Leela Velautham was born and brought up in the UK. Alongside an academic career in sustainability research, she has been featured in the Best of Playground SF 24 and 25 and twice in the best of Playground NY, is a two-time semi-finalist of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival  2021 and 2022 (with the plays “The Empty Crusade” and “Modern Love”, respectively) and won the University of Oxford’s New Writing Festival in 2011 for her play “Schroedinger’s Hat”. A full production of her one-act play “Post-Scarcity Possibilities” was staged as part of the 2022 Meganne George Women’s Work Short Play Festival at the New Perspectives Theatre Company. She is currently a member of the New Perspectives Theatre Company’s 2022 Full-Length Lab.

Illana Stein (she/her) is a NYC-based director, originally from Fort Worth. Amphibian credits include Director/Co-writer (with Deborah Yarchun and Sean Hudock) on Hans & Sophie (five DFW Critic Awards including Outstanding Director and Outstanding New Play) and A Lost Leonardo. She recently directed Handle with Care (Stage West). NYC Directing credits: Julius Caesar Tour (HVSF), NYU (Tisch, Stella Adler, Strasberg) Associate/Asst. credits: TFANA, Signature, Pearl, OSF, Yale Rep, A.R.T., Hangar Theater, Cincy Playhouse, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. Drama League First Stage Residency, LCT Directors Lab, AJT Theatremacher Program Director, JPP Artistic Producer, and League of Professional Theatre Women Board. illanastein.com 

Taliyah Salih is excited to be working with Amphibian Theater for the first time. Most recently she stage managed Moon Man Walk (Jubilee Theater), Wonder of the World and Chamber Music (Texas Wesleyan University). She is currently perusing a BFA in Design and Technology, with an emphasis in stage management.

Jeff Stanfield is a graduate of Texas Christian University. After spending eight and a half seasons with Dallas Children’s Theater, he is pleased to have returned to Fort Worth with Amphibian Stage. You may have seen him on stage under the open Texas sky at the Hip Pocket Theatre in such productions as Love Letters to a Raven, Loop the Loop, In Watermelon Sugar, The Lake Worth Monster and Don Quixote.

Ally Varitek is a dramaturg and occasional actor who recently graduated from Baylor University Theatre. She loves the intersections of the arts and is especially passionate about the literary side of theatre. She’s an interdisciplinary aficionado who finds herself enamored with approaching relationships from a place of abundance instead of competition and above all loves learning about the human experience through theatre. Find her at allyvaritek.com!

Joy Yvonne Jones is an accredited actor, poet, playwright, model, and entrepreneur; who embodies revolutionary art with every project she is a part of. Recipient of the San Diego Critic Circle Craig Noel Award for Outstanding Featured Performance in a Play, Joy’s stage credits include Saartjie Baartman in Voyeurs de Venus (Moxie Theatre), Caitlin in Ferryman (New Village Arts), Frances in Mud Row (Cygnet Theatre), Jane in Pride and Prejudice (Cygnet Theatre), Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra (New Match Collective), Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (Texas Shakespeare Festival). She is currently working on her One Woman show: Cleopatra, and a short film, A Month of Sundays. Follow her on Patreon, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, or visit her website to know where you can catch her next. Joyyvonnejones.com

Carter Gill (He/Him) is based in Dallas and New York, Carter Gill is currently a recurring guest-starring in the award-winning Harlan Coben’s Shelter streaming on Amazon Prime. Carter currently serves on the Movement Faculty at Southern Methodist University and works as a movement director with Dallas Theatre Center. Gill has performed with several Off-Broadway and regional productions over the past 15 years and recently, he was a company member of Punchdrunk NYC’s Sleep No More. He has worked with Lincoln Center, Playwrights Horizons, The Lark, Theatre for a New Audience and The Women’s Project, among others. Regionally, Gill has performed with The Berkshire Theatre Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre and Shakespeare Theatre Company, where he and the company were Helen Hayes Award nominees for Best Ensemble. He proudly crafted and performed in several company-created Commedia dell’arte productions in New York and he has collaborated with such esteemed directors as Karen Allen, Alan Muraoka, Tatiana Pandiani, Christopher Bayes, Daniel Fish, Mark Lamos, Patricia McGregor, Alan Paul, Moritz von Stuelpnagel, Les Waters, Norman Ayrton and Evan Yionoulis. Film and television credits include Banana Split on Netflix, NBC’s Law & Order, CBS’s Person of Interest, AMC’s Turn: Washington’s Spies, TV Land’s Younger and Evil on CBS, Harlan Coben’s Shelter. MFA in Acting from the Yale School of Drama. Upcoming Theatre: The French Play, by Gonzalo Rodriguez Risco at SMU, director. Hamlet directed by Becca Wolff at Telluride Theatre Company, choreographer.

Mitchell Stephens is an actor, choreographer and movement artist based in DFW. Mitchell is happy to be back at Amphibian after working on She Wolf, Cyrano, Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins. Mitchell’s work spans the country and all over the metroplex. Recent Credits include Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, The Great Distance Home, Silent Sky, Lord of the Flies (WaterTower Theatre), Reykjavík (Kitchen Dog Theatre) La Maupin: The French Abomination, Everything will be Fine (Prism Movement Theatre). Mitchell is a proud facilitator for De-Cruit, using Shakespeare to treat Post Traumatic Stress and specializes in incarcerated veterans with Amphibian.

Lisa Fairchild is honored to be appearing in her second SparkFest with the team at Amphibian Stage, having previously appeared as Sheila in the staged reading of Sharifa Yasmin’s Close to Home. It was directed by Sophia Watt who then directed Lisa in Dance Nation at RecRoom Arts in Houston. It is a current delight to be directed by Illana Stein who recently guided her performance in Handle with Care at Stage West.

Stan Denman is an actor, playwright, and director who lives in Waco, Texas. His acting credits include Booth at Second Thought Theatre, PARADE at Water Tower Theatre, The Unseen at DFW’s Out of the Loop Festival and at the Cherry Lane Theatre in NY, and Horton Foote’s Drama Desk-nominated production of The Traveling Lady at Ensemble Studio Theatre in NY. In addition to Actor’s Equity, he is also a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. Stan is a professor of theatre at Baylor University, where he has directed over 30 productions.