SEA DOG THEATER
CHRISTOPHER J. DOMIG, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR; DAN SWERN, MANAGING DIRECTOR
PRESENTS
DIGITAL PROGRAM
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It’s been said that all great dramas are family dramas, and in that sense Awake and Sing! is no different. Clifford Odets drew from his own Bronx childhood to write about a family under economic and relational strain, trying to make ends meet. The play wrestles with class division, economic inequality, and social marginalization—questions that feel just as urgent in 2025, ninety years after its premiere.
Today, it can feel as though we’re all caught up in systems and algorithms that harvest our work, our attention, and even our personal lives down to the last detail. What does it take to flourish and find happiness within or beyond these systems? As the characters insist, “life shouldn’t be printed on dollar bills.” If not on dollar bills, then where is the good life to be found?
When the Group Theatre first staged the play in 1935, they weren’t primarily setting out to lead a political movement. They wanted to create a new kind of American theater, an ensemble that resisted the star system and valued collective work over individual acclaim. Awake and Sing! was written for that ensemble as they explored new ways of making theater.
Sea Dog leans into that spirit. In this production, we have neither a traditional theater nor traditional sets and props. What we do have is a diverse group of actors who reflect both the modern, multiethnic American family and the shared reality that we are all caught up in forces trying to dictate how we live. The Berger family represents all of us—the everyman and everywoman, people in our cities and suburbs, our villages, and the stranger we sit across from in a bar, on a train, or in a theater. Just as there’s no real privacy in the Bergers’ Bronx apartment, all of our actors remain present for the entire play. There is no true off ramp, no real privacy in this new world.
As a company, we chose this play for its communal heartbeat. And like the Group Theatre in its early days, we work with what’s been given to us. For nearly eight years, the beautiful, historic spaces of St. George’s have shaped our theater and taught us that beauty can be born from constraint. We continue to gather artists and designers who are energized by the opportunity to create within, and sometimes because of, unusual circumstances, and are grateful to be in residency here.
At Sea Dog, we are committed to telling stories of alienation and reconciliation. Even Odets’ early working title reflected that tension: his first draft, I’ve Got the Blues, carried the weight of melancholy and despair, while the final title, drawn from Isaiah 26:19—“Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust … and the earth shall cast out the dead”—holds out a radical hope.
Isaiah points to the true urgency in life: the systems we inhabit—both those imposed upon us and those of our own making—can wear our souls down to dust. What, then, will wake us? And what might that world look like—one in which we rise and break into song? In the end, it may not be questions of success and status that we most need to answer, but what it means to become more fully human. That is the question Odets leaves ringing in the air, and the one we are proud to wrestle with here.
—Christopher Domig & Erwin Maas
CAST
Myron
JUAN CARLOS DIAZ*
Moe
CHRISTOPHER J. DOMIG*
Morty
ALFRED C. KEMP*
Ralph
TREVOR MCGHIE*
Sam
SINA POORESMAEIL*
Jacob
GARY SLOAN*
Bessie
DEBRA WALTON*
Hennie
DAISY WANG
CREATIVE TEAM
Director
ERWIN MAAS
Production Designer
GUY DE LANCEY
Sound Designer
FAN ZHANG
Costume Designer
HANXIAO ZHANG
PRODUCTION TEAM
Production Stage Manager
ABBY FRY
Assistant Stage Manager
MADDIE MCAULIFFE
Sound Associate
EAMON GOODMAN
Casting
CHRISTINA SHEA-WRIGHT
Press
EVERYMAN AGENCY
SEA DOG THEATER STAFF
Artistic Director and Co-Founder
CHRISTOPHER J. DOMIG
Managing Director
DAN SWERN
Co-Founder
JANELLE GARCIA DOMIG
Communications / Company Manager
SALLY SHAW
Advertising / Marketing
THINK BIG PICTURE
Catering
PIXIE SCOUT
Box Office
CAROLYN BEST
House Manager
MAGGIE GILLETTE
Photographer
JEREMY VARNER
*Equity Member appearing with permission of Actors’ Equity Association without benefit of an Equity contract in this Off-Off Broadway production.
ABOUT THE CAST
JUAN CARLOS DIAZ (MYRON) Born and raised in New York City; Juan Carlos Diaz began acting at the age of six in various school plays and musicals while a child. After completing theatre studies at Bard College, he returned to New York to pursue his love and devotion for acting. His constant drive and dedication keeps him hard at work as an actor.
