STAFF
Jessica Bird Beza
Jessica Bird Beza, Executive Artistic Director (she/her) is a Bay Area based director and producer. She has specialized in interim leadership positions including: Interim Associate Artistic Director & Interim Associate Producer at The Old Globe, Interim Associate Producer at La Jolla Playhouse, and Interim General and Producing Manager at Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company. Other select roles include National New Play Network Producer in Residence and Casting Director at San Diego Repertory Theatre as well as multiple consultant positions supporting casting, producing and fundraising.
Throughout her career, she has had a special focus on developing new work, producing multiple new play festivals, and had the opportunity to work, as a director or producer, with living playwrights such as Lindsay Joelle, Kait Kerrigan, JC Lee, BD Wong, PigPen Theatre Co., Laurel Ollstein, Thomas Gibbons, Herbert Siguenza, Inda Craig Galvan, Tom Salamon, and many more. She also served as Associate Director on the current Tony award winning Broadway musical COME FROM AWAY from its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse in 2015 to Broadway in 2017.
She has developed new work at Theatreworks Silicon Valley, American Conservatory Theatre, The Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego REP, Diversionary Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, NYU Musical Theatre Graduate Program, and Playwrights Foundation. Select directing projects include: a San Francisco based Urinetown: the musical in ACT’s conservatory program, NNPN rolling world premiere of Uncanny Valley at San Diego REP, a surrealist interpretation of God of Carnage at New Village Arts, Car Plays (literally in a car) during La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls Festival as well as co-writing and directing the BRAVO award winning one-woman show Woman in the Mirror: A Dancer’s Journey starring Michael Jackson impersonator Devra Gregory. You can visit her directing website at www.jessicabird.net.
Jessica holds a B.A. in Music & Theatre from Point Loma Nazarene University and a Master of Arts in Nonprofit Leadership and Management from the University of San Diego.
Heather Helinsky
Heather Helinsky, Literary Manager (she/her) is a Philadelphia-based dramaturg that playwrights have recognized as “especially adept at freeing energies in unexpected ways. She encourages discovery.” Nationally, her dramaturgical work has been seen at the Accessible Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, the Apothetae, Arizona Repertory Theatre, Arkansas New Plays Festival, Athena Project Festival, Best Medicine Rep, Borderlands Theatre Company, City Theatre, Colorado New Play Summit, Denver Center, Great Plains Theatre Conference, James Madison University, The Kennedy Center, The Lark, Lee University, Moscow Art Theatre’s American Studio, Omaha Community Playhouse, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Phoenix Theatre, Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Plan-B Theatre, Plays and Players of Philadelphia, PlayPenn, Salt Lake Acting Company, Telluride Playwrights Festival, Unexpected Stage, Woolly Mammoth, Venus Theatre, and the 6NewPlays collective in San Francisco. For two seasons, she served as a Barrymore Judge for Theatre Philadelphia, which adjudicates 60-100 productions in the Philadelphia region and is currently a board member for LMDA as VP of Freelance. She’s read and evaluated scripts for The O’Neill, PlayPenn, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Jewish Plays Project, Seven Devils and Sundance Theatre Lab. She has been the Literary Manager of the Pittsburgh Public and PICT Classic Theatre. For the Kennedy Center, Heather mentors student dramaturgs, regionally and nationally, since 2012, and reads for the David Mark Cohen & Steinberg award. Other Kennedy Center projects include the Undergraduate Playwrights Workshop, the VSA Discovery Series, the Page-to-Stage Festival, and two seasons of the MFA Playwrights Workshop for NNPN. She was a Visiting Professor of Dramaturgy at Carnegie Mellon (’12-’13), University of Arizona (’07-08), Lesley University (’15-’16) and Brooklyn College (’15) and taught a workshop in Spring ’19 to the Yale School of Drama 1st & 2nd year dramaturgs. She holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from the ART/Moscow Art Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard ’07, where she studied with Playwrights Foundation founder Robert Woodruff. www.helinskydramaturgy.com
Tessa Saito King
Tessa Saito King, General Manager (she/her) is a Japanese American playwright, poet, and screenwriter. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, she received her B.A. from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, an MFA from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Leeds. She had her first one-act produced at the age of fourteen and her first full-length produced at seventeen. Since then, her plays and one-acts have been commissioned, staged, and performed throughout America and the United Kingdom. Most recently she was commissioned to adapt her play NOISE for the screen. She is the winner of PlayGround’s Young Playwrights Festival, a two-time finalist in the Marin Young Playwrights Festival at Marin Theatre Company, semi-finalist for the Mu-Tang Clan Residency at Theatre Mu, and longlisted for the Royal Court Writer’s Group at the Royal Court Theatre. Her poems “Testing” and “Killers” both won awards and received publication.
AeJay Mitchell
