Phoenix Festival Playbill 2025 (1) - Flipbook - Page 48
WHO’S WHO: THE ARTISTS
KAREN CASE COOK (Resident Director)
Karen Case Cook serves as Phoenix Theater Ensemble’s Resident Director. 2025 Phoenix Festival: Live Arts in Nyack: Director
Afterplay alongside Elise Stone as Sonya and Craig Smith as Andrey.
2024 Phoenix Live Arts in Nyack: Karen appeared as Virginia Woolfe
in Vita and Virginia with Elise Stone as Vita Sackville-West, directed by
Craig Smith. Some Directing Highlights: Crime and Punishment (Phoenix
Theatre Ensemble Off-Broadway and 2023 Phoenix Festival: Live Arts in Nyack), The Skin of
Our Teeth (2022 Phoenix Festival: Live Arts in Nyack) Don Juan in Hell (Winner Best Revival and
Best Director Nominee New York Innovative Theatre Awards, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble NYC),
Medea and The Furies (Phoenix Theatre Ensemble NYC), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Peking
University, Beijing), The Guardsman (East Lynne Theater Company), The Twentieth-Century Way
(Philadelphia Premiere/Global Equality Forum), Dad Doesn’t Dance (Edinburgh Fringe) and for
Stella Adler/NYU As You Like It, The Hot L Baltimore and A Winter’s Tale. Karen is a member of
Actors Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.
CRAIG SMITH (Andrey)
Craig Smith was an ensemble member of New York’s prestigious Jean
Cocteau Repertory where he made his artistic home for more than
three decades, appearing in over 200 productions from Stoppard
to Shakespeare and Sophocles to Williams. In 2004, Craig and four
colleagues founded Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, an off-Broadway
award-winning artist-directed ensemble, presenting three to six
productions of new and classical works annually. The Ensemble also produces an
award-winning arts-in-education program for NYC public schools, and a new-works
program, as well as a variety of NYC community activities. The New York Times has
described Craig as “one of our most consistently 昀椀ne actors” and Playgorer.com said he is
“a downtown legend.” He is the recipient of the President of the Borough of Manhattan’s
Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts and Community Service.
ELISE STONE (Sonya)
Elise Stone has performed more than 200 roles on the New York
stage including the celebrated world premier productions of Eric
Bentley’s and Darius Milhaud, Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and
Her Children (Mother Courage), the world premiere of Bentley’s
adaption of Wedekind’s LuLu (LuLu), and as the lead in Eve
Adamson’s production in both the US and South America of Luigi
Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author all at the Jean Cocteau Repertory where
she was a resident artist for two decades. Selected as one of NYTheatre.com’s people of
