining City, Translations, Funnyhouse of a Negro and Moviestar. Education: MFA, American Conservatory Theater; BFA, BU School of Theatre & LAMDA.
Ken Riaf (Playwright)
Ken Riaf is a playwright, teacher, artist, lawyer and agent based in Gloucester, MA. His plays Think of Me Tuesday and My Station in Life have been presented at Gloucester Stage. Riaf collaborated with filmmaker Henry Ferrini and others for an earlier documentary on Geller, Radio Fishtown, produced in 1990. Riaf also wrote the screenplay to the Charles Olson film, Polis is This, another collaboration with Ferrini that has won multiple documentary awards. As a visual artist, his boxes were featured in an exhibition at Gloucester’s Matthew Swift Gallery, and Jane Deering Gallery, and led a workshop at the Peabody Essex Museum on that practice. As an agent, he represented the late Jon Sarkin, visionary outsider artist based here in Gloucester, who created a massive body of work, spanning exhibitions, private sales, and museum placements. As a lawyer, he specializes in public interest and ocean aquaculture law, and teaches screenwriting at Endicott College.