ARTISTS
The Play Society convenes artists/teachers from around the world —
bringing practitioners together to offer their distinct perspectives and dynamic approaches
to performance and creation, united by an ethos of play.
Through these encounters, participants will find the support and challenge they need
to enlarge their sense of what might be possible on stage, and to bring their newfound tools & capacities for robust expression & playful investigation to their creative practices and communities.
JUSTINE WOLF WILLIAMS
Justine (she, they) is an actor-creator, theater & filmmaker, and celebrated teacher of play, clown, ensemble-based and devised performance. In the US, she has developed new work and appeared on stages at Ars Nova, NYTW, The Public Theater, Dixon Place, Abrons Arts, Shakespeare Theater of NJ, Yale Rep and Berkeley Rep, among others. Film work has premiered at Woodstock Film Festival, New Directors/New Films and Maryland Film Festival, and she was an artist-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she integrated new media and performance to bring the voices/work of elder immigrant artists in NYC to life inside the museum.
Internationally, Justine has presented new work at the Sibiu International Theater Festival, National Arts Festival in South Africa, and has collaborated with companies in France, Poland, Israel, Macedonia, Brazil and South Africa. She has completed residencies and fellowships with Queer|Art, New Georges, Lighthouse Film Festival, The Orchard Project and NY Women in Film & Television, and is currently writing a book on Play.
She has been at Yale School of Drama since 2013 teaching Acting as Play, Collaboration, and advising & facilitating new play development, and completed her MFA at CUNY/Brooklyn College in Performance and New Media.
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KATIE DOWN
Katie is a sound artist, experimenter, flutist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound practitioner, music psychotherapist, and teacher/facilitator.
Her music intersects the realms of sound art, free improvisation, folk, Jazz, and "world" music. Her homemade and constructed instruments include glass percussion, toys, broken things, and steel cello. She also plays ukuleles of all shapes and sizes, and likes to sing with people. Her band The Ukuladies performs original comic tunes and lots of bawdy songs from the 20s and 30s.
​Katie is an accomplished theater-maker and collaborator, and has created numerous sound scores for theatre, dance, and independent films. Her sound designs for theatre and dance have garnered Drama Desk nominations and an award for best sound design from The Connecticut Critic's Circle for her work at Long Wharf Theatre. She is the recipient of several grants, artist residencies, and composer commissions including the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, BAM, Watermill, Chashama, Music Omi, and Meet the Composer. ​
She hosts and curates workshops and events at Sound Well Barn in Upstate NY, an intimate artist retreat center she co-founded that convenes people around creativity and well-being.
EMMANUELLE DELPECH
Emmanuelle was classically trained at the Ecole Supérieure d’Art Dramatique de la Ville de Paris (ESAD), studied physical theater at l’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, and earned her MFA from Temple University in Directing.
In 2021, Emmanuelle returned to Lecoq to complete a 3rd pedagogical year, making her a certified and distinguished Lecoq teacher.
Emmanuelle was a member of The Pig Iron Theatre Company for 8 years as an actor/creator, and has been a core faculty member of their MFA program in Devised Performance, in association with Rowan University. She teaches regular workshops with Pig Iron, such as Red Nose Clown, The Body at Play, and a summer session including Neutral mask, half masks and clown. As a teacher, Emmanuelle has also taught at Swarthmore College, Bryn Mawr College, University of the Arts, Arcadia, Temple University, and Rowan University. She was a guest artist at Williams College, both teaching and directing student productions. Other workshops include: Volcano Institute in Toronto, Movement Theater Studio in NYC, Denison University, Davidson College, and the Yale School of Drama.
As an independent artist, Emmanuelle creates and performs in her own pieces, and collaborates with actor-creators to devise and create their own work. As a consultant, Emmanuelle worked with The Civilians on The Great Immensity, and on Anne Washburn’s A Devil at Noon.
Original works include: Spinning Immigrant for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and Madame Douce-Amere which toured in France and Philadelphia. Emmanuelle directed Oedipus at FDR (a skateboard adaptation of Oedipus at Colonus), FRONTIN’ with James Ijames on the tradition of Blackface performances and the identity of the black performers in America, Charlotte Ford’s BANG, a clown adaptation of Marivaux’s La Dispute, and Moliere’s Tartuffe. Emmanuelle has directed La Bete, Legend of Georgia McBride and Touchtones, a new musical. for the Arden Theatre in Philadelphia.
THE PLAY SOCIETY partners with Atlantic Theatre Arts, a music and theatre company based in Paris, France to co-produce our Paris-based sessions. The company is founded and directed by Adam Alexander and Lauren Van Kempen.