CHRISTOPHER J. DOMIG (MOE) is a three-time New York Innovative Theater Award nominee and Fringe Festival Outstanding Actor winner. Previous Sea Dog Theater productions include Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (NYIT Best Revival 2018) and Tuesdays with Morrie (Off-Broadway Alliance Best Revival 2024). He is developing a stage adaptation of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. www.christopherdomig.com
ALFRED C. KEMP (MORTY) New York/Off-Broadway: Macbeth (The Curtain), The War of Woo (Thin Duke Productions). Regional: Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, American Players Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre. Film/TV: Law and Order: Organized Crime. Education: Northwestern University (BS). Thanks to family, friends, and manager Ben Padua. AEA/SAG-AFTRA.
TREVOR MCGHIE (RALPH) Off Broadway: As You Like It (The Public/Shakespeare in the Park) Regional: Two Bit in The Outsiders (La Jolla Playhouse), Fly (Capital Repertory Theatre), Gypsy (Harbor Lights). Training: NYU Tisch - The Meisner Studio, Stonestreet Studios, RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art). Owner of McGhie Productions, a film production company.
SINA POORESMAEIL (SAM) Theater: Iraq, But Funny (Lookingglass Theatre Company), Three Tall Persian Women (Shakespeare and Company), When the Rain Stops Falling (Lenfest Center for the Arts). TV credits: High Maintenance. Developed work at NYTW, Irish Rep, Clubbed Thumb, Arena Stage, and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Wrote and acted in short films, Auto Plus and Inkshop. Represented by Framework Entertainment. MFA Acting Columbia University. Love to G.
GARY SLOAN (JACOB) has performed leading roles off-Broadway in New York and throughout the US in major regional theatres for forty years. He most recently was Head of the MFA Acting program at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. His acting text, In Rehearsal, was released by Routledge Publishing in London in 2011. He is currently rehearsing a five-year King Lear project with friend and director, Mark Lewis.
DEBRA WALTON (BESSIE) Honing her skills on Broadway, national tours, and in regional theatre, Debra has played a variety of roles from the title character in CLYDE’S to Minnie Fay in Hello, Dolly!. TV and streaming appearances include Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods, and Harlem. Debra made her Broadway directorial debut as the Associate Director of Thoughts of a Colored Man. She currently serves as Interim Associate Artistic Director at The York Theatre.
DAISY WANG (HENNIE) Daisy Wang was previously an internationally syndicated radio host and the co-host of Wheel of Fortune Live. Recent credits include Criminal Minds and General Hospital. After working several years in Los Angeles, Daisy is new to New York, and beyond excited to make her Off-Broadway debut with Sea Dog Theatre.
ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM
ERWIN MAAS (DIRECTOR) is a New York based theatermaker, curator, educator and international arts advocate from the Netherlands with extensive international experience across a variety of creative and community contexts. In New York, his directions both Off-Broadway and site specific have received multiple New York Times Critic’s Picks. His directing work ranges from plays by contemporary playwrights to devised, interdisciplinary immersive projects, opera, music theater & dance with performances for all ages. He is the Co-Executive Director of the Pan-African Creative Exchange (PACE) & teaches at CUNY Brooklyn College's MFA Performance & Interactive Media Arts Program (PIMA). www.erwinmaas.com
GUY DE LANCEY (PRODUCTION DESIGNER) is Associate Director of the Movement Laboratory for research and practice in performance, movement, technology and creativity at Barnard College, Columbia University. He recently created the scenography and projection design for Breaking Bricks, a ballet for the centenary of the Tulsa Race Massacre for Tulsa Ballet, choreographed by Jennifer Archibald, and the projection design, lighting, and scenography for A Kid Like Rishi by Kees Roorda, directed by Erwin Maas. He has had artistic work exhibited at Signs and Symbols gallery New York (2020) and The Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art Austria (2021).
FAN ZHANG (SOUND DESIGNER) is a Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, AUDELCO, and Henry Hewes–nominated sound designer and composer. Her works has been heard at Lincoln Center, Public Theatre, Atlantic, Second Stage, MCC, American Conservatory Theater, Steppenwolf,Old Globe, and many more. Member of LOCAL 829, TSDCA. Professor at Purdue University. MFA: Yale School of Drama. fanzhangsound.com
HANXIAO ZHANG (COSTUME DESIGNER) is a Chinese costume and fashion designer based in New York. Her work combines historical research with imaginative storytelling, using techniques such as draping, pattern making, and zero-waste design. With a background in fashion design, she brings each costume to life through refined craftsmanship and a distinct visual sensibility.