People

Co-Artistic Directors

Leah Cooper, Co-Artistic Director* (she/her), has been directing, producing, and managing in theater for over 30 years. Locally, she has directed for Rough Magic, Park Square Theatre, History Theatre, Commonweal Theatre, Gremlin Theater, 20% Theatre, Theatre in the Round, Shakespearean Youth Theatre, The Playwrights Center, and for the Breaking Ice (equity, diversity and inclusion) program at Pillsbury House & Theatre. She was the first Executive Director of the MN Theater Alliance from 2010-2016, serving over 450 theaters across the state; co-founding partner from 2007-2017 at MinnesotaPlaylist.com, and Executive Director at the MN Fringe Festival from 2001-2006. Leah is also a facilitator and consultant in community engagement and organizational development, and she serves on the board of directors for the Department of Public Transformation. Prior to working full time in the arts, she spent 10 years in the corporate sector as a software engineer and business consultant. She’s done a wide variety of things, but the unifying theme to her passion is inclusive creativity and creative inclusivity.

Artist Ensemble

Laurel Armstrong (she/her) has worked in the performing arts as an actor, singer, dancer, voice-over talent, writer, director and producer. As a performer she was last seen in Wonderlust’s productions of Lost & Found, The Incarceration Play Project, and Hopscotch. She has performed with many other companies in the Twin Cities, as well as toured with Sesame Street Live! and worked as a singer for Universal Studios Japan. Locally her most recent producing/creating projects have been: Feed the Ducks in cooperation with Nautilus Music Theater, which virtually connected seniors with artists during the pandemic; Half-Baked with Theater Elision which gave an opportunity for artists to perform emerging, “half-baked” work; and East of the Sun, a concert-reading/retelling of the fairy-tale “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” with composer Natalie Nowytski.  Her favorite projects are those that combine different styles, traditions, and people in ways that acknowledge and honor what is and what has been, while playfully stepping together into what could be.

Becky Dale (she/her/we) is a process of becoming love and joy. (“You,” too? Maybe all of us?) Some of the components of this process, so far, include: composting experience, ideas, and interactions into music (with Nautilus Music-Theater, Cornerstone Theater Company, Ten Thousand Things and many more); collaborating with other beings and places to make community-engaged theater (with Wonderlust productions since 2018!); partnering in learning about individual and collective trauma and creating healing in communities; practicing coaching skills like asking powerful questions, listening deeply, being open to windows of opportunity, opening to emergence, and more; parenting and learning from children; being outdoors with the more than human world; metabolizing pain and hurt and grief; lots of up and down; letting go and letting come; practicing mindfulness meditation and so much more. What else may it include? The possibilities are endless.

snem DeSellier  is a wiggly idea raised by the long tidal river in western massachusetts. they are a deviser, a writer/dancer, a designer, a dramaturg, a director, and beyond! mostly they like listening to and shaping time together. local collaborations include: Red Eye Theater, Lightning Rod, Body Watani, Playwrights’ Center, Pillsbury House + Theatre, and 20% Theatre Company. snem first worked with Wonderlust on Thank You for Holding: The Caregiver Play Project, as a story circle participant and performer, and then as the Assistant Director when it premiered in fall 2024. they build for a future of transdisciplinary stretching and translational medicine that has capacity for the wide and complex bodies of those they love, those they are, and those they don’t yet know!

Antonio Duke (he/him) is a Twin Cities based theater maker. Theater allows him to examine human behavior communally. Writing and embodying a character gives him the opportunity to evoke empathy publicly. Through writing and live audience interactions with a character he gains more insight into the human condition. He strives through storytelling to evoke a cathartic healing experience. His artistic mission is to provide conjuration spells for black folk. By offering black magic he hopes to illuminate a communal healing space. He conjures most of his muse from black spiritualities, specifically the deities from the Yoruba, Santeria and Voodoo traditions. He’s found through his solo work that some stories in the black experience need divine inspiration to tell fully. In doing so he follows in the tradition of a long lineage of African oral solo storytellers called Griots. He’s an alumnus of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie B.F.A Actor Training Program.

Samantha Fairchild (she/her) is a local stage manager, actor, and otherwise theatre artist based.  She has additional backgrounds in education and disability advocacy.  She started at Wonderlust with Every Brilliant Thing (a project done in partnership with the University of St. Thomas) and has since worked on Hidden Herald (Season 1), Thank You for Holding: The Caregiver Play Project, and Hidden Herald (Season 2).  She has stage managed and/or performed with Playwrights’ Center, Six Points Theater, Interact Center, Mixed Blood Theatre, Old Log Theatre, Classical Actors Ensemble, Minneapolis Musical Theatre, and Theatre Coup D’état.  Her dog, Vienna, is half of her personality; If you’ve ever been to a show at the Fitzgerald Theatre and have witnessed Vienna greeting audience members from perch, then you understand why.

Andrea M Gross is a St Paul based costume designer, mama, advocate and activist. She is a company member with Wonderlust because she believes in the transformative way that stories here are gathered and told with love and dignity. Her costume designs have been seen in almost every production the company has made (In My Heart, The People’s House, and The Minotaur and the Labyrinth). Design work has been seen with Walking Shadow Theatre Company, Park Square Theater, The Ordway, and The Jungle. As Rubble&Ash, she collaborates with Barb Portinga to meld pieces from existing stocks of costumes; thrift, antique, and fabric stores; and purpose-build garments to combine elements in unexpected ways. She is a company member with nimbus theatre, where she made her local debut in 2005 and where she continues to grow, stretch, and become the storyteller she is. The intention is always to support the story and creation of character with skill and ingenuity. She is a founding member of Technicians for Change, and The Costume Collective. Andrea believes that a rising tide raises all boats and that we all do better when we all do better.  (www.agrossdesigns.com)

Zeb Hults (he/him), was the scenic director for Wonderlust’s Incarceration Play Project, the Adoption Play Project, and Six Characters in Search of an Author Meets a Reality TV Show, and he was the technical director for the Capitol Play Project. He is a transplant to Minneapolis from New York City and Connecticut. Locally, Zeb has also worked as Technical Director or Stage Manager for Penumbra Theatre, Theatre Novi Most, Eclectic Edge Ensemble, Maple Grove HS, Circus Juventas, and Mad Munchkin Productions. He is currently the Assistant Technical Director for the Theatre Arts & Dance Dept. at the University of Minnesota. During his eight years in NYC, he worked Off-Broadway, in the theatre/event/fashion industry, and traveled across the country for a design firm, installing large-scale seasonal displays for casinos. In CT, he worked for the Goodspeed Opera House, was the Technical Director for the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts in Hartford, CT and as a Project Manager for Global Scenic Services in Bridgeport, CT.

Sophie Javna (she/they) is a recent transplant from Colorado and Oregon. She started with Wonderlust Productions as the Assistant Director for The Incarceration Play Project in 2022 and has since performed in their show and participatory ritual, Lost and Found. She is also collaborating on their Payne-Phalen Community Engagement project. Sophie loves playing with different aspects of theater-making, including acting, puppetry, visual art, singing, writing, movement, directing, and teaching. She is getting her Master of Social Work at the University of Minnesota, focusing on community-engaged arts as a therapeutic modality. She also gardens! Other credits include MN Fringe, Gadfly Theatre Productions, CLIMB Theater, Pillsbury House + Theatre’s Chicago Avenue Project, and Open Eye Theatre.

Megan Kim (she/her), Megan Kim is a graduate of The American Musical and Dramatic Academy-Los Angeles. She spent 9 years acting and singing in LA performing at various venues such as the Ford Amphitheatre and Fullerton Civic Light Opera, before returning to the Twin Cities. She is a company member with Wonderlust Productions. She performed in Lost & Found, The Incarceration Play Project, Hopscotch, Contact Tracing, The Capitol Play Project, Overachievers Web Series, The Adoption Play Project,  and was the assistant director for Look Again: The Normandale Play Project. Other theatre credits include: Artistry, Smartmouth Comedy, Freshwater Theatre, Theatre Unbound and Nautilus Music-Theater. She also performs with Pillsbury House + Theatre’s Breaking Ice program.

Peter Morrow (he/him) moved to the Twin Cities in 2012 and has been creating and collaborating throughout the community with theaters, dance companies and independent artists since then.  When not working you might catch him performing music with Carlisle Evans Peck, Christian Bardin, Theo Langason or solo. He also teaches with Stages, Speaking Out Collective and East Side Arts Council. The Capitol Play Project was his first Wonderlust Production and he has since worked on The Labyrinth and the Minotaur (Incarceration Play Project), The Capitol Play Podcast, Hidden Herald,  Hopscotch, Contact Tracing and the live streaming / filming of the Caregiver Play.

Gabriel Peñaloza-Hernandez (he/him/his) is a Texas native who holds a BA in Theatre and a Psychology minor. After graduating from Stephen F. Austin State University and completing a one year apprenticeship at the Commonweal Theatre, he decided to stay in the Twin Cities as freelance stage manager for various companies including Stages Theater, Rough Magic, Uprising, Shakespearean Youth Theatre, and Wonderlust Productions. He began working with Wonderlust Productions as the Stage Manager for The Incarceration Play Project and since has joined projects including Hopscotch and most recently Lost & Found.

Staff

Frances Matejcek, Communications Manager (she/her) was born and raised in Minneapolis, and has been doing communications work for nonprofits in the Twin Cities for the past five years. She graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2020 with a BA in American Studies. Frances enjoys running, going on long road trips, sitting and thinking by bodies of water, and especially thinking about reality television. She is interested in how popular art and culture can be an expression of innate human desires. 

Rachel Lynett , Producing Manager (she/they) is a queer Afro-Latine playwright, producer, and teaching artist. Their plays have been featured at  San Diego Rep, Magic Theatre, Mirrorbox Theatre, Laboratory Theatre of Florida, Barrington Stage Company, Theatre Lab, Theatre Prometheus, Florida Studio Theatre, Laughing Pig Theatre Company, Capital Repertory Theatre, Teatro Espejo, the Kennedy Center Page to Stage festival, Theatresquared, Equity Library Theatre, Chicago, Talk Back Theatre, American Stage Theatre Company, Indiana University at Bloomington, Edgewood College, and Orlando Shakespeare Theatre. Lynett is the 2021 recipient of the Yale Drama Prize for their play, Apologies to Lorraine Hansberry (You Too August Wilson), and the  2021 recipient of the National Latinx Playwriting award for their play, Black Mexican. They have previously taught at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Alfred University and worked locally at the Science Museum of Minnesota as a Project Leader and the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless as Director of Operations.

Board

Marianne Combs, Board Member (she/her) is a veteran public radio journalist, with more than 20 years experience covering the Minnesota arts scene. In 2020 she was named Journalist of the Year by the Minnesota chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists, and has won multiple awards for her investigative reporting. She is particularly interested in the areas where the arts intersect with social justice. Currently she is the Managing News Editor for “Racial Reckoning: The Arc of Justice,” a collaboration between KMOJ, Ampers Radio for Diverse Communities and the Minnesota Humanities Center.

Noelle Faye, Board Member was born inside a prison to an incarcerated mother and soon placed into the foster care system in Michigan. After a fatal car crash in 2016, Faye served three years. Upon release, she was alarmed by the lack of trauma-informed care for people leaving the prison system. It became her new vocation – to raise awareness about the struggles of the justice system on women of color. Her experience has led her through many community engagements and organizations whose causes are parallel to her own personal experiences. Prior to her current role as an Assistant Ombuds Investigator for the Office of the Ombuds for Corrections, Noelle was the first Justice impacted legal fellow for the ReEntry Clinic at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, where she assisted with legal services in the state’s only clinic dedicated to reentry as well as currently incarcerated individuals. She credits success to those who have allowed her the space to use her voice, and motivated by family. Noelle performed the part of the Ombudsperson in our production of The Labyrinth & The Minotaur.

Bio coming soon

Christin Lindberg, Board Member (she/her) is a newcomer to theatre via the Caregiver Play Project where she was honored both to participate in a story circle and as a cast member. She currently works at Wilder Research, on projects related to older adults, housing, and homelessness. Chris has a double major in Sociology and French from St. Olaf College, and Master’s degrees in Gerontology, and in Higher Education. When not dreaming about theatre or going to shows, Chris likes to build, sew and grow things, collect languages, travel to interesting places, hang out with her adult kids, walk her dogs, and challenge herself to learn new things.

Sarah Tan, Board Member (she/her) is an artist educator and deviser born and raised in Singapore. She has a B.A. in Theatre Arts and concentration in Education Studies from Carleton College, an M.F.A. in Theatre for Youth and Community from Arizona State University, and is a certified Trauma Support Specialist. Her background is in modern dance, physical theatre, professional theatre, and drama education. As a scholar, she has researched digital creations with young people, the performance of identity, and the intersection between the performing arts and healing trauma. Currently, she is a freelance artist educator in North America in the physical and online space. Learn more about what she’s up to at www.sarahtanhy.com. 

*Leah Cooper and Alan Berks are the founders of Wonderlust Productions and are active ensemble and board members.

Thank you to our founding and past board members!

Thank you to our founding and past ensemble members and staff!

KD Bauer
John Bueche
Molly Chase
Gabrielle Dominique
Deb Ervin
Aaron Gabriel
Meghan Gunderson
Lindsay Marcy
Tamara Ober
Kari Olk
Ariel Pinkerton
Oogie Push
Rosie Tabachnick
Adam Whisner